Trojan Odyssey

15

The air was hot and damp with humidity that hung heavy without a breeze. The sky was cobalt blue with white clouds marching across it like a herd of sheep. Except for the tourists, the city simmered at a slow pace in the middle of summer. Congress used any excuse for a recess to escape the heat and soggy air, holding sessions only when it thought it was either absolutely necessary or when it polished its members' image, as busy bees in the voters' eyes. To Pitt, as he stepped off the NUMA Citation jet, the atmosphere was little different from the tropics he'd come from. The private government airport a few miles north of the city was empty of other aircraft, as Giordino, Dirk and Summer followed him down the boarding stairs to the black asphalt that felt hot enough to fry Spam.

The only vehicle waiting on the aircraft parking strip was a prodigious 1931 Marmon town car with a V-16 engine. It was a wondrous vehicle with style and class, technically superior in its time, noble and elegant. One of only 390 Marmon V-16s built, it was magically smooth and silent, its big engine putting out 192 horsepower with 407 foot-pounds of torque. Painted a dusty rose, the coachwork was perfectly in tune with Marmon's advertising as "The World's Most Advanced Motor Car."

Every bit as lovely and stylish as the car was the woman standing beside it. Tall and captivating, cinnamon hair glinting in the sun and falling to her shoulders, framing a soft beautiful face with a model's high cheekbones that were enhanced by soft violet eyes, Congress-woman Loren Smith stood cool and radiant. She was wearing a white lace patch blouse cut to show off her natural curves over matching asana pants cut loose with flared legs that dropped slightly over white canvas sneakers. She waved, smiled and ran over to Pitt. She looked up at him and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then stood back.

"Welcome home, sailor."

"I wish I had a dollar for every time you've said that."

"You'd be a rich man," she said with a cute laugh. Then she hugged Giordino, Summer and Dirk. "I hear you all had a big adventure."

"If not for Dad and Al," said Dirk, "Summer and I would be wearing wings."

"After you settle in, I want you to tell me all about it."

They carried their luggage and duffel bags to the car, threw some in the humpbacked trunk and the rest on the floor of the rear seat. Loren slipped behind the wheel that sat in the open air while Pitt moved into the passenger's side. The rest shared the enclosed rear compartment behind the divider window.

"Are we dropping Al off at his condo in Alexandria?" she asked.

Pitt nodded. "Then we can head for the hangar and clean up. The admiral wants us in his office by noon."

Loren looked down at the clock on the instrument panel. The hands read: 10:25. Frowning as she expertly, smoothly, shifted through the gears, she said caustically, "No time to relax before going back to work? After what the four of you have been through, isn't he crowding you a bit?"

"You know as well as I that beneath his sandpaper exterior beats the heart of a considerate man. He wouldn't insist on a deadline unless it was important."

"Still," Loren said, as the car was waved through the armed security guard at the airport gate, "he could have given you twenty-four hours to rejuvenate."

"We'll know soon enough what's on his mind," Pitt muttered, doing his best to keep from dozing off.

Fifteen minutes later, Loren drove up to the gated condominium complex where Giordino lived. A bachelor who had yet to marry, he seemed in no hurry to take the big step, preferring to spread his frosting on the cake, as he put it. Loren had seldom seen him with the same lady twice. She had introduced him to her lady friends, who all found him charming and interesting, but after a while he always drifted off to someone else. Pitt always likened him to a prospector wandering a tropical paradise for gold but never finding it on the beach under the palm trees.

Giordino retrieved his duffel bag and waved. "See you again soon… too soon."

The drive to Pitt's aircraft hangar apartment at one deserted end of Ronald Reagan National Airport was traffic-free. Again, they were waved through a security gate when the guard recognized Pitt. Loren stopped at the old hangar once used by a long-extinct airline in the nineteen thirties and forties. Pitt had purchased it to store his old-car collection and remodeled the upper offices into an apartment. Dirk and Summer lived on the main floor that also housed his fifty-car collection, a pair of old aircraft and a railroad Pullman car that he'd found in a cave in New York.

Loren braked the Marmon in front of the main door as Pitt used his remote to disengage his complicated alarm system. Then the door raised and she drove inside and parked in the middle of the incredible array of beautiful old classic automobiles dating from the earliest, a 1918 V-8 Cadillac, to a 1955 Rolls-Royce Hooper-bodied Silver Dawn. Sitting on a white epoxy floor and illuminated by skylights above, the old cars radiated a dazzling rainbow of colors.

Dirk and Summer retired to their separate compartments in the Pullman car while Pitt and Loren went up to his apartment, where he showered and shaved as she fixed a light brunch for the four of them. Thirty minutes later, Pitt exited his bedroom, dressed in casual slacks and golf shirt. He sat down at his kitchen table as Loren handed him a Ramos Fizz.

"Have you ever heard of a big corporation called Odyssey?" he asked Loren out of the blue.

She looked at him for a moment. "Yes, I'm on a congressional committee that has looked into its operations. It's not an agenda that's being covered by the news media. What do you know about our investigation?"

He shrugged casually. "Absolutely nothing. I wasn't aware of your congressional involvement with Specter."

"The corporation's nebulous founder? Then why did you ask?"

"Curiosity. Nothing more. Specter owned the hotel Al and I helped save from being carried onto the rocks by Hurricane Lizzie."

"Other than the fact he heads a vast scientific research facility in Nicaragua and is involved with huge construction projects and mining operations around the world, very little is known about him. Some of his international dealings are legitimate, others are very shady."

"What are his projects in the U.S.?"

"Water canals through the southwest deserts and a few dams. That's the extent of it."

"What sort of scientific research projects does Odyssey conduct?" Pitt asked.

Loren shrugged. "Their activities are heavily veiled, and since their facility is in Nicaragua, they aren't bound by any laws to report their experiments. Rumor has it they're involved with fuel cell research, but no one knows for certain. Our intelligence people don't see Odyssey as a priority investigation."

"And their construction operations?"

"Mostly underground vaults and warehouse excavation," answered Loren. "The CIA has heard rumors that he's hollowed out caverns for clandestine nuclear and biological weapons manufactured in countries such as North Korea, but there's no proof. A number of their projects are with the Chinese, who want their military research programs and weapons supplies kept secret. Odyssey seems to have made a specialty of building below-the-surface vault warehouses that hide military activity and arms assembly plants from spy satellites."

"Yet Specter built and operated a floating hotel."

"A toy he uses to entertain clients," explained Loren. "He's only in the resort business for the fun of it."

"Who is Specter? The operation's manager for the Ocean Wanderer had nothing good to say about him."

"He must not like his job."

"Not that. He told me he would no longer work for Specter, because he ran from the hotel and flew off in his private plane before the hurricane struck, abandoning the guests and employees, not caring whether they might all die."

"Specter is a very mysterious person. Probably the only corporate executive officer of a giant business who doesn't have a personal publicity agent or public relations firm. He's never given an interview and is rarely seen in public. There are no records of his history, family or schooling."

"Not even a birth record?"

Loren shook her head. "No record of his birth has been found in the U.S. or in any other nation's archives around the world. His true identity has yet to be revealed despite the best efforts of our intelligence agencies. The FBI tried to get a handle on him a few years ago, but came up empty. There are no revealing photographs because his face is always covered by a scarf and heavy sunglasses. They tried to obtain fingerprints, but he wears gloves. Even his closest business aides have never seen his face. All that is obvious is that he is very obese, probably weighing more than four hundred pounds."

"Nobody's life or business can remain that veiled."

Loren made a helpless gesture with her hands.

Pitt poured himself a cup of coffee. "Where are his corporate headquarters located?"

"Brazil," replied Loren. "He also has a huge office center in Panama. And because he has made a large investment in the country, the president of the republic made him a citizen. He also appointed Specter as a director of the Panama Canal Authority."

"So what is the justification for your congressional probe?" asked Pitt.

"His dealings with the Chinese. Specter's connection with the People's Republic of China's is a long-standing relationship that goes back fifteen years. As a director of the Canal Authority, he was instrumental in helping the Hong Kong — based Whampoa Limited company, which is tied in with the People's Liberation Army, to obtain a twenty-five-year option for control of the canal's Atlantic and Pacific Ocean ports of Balboa and Cristobal. Whampoa will also be in charge of all loading and unloading of ship cargoes, and the railroad that transports cargo between the ports, and will soon begin construction on a new suspension bridge that will be used to truck oversized cargo containers north and south over the Canal Zone."

"What is our government doing about this?"

Loren shook her head. "Nothing that I'm aware of. President Clinton gave the Chinese carte blanche for their influence and expansion throughout Central America." Then she added, "Another intriguing thing about the Odyssey Corporation is that its top management is almost entirely staffed by women."

Pitt smiled. "Specter must be idolized by the feminist movement."

Dirk and Summer joined them for a brief late breakfast before they left for Sandecker's office. This time, Pitt drove one of the turquoise NUMA Navigators that were part of the fleet of agency vehicles. He stopped at Loren's town house to drop her off.

"Dinner tonight?" he queried.

"Are Dirk and Summer coming too?"

"I might drag the kids," Pitt said, smiling, "but only if you insist."

"I insist." Loren gave his hand a squeeze and elegantly exited the Navigator, stepped lightly to the driveway and walked up the steps to her door.

The NUMA headquarters building rose thirty stories on a hill above the Potomac River and had a commanding view of the city. Sandecker had personally chosen the site when Congress provided him with the funding to construct the building. It was far more magnificent than officials had originally conceived and ran several million dollars over budget. Because it was on the east side of the river just out of the District of Columbia, the admiral had unaccountably found a skyline free from the building height restrictions and erected a magnificent green glass tubular structure that could be seen from miles around.

Pitt drove into the crowded underground parking and pulled into his reserved slot. They took the elevator up to Sandecker's office on the top floor and exited the elevator into an anteroom paneled with teak decking from old shipwrecks. The admiral's secretary asked if they wouldn't mind waiting a minute since he was in a meeting.

Almost before the words left her lips, the door to the admiral's office opened and two old friends stepped into the anteroom. Kurt Austin, with a premature forest of gray hair, who was Pitt's counterpart as director of special projects, and Joe Zavala, the wiry engineer who often worked on submersible designs and construction with Giordino, stepped forward and shook hands.

"Where is the old geezer sending you two?" asked Giordino.

"Heading for the Canadian north country. There's rumors of mutant fish in some of the lakes. The admiral asked us to check it out."

"We heard about your rescue of the Ocean Wanderer in the middle of Hurricane Lizzie," said Zavala. "I didn't expect to see you back in the harness so soon."

"No rest for the weary in Sandecker's book," Pitt said with a half grin.

Austin nodded at Dirk and Summer. "One of these days I'll have you and the kids over for a barbecue."

"I'd like that," accepted Pitt. "I've always wanted to see your antique gun collection."

"And I've yet to see your auto collection."

"Why not arrange a tour? We'll have cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at my place and then drive to your house for the barbecue."

"Consider it a done deal."

Sandecker's secretary approached. "The admiral is ready for you now."

They bid their goodbyes, as Austin and Zavala headed toward the elevators and Pitt's group was ushered into Sandecker's office, where the admiral sat behind an immense desk fashioned from the salvaged hatch cover from a Confederate blockade runner.

A gentleman of the old school, he rose as Summer entered, and motioned her to a chair across from the desk. Amazingly, Giordino had arrived early. He was dressed in casual slacks and a Hawaiian flowered-print shirt. Rudi Gunn came up from his office on the twenty-eighth floor and joined them.

Without prelude, Sandecker launched the meeting. "We have two intriguing problems to deal with. The most important is the brown crud which is spreading throughout the Caribbean, which I'll come to later." He looked across his desk with piercing eyes, first at Summer and then at Dirk. "You two certainly opened up a Pandora's box with your discoveries on Navidad Bank."

"I haven't heard of the test results since Captain Barnum sent the amphor to the lab," said Summer.

"The lab is still in the process of cleaning it," clarified Gunn. "It was Hiram Yaeger and his computer magic that established a date and culture."

Before Summer could ask, Sandecker said, "Hiram dated the amphor sometime prior to eleven hundred B.C. He also established that it was Celtic."

"Celtic?" Summer echoed. "Is he sure?"

"It matches every other amphor known to have been created by ancient Celts around three thousand years ago."

"What about the comb we photographed?" asked Summer.

"Without having the actual objects to study," answered Sandecker, "Hiram's computer could only make an approximation as to the date. However, his best guess is they're also three thousand years old."

"Where does Yaeger think the artifact came from?" queried Pitt.

Sandecker stared at the ceiling. "Since the Celts weren't a seafaring people and are not known to have sailed across the Atlantic to the new world, it must have been thrown or lost off a passing ship."

"No ships sailed over Navidad Bank unless they wanted to have their hulls ripped apart by shallow coral and file a phony insurance claim," said Pitt. "The only other possibility is that the ship was driven onto the bank by a storm."

Gunn gazed down at the carpet as if something had entered his mind. "According to insurance records, an old steamer called Vandalia smashed onto the reef."

"I surveyed her remains," said Summer, looking at her brother expectantly.

Dirk nodded at her and grinned. "The amphor was not all we found."

"What Dirk is hinting is that we also discovered a labyrinth of caverns or rooms carved from rock that is now covered with the coral." She reached into her purse and retrieved the digital camera. "We took pictures of the architecture and a large cauldron sculpted with images of ancient warriors. It was filled with small, everyday artifacts."

Sandecker looked at her in disbelief. "A city beneath the sea in the Western Hemisphere predating the Olmecs, Mayans and Incas? It doesn't seem possible."

"We won't have answers until a thorough exploration is conducted." Summer held the camera as if it was a piece of expensive jewelry. "The structure we observed looked like some sort of temple."

Sandecker turned to Gunn. "Rudi?"

Gunn nodded in understanding, took the camera from Summer's hand and pushed a switch on the wall that raised a panel, revealing a large digital television. He then connected the cable into the TV, picked up the remote and began running through the images recorded by Dirk and Summer of the sunken temple.

There were more than thirty images, beginning with the entry arch and the steps leading to the interior with what looked like a large stone bed. The cauldron and its contents were in another chamber.

Dirk and Summer narrated as Gunn moved from one picture to the next. When the last image flashed on the monitor, they all sat silently for a few moments.

Finally, Pitt spoke first. "I think we should get St. Julien Perlmutter in on this."

Gunn looked skeptical. "St. Julien isn't an archaeologist."

"True, but if anyone has theories on early seafarers and navigators sailing to this side of the ocean three thousand years ago, he would."

"Worth a shot," Sandecker agreed. He looked at Dirk and Summer. "Your research project for the next two weeks. Find answers. Consider it a working vacation." He swung in his big leather executive's chair until he faced Pitt and Giordino. "And now to the matter of the brown crud. All we know at this moment is that it is not associated with a diatom or a form of algae. Nor is it a biotoxin linked to the red tide phenomenon. What we do know is that it leaves a swath of devastation as it is carried out into the open Atlantic and swept north by the southern equatorial current toward the Gulf and Florida. Ocean scientists believe the crud has already reached American waters. Reports coming in from Key West say sponge beds are suffering from an unknown source of devastation."

"I'm sorry the glass jars containing my water samples and dead sea life specimens were destroyed when the waves tumbled Pisces into the crevasse," said Summer.

"Don't concern yourself. We have samples and specimens coming in daily from fifty different locations throughout the Caribbean."

"Any indications where the crud might originate?" asked Pitt.

Gunn pulled off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a small cloth. "Not really. Our scientists have sorted through water samples, wind and current data, satellite images and ship sightings. Their best guess at the moment is that the crud is spawned somewhere off the coast of Nicaragua. But that's all it is, a guess."

"Could it be some kind of chemical flushed from a river?" inquired Dirk.

Sandecker rolled one of his immense cigars in his fingers without lighting it. "Possible, but we have yet to discover a trail to its source."

"Something nasty is going on," said Gunn. "This stuff is deadly to most sea life and the coral. We've got to find a solution soon before it spreads out of control throughout the entire Caribbean and creates a sea of sludge and a dead zone for all water life."

Pitt stared at Gunn. "You don't paint a very pretty picture."

"The source must be found and a counteraction developed," added Sandecker. "That's where you and Al come in. Your mission is to investigate the waters off the west coast of Nicaragua. I've lined up one of NUMA's Neptune-class research vessels. I don't have to tell you that she's small, requiring no more than a five-man crew. She carries the latest state-of-the-art research equipment and instrumentation for specialized projects such as this one. Unlike our other ocean research and survey ships, she's as fast as anything in the oceans, with speed to spare."

"Like the Calliope we were forced to destroy several years ago on the Niger River?" said Pitt without looking up as he took notes on a yellow pad.

"I should have taken the cost of losing her out of your paychecks."

"If it's all the same to you, Admiral, Al and I would rather not be quite so conspicuous this time."

"You won't be," Sandecker said, ignoring the nonsmokers and finally lighting his cigar. "The Poco Bonito is my pride and joy. She's seventy-five feet in length and her appearance is misleading. No one will find her conspicuous, because her hull, deck and wheelhouse was based on a Buckie, Scotland-built fishing trawler."

Pitt was continually taken in by Sandecker's fascination with odd and creative vessels. "An oceanographic research vessel disguised like a fishing boat. That has to be a new first."

"A Scots-built fishing trawler will stand out in the Caribbean like a street derelict at a debutante ball," said Giordino dubiously.

"Not to worry," replied Sandecker. "The superstructure of Poco Bonito is electronically designed to automatically alter her appearance to fit in with any fishing fleet in the world."

Pitt stared at the carpet, trying to visualize such a vessel. "If my high school Spanish serves me correctly, Poco Bonita means 'little tuna.' "

Sandecker nodded. "I thought it appropriate."

"Why all the subterfuge?" asked Pitt. "We're not entering a war zone."

Sandecker gave him a cagey look that Pitt knew too well. "You never know when you might cross paths with a ghost ship full of phantom pirates."

Pitt and Giordino both gazed at the admiral as if he'd just claimed to have flown to Mars and back. "A ghost ship," Pitt repeated sardonically.

"You've never heard of the legend of the Wandering Buccaneer?"

"Not lately."

"Leigh Hunt was an unscrupulous freebooter and pirate who ravaged the West Indies in the late seventeenth century, preying on every ship he came upon, be it Spanish, English or French. A giant of a man, he made Blackbeard look like a sissy. Tales of his brutality were legend throughout the Spanish Main. Crews of merchant ships he captured were known to have killed themselves before surrendering to Hunt. His favorite pastime was dragging unfortunate captives behind his ship until the ropes were pulled in empty after the sharks took them."

"He sounds like an old salt I know," muttered Giordino testily.

Sandecker continued as if he hadn't heard the gibe. "Hunt's reign of terror lasted fifteen years until he attempted to capture a British warship disguised to look like a helpless merchantman. Taken in, Hunt raised his Jolly Roger flag with a black background and skull with blood streaming from the eyes and teeth and sent a shot across the Britishers' bow. Then, just as he pulled alongside, the British raised their gunports and poured a series of murderous broadsides into Hunt's ship, which was named the Scourge. After a furious battle the pirates were decimated. A company of British marines then swarmed aboard the pirate vessel and made short work of its crew."

"Was Hunt still alive after the battle?" asked Summer.

"Unfortunately for him, yes."

Dirk ran his fingers over Sandecker's old worn desk. "Did the British treat him in kind and drag him behind their ship?" asked Dirk.

"No," replied Sandecker. "The captain had lost a brother to Hunt two years before, so he was set on revenge. He ordered Hunt's feet cut off. Then he was strung up by a rope and lowered over the side until his bloody stumps were only a foot from the water. It was only a matter of time before the sharks got the scent of blood and leaped out of the water, jaws snapping until only Hunt's hands and arms were left hanging by the rope."

Summer's pretty face altered to an expression of repulsion. "That's disgusting."

Dirk disagreed. "Sounds to me like he got what he deserved."

"Enlighten me, Admiral," said Giordino, fighting to keep awake. "What has this pirate got to do with anything?"

Sandecker smiled crookedly. "Like the Flying Dutchman, Leigh Hunt and his crew of bloodthirsty pirates still roam the waters you'll be working."

"Sez who?"

"Over the past three years there has been any number of sightings by ships, pleasure craft and fishing boats. Some radioed that they were being attacked by a haunted sailing ship with a ghostly crew before they disappeared with all hands."

Pitt looked at Sandecker. "You've got to be joking."

"I'm not." The admiral was decisive. "Since you have a doubting mind, I'll send you the reports."

"Make a note," Giordino said acidly, "to stock up on wooden stakes and silver bullets."

"A phantom ship with a skeletal crew sailing through a sea of brown crud." Pitt gazed pensively out the window at the Potomac River below. Then he shrugged resignedly. "Now there's a sight to take to the grave."

16

Pitt decided to drive everyone to the restaurant in the elegant old Marmon. It was a warm evening, so the three men sat together in the open front seat while the women sat in the back to keep their hair from getting windblown. The men wore light sport coats over slacks. The women dressed in a variety of light summery dresses.

Giordino brought his current lady friend, Micky Levy, who worked for a Washington-based mining company. She had soft facial features with dark skin and wide brown eyes. Her long black hair was done in curled strands wound into a crown. She wore a small hibiscus blossom behind her left ear. She spoke in a soft voice that had a slight trace of an Israeli accent.

"What a marvelous car," she said after Giordino made the introductions. She entered through the rear door held open by Giordino and sat next to Summer.

"You'll have to bear with my friend," said Giordino dryly. "He can't go anywhere without pomp and circumstance."

"Sorry, no trumpets or drumroll," Pitt retorted. "My band has the night off."

With the divider window between the seats rolled up to shield the breeze, the women chatted on the way to the restaurant. Loren and Summer learned that Micky was born and raised in Jerusalem and that she had obtained her master's degree at the Colorado School of Mines.

"So you're a geologist," said Summer.

"A structural geologist," replied Micky. "I specialize in conducting analysis for engineers who have plans for an excavation project. I investigate water seepage and underground channels into deeper zones and aquifers, so they can be aware of possible flooding while boring their tunnels."

"Sounds positively dull," said Loren in a nice way. "I took a geology course in college to satisfy the scientific requirements for a degree in social economics. I thought it would be interesting. Was I ever wrong. Geology is about as fascinating as bookkeeping."

Micky laughed. "Fortunately, working in the field is not quite as banal."

"Did Dad say where he's taking us to dinner?" Summer asked.

Loren shook her head. "He didn't say anything to me."

Twenty-five minutes later, Pitt turned into the driveway of L'Auberge Chez Francois restaurant in Great Falls, Virginia. The Alsatian architecture and interior decor exuded a warm, comfortable atmosphere. He parked the car and they walked through the front door, where one of the family who owned the restaurant checked Pitt's name off on the reservation sheet and escorted them to a table for six in a small alcove.

Pitt spotted some old friends — Clyde Smith and his lovely wife, Paula — and conversed briefly. Smith had been with NUMA almost as long as Pitt, but in the financial section of the agency. After everyone was seated, the waiter arrived and announced the evening's specials. Skipping cocktails, Pitt went right to the wine, ordering a hearty Sparr Pinot Noir. He then ordered a game platter for the table as an appetizer consisting of deer, antelope, breast of pheasant, rabbit and quail with wild mushrooms and chestnuts.

While they savored the wine and enjoyed the huge game appetizer, Loren reported on the latest buzz in Washington politics. They all listened in rapt attention at hearing the inside gossip from a member of Congress. She was followed by Dirk and Summer, who told of their discovery of the ancient temple and artifacts, ending with their near-death experience on Navidad Bank during the hurricane. Pitt interrupted to notify them that he had called St. Julien Perlmutter and let him know that his son and daughter would be stopping by to tap his vast knowledge of ships and the sea.

The entrees came that any lover of French cooking would heartily approve. Pitt ordered the kidneys and mushrooms in a sauce of sherry and mustard. Calves' brain and exotic veal tongue were also on the menu, but the women weren't up to it. Giordino and Micky shared the rack of lamb while Dirk and Summer tried the choucroute garni, a large platter of sauerkraut with sausages, pheasant, duck confit, squab and foie gras, which was a specialty of the house. Loren settled for the petite choucroute with the sauerkraut, smoked trout, salmon, monkfish and shrimp.

Most of the couples shared a rich dessert followed by a glass of fine port. Afterward, they voted unanimously that everyone would begin dieting the next day. While relaxing after the sumptuous meal, Summer asked Micky what part of the world her geological expeditions had taken her to. She described immense caverns in Brazil and Mexico and the often difficult penetration into their deepest reaches.

"Ever find any gold?" asked Summer jokingly.

"Only once. I discovered faint trace elements in an underground river that runs beneath the lower California desert into the Gulf of California." As soon as she spoke of the river, Pitt, Giordino and Loren began laughing. Micky was quite surprised to learn how Pitt and Giordino had discovered the river and saved Loren from a gang of artifact thieves during the Inca Gold project.

"Rio Pitt," said Micky, impressed. "I should have made the connection." She continued describing her travels around the world. "One of my most fascinating projects was to investigate water levels in the limestone caverns in Nicaragua."

"I knew Nicaragua had bat caves," said Summer, "but not limestone caverns."

"They were discovered ten years ago and are quite extensive. Some run for miles. The development corporation that hired me for the study has plans for building a dry canal between the oceans."

"A dry canal across Nicaragua?" questioned Loren. "That's a new one."

"Actually, the engineers called it an 'underground bridge.' "

"A canal that runs underground?" Loren said skeptically. "I'm still trying to figure it out."

"Deepwater container ports and free-trade zones on the Caribbean and Pacific, yet to be constructed, would be linked by a high-speed, magnetic levitation railroad running through huge bores beneath the mountains and Lake Nicaragua, with trains capable of speeds up to three hundred and fifty miles an hour."

"The idea is sound," Pitt admitted. "If practical, it could conceivably cut shipping costs by a wide margin."

"You're talking heavy bucks," said Giordino.

Micky nodded in agreement. "The estimated budget was seven billion dollars."

Loren still looked doubtful. "I find it strange that no reports of such a vast undertaking have been circulated by the Department of Transportation."

"Or mentioned in the news media," Dirk added.

"That's because it never got off the ground," said Micky. "I was told the development company behind the project decided to pull out. Why, I never found out. I signed a confidential agreement never to mention my work or reveal any information on the project, but that was four years ago. And since it has apparently died, I don't mind ignoring the agreement and telling my friends the story over a lovely dinner."

"A fascinating tale," Loren acknowledged. "I wonder who was going to put up the financial backing?"

Micky took a sip of her port. "My understanding was that part of the funding was to come from the Republic of China. They've heavily invested in Central America. If the underground transportation system had been completed, it would have given them great economic power throughout North and South America."

Pitt and Loren looked at each other, a growing understanding in their eyes. Then Loren asked Micky, "Who was the construction firm that hired you?"

"A huge international development outfit called Odyssey."

"Yes," Pitt said softy, squeezing Loren's knee under the table. "Yes, it seems to me I've heard of it."

"There's coincidence for you," said Loren. "Dirk and I were discussing Odyssey not more than a few hours ago."

"An odd name for a construction company," said Summer.

Loren smiled faintly and paraphrased Winston Churchill. "A puzzle wrapped in a maze of secret business dealings inside an enigma. The founder and chairman, who calls himself Specter, is as far out as the formula for time travel."

Dirk looked thoughtful. "Why do you think he broke off the project? Lack of money?"

"Certainly not the money," Loren answered. "British economic journalists estimate his personal assets upward of fifty billion dollars."

"Makes you wonder," Pitt murmured, "why he didn't complete the tunnels, with so much at stake."

Loren hesitated; not so Giordino. "How do you know he threw in the towel? How do you know he isn't secretly digging away under Nicaragua while we enjoy our port?"

"Not possible." Loren was blunt. "Satellite photos would show construction activity. There's no way he could hide an excavation of such immense magnitude."

Giordino studied his empty glass. "A neat trick if he could hide millions of tons of excavated rock and muck."

Pitt looked across the table at Micky. "Could you supply me with a map of the area where the tunnel was supposed to begin and end?"

Micky was only too happy to oblige. "You've piqued my curiosity. Let me have your fax number and I'll send you the site plans."

"What's on your mind, Dad?" asked Dirk.

"Al and I will be cruising down Nicaragua way in a few days," Pitt said with a crafty grin. "We just might drop in and browse the neighborhood."

17

Dirk and Summer drove to St. Julien's residence in Georgetown with the top down on Dirk's 1952 Meteor, a California custom-built fiberglass-bodied hot rod with a DeSoto Fire-Dome V-8 that was souped up from the stock one hundred and sixty horsepower to two hundred and seventy. The body was painted in American racing colors, white with a blue stripe running down the middle. Actually, the car never had a top. When it rained, Dirk merely pulled a piece of plastic from under one seat and spread it over the cockpit with a hole for his head to poke through.

He pulled off a picturesque tree-lined brick street and turned into the drive circling a large, old, three-story manor house with eight gables. He continued around the side until he came to a stop in front of what was the manor's former carriage and stable house. Quite large, it was once the home of ten horses and five carriages, with rooms upstairs for the grooms and drivers. Purchased by St. Julien Perlmutter forty years earlier, he had remodeled the interior into a homey archive with miles of shelves crammed with books, documents and private papers, all recording the marine history of nearly three hundred thousand ships and shipwrecks. A gourmand and bon vivant, he maintained a refrigerated food locker stocked with delicacies from around the world and a four-thousand-bottle wine cellar.

There was no doorbell, only a big door knocker cast in the shape of an anchor. Summer rapped three times and waited. A full three minutes later the door was thrown open by a massive man standing four inches over six feet and weighing four hundred pounds. Perlmutter may have been huge, but he was solid; the sea of flesh was firm and tight.

His gray hair was shaggy and his full beard was enhanced by a long mustache twisted on the ends. Except for his size, children might have taken him for Santa Claus because of his round red face with a tulip nose and blue eyes. Perlmutter was dressed in his customary purple-and-gold paisley silk robe. A little dachshund puppy danced around his legs and yapped at the visitors.

"Summer!" he exclaimed. "Dirk!" He swept the young people up in his huge arms in a great bear hug and lifted both of them off the porch. Summer felt as if her ribs were cracking and Dirk gasped for breath. To their great relief, Perlmutter, who didn't know his own strength, set them down and waved them through the door.

"Come in, come in. You don't know what a joy it is to see you." Then he admonished the dog. "Fritz! Any more barking and I'll cut off your gourmet dog food allowance."

Summer massaged her breast. "I hope Dad told you we were coming?"

"Yes, yes, he did," Perlmutter said cheerfully. "What a pleasure." He paused and his eyes became misty. "Looking at Dirk, I can remember when your father was your age, even a bit younger, when he used to come around and browse my library. It's almost as if time has stood still."

Dirk and Summer had visited Perlmutter with Pitt on several occasions and were always astounded by the vast archives that sagged the shelves and the volumes stacked in hallways and every room of the carriage house, even the bathrooms. It was renowned as the world's largest repository of marine history in the world. Libraries and archives around the nation stood in line, ready to bid whatever price it took should Perlmutter ever decide to sell his immense collection.

Summer was always bewildered at Perlmutter's incredible memory. It would seem that the mass of data should be categorized and indexed onto a computer data file system, but he always claimed he couldn't think abstract and never bought a terminal. Amazingly, he knew where every scrap of information, every book, every author and source and every report was deposited. He liked to boast that he could pick any one out of the maze within sixty seconds.

Perlmutter escorted them into his beautiful sandalwood-paneled dining area, the only room of the house devoid of books. "Sit down, sit down," he fairly boomed, motioning to a thick, round dining table he'd had carved from the rudder of the famous ghost ship Mary Celeste, whose remains had been found in Haiti. "I've made a light lunch of my own concoction of guava-sautéed shrimp. We'll wash it down with a Martin Ray Chardonnay."

Fritz sat beside the table, his tail sweeping the floor. Perlmutter reached down every few minutes and gave him a bit of shrimp, which he swallowed without chewing.

Not much later, Dirk patted his flat stomach. "The shrimp was so good I'm afraid I made a pig of myself."

"You weren't alone," Summer groaned softly, fully sated.

"Now then, what can I do for you kids?" said Perlmutter. "Your Dad said something about you finding Celtic artifacts."

Summer opened a briefcase she'd brought with her, retrieved the report she and Dirk had written on the airplane to Washington and photos of the ancient relics. "This pretty well sums up our findings. It also includes Hiram Yaeger's conclusions on the amphor, comb and printed photocopies of the artifacts and chambers."

Perlmutter poured himself another glass of wine, dropped his spectacles over his nose and began reading. "Help yourself to more shrimp. There's plenty."

"I don't think either of us could manage another bite," Dirk muttered, holding his stomach.

Wordlessly, Perlmutter dabbed around his beard that hid most of his mouth. He paused occasionally, staring up at the ceiling in thought before he went back to studying the report. Finally, he laid it on the table and fixed the Pitts with a steady stare.

"Do you realize what you've done?"

Summer shrugged unknowingly. "We think it's an archaeological find of some significance."

"Some significance," Perlmutter parroted, with a slight tone of sarcasm. "If what you've discovered is the genuine article, you've thrown a thousand accepted archaeological theories down the sink."

"Oh dear," said Summer, looking at her brother, who was containing laughter. "Is it all that bad?"

"Depends from what direction you look at it," Perlmutter said between sips of wine. If the report was an earthshaking revelation, he was acting buoyantly calm. "Very little is known about Celtic culture much before five hundred B.C. They didn't keep written records until the Middle Ages. All that is known through the mists of time is that sometime around two thousand B.C., the Celts fanned out from Eastern Europe after originating around the Caspian Sea. Some historians theorize that the Celts and Hindus shared a common ancestry because their language was similar."

"How widespread were their settlements?" asked Dirk.

"They moved into the north of Italy and Switzerland, then on to France, Germany, Britain and Ireland, reaching as far north as Denmark in the Scandinavian region and as far south as Spain and Greece. Archaeologists have even found Celtic artifacts across the Mediterranean in Morocco. Also, graves of well-preserved mummies have been discovered in northern China from a culture called the Urumchi people. They were most certainly Celtic, since they had Caucasian skin and facial features, blond and red hair, and were dressed in tartan-woven cloth."

Dirk leaned back in his chair, lifting the front legs off the floor. "I've read of the Urumchi. But I had no idea the Celts migrated into Greece. I always thought the Greeks were indigenous."

"Though some of them originated in the region, it has generally been accepted that most filtered south from Central Europe." Perlmutter shifted his bulk into a more comfortable position before continuing. "The Celts eventually ruled lands almost as vast as the Roman Empire. Displacing the neolithic people who built megalithic monuments around Europe such as Stonehenge, they continued the traditions of the Druid religion of mysticism. Druids, by the way, means 'the very wise ones.' "

"Strange, so little has come down through the ages about them," said Summer.

Perlmutter nodded in agreement. "Unlike the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, they never built an empire nor formed a national unity. They were made up of a loose confederation of tribes that often fought each other but came together and banded against a common enemy. After fifteen hundred years their village culture eventually gave way to hill forts constructed of earthworks and wooden palisades that evolved into crowded communities. Quite a number of modern cities are built on the sites of old Celt fortresses. Zurich, Paris, Munich and Copenhagen, for example, and half the towns across Europe rest on top of what were once Celtic villages."

"Hard to believe nonbuilders of palaces and citadels became the dominant culture of Western Europe."

"Celtic society leaned mainly toward the pastoral. Their primary endeavor in life was the raising of cattle and sheep. They engaged in agriculture but their yield was small, raised only to feed individual families. But for the fact they were not nomadic, their tribal existence was very similar to that of the American Indian. They often raided other villages for cattle and women. Not until three hundred B.C. did they turn to growing crops to feed their animals during harsh winters. Those who lived along the coasts became traders, dealing in bronze weapons and selling precious tin for other cultures to produce the metal. Most of the gold for the production of exotic adornments for the ruling chieftains and upper-caste classes was imported."

"Strange, a culture with so little going for it grew so strong over such a vast territory."

"You can't say the Celts had nothing going for them," Perlmutter lectured Dirk. "They led the way into the Bronze Age by developing the metal using copper alloyed with the tin found in huge reserves in Britain. They were later credited with smelting iron and ushering in the Iron Age as well. They were superb horsemen and brought to Europe knowledge of the wheel, built war chariots and were the first to use four-wheeled farm wagons and metal implements for plowing and harvesting. They created tools still in use today like pincers and pliers. They were the first to have shod their horses with bronze shoes and made iron rims for chariot and wagon wheels. The Celts educated the ancient world on the use of soap. Their craftsmanship in metal was second to none, and their mastery of gold in the decoration of jewelry, ornaments, warriors' helmets, swords and axes was exquisite. Celtic ceramics and pottery were also creatively designed, and they mastered the art of producing glass. They also taught the art of enameling to the Greeks and Romans. Celts excelled in poetry and music. Their poets were placed in greater esteem than their priests. And their practice of beginning the day at midnight has been passed down to us today."

"What were the causes behind their fading glory," asked Summer.

"Mainly defeats by the invading Romans. The world of the Gauls, as the Romans called the Celts, began to unravel, as other cultures such as the Germans, the Goths and the Saxons began to expand throughout Europe. In a way, the Celts were their own worst enemy. A wild, untamed people who loved adventure and individual freedom, they were mercurial, impetuous and completely undisciplined, factors that hastened their downfall. By the time Rome fell, the Celts had been driven across the North Sea to England and Ireland, where their influence is still felt today."

"What was their appearance — and how did they treat their women?" asked Summer, with a kittenish grin.

Perlmutter sighed. "I wondered when you'd get around to that." He poured the last of the wine in their glasses. "The Celts were a hardy race, tall and fair. Their hair ran from blond to red to brown. They were described as a boisterous lot, with deep-sounding and harsh voices. You'll be happy to know, Summer, that women were held on a pedestal in Celtic society. They could marry whom they desired and inherit property. And unlike most cultures since their time, women could claim damages if they were molested. Celtic women were described as being as large as their men and fought alongside them in battle." Perlmutter hesitated and grinned before continuing. "An army of Celtic men and women must have been quite a sight."

"Why is that?" asked Summer, falling into the trap.

"Because they often went into battle naked."

Summer was too intrepid to blush, but she did roll her eyes and stare at the floor.

"Which brings us back around to the Celtic artifacts we found on Navidad Bank," said Dirk seriously. "If they weren't being transported aboard a ship three thousand years later, where did they come from?"

"And what about the room and chambers we found that were carved from the rock?" added Summer.

"Are you sure they were carved from the rock and not stones laid one on the other?" Perlmutter questioned.

Dirk looked at his sister. "I suppose it's possible. The encrustation could easily have covered the cracks between the stones."

"It wasn't like the Celts to carve chambers out of solid rock. They rarely built structures from stone," said Perlmutter. "It may have been there were no trees to fell as lumber when Navidad Bank rose above the sea. Tropical palms, for example, because of their curved and fiber trunks, were not practical for livable structures."

"But how could they have crossed six thousand miles of ocean in eleven hundred B.C.?"

"A tough question," Perlmutter admitted. "Those who lived on the Atlantic shores were a seafaring people, often called 'people of the oars.' They are known to have sailed into the Mediterranean from ports in the North Sea. But there are no legends of Celts crossing the Atlantic, other than possibly Saint Brendan, the Irish priest, whose voyage of seven years is thought by many to have reached the east coast of America."

"When did this the voyage occur?" Dirk asked.

"Sometime between 520 and 530 a.d."

"Fifteen hundred years too late for our find," said Summer.

Dirk reached down and petted Fritz, who promptly sat up and licked his hand. "We seem to strike out with every pitch."

Summer looked down and smoothed her dress. "So where do we go from here?"

"The first item on your list of enigmas to be solved," Perlmutter advised, "is to find out when and if Navidad Bank sat above the surface of the sea three thousand years ago."

"A geomorphologist who studies the origin and age of land surfaces might come up with some theories," Summer suggested knowledgeably.

Perlmutter gazed at the model of the famed Confederate submarine Hunley. "You might begin with Hiram Yaeger and his computer wizardry. The world's most extensive accumulation of data on marine sciences is in his library. If any scientific study on the geology of Navidad Bank was ever conducted, he'd have a record of it."

"And if it were compiled by a German or Russian team of scientists?"

"Yaeger will have a translation. You can count on it."

Dirk came to his feet and began pacing the floor. "Our first stop on returning to NUMA headquarters is to meet with Hiram and ask him to probe his files."

Summer smiled. "And then what?"

Dirk didn't hesitate. "Next stop, Admiral Sandecker's office. If we want to get to the bottom of this thing, we must persuade him to loan us a crew, research ship and the necessary equipment to conduct a thorough investigation of the sunken chambers and retrieve their artifacts."

"You mean, go back."

"Is there any other way?"

"I suppose not," she said slowly. For some reason she could not fathom, a fear welled up inside her. "But I don't think I could bring myself to look at Pisces again."

"Knowing Sandecker," said Perlmutter, "he'll save NUMA funds by combining your exploration with another project."

"You have to agree that's a reasonable assumption," Dirk said, turning to his sister. "Shall we go? We've taken up enough of St. Julien's time."

Summer gave Perlmutter a cautious hug. "Thank you for the glorious lunch."

"Always a joy for an old bachelor to have a pretty young girl for company."

Dirk shook Perlmutter's hand. "Goodbye and thank you."

"Give your dad my best and tell him to drop by."

"We will."

After the kids had left, Perlmutter sat for a long time lost in his thoughts, until the phone rang. It was Pitt.

"Dirk, your son and daughter just left."

"Did you steer them in the right direction?" asked Pitt.

"I whetted their appetite a bit. Not a great deal I could offer them. There is little recorded history of the seafaring Celts."

"I have a question for you."

"I'm here."

"Ever hear of a pirate named Hunt?"

"Yes, a buccaneer who achieved minor fame in the late sixteen hundreds. Why do you ask?"

"I'm told he's a restless ghost known as the Wandering Buccaneer."

Perlmutter sighed. "I've read the reports. Another Flying Dutchman fable. Although, several of the ships and boats that radioed that they'd seen his ship disappeared without a trace."

"So there is cause to be concerned when sailing in Nicaraguan waters?"

"I suppose so. What's your interest?"

"Curiosity."

"Would you like whatever history I have on Hunt?"

"I'd be grateful if you could send it to my hangar by courier," said Pitt. "I've a plane to catch first thing in the morning."

"It's on its way."

"Thank you, St. Julien."

"I'm having a little soiree in two weeks. Can you make it?"

"I never miss one of your fabulous parties."

After he rang off, Perlmutter assembled his papers on Hunt, called a courier service and went to his bedroom, where he stood before a case tightly packed with books. Unerringly, he pulled one from the shelf and walked heavily to his study, where he reclined his bulk on a leather Recamier doctor's couch made in Philadelphia in 1840. Fritz jumped up and lay on Perlmutter's stomach, staring at him through doleful brown eyes.

He opened the book by Iman Wilkens titled Where Troy Once Stood and began reading. After an hour, he closed the cover and gazed at Fritz. "Could it be?" he murmured to the dog. "Could it be?"

Then he allowed the lingering effects of the vintage Chardonnay to put him to sleep.

18

Pitt and Giordino left for Nicaragua the next day on a NUMA Citation jet to Managua. There, they switched to a commercial Spanish-built Cassa 212 turboprop for the hour-and-ten-minute flight over the mountains and across the lowlands to the Caribbean sea and over an area known as the Mosquito Coast. They could have made the short flight in the NUMA jet, but Sandecker thought it best they arrive like ordinary tourists, in order to blend in.

The setting sun in the west bathed the mountain peaks gold before the rays were lost in shadows on the eastern slopes. It was hard for Pitt to imagine a canal crossing such difficult terrain, and yet throughout history Nicaragua was always considered the better route for an inter-oceanic channel than Panama. It had a healthier climate, the surveyed route was easier to excavate, and the canal would have been three hundred miles closer to the United States; six hundred miles, if you consider the mileage down and up from the Panama passage.

Before the turn of the century, as with too many far-reaching and historic turning points, politics crawled out of its lair and came to a bad verdict. Panama had a powerful lobby and worked hard to push their cause and disrupt relations between Nicaragua and the U.S. government. For a while, it was a toss-up, but with Teddy Roosevelt working behind the scenes to hammer out a sweet deal with the Panamanians, the pendulum swung the extra mile away from Nicaragua when Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Caribbean island of Martinique, erupted, killing more than thirty thousand people. In a case of incredibly bad timing, the Nicaraguans issued a series of stamps advertising the country as the land of volcanos, one of them depicting an eruption behind an illustration of a wharf and a railroad. That clinched it. The Senate voted for Panama as the site of the U.S.-built canal.

Pitt began studying a report on the Mosquito Coast soon after takeoff from Washington. Nicaragua's Caribbean lowlands were isolated from the more populated western side of the country by the rugged mountains unfolding below and dense tropical rain forests. The people and the region were never a part of the Spanish empire but came under British influence until 1905, when the entire coast fell under the jurisdiction of the Nicaraguan government.

His destination, Bluefields, was Nicaragua's main Caribbean port, named after the infamous Dutch pirate who used to hide his ship in the coastal lagoon near the city. The population of the area was made up of Miskitos, the dominant group whose diverse ancestors came from Central America, Europe and Africa; the Creoles, who are the black descendants of colonial-era slaves; and the Mestizos, whose bloodlines are a mixture of Indian and Spanish.

The economy, based on fishing, was big business along the coast. The primary catch came mostly from shrimp, lobster and turtle. A large plant in town processed the fish for export while extensive maintenance facilities serviced, fueled and supplied the international fishing fleets.

When he looked up from the report, the sky had turned as black as coal. The drone of the propellers, the whine of the engines, took his mind and sent it on a journey into the land of nostalgia. The face he was seeing every morning in the mirror no longer revealed the smooth skin he'd seen twenty-five years earlier without the craggy lines. Time and adventurous living and the onslaught of the elements had taken its toll.

As he stared through the window into nothingness, his mind traveled back to where it had all begun on that lonely stretch of beach at Kaena Point on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. He was lying on the sand in the sun, gazing idly past the breakers out to sea, when he spotted a yellow cylinder floating in the water. Swimming through treacherous riptides, he retrieved the cylinder and struggled back to shore. Inside was the message from the captain of a missing nuclear submarine. From that moment on, his life took a new turn. He met the woman who became his first love from the moment he laid eyes on her. He had carried her vision in his memory, always believing she had died, never knowing that she had survived, until Dirk and Summer showed up on his doorstep.

The body had weathered time well, perhaps the muscles were not as hard as they once were, but his joints had yet to encounter the aches and pains that come with age. The black hair was still thick and wavy, with streaks of gray that was starting to spread on the temples. The mesmeric opaline green eyes still gleamed with intensity. His love of the sea and his work with NUMA still consumed his time. Memories of his exploits, some pleasant, some nightmarish, and more than a few physical scars, had yet to fade with the years.

His mind relived the many times he had cheated the old man with the scythe. The hazardous journey down the underground river in search of Inca Gold, the fight in the Sahara against overwhelming odds in the old French Foreign Legion fort, the battle in the Antarctic with the giant old snowmobile and the raising of the Titanic. The contentment and fulfillment that came with two decades of achievements gave him warm satisfaction, and made him feel his life had been worthwhile after all.

But it was the old drive, the lust of challenging the unknown, that had faded. He had a family now, and responsibility. The wild days were counting down. He turned and looked over at Giordino, who could enter a deep sleep in adverse conditions as easily as if he was in his own goose-down bed in his Washington condo. Their exploits together had become almost mythical, and although they were not particularly close in their personal lives, once they faced what seemed like overwhelming adversity and disaster, they came together as one, each playing off the physical and mental virtues of the other until they either won, or occasionally lost, which wasn't often.

He smiled to himself at remembering what a reporter wrote about him, in one of the few times his feats had gained distinction. "There is a touch of Dirk Pitt in every man whose soul yearns for adventure. And because he is Dirk Pitt, he yearns more than most."

The landing gear dropped on the Cassa and pulled Pitt back from his reverie.

The landing lights were reflecting off the water of the rivers and lagoons surrounding the city's airport when he leaned toward the window and stared downward. A light rain was falling as the plane set down and taxied toward the main terminal. A fresh five-mile-an-hour wind blew the raindrops on an angle, giving the air a smell of humid freshness. Pitt followed Giordino down the boarding steps and was mildly surprised to find the temperature in the low seventies; he had expected it to be at least ten degrees higher.

They hurried across the tarmac and entered the terminal, where they waited twenty minutes for their luggage to appear on a cart. Their instructions from Sandecker only said that a car would be waiting at the terminal entrance. Pitt pulled two suitcases on wheels while Giordino shouldered a big duffel bag, heavy with diving gear. They walked fifty yards up a paved pathway to the road. Waiting for passengers were five cars and ten taxis, their drivers hustling for a fare. Waving away the cabbies, they stood expectantly for a minute, before the last car in line — a battered, scratched and dented old Ford Escort — blinked its lights.

Pitt walked up to the passenger's window, leaned in and started to ask, "Are you waiting for…"

That was as far as he got before going silent in surprise. Rudi Gunn exited the driver's side and came around the car to greet and shake hands. He grinned. "We can't go on meeting like this."

Pitt stared blankly. "The admiral never mentioned you'd be in on the project."

Giordino stared blankly. "Where did you come from and how did you get here before us?"

"I was bored sitting behind a desk so I sweet-talked Sandecker into letting me come along. I left for Nicaragua soon after our meeting. I guess he didn't bother to warn you."

"He must have forgot," Pitt said cynically. He put his arm around the shoulder of the little man. "We've had wild times together, Rudi. It's always a pleasure to work by your side."

"Like the time in Mali on the Niger River when you threw me off the boat?"

"As I recall, that was a necessity."

Both Pitt and Giordino respected NUMA's deputy director. He may have looked and acted like an academic schoolteacher, but Gunn wasn't afraid to get down and dirty if that's what it took to carry a NUMA project to a successful conclusion. The guys especially admired him because, no matter how much mischief they got into, Gunn never squealed on them to the admiral.

They threw their luggage in the trunk and climbed inside the tired Escort. Gunn snaked around the cars waiting outside the terminal and turned on the road leading from the airport to the main dock. They drove along the big bay of Bluefields that was surrounded by wide beaches. The Escondido River delta split off into several channels that ran around the city and then through the Straits of Bluffs to the sea. The lagoon, inlets and harbor were crowded with deserted and silent fishing boats.

"It looks as if the entire fishing fleet is in town," observed Pitt.

"Thanks to the brown crud, fishing has come to a standstill," replied Gunn. "The shrimp and lobster are dying off and the fish have migrated to safer waters. International fishing fleets like the commercial vessels from Texas have moved to more productive waters."

"The local economy must be down the sewer," said Giordino, slouched comfortably in the backseat.

"It's a disaster. Everyone living in the lowlands in some way depends on the sea for their livelihood. No fish, no money. And that's only half the misery. Like clockwork, Bluefields and the surrounding shoreline are struck by major hurricanes every ten years. Hurricane Joan destroyed the harbor in nineteen eighty-eight and what was rebuilt was wiped out by Hurricane Lizzie. But unless the brown crud dissipates or is neutralized, a lot of people are going to starve." He paused. "Things were bad enough before the storm. Unemployment was sixty percent. Now it's closer to ninety. Next to Haiti, the west coast of Nicaragua is the poorest stepchild of the Western Hemisphere. Before I forget, have you guys eaten?"

"We're good," answered Giordino. "We had a light dinner at the airport in Managua."

Pitt smiled. "You forgot the two rounds of tequila."

"I didn't forget."

The Escort rolled through the primitive city, bouncing in potholes that looked deep enough to strike water. The architecture on the crumbling buildings that seemed little more than derelicts was a style of mixed English and French. At one time they had been painted in bright colors, but none had seen a paintbrush in decades.

"You weren't kidding when you said the economy was a disaster," said Pitt.

"Much of the poverty is inspired by a complete lack of infrastructure, and local leaders who just don't get it," Gunn lectured. "Girls with no options go into prostitution as young as fourteen, while boys sell cocaine. None can afford electricity, so they hook wires from the hovels up to streetlights. There are no sewage facilities, and yet the governor took the entire yearly budget and used it to build a palace because she thought it was more important to put on a good face for visiting dignitaries. There is a big drug industry here, but none of the locals are getting rich off the smuggling that takes place mostly offshore or in secluded coves."

Gunn drove into the commercial dock area at El Bluff, the entrance of the lagoon and across the bay from Bluefields. The stench of the harbor was overpowering. Refuse, oil and sewage mingled together in the filthy water. They passed ships unloading at the docks that looked as though they might crumble and fall into the dirty water any minute. The roofs on most of the warehouses looked as if they had been torn away. Pitt noticed that one containership was unloading large crates with farm machinery stenciled on their wooden sides. The huge, immaculate, shiny semitrucks and — trailers being loaded with the cargo seemed out of place in such a sleazy background. The name of the ship, just visible under the ship's work lights, read: Dong He. The letters cosco stretched along the center of the hull. Pitt knew it stood for the China Ocean Shipping Company.

He could only wonder what was inside the cases labeled FARM MACHINERY.

"This is their port facility?" asked Giordino incredulously.

"All that's left after Lizzie got through with it," answered Gunn.

Four hundred yards later the Escort rolled onto an old wooden wharf crowded with darkened and forlorn fishing boats. Gunn braked to a stop at the only one whose lights illuminated its decks. The boat appeared to have seen better days. Under the yellow glow, her black paint looked faded. Rust streaks ran from the deck and hull hardware. Fishing gear lay carelessly cluttered around the work deck. To a passerby on the dock, she looked uncompromisingly utilitarian, another fishing boat in a world full of fishing boats, with the same character as the vessels anchored and moored around her.

As Pitt's eyes swept the beamy vessel from stem to stern, where the Nicaraguan flag hung limp with its twin horizontal blue stripes bordering one of white, he reached inside his shirt and felt the small folded silk bundle, reassuring himself it was still there.

He turned slightly and glanced briefly sideways at a lavender-colored pickup truck that was parked in the shadows of a nearby warehouse. It was not empty. He could see a dark shape behind the wheel and the red glow of a cigarette through the rain-streaked windshield.

Finally, he turned back to the boat. "So this is Poco Bonito."

"Not much to look at, is she?" Gunn said, as he opened the trunk and helped retrieve the bags. "But she's powered by twin thousand-horsepower diesels and carries scientific gear most chemical labs would die for."

"There's a switch," said Pitt.

Gunn looked at him. "How so?"

"This has to be the only vessel in the NUMA fleet that isn't painted turquoise."

"I'm familiar with the smaller Neptune class of NUMA survey ships," said Giordino. "She's also built like an armored car and comfortably stable in heavy seas." He hesitated and looked up and down the wharf at the other fishing boats. "Nice job of disguise. Except for her larger deckhouse, which you can't reduce with a stage set, she fits right in."

"How old is she?" Pitt asked.

"Six months," answered Gunn.

"How did our engineers make her look so… so used?"

"Special effects," Gunn replied, laughing. "The shabby paint and rust are specially formulated to give that appearance."

Pitt leaped from the dock onto the deck and turned as Giordino passed over their luggage and duffel bag. The sound of feet thumping on the deck alerted a man and a woman, who appeared from the rear door of the deckhouse. The man, in his early fifties with a neatly trimmed gray beard and bushy eyebrows, stepped under the deck light. His head was shaven and gleamed with sweat. He wasn't much taller than Giordino and he stood with slightly hunched shoulders.

The other crew member was nearly six feet tall and willowy, with the anorexic figure of a fashion model. The blond hair, radiant and thick, splashed around her shoulders. Her face was tanned with high cheekbones and when she smiled a greeting she displayed a fine set of white teeth. Like most women who worked in the outdoors, she wore her hair tied back and little makeup, which did not distract from her overall attractiveness. At least not in Pitt's mind. He noted that she did adhere to certain feminine traits of beauty. She painted her toenails.

Both man and woman were dressed in native cotton shirts with vertical stripes over khaki shorts. The man wore sneakers that looked like they had been shot full of holes, while the woman's feet were slipped into wide-strapped sandals.

Gunn made the introductions. "Dr. Renee Ford, our resident fishery's biologist, and Dr. Patrick Dodge, NUMA's leading marine geochemist. I believe you know Dirk Pitt, special projects director, and Al Giordino, marine engineer."

"We've never worked on the same project together," said Renee in a husky voice only a few decibels above a whisper. "But we've sat together in conferences on several occasions."

"Likewise," said Dodge, as he shook hands.

Pitt was tempted to ask if Ford and Dodge shared a garage, but held back from making a bad joke. "Good to see you again."

"I trust we'll have a happy ship." Giordino flashed one of his congenial grins.

"Why wouldn't we?" Renee asked sweetly.

Giordino did not reply. It was another of the rare times he was at a loss for a comeback.

Pitt stood for several moments, listening to the water slapping against the wharf pilings. Not a soul could be seen. The wharf looked deserted. Almost, but not quite.

He dropped down to his cabin in the stern, removed a small black case from his suitcase and eased back up the stairway onto the side of the deck opposite the wharf. Using the deckhouse as a cover, he opened the case and removed what looked like a video camera. He switched on its transformer and it gave off a muted high-pitched whine. Next, he draped a blanket over his head and slowly rose until his eyes could peer over a pile of rope coiled on the deckhouse roof. He pressed his face against the eyepiece of the night-vision monocular as the scope automatically adjusted the amplification, brightness control and infrared illuminator. Then he peered into the darkness across the wharf that was now illuminated in a greenish image that gave him the night vision of an owl.

The Chevrolet pickup truck he'd noticed when arriving at the Poco Bonito was still sitting in the dark. The ambient light from the stars and two dim lights a hundred yards down the wharf were now enhanced twenty thousand times, revealing the driver of the truck as if he were in a well-lit room. But as Pitt studied the driver, he saw that he was a she. Pitt could tell by the way the observer swept her scope back and forth across the lit portholes of the hull that she did not suspect that she had been detected. He could even tell that her hair was wet.

Pitt lowered the scope slightly until it was focused on the pickup truck's driver's door. The snoop was no professional, Pitt thought. Nor was she cautious. Probably a construction worker doing double duty as a spy, since the name of her employer was painted on the side of the door in gold letters:

The name stood alone, no "Limited," no "Corporation," no "Company," after it.

Below the name was the stylized image of a horse running with its legs outstretched. It looked vaguely familiar to Pitt, but he couldn't recall where he'd seen it.

Why was Odyssey interested in a NUMA research expedition?

Pitt wondered. What possible threat was a team of ocean scientists? He saw no sense to the stakeout by a giant organization with nothing to gain.

He could not refrain from standing up and walking to the wharf side of the boat and waving to the woman in the pickup, who immediately trained her nightscope on him. Pitt held up his scope to his eyes and stared back. Definitely not a professional snoop, the woman became so shaken that she dropped her scope on the seat, hurriedly kicked over the engine and roared across the wharf into the darkness, spinning her rear tires in a screech of protest.

Renee looked up in unison with Giordino and Dodge. "What was that all about?" asked Renee.

"Someone in a hurry," Pitt said in amusement.

Renee cast off the bow and stern lines while the men looked on. With Gunn manning the pilothouse, the powerful engines sputtered and rumbled into life with a mellow hum, as they gently shivered the deck. Then Poco Bonito slipped away from the wharf and churned into the channel that ran through the Straits of Bluffs to the sea. The course, programed into the computerized navigation equipment, set the bow on a heading toward the northeast. But Gunn — like most airline pilots, who would rather take off and land a commercial airliner than allow a computer to do it — took the wheel and steered the vessel seaward.

Pitt descended a ladder to his cabin, replaced the nightscope in his bag and retrieved a Globalstar tri-mode satellite phone. Then he returned to the deck and relaxed in a tattered lounge chair. He turned and smiled as Renee extended her hand through a porthole of the galley with a cup in her hand.

"Coffee?" she inquired from inside the galley.

"You're an angel," said Pitt. "Thank you."

He sipped at the coffee and then punched a number on the satellite phone. Sandecker answered on the fourth ring. "Sandecker," the admiral snapped briskly.

"Did you forget to tell me something, Admiral?"

"You're not clear."

"Odyssey."

There was a silence. Then, "Why do you ask?"

"One of their people was spying on us as we boarded the boat. I'm interested in knowing why."

"Better you learn later," Sandecker said cryptically.

"Has this to do with Odyssey's excavation project in Nicaragua?" Pitt asked innocently.

Another silence and an echo. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious."

"Where did you obtain your information?"

Pitt couldn't resist. "Better you learn later."

Then he closed the connection.

19

Gunn guided Poco Bonito through the black water separating the high-bluffed straits. The water was deserted of all shipping as he kept the bow aimed straight down the middle of the channel. The lights on the top of the buoys that marked the entrance to the harbor swayed with the waves in the distance, one with a blinking green light, the opposite showing red.

As Pitt was sitting in the lounge chair enjoying the tropical evening at sea and watching the yellow glow of Bluefields fade into the darkness astern, the memory of the spy on the dock stayed in his mind and spread, like a plant with roots. There was an indefinite thought that seemed distant and unfocused. He was not concerned that they had been observed as they cast off their moorings. That part of the intrigue seemed inconsequential. The pickup truck with odyssey painted on the door measured no more than two points on his trepidation scale. It was the haste of the driver when she shot off the dock that puzzled him. There had been no need for a quick getaway. So she was made by the NUMA crew? So what? They'd made no move to approach her. The answer had to lie somewhere else.

And then it all crystallized when he recalled the driver's wet hair.

Gunn's right hand was poised above the twin throttles leading to the big fuel-injected engines in readiness to ease them forward and send the boat whipping over the low swells rolling in from the Caribbean. Abruptly, Pitt sat up in his lounge chair and shouted.

"Rudi, stop the boat!"

Gunn half turned. "What?"

"Stop the boat! Stop it now!"

Pitt's voice was as sharp as a fencing saber, and Gunn quickly complied, pulling the throttles back to their stops. Then Pitt yelled at Giordino, who was down below in the galley with Ford and Dodge, savoring pie and coffee. "Al, bring up my dive gear!"

"What's this all about?" asked Gunn in confusion as he stepped from the side door of the pilothouse. Looking bewildered, Renee and Dodge also appeared on deck to see what all the fuss was about.

"I can't be certain," explained Pitt, "but I suspect we might have a bomb on board."

"What brought you to that conclusion?" asked Dodge skeptically.

"The driver of the truck couldn't wait to get away. Why the hurry? There must be a reason."

"If you're right," spoke up Dodge, seeing the light, "we'd better find it."

Pitt nodded decisively. "My thoughts exactly. Rudi, you, Renee and Patrick search every inch of the cabins. Al, you take the engine room. I'm going over the side on the possibility it was attached under the hull."

"Let's get a move on," said Al. "The explosives could be on a timer set to detonate as soon as we cleared the harbor and moved into deep water."

Pitt shook his head. "I don't think so. There was always the chance we might have hung around the dock until morning. Impossible for anyone to predict the precise time we'd cast off and reach the open sea. My guess is that when we pass the entrance, a transmitter attached to one of the channel buoys will activate a receiver connected to the explosives."

"I believe you have an overactive gray matter," Renee said dubiously. "I can't for the life of me imagine who has a motive to kill all of us and destroy the boat."

"Somebody is afraid of what we might find," Pitt continued. "And for now the Odyssey mob is our prime suspect. Their intelligence-gathering must be good if they saw through the admiral's scheme to smuggle the five of us and the boat into Bluefields."

Giordino appeared from below with Pitt's dive gear. He didn't require intuition to accept Pitt's theory. From their many years together since elementary school, he knew Pitt rarely if ever misinterpreted events. Their trust in each other's vision was more than a simple bond. Many times in the past their minds had acted as one.

"We better move quickly," Pitt advised strongly. "The longer we hang around, the sooner our friends know we're onto them. They'll be expecting to see a fireworks display in the next ten minutes."

The message came through. No one needed any urging. They quickly coordinated their efforts and assigned themselves sections of the boat to search while Pitt stripped to his shorts and strapped on his air tanks and regulator. He didn't bother, nor did he take the time, to slip into a wet suit. Without its buoyancy he felt no necessity to be hindered by a weight belt. Inserting the regulator's mouthpiece between his teeth, he strapped a small tool kit around his left leg, gripped a dive light in his right hand and stepped over the stern.

The water felt warmer than the air above. Visibility was almost diamond clear. Shining the light downward, he could make out a flat, sandy, nondescript bottom eighty feet below. Pitt felt remarkably comfortable as the tepid water pressed against his body. The hull below the waterline was free of growth, having been dry-docked and scraped clean before Sandecker ordered Poco Bonito south.

He moved from the rudder and propellers toward the bow, swinging the light from port to starboard and back. There was always the danger of a curious shark, nosing its way toward the light, but in all his years of diving Pitt had seldom crossed paths with the murder machines of the deep. He concentrated instead on the object caught in the beam of his dive light, protruding like a tumor from the keel amidships. His suspicions confirmed, he stroked his fins slowly until he was staring at what he knew without the slightest doubt was an explosive device no more than ten inches in front of his face mask.

Pitt was no bomb expert. All he could determine was that some kind of oval-shaped cannister about three feet in length and eight inches wide had been attached to the aluminum hull where it met the keel. Whoever had placed the cannister had anchored it with an adhesive tape impervious to liquid and strong enough to maintain a grip against the drag from the water as the boat cruised through the channel.

There was no way he could tell what type of explosive was being used, but it looked to him like a classic case of overkill. It seemed far more than enough to blast Poco Bonito into a thousand fragments and her crew into tiny shreds of flesh and bone. It was hardly a pretty thought.

He clamped the dive light under an armpit and gently placed both hands on the cannister. One deep breath and he attempted to pull the cannister away from the hull. Nothing happened. He increased his effort, but it was fruitless. Without a firm base to stand on, Pitt could exert too little force to overcome the adhesive. He backed off, reached into the tool kit strapped to his leg and pulled out a small fisherman's knife with a curved blade.

Under the light, he took a quick glance at the orange dial on his ancient Doxa dive watch. He had been down four minutes. He had to hurry before Specter's agent onshore got wise that something was up. Very cautiously slipping the edge of the knife under the cannister as far as he dared, Pitt sliced the blade through the tape as if he was sawing a piece of wood. Whoever had attached the bomb used enough tape to choke a whale. Though he had split the tape in four different areas, the cannister still remained stuck to the hull.

Putting the knife back in the kit, Pitt gripped both ends, curled his body until his finned feet were planted firmly against the keel and heaved, praying that only an electronic signal would set it off. The cannister abruptly came off the hull with such momentum that Pitt was hurled through the water nearly six feet before drifting to a stop. It was then, as he held the explosives in his hands, that he realized he was gasping air from his tank like a pump, while his heart felt like it was trying to beat through his rib cage.

Without waiting for his heart to slow and his breathing to return to normal, Pitt swam along the keel and surfaced beside the rudder at the stern. No one was visible. They were all busily searching the interior of the boat. He spit out his mouthpiece and shouted.

"I could use some help!" He wasn't surprised that Giordino was the first to respond.

The little Italian burst through the engine room hatch and leaned over the transom. "What have you got?"

"Enough explosives to disintegrate a battleship."

"You want me to lift it on board?"

"No." Pitt gasped, as a wave washed over his head. "Tie a long line to a life raft and throw it over the stern."

Giordino asked no questions as he hurried up a ladder to the roof of the deckhouse. There he feverishly yanked one of the two life rafts out of its cradle, where it was stowed untied so it could float free should the boat sink. Renee and Dodge appeared on the deck just in time to catch the raft as Giordino let it slide over the wheelhouse roof to the deck below.

"What's happening?" asked Renee.

Giordino nodded to Pitt's head bobbing in the water aft of the stern. "Dirk found an explosive device fastened to the hull."

Renee peered over the transom at the cannister revealed under the glow of Pitt's dive light. "Why doesn't he drop it on the bottom?" she murmured, her tone laced with fear.

"Because he has a plan," Giordino answered patiently. "Now give me a hand dropping the raft over the side."

Dodge said nothing, as the three of them manhandled the heavy raft over the railing into the water with a splash that covered Pitt's head. Kicking his fins furiously, he rose out of the water up to his chest, lifted the heavy cannister over his head and carefully lowered it onto the bottom of the raft, terribly aware that he could be overplaying his luck. His only consolation was that he would never realize he was sent to the great beyond until it was over.

Only after the cannister was safely secured inside the raft did Pitt utter a long sigh of relief.

Giordino dropped the boarding ladder and helped Pitt climb on board. As Giordino removed his air tanks, Pitt said, "Pour a few gallons of fuel into the raft, then pay out the line as far as it will go."

"You expect us to tow a raft full of explosives covered in gasoline?" Dodge asked hesitantly.

"That's the idea."

"What happens when it passes the buoy with the transmitter?"

Pitt looked at Dodge and flashed a crooked grin. "Then it will go bang."

20

When entering the harbor from seaward, the port buoy marking the sides of the channel is usually painted green with a matching colored light on top, and is given an odd number. The starboard buoy directly opposite is red, mounts a red light and sports an even number. As Poco Bonito exited Bluefields Harbor, the channel buoys appeared reversed, red to port, green to starboard.

Except for Giordino, who took the helm, everyone huddled on the stern deck and stared expectantly over the top of the transom as the outer harbor buoys came even with Poco Bonito's bow.

Secure in the knowledge that Pitt had discovered the explosives, and having witnessed him placing the cannister in the life raft before allowing it to fall astern, Ford and Dodge still half expected a fiery eruption that would destroy the boat. As they peered warily at the life raft, a small orange shape against the black water a hundred and fifty yards astern, you could have cut the cloud of apprehension with a chain saw until Poco Bonito's hull safely passed the buoys without disintegrating.

Then the tension mounted again, this time even higher as the raft was towed closer and closer to the buoys. Fifty yards, then twenty-five.

Renee instinctively ducked and placed her hands over her ears. Dodge crouched and turned his back toward the stern while Pitt and Giordino calmly gazed aft, as if waiting for a shooting star to dart through the stars.

"Soon as she blows," Pitt said to Dodge, "switch off our running lights so they think we've evaporated."

He had no sooner finished giving the order than the life raft vaporized.

The sound of the explosion thundered and echoed through the straits between the bluffs as the concussion rolled across the water, slapped their faces and rocked the boat. The darkness became a nightmare of flame and fiery debris as a great boiling upthrust of white water twenty feet wide burst out of a crater in midchannel. The fuel that Pitt had used to fill the life raft burst into a column of flame. The crew of Poco Bonito stared as if hypnotized at the atomized wreckage of the raft raining down from the sky like streaking meteors. Tiny bits and pieces splattered down on the boat without injuring anyone or doing damage.

Then, just as suddenly, the night went silent and the water astern the boat closed over the crater and was empty again.

The woman sat in the pickup truck and checked her watch a dozen times from the time the boat pulled away from the dock, and exhaled a deep breath of satisfaction when at last she heard the distant rumble and saw the brief flash in the blackness nearly two miles away. It had taken longer than she estimated. Eight minutes late, by her calculation. Perhaps the helmsman was cautious and sent the boat slowly through the black waters of the narrow channel. Or, perhaps there was a mechanical problem and the crew stopped the boat for a quick fix. Whatever the reason, it no longer mattered. She could inform her colleagues that the job was accomplished successfully. Rather than head directly for the airport and a waiting Odyssey corporate jet, she decided to go into the shabby downtown of Blue-fields and enjoy a glass of rum. For her work tonight, she felt entitled to a little rest and relaxation.

It had started to rain again, and she switched on the windshield wipers as she drove off the wharf and headed toward town.

The channel was cleared and they were outward bound. A heading was set for Punta Perlas and the Cayos Perlas Islands beyond. The skies were clearing and the stars appeared through the clouds as they picked up a light southerly breeze. Pitt volunteered to take the midnight to three a.m. watch. He manned the pilothouse and let his thoughts wander while the computerized automated controls precisely followed the programmed course. For the first hour, it took all his willpower not to fall asleep.

His mind began to create a vision of Loren Smith. Theirs was an on-again, off-again relationship that had lasted almost twenty years. At least twice they had come within a shadow of marrying, but both were already wed to their jobs: Pitt to NUMA, Loren to Congress. But now that Loren expressed a desire not to run for a fifth term, perhaps it was time for him to retire to a less demanding job that didn't take him to the far reaches of the oceans. He had experienced too many brushes with death that had left scars both physical and mental. Chances were, he was now on borrowed time. His luck couldn't last forever. If he hadn't been suspicious of the woman in the Odyssey truck and struck by a sudden revelation about the explosives, he, his friend Giordino and the others would all be dead now. Maybe it was time to retire. After all, he was a family man now, with two grown children and responsibilities he'd never imagined two years earlier.

The only problem was that he loved the sea, above and below. There was no way he could simply turn his back and give it up. Somewhere there had to be a compromise.

He refocused on the current problem of the brown crud. Still only minor traces of it were on the chemical detection instruments, whose delicate sensors were mounted under the hull. Despite the fact that no ship's lights showed on the horizons, he picked up a pair of binoculars and idly scanned the darkness ahead.

At a comfortable cruising speed of twenty knots, Poco Bonito had left the Cayos Perlas Islands behind over an hour ago. Laying down the glasses and then studying a navigation chart, Pitt estimated that they were about thirty miles off the town of Tasbapauni on the Nicaraguan coast. He glanced at the instruments again. Their needles and digital numbers still stood unwavering on zero, and he began to wonder if they were on a wild-goose chase.

Giordino joined him with a cup of coffee. "Thought you might like a little something to keep you awake."

"Thank you. You're an hour early for your watch."

Giordino shrugged. "I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep."

Pitt gratefully sipped at the coffee. "Al, how come you never got married?"

The dark eyes squinted with curiosity. "Why ask me that now?"

"I've had nothing but time on my brain and it wanders to strange subjects."

"What's the old line?" Giordino said with a shrug. "I never found the right girl."

"You came close once."

He nodded. "Pat O'Connell. We both had our reservations at the last minute."

"What if I told you I'm thinking about retiring from NUMA and marrying Loren?"

Giordino turned and looked at Pitt as if he'd taken an arrow through one lung. "Say again?"

"I think you get the drift."

"I'll believe that when the morning sun rises in the west."

"Haven't you ever wondered about packing it in and taking it easy?"

"Not really," said Giordino thoughtfully. "I've never entertained any great ambitions. I'm happy at what I do. The husband and father routine never turned me on. Besides, I'm away from home eight months out of the year. What woman would put up with that? No, I guess I'll keep things just as they are until they wheel me into a nursing home."

"I can't picture you expiring in a nursing home."

"The gunslinger Doc Holliday did. His last words were 'I'll be damned' when he looked at his bare feet and realized he wasn't dying with his boots on."

"What do you want on your tombstone?" Pitt asked, not without humor.

" 'It was a great party while it lasted. I trust it will continue elsewhere.' "

"I'll remember when your time comes—"

Suddenly, Pitt went silent as the instrument displays came to life and began detecting traces of chemical pollution in the water.

"Looks like we're picking up something."

Giordino turned for the stairway leading to the crew's cabins. "I'll wake Dodge."

A few minutes later, a yawning Dodge climbed to the pilothouse and began scanning the computer monitors and recordings. Finally, he stood back, seemingly perplexed. "This doesn't look like any man-made pollution I've ever seen."

"What do you make of it?" asked Pitt.

"I'm not sure yet till I run some tests, but it appears to be a veritable cocktail of minerals flowing from the chemical element chart."

Excitement began to mount as Gunn and Renee, aroused by the sudden activity in the pilothouse, joined them and offered to make breakfast. There was an underlying current of expectation and optimism as Dodge quietly began assembling the incoming data and analyzing the numbers.

The eastern sun was still three hours from sliding over the horizon when Pitt went out on deck and studied the black sea flowing past the hull. He lay on the deck, leaned through the railing and trailed his hand in the water. When he pulled it back and raised it before his eyes, the palm and fingers were covered with a brown slime. He reentered the pilothouse, held up his hand and announced, "We're in the crud now. The water has turned a dull brownish muck almost as if the bottom silt was stirred up."

"You're closer to the mark than you think," said Dodge, speaking for the first time in half an hour. "This is the wildest concoction I've ever seen."

"Any clues to its recipe?" asked Giordino, waiting patiently as Renee filled his plate with bacon and scrambled eggs.

"The ingredients are not what you might think."

Renee looked puzzled. "What type of chemical pollutants are we talking about?"

Dodge looked at her solemnly. "The crud is not derived from manufactured toxic chemicals."

"Are you saying man is not the culprit?" inquired Gunn, pushing the chemist into a corner.

"No," Dodge answered slowly. "The culprit in this case is Mother Nature."

"If not from chemicals, then what?" Renee insisted.

"A cocktail," replied Dodge, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "A cocktail containing some of the most toxic minerals found in the earth. Elements that include barium, antimony, cobalt, molybdenum and vanadium that are obtained from toxic minerals such as stibnite, barytine, patronite and mispickel."

Renee's finely defined eyebrows lifted. "Mispickel?"

"The mineral arsenic is obtained from."

Pitt looked at Dodge, soberly, speculatively. "How is it possible that such a heavily concentrated toxic mineral cocktail, as you call it, can multiply, since it's impossible for it to reproduce itself?"

"The accumulation comes from constantly being replenished," replied Dodge. "I might add that there are heavy traces of magnesium, an indication of dolomitic lime that has dissolved in unheard-of concentrations."

"What does that suggest?" queried Rudi Gunn.

"The presence of limestone, for one thing." Dodge answered directly. He paused a few moments to study a readout from a printer. "Another factor is the gravitational force that pulls minerals or chemicals in alkaline water toward true magnetic north. Minerals attract other minerals to form rust or oxidation. Chemicals in alkaline water pull other chemicals toward their surface to form toxic waste or gas. That is why most of the brown blob has moved north toward Key West."

Gunn shook his head. "That doesn't explain why Dirk and Summer were able to study sections of the blob on Navidad Bank on the other side of the Dominican Republic out in the Atlantic."

Dodge shrugged. "A portion must have been carried by wind and currents through the Mona Passage between Dominica and Puerto Rico before drifting onto Navidad Bank."

"Whatever the cocktail," said Renee, waving her environmentalist flag, "it's turned the water harmful and dangerous to all life that uses it — humans, animals, reptiles, fish, even the birds that land in it, not to mention the microbial world."

"What puzzles me," muttered Dodge, continuing as if he hadn't heard Renee, "is how something with the consistency of silt can bind together in a cohesive mass that floats over a great distance in a cloud no deeper than a hundred and twenty feet from the surface." As he spoke, he made notations in a notebook. "I suspect sea salinity plays a part in the spread, which might explain why the crud doesn't sink to the bottom."

"That's not the only odd part of the puzzle," said Giordino.

"Make your point?" Pitt softly probed.

"The water temperature is seventy-eight, a good five degrees below normal for this part of the Caribbean."

"Another problem to solve," muttered Dodge wearily. "A drop that low is a phenomenon that doesn't go by the book."

"You've accomplished a lot," Gunn complimented the chemist. "Rome wasn't built in a day. We'll collect specimens and let the NUMA lab in Washington find answers to the rest of the enigma. Our job now is to track down the source somehow."

"We can only do that by following a trail leading to the highest concentrations," said Renee.

Pitt smiled wearily. "That's why we came here—" He broke off suddenly, stiffened and gazed out through the windshield. "That," he continued quietly, "and our fun visit to Disneyland."

"You'd better get some sleep," said Giordino evenly. "You're beginning to babble."

"This is no Disneyland," said Renee, suppressing a yawn.

Pitt turned and nodded his head and pointed toward the sea beyond the bow. "Then why are we about to enter the Pirates of the Caribbean?"

All heads turned in unison, and all eyes stared into the dark water that ended where the stars began. They saw a faint yellow glow that slowly increased in brilliance as Poco Bonito moved steadily toward it. They stood there frozen in silence as the glow slowly materialized into a nebulous shape of an old sailing ship that became more defined with each passing minute.

For a moment, they thought they were losing touch with reality, until Pitt spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. "I wondered when old Leigh Hunt was going to show up."

21

The mood on board the boat had suddenly changed. For nearly a minute, no one moved. No one spoke as they stared uneasily at the bizarre phenomenon. Finally, Gunn broke the silence.

"The same Hunt the pirate the admiral warned us about?"

"No, Hunt the buccaneer."

"It can't be real." Renee stared in awe, refusing to believe what her eyes relayed to her brain. "Are we really looking at a ghost ship?"

Pitt's lips curled in a vague smile. "Only in the eye of the beholder." Then he paraphrased from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. "With never a whisper in the sea, oft darts the Odyssey ship."

"Who was Hunt?" asked Dodge, in a voice close to a quaver.

"A buccaneer who roamed the Caribbean from sixteen sixty-five until sixteen eighty, when he was captured by a British Royal Navy ship and fed to the sharks."

Not wanting to look at the phantom, Dodge turned away, his mind not functioning, and muttered, "What's the difference between a pirate and buccaneer?"

"Very little," answered Pitt. "Pirate is a general term that covers British, Dutch and French seafarers who captured merchant ships for prize money and treasure. The term buccaneer comes from the French for barbecue. The early buccaneers used to grill their meat and dry it. Unlike privateers, who had valid commissions from their government, buccaneers preyed on any ship, mostly Spanish, without papers. They were also known as freebooters."

The ghostly vessel was only a half a mile away now and closing fast. The eerie yellow glow gave the apparition a surrealistic image. As it neared and the details of the ship became more distinct, the sounds of men shouting across the water began to be heard aboard the phantom.

She was a square-rigged barque with three masts and a shallow draft, a favorite vessel of pirates before the seventeen hundreds. The foresails and topsails were billowing in a nonexistent breeze. She mounted ten guns, five run out on the main deck on both sides. Men with bandanas around their head were standing on the quarterdeck, waving swords. High on her mainmast, a huge black flag with a fiendishly grinning skull dripping blood stood straight out as if the ship was sailing against a headwind.

The expressions on the faces of those on the Poco Bonito varied from growing horror to foreboding to academic contemplation. Giordino looked as if he was staring at cold pizza, while Pitt peered through binoculars at the phantasm with the face of a man enjoying a science fiction movie. Then he lowered the glasses and began to laugh "Are you mad?" Renee demanded.

He handed her the glasses. "Look at the man in the scarlet suit with the gold sash standing on the quarterdeck and tell me what you see."

She stared through the lenses. "A man with a feathered hat."

"What else sets him apart from the others."

"He has a peg leg and a hook on his right hand."

"Don't forget the eye patch."

"Yes. There's that too."

"All that's missing is a parrot on one shoulder."

She lowered the binoculars. "I don't understand."

"A bit stereotyped, don't you think?"

An old Navy man who had served fifteen years on the sea, Gunn read the ghost ship's change of course almost before it turned. "She's going to cross our bow."

"I hope she isn't planning on giving us a broadside," Giordino said half in jest, half seriously.

"Lay on the throttles and ram her amidships," Pitt instructed Gunn.

"No!" Renee gasped, staring at Pitt stupidly, stunned. "That's suicide!"

"I'm with Dirk," Giordino said loyally. "I say stick our bow in the sucker."

A smile began to creep across Gunn's face as he became aware of what Pitt was silently implying. He stood at the helm and punched the engines, laying on full power and lifting the bow three feet out of the water. The Poco Bonito leaped forward like a racehorse prodded in the rump with a pitchfork. Within a hundred yards, she was flying across the water at fifty knots straight toward the port side of the pirate ship. The cannon muzzles, already poking through the gun ports, opened fire, spouts of flames bursting from their muzzles, accompanied by the sound of a thunderous blast that echoed over the water.

One quick glance at the radar screen and Pitt dashed to his cabin to retrieve his nightscope. He returned to the open deck in less than a minute and motioned for Giordino to follow him up a ladder to the roof of the pilothouse. Without the slightest hesitation, Giordino climbed after him. They lay flat on the roof, elbows braced to steady the nightscope they passed back and forth. Oddly, they did not stare directly at the luminescent phantom, but eyed the darkness ahead and astern of it.

Wondering if the two NUMA men were losing touch with all reality, Dodge and Renee instinctively ducked down on the deck behind the pilothouse. Above them, Pitt and Giordino ignored the approaching disaster.

"I've got mine," declare Giordino. "Looks like a small barge to the west about three hundred yards."

"I have my target too," Pitt followed. "A yacht, a big one well over a hundred feet in length, the same distance to the east."

A hundred yards, fifty, on a collision course with the unknown. Then Poco Bonito lunged into and through the opaque shape of the ancient barque. For an instant the yellow glow burst like orange lasers at a rock concert and shrouded the little research boat. Renee and Dodge could see the pirates moving above them on the main deck, firing their guns with a vengeance. Oddly, none of them took the slightest notice of the vessel plunging through their ship.

Then Poco Bonito was speeding alone over a velvet black sea. In her wake, the yellow glow abruptly blinked out and was gone, and the sounds of the guns melted into the night. It was as if the ghostly vision had never been.

"Stay on the throttles," Pitt advised Gunn. "It's not healthy around here."

"Were we hallucinating?" Renee muttered, her face white as a paper towel. "Or did we really run through a ghost ship?"

Pitt put his arm around her. "What you saw, dear heart, was a four-dimensional image — height, depth, width and motion — all recorded and projected in a hologram."

Renee still seemed dazed as she stared into the night. "It looked so real, so convincing."

"About twice as real as its phony captain with his Treasure Island Long John Silver peg leg, Peter Pan hook and Horatio Nelson eye patch. And then there was the flag. Blood was dripping in all the wrong places."

"But why?" asked Renee to no one in particular. "Why such a production in the middle of the sea?"

Pitt's eyes were staring through the pilothouse doorway at the radar screen. "What we have here is a case of contemporary piracy."

"But who projected the holographic image?"

"I'm in the dark too," added Dodge. "I saw no other vessels."

"Your eyes and mind were focused on the apparition," said Giordino. "Dirk and I observed a large yacht to our port and a barge to the starboard, both three hundred yards away. Neither showing any lights."

A light went on in Renee's mind. "They projected the beam for the hologram?"

Pitt nodded. "They cast the illusion of a phantom ship and crew doomed to sail the sea forever. But their projection was one huge cliché. They must have created Hunt's ship and crew after watching too many old Errol Flynn movies."

"Judging from the radar, the yacht is giving chase," Giordino alerted them.

Standing at the helm, Gunn appraised the two blips on the screen. "One is stationary, which must be the barge. The yacht is following in our wake about half a mile astern, but is losing ground. They must be crazy mad at seeing an old fishing boat leave them in the foam."

Giordino threw a wet blanket over the relief and joy. "We'd better pray that they don't carry mortars or rockets."

"They'd have opened up on us by now—" Gunn's statement was punctuated by a missile that burst out of the early-morning night and whistled past Poco Bonito, grazing its radar dome, striking the water fifty yards ahead with a great thump.

Pitt looked at Giordino. "I wish you hadn't given them ideas."

Gunn didn't answer. He was too busy spinning the helm and heaving the research boat on a sharp bank to port and then to starboard, weaving unpredictably to avoid the rockets that began to come every thirty seconds.

"Douse our running lights!" Pitt shouted to Gunn.

His reply was instant darkness, as the little NUMA director flicked off the main lighting switch. The swells had risen to three feet and Poco Bonito's beamy hull was now splashing through the crests at almost forty-five knots.

"How are we fixed for weapons?" Giordino asked Gunn calmly.

"Two M4 carbines with attached forty-millimeter grenade launchers."

"Nothing heavier?"

"Easily hidden small arms is all the admiral would allow on board in case we were stopped and searched by a Nicaraguan patrol boat."

"Do we look like drug smugglers?" demanded Renee.

Dodge stared at her with a crooked smile. "What do drug smugglers look like?"

Pitt said, "I've got my old Colt forty-five. How about you, Al?"

"A fifty-caliber Desert Eagle automatic."

"We may not be able to sink them," said Pitt. "But at least we can repel boarders."

"If they don't blast us to smithereens first," grunted Giordino, as another missile landed in Poco Bonito's wake no more than fifty feet astern.

"So long as their rockets aren't equipped with homing devices, they can't hit what they can't see."

Automatic weapons fire began to wink in the darkness behind them, as the modern pirates aimed by radar in their general direction. Tracers danced over the surface of the sea fifty yards to starboard in a spraying pattern. Gunn, playing the odds, turned the boat to port for a short distance before heading straight again. The tracers ever so slowly spiraled through the night, groping for their prey before falling away into the dark sea where Poco Bonito should have been but wasn't.

Two more rockets arced through the night. The pirates played the odds and fired them almost in parallel at the blip on their radar. They had the right idea, but they fired when Gunn was momentarily heading on a straight course before he feinted port before turning starboard. The rockets landed on opposite sides of the boat within fifty feet, showering the decks with twin cascades of water.

Then the firing stopped and it seemed as though a mantle of stillness had been drawn over the boat. Only the beat of the mighty engines straining in their mounts, the growl of the exhaust and the water sloshing past the bow broke the silence.

"Have they given up?" Renee murmured hopefully.

Staring at the radar, Gunn spoke happily through the pilothouse door, "They're turning away and reversing course."

"But who are they?"

"Local pirates don't use holograms or fire missiles from yachts," Giordino said flatly.

Pitt stared pensively out the back of the boat. "Our friends from Odyssey are the most likely suspects. No way they could have known our bodies weren't lying on the bottom of the sea. We simply walked into an ambush set for any boat or ship that wandered into this particular area."

"They won't be happy campers," said Dodge, "when they learn we're the ones who got away, not once but twice."

Renee felt even more lost. "But why us? What did we do to be murdered?"

"I suspect we're trespassing on their hunting grounds," Pitt said, taking a logical course. "There has to be something in this part of the Caribbean they don't want us or anyone else to see."

"A drug-smuggling operation, perhaps?" offered Dodge. "Could it be Specter is involved with the drug trade?"

"Maybe," said Pitt. "But from what little I know, his empire makes vast profits in excavation and construction projects. Drug running wouldn't be worth their time or effort, even as a side operation. No, what we have here goes far beyond drug smuggling or piracy."

Gunn set the helm on autopilot, stepped from the pilothouse and wearily dropped into the lounge chair. "So what heading do we program into the computer?"

There was a long silence.

Pitt was not happy about further endangering everyone's lives, but they were here and they had a mission. "Sandecker sent us to find the truth behind the brown blob. We'll continue searching for the highest concentration of its contamination in the hope it will lead us to the source."

"And if they chase after us again?" prompted Dodge.

Pitt grinned broadly. "We turn and run, now that we've gotten so good at it."

22

Dawn broke over an empty sea. The radar disclosed no vessels within thirty miles, and except for the lights of a helicopter that passed over an hour earlier, the search for the source of the brown crud went uninterrupted. Just to be on the safe side, they had run without lights the entire night.

Turning south soon after their confrontation with the bogus ghost ship, they were now sailing in Bahia Punta Gorda, where the trail of increasing toxicity in the seawater had led them. So far they had been blessed with good weather, with just the slightest hint of a breeze and low winds.

The Nicaraguan coastline was only two miles distant. The lowlands were a faint line across the horizon, as if some giant hand had drawn it using a T square and a pen with black ink. Mists covered the shore and drifted against the foothills in the low mountains to the west.

"Most strange," said Gunn, peering through binoculars.

Pitt looked up. "What?"

"According to the charts of the bay of Punta Gorda, the only habitation is a small fishing village called Barra del Rio Maiz."

"So?"

Gunn handed the glasses to Pitt. "Take a look and tell me what you see."

Pitt focused the lenses for his eyes and scanned the shoreline. "That's no isolated fishing village, it looks like a major deepwater container port. I count two containerships unloading at a huge dock with cranes, and another two ships anchored and waiting their turn."

"There is also an extensive area devoted to warehouses."

"It's a beehive of activity, all right."

"What's your take on the situation?" asked Gunn.

"My only guess is equipment and supplies are being stored to build the proposed high-speed railroad between the seas."

"They've been damned quiet about it," said Gunn. "I've read no reports that the project was actually funded and under way."

"Two of the ships are flying the Republic of China red flag," said Pitt. "That answers the question on funding."

The great bay of Punta Gorda that they were entering suddenly turned into a sea of ugly brown. Everyone's attention turned to the water. No one spoke. No one moved as the massive brown crud materialized out of the morning haze thick as a bowl of oatmeal.

They stood and watched silently as the bow plowed through water that looked as if it was suffering from a plague, its surface painted the burnt umber on a painter's palette. The effect was of skin invaded by leprosy.

Standing at the helm, chewing on an unlit cigar, Giordino slowed the engines while Dodge furiously recorded and analyzed the chemistry of the water.

During the long night, Pitt had become more familiar with Renee and Dodge. She had grown up in Florida and became a master diver at an early age. Falling in love with life underwater, she had achieved her master's degree in ocean biology. A few months before coming aboard Poco Bonito, she came off a divorce that left her with scars. Away from home during long projects at sea, Renee returned after a lengthy research program in the Solomon Islands to find the love of her life had moved out and was living with another woman. Men, she asserted, were no longer a priority.

Pitt launched a campaign to make her laugh at every chance he could think of something funny to say.

His wit fell on deaf ears when it came to Dodge. A taciturn man, somehow happily married for thirty years, he had five children and four grandchildren. He had worked for NUMA since its inception. With a Ph.D. in chemistry, he had specialized in water pollution, working in NUMA's laboratory. But with the death of his wife a year earlier, he had volunteered for fieldwork. He might have cracked a thin smile at Pitt's attempts at humor, but he never laughed.

Around them, the new sun revealed a sea surface thick with the notorious brown crud. It had the consistency of an oil slick, only much denser, and flattened the sea. No swells rolled through it, as Giordino held Poco Bonito at a reduced speed of ten knots.

After avoiding the explosion outside Bluefields and the narrow escape from the pirate yacht, the uneasy tension that had been building up in the ship all night seemed to become a mist so thick they could reach out and feel it. Pitt and Renee had pulled aboard several buckets of the crud and poured it into glass containers for future analysis in the NUMA labs in Washington. They also collected dead sea life they found floating in the contamination, for Renee to study.

And then, suddenly, Giordino shouted from the pilothouse, his hand motions animated by Italian breeding. "Off the port bow! Something is happening in the water!"

They all saw it then, a movement in the sea as though a giant whale was thrashing in its death throes. Everyone stood as still as a statue as Giordino turned the bow of the boat twelve degrees toward the turbulence.

Pitt stepped into the pilothouse and examined the readings on the depth finder. The bottom was coming up rapidly. It was almost as if they were crossing a steep slope rising from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The naked ugliness of the crud gave the sea the look of a bubbling mud pot.

"Unbelievable," muttered Dodge, as if hypnotized. "According to the depth marked on the chart around our position, we should be recording six hundred feet."

Pitt didn't say anything. He was standing on the bow with the binoculars pressed to his eyes. "It looks as if the sea is boiling," he said to Giordino through the open window beside the helm. "Can't be from a volcanic source. There are no steam or heat waves."

"The bottom is coming up at an incredible rate," Dodge called out. "It's as though it was spewing out of a volcano but without molten lava."

The shore had drawn closer, less than two miles distant. The water was becoming more violent, with waves slashing in every direction. The boat was rocked violently, as if shook by a huge vibrator. The brown crud had thickened until it looked like pure, unadulterated mud.

Giordino stepped to the door of the pilothouse and hailed Pitt. "The water temperature has taken a jump. It returned to a normal eighty-three degrees in the last mile."

"How do you explain that?"

"No more than you can."

Dodge was having trouble accepting any of it. The water temperature's sudden increase, the unmarked rise on the seabed, the incredible amount of brown crud rising from nowhere. It was just inconceivable.

Pitt wasn't buying it either. Everything they'd discovered went against the known laws of the sea. Volcanoes were known to rise from the depths, but not an upheaval of mud and silt. This should have been a liquid, live environment where fish of every variety existed. Here there were no living creatures. They might have swum or crawled across the bottom once. Now they were either dead and buried under a mountain of crud or had migrated to clear water. Nothing grew, nothing lived. It was a world of the dead, covered over with toxic muck that seemed to have materialized from nowhere.

Giordino was having a difficult time keeping the boat on an even keel. The waves were not high, no more than five feet, but unlike waves generated in one direction by the winds of a storm, these whipped and buffeted the boat from every point of the compass. Another two hundred yards and the water went crazy with uncontrolled violence.

"A mass of mad mud," Renee spoke, as if gazing at a mirage. "Pretty soon it will become an island—"

"Sooner than you think," Giordino yelled, hauling the throttles into reverse. "Hang on. The bottom has come up beneath us." The boat yawed, but it was too late. The bow struck the rising muck, throwing everyone forward, and stuck fast. The bow wave died away and the propellers thrashed madly, chopping the mud into an ivory-brown froth as they tried to pull Poco Bonito off the mysterious rise. With the boat imprisoned in the mud, they felt like unproductive spectators.

"Cut the engines," Pitt ordered Giordino. "High tide is in another hour. Wait and try then. In the meantime, we'll carry all the heavy material and supplies to the stern of the boat."

"Do you really think that by moving a few hundred pounds, you can raise the bow enough to slip off the mud pile?" asked Renee doubtfully.

Pitt was already hauling a large coil of rope toward the transom. "Add another seven hundred pounds of bodies, and who knows? We just might get lucky."

Though every man and one woman worked as though their lives depended on it, it took the better part of the next hour to stack luggage, food supplies, nonessential equipment and furniture as far back on the stern deck as possible. The fishing nets and traps used to disguise the boat were thrown overboard, along with the bow anchors.

Pitt gazed at the hands on his Doxa watch. "High tide in thirteen minutes and then the moment of truth."

"The moment has come sooner than you thought," said Giordino. "We have a vessel approaching from the north on radar. And she's coming fast."

Pitt snatched up the binoculars and peered into the distance. "Appears to be a yacht."

Gunn shaded his eyes from the eastern sun and gazed out over the brown crud. "The same one that attacked us last night?"

"I didn't get a good look at her in the dark through the night glasses. But I think it's safe to say there is little doubt of it being the same vessel. Our friends have tracked us down."

"No time like the present," said Giordino, "to get a head start on the posse."

Pitt herded everyone to the very edge of the Poco Bonito's transom. Giordino took the helm and looked astern. Making certain they all had a firm grip on the railing, Pitt nodded a signal for reverse full power. The mighty diesels reverberated as Giordino pushed the throttles as far as they could go. The boat slewed and fishtailed, but was stuck fast. The thickness of the brown crud acted as a glue, adhering to the keel of Poco Bonito. Even with the crew and a ton of solid substance crammed against the transom, the forward part of the boat had raised but two inches. Not enough to break loose.

Pitt hoped for a wave to lift the bow, but no waves came. The thick brown substance laid the sea flat as a newspaper. The engines strained and the propellers dug into the muck, but nothing happened. All eyes had turned to the yacht that was approaching at high speed directly toward them.

Now that he saw her clearly in the daylight, Pitt estimated her overall length at one hundred and fifty feet. Unlike the standard white, the mega-yacht was painted lavender, like he'd seen on the Odyssey pickup truck at the dock. A masterpiece of craftsmanship, she was the essence of oceangoing luxury. She carried a twenty-foot powerboat as a tender and a six-passenger helicopter.

She was near enough for him to make out her name in gold letters: EPONA. Below the name, painted across the bulkhead of the second deck, was the same Odyssey logo of a running horse. A flag flying from the communications antenna also flaunted the golden horse on a lavender background.

Pitt observed two crewmen feverishly preparing to lower the tender while several others took up positions on the long forward deck, weapons in hand. None made any attempt at taking cover. They were lulled by the belief that a fishing boat had no bite and took no precautions. The hair on the nape of Pitt's neck rose a fraction as he spotted a pair of the men loading a rocket launcher.

"She's coming straight for us," muttered Dodge uneasily.

"They don't look like any pirates I ever read about," Giordino shouted from inside the pilothouse over the roar of the engines. "They never captured ships from an elegant yacht. Ten will get you twenty, it was stolen."

"Not stolen," Pitt retorted. "It belongs to Odyssey."

"Is it me, or are they everywhere?"

Pitt turned and called out, "Renee!"

She was sitting with her back against the transom. "What is it?"

"Go down in the galley, empty whatever bottles you can find, then fill them with fuel from the tank on the generator motor."

"Why not fuel from the engines?" asked Dodge.

"Because gas ignites more easily than diesel fuel," Pitt explained. "After the bottles are filled, insert a cloth and twist on the top."

"Molotov cocktails?"

"Precisely."

Renee no sooner disappeared below than the Epona swung in a wide arc toward them. Coming head-on, she was closing fast. From the new view, Pitt could see that she had the twin hulls of a catamaran. "If we don't get off this mud pile," he said irritably, "we'll have a most exasperating complication."

"Exasperating complication," Giordino shot back. "Is that the best you can do?"

Then to everyone's stunned amazement, Giordino suddenly ran from the pilothouse, scrambled up the ladder to the roof, stood poised for a moment like an Olympic diver and leaped onto the stern deck between Pitt and Gunn.

Call it luck, call it foresight or fate. Giordino's weight and momentum striking the stern deck was the extra inducement it took to jar the boat loose. Sluggishly, inch by inch, the boat slowly slithered off the unyielding muck. Finally, the keel slipped free and the boat leaped astern as if yanked on a big spring.

Creases of mirth crinkled the corner of Pitt's eyes. "Don't ever let me tell you to diet."

Giordino flashed a broad smile. "I won't."

"Now for our well-rehearsed getaway," said Pitt. "Rudi, take the helm and crouch down as far as you can go. Renee, you and Patrick lay low and take cover behind all this junk we've piled on the stern. Al and I will hide under a pile of nets."

The words were barely out of Pitt's mouth when one of the crewmen of the luxury yacht fired a handheld rocket launcher. The missile soared through the port door of the pilothouse and out the starboard window before impacting with the water fifty yards abeam and exploding.

"Good thing I wasn't in there yet," said Gunn, trying to act as if he was on a walk in the park.

"See what I mean about crouching down?"

Gunn jumped in the pilothouse and spun the wheel, sending the hull curling away from the muck rising from below the water. But before he could bring the boat up to speed, another rocket smashed through the side of the hull amidships and struck the starboard engine. Miraculously, it failed to explode, but it caused a fire by igniting oil spilling from the shattered engine. Almost as a reflex, Gunn immediately closed the throttle to prevent any broken lines from spraying fuel on the fire.

Dodge took the initiative, dove down the hatch into the engine room and snatched a fire extinguisher mounted on a bulkhead. Pulling the safety pin and squeezing the trigger, he smothered the flames until only a billow of black smoke spiraled through the open hatch.

"Are we taking on water?" Pitt shouted from under the fishnet.

"It's an ungodly mess down here, but the bilge is dry!" Dodge yelled back between coughing fits.

To those on board the pirate yacht, it looked as though the fishing boat was mortally hit, as they watched the column of smoke billowing from inside her hull. Believing her crew dead and too injured to resist, the yacht's captain backed off on his engines, slowed the vessel and drifted across Poco Bonito's, bow.

"Do we still have power, Rudi?"

"Our port engine is dead, but the starboard is still turning over."

"Then they just made a big mistake," Pitt said with a cold grin.

"And what was that?" Gunn replied.

"Remember the pirate ship?"

"I do indeed." Gunn cut back on the throttle to the good engine for the sucker play, allowing the little research boat to stop dead in the water. The ploy worked. Certain that his victim was about to sink, the yacht's captain swallowed the bait and idled closer.

Seconds crawled by, until the yacht was almost sitting on top of them at point-blank range. Seeing no movement on board and smoke still gushing from the hull, no small-arms fire was poured into the seemingly stricken vessel. Then a bearded man leaned out the window of the yacht's pilothouse, and with an American Deep South accent spoke through a bullhorn.

"Y'all who can hear me. If y'all do not abandon your boat, it will be blasted to kindlin'. Do not attempt to use any communication devices. Ah repeat, do not open communications. We'all have detection equipment on board and will know immediately if y'all transmit. Y'all have exactly sixty seconds to take to the water. Ah promise y'all safe passage to the nearest port."

"Shall we reply?" asked Gunn.

"Maybe we should do as he says," muttered Dodge. "I want to see my children and grandchildren again."

"If you trust a pirate's word," said Pitt coldly, "I've got a gold mine in Newark, New Jersey, I'll sell you cheap."

Seemingly ignoring the yacht, Pitt rose into view and climbed through the gear piled on the stern and approached the jackstaff on the transom that was flying the Nicaraguan flag. He lowered the flag, unclasped the fasteners and removed it. Then he retrieved the bundle he'd been carrying inside his shirt. In a few moments, a silk, three-by-five-foot emblem was raised.

"Now they know where we come from," Pitt said, as everyone stared reverently at the stars and stripes snapping defiantly in the breeze.

Renee returned on deck, carrying two glass jars and a wine bottle topped with gasoline. Quickly sizing up the situation, she suddenly had a revelation. "You're not going to ram him?" she cried.

"Say when," yelled Gunn, in a voice edged with anticipation and the stony face of a poker player bluffing to win a pot.

"No!" Renee moaned. "That isn't a hologram. It's a solid object. Ram that and we'll fold up like Lawrence Welk's accordion."

"I'm counting on it," Pitt snapped back. "You and Patrick light the wicks and get ready to toss the cocktails as soon as we collide."

There was no more hesitation. The yacht was creeping past Poco Bonito's bow, now less than a hundred feet away.

Giordino threw Pitt one of the M4 carbines and they began blasting away at the yacht. Giordino fired full automatic, sending a spray of 5.56-millimeter NATO rounds into the pilothouse, while Pitt aimed and accurately fired single shots at the crewman holding the rocket launcher, taking him out with his second shot. Another man leaned down to pick up the weapon, but Pitt canceled him out too…

Stunned that Poco Bonito was unexpectedly fighting back, the crew of the yacht dashed for cover without returning fire. Giordino did not know it but he had put a bullet in the shoulder of the captain, who had fallen out of sight onto the deck of the pilothouse. At the same moment, the helmsman was dropped by the shower of shells, and the yacht began to lose steerage and angle away. With only just one engine providing power, Poco Bonito flattened out at less than half her top speed, but she still gamely thrust her bow through the water with more than enough power to do the job.

No one had to be told to sit against the bulkhead with their arms protecting their heads. Renee and Dodge shared apprehensive looks at the orange life jackets that Gunn had passed out. In the pilothouse, he stood firm, hands clutched on the wheel, knuckles turning ivory. The single screw chewed the water, driving the boat straight toward the big, opulent yacht. Its crew stared back, numbed with horror and disbelief, as they realized the innocent-looking fishing boat was not throwing in the towel but rather attacking them with the intention of ramming. A fox in sheep's clothing, surprise was total, no other boat or ship had offered resistance before being captured. They were also shaken by the unexpected show of the American flag.

Pitt and Giordino kept up their devastating fire, sweeping the decks and clearing them of the yacht's crew as Poco Bonito closed the gap. The Epona looked bigger than ever, as they surged toward her hull amidships just aft of the wheelhouse. The decks had been cleared. Like scared rabbits, the crew had concealed themselves belowdecks rather than risk the accurate fire pouring from the oncoming boat.

Poco Bonito looked like the boat from hell, with exhaust fumes issuing through the engine room hatch along with smoke, blown back on a ninety-degree trail astern by the wind over the bow. Gunn had served as executive officer of a missile destroyer that had rammed an Iraqi submarine in the Mediterranean during the conflict to rid the area of Saddam Hussein. But the conning tower of the sub was all that had been visible then. Now, he was looking at a big, solid ship that towered over him.

Ten seconds to impact.

23

Pitt and Giordino laid aside their carbines and braced themselves for the collision. From her curled-up position against the deckhouse bulkhead, Renee could see that the two men's faces were impassive, with no indication of fear or stress. They seemed as indifferent as a pair of ducks sitting under pouring rain.

In the pilothouse, Gunn was planning his moves in sequence. He aimed the bow to strike into the yacht's engine room just aft of the main dining salon. After impact, the next trick was to reverse the engine and pray it could pull Poco Bonito out of the hole she just gouged and keep afloat while the enemy made a one-way trip to the seabed. The sleek hull of Epona looked so close now, Gunn felt as if he could reach through the shattered windshield and touch the elongated image of the horse.

The yacht loomed up and blocked out the sun. Then havoc piled on havoc and everything seemed to go into slow motion as the sound of a dull lingering crunch that never seemed to end broke the atmosphere. Poco Bonito sliced into her far larger antagonist, smashing a V-shaped slash, demolishing the engine room bulkheads on the starboard hull of the big catamaran and crushing anyone working inside.

Renee and Dodge stood and hurled their fuel-filled bottles, with soaked rags aflame. One bounced on the teak deck without breaking, but the other smashed and ignited a ball of fire that spread down the side of the yacht in a fiery waterfall. Without pause, they hurled the glass jars, then the wine bottle, and all burst into a holocaust that covered half the yacht. The once-beautiful vessel looked as though it was locked in a psychotic's nightmare.

Even before the research boat had lost her momentum, Gunn pulled the throttle into full reverse. For several tormented seconds, Poco Bonito just hung there, her shattered bow driven six feet into Epona, caught like a fist in a vise, propeller flogging the water convulsively. Ten seconds, fifteen seconds, then twenty. At last, with a great shriek of ripping debris, she began to pull free. As her crumpled bow unplugged the gash in the yacht's hull, the brown crud gushed into her like a raging river. The yacht immediately began to list sharply.

Two of Epona's crewmen, protected on the opposite hull, recovered and began firing automatic weapons at Poco Bonito. Their aim was erratic and low because their eyes were influenced by the downward list of the starboard hull. Bullets splashed the water around the research boat's hull, some penetrating and leaving several small holes for water to spurt through.

Pitt and Giordino fired blindly into the smoke and fire until resistance aboard the yacht faded away. The superstructure was hidden by flame and smoke. Screams and shouts could be heard inside the conflagration. Fanned by a light breeze, flames flickered through the great hole driven in her starboard hull. The catamaran yacht was settling deeper in the water now, lifting the undamaged port hull free of the water surface.

Everyone on board Poco Bonito crowded the railing, staring in rapt fascination at the dying yacht. The Epona's crew frantically scrambled aboard the helicopter, whose pilot started and revved the engine. Compensating for the angle of list, the pilot lifted the helicopter off the burning vessel and banked toward land, leaving any wounded behind to burn or drown.

"Pull alongside her," Pitt ordered Gunn.

"How close?" the little man inquired anxiously.

"Close enough for me to jump aboard."

Knowing it was senseless to argue with Pitt, Gunn shrugged and began easing the badly damaged boat toward the yacht that was aflame from bow to amidships. He kept the engine in reverse and moved astern to ease pressure from the water that was streaming into the smashed bow section.

Meanwhile, Giordino labored furiously in the mangled mess of the Poco Bonito's engine room, making necessary repairs to keep the boat afloat and under power. Renee cleared the deck of any useless equipment and threw it over the side. Blackened and stained with smoke, Dodge went below and dragged a portable pump into the bow section and attacked the rising water that flowed in through the bow that had been smashed back to the forward bulkhead.

As Gunn carefully maneuvered Poco Bonito alongside Epona, Pitt waited until they nearly touched before he stood on the railing and leaped aboard, landing on the open teak deck behind the main dining salon. Thankfully, the breeze was blowing the fire forward and the aft section had not yet suffered the effects of the blaze. If he were to find anyone alive, he had to move fast before the once-sleek ship sank into the deep. The sound of a fire out of control was like a steam locomotive thundering down the track.

Pitt ran through the dining salon and found it empty. A fast search through the staterooms below failed to turn up any sign of crew member or officer. He tried to go up the plushly carpeted stairs to the pilothouse, but met a wall of fire that drove him back. The smoke seeped through his nose into his lungs. His eyes streamed tears from the acrid smoke and felt as though they were burning out of their sockets. With his hair and eyebrows singed, he was about to give up and abandon the search when he stumbled over a body in the galley.

He reached down and was stunned to feel that it was a woman wearing nothing but a brief bikini. Hoisting her over his shoulder, he stumbled out onto the stern deck, coughing and wiping the tears from his eyes onto one arm.

Gunn instantly appraised the situation and moved the boat ever closer to the yacht until their hulls bumped. Then he rushed from the pilothouse and took the limp shape of the woman that Pitt passed across the railing. The heat from the flames was beginning to blister the paint on the sides of the research boat, as Gunn laid the woman gently on the deck, noting only that she had long straight red hair before hurrying back to the helm and moving Poco Bonito away from the flames.

Pitt, barely able to see until his eyes cleared, felt her pulse and found it had a regular beat. Her breathing was also normal. He brushed back the flame-red hair from her forehead and found an egg-sized bump. He assumed that she had been knocked unconscious during the collision. The face, arms and long, shapely legs revealed an even tan. Her face was beautifully sculpted, with a flawless complexion and lips that were full and sensual. The upturned nose was a perfect complement to the face. Because her eyes were closed, he could not see their color. From what he could tell, she was a very attractive woman, with the lithe body of a dancer.

Renee finished throwing a box of net buoys over the side and rushed to the woman lying on the deck. "Help me get her down below," she said. "I'll take care of her."

Still partially blind, Pitt carried the woman from the yacht down the stairwell to his cabin and laid her out on his bunk. "She has a nasty bump on the head," he said, "but I think she'll come around. You might give her air from a dive tank to help clear the smoke from her lungs."

Pitt returned topside just in time to watch the end of the yacht.

It was slipping under the water, her once lavender-colored hull and superstructure now blackened by the fire and stained with the brown crud. A sad and pathetic ending for a beautiful ship. He regretted that he had been the cause of her demise. But then cold, hard logic took the place of sadness, as he envisioned Poco Bonito succumbing to the same fate, with all her crew dead. His regret was replaced with a euphoria that he and his friends were alive and unharmed.

The starboard hull of the catamaran had sunk completely under the brown water. The port hull hung briefly in the air as the superstructure slipped below the surface, leaving behind a swirling spiral of steam and smoke. Her polished bronze screws sparkled in the sun, and then they were gone. Except for the hiss of the water as it squelched the flames, she went down quietly, without protest, as if wanting to hide her disfigurement. The last sight of her was the pennant with the golden horse. Then it too was swallowed by the indifferent brown sea.

After she disappeared, fuel oil surfaced and spread across the muck, painting it black with rainbow-hued streaks reflecting under the sun. Bubbles came up and burst, along with distorted debris that popped to the surface and seemed to hang there, waiting to be carried to some distant shore by the currents and tides.

Turning from the tragedy, Pitt stepped into the pilothouse, his shoes crunching in the shattered glass scattered on the deck. "How's it look, Rudi? Can we make the coast or do we take to the rafts?"

"We might make it if Al can keep the engine running and Patrick slows the flooding in the bow, which isn't likely. It's gaining faster than the pumps can handle."

"We're also taking water from the bullet holes that penetrated below the waterline."

"There's a large canvas tarp in the storage locker below. If we could lower it over the bow like a mask, that might slow the water enough for the pumps to catch up."

Pitt could see the forward section of the boat was almost two feet down at the bow. "I'll work on it."

"Don't take too long," Gunn cautioned. "I'll keep us in reverse to slow the flooding."

Pitt leaned over the engine room hatch. "Al, how's the party down there?"

Giordino appeared and looked up. He was standing knee-deep in brown crud water, his clothes were soaked and his hands, arms and face were coated in oil. "Barely staying ahead of the game, and believe you me, it ain't no party."

"Can you give me a hand topside?"

"Give me five minutes to unclog the bilge pump. The crud plugs it if I don't clean out the filters every few minutes."

Pitt dropped down and made his way past the cabins to the storage locker, where he found a large folded canvas tarpaulin. It was heavy and bulky, but he managed to drag it up a ladder and through a hatch on the forward deck. Giordino soon joined him, looking like he'd fallen in a tar pit, and together they spread out the canvas and tied all four ends with a nylon line. Two of the ends they weighted with fractured parts from the engine struck by the rocket. When ready, Pitt turned and motioned for Gunn to reduce the speed astern.

Together, he and Pitt threw the canvas off the crunched bow into the water, holding on to all four ends of the line. They waited until the weighted side of the tarp sank slowly through the crud. Then Pitt called to Gunn.

"Okay, move ahead slowly!"

They stood on opposite sides of the bow and pulled in the lines until the weighted end hung beneath the remains of the bow. Next they tied off the lower lines and pulled on the upper ends until the tarp was spread over the damaged section, greatly reducing the flow of water inside. Soon as the lines were secured, Pitt pulled up the forward deck hatch and checked with Dodge.

"How's it look, Patrick?"

"That did the trick," Dodge replied, wearily but happy. "You've reduced the flooding by a good eighty percent. The pump should be able to hold its own now."

"I have to get back to the engine room," said Giordino. "It's not a pretty sight down there."

"Neither are you," Pitt said, smiling, as he put his arm around Giordino's shoulder. "Let me know if you need a hand."

"You'd only get in the way. I'll have things under control in another couple of hours."

Then Pitt entered the pilothouse. "We can get under way now, Rudi. Our patch seems to be working."

"Lucky for us the computerized navigation controls survived intact. I've programmed in a course for Barra del Colorado in Costa Rica. An old naval buddy of mine retired down there and lives next to a sport-fishing lodge. We can tie up at his dock and make the necessary repairs for the trip across the sea to the NUMA boatyard at Fort Lauderdale."

"A wise choice." Pitt gestured toward the huge and mysterious containership across the water. "We might find trouble if we run in there. Better safe than sorry."

"You're right. Once Nicaraguan authorities find out we sank a yacht in their backyard, we'd all be arrested." He dabbed a cloth at a trickle of blood that was oozing from a cut on one cheek. "What's the story on the woman you rescued?"

"Soon as she's conscious, I'll find out."

"Do you want to contact the admiral and give him a report, or should I?"

"I'll take care of it." Pitt entered the galley and sat down at a computer used by the crew mostly for entertainment, e-mail home and occasional research on the Internet via satellite. He typed in the name of the yacht, Epona, and waited. Within a minute, an image of a horse and a brief description came on the screen. Pitt absorbed it in his memory, shut down the terminal and left the galley.

He met Renee in the passageway separating the cabins. "How's she doing?"

"If it was up to me, I'd throw her arrogant ass into the sea."

"That bad?"

"Worse. Within seconds of coming awake, she began giving me a hard time. Not only is she demanding, but she only speaks in Spanish." Renee paused to smile smugly. "It's an act."

"How can you tell?"

"My mother was an Ybarra. I speak better Spanish than our guest."

"She won't reply in English?" asked Pitt.

Renee shook her head. "Like I said, it's an act. She wants us to believe she was only a poor Mexican who slaved in the galley. Her makeup and designer bikini are dead giveaways. This broad has class. She's no scullery maid."

Pitt pulled his old .45 Colt from a holster on his belt. "Let me play Let's Make a Deal with her." He stepped into the cabin with the mystery guest, approached her and gently pushed the muzzle against her nose. "I'm sorry to have to kill you, sweet stuff, but we can't leave any witnesses around. You understand."

The amber-brown eyes flew wide and crossed, staring at the gun. Her lips suddenly trembled as she felt the cold, hard barrel and looked into Pitt's inscrutable green eyes. "No, no, please!" she cried out in English. "Don't kill me! I have money. Let me live and I'll make you rich."

Pitt looked up at Renee, who was standing with her mouth open, not completely certain whether Pitt was not actually going to shoot the woman. "Do you want to be rich, Renee?"

Renee caught onto the game and came on stage. "We already have a ton of gold hidden aboard the boat."

"Don't forget the rubies, emeralds and diamonds," chided Pitt.

"We might find it in our hearts not to feed her to the sharks for a couple of days if she tells us about the fake pirate ship, and why the pirates chased us half the night so they could murder all of us and sink our boat."

"Yes. Yes, please!" the woman gasped. "I can only tell you what I know!"

Pitt saw a strange glint in her eyes that did not indicate trust. "We're listening."

"The yacht belonged to my husband and me," she began. "We were on a cruise from Savannah through the Panama Canal and up to San Diego, when we were approached by what we thought was an innocent fishing boat whose captain asked for medical supplies so they could treat an injured crewman. Unfortunately, my husband, David, fell for the ruse and before we could react, the pirates had boarded our boat."

"Before we continue," said Pitt, "my name is Dirk Pitt and this is Renee Ford."

"I'm rude for not thanking you for saving me. I'm Rita Anderson."

"What happened to your husband and crew?"

"They were murdered and their bodies thrown in the sea. I was spared because they thought I would be useful in luring passing boats."

"How was that?" asked Renee.

"They thought that seeing a woman on the deck in a bikini would attract them close enough to be attacked and captured."

"That was their only motive in keeping you alive?" asked Pitt doubtfully.

She nodded silently.

"Do have any idea of who they were or where they came from?"

"They were local Nicaraguan bandits turned pirates. My husband and I had been warned not to sail through this area, but the sea along the coast looked peaceful."

"Odd that local pirates knew how to fly a helicopter," Renee muttered under her breath.

"How many boats did they capture and destroy using your yacht?" Pitt pressed Rita.

"Three that I'm aware of. Once the crew was murdered and the boat ransacked for valuables, it was scuttled."

"Where were you when we collided with your yacht?" inquired Renee.

"So that's what happened?" she answered vaguely. "I was locked in my cabin. I heard sounds of explosions and gunfire. Then came a great shock and the boat shuddered, followed by fire. The last thing I remember before I blacked out was the wall of my cabin crashing in around me. When I woke up, I was here on your boat."

"Do you recall anything else leading up to the collision and fire?"

Rita shook her head slowly back and forth. "Nothing. They held me prisoner in my cabin and only let me out when they were preparing to capture another vessel."

"Why the hologram of the pirate ship?" asked Renee. "That seemed more like a gimmick to keep boats out of the area than an act of piracy."

Rita looked uncomprehending. "Hologram? I'm not even sure what one is."

Pitt smiled inwardly. He saw little cause not to believe that Rita Anderson was fabricating a wild story. Renee was right. Rita's makeup hardly looked like it belonged on a woman who had seen her husband murdered and had been cruelly dealt with by pirates. The beige-rose lipstick with lip gloss was too precisely applied, the eyes defined with a deep chestnut liner and a shimmer highlighter on the brow — all spelled a life of elegance. He decided to go for the jugular, watching closely for a reaction.

"What is your connection with Odyssey?" he said suddenly.

At first, she didn't get it. Then it began to dawn on her that these people were no innocent fishermen. "I don't know what you're talking about," she hedged.

"Wasn't your husband an employee of the Odyssey conglomerate?"

"Why do you ask?" she threw out, stalling while she came back on keel.

"Your boat bore the same image of a horse as the Odyssey logo."

The immaculately plucked and penciled eyebrows pinched fractionally. She was good, Pitt thought, very good. She didn't faze easily.

He began to realize that Rita was no mundane wife of a rich man. She was comfortable being in command, with power to wield. He was amused as she made a flank attack and tried to turn the tables.

"Who are you people?" Rita suddenly demanded. "You're not fishermen."

"No," Pitt said slowly, with effect. "We're with the United States National Underwater and Marine Agency on a scientific expedition to find the source of the brown crud."

He might as well have slapped her in the face. The calm composure abruptly fell away. Before she could stop herself, she blurted, "Not possible. You're—" She caught herself and her voice trailed off.

"Supposed to be dead from the explosion in Bluefields Channel," Pitt finished for her.

"You knew?" Renee gasped, moving toward the bed as if to strangle Rita.

"She knew," Pitt agreed, gently taking Renee by the arm and restraining her.

"But why?" Renee demanded. "What did we do to deserve a horrible death?"

Rita would say no more. The expression on her face altered from surprise to anger mixed with hatred. Renee would have loved to have rammed her fist into Rita's face. "What will we do with her?"

"Nothing," Pitt replied with a slight shrug. He knew he could no longer bluff Rita. She had said all she was going to say. "Keep her locked in the cabin until we reach Costa Rica. I'll have Rudi call ahead and have the local law authorities waiting on the dock to take her into custody."

Exhaustion crept up on Pitt. He was dead tired, but so were the others. He had one more chore to perform before he could catch a short catnap. He looked around for the lounge chair, but remembered Renee had thrown it overboard. He stretched out on the deck that had been cleared of the phony fishing gear, leaned his back against a bulwark and dialed his Globalstar tri-mode satellite phone.

Sandecker sounded angered. "Why haven't I heard from you people before now?"

"We've been busy," Pitt muttered. Then he spent the next twenty minutes bringing the admiral up to speed. Sandecker patiently listened without interruption until Pitt ended by relating his conversation with Rita Anderson.

"What could Specter possibly have to do with any of this?" Sandecker's voice sounded confused.

"At the moment, my best guess is that he has a secret he wants to keep and will murder the crew of any boat that stumbles into his realm."

"I've heard they have construction contracts with the Red Chinese throughout Nicaragua and Panama."

"Loren mentioned the same connection over dinner the other night."

"I'll order an investigation into Odyssey's activities," said Sandecker.

"You might also check out Rita and David Anderson and a yacht named Epona."

"I'll put Yaeger on it first thing."

"It will be interesting to see how this woman ties in to this thing."

"Did you discover a source of the brown crud?"

"We homed in on the position where it's rising from the seafloor."

"Then it looks like a natural phenomenon?"

"Patrick Dodge doesn't think so." Pitt stifled a yawn. "He claims there is no way the mineral ingredients that make up the crud can rise up from the bottom like it was shot out of a cannon. He says it has to be an artificial upwelling. There must be something nasty going on here that borders on The Twilight Zone."

"Then we're back to square one," said Sandecker.

"Not quite," Pitt said quietly. "I have a little expedition of my own I'd like to carry out."

"I've sent a NUMA jet transport to the airport near the Rio Colorado Lodge with a crew to patch up Poco Bonito before they sail it north. Gunn, Dodge and Ford will be transported back to Washington. I'd like you and Al to join them."

"The job isn't finished."

Sandecker didn't argue. He'd learned long ago that Pitt's judgment was generally on the money. "What is your plan?"

Pitt stared across the sea toward the green forested coastal mountain ranges rising beyond white sandy beaches. "I think a cruise up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua might be in order."

"What do you expect to find so far from the sea and the brown crud?"

"Answers," Pitt answered, his mind already traveling upriver. "Answers to this whole mess."