Night Probe! - Cussler Clive - Страница 58

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The communications director handed him a sheet of paper. "Read it and weep."

Moon studied the wording. Then he looked up. "Where's the President?"

"He's speaking to a group of Mexican-American labor leaders out in the rose garden."

Moon slipped on his shoes and hurried down the hallway, pulling on his coat and straightening his tie as he went. The President had just finished a round of handshaking and was returning to the oval office when Moon caught up with him. "More bad news?" asked the President.

Moon nodded and held up the message. "The latest word from Pitt."

"Read it to me as we walk back to my office."

"He says, "Have been ordered out of the St. Lawrence by the Canadian navy. Granted a ten-hour grace period to pack the suitcases. Destroyer is standing by."

"Is that all?"

"No, sir, there's more."

"Then let's have it."

Moon read on. " 'Intend to disregard eviction notice. Salvage continues. We are preparing to repel boarders. Signed Pitt.'"

The President stopped in mid-stride. "What was that?"

"Sir?"

"The last part, read it again."

" 'We are preparing to repel boarders.'"

The President shook his head in astonishment. "Good lord, the order to repel boarders hasn't been given in a hundred years."

"If I'm any judge of character, Pitt means what he says."

The President looked thoughtful.

"So the British and Canadians have slammed the door."

"I'm afraid that's the verdict," said Moon. "Shall I contact Pitt and order him to break off the salvage? Any other action might provoke a military response."

"It's true we're walking a tightrope, but good old-fashioned guts deserve a reward."

Moon suppressed a sudden fear. "You're not suggesting we throw Pitt a lifeline."

"I am," said the President. "It's time we showed some guts of our own."

They stood together tenderly as though it was the first time and watched a young moon rise in the east, guessing the destinations of the ships beating steadily downriver. Overhead the two red lights, signifying a vessel moored over a wreck, burned from the mast, giving them just enough glow to make out each other's faces. "I never knew it would come to this," Heidi said softly.

"You created a ripple effect," Pitt responded, "and it's still spreading."

She leaned against him. "Strange how the discovery of an old crumpled letter in a university archive could touch so many lives. If only I'd left well enough alone," she whispered.

Pitt put his arm around her and gently squeezed. "We can't look back on the ifs. There's no profit in it."

Heidi gazed across the water at the Canadian destroyer. The decks and boxlike superstructure were brightly lit, and she could hear the hum of the generators. She shivered as a drifting patch of fog crept in across the river. "What will happen when we overstep Commander Weeks' deadline?"

Pitt held up his watch to the dim mast lights. "We'll know in another twenty minutes."

"I feel so ashamed."

Pitt looked at her. "What is this, cleanse-the-soul hour?"

"That ship wouldn't be out there if I hadn't blabbed to Brian Shaw."

"Remember what I said about ifs."

"But I slept with him. That makes it worse. If anyone is hurt I…..." The words escaped her and she fell silent as Pitt held her tight.

They did not speak again until, a few minutes later, a low, polite cough tugged them back to reality. Pitt turned to see Rudi Gunn standing on the bridge wing above.

"You'd better come up, Dirk. Weeks is getting pretty insistent. Claims he sees no evidence of our departure. I'm running out of excuses."

"Did you tell him the ship is swept by bubonic plague and mutiny?"

"No time for humor," Gunn said seriously. "We also have a contact on radar. A ship steering out of the main channel in our direction. I fear our luncheon guest has called up reinforcements."

Weeks stared through the bridge windows at the incoming mist. He held a cup of coffee in one hand that was half full and turning cold. His normally easygoing disposition was stretched to the limits by the annoying indifference of the NUMA ship to his requests for information. He turned to his first officer, who was bent over a radarscope. "What do you make of it?"

"A large ship, nothing more. Probably a coastal tanker or a containership. Can you see its lights?"

"Only when they climbed over the horizon. The fog has cut them off."

"The curse of the St. Lawrence," said the first officer. "You never know when the fog decides to shroud this part of the river."

Weeks trained a pair of binoculars on the Ocean Venturer, but already its lights were beginning to blur as the fog bank rolled in. Within a few minutes the Venturer would be completely obscured.

The first officer straightened up and rubbed his eyes. "if I didn't know better, I'd say the target was on a collision course."

Weeks picked up a microphone. "Radio room, this is the Captain. Patch me in on the safety call frequency."

"The contact is slowing," said the first officer.

Weeks waited until he heard the bridge speaker come on and emit a low crackle of static. Then he began transmitting.

"To the ship-on an upriver course, bearing zero-one-seven degrees off Pointe-au-Pere. This is the H.M.C.S. Huron. Please respond. Over." His only reply was the muted static. He called two more times, but there was still no reply.

"Down to three knots and still closing. Range twelve hundred yards.

Weeks ordered a seaman to sound the inland waterway fog signal for a ship at anchor. Four blasts of the Huron's horn whooped over the black water: one short, two long, one short.

The answer was a prolonged shriek that cut through the fog.

Weeks stepped to the doorway, his eyes straining into the night. The approaching intruder remained invisible.

"He appears to be slipping between us and the Ocean Venturer," the first officer reported.

"Why in hell don't they answer? Why don't the fools stay clear?"

"Maybe we'd better throw a scare into them."

A devious gleam came into Weeks' eyes. "Yes, I think that might do the trick." He pressed the mike's transmit button and said, "To the ship off my port stem. This is the H.M.C.S. destroyer Huron. If you do not identify yourself immediately, we shall open fire and blow you out of the water."

Perhaps five seconds passed. Then a voice rasped out of the bridge speaker in a pronounced Texas drawl.

"This is the U.S.S. guided missile cruiser Phoenix. Draw when you're ready, pardner."

Local farmers may have welcomed the rain that poured onto the Hudson River valley, but it only further depressed the crew of the De Soto. Their search for the Manhattan Limited had turned up nothing but the twisted, rusting remains of the Hudson-Deauville bridge, which lay on the river bottom like the scattered bones of an extinct dinosaur.

Hour followed hour, the crew keyed to the instruments, the helmsman steering over the same grids five and six times, everyone trying to spot something they might have overlooked. Three times the probes that trailed behind the boat's stern hung up on underwater obstructions, creating delays of several hours before divers could work them free again.

The line of Giordino's mouth tightened as he pored over the grid charts, sketching in the debris shown by the side-scan so nor Finally he turned to Glen Chase.

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