look for evidence of the phantom ship there.
* * *
THEY APPROACHED THE beach slowly, not wanting to kick up any kind of visible wake.
Though it was the dead of night, a lot of noise was coming from the shore: The idling engines of heavy cutting machines, soon to be made ready for their morning work. Static and foreign voices blasting from radios up in the workers’ shantytowns. The continuous baying of an unseen foghorn. There was so much smoke coming from the beach fires, it had settled on the shoreline like a toxic blanket. Nolan ordered everyone to connect their oxygen masks. Where they were going next, the air was not breathable.
Prior to leaving the Shin, Nolan told one of the Senegals that if Alpha had to go to the beach, he should pretend to stay behind to watch the RIB—and that he would try to make Emma Simms stay behind with him. But as soon as they made it to shore, she was the first to jump from the boat, ruining the plan. She had her camera out and was demanding someone take pictures of her. When no one would, she stormed off, marching up the beach alone, in full view of anyone who might be looking in their direction.
Nolan ran after her, practically tackling her and pulling her back into the shadows. “This place is lousy with people who won’t mind shooting any of us—and not with a camera,” he told her sternly. “Why can’t you just stay with the goddamn boat?”
She waved him off. “Because I got this goddamn suit on,” she snapped back at him. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
He kept hold of her arm, though. “If you move more than two feet away from me,” he told her, “I’ll shoot you myself.”
Hiding the RIB in some shore vegetation, by this time the rest of the squad had caught up to them. Nolan told them to check their weapons and their breathing masks. Then they began their search of the grimy beach.
They made their way slowly at first, moving carefully among the heaps of cut steel and burning trash. The beach reminded Nolan of a battlefield that war had passed by. The carcasses of dozens of ships lay tossed about as if discarded by some giant hand. Some were in pieces; others had yet to be broken. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. There were also hundreds of tools scattered about—sledgehammers, huge hacksaws, acetylene torches. Apparently once quitting time arrived, all of Gottabang’s 20,000 workers just dropped whatever they were using at the moment and walked away.
All this clutter, plus the smoke and the night, made moving around the beach slow and difficult. Nolan soon realized they had to split up. Two Senegals would search the water’s edge along the southern part of the beach. Two more would take the northern end. Gunner and the fifth Senegal would take the midsection. Being stuck with Emma Simms, Nolan would search the area closest to where the RIB was hidden.
He was hoping this would be the safest part of the mile-long beach to check. Because it was far from the cutting yards and the workers’ shantytowns, it seemed the place where they were least likely to run into Gottabang’s security thugs.
Once the squad dispersed, Nolan and Emma Simms set out, staying close to one another but not talking, which was fine with him. They passed dozens of pools of discarded fuel, oil and bloody-red lubricants. The beach was so polluted, the sand was luminescent green in some parts, so soaked through it was with toxic chemicals. Sky-high piles of insulation and mountains of ship’s wall paneling soon surrounded them. Random jagged pieces of metal, lit by countless fires, big and small, were everywhere.
They reached an area jam-packed with giant pieces of broken ships. Bows, sterns, midsections. Some were cut neatly in sections, others were torn and jagged as if they’d been blown apart. It was like walking through a city where the streets contained block upon block of nightmarish buildings. These pieces towered over their heads, blotting out the night sky as effectively as the ever-present cloud of toxic smoke.
They moved along like this for nearly a half hour, Nolan checking for a ship name on every stern they came to. Every few minutes he would feel his sat-phone click twice, the signal from the other search teams checking in. But nothing beyond those two clicks meant they had no good news.
One part