The captain found his focus and spotted the falling remnants of a large water spire a hundred meters ahead of the ship.
“Engine ahead one-third.” He reached for a pair of binoculars.
There was little to focus on, aside from a frothy boil of water in their path. He glanced out the rear bridge window and noticed the lights of the accompanying vessel had drawn closer.
An acrid odor enveloped the bridge, subtle, initially, then overpowering. The armed man near the doorway felt the effects first, choking and coughing, then dropping his weapon and falling to his knees. The helmsman followed, gagging and crumpling to the deck.
His senses numbed by alcohol, the captain was slower to feel the invisible assault. As his two companions on the bridge turned silent and stiff, his mind grasped to understand what was happening. Somewhere nearby he heard a gunshot, then he felt his throat constrict. His pulse raced as he struggled to breathe. Staggering to the helm, he grabbed the radio transmitter and rasped into it, “Mayday! Mayday! This is the Crimean Star. We are under attack. Please help us.”
Confusion and fear were consumed by an overpowering pain. He swayed for a second as the transmitter slipped from his hand and then he collapsed to the deck, dead.
2
“Sir, there’s no response on the emergency channel.” The youthful third officer looked up from the communications station and gazed at a lean man studying the ship’s radarscope.
Dirk Pitt nodded in acknowledgment while keeping his eyes glued to the radar screen. “All right, Chavez. Let them know we’re on our way. Then you best go rouse the captain.”
Pitt straightened his tall frame and turned toward the helmsman. “We’re well clear of the Bosphorus, so you can open her up. The Crimean Star looks to be about thirteen miles ahead of us. Steer a course of zero-five-five degrees and give me everything she’s got.”
As the helmsman acknowledged the order, Pitt called the engine room and had the chief engineer apply all available power to the vessel’s twin screws. A low whine reverberated through the fifty-meter oceanographic research ship as its twin diesels wound to maximum revolutions. A few minutes later, the ship’s captain, a large, sandy-haired man named Bill Stenseth, stepped onto the bridge. He was followed by Third Officer Chavez, who resumed his place at the communications station.
Stenseth suppressed a yawn. “We’ve got a Mayday?”
“A single distress call from a vessel named Crimean Star,” Pitt said. “Listed as a Romanian-flagged bulk freighter. She appears to be on a direct inbound course about a dozen miles ahead of us.”
Stenseth gazed at the radar screen, then noted his own ship’s accelerating speed. “Do we know the nature of their emergency?”
“All we picked up was a single distress call. Chavez hailed them repeatedly, but there was no response.” Pitt tapped a finger on the radar screen. “We look to be the closest ship in the area.”
“The Turkish Coast Guard Command might have some fast-responding resources nearby.” He turned to the third officer. “Let’s give them a call, Chavez.”
Pitt grabbed a handheld radio from a charging stand and stepped toward a bridge wing door. “Chavez, when you’re done there, can you ring Al Giordino and have him meet me on the aft deck in ten minutes? I’ll prep a Zodiac in case we’re needed aboard. Call me when we’re clear to launch.”
“Will do,” Chavez said.
As Pitt started to leave, Stenseth squinted at a bulkhead-mounted chronometer. It read two in the morning. “By the way, what were you doing on the bridge at this hour?”
“A loose davit was banging against my cabin bulkhead and woke me up. After securing it, I wandered up to see where we were.”
“Sixth sense, I’d say.”
Pitt smiled as he left the bridge. Over the years, he did seem to have a knack for finding trouble around him. Or perhaps it found him.
The Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency climbed down two levels, then moved aft along the main deck of the oceanographic research ship. A roar from the engine room revealed that the Macedonia was pressing her rated top speed of seventeen knots, kicking up white foam along her turquoise sides. She was one of several dozen research vessels in the NUMA fleet tasked with studying the world’s oceans.
On the Macedonia’s fantail, Pitt released the lines of a Zodiac, secured to a cradle, and pulled back its oilskin cover. He checked the fuel tank, then attached a lift cable. Satisfied as to its readiness, he stepped to the ship’s rail and peered ahead for the distant lights of the Crimean Star.
He shouldn’t even be here, Pitt thought. He had joined the Macedonia in Istanbul just the day before, after traveling from his headquarters office in Washington, D.C. A last-minute plea for assistance from the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture to help locate a lost Ottoman shipwreck had lured him halfway across the globe.
Twenty minutes later, the NUMA research ship pulled alongside the black freighter, which drifted silently like an illuminated ghost ship. On the Macedonia’s bridge, Captain Stenseth scanned the merchant ship through night vision binoculars.
“Still no response from the vessel,” Chavez said. “Turkish authorities repo
rt a cutter is en route, and a rescue helicopter is being scrambled from Istanbul, with an estimated arrival time of twenty-six minutes.”
Stenseth nodded as he held the binoculars firm to his brow. There was no sign of life aboard the ship. He glanced at the radarscope. A small image a half mile distant was moving away from the freighter. Retraining the binoculars, he detected the faint outline of a vessel with no running lights. He picked up a handheld radio. “Bridge to Pitt.”
“Pitt here.”