“She looks like she just went under,” Dirk said. He drove the submersible up the side of the hull and above the deck rail. There, they spotted three large open hatches on the forward deck. Dirk piloted the submersible toward the bow, skimming over cargo compartments filled with nothing but seawater. They peered down the sharp prow, detecting no damage around the bow. They turned back and surveyed along the starboard rail to the rear superstructure, where they ascended several levels to the bridge. From just a few feet away, they peeked through the intact windows at an empty control station.

“Looks like the helm was stripped of most of its electronics,” Dirk said. “That makes a good argument for her being scuttled.”

“Somebody call Lloyd’s of London,” Summer said. “I’ve never seen such a pristine shipwreck. She must have sunk recently.”

“No more than a few months, judging by the minimal sea growth.”

“Why would somebody scuttle a perfectly good freighter?”

“Hard to say. It’s possible she was under tow, headed for a refit, and sank in poor weather.” He checked the status of their battery power. “It’s about time we head topside, but let’s see if we can get a ship’s name.”

He guided the submersible around the superstructure to the stern and descended past the aft rail. A bent flagpole hung forlornly over the rail, its former colors long since vanished. When they were twenty feet off the ship, he turned the craft to face the freighter’s transom and adjusted their height so the lights would shine on the ship’s name.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said in a low voice. “She was scuttled after all.”

In front of them stood a blank wall of red bisected by a thick horizontal band of rust where the ship’s name and home port had once been posted. But somebody had intentionally ground away the name and covering paint, sending the freighter to the lonely depths in total anonymity.

Chapter 44

44

THE NUMA RESEARCH SHIP ALEXANDRIA WAS stationed four miles away when the submersible broke the surface, and Summer radioed for recovery. As the submersible drifted with the current, she and Dirk passed the time studying the dusty brown shores of southern Madagascar, which seemed to rise and fall across the choppy sea.

The Alexandria arrived promptly, its turquoise hull, like all the ships in the NUMA fleet, sparkling under a sunny sky. A brawny man with a thick mustache and even thicker Texas accent directed the retrieval of the submersible onto the ship’s aft deck. Jack Dahlgren opened the vessel’s rear-mounted hatch and welcomed Dirk and Summer to the fresh air. “Y’all have a good swim?”