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"Nearest flat ground to land a copter is a thousand yards away," Pitt replied. "She and her team will have to hike in."
Giordino walked over to the railing beside the corroded shaft of the jack staff and stared at the water below. "The poison must be seeping through the hull during high tine."
"Probably stored in the after hold," said Dover.
"The cargo hatches are buried under tons of this lava crap," Giordino said in disgust. "We'll need a fleet of bulldozers to get through."
"You familiar with Liberty ships?" Pitt asked Dover.
"Should be. I've inspected enough of them over the years, looking for illegal cargo." He knelt down and began tracing a ship's outline in the rust. "Inside the aft deckhouse we should find a hatch to an escape trunk that leads to the runnel holding the screw shaft. At the bottom is a small recess. We might be able to cut our way into the hold from there."
They all stood silent when Dover finished. They should all have felt a sense of accomplishment at having found the source of the nerve agent. But instead they experienced apprehension-a reaction, Pitt supposed, that stemmed from a letdown after the excitement of the search. Then also there was a hidden dread of what they might actually find behind the steel bulkheads of the Pilottown.
"Maybe . . . maybe we better wait for the lab people," one of the chemists stammered.
"They can catch up," Pitt said pleasantly, but with cold eyes.
Giordino silently took a pry bar from the tool pack strapped on Pitts back and attacked the steel door to the after deckhouse. To his surprise it creaked and moved. He put his muscle to it, the protesting hinges surrendered and the door sprung open. The interior was completely empty, no fittings, no gear, not even a scrap of trash.
"Looks as though the movers have been here," observed Pitt.
"Odd it was never in use," Dover mused.
"The escape trunk?"
"This way." Dover led them through another compartment that was also barren. He stopped at a round hatch in the center of the deck.
Giordino moved forward, pried open the cover and stepped back. Dover aimed a flashlight down the yawning tunnel, the beam stabbing the darkness.
"So much for that idea," he said dejectedly. "The tunnel recess is blocked with debris."
"What's on the next deck below?"
"The steering gear compartment." Dover paused, his mind working.
Then he thought aloud. "Just forward of the steering gear there's an after steering room. A holdover from the war years. It's possible, barely possible, it might have an access hatch to the hold."
They went aft then and returned to the first compartment. It felt strange to them to walk the decks of a ghost ship, wondering what happened to the crew that abandoned her. They found the hatchway and climbed down the ladder to the steering gear compartment and made their way around the old, still oily machinery to the forward bulkhead.
Dover scanned the steel plates with his flashlight. Suddenly the wavering beam stopped.
"Son of a bitch!" he grunted. "The hatch is here, but it's been welded shut."
"You're certain we're in the right spot?" Pitt asked.
"Absolutely," Dover answered. He rapped his gloved fist against the bulkhead. "On the other side is cargo hold number five-the most likely storage of the poison."
"What about the other holds?" asked one of the EPA men.
"Too far forward to leak into the sea."
"Okay, then let's do it," Pitt said impatiently.
Quickly they assembled the cutting torch and connected the oxygen-acetylene bottles. The flame from the tip of the torch hissed as Giordino adjusted the gas mixture. Blue flame shot out and assaulted the steel plate, turning it red, then a bright orange white.
A narrow gap appeared and lengthened, crackling and melting under the intense heat.
As Giordino was cutting an opening large enough to crawl through, Julie Mendoza and her lab people appeared, packing nearly five hundred pounds of chemical analysis instruments.
