“A grateful government may make the offer, but I doubt if they'll accept it.”
“Incredible,” said Sandecker quietly. “The Gallaghers have restored my faith in the human race.”
“Now that we have a ballpark, we're going to require a proper search-and-survey vessel.”
“I'm way ahead of you,” Sandecker said smoothly. “Rudi has already hired a fully equipped search boat. The crew is on its way to Manitowoc from Kenosha. The boat's name is Divercity. Because we have a requirement for secrecy to consider, I felt you'd attract less attention with a smaller vessel. Not wise to advertise a hunt for a treasure of inestimable value. If word leaked, a thousand treasure seekers would flood onto Lake Michigan like a school of piranha in a pond stocked with catfish.”
“A phenomenon that takes place with every treasure find,” Pitt concurred.
“And in the hope and anticipation that you'll make a successful discovery, I've also ordered the Ocean Retriever off a project on the Maine coast and directed her to Lake Michigan.”
“The perfect choice. She's ideally equipped for intricate salvage work.”
“She should arrive on site and be in position over the wreck within four days.”
“You planned and arranged all this before you knew if Gallagher could lead us to the wreck?” Pitt asked incredulously.
“Again, anticipation.”
Pitt's admiration of Sandecker never ceased. “You're a tough man to keep up with. Admiral.”
“I always hedge my bets.”
“I can see that.”
“Good luck, and let me know how it goes.”
With Julia in tow, Pitt spent the day talking to local divers about water conditions and studying charts of the lake bed in the general location of the Princess Don Wan. The following morning at the crack of dawn, they parked the car at Manitowoc's yacht basin and walked along the dock until they found the Divercity and her crew waiting for them.
The boat, a twenty-five-foot Parker with a cabin, was powered by a 250 Yamaha outboard. Functional and electronically well equipped with a NavStar differential global-positioning system interfaced with a state of the art PC and Geometerics 866 marine magnetometer, the Divercity also mounted a Klein side-scan sonar that would play a key role in seeking out the remains of the Princess Don Wan. For a close-up identification, the boat carried a Benthos MiniRover MK II underwater robotic vehicle.
The experienced crew consisted of Ralph Wilbanks, a big, jolly man in his early forties with expansive brown eyes and a bristling mustache; and his partner, Wes Hall, easygoing, soft-spoken and smoothly handsome, who could have doubled for Mel Gibson.
Wilbanks and Hall greeted Pitt and Julia warmly and introduced themselves. “We didn't expect you this early,” said Hall.
“Up with the birds, that's us,” Pitt said, nodding humorously. “How was your trip from Kenosha?”
“Calm water all the way,” answered Wilbanks.
Both men spoke in a soft Southern accent. Pitt liked them almost immediately. He didn't need a drawing to see they were a professional, job-dedicated pair. They watched amused as Julia jumped from the dock, landing on the deck with the finesse of a limber cat. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater under a nylon windbreaker.
“She's a fine, no-nonsense boat,” said Pitt, admiring the Divercity.
Wilbanks nodded in agreement. “She does the job.” He turned to Julia. “I hope you don't mind roughing it, ma'am. We're not equipped with a head.”
“Don't worry about me,” Julia said, smiling. “I've got an iron bladder.”
Pitt looked across the water of the little harbor at the seemingly endless lake. “Light breeze, one- to two-foot waves, conditions look good. Are we ready to cast off?”
Hall nodded and unwound the mooring lines from the dock's cleats. Just as he was about to climb on board, he pointed down the dock at a figure awkwardly approaching and waving wildly. “Is he with you?”
Pitt found himself staring at Al Giordino, who was stomping across the wooden planks on a pair of crutches, his wounded leg encased in a plaster cast from ankle to crotch. Giordino flashed his celebrated smile and said, “A pox on your house for thinking you could leave me onshore while you got all the glory.”
Happy to see his old friend, Pitt said, “You can't say I didn't try.”
Wilbanks and Hall gently lifted Giordino over the side and sat him on a long cushion that lay on a raised hump in the middle of the boat. Pitt introduced him to the crew as Julia fussed over him and pressed a cup of coffee in his hand from a thermos she carried in a picnic basket.
“Shouldn't you be in a hospital?” she asked.
“I hate hospitals,” Giordino grumbled. “Too many people die in them.”
“Is everyone aboard who's coming aboard?” Wilbanks inquired.
“All present and accounted for,” replied Pitt.
Wilbanks grinned and said, “Then let's do it.”
As soon as they cleared the harbor, Wilbanks pushed the throttle forward and the Divercity leaped ahead, bow clear of the water, until she was skimming the waves at nearly thirty miles an hour. While Julia and Giordino sat aft, enjoying the view and the beginning of a spectacular day under a sky decorated with clouds drifting overhead like a grazing herd of white buffalo, Pitt gave Wilbanks his chart with an X marked twenty-five miles just south of east frorh the Gallagher's house. He had enclosed the X within a five-mile-by-five-mile search grid. Wilbanks then programmed the coordinates into the computer and watched as the numbers came up on the monitor. Hall busied himself studying the photos and dimensions of the Princess Dou Wan.
It seemed hardly any time had passed before Wilbanks slowed the boat and announced, “Coming up on lane one in eight hundred meters.” He used the metric system, since the equipment was set up for it.
Pitt helped Hall drop over the magnetometer sensor and the side-scan sonar towfish, trailing them behind the stern of the boat on tethered cables. After tying off the cables, they returned to the cabin.
Wilbanks steered the boat toward the end of a line displayed on the monitor that led to a search grid with parallel lanes. “Four hundred meters to go.”
“I feel like I'm taking part in an adventure,” said Julia.
“You're going to be sadly disappointed,” Pitt laughed. “Running search lanes for a shipwreck is downright tedious. You might compare it to mowing grass on an endless lawn. You can go hours, weeks or even months without finding so much as an old tire.”
Pitt took over the magnetometer duties as Hall set up the Klein & Associates Systems 2000 sonar. He sat on a stool in front of the high-resolution color video display unit that was mounted in the same console as a thermal printer that recorded the floor of the lake in 256 shades of gray.
“Three hundred meters,” Wilbanks droned.
“What range are we set for?” Pitt asked Hall.
“Since we're hunting for a large target five hundred feet in length, we'll run thousand-meter lanes.” He pointed to the lake-bed detail that was beginning to unreel from the printer. “The bottom looks flat and undisturbed, and since we're operating in fresh water, we should have no problem spotting an anomaly that fits the target's dimensions.”
“Speed?”
“The water's pretty calm. I think we can run at ten miles an hour and still get a sharp recording.”
“Can I watch?” asked Julia from the cabin doorway.
“Be my guest,” said Hall, making room for her in the cramped quarters.
“The detail is amazing,” she said, staring at the image from the printer. “You can clearly see ripples in the sand.”
“The resolution is good,” Hall lectured her, “but nowhere near the definition of a photograph. The sonar image translates similar to a photo that's been duplicated and then run through a copy machine three or four times.”