Dead Sea (7 page)

“Something that bit him,” Morse said. “Chewed into him. Hmm. Is that tank sealed?”

“Yes, sir, it’s secured, all right.”

They talked about the fog, their predicament. The chances things might clear out there.

“I wish there was something I could tell you, but this is all beyond me.” Gosling sighed. “I’ve been sailing a long time, Captain. We both have. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s not in the books or out of it.”

Morse’s face did not change. “Tell me something, Paul. Anything.”

“Okay. Radio’s working, but all we’re picking up is static. RDF is also working but, again, it’s not picking up a goddamn thing. SatNav seems operational, but it, too, is locking in on zilch” He shook his head. “It’s all pretty crazy. Satellite could be messed-up. I’ve seen it happen before, but we should get something. It’s almost like it’s not even up there anymore.”

Which was crazy. He didn’t need to tell Morse how GPS worked. That the GPS was a satellite-based navigation system provided by a network of no less than twenty-four satellites in separate orbital paths. Sure, one might go out and maybe even two or three … but all twenty-four?

Morse considered it. “All right. How about radar?”

“Working. Everything checks. We’re not reading a damn thing. No land masses, no ships. Nothing. Now and then we’ll get a few blips, then they disappear. Could be reflections or nothing at all. I really don’t know. Depthfinder’s okay. We’re reading bottom at twelve-hundred feet. Seems pretty consistent. Compass is moving counterclockwise still.”

“Mechanical?”

“No way. Back-up’s doing the same. Even the one I keep in my kit is doing it. Gyro can’t grab a fix, either. LORAN’s belly-up. There’s nothing wrong with our instruments, Captain. It’s gotta be this fog or this sea or something.” He shook his head. “I pulled her off autopilot … I got Iverson on the wheel now. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I just don’t trust technology today.”

Morse stared at his hands. There were callused and rough from a lifetime spent battling the wind and weather. They shook slightly. “We better keep running quarter-speed until …”

Gosling licked his lips. “Until what?”

“Until we get out of this”

Gosling just nodded. There was really nothing else they could do. He knew Morse was thinking the same crazy things he was. Crazy, comic book shit about the Devil’s Triangle and the Sargasso Sea and all the silly stories they had inspired. But neither would speak of it.

“What about that smell before?” Morse asked.

“All I can tell you is that it’s gone. It didn’t come from us, I know that much. It came with the fog. Whatever sense that makes.” He chewed his lower lip, thinking. “It was more than a stink, Captain. We both know that. It was almost like there suddenly was no air.”

“Keep that to yourself” Morse said.

They sat there in silence for a moment. Then Gosling cleared his throat. “You ever seen anything like this?”

Morse pursed his lips. “What do you think?”

“Yeah, I guess. Nobody’s seen this before. Have you checked your watch?”

“My watch?”

Morse had a digital. It seemed to be operating.

Gosling had a diving watch. The hands were running backward. “And it’s not just mine.”

Morse exhaled. “I think,” he said slowly, “we’re in deep shit.”

About ten minutes later, Morse met with Saks and his crew. It was not something he was particularly looking forward to. He met with them in the observation lounge and answered their questions. The observation lounge was a space generally reserved for the brass of the shipping company and assorted VIPs: politicians, privileged guests etc. It contained a wet-bar, marble fireplace, imported leather furniture, and gleaming walnut paneling. Morse hoped, maybe in some small way, that the lavish accoutrements would give Saks the impression that he was thought highly of by the crew and officers of the
Mara Corday
… and particularly, the captain himself.

Of course, it was all a ruse. Morse was no more impressed by the man than his First was, but he knew all about men like Saks. If you could control him, you could control his people.

“The sea can get a little freakish this time of year,” Morse told them. “I’ve seen fogs wrap up a ship for two, three days. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Saks nodded. “That’s what I figured. You idiots hear what the captain said?”

Fabrini just shook his head. “Yeah, we heard, we heard.”

“Good. Now you can quit with the ghost stories all ready.”

“There really is no reason for alarm,” Morse told them, maintaining his demeanor, just damn glad they couldn’t see him on the inside — the quivering, white-knuckled thing he had become.

“Shit,” Fabrini said. “Do you guys even know where we are?”

“We’re on course. But we’re moving slow. We don’t have a choice in this soup.”

Saks scowled at that. “How much of a delay are we talking here? I got a contract to fill, you know.”

“A day, maybe two. No more than that.”

Soltz shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His glasses reflected the fluorescents above. “What about the man who threw himself overboard?”

“A terrible business,” the captain said. “We’ll never know for sure what happened there. When we reach port there’ll be a formal investigation. But even then … who can say?”

Fabrini giggled dryly. “Who can say? What kind of bullshit is that?” he wanted to know. “We saw him. We all saw him. The guy was covered in blood screaming that something had him, something was inside him.”

Saks’s heavy brow furrowed. “Shut the hell up, Fabrini. You saw a guy with blood on him. A guy totally out of his mind for chrissake. If he said Jesus and Mary were chasing him down the hallway with chainsaws would you believe that too?”

Fabrini shook his head slowly from side to side. “You know, Saks, you’re really starting to piss me off here. What’s with you? What’s with all you guys?” He looked around at them with accusing eyes. “You know something’s totally fucked up here. This fog ain’t right. The captain here is serving up the bullshit on a platter and expecting us to chew and swallow and Saks? Saks is pretending nothing has happened. Well, I ain’t fucking buying it. No way. And neither are any of you.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Saks said in disgust.

Soltz just shook his head. “He’s right. Something’s wrong here.”

Cook and Menhaus kept silent, but their minds were going full tilt. Cook was the sort of guy who rarely said anything. Menhaus didn’t like confrontation; he would wait and see what the majority thought and then adopt this thinking himself.

The next one to speak was George Ryan. What he had to say was simple and to the point. “What is it you think
is
happening, Fabrini?”

Cushing nodded, smiling thinly, seeming to enjoy the anarchy. “Yes, tell us.”

All eyes were on Fabrini now. His dark face was somehow flushed, a vein at his temple throbbing. “I don’t know what happened. But it sure as hell wasn’t just some guy going nuts and jumping overboard. There’s more to it than that. Christ, look at that fog. I’ve seen fog before and it doesn’t fucking glow. And it doesn’t suck away the air.”

Captain Morse just stared, then cleared his throat. “I’ll be the first to admit we’ve experienced some strange phenomena here, but nothing that has happened is what I would call supernatural, gentlemen. I’ve been sailing the Atlantic for over thirty-five years and it still never fails to surprise me.”

“What is it
you
think happened, then?” Cushing said, amused by it all.

“I don’t know really. My guess is that we experienced some bizarre atmospheric anomaly. The fog is just the result of some strange weather pattern, maybe the sun acting on a cold sea. The lack of air and those gases that nearly suffocated us all, those could have came from a mile down … a bubble of methane, maybe. It’s happened before.”

“That’s right,” Saks said. “A day or so and we’ll be out of this, so all of you knock it off with the spooky stories here.”

Cushing and George looked at each other. Like Fabrini, they knew bullshit when they heard it. They knew when somebody was telling them something just to shut them up and that’s exactly what was going on here. The real ugly, unpleasant part of it all, they knew, was that nobody knew what was going on. And that was scary.

“This is pointless,” Fabrini said and stomped off.

Soltz followed suit.

There was nothing more to say.

Gosling wasn’t present at the session between Morse and Saks’s crew. But the captain filled him in on it. Morse wasn’t a guy who enjoyed lying. He would’ve liked to have told the others the truth. The only problem being he didn’t know
what
the truth was. No one did. Yes, something was wrong, but what? They were sailing blind here. No navigational aids. No radio contact. Even the radar was acting screwy. The thick fog made visual navigation impossible … there were no stars that could be seen. It was all very disturbing.

Gosling had never been in a situation like this.

It was insane.

He assumed they were somewhere between Norfolk and South America, which was pretty much saying they were a needle in the biggest haystack in creation.
Somewhere between Norfolk and French Guiana.

That was slick. Like telling someone the contact lens they’d dropped was somewhere between Milwaukee and Buffalo.

But where else could we be? he asked himself. Sure, the fog and everything else is goddamn strange, but it doesn’t mean much in itself. We’re caught in some freakish weather pattern here and like Morse said, it’ll blow over sooner or later. So what is it I’m worried about?

He had no answer to that.

What you’re worried about,
a low, menacing voice in his head said,
is that Morse is wrong. And down deep, you know he’s wrong. This is no fucking weather pattern, freak or otherwise. Weather patterns might screw with the radio or the RDF, but they couldn’t touch the GPS and sure as hell not the radar. And if that isn’t enough, then why don’t you tell me about the compasses? Why are they spinning counterclockwise? Why the hell can’t they zero in on magnetic north? You’ve never seen one act like that and you know it. Even the feel of the sea is wrong. The water’s too calm and that smell is just not right. You have no explanation for any of this and if you did, you wouldn’t want to admit it.

Licking his lips, Gosling left his cabin.

He would not think anymore.

That was the way it would have to be from now on. No thinking, no theorizing, no wild guesses. Whatever was happening here would have to take care of itself. The wheels were spinning now and he’d just have to wait and see where they took him. Took all of them.

But, again, that damn voice, sharp and cutting in his head:
You know very well what you’re avoiding here, Paul. You know very well. You’ve heard about things like this from sailors too drunk to know better. In books. On TV. You’ve heard about strange seas like this. Places where compasses spin and technologies die a hard death. Where nothing is right. Where everything is wrong.

Dead Sea.

“Dead Sea” not as in the Dead Sea itself, but as in a phenomena which has been reported since men began sailing the seas. Strange becalmed bodies of water where everything suddenly goes insane. Where men kill themselves rather than face the reality of what has happened to them. The Bermuda Triangle. The Devil’s Sea. The Sargasso Sea. Ship’s graveyards. Maritime dead zones few return from.

He shook his head. No. Absolutely not.

I will not accept this.

He started walking again. Moving blindly, not seeing anything. The gears of his brain were revolving madly now and it was all going so fast he could make no sense of any of it. And he didn’t want to. He didn’t plan on touring the ship, but this is what he did. He walked the decks from the stern to the bow, visited the boat decks and checked the equipment stowed on the spar deck. He checked hatch covers and derricks. He went up to the pilothouse, made sure Iverson was steering the ship with his hands and not his feet, staying true on course. Then down into the lounge and messrooms, crew’s hall and forward cargo holds. He walked aimlessly, lost in thought. He hadn’t planned on making the galley his ultimate destination, yet, somehow, he knew that’s exactly where he was going.

The night kitchen.

It was kept running even in the wee hours, for there was always someone on duty or out on watch that needed a meal or a hot cup of coffee. Gosling walked in there, found Bobby Smalls, the second cook and one of the new porters on duty. They nodded to him and Gosling nodded back. The porter was filling Tupperware containers with cold cuts, pickles, cheeses, and veggies for late-night sandwiches for the dog watch crew.

The chief steward was the head cook, but the second cook did all the baking and prep work. The porters handled clean-up and serving.

“Fog thinning any?” Smalls asked, as he kneaded a huge glob of dough with his fists.

“Not yet,” Gosling told him.

The porter arranged condiments on a serving platter and headed off to the crew’s mess with them.

Gosling walked around the kitchen. The stainless steel counters gleamed and the tiled floors smelled of pine cleaners. He examined the rows of shining stoves, peaked aft into the pantry, ran a hand along the cool steel door of the immense walk-in freezers. He rummaged through cupboards, scrutinized foodstuffs, stared into drawers of cutlery.

“You need something, First,” Smalls said, without looking away from his dough, “ya’ll let me know.”

Gosling smiled. “I don’t need anything, Bobby. Just restless.”

Smalls was in his fifties, thickset with a graying crewcut and shaggy sideburns that angled up to his cheeks. Almost muttonchops, but not quite. Gave him the look of a Victorian London cop, but his West Texas twang quickly erased that.

“Sure, we’re all restless here, we’re all thinking things,” Smalls said.

“You knew Stokes, didn’t you, Bobby?” Gosling said, trying to sound like he was just making conversation. “The kid who-”

“Sure, I knew him. He was a good boy. This was only his second run. But, yeah, I knew him.”