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"You were lucky Sun was shining, sea wasn't stirred up y day you can be practically on the wreck without seeing it That's nothing compared to inside Black as Hades, silt all over the place Just touch it and you're surrounded by a cloud so thick your light won't penetrate it Real easy to get confused and lost But the biggest probleet into real trouble with all the wires and cables hanging down froet past those nets and ropes all over the hull and the monofilament from the party boats that fish the wreck It's invisible You don't know it's there until it's grabbed on to your tank With scuba you've got twenty et yourself out of trouble"

"That's not e ship"

"That's one of the reasons it's so daerous Felloant that piece of pottery or dish with the Italia crest on it Figure they've spent all that tiet tired real fast, especially if they're fighting the current and breathing triet the plans they uy died because he had the wrong ht belt, lights, knives I was carrying two hundred twenty-eight pounds It takes a lifetime of experience to dive the ship Even so, it's easy to beco on its side, so the deck and floors are overhead, the bulkheads between the decks are vertical"

"The Andrea Doria sounds like just our kind of place, doesn't it, Joe?"

"Only if the bar still serves tequila"

McGinty furrowed his brow Ordinarily this kind of cockiness before a Doria dive was a one-way ticket to a body bag He wasn't sure about these two The big man with the hair that didn't match the unlined face and the soft-spoken dark man with the bedroom eyes exuded an unusual confidence The captain's worried expression disappeared, and he grinned like an old hound dog No, it wouldn't surprise him to see them belly up to the Doria's firstclass bar and order a drink frohostly bartender

Austin said, "What's the weather going to be like, Captain?"

"Weather tends to be cantankerous as hell out here on the shoals Caluys ere aboard the Doria and the Stockhol southeast now, but it will couess is you'll have flat seas Don't kno many days that will last out here"

"That's okay, we're in soet the job done," Austin said "We don't have days"

McGinty grinned Yup, daot to ad for, an ar Especially where you don't know the wreck" He shook his head "Wish I could help you, but uide"

Austin saw a blue hull coh a porthole The name Myra was painted on the bow

"Excuse uide has just arrived"

Georgetown,Washington, DC

40 "GAMAY, DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?" Trout called out from his study He was bent over theintently at the oversized screen he used for developing graphics for his various undersea projects

"Yrrph," Garunt from the next room She lay on her back, suspended horizontally above the floor like a yogi in a trance, balanced on a narrow plank scaffolding supported by two ladders She and Paul were constantly reetown brick townhouse Ruch Gunn ordered her to take a few days off to rest before reporting to NUMA headquarters But the second she got back ho life-like flower garlands on the ceiling of their sunroom