The Saboteurs by Clive Cussler (top 10 best books of all time .TXT) 📗

“Three of the four men killed last night floated up from the sunken boat and were recovered by Navy personnel from the Maryland. They’re getting ready to send a hard-hat diver down to see if he can find the fourth. I thought you might want to get a look-see at the bodies before they go to the coroner.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You put a fast end to the worst shooting this city’s ever seen,” Wilson said, his eyes slit against the wind fanning across the boat’s aft deck. “Least I can do.”

Wilson didn’t seem to have anything more to say, and Bell was just as happy to keep his own counsel. The sun was climbing higher into the sky and throwing lightning-like flashes off the wavelets rippling the harbor. A big gull momentarily hovered over the boat, as it motored toward the heavy cruiser, but soon realized there was no prospect of fish and wheeled away.

They approached the Maryland under the vigilant eyes of a half dozen armed men standing watch. After the previous night’s brush with anarchists, the captain was taking no chances.

The cruiser’s boarding ladder was down, and a sailor in white was waiting on the landing to help Bell and Wilson jump across. They climbed up to the main deck. The ship’s second officer was there to greet them. Bell couldn’t recall his name. He led them around the forward gun turret, under the enormous barrels of its eight-inch cannons, and back down the cruiser’s port side. Just aft of amidships, a crane had been unlimbered and its boom arm maneuvered over the ship’s rail. Nearby, a compressor powered by steam from an auxiliary line off the ship’s main boilers chugged rhythmically and forced air down a vulcanized rubber hose to the diver standing on a cradle dangling from the end of the crane. Sailors were on hand to feed his umbilical smoothly into the water and to monitor the electric telephone system.

The diver himself was clad in an enclosed canvas suit topped with an enormous brass helmet, with three round viewing ports, and lead-soled boots on his feet. A lead belt was buckled around his waist. Because of the air pressure inside the suit when he was submerged, all the extra weight was needed to anchor him to the seafloor. He had a knife and pry bar attached to an equipment belt.

The dive master threw the diver a salute, which he returned as best he could in the bulky outfit, and the crane started paying out more line. The cradle descended, and the diver was soon chest-deep in the warm waters of San Diego Bay. Then he was gone altogether, leaving only the steady rise of bubbles to give his location.

Bell noticed a Navy rowboat made of gray metal was a safe distance away from the work zone. It was crewed by five sailors, and he understood its grim task.

“Where are the other bodies?” Bell asked the executive officer.

“Come.”

He and Wilson were led aft, where the three bodies had been laid out on stretchers under heavy canvas tarps, the edges weighted down with paint cans.

“Do you mind if I . . . ?” Bell asked the chief, who had jurisdiction, and knelt next to the first one.

“Help yourself.” Wilson had no desire to see the bodies, so he gazed out over the harbor.

Bell lifted the tarp. The man hadn’t been in the water long enough for any marine decay, but the explosion and fire had wreaked havoc on his flesh. Not the worst Bell had ever seen, but disturbing nevertheless. His features were Hispanic, with strong native ancestry, and Bell recognized him as the one who’d picked up the Lewis gun after he’d shot its original owner. Like the anarchists he’d inspected in the dining room, he had a slight build but was wiry with muscle, and he had distinct calluses on his hands. The corpse had no legs below the knees.

There was nothing in his sodden pockets and no labels in any of his clothes, but they were rough-spun, so likely bought in Panama.

The other two men were in similar condition and just as uninformative.

Bell joined Wilson at the rail. “I can positively identify these three as part of the squad that attacked us at The Del. I will sign an affidavit, if you’d like.”

“Probably should, just to keep everything official. Learn anything about ’em?”

Before Bell could answer there was a commotion farther down the ship. The crew were bringing up the diver. Nearing the surface, his canvas suit and bright helmet began to appear as a light splotch under the murky green water. With no warning, another corpse suddenly surfaced close by, propelled upward by the gases trapped in the stomach.

The body bobbed obscenely.

The diver’s brass helmet broached, and moments later he was hoisted clear of the harbor on the cradle, water sluicing off his vulcanized suit and spattering the water beneath his weighted feet.

When the cradle rose over the ship’s rail, the derrick swung back over the deck, and he was lowered to where the sailors already had a bucket waiting so he could sit. Standing upright in the heavy suit was a physically draining exercise. Down on the water, the men in the steel boat had rowed over to where the legless body was floating facedown. Rather than haul it over the gunwale, a fifth sailor, not manning an oar, reached over the bow and took a firm grip of the back of the corpse’s shirt collar.

It took just minutes for them to row around the fantail and up to the boarding ladder. Bell and Wilson circled the deck to keep watch. The trawler that had taken them out to the Maryland moved in, and the body was lifted from the sea onto her deck. A sailor rushed down from the deck with a tarp, which was quickly draped over the prone figure.

A detail of sailors was assembled to transfer stretchers with the other dead men on them