Cabral frowned. "Most of the message was garbled. There was a lot of background noise. We recorded the call. Maybe you can make sense of it."
He flicked a switch on the radio console. The bridge was filled with a cacophony that sounded like an oratorical contest at a madhouse. There was wild shouting, but the words were mostly incomprehensible except for a hoarse male voice that cut through the pandemonium.
"Mayday!" the voice said. "This is the NOAA ship Ben Franklin. Mayday. Come in, anybody."
Another voice, more garbled, could be heard in the background, bawling: "Power! Damnit, more power …"
Then came a quick phrase. It
was only caught for an instant, but that was all that was needed to convey the unmitigated terror.
"Damnit! We're going in!"
Cabral's recorded voice came on. He was trying to respond to the SOS.
"This is the NUMA ship Throckmorton. What is your situation? Come in. What is your situation?"
His words were drowned out by a dull, churning roar as if a monsoon were howling through a cavern. Then the radio went dead. The silence that followed was worse than any noise.
Austin had tried to imagine himself on the Franklin's bridge. The scene was obviously one of chaos. The voice calling the Mayday was probably the captain's. Or, more likely, he was the one urging the engine room to give them more power.
The unearthly swirling roar was beyond anything in Austin's experience. He realized that the hair on the back of his neck was standing up like soldiers at attention. He glanced around the bridge. Judging from the apprehensive faces of captain and crew, it was clear that he was not alone in his thoughts.
"What's the Franklin's position?" Austin said.
Captain Cabral stepped over to a blue-glowing radar monitor.
"That's another crazy thing. We picked them up on radar eighteen miles away. They were moving in a southwest direction. Then they disappeared from the radar screen."
Austin watched the radar sweep line go around a couple of times. There was no sign of the ship, only some patches of scatter where the radar beam touched the wavetops. "How long will it take to get there?"
"Less than an hour. We've got to haul in the ROV first."
"Joe's doing it now. He should have the vehicle aboard by now."
Cabral gave the order to get under way and head toward the Franklin at top speed. The Throckmorton pulled anchor, and its high bow was starting to cut through the ranks of waves when Zavala showed up with Professor Adler.
"The professor told me about the whirlpool," Zavala said. "Any word from the Franklin?"
"They sent an SOS, but the radio transmission got cut short. And we lost them on radar."
Cabral heard the brief exchange. "What's this about a whirlpool, Kurt?"
"The professor and I were checking satellite images and picked up a big, spinning water disturbance near the Franklin's position. Maybe a mile or two across."
"Isn't NOAA doing a study of ocean eddies?"
"This is no slow-moving eddy. It's probably hundreds of feet deep, and spinning at more than thirty knots."
"You're not serious."
"Deadly serious, I'm afraid."
Austin asked the professor to describe what they had seen. Adler was filling the captain in on the details when they were interrupted by the radio operator.
"We're picking them up on radar again," the operator said.
"Captain," the radio operator said a second later. "I'm getting a transmission from the Franklin."