Sahara (72 page)

Pitt pulled the logbook from his shirt pocket and held it out to Quinn. “Kitty’s pilot log. She used it to record her final flight and tragic aftermath. I borrowed it for reference on something she found during her ordeal. I hope Kitty wouldn’t have minded.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mind at all,” said Quinn, nodding down at the wooden coffin draped in the Australian flag with the cross of St. George and stars of the Southern Cross. “My countrymen are indebted to you and Mr. Giordino for clearing up the mystery of her disappearance so we could bring her home.”

“She’s been gone too long,” said Perlmutter softly.

“Yes,” Quinn said with a touch of reverence to his rasping voice. “That she has.”

Much to Perlmutter’s delight, Quinn insisted on supplying their helicopter with ten bottles of beer before they said their farewells. To a man, the Aussies climbed the steep bank to express their thanks and heartily shake Pitt and Giordino’s hands. After he lifted off the helicopter into the air, Pitt circled the wreckage once more in tribute before turning and following Kitty’s footsteps toward the legendary ship in the desert.

Flying in a straight line over the meandering ravine that had taken Kitty days of painful struggle to limp through, the jet helicopter reached the ancient riverbed in less than twelve minutes. What had once been a flowing river surrounded by a green belt was now little more than a wide barren wash surrounded by unstable sand.

“The Oued Zarit,” announced Perlmutter. “Hard to believe it was a thriving waterway.”

“Oued Zarit,” Pitt repeated. “That’s what the old American prospector called it. He claimed it began to go dry about a hundred and thirty years ago.”

“He was right. I did some research on old French surveys of the area. There once was a port near here where caravans traded with merchants who ran a fleet of boats. No telling where it stood now. It was covered over by sand not long after the unending drought began and the water sank into the sand.”

“So the theory is the
Texas
steamed up the river and became landlocked when the river ran dry,” said Giordino.

“Not a theory. I found a deathbed statement in the archives from a crewman by the name of Beecher. He swore he was the only survivor of the
Texas’
crew, and gave a detailed description of the ship’s final voyage across the Atlantic and up the tributary of the Niger where it became stranded.”

“How can you be sure it wasn’t the ravings of a dying man?” asked Giordino.

“His story was too incredibly detailed not to believe,” Perlmutter said firmly.

Pitt dropped the helicopter’s speed as he stared down at the dry wash. “The prospector also said the
Texas
was carrying gold from the dying Confederacy’s treasury.”

Perlmutter nodded. “Beecher mentioned gold. He also gave me a tantalizing clue that led to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s secret and still unopened papers—”

“I think we have something,” interrupted Giordino, pointing down through the windshield. “Off to the right. A large dune that spills out from the west bank.”

“The one with a rock embedded on top?” asked Perlmutter, his voice rising in excitement.

“You got it.”

“Break out the Schonstedt gradiometer Julien brought from Washington,” Pitt ordered Giordino. “As soon as you set it up, I’ll make a pass over the dune.”

Giordino quickly unpacked the iron-detecting instrument, checked the battery connections, and set the sensitivity reading. “Ready to drop the sensor.”

“Okay, approaching the dune at an airspeed of 10 knots,” replied Pitt.

Giordino lowered the sensor on a cable leading back to the gradiometer until it dangled 10 meters beneath the helicopter’s belly. Then he and Perlmutter intently studied the needle on the frequency dial. As the helicopter moved slowly over the dune, the needle wavered and the sound amplifier began to buzz. Suddenly the needle pegged and then shot to the other side of the dial as the sensor passed over the magnetic polarity from positive to negative. In unison the buzz rose to a shrill shriek.

“She’s off the scale,” Giordino shouted jubilantly. “We’ve got a king-size iron mass down there.”

“Your reading could be coming from that circular brown rock on the dune,” cautioned Perlmutter. “The desert around here is teeming with iron ore.”

“Not a brown rock!” Pitt whooped. “You’re looking at the top of a smokestack coated with rust.”

As Pitt hovered over the mound, no one found the right words to say. Until now, deep down, they had wondered if she existed at all. But there was no uncertainty in their minds now.

The
Texas
had surely been rediscovered.

62

The first flush of exhilaration and elation soon died when a survey of the mound showed that with the exception of 2 meters of smokestack, the entire ship was covered by sand. It would take days for them to shovel through the avalanching sand to reach inside.

“The dune has marched over the casemate since Kitty was here sixty-five years ago,” muttered Perlmutter. “The wreck is buried too deep for us to penetrate. Nothing but heavy excavation equipment can clear an entrance.”

“I believe there is a way,” said Pitt.

Perlmutter looked at the enormous size of the mound and shook his head. “Looks hopeless to me.”

“A dredge,” snapped Giordino as if a light clicked on inside his head. “The method salvagers use to remove silt from a wreck.”

“You read my mind,” Pitt laughed. “Instead of a high-pressure hose to excavate, we hang the chopper overhead and let the air surge from the rotors blow away the sand.”

“Sounds rather half-assed to me,” grumbled Perlmutter thoughtfully. “You won’t be able to exert enough downward thrust to move much sand without lifting us into the sky.”

“The slopes of the dune rise sharply to a peak,” Pitt pointed out. “If we can level the summit by 3 meters, she should see the top of the ironclad’s casemate.”

Giordino shrugged. “Can’t lose by trying.”

“My sentiments also.”

Pitt hung the helicopter over the mound and applied only enough power to keep the craft in a static hover. The force of the air from the rotor whipped up the sand below in a frenzied swirl. Ten, twenty minutes, he held the chopper stable, fighting the buffeting from the down draft. He could see nothing; the induced sandstorm hid all sight of the dune.

“How much longer?” asked Giordino. “The grit must be playing hell with the turbines.”

“I’ll blow the engines to scrap if that’s what it takes,” Pitt answered with bulldog determination.

Perlmutter began to see visions of his ample body becoming a ten-day feast for the local buzzards. He felt nothing but pessimism about Pitt and Giordino’s mad brainstorm, but he sat quietly without interfering.

After thirty minutes, Pitt finally hauled the helicopter into the sky and off to one side of the mound until the cloud of sand and dust settled to the ground. Every eye peered downward. The minutes that followed seemed endless.

Then Perlmutter let out a bellow that drowned out the whine of the turbines.

“She’s clear!”

Pitt was seated on the side of the cabin opposite the dune. “What do you see?” he yelled back.

“Iron plates and rivets of what looks like the pilothouse.”

Pitt shoved the chopper to a higher altitude so he wouldn’t disturb more sand. The cloud had finally drifted away and settled, exposing the ironclad’s pilothouse and about 2 square meters of deck over the casemate. It seemed so unnatural for a ship to be lying under a desert, it materialized like a giant sand monster out of a science fiction movie.

Less than ten minutes later, after Pitt landed the helicopter, and he and Giordino heaved a laboring Perlmutter up the sides of the dune, they found themselves standing on the
Texas.
The pilothouse rose clear, and they half expected to find eyes peering back at them through the observation slits.

There was only a light coating of rust on the thick iron that shielded the wood of the casemate. Gouges and dents from the Union navy’s guns were still evident on the armor.

The entry hatch on the rear of the small structure was frozen shut, but it was no match for Pitt’s wiry strength, Giordino’s thick muscles, and Perlmutter’s weight as it squeaked in protest at being forced open. They stared at the ladder that dropped into the darkness, then stared at each other.

“I think the honor should go to you, Dirk. You put us here.”

Giordino removed a backpack slung over his shoulders and passed out maximum optic flashlights that could illuminate a basketball court. The interior beckoned, and Pitt flicked on his light and stepped down the ladder.

The sand that had sifted through the eye slits covered the deck almost to the tops of Pitt’s hiking boots. The wheel stood frozen in time as if patiently waiting for a ghostly helmsman. The only other objects he could see were a set of speaking tubes and a high stool lying on its side in a sand-filled corner. Pitt hesitated at the open hatch leading down to the gun deck for a moment, inhaled deeply, and dropped into the darkness below.

The instant his feet touched the wooden deck he crouched and turned completely in a circle, beaming his light into every corner of the immense enclosure. The great 100-pound Blakely guns and the two 9-inch, 64-pounders sat half immersed in sand that had flowed past the shutters of their open gun-ports. He walked over and stood beside one of the Blakelys, still solidly mounted on its huge wooden carriage. He had seen old Mathew Brady photographs of Civil War naval cannon, but had never conceived their monumental size. He could only marvel at the strength of the men who once manned them.

The atmosphere of the gun deck was oppressive but surprisingly cool. It was also eerily empty but for the guns. No fire buckets, no ramrods or shot and shell. Nothing littered the floor. It was as though it had been stripped clean for a dockyard refit. Pitt turned as Perlmutter awkwardly climbed down the ladder followed by Giordino.

“How odd,” said Perlmutter, gazing around. “Are my eyes failing or is this deck as bare as a mausoleum?”

Pitt smiled. “Your eyes are fine.”

“You’d think the crew might have given it a lived-in look,” Giordino mused.

“The men on this deck and these guns battered half the Union fleet,” exclaimed Perlmutter. “Many of them died in here. It doesn’t figure there isn’t a scrap of their existence.”

“Kitty Mannock mentioned seeing bodies,” Giordino reminded him.

“They must be below,” said Pitt. He aimed his light beam at a stairwell leading down into the ship’s hull. “I suggest we begin with the crew’s quarters forward and then work back through the engine room toward the stern and the officers’ quarters.”

Giordino nodded. “Sounds good.”

So they moved on, numbed by an awe of the unknown. The knowledge that she was the only completely intact ironclad from the Civil War with remains of her crew still on board only deepened an almost superstitious reverence. Pitt felt as if he was walking through a haunted house.

They slowly moved into the crew’s quarters and came to an abrupt halt. The compartment was a tomb of the dead. There were over fifty of them frozen in their final posture when overtaken by death. Most had died while lying in their bunks. Although there was water to drink from the dwindling flow of the river, the shrunken stomachs of their mummified corpses told of the disease and starvation after their food ran out. A few were sitting slumped around a mess table, some crumpled on the deck. Much of their clothing was stripped off their bodies. No sign of their shoes or a trace of their sea chests or personal belongings could be seen.

“They’ve been picked clean,” murmured Giordino.

“The Tuaregs,” Perlmutter concluded wearily. “Beecher said that desert bandits, as he called them, had attacked the ship.”

“They must have had a death wish to attack an armored ship with old muskets and spears,” said Giordino.

“They were after the gold. Beecher said the Captain used the Confederate treasury gold to buy food from the desert tribes. Once the word spread, the Tuaregs probably made a couple of futile assaults against the ship before getting smart and laying siege by cutting off all food and supplies. Then they waited until the crew starved or died off from typhoid and malaria. When all signs of resistance disappeared, the Tuaregs simply walked on board and pillaged the ship of the gold and everything else they could carry. After years of scrounging by every nomad tribe that wandered by, nothing is left but the crew’s bodies and the cannon that were too huge to haul away.”

“So we can forget about the gold,” said Pitt thoughtfully. “It’s long gone.”

Perlmutter nodded. “We won’t get rich this day.”

There was no temptation to linger in the compartment of the dead. They moved aft and into the engine room. Coal was still heaped in the bins and shovels hung beside the scuttles. Without moisture to cause corrosion, the brass on gauges and fittings still had a faint gleam under the bright glare of the max optic flashlights. But for the dust, the engines and boilers looked to be in first-class operating condition.

One of their light beams caught the figure of a man sitting hunched over a small desk. A yellowed paper lay under one hand next to an inkwell that had spilled when he had slumped into death.

Pitt gently removed the paper and read it under his flashlight.

I have done my duty to the last of my strength. I leave my sweet, faithful engines in prime condition. They beautifully carried us across the ocean without missing a stroke and are as strong as the day they were installed in Richmond. I bequeath them to the next engineer to move this good ship against the hated Yankees. God save the Confederacy.

Chief Engineer of the
Texas,

Angus O’Hare

“There sits a dedicated man,” said Pitt approvingly.

“They don’t make them like him today,” Perlmutter agreed.

Leaving Chief Engineer O’Hare, Pitt led the way past the big twin engines and boilers. A passageway led into the officers’ quarters and mess, where they found four more undressed bodies, all reposed on bunks in their individual cabins. Pitt gave them little more than a passing glance before stopping at a mahogany door mounted in the aft bulkhead.