“And Bruce?”
“He’s rated to two thousand meters,” Jerry said.
Stone wasn’t sure to what depth theAmanda Jaehad sunk. “I take it that’s enough?”
“More than,” Josie said. “TheAmanda Jaewas still over thecontinental shelf when it went down. Deep but not nearly that deep.”
As she said this, the ship rolled a bit as it moved down the river toward the southern end of Manhattan.
“It’ll be a few hours until we’re in position,” Josie said. “How about we go down to the galley and have some breakfast?”
Chapter 25
By midmorning, they reached thecoordinates from where theAmanda Jae’s distress signal had been sent and spent the next two hours searching the bottom with the sonar to find the yacht.
The current in the area had been strong enough to take theAmanda Jaenearly a half mile from where it had gone under before it hit bottom. It was resting at a depth of a hundred and fifty meters.
On one of the control room cameras, Stone and the others watched the cargo crane swing Bruce over the side of the vessel and set the ROV into the water.
Jerry’s voice came over the main speaker. “Ready to release.”
Sam checked one of her monitors, then said, “Cleared for release.”
The ROV detached from the crane and began its descent, trailing the electronics umbilical cord that kept it tethered to theMinerva.
“How long will it take to get to the bottom?” Stone asked.
“At this depth, it should only take a few minutes,” Josie said.
“Five, tops,” Sam interjected without looking away from her screen.
Three of the large monitors on the port-side wall showed feeds from Bruce’s cameras, but there was little to see. The clear water soon became murky as the ROV descended to depths the sun’s rays had a harder time reaching.
Sam called off the depth in intervals of ten meters until Bruce hit the one hundred and twenty mark. From there, she switched to every five meters.
Just after she announced one hundred and forty-five meters, she said, “Leveling off.”
A shape appeared in the watery twilight.
“Is that it?” Stone asked.
Sam tapped her keyboard, and Bruce’s lights flared to life, revealing a rock protruding from the seabed.
“The yacht’s twenty meters east,” she said.
“It’s best not to come down right on top of a shipwreck,” Josie explained. “We don’t want to get the umbilical tangled in anything sticking up off the ship that the sonar didn’t catch.”
The ROV glided over the seabed, sending fish scurrying out of the way. Within a minute, a new shape loomed in the distance.
As Bruce neared it, the mass resolved itself into the stern of theAmanda Jae. The yacht was leaning against a rock formation and looked oddly serene.
Sam stopped the ROV a few meters away and glanced at Josie. “Which direction?”
“Let’s start with a pass over the top,” Josie told her.
“You got it.”
The center wall monitor switched to a feed from a downward-facing camera, then Sam guided Bruce over the wreck.
