Clive Cussler - The Silent Sea

Table of Contents

DIRK PITT ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

Arctic Drift
(WITH DIRK CUSSLER)

Treasure of Khan
(WITH DIRK CUSSLER)

Black Wind
(WITH DIRK CUSSLER)

Trojan Odyssey
Valhalla Rising
Atlantis Found
Flood Tide
Shock Wave
Inca Gold
Sahara
Dragon
Treasure
Cyclops
Deep Six
Pacific Vortex
Night Probe
Vixen 03
Raise the Titanic!
Iceberg
The Mediterranean Caper

FARGO ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER
WITH GRANT BLACK WOOD
Spartan Gold

ISAAC BELL NOVELS BY CLIVE CUSSLER

The Wrecker
(WITH JUSTIN SCOTT)

The Chase

KURT AUSTIN ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER
WITH PAUL KEMPRECOS

Medusa
The Navigator
Polar Shift
Lost City
White Death
Fire Ice
Blue Gold
Serpent

OREGON FILES ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER
WITH JACK DU BRUL

Corsair
Plague Ship

Skeleton Coast
Dark Watch

WITH CRAIG DIRGO

Golden Buddha

Sacred Stone

NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND CRAIG DIRGO

The Sea Hunters

The Sea Hunters II

Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed

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Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cussler, Clive.

The silent sea / Clive Cussler ; with Jack Du Brul.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18597-1

1. Cabrillo, Juan (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. Intelligence serviceFiction. 3. Ship captainsFiction. 4. Mercenary troopsFiction. 5. ArgentinaFiction. 6. AntarcticaFiction. I. Du Brul, Jack B. II. Title.

PS3553.U75S

813.54dc22

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the authors assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

PROLOGUE

DECEMBER 7, 1941
PINE ISLAND,
WASHINGTON STATE

A GOLDEN BLUR LEAPT OVER THE SMALL BOATS GUNWALE just as the bows met the rocky beach. It hit the water with a splash and plowed through the surf, its tail raised like a triumphant pennant. When the retriever reached land, it shook itself so that drops flew like diamond chips in the crisp air, and then it looked back at the skiff. The dog barked at a pair of gulls farther down the beach that took startled flight. Feeling its companions were coming much too slowly, the purebred tore off into a copse of nearby trees, her bark diminishing until it was swallowed by the forest that covered most of the mile-square island just an hours row off the mainland.

Amelia, cried Jimmy Ronish, the youngest of the five brothers in the boat.

Shell be fine, Nick said, shipping his oars and taking the boats painter line in his hand. He was the eldest of the Ronish boys.

He timed his leap perfectly, landing on the pebbled shore as a wave receded. Three long strides later he was above the tidal mark of flotsam and drying kelp, looping the rope around a sun- and salt-bleached limb of driftwood that was a crosshatch of carved initials. He hauled back on the line to firmly ground the fourteen-foot craft and tied it off.

Shake a leg, Nick Ronish admonished his younger siblings. Low tides in five hours, and weve got a lot to do.

While the air was reasonably comfortable this late in the year, the north Pacific was icy cold, forcing them to unload their gear between the lapping waves. One of the heaviest pieces of equipment was a three-hundred-foot coil of hemp line that Ron and Don, the twins, had to shoulder together to get it up the beach. Jimmy was given charge of the rucksack containing their lunch, and as he was nine years old it was a burden to his slender frame.

The four older boysNick at nineteen, Ron and Don a year younger, and Kevin just eleven months their juniorcould have passed for quintuplets, with their towheads of floppy blond hair and their pale blue eyes. They retained the buoyant energy of youth wrapped in bodies that were rapidly becoming those of men. On the other hand, Jimmy was small for his age, with darker hair and brown eyes. His brothers teased that he looked a lot like Mr. Green-field, the towns grocer, and while Jimmy wasnt exactly sure what that implied, he knew he didnt like it. He idolized his older brothers and hated anything that distinguished him from them.

Their family owned the small island off the coast and had for as far back as their grandfather could remember, and it was a place every generation of boysfor the Ronishes hadnt produced a girl since 1862spent adventurous summers exploring. Not only was it easy to pretend they were all Huck Finns marooned on the Mississippi or Tom Sawyers exploring the islands intricate cave systems, but Pine Island had an inherent sense of intrigue because of the pit.

Mothers had been forbidding their boys from playing near the pit since Abe Ronish, great-uncle of the current Ronish brood, had fallen to his death in 1887. The directive was as inevitably ignored as it was given.

The real lure of the place was that local legend told that a certain Pierre Devereaux, one of the most successful privateers to ever harass the Spanish Main, had buried part of his treasure on this far northern island to lighten his ship during the dogged pursuit by a squadron of frigates that had chased him around Cape Horn and up the length of the Americas. The legend was bolstered by the discovery of a small pyramid of cannon balls in one of the islands caves, and the fact that the top forty feet of the square pit was braced with rough-hewn log balks.