“That means it should light up the magnetometer like a Christmas tree,” Garin put in.

Annja nodded. “That’s the hope, anyway.”

As if on cue the magnetometer began beeping and a section of the screen suddenly bloomed with color. Hearing it, Mitchell slowed the boat to a crawl, letting the magnetometer get a good long look.

The men turned expectant gazes in her direction, but after studying the readings for a moment, Annja had to shake her head. The object, while certainly iron, was too small to be the Marietta.

More like somebody’s old hot-water heater, she thought to herself, and quelled the sense of disappointment that threatened. She guessed there had been plenty of junk dumped into the river over the years and they were likely to get a lot of false positives before they found the real target.

To try and limit that as much as possible, Annja moved the gamma setting from three to nine, ensuring that they would only pick up larger concentrations of iron, and signaled to Mitchell to get the boat moving again.

By midafternoon they’d stopped four more times. Each time Annja had suited up in wetsuit and scuba gear and, with the help of a diving sled outfitted with high-powered spotlights, had gone down into the murky water to take a look. Each time she’d been filled with anticipation, her heart pounding as her diving fins pushed her through the dark toward the unknown. Each time she’d been disappointed. So far she discovered an abandoned station wagon, an industrial-size boiler, a pile of cast-iron sinks and, much to her surprise, a steam locomotive. The train had just been sitting there on the river bottom, the round bulb of its front light looking like an eye gazing back at her out of the gloom. Seeing it sent her imagination into overdrive and she found herself wondering what train it was from and how it had come to be here, at the bottom of the Savannah River. When she surfaced, she made a note on the charts, indicating the find, and made a mental note as well to return to the spot one day to learn more.

For now, though, they still had an ironclad to find.

They were on the very edge of the target area, just finishing off their complete pass, when the magnetometer’s alarm went off for the fifth time that day. The display showed a good-size target, so Annja zipped up her wetsuit and prepared to dive again.

“Want me to take it this time?” Garin asked.

Annja was tempted but, after a moment’s consideration, shook her head. She wanted to be the first to see the Marietta’s final resting place; call her selfish, she didn’t care.

“Thanks, but I’ve got it,” she told him.

“Suit yourself. Remember to use one of the strobes if you get into trouble—white for marking the wreck and red for an emergency.”

“Right. Wish me luck,” she said as she put her mouthpiece between her teeth and went over the side for the fifth time that day. When she surfaced, Garin handed the light sled down to her, waited until she’d turned it on to check how much battery power was left and then played out her dive rope behind her as she sunk beneath the surface.

The weights on her belt helped her resist the river’s current and took her to the bottom fairly quickly. They’d loaded the exact location into the GPS unit she wore on her wrist, so it was a simple matter of following the signal to the site.

Except there was nothing there.

Or rather, nothing that looked to her like the wreckage of a Civil War ironclad.

She began swimming in a wide circle, moving through the target area methodically. At this point in the river a wide ridge rose up about ten feet along the bottom, just large enough that she couldn’t see over it and long enough that she couldn’t see past it in the gloom. She kept it close on her left, keeping it as a reference point so she wouldn’t get confused in the murky water.

Damn, it’s dark down here, she thought.

She’d almost reached the end of the ridgeline when she saw something sticking out of the muck at the point where the ridge rose up from the river bottom.

Something that looked far too symmetrical and round to be natural.

Annja shone the light directly at it.

The open mouth of a Civil War–era cannon gaped at her.

With a grunt of surprise, she understood what had been eluding her for the past several minutes.

The hurricane must have pushed the wreckage deep into the silt of the river bottom, where it had become lodged against the current. Over time, spring floods and the occasional high-water storm had deposited more and more debris atop the wreck, until it was essentially entombed in the earth, forming the underwater ridge she’d been swimming beside.

Better yet, based on the size and shape of the ridge, it appeared that the Mariettamight have remained reasonably intact, despite the force of the water.

Annja felt her excitement grow at the realization.

If the ship was intact and she could find a way inside, they might still be able to recover Ewell’s Rifle and continue the search for the treasure!

She gave a powerful kick and began swimming along the length of the ridge, looking for some way inside the hull she knew was hidden beneath.

It didn’t take long.

A shelf jutted out from the rounded side of the ridge and a school of fish shot out from beneath when her light washed across it. When she moved in for a closer look, pointing her light like a beacon into the darkness, she found herself staring at the algae-encrusted edges of a wide hole that led farther into darkness.

At some point in the distant past, a hole had been gouged through the casemate armor that surrounded the hull. Annja didn’t know if it happened when the ship ran aground or prior to that, during the battle itself that had forced the CSS Mariettato heave to or risk sinking with all hands on board, but it didn’t really matter. The hole provided a way inside the vessel and that’s what she needed to allow her to search inside the ship for what they come here for.

But first, she had to tell the others….

She pulled one of the white emergency flare lights off her belt and clipped it to the edge of the hull. She gave the top a twist, activating the strobe inside it, and then pushed off for the surface, rising through water suddenly lit up with the pulsing white light of the flare.

26

The wide smile on her face must have given her news away, for her two companions took one look at her and began whooping and hollering like a couple of two-year-olds. Annja swam over to the boat, passed the light sled up to Mitchell and then accepted Garin’s hand to help pull her aboard.

“Talk to me,” he said to her, grinning like a baboon.

Glad I’m not the only one,she thought.

“She’s down there all right, almost completely buried in the mud at the river bottom. Thankfully, she appears to be mostly intact!”

“So what do you think? Can we get inside?” Garin asked.

Annja nodded. “I found a hole about three-quarters of the way along the hull that’s wide enough for us to swim through.”

“Did you try to get inside?”

“Not yet, but it doesn’t look like it will be a problem. I could see down to the lower deck from where I stood outside the gap and it looks like there is room enough to move around inside. That doesn’t mean a bulkhead somewhere hasn’t been crushed or the captain’s cabin, where what we need was stored, is still accessible, but at least it gives us a chance.”

Garin nodded. “All right. Take half an hour to rest and then we’ll go down together.”

She didn’t want to wait. She wanted to simply switch tanks and dive immediately, but she knew he was right. The ship had been there this long and it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so there was no reason to take a chance with safety. Tired divers made stupid mistakes and mistakes were something they couldn’t afford.