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“And that other lovely word you used—torpedo”

“That’s the dicey part My hunch is it got pushed this far upriver by six-plus decades of stores Probably both the torpedoes—if it was equipped with any to start ere knocked off long ago”

“Well, that’s some small comfort,” Rees to snag one someday”

“We’re going to have to tell souard or the navy How they’ll deal with it, I have no idea”

“One thing at a time”

“Right Step one: Make sure it isn’t sitting atop a pair of sixty-year-old live torpedoes”

CHAPTER 9

Using one of the Spair Air pony canisters, Sam inspected the botto on each log with the tip of his dive knife and praying he didn’t get a metallic clank in reply Their luck held; all he heard was the soft thump of rotten wood

Given the appearance of the logs near the top of the heap, many of which still showed some remnants of bark, Sam suspected the Molch had been deposited here recently, pushed by the storm out of the main channel and into this inlet If so, any torpedoes she’d been carrying were likely lost somewhere in the main channel of the Pocomoke, between here and the bay, some twenty miles to the south

A sound theory, but a theory nonetheless, Sam reminded himself He finished his survey of the bottoh he’d seen no external dae to the Molch’s hull it didn’t mean she wasn’t flooded, and if so they were out of luck Small as it was coht, weighing in at eleven tons Add to that the voluet subood their ropes and ratchet blocks would do them

Moving fro the hull every few feet with his knuckle, listening to the echoes They were hollow Damn, could they be this lucky?

He returned to the surface and climbed back onto the bank

“Good news, bad news,” Sam said “Which do you want first?”

“Good”

“I’m ninety percent sure the torpedoes aren’t down there and ninety-nine percent sure she’s not flooded”