Pitt and Hall exchanged grins. Observers always became addicted to watching the sonar data. Julia would be no different. They knew that she would gaze entranced for hours, enthusiastically waiting for the image of a ship to materialize.
“Starting lane one,” Wilbanks proclaimed.
“What's our depth, Ralph?” Pitt asked.
Wilbanks glanced up at his depth sounder, which hung from the roof on one side of the helm. “About four hundred ten feet.”
An old hand at search-and-survey, Giordino shouted from his comfortable position on the cushion where he lay with his cast propped up on a railing. “I'm going to take a siesta. Yell out if you spot anything.”
The hours passed slowly as the Divercity plowed through the low waves at ten miles an hour mowing the lawn, the magnetometer ticking away, the recording line trailing down the center of the graph paper until swinging off to the sides when it detected the presence of iron. In unison, the side-scan sonar emitted a soft clack as the thermal plastic film unreeled from the printer. It revealed a lake bed cold and desolate and free of human debris.
“It's a desert down there,” said Julia, rubbing tired eyes.
“No place to build your dream house,” said Hall with a little grin.
“That finishes lane twenty-two,” Wilbanks broadcast. “Coming around on lane twenty-three.”
Julia looked at her watch. “Lunchtime,” she announced, opening the picnic basket she had packed at the bed and breakfast. “Anybody besides me hungry?”
“I'm always hungry,” Giordino called out from the back of the boat.
“Amazing.” Pitt shook his head incredulously. “At twelve feet away, outside in a breeze with the roar of the outboard motor, he can still hear the mere mention of food.”
“What delicacies have you prepared?” Giordino asked Julia, having dragged himself to the cabin doorway.
“Apples, granola bars, carrots and herbal ice tea. You have your choice between hummus and avocado sandwiches. It's what I call a healthy lunch.”
Every man on the boat looked at each of the others with utter horror. She couldn't have received a more unpalatable reaction if she had said she was volunteering their services as diaper changers at a day-care center. Out of deference to Julia none of the men said anything negative, since she went to the bother of fixing lunch. The fact that she was a woman and their mothers had raised them all as gentlemen added to the dilemma. Giordino, however, did not come from the old school. He complained vociferously.
“Hummus and avocado sandwiches,” he said disgustedly. “I'm going to throw myself off the boat and swim to the nearest Burger King—”
“I have a reading on the mag!” Pitt interrupted. “Anything on the sonar?”
“My sonar towfish is trailing farther astern than your mag sensor,” said Hall, “so my reading will lag behind yours.”
Julia leaned closer to the sonar's printer in anticipation of seeing an object appear from the printer. Slowly, the image of a hard target began to move across the video display and the printer simultaneously.
“A ship!” Julia shouted excitedly. “It's a ship!”
“But not the one we're after,” Pitt said flatly. “She's an old sailing ship sitting straight up off the bottom.”
Wilbanks leaned around the others to peer at the sunken ship. “Look at that detail. The cabins, the hatch covers, the bowsprit, they all show clearly.”
“Her masts are gone,” observed Hall.
“Probably swept away by the same storm that sank her,” said Pitt.
The ship had passed behind the range of the towfish now, but Hall recalled its image on the video screen before zooming in, freezing the target, and comparing synchronous magnifications. “Good size,” Hall said, studying the image. “At least a hundred and fifty feet.”
“I can't help wondering about her crew,” said Julia. “I hope they were saved.”
“Since she's relatively intact,” said Wilbanks, “she must have gone down pretty fast.”
The moment of fascination quickly passed, and the search for the Princess Dou Wan continued. The breeze had slowly veered from north to west and dropped until it barely fluttered the flag on the stern of the boat. An ore ship passed a few hundred yards away and rocked the Divercity in its wake. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Wilbanks turned and looked at Pitt.
“We've got two hours of daylight left. What time do you want to pack it in and head back to the dock?”
“You never know when the lake will turn ugly,” Pitt answered. “I suggest we keep going and finish as much of the grid as we can while the water is calm.”
“Gotta make hay while the sun shines,” Hall agreed.
The mood of anticipation had not diminished. Pitt had requested that Wilbanks begin the search through the center of the grid and work east. That half had been completed, and now they were working west with over thirty lanes to go. The sun was lingering over the western shore of the lake when Pitt called out again.
“A target on the mag,” he said with a tinge of excitement in his voice. “A big one.”
“Here she comes,” said Julia, electrified.
“We've got a modern steel ship,” Hall acknowledged.
“How big?” asked Wilbanks.
“Can't tell. She's still showing on the edge of the screen.”
“She's huge,” Julia muttered in awe.
Pitt grinned like a gambler who hit a jackpot. “I think we've got her.” He checked his X on the chart. The wreck was three miles closer inshore than Gallagher had estimated. Actually, an incredibly close guess, all things considered, Pitt thought.
“She's broken in two,” Hall said, pointing at the blue-black image on the video screen as everyone, including Giordino, pushed in for a closer look. “About two hundred feet of her stern lies a good hundred and fifty feet away with a large debris field in between.”
“The forward section looks to be sitting upright,” added Pitt.
“Do you really think it's the Princess Dou Wan?” asked Julia.
“We'll know for certain after we get the ROV down on her.” He stared at Wilbanks. “Do you want to wait until tomorrow?”
“We're here, ain't we?” Wilbanks retorted with a smile. “Anybody have any objections against working at night?”
No one objected. Pitt and Hall quickly retrieved the sonar towfish and magnetometer sensor, and soon they had the Benthos MiniRover MK II robotic vehicle tethered up to the control handbox and a video monitor. At seventy-five pounds, it only took two of the men to lift it over the side and lower it into the water. The bright halogen underwater lights of the ROV slowly vanished in the deep as she began her journey downward into the dark void of Lake Michigan. She was attached to the Divercity and the control console by an umbilical cable. Wilbanks aimed an eye on the computer screen of the global positioning system and adroitly kept the Divercity floating motionless above the wreck.
The descent to four hundred feet took only a few minutes. All light from the setting sun vanished at 360 feet. Hall stopped the MiniRover when the bottom came into sight. It looked like a lumpy blanket of gray silt.
“The depth here is four hundred thirty feet,” he said as he swung the ROV in a tight circle. Suddenly, the lights illuminated a large shaft that looked like a giant tentacle reaching out from a sea monster.
“What in hell is that?” muttered Wilbanks, turning from his computer positioning screen.
“Move toward it,” Pitt ordered Hall. “I think we've come down on the forward cargo section of the hull, and we're looking at the overhead boom of a loading crane on the forward deck.”
Working the controls of the MiniRover's handbox, Hall slowly sent the ROV along one side of the crane until the camera revealed a clear video image of a hull belonging to a large ship. He worked the ROV along the sides of the hull toward the bow, which still stood perfectly upright, as if the ship had refused to die and still dreamed of sailing the seas. Soon the outline of the ship's name became visible. It looked to have been painted crudely on the raised white gunwale atop the black bow slightly aft of the anchor, which still fit snug in its hawsehole. One by one the letters slid past the screen.