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“You mean, I get to tell you how to drive?” Paul asked. “This is a first.”
“Don’t get used to it,” she replied. “Turning now. You should see the hull any minute.”
Braced against the buffeting force of the water and counting off the seconds, Paul kept his head up and eyes forward. While he saw nothing but a gray-green background, there was plenty to hear: the high-pitched electric whine of the Remora’s battery-powered propeller, the fading buzz of Gamay’s boat as it moved farther away and a low hum that came from directly in front of him.
“I can hear the ferry’s engines,” he said.
“Can you see it?”
“Not yet,” he replied. “But it’s suddenly obvious to me why dolphins developed sonar.”
“Sound works much better down there,” she replied. “Let me know when you see something. I’m dialing back your speed.”
Paul felt the ROV slow, and though they were doing only a couple of knots to begin with, it significantly reduced the strain on his arms.
He caught sight of a shape up ahead. “I see it,” he said. “Looks like they’re dumping bilgewater. Steer me ten degrees to the left, would you? I’d rather not go directly under that.”
The shrouded propeller deflected to the side and the tadpole-shaped ROV turned. “Perfect,” Paul said. “Straight ahead now for twenty seconds. Then bring me up to a depth of thirty feet and cut the throttle.”
The hull of the ferry came into focus. The ship was a twenty-year veteran of channel crossings. Its metal plating was painted red beneath the waterline, but the rust and a coating of marine growth gave it a mottled color. It drew sixteen feet of water and Paul passed beneath the outside edge with plenty of headroom above him.
“Cut the throttle,” he said.
The motor shut down right on cue and Paul and the Remora coasted to a stop, dead center beneath the keel of the ship.
Paul switched on a diving light. “And now for the manual portion of our endeavor.”
With a tether from the Remora attached to his ankle, Paul released his grip on the ROV and swam upward toward the overhanging hull. Diving beneath a large ship was an interesting experience, one Paul hadn’t had before. Reaching out to the hull felt as if he was touching the bottom of a cloud.
“Contact,” he said.
“How’s it feel to have thirty thousand tons floating over your head?” Gamay asked.
“Makes me thankful for the laws of buoyancy. I’d be very upset if they were repealed in the next ten minutes.”
Moving along the hull, Paul found the spot he was looking for. A section near the bow that the engineers at NUMA insisted would have the lowest amount of dynamic pressure once the ferry began to move. “I’ve found the attachment site.”
“How’s it look?” Gamay asked.
“It’s a full-on barnacle convention,” Paul said. “Apparently, the Shanghai Ferry Company doesn’t care to defoul their ships.”
This layer of marine life was the reason for Paul’s ride on the Remora. The ROV was designed to connect magnetically to the bottom of any steel-hulled vessel, but it couldn’t attach securely through a layer of hard-shelled barnacles. To ensure that it stayed in place until they were ready to use it, Paul would have to scrape a section of the hull clean.
To do so required a device known as a needle scaler. The electrically powered appliance was shaped like an assault rifle, complete with a shoulder stock, a vertical handgrip and a long barrel that ended in a titanium chisel. Once Paul activated the scaler, the chisel would vibrate back and forth at high speed. Paul would be the manpower behind it, pushing the blade through the barnacles, scraping them away and revealing smooth metal beneath.
“Here goes,” he said.
He switched the unit on and it shuddered to life. Making sure he had good contact, Paul pressed the blade against the hull and shoved it forward. He had to kick with his legs to keep from being pushed back, but the scaler worked like magic and the barnacles fell away one strip at a time.
Gamay began talking. “How thick are the layers?”
“At least four inches deep,” Paul said.
“It’s amazing how fast marine growth appears on a ship,” she told him. “Did you know that newly launched vessels have a film of microbes on them within twenty-four hours of going into the water?”
“Did not know that,” Paul said. “Trust me, these are not microbes.”
As Paul worked, Gamay launched into a soliloquy on the subject of barnacles. She spoke about the
