Spartan Gold - Cussler Clive. Страница 12

To that end they’d brought along a dive mask, a pair of truncated swim fins, waterproof flashlights with extra batteries, four coils of nylon towing-grade rope, and three ratchet blocks to secure the sub in position lest it slip during Sam’s inspection. If they even got that far.

Additionally, the day before he’d asked Selma to FedEx him a trio of Spair Air emergency pony tanks, each of which contained enough air for roughly sixty breaths, or two to five minutes.

“I know that look on your face, Fargo,” Remi said. “You want to go inside, don’t you?”

“Only if it’s safe. Trust me, Remi, I got my adrenaline fix last night. I’m not going to take any stupid chances.”

“Okay.”

Sam slid down the bank into the water, then stroked over to where the periscope rose from the water. He grabbed ahold of it, gave it a tug and several shakes. It seemed solid. Remi tossed him two ends of rope, both of which he secured around the periscope. Remi took the other ends, secured each of them to a ratchet block, then each of those to nearby trees. Sam climbed back out and together they cranked the ratchets until the lines were taut. Sam gave each one a tug.

“It’s not going anywhere. Okay, I’m going to have a quick look around. Three minutes, no more.”

“Do you want me to—”

“Shhh,” Sam whispered, a finger to his lips.

He turned his head, listening. Five seconds passed and then faintly, in the distance, came the sound of a boat engine.

“Coming this way,” he said.

“Just fishermen.”

“Probably.” But after last night . . .

One thing that had been nagging at Sam was the proximity of their submarine to where Ted had said he’d found the punt shard. It was unlikely the two were connected, but not so unlikely that Ted’s assailant might choose to search this area of the Pocomoke.

He crouched beside one of the duffel bags, rummaged around, and came up with a pair of binoculars. With Remi on his heels, he ran back along the bank to where they’d tied off the skiff. They dropped to their knees in the high grass and Sam aimed the binoculars upriver.

A few seconds later a powerboat appeared around the bend of the river. It contained four men. One at the wheel, one on the bow, and two sitting on the afterdeck. Sam zoomed in on the driver’s face.

Scarface. “It’s him,” he muttered.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Remi replied.

“I wish I was.”

CHAPTER 8

The skiff!” Sam rasped softly. “Come on!”

He slid belly first down the bank and into the water. A quarter mile upstream Scarface had turned the powerboat into the mouth of another inlet, which the man in the bow was scanning through a pair of binoculars. Sam heard Scarface’s voice echo over the water, followed by another voice saying, “Nyet.”

Great, more Russian heavies.

Sam stroked over to where he’d secured the skiff’s painter line, quickly undid the knot, then swam back and grabbed the bow cleat. He glanced over his shoulder. Scarface was bringing the powerboat about and turning their way.

“Sam . . .”

“I see them.”

He wrapped the painter around one fist then accepted Remi’s help up the bank. “Pull,” he whispered. “Pull hard!”

Together they heaved on the painter. The skiff’s bow bumped against the bank, then began inching up the slope.

The powerboat was three hundred yards away. The men’s attention seemed focused on the opposite shore, but Sam knew that could change at any second. One stray glance and they were finished.

“Pull, Remi.”

Again they heaved back on the painter. Sam spread his legs and dug his heels into the soil, pulling until the tendons in his neck bulged. The skiff’s nose appeared over the lip of the bank, but now free of the water and subject to gravity the electric motor began fighting them. The skiff slipped backward a foot.

“One more good pull,” Sam said. “On three. One . . . two . . . three!”

The skiff arced up and over the lip and slid onto level ground. In lockstep Sam and Remi backpedaled, dragging the skiff deeper into the grass.

“Down, Sam.”

Remi dropped to her belly, followed a split second later by Sam. They went still, tried to slow their breathing.

“Think we made it?” Remi whispered.

“We’ll know shortly. If things go bad, I want you to run as fast as you can. Head for the forest and don’t look back.”

“No, Sam—”

“Shhh.”

The powerboat’s engine was growing louder by the second, seemingly headed straight for their spot.

Then, Scarface’s voice: “Anything?”

“Nothing. What are they in, anyway?”

“A skiff, about twelve feet long.”

“Can’t be on this side,” the voice said. “There’s nothing here. Got to be the other one. Plenty of side channels to hide in there.”

“Yeah.”

The engine noise began moving off, fading across the water until Sam and Remi could only hear its distant echo.

“They’ve moved into another channel,” Sam said, rising to his knees and peeking over the top of the grass. “Yep. Don’t see them. They’re gone.”

Remi rolled onto her back and let out a sigh. “Thank God.”

Sam lay down beside her. She laid her head onto his shoulder.

“What do you say?” he asked. “Stay or go?”

She didn’t hesitate. “We’ve come this far. Be a shame to leave the mystery unsolved.”

“That’s the woman I love,” Sam said.

“What, reckless and misguided?”

“No, courageous and determined.”

Remi sang softly, “ ‘You say potayto, I say potahto . . .’ ”

“Come on, back to work.”

Sam spit into his mask, dipped it into the water, then settled it onto his head. Remi stood on the bank, arms on her hips, face etched with worry.

“Just going to have a look around,” he assured her. “I’ll save the air in case we can get inside. This won’t happen, but if it shifts in my direction while I’m down there, just start working those ratchet blocks until it tips back. If I don’t come up within, say, four to six hours, you can start worrying.”

“Comedian.”

“Hold the fort, I’ll be back.”

Sam clicked on his flashlight, took a deep breath, and ducked beneath the surface. Left hand extended, he finned downward. Within only a few feet the algae-filled water turned a deep green and visibility dropped to only a few feet. Sediment and bits of plant life swirled in the flashlight’s beam, leaving Sam feeling like he was trapped inside a nightmarish snow globe.

His hand touched something solid, the hull. He kept going, letting his hand trail over the curve of the hull until finally the bottom appeared in his flashlight beam. The keel was perched atop a jumble of sunken logs, precariously balanced but stable enough that Sam felt a flood of relief knowing the sub wasn’t likely to roll over on him. He felt the ache in his lungs turn into a burning, so he finned for the surface.

“Everything okay?” Remi asked once he’d caught his breath.

“Yep. Good news. She’s sitting upright, more or less. Okay, going again.”

He ducked back under, this time estimating the hull’s diameter as he skimmed past it. At the keel, he turned aft. At about the midpoint he encountered a bracket of some sort jutting from the hull and running lengthwise. For a moment what he was seeing didn’t register on his brain. He’d seen this before . . . one of the pictures from his earlier research. When the answer came, Sam felt a knot form in his belly.

Torpedo rack.

He stopped swimming and cast the flashlight along the bottom, seeing it with new eyes. Was one of those seemingly harmless sunken logs something else altogether?

He kept swimming aft until his flashlight picked out the tapered cigar end of the sub, and jutting from its side a horizontal plane. When he drew even with it he righted himself and let himself rise alongside the hull until the last piece of the puzzle came into view. Rising from the back of the hull was another tube, about eighteen inches tall and about shoulder-width in diameter.