“You think that pal of yours from the Miners Co-op is aboard the icebreaker?”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Pitt replied.

“Let’s try the captain’s cabin and then we’ll skedaddle.”

The captain’s cabin was located off the far side of the Great Cabin and represented a faint hope for containing the ship’s log. But a small sliding door to the cabin was locked and no amount of bumping or cajoling by the ROV would shake it loose. With less than an hour of battery power left and a twenty-minute ride to the surface, Pitt called the survey off and told Giordino to fetch Rover back home.

Giordino steered the ROV back to the galley and toward the entry gap in the bow, as a take-up spool reeled in the power cable. Pitt powered up the submersible’s thrusters, then gazed out the view port at the Bloodhound ’s electronic pod while waiting for the ROV.

“How did the mineral sensor test out?” he asked, pointing at the pod.

“Seems to work like a champ,” Giordino replied, his eyes glued to the overhead monitor as he threaded the ROV through the forward debris. “We won’t be able to gauge its full accuracy until we can assay our samples back at headquarters.”

Pitt reached over and powered on the sensor, watching a nearby monitor as it computed the mineral readings. Of no surprise to Pitt, the screen registered a very large iron concentration nearby, along with some trace elements of copper and zinc. The iron made perfect sense, as the ship was loaded with it, from the anchors and anchor chains directly below them to the locomotive engine in the hold. But it was one of the other trace elements that caught his eye. Waiting until the ROV snaked out of the lower deck, he engaged the thrusters and elevated the submersible. Moving slowly, he brought the craft to a hover over the damaged section of the bow while keeping one eye on the sensor’s output.

“If you can find us some gold on this tub, it would redeem an otherwise forgettable dive,” Giordino said.

Pitt danced the submersible over the debris area, gradually focusing on a small section near the ship’s centerline. Easing to a stable section of the deck, he again set the submersible down. Giordino had pulled the ROV’s cable slack and was preparing to drop it into its cradle.

“Hold on,” Pitt said. “Do you see that broken timber standing upright about ten feet in front of us?”

“Got it.”

“There’s a covered object near its base, a little to the right. See if you can blast it off with the ROV.”

Giordino had the Rover in place within seconds. He cut the power and let the ROV sink to a small pile of debris covered in silt. When the ROV made contact, he applied full power to its tiny thrusters. The little ROV shot upward, kicking up a thick cloud of silt in the process. The steady bottom current that rippled over the ship quickly cleared away the murky water. Both men could see a curved object with a gold luster lying in the debris.

“My gold bars,” Giordino said facetiously.

“Something better, I think,” Pitt replied. He didn’t wait for Giordino to fly the ROV over the object, instead propelling the submersible over for a close-up look. Peering down through the view port, they saw the unmistakable shape of a large bell.

“Holy smokes, how did you pick that out of the muck? ” Giordino asked.

“The Bloodhound’s sniffer did it. I noticed a small reading of copper and zinc, and remembered that they’re the two components of brass. I figured it was either a cleat or the ship’s bell.”

They stared down at the bell, observing an engraving on the side, which they couldn’t quite make out. Pitt finally backed off a few feet and let the ROV zoom in for a closer look.

The bell was still caked with silt and crustaceans, but a close-up view from the Rover’s camera revealed two of the engraved letters: ER.

“Can’t spell Erebus without it,” Giordino remarked with some relief.

“Give it another blast,” Pitt directed.

While Giordino maneuvered the ROV in for another go at the silt, Pitt checked their battery reserves, finding their remaining power was down to thirty minutes. There was little time left to lose.

The silt burst upward in a massive cloud of brown particulates from the Rover’s second burst. It seemed to Pitt that the water took hours to clear when in fact in was just a few seconds. Giordino immediately guided the ROV back over the bell as they waited for the murky cloud to drift away. They both stared silently at the monitor as the bell’s engraved lettering slowly materialized in its entirety.

It spelled TERROR.

67

After three days of confinement in the frozen darkness, the barge captives were living a different kind of terror. Roman had ordered the fading penlights to be used sparingly, so most of the time the men spent groping around in complete blackness. Initial feelings of anger and determination to escape had waned to despair in the bleak hold, where the men huddled close together to stave off hypothermia. Hope had flourished when the barge had come to a rest at the dock and the hatch was briefly thrown open. It proved to be nothing more than an inspection from several armed guards, but at least they had provided some food and blankets before their hasty exit. Roman took it as a good sign. They wouldn’t be given food if they were not intended to be kept alive, he reasoned.

But now he wasn’t so sure. When Bojorquez had awakened him to report a change in the sound of the icebreaker’s engines, he suspected that they had reached their destination. But then the rhythmic tugging of the towropes had suddenly ceased while the rocking motion from the choppy seas remained. He could sense that they had been cut adrift.

Second’s later, Zak’s explosives detonated with a jolt. The explosion reverberated through the empty holds of the barge like a thunderstorm in a bottle. Instantly, the commandos and Polar Dawn’s crew were on their feet, wondering what had happened.

“Captain Murdock,” Roman called out, turning on his penlight.

Murdock shuffled forward, a haggard look to his eyes from a lack of sleep.

“Speculation?” Roman asked quietly.

“Sounded well aft. I suggest we go take a look.”

Roman agreed. Then seeing the apprehensive look in the faces of the nearby men, he called over to Bojorquez.

“Sergeant, get back to work on that hatch. I’d like some fresh air in here before breakfast.”

Moments later, the stocky sergeant was pounding away at the locked hatch again with his small hammer. The clanging racket, Roman hoped, would give the men a small lift while masking the sound of whatever was happening aft.

Roman led Murdock to the open stern hatchway and shined his light over the threshold. A steel-rung ladder led straight down into an empty black void.

“After you, Captain,” Murdock said curtly.

Roman slipped the penlight between his teeth, then grabbed the top rung and slowly started climbing down. Though not afraid of heights, he found it unnerving to climb into a seemingly bottomless black hole inside a rolling ship.

The bottom rung seemed elusive, but after a forty-foot drop he reached the base of the number 1 hold. Shining his light at the foot of the ladder, Murdock appeared right behind him. A rock solid man just over sixty, the gray-bearded captain was not even breathing hard.

Murdock led the way across the hold, startling a pair of rats that somehow flourished even in the bitter cold.

“Didn’t want to say it in front of the men but that sounded like an onboard explosion to me,” he said.

“My thoughts as well,” Roman replied. “Do you think they mean to sink us?”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

The two men found another steel ladder on the opposite side of the hold, which they climbed up to a short passage that led to the number 2 hold. They repeated the process twice more, crossing the next two holds. As they climbed up the far side of the third hold, they could hear a distant sound of sloshing water. Reaching the last passageway, Roman scanned the number 4 hold with his light.