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"How did you find us?" Pitt asked.
"We hadn't passed two icebergs before we snotted that yellow copter of yours. it stood out like a canary on a bedsheet."
Pitt and Hunnewell looked at each other and began laughing.
"What's the joke?" Koski asked curiously.
"Luck, plain, simple, paradoxical luck," said Pitt, his face twisted in mirth. "We flew all over hell for three hours before we found this floating ice palace, and you found it five minutes after you began searching." Pitt then briefly told Koski and Dover about the iceberg decoy and meeting with the Russian submarine.
"Good Lord," Dover muttered. "Are you suggesting that we're not the first to set foot on the iceberg?"
"The evidence is plain," Pitt said. "The Ice Patrol's dyed stain has been chipped away, and Hunnewell and I found footprints in nearly every cabin of the ship.
And there's more, something that takes the whole situation out of the mysterious and puts it in the category of the macabre."
"The fire?"
"The fire."
"Undoubtedly accidental. Fires have been happening on ships since the first reed boats floated down the Nile thousand of years ago."
"Murder has been going on for much longer than that."
"Murder!" Koski repeated flatly. "You did say murder?"
"With a capital M."
"Except for the excessive degree, I've observed nothing I haven't already seen On at least eight other burned-out ships during my service on the Coast Guard-bodies, stench, devastation, the works. In your honored opinion as an Air Force officer what makes You think this one is any different?"
Pitt ignored Koski's testy remark "It's all too perfect. The radio operator in the radio room, two engineers in the engine room, the captain and a mate on the bridge, the passengers in either their staterooms or salon, even a cook in the galley, everybody exactly where he should be. You tell me, Commander; you're the expert. What in hell kind of a fire would sweep through the entire ship, roasting everyone to a crisp without their making the slightest attempt at selfpreservation?"
Koski tugged at an ear thoughtfully. "No hoses are scattered in the passageways. It's apparent no one tried to save the ship."
"The nearest body to the fire extinguisher lies twenty feet away. The crew went against all laws of human nature if they decided at the last minute to run and die at their routine duty stations. I can't imagine a cook who perferred dying in his galley to saving his life."
"That still proves nothing. Panic could have-"
"What does it take to con
vince you, Commander-a belt in the bicuspids with a baseball bat?
21
Explain the radio operator. He died at his set, yet it's a known fact that a Mayday signal was never received from the Lax or any'other ship in the North Atlantic at the time. Seems a bit odd that he couldn't have gotten off at least three or four words of a distress call."
"Keep going," Koski said quietly. His piercing eyes had an interested glint.
Pitt lit a cigarette and blew a long cloud of blue smoke into the refrigerated air, and he seemed to deliberate for a moment.
"Let's talk about the condition of the derelict. You said it, Commander, you've never seen a ship gutted as badly as this one.
Why? It was carrying no explosives or flammable cargo, and we can rule out the fuel tanks-they caused the blaze to spread, yes, but not to this degree on the opposite end of the ship. Why would every square inch burn with such a high intensity? The hull and superstructure are steel. And besides hoses and extinguishers, the Lax had a sprinkler system." He paused and pointed at two misshapen metal fixtures hanging from the ceiling. "A fire at sea usually starts at one location, the engine room, or a cargo hold, or a storage area, and then spreads from compartment to compartment, taking hours and sometimes days to fully consume a ship. I'll bet you any amount you care to cover that a fire investigator would scratch his head and cross this one off as a flash fire, one that totaled out the entire ship within a matter Of minutes, setting a new record, ignited by causes or persons unknown."
"What do you have in mind for the cause?"
Pitt said, "A flamethrower."
There was a minute of appalled silence.
