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“You can’t be serious?”
“He personally requested you.”
Pitt shook his head angrily. “This is asinine. What’s to stop me from refusing?”
“You force me to remind you,” Sandecker said calmly, “that in spite of your status with NUMA, you’re still carried on the active rolls as a major in the Air Force. And, as you well know, the Joint Chiefs frown upon insubordination.”
Pitt’s eyes looked resentfully into Sandecker’s. “It won’t work.”
“Yes it will,” Sandecker said. “You’re a damn good marine engineer, the best I’ve got. I’ve already met with Hunter and I minced no words in telling him so.”
“There are other complications,” Pitt didn’t sound very confident, “that haven’t been considered.”
“You mean the fact that you’ve been laying Hunter’s daughter?”
Pitt stiffened. “Do you know what that makes you, Admiral?”
“A sly, old devious son of a bitch?” Sandecker asked. “Actually, there’s much more to this business than you’ve taken the trouble to notice.”
“You sound ominous as hell,” Pitt said, unimpressed.
“I mean to,” Sandecker replied seriously. “You’re not joining the Navy to learn a new trade. You’re to act as liaison between Hunter and myself. Before this thing’s over with, NUMA will be involved up to its ears. NUMA has been ordered to help the Navy with whatever oceanographical data they demand.”
“Equipment?”
“If they ask for it.”
“Finding a submarine that disappeared six months ago won’t be a picnic.”
“The Starbuck is only half the act,” Sandecker said. “The Navy Department has compiled thirty-eight documented cases of ships over the past thirty years that have sailed into a circular-shaped area north of the Hawaiian Islands and vanished. They want to know why.”
“Ships disappear in the Atlantic and Indian oceans too. It’s not an unheard-of occurrence.”
“True, but under normal c
ircumstances, marine disasters leave traces behind; bits of flotsam, oil slicks, even bodies. Wreckage will also float ashore to give a hint of a missing ship’s fate, but no such remains have turned up from the ships that vanished in the Pacific Vortex.”
“The Pacific Vortex?”
“That’s the name the seamen in the maritime unions coined for it. They won’t sign on a ship whose course takes them through the area.”
“Thirty-eight ships,” Pitt repeated slowly. “What about radio contact? A ship would have to go down in seconds not to transmit a Mayday signal.”
“No distress signals were ever received.”
Pitt didn’t say anything. Sandecker simply sipped his Scotch, offering no further comment. As if on cue, the myna birds began their noisy antics again, shattering the brief silence. Pitt shut them from his mind and stared steadfastly at the floor; there were a hundred questions swirling around in his head, but it was far too early in the morning for him to conjure up theories on mysterious ship disappearances.
After the silence had dragged on a bit too long, Pitt spoke “Okay, so thirty-seven ships will never reach port again. That leaves the thirty-eighth, the Starbuck. The Navy has the exact position from the capsule. What are they waiting for? If they locate the remains, their salvage ships won’t require an act of God to raise her from ten fathoms.”
“It’s not all that elementary.”
“Why not? The Navy raised the submarine F-4 from sixty fathoms right here on Oahu off the entrance of Pearl Harbor. And that was back in 1915.”
“The armchair admirals who do their thinking through computers today, aren’t convinced that the message you found is genuine. At least not until they’ve had time to analyze the handwriting.”
Pitt sighed. “They suspect the dumb ass who brought in the capsule of perpetrating a hoax.”
“Something like that.”
