Trojan Odyssey

36

The private and CORPORATE jets began arriving on Branwyn Island fifteen miles south of Basse-Terre, one of the main islands of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Exotically designed minibuses with luxurious interiors and painted lavender pulled up to the aircraft to accommodate the passengers. After putting their luggage in the trunk, the drivers transported the travelers to elegant suites in a palatial belowground sanctuary that was only open to private guests of Specter. All those who departed the aircraft were women. None were accompanied by friends or business associates. They all arrived alone.

The last plane to arrive landed at six o'clock in the evening. It was the familiar Beriev Bc-210 of the Specter Corporation, which touched down at six o'clock in the evening. Specter, the only male to make an appearance, lumbered down the boarding steps, his great belly barely squeezing through the door. He was followed by a body carried on a stretcher that was completely covered by a blanket. Specter, wearing his signature white suit, then settled into the rear seat and poured himself a glass of Beaujolais from the bar.

The driver, who had chauffeured Specter on other occasions, was always amazed at how someone so gross could move so agilely. He stood for a moment and watched with curiosity as the form on the stretcher was unceremoniously shoved into the open bed of a pickup truck, without any consideration for the heavy rain that began to fall.

On the south end of the island, a bowl shaped like a sunken cauldron one hundred yards in diameter had been carved into the rock and coral. The concave depression had been hollowed out to a depth of thirty feet, deep enough so no passing boats or ships could observe any activities.

Inside the cauldron, thirty tall shafts of stone thirteen feet high stood evenly spaced three feet apart. It was a copy of the famous mystical monolithic structure known as Stonehenge, which means stone circle. The shafts were six and a half feet wide and three feet thick. Their tapered tops supported ten-and-a-half-foot lintels, shaped to the curve of the circle.

The inner horseshoe-shaped circle known as the Trilithons contained five towering stones with their own lintels. Unlike the hard-grained sandstone of the original structure in England that was built between 2550 and 1600 B.C., these were cut from black lava rock.

The main difference between the old and the new structures was a huge block of marble carved and contoured like a sarcophagus. It was elevated nearly ten feet off the ground within the inner horseshoe profile and reached by steps leading up to a landing that encircled its walls ornately carved with the galloping Horse of Uffington.

At night hidden lights illuminated the interior of the bowl in lavender-colored streams that swirled around the shafts, while a single set of laser beams spaced around the outer circle soared into the nighttime sky. They were turned on briefly early in the evening before blinking out.

A few minutes before midnight, as if by command, the rain stopped. When the lights flashed on again, the floor of the center of the Trilithons was enhanced by thirty women in dresses draped like shawls and rippled with folds. Known as a peplos, from the ancient Greek, the voluminous dresses covered their legs and feet and came in a rainbow of colors with no two the exact same hue. Long red hairpieces adorned their heads as flecks of silver sparkled on their faces, necks and open arms. The silver makeup gave their facial features a masklike effect, making them all appear as if they might have been sisters of the same blood.

They all stood silent, staring at a figure stretched on the block of marble. It was a man. All that could be seen of him was the upper half of his face. His body, chin and mouth were tightly wrapped in black silk. He appeared to be in his late fifties, with a mass of graying hair. The nose and chin were sharp, with suntanned, heavily lined features. His eyes were wide and bulging as they darted around the lights and the tops of the columns. Seemingly adhered to the marble slab, he could not move nor turn his head. His only line of vision was upward, as he stared in terror at the laser beam piercing the black sky above him.

Suddenly, the swirling lights darkened while the lasers around the marble remained on. In a minute the lights spiraled on again. For a moment it seemed that nothing had changed, but then a woman had magically appeared in a gold peplos. Her head was covered by a mass of flame-red hair, long and shiny, that fell in a loose cascade to her hips. The skin on her face, neck and arms had pearl white luster. She was slim, with a body whose shape flared with perfection. With feline grace, she walked up the stairs to the marble block that was now recognized as an altar.

She raised her arms and began to chant: "O daughters of Odysseus and Circe, may life be taken from those who are not worthy. Intoxicate yourself with wealth and the spoils of men who attempt to enslave us. Seek not men without wealth and power. And when they are found, exploit, dispel their desires, plunder their treasures and step into their world."

Then all the women raised their arms and chanted: "Great is the sisterhood for we are the pillars of the world, great are the daughters of Odysseus and Circe for their path is glorified."

The chant was repeated, swelling in volume before dropping almost to whispers as their arms were lowered.

The woman standing before the terrified man on the marble altar reached beneath the folds of her gown, produced a dagger and raised it above her head. The other women moved up the steps and surrounded what was about to become a pagan sacrifice. As one, they also produced daggers and held them high.

The woman who bore the image of a high priestess chanted: "Here lies one who should not have been born."

Then she plunged her dagger into the chest of the horrified man bound on the altar. Lifting the dagger with blood streaming from the blade, she stepped aside as the other women came one after the other and drove their daggers into the helpless man.

The circle of women moved down the steps and stood beneath the columns, holding the bloody daggers as if presenting them as gifts. There was an eerie silence for several moments until they all chanted: "Under the gaze of our gods, we triumph."

Then the laser beams and the swirling rays blinked out, leaving the pagan temple of murder in the black of the night.

The following day, the business world was stunned by the news that publishing mogul Westmoreland Hall was presumed dead after swimming off the reef of his luxurious beach house estate in Jamaica and vanishing. Hall went for his usual morning swim alone. He was known to swim beyond the reef into deeper water and allow the surf to return him to shore though a narrow channel. It is not known whether Hall drowned, was attacked by a shark or died of natural causes, since his body went undiscovered after an extensive search by Jamaican officials. His obituary read:

Ten days later an item appeared in the business sections of the world's leading newspapers:

There was no mention that all the processed platinum ore was now being purchased by Ling Ho Limited in Beijing and shipped in Chinese cargo ships to an industrial center on the coast of Fukien Province.

37

The wind off the Pacific bumped the water on the lake into a mild chop. Though the lake was large, the tide was minimal and the temperature was a mild eighty degrees. The silence over the dark waters was fractured by the harsh whirr of a jet ski's motor. Unseen by human eyes, it raced through the night at a speed of over fifty knots, invisible to radar because of a soft rubber mantle that absorbed the radio wave pulse and stopped the echo from returning to the radar's transmitter.

Pitt steered the Polaris Virage TX with Giordino on the rear seat and a bag full of equipment in the bow storage. Along with their dive gear, they also carried their stolen Odyssey employee jumpsuits, except this time the photos on the IDs matched their faces, with Giordino's features retouched to at least resemble a husky woman. While waiting for their dive gear to be flown in from Washington, they had gone to a photo shop and arranged for their pictures to be taken and reinserted inside the laminated plastic ID holders. The shop's owner charged them a pretty price, but asked no questions.

As they rounded the shoreline below the Madera volcano side of the island, they skirted the isthmus, staying a mile off a sandy beach that stretched between the two mountains. The lights of the complex shone brightly against the black of Mount Concepcion. No blackout here. The Odyssey management felt safe and snug guarded by their army of security agents and array of detection equipment.

Pitt slowed the jet ski as they approached the dock area, where a large COSCO containership was brightly lit under a sea of floodlights. Pitt noted that the cranes were off-loading the cargo containers onto trucks parked beneath the hull. No cargo was going on. He began to think the complex was more than a research and development center. It had to have a connection with the tunnels that ran under it.

Sandecker had finally agreed on the mission in principle. Yaeger and Gunn had filled Pitt and Giordino in on the purpose of the tunnels. It then became imperative in everyone's mind that whatever information they gained inside the complex might be vital for the discovery of Specter's motives for covering Europe in ice.

The Virage TX was painted a charcoal gray that blended into the black water. Contrary to what is shown in the movies where agents sneak around in black skintight suits, dark gray has less visibility under the stars at night. The three-cylinder engine was massaged by NUMA engineers to put out one hundred and seventy horsepower. Noise reduction was also modified to reduce exhaust noise by ninety percent.

Speeding across the black water, the only sounds came from the slap of the bow and the muted hum of the tuned pipe exhaust. They had reached the outer edge of the Isle de Ometepe in half an hour after leaving a deserted wharf south of Granada.

Pitt eased back on the throttle as Giordino studied a basic, handheld radar detector. "How's it look?" Pitt asked.

"Their beam sweeps past us without pausing, so they must not be reading us."

"We were wise to take the precaution of finishing the trip underwater," Pitt said, tipping his head toward a pair of searchlights that were sweeping the water for five hundred yards off the shore.

"I make it about a quarter of a mile."

"Our depth sounder reads the bottom at only twenty-two feet. We must be out of the main channel."

"Time to abandon ship and get wet," Giordino said, motioning toward a patrol boat that appeared around the end of a long dock.

Already in their light wet suits, they quickly pulled their dive gear and packs from the jet ski's storage areas. The Virage was a stable craft and they could stand while helping each other slip into their oxygen closed-circuit rebreathers, of a type used by the military for shallow-water operations. After quickly going through the predive checking procedures, Giordino slid into the water while Pitt tied the hand grips in a straight position. Then he aimed the jet ski on a course toward the west shore of the lake and set the throttle as he slid off. Neither man took a backward glance at the speeding craft before diving beneath the surface. Though they were using communication equipment, they took no chances of losing each other in the ink-black water. They clipped the ends of a ten-foot line to their weight belts.

Pitt preferred the oxygen closed-circuit rebreather. The semi — closed circuit rebreathers were more efficient for deepwater work, but they left telltale signs of bubbles on the surface. Breathing one hundred percent oxygen, the rebreather was the only true bubble-free diving system, the reason they were used by military divers on covert missions. There could be no detection on the surface because the system eliminated all indications of bubble exhaust. It took specialized training to use the system efficiently without problems, but Pitt and Giordino were no strangers to rebreathers, having used them for twenty years.

Neither man spoke. Giordino trailed behind, tracing Pitt's movement by using a shaded underwater penlight that sent out a thin beam that was next to impossible to spot from the surface. Pitt saw the bottom slope down as they came to the main ship channel. He leveled off, checked his compass and began kicking toward the Odyssey dock. Far into the distance, magnified by the water, he and Giordino could hear the thrash of the patrol boat's twin screws.

Relying on his compass and computer displaying GPS positions, they homed in on the section under the main dock where it met the shoreline. They swam slowly and steadily, seeing the water on the surface become a shade less black as they came closer to the lights beaming over the entire dock area. They could also see the sweep of the searchlights as their yellow shafts streaked across the surface above them.

The water became more transparent, and they began to see the yellow glow turn brighter on the water surface. Another hundred yards and they could make out the faintly shimmering outline of the dock pilings. They skirted around the big COSCO containership, staying far enough away so no idle crewman could see them under the surface. All activity had come to a standstill on the dock. The big cranes became immobile and the warehouses were closed and deserted as the trucks moved away.

Suddenly, Pitt felt the back of his neck tingle and he sensed a movement in the water as a huge shape materialized out of the gloom and swiped Pitt's shoulder with its tail and disappeared. He stiffened and Giordino immediately sensed the rope go slack.

"What is it?" Giordino demanded.

"I think we're being stalked by a carcharhinid."

"A shark?"

"A Lake Nicaragua bull shark, with blunt-nosed snout, big and gray, eight to nine feet."

"Do freshwater sharks bite?"

"Show me one who isn't carnivorous."

Pitt swept the narrow beam of the penlight in a circle, but it failed to pierce the murky water for more than ten feet. "We'd better circle the wagons."

Giordino swiftly picked up on the meaning and swam to Pitt's side and turned until they were back to back, facing in opposite directions to cover three hundred and sixty degrees. As if reading the other's thoughts, they pulled their dive knives from the sheaths attached to their lower legs and held them as if pointing swords.

Their nemesis returned and slowly spiraled around them, moving closer with each circle. Its gray skin was ominously illuminated under the tiny glow of their penlights, a big repulsive beast staring at them from one black eye as large as the rim on a coffee cup, with a wide jaw showing triangular rows of serrated teeth like a snarling dog. It turned sharply and eased past the divers for a closer look, never having seen such strange fish with appendages that did not resemble its usual victims. It had the look of a gluttonous monster trying to make up its mind whether the two weird fish that had intruded into its domain would make a palatable meal. It seemed curious that its prey made no move to dart away.

Pitt knew the sinister murder machine was not quite ready to attack. The mouth was only slightly open and the lips had not pulled away from the hideous teeth. He decided that offense was the best defense and he lunged at the creature, thrusting his knife and making a slashing swipe across the shark's nose, the only tender spot on its taut body.

The shark rolled away, trailing a streak of blood, confused and angered by the sudden show of resistance from what should have been an easy kill. Then it turned, hovered for a few moments, flipped its tail fins and came at them with phenomenal speed in a movement dead silent, straight for the kill.

Pitt had only one trick left in his bag. He shined the beam of the penlight directly into the shark's right eye. The unexpected flash temporarily blinded the killer just enough to induce it to veer and roll to his right, mouth opening in anticipation of biting into flesh and bone. Pitt kicked fiercely, twisting his body to one side as the shark flashed past, using its pectoral fin to push it away. The yawning jaws clamped shut on empty water. Then Pitt lashed out with the knife and gashed the monster in its black lifeless eye.

Two things could have happened. The maddened shark could have attacked without further hesitation, provoked by pain and anger, or it could have swum away, half blinded, giving up the battle for easier prey.

Fortunately, it swam away and did not return.

"That was about as close as we ever came to being a special on a dinner menu," Giordino said, in a vague tone still tinged with tension.

"He would probably have digested me and spit you out for tasting bad," Pitt came back.

"We'll never know whether he enjoyed Italian food."

"Let's get a move on before one of his pals comes nosing around."

They continued on but with greater caution than before, feeling a sense of relief as the lights from the docks now provided them with a good thirty feet of underwater visibility. Finally, they reached the pilings under the dock and swam between them before surfacing and staring up at the wooden planking, where they floated, getting their wind and waiting to see if they had set off any security sensors. After a few minutes, no sounds of approaching security guards were heard from above.

Pitt said, "We'll follow the dock until it reaches the shore before we surface again."

This time Giordino moved off into the lead, with Pitt following. The bottom came up sharply and they were relieved to find a sandy beach free of rocks. Crouching under the dock and shielded from the overhead lights, they removed their dive gear and wet suits, opened their waterproof bags and retrieved their Odyssey jumpsuits and hard hats. Slipping on socks and shoes, they checked their ID badges to see they were attached in the proper position before stepping warily into the open.

A single guard sat in a small house at the edge of a paved road that passed by the entrance to the dock. He was eyeballing a TV channel that was running an old American movie in Spanish. Pitt scanned the area but saw only the single guard.

"Shall we test our presence?" he said to Giordino, face-to-face for the first time since they dove in the water.

"You want to observe his reaction when we walk by?"

"Now or never to see if we can freely move throughout the facility."

They walked casually past the guardhouse. The security guard, wearing the male black jumpsuit, caught their movement and came out onto the road. "La parada?" he shouted, a frown on his face.

"La parada?" Giordino repeated.

"It means halt."

"Para qué está usted aqui? Usted debe estar en sus cuartos."

"Here's your chance to flash your Spanish," said Giordino, his fingers tightening around the grip of his gun beneath the jumpsuit.

"What Spanish," said Pitt benignly. "I forgot most of what I learned in high school."

"Take a guess. What did he say?"

"He wants to know what are we're doing here. Then he said we're supposed to be in our quarters."

"Not bad." Giordino grinned. He walked up to the guard as if he didn't have a care in the world. "Yo no hablo el español," he said in a high-pitched voice in a sad attempt to mimic a woman.

"Very good," Pitt complimented him in turn.

"I've been to Tijuana." Giordino approached the guard and shrugged helplessly. "We're Canadian."

The guard frowned as he looked at Giordino. If his mind could be read, it would reveal that the woman inside the white uniform jumpsuit was the ugliest he'd ever seen. Then his frown turned to a smile. "Oh, si, Canadians, I speak English." He pronounced it Englais.

"I know we're supposed to be in the barracks," said Pitt, smiling back. "We only wanted to take a little walk before going to sleep."

"No, no, that is not allowed, amigos," said the guard. "You are not allowed out of your assigned area after eight o'clock."

Pitt threw up his hands. "Sorry, amigo, we were talking and didn't notice we had wandered into the wrong area. Now we're lost. Can you direct us to the barracks?"

The guard came over and shined a flashlight on their badges and studied them. "You from the dig?"

"Si, we're from the dig. Our superior sent us topside for a few days' rest."

"I understand, senor, but you must return to your quarters. It is regulations. Just follow the road and turn left at the water tower. Your building is thirty meters to the left."

"Gracias, amigo," said Pitt. "We're on our way."

Satisfied Pitt and Giordino were not intruders, the guard returned to his little house.

Giordino said, "Well, we passed the first test."

"Best we hide out somewhere until daylight. Not healthy to wander around here in the dead of night. Too suspicious. The next guard who stops us might not be so friendly."

They followed the guard's directions until they came to a long row of buildings. They moved in the shadows through the edge of a grove of palm trees, studying the entrances to the living quarters for the employees of Odyssey.

All but the fifth and last building were free of guards. That building had two guards stationed at the entrance, while another two patrolled the perimeter outside a high surrounding fence.

"Whoever lives there must not be popular with Odyssey," said Pitt. "It looks like a prison."

"The occupants must be held captive."

"Agreed."

"Then we break into one that's open."

Pitt shook his head. "No, we enter this one. I want to talk to those who are held inside. We may learn more from them about Odyssey's operation."

"No way we're going to bluff our way in."

"Looks like a small shed next door. Let's move around, keeping the trees as cover, and check it out."

"You never take the easy path," Giordino groaned at seeing that Pitt's face held a remote and thoughtful expression under the glow of the lights lining the street.

"No fun if it's simple," Pitt said seriously.

Like burglars slinking through a residential neighborhood, they moved through the trees, taking advantage of the thin curling trunks until they reached the edge of the grove. Crouched and running, they covered another thirty yards until they reached the rear of the shed. Edging around one corner, they found a side door. Giordino tried the latch. It was open and they slipped inside. Flashing their penlights around the interior, they found that it was an equipment garage that held a street sweeper.

Pitt could see Giordino's teeth spread in a smile in the dim light. "I think we struck the mother lode."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I am," said Pitt. "We start up the sweeper and send it down the street, but with one refinement to get the guard's attention."

"Which is?"

"We set it on fire."

"Your devious mind never ceases to amaze me."

"It's a gift."

In ten minutes, they had siphoned three gallons of gas into a five-gallon can they found in the garage. Pitt climbed into the cab of the street sweeper and turned on the ignition, while Giordino stood ready to swing the doors open. They were both thankful the engine started with a single cough and turned over smoothly without an abundance of exhaust noise. The sweeper had standard four-speed transmission, and he stood outside the open door, ready to shift it into second gear, skipping first so the big vehicle would gain speed faster. Waiting until the last minute to avoid an explosion inside the garage from the gas fumes, he turned the steering wheel of the big vehicle so that it would angle down the road toward a row of parked trucks. Giordino opened the double doors and trotted back to the fuel can. He doused the gas into the empty cab and stood holding the flame starter for an acetylene torch.

"Showtime," he said briefly.

Pitt, standing on the doorframe just outside the cab, jammed the shifter into gear and leaped, as Giordino turned the oxygen and acetylene valves full open and squeezed the handle of the flame starter, sending a two-foot flame bursting from the tip of the torch. There was a loud whoosh as a combustion-produced ball of fire enveloped the cab of the sweeper before it accelerated through the doors.

Roaring down the road like a comet, the sweeper, with its brushes spinning wildly and throwing up a cloud of dirt and dust, sped fifty yards before crashing into the first truck and sending it bouncing on all wheels into a palm tree. Then it smashed square into the next truck in the row with a horrendous screech of tearing metal and glass, shoving it into the others, until it finally became jammed and came to a standstill with flames shooting into the sky followed by a swirling cloud of black smoke.

The two guards outside the building stood frozen in shock staring incredulously at the sudden eruption of fire. Finally they were galvanized into action, their first reaction being the obvious conclusion that the driver was still in the cab. They abandoned their posts and went running down the road, followed on their heels by the guards from inside.

Pitt and Giordino took immediate advantage of the commotion focused around the blazing sweeper. Pitt dashed through the gated fence, dove inside the open door of the building and fell on the floor, only to have Giordino, unable to stop his momentum, trip and fall on him.

"You've got to lose weight," Pitt grunted.

Giordino swiftly pulled him to his feet. "Now where, genius?"

Pitt didn't answer but, seeing that it was clear, he took off running down a long hallway. The doors on either side had locked latches. He stopped in front of the third door and turned to Giordino. "This is your specialty," he said, stepping aside.

Giordino shot him a testy look, then leaned back and kicked the door half off its hinges. Then he lunged with one shoulder and finished the job. Unable to withstand the muscular Italian's onslaught, the door fell flat on the floor with a loud thud.

Pitt stepped inside and found a man and a woman sitting upright in bed, frozen in shocked silence at the sight of the strangers, their faces expressing icy fear.

"Forgive the intrusion," Pitt said softly, "but we need a place to hide." As he spoke, Giordino was already setting the door back in place.

"Where are you going to take us?" the woman asked in near panic with a heavy German guttural accent as she pulled up the covers around the top of her nightgown. Round, flushed face with wide brown eyes, silver hair pulled back in a bun, she looked like the grandmother she probably was. Though it was buried under a sheet and light blanket, Pitt could see that her body would never fit into a size sixteen dress.

"Noplace. We're not who you think."

"But you're one of them."

"No, ma'am," said Pitt, trying to ease her terror. "We are not employees of Odyssey."

"Then who in God's name are you?" asked the man, slowly recovering. The man in the bed rose in an old-fashioned nightshirt and threw on an equally old-fashioned chenille bathrobe. Just the opposite of what Pitt assumed was his wife, he was quite tall and thin as a yardstick. His thick gray hair stood at least three inches above Pitt's. White facial skin, a sharp pyramid of a nose and tight lips decorated with a pencil-thin mustache defined his face.

"My name is Dirk Pitt. My friend is Al Giordino. We work for the United States government and are here to learn why the existence of this facility is such a well-guarded secret."

"How did you get on the island?" asked the woman.

"From the water," Pitt replied, without detail. "We entered your building after creating a little diversion that drew away the guards." As he spoke, the sound of approaching sirens could be heard echoing down the corridor through the building's still-open front entrance. "I've never known anyone who could ignore watching a good fire."

"Why did you choose our room?"

"Pure chance, nothing more."

"If you will kindly oblige us," said Giordino, "we'd like to spend the night. We'll be gone come the dawn."

The woman studied Giordino, her eyes traveling up and down his white jumpsuit, with a look of suspicion. "You're not a woman."

Giordino responded with a wide smile. "Thankfully, no, but how I came to be in a female Odyssey uniform is a long and boring story."

"Why should we believe you?"

"I can't give you a reason in the world."

"Do you mind telling us why you're confined inside this building?" queried Pitt.

"Forgive us," said the woman, coming back on track. "My husband and I are terribly confused. He is Dr. Claus Lowenhardt, and I am his wife, Dr. Hilda Lowenhardt. We are only locked in at night. During the day we work under heavy guard in the laboratories."

Pitt was amused at the formality of the introductions. "How did you come to be here?"

"We were doing research at the Technical Research Institution in Aachen, Germany, when agents working for a Mr. Specter representing the Odyssey Corporation requested that we come to work for them as consultants. My wife and I were only two out of forty of the top scientists in our field who were lured away from their laboratories by offers of an immense amount of money and promises of funding for our projects after we were finished here and returned home. We were told we were flying to Canada, but they lied. When our plane landed, we found ourselves on this island in the middle of nowhere. Since then, we have all virtually worked as slaves."

"How long ago?"

"Five years."

"What type of research were you forced to conduct?"

"Our academic discipline is in the science of fuel cell energy."

"Is this why this facility was constructed, to conduct experiments on fuel cells?"

Claus Lowenhardt nodded. "Odyssey began construction nearly six years ago."

"What about outside contact?"

"We are not allowed telephone communications with our friends and families," replied Hilda, "only outgoing letters, which are heavily censored."

"Five years is a long time to be away from your loved ones. Why didn't you obstruct the research by slowdowns and sabotage?"

Hilda shook her head solemnly. "Because they threatened a horrible death to anyone who hampered the research."

"And the lives of our families back home as well," added Claus. "We had no choice but to put forth a dedicated effort. We also had a true desire to continue our life's work, to create a clean and efficient energy source for the people of the world."

"One man who had no family was made an example," said Hilda. "They tortured him by night and forced him to work by day. He was found one morning hanging from the light fixture in his room. We all knew he was murdered."

"You believe he was murdered on orders from Odyssey officials?"

"Executed," Lowenhardt corrected him. He smiled grimly and pointed up at the ceiling. "Look for yourself, Mr. Pitt. Would that fixture, which is little more than a wire and lightbulb, support the weight of a man?"

"I see your point," Pitt acknowledged.

"We do what we're told to do," said Hilda quietly, "whatever it takes to prevent harm from coming to our son and two daughters and five grandchildren. The others are in the same boat."

"Have you and your fellow scientists made any progress in developing fuel cell technology?" asked Pitt.

Hilda and Claus turned and faced each other with quizzical expressions. Then Claus said, "Hasn't the world learned of our success?"

"Success?"

"Along with our fellow scientists, we have developed an energy-generating source that combines nitrogen-producing ammonia and oxygen out of the atmosphere to create substantial amounts of electricity at a very low cost per unit, with pure water as its only waste product."

"I thought practical and efficient fuel cells were decades away," said Giordino.

"Fuel cells using hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, yes. Oxygen can come from the air. However, hydrogen is not readily available and must be stored as a fuel. But because of our fortunate and almost miraculous breakthrough, we have paved the way to nonpolluting energy that is available to millions of people as we speak."

"You talk as if it is already in production," said Giordino.

"It was perfected and tested with great success over a year ago." Lowenhardt gave him the look of a man staring at a village idiot. "Production began immediately after it was perfected. Surely you're familiar with it."

They could read the expression of bafflement and incomprehension on Pitt's and Giordino's faces as genuine. "That's news to us," said Pitt skeptically. "I'm not aware of a new miracle energy product sitting on store shelves or powering automobiles."

"Nor I," Giordino chimed in.

"We don't understand. We were told that millions of units had already been produced by a manufacturing facility in China."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but your great achievement is still a secret," Pitt said sympathetically. "I can only guess that the Chinese are stockpiling your creation for some inexplicable purpose."

"But what do they have to do with the tunnels?" Giordino muttered, confused at trying to put two and two together.

Pitt sat down in a chair and stared thoughtfully at the design in a throw rug. Finally, he looked up. "The admiral said that Yaeger's computer concluded that the purpose behind the tunnels was to lower the temperature of the Gulf Stream and throw the eastern United States and Europe into eight months of frigid weather." Then he turned to the Lowenhardts. "Your cutting-edge power technology, is it designed for automobiles?"

"Not at the moment. But eventually, with more study and refinement, it will generate enough clean energy to power all vehicles, including aircraft and trains. We've gone beyond the design stage. Currently, we're working out the final phase of engineering before running tests."

"What does the gadget in production accomplish?" asked Pitt.

Claus winced at the word gadget. "The Macha is a self-sustaining generator that can provide cost-efficient electrical energy to every home, office, workplace and school in the world. It makes air pollution a nightmare of the past. Now a family home, no matter how large or small, located in the city or in the farthest reaches of the country, can have its own independent source of energy—"

"You call it the Macha?"

"Specter came up with the name himself when he saw the first operational unit. Macha, so he informed us, was the Celtic goddess of cunning, also known as the queen of phantoms."

"The Celts again," muttered Giordino.

"The plot thickens," Pitt said philosophically.

"Guard approaching," warned Giordino at his station by the door. "Sounds like two of them." He leaned his weight against it.

The room became so hushed that the guards' voices became quite audible as they approached down the hallway, checking the doors of the hostage scientists. Their footsteps stopped outside.

The Lowenhardts' eyes took on the look of frightened rabbits hearing the howl of coyotes, until they saw Pitt's and Giordino's automatics appear as if by magic, and they realized these were men who had command of the situation.

"Este puerta aparece dañada."

"He said the door looks damaged," Pitt whispered.

One of the guards jiggled the latch and pushed against the door, but it did not move with Giordino's weight against it.

"Se parece seguro," came another voice.

"It seems secure," Pitt translated.

"Lo tendremos reparados por la mañana."

"They said they'll have it repaired in the morning."

Then the footsteps and voices faded, as they continued on their rounds down the hallway.

Pitt turned and gave the Lowenhardts a long hard look. "We're going to have to leave the island and you must come with us."

"You think that's wise?" Giordino put to him.

"Expedient," said Pitt. "These people are the key to the mystery. Because of what they know, we don't have to take the chance of getting caught while we nose around the facility, nor would we learn a third of what the good doctors know."

"No, no!" Hilda gasped. "We don't dare leave. Once security learns we were missing, the fiends at Odyssey will retaliate and murder our children."

Pitt took her hand and gently squeezed it. "Your family will be protected. I promise you, no harm will be allowed to come to them."

"I'm still not sure," Giordino said, considering the circumstances and possible consequences. "Once we abandoned the jet ski our only plan for escaping the island was to attempt to steal a boat or an airplane, since their security forces would stop any helicopter pickup. That plan won't come easy with a pair of senior citizens in tow."

Pitt turned back to the Lowenhardts. "What you haven't considered is that when your usefulness is over, you and the other hostage scientists will have to be eliminated. Specter cannot risk any of you revealing to the world what went on here."

Total understanding flooded Claus Lowenhardt's face, but he still could not bring himself to fully accept Pitt's words. "Not all of us. It's diabolical. They wouldn't dare kill us all. The outside world would discover the truth."

"Not if a plane carrying you back to your homes mysteriously crashed in the sea. Except for an investigation into the crash, no one would be the wiser about what really happened."

Claus looked at his wife and placed an arm around her shoulders. "I'm afraid Mr. Pitt is right. Specter could not allow any of us to live."

"Once you reveal everything to the news media, Specter would not dare kill the other members of your scientific team. Every law enforcement agency of your respective countries would band together and go after Specter and his Odyssey empire with every international legal means at their disposal. Believe me, leaving now and coming with us is the only way."

"Can you guarantee that you'll get us off the island safely?" asked Hilda hesitantly.

Pitt looked singularly concerned. "I can't promise what I can't predict with certainty. But you will surely die if you remain here."

Claus squeezed his wife's shoulder. "Well, Mother, this looks like our chance to see our loved ones again."

She lifted her head and kissed him on the cheek. "Then we go together."

"They're coming back," announced Giordino, with his ear to the door.

"If you will kindly get dressed," said Pitt to the Lowenhardts, "my friend and I will take care of the guards." Then he turned his back as the scientists began getting their clothes and joined Giordino on the opposite side of the door, Colt .45 drawn and held at the ready.

The seconds ticked off as the guards retraced their steps. Pitt and Giordino waited patiently until the sound of the guards came outside the door. Then Giordino yanked the broken door inward, sending it crashing to the floor. The security guards were too surprised to offer resistance, as they were pulled into the room and found themselves staring into the muzzles of two very large automatic pistols.

"En el piso, rápidamente!" Pitt snapped, ordering them to lie on the floor as Giordino began tearing up the bedsheets. They quickly disarmed, bound and gagged the stunned guards.

Five minutes later, Pitt, with Claus and Hilda behind and Giordino bringing up the rear, passed through the entrance of the unguarded gate in the fence and scurried across the street that was packed with a milling crowd of security personnel and firemen surrounding the still-burning street sweeper, before slipping into the shadows unnoticed.

38

They had a long way to go. The hangars at the end of the isthmus airstrip were over a mile across the facility from the Lowenhardts' prison quarters. Besides a satellite photo of the facility for a guide, they now had the assistance of the scientists, who were familiar with the layout of the streets.

Claus Lowenhardt fell back to talk softly to Giordino. "Is your friend truly in control of our situation?"

"Let's just say that Dirk is a man of infinite resource who could talk or extricate himself out of almost any awkward situation."

"You trust him." It was a statement more than a question.

"With my life. I've known him for almost forty years and he hasn't failed me yet."

"Is he an intelligence agent?"

"Hardly." Giordino could not suppress a soft laugh. "Dirk is a marine engineer. He's special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I'm his second in command."

"God help us!" Lowenhardt muttered. "If I had known you were not highly trained undercover CIA agents, I would have never come with you and risked my wife's life."

"Your lives couldn't be in the hands of a better man," Giordino assured him, his voice low and hard as concrete.

Pitt moved from one structure to another, trying to stay in the shadows away from the streetlamps and overhead lights on the roofs of the buildings. It was not an easy journey. The facility was brightly lit from one end to the other. Floodlights had been installed on every building, along every street to discourage anyone from trying to escape. Because of the abundance of illumination, Pitt scanned the territory through binoculars rather than his nightscope, continually checking for evidence of guards lurking in the shadows.

"The streets seem unusually empty of patrols," he murmured.

"That's because the guards turn loose the dogs until morning," said Hilda.

Giordino came to an abrupt halt. "You didn't say anything about dogs."

"I wasn't asked," she said blankly.

"I'll bet they're Dobermans," Giordino moaned. "I hate Dobermans."

"We're lucky we got this far," Pitt said frankly. "We'll have to be doubly careful from now on."

"And with us fresh out of meat," Giordino grumbled.

Pitt was about to lower his binoculars when he detected a high chain-link fence with circular barbwire running along the top. He could see that a gate on the road leading to the airstrip was guarded by two men who were clearly exposed by an overhead light. Pitt re-focused the lenses and peered again. They were not men but women in blue jumpsuits. Two unleashed dogs nosed the ground in front of the gate. They were Dobermans, and he smiled to himself at Giordino's revulsion of them.

"We have a fence barring the road to the airstrip," he said, passing the binoculars to Giordino.

Giordino peered through the lenses. "Did you notice there is a smaller fence running a few feet in front of the big one?"

"No doubt built to protect the dogs?"

"To keep them from turning crispy-crunchy." Giordino paused and traversed the fence a hundred yards in each direction. "The main fence probably has enough electrical juice running through it to barbecue a buffalo." Giordino paused to check the neighborhood. "And not a vacant street sweeper in sight."

Abruptly, the ground began to move and a low rumbling sound swept the facility. The trees swayed and the windows of the buildings rattled. It was a tremor like the one they experienced inside the lighthouse and on the river. This one lasted longer, over a minute before tapering off. The Dobermans went into a barking frenzy as the guards milled around uneasily. There would be no creeping up on the guards undetected while the dogs were excited and alert.

"We felt an earth tremor earlier," Pitt said to Claus. "Is it coming from the volcano?

"Indirectly," he answered matter-of-factly. "One of the scientists on our research team, Dr. Alfred Honoma, a geophysicist who was lured away from the University of Hawaii, is an expert on volcanoes. In his opinion the tremors have nothing to do with superheated rock ascending through the volcano's fissures. He claims the impending danger is a sudden slip of the volcano's slope that will cause a catastrophic flank collapse."

"How long have you experienced these tremors?" asked Pitt.

"They began a year ago," replied Hilda. "They've increased in frequency until now they come less than an hour apart."

"They've also amplified in intensity," added Claus. "According to Dr. Honoma, some unexplained phenomenon beneath the mountain has caused its surface to shift."

Pitt nodded at Giordino. "The fourth tunnel runs under the base of the volcano."

Giordino merely nodded in agreement.

"Did Honoma have a prediction as to when the shift will occur?" Pitt inquired.

"He thought the final slip might take place at any time."

"What would be the consequences?" Giordino asked.

"If Dr. Honoma is correct," replied Claus, "a devastating flank collapse would unleash a cubic mile of rock, sending it sliding down the mountain slope toward the lake at speeds up to eighty miles an hour."

"That would trigger massive waves once it hit water," said Pitt.

"Yes, the waves could easily wipe out every town and village surrounding the lake."

"What about the Odyssey facility?"

"Since it covers a good part of the volcano's slope, the entire works would be swept away and buried." Claus paused and then he added grimly, "And everybody with it."

"Isn't Odyssey management aware of the threat?"

"They called in their own geologists, who argued that flank collapses are quite rare and only happen somewhere in the world every ten thousand years. My understanding is that word came down from Mr. Specter that there was no threat and to ignore it."

"Specter isn't noted for being considerate of his employees' welfare," said Pitt, recalling the incident on board the Ocean Wanderer.

Suddenly, everyone stiffened and stared up into star-peppered sky toward the unmistakable sound of a helicopter coming in from the air terminal. From the floodlights on the ground the lavender color was clearly visible. They all stood immobile, pressed against the wall of a building, as the rotor blades pounded the night air toward them.

"They're looking for us," rasped a frightened Claus Lowenhardt, clutching his wife around her shoulders.

"Not likely," Pitt asserted. "The pilot isn't circling in a search pattern. They're not onto us yet."

The craft flew directly over them, not more than two hundred feet above. Giordino felt as if he could have hit it with a well-thrown rock. Any second the landing lights would come on and target them like rats in a barn under a dozen flashlights. Then Dame Fortune smiled. The pilot didn't flick on his landing lights until the craft had passed safely beyond where they stood. It banked sharply toward the roof of what looked like a glass-walled office building, hovered and then settled.

Pitt took the binoculars from Giordino and trained them on the aircraft as it landed and the rotor blades slowly swung to a stop. The door came open and several figures in lavender jumpsuits crowded around the steps, as a woman stepped down, wearing a gold jumpsuit. He gently rotated the adjustment until he had a sharp definition. He couldn't be absolutely positive, but he would have bet a year's pay that the person who climbed from the helicopter was the woman who called herself Rita Anderson.

His face tightened with anger as he passed the binoculars back to Giordino. "Look closely at the queen in the gold jumpsuit."

Giordino studied the woman closely and watched as she and her retinue walked toward the elevator that led down from the roof. "Our pal from the yacht," he spoke, in a voice low and vicious. "The one who murdered Renee. My kingdom for a sniper rifle."

"Nothing we can do about her," Pitt said regretfully. "Our number one priority is to get the Lowenhardts to Washington in one piece."

"And speaking of one piece, how are we getting past an electric fence, three Dobermans and two heavily armed security guards?"

"Not through," Pitt said quietly, as his mind calculated the odds on a long shot, "but over.'"

The Lowenhardts stood quietly, not quite knowing what to make of the conversation. Giordino followed Pitt's gaze toward the helicopter on the top of the office building a block away, his expression cool and focused. Wordlessly, silently, a plan took root between them. Pitt lifted the binoculars and studied the building.

"The headquarters office of the facility," he said. "It looks unguarded."

"No reason for them to lock people inside. All the workers are loyal employees of Odyssey."

"And no paranoia about unwanted guests entering through the front doors." Pitt tilted the glasses. The pilots followed Rita into the elevator, leaving the helicopter seemingly deserted. "We'll never have a better opportunity."

"I fail to see an opportunity in gaining entrance to a busy office building, bluffing our way past two hundred workers, trespassing to the tenth floor to steal a helicopter without someone suspecting a band of rats in their lair."

"Maybe it would help if I could find you a lavender jumpsuit."

Giordino gave Pitt a look that would have withered a redwood. "I've already gone beyond the call of duty. You'll have to think of something else."

Pitt walked up to the Lowenhardts, who were standing with their arms around each other. They looked apprehensive but not frightened. "We're going to enter the headquarters building and ascend to the roof, where we will appropriate the helicopter," Pitt said. "Stay close to me. If we run into trouble, drop to the floor. We can't have you obstructing our line of fire. Our best hope is to act audacious. Al and I will try to make it look like we're escorting you to a meeting or interrogation or whatever scam works best. Once we reach the roof, hurry into the aircraft quickly and tighten your seat belts. The takeoff might be very rough."

Claus and Hilda solemnly assured him they would follow his instructions. They were in it now up to their ears and had crossed over the point of no return. Pitt had faith in their adhering to his instructions to the letter. They had no choice.

They walked along the edge of the street until they reached the steps leading up to the entrance of the headquarters. A passing truck caught them in its headlights. But the driver took no notice of them. Two women, one in lavender, the other in a white jumpsuit, were standing just outside the portal, smoking cigarettes. This time with Giordino in the lead, who smiled politely, they passed through the big glass door into the lobby. Several women and only one man milled about the lobby in conversation. Few looked their way as Pitt and the others passed, and those who glanced at them did so without suspicion.

Moving along as if it was a common, everyday routine, Giordino hurried the group into an empty elevator before the doors closed. But no sooner had everyone entered, and before he could push the button for the roof exit, than an attractive blond woman in lavender entered, leaned in front of him and pressed the button for the eighth floor.

She turned and studied the Lowenhardts, paused significantly as a look of wariness came to her eyes. "Where are you taking these people?" she demanded in English.

Giordino hesitated, unsure of what tack to take. Undaunted, Pitt stepped beside Giordino and said in broken Spanish, "Perdónenos para inglés no parlante." [Forgive us for English nontalking].

The eyes suddenly blazed. "I wasn't speaking to you!" she snapped maliciously. "I was talking to the lady."

Caught in the middle of the exchange, Giordino was afraid of speaking, his voice a sure giveaway that he wasn't feminine. When he spoke, it was a squeaky high pitch that sounded odd and hollow inside the elevator.

"I speak a little inglés."

His answer was a penetrating stare. She studied his face and her eyes widened as she saw his five o'clock shadow. She reached out and rubbed one hand across his cheek. "You're a man!" she blurted. She wheeled and reached out to stop the elevator at the next floor, but Pitt slapped her hand down.

The Odyssey representative looked at Pitt in disbelief. "How dare you?"

He smiled devilishly. "You've made such an impression on me that I'm stealing you away to a better world."

"You're crazy!"

"Like a fox." The elevator stopped on the eighth floor, but Pitt pushed the close door button. The doors remained shut, the motor hummed and it continued upward to its last stop on the roof above the tenth floor.

"What is going on here?" For the first time she took a good look at the Lowenhardts, who seemed amused by the exchange. Her face clouded. "I know these people. They're supposed to be confined at night in the prison building. Where are you taking them?"

"To the nearest bathroom," Pitt answered nonchalantly.

The woman didn't know whether to stop the elevator or scream. Confused, she fell back on her womanly instinct and opened her mouth to scream. Pitt showed no hesitation in ramming his right fist into her jaw. She went down like a sack of wet flour. Giordino grabbed her under the arms before she hit the floor and pulled her into a corner, where she was out of sight when the doors opened.

"Why didn't you simply gag her?" asked Hilda, shocked at seeing Pitt brutally strike the woman.

"Because she would have bitten my hand, and I didn't feel in a chivalrous mood to let her do it."

Agonizingly, with apparently infinite slowness, the elevator rose the final few feet of its ascent and reached the stop on the tenth floor leading to the roof. After it eased smoothly to a halt, the doors spread apart and they exited.

Right into a group of four uniformed security guards who had been standing out of sight behind a large air-conditioning unit.

The atmosphere was one of calm if not an equal level of anxiety in Sandecker's penthouse apartment at the Watergate in Washington. He paced the floor under a trail of blue smoke from one of his mammoth, specially wrapped cigars. Some men might have acted as gentlemen with ladies present rather than enshrouding them with tobacco fumes, but not the admiral. They either accepted his noxious habit or he didn't entertain them. And, despite this liability, single ladies of Washington passed over his doorstep with surprising frequency.

Considered a prestigious catch because he was an unmarried widower with a daughter and three grandchildren who lived in Hong Kong, Sandecker was besieged with dinner invitations. Either fortuitously or unluckily, depending upon how one looked at it, he was constantly introduced to single ladies looking for a husband or a relationship. Amazingly, the admiral was a master at juggling five ladies at the same time, one of the reasons he was a fitness nut.

His lady of the evening, Congresswoman Bertha Garcia, who stepped into the office of her late husband, Marcus, was sitting on the balcony, drinking a glass of fine port while viewing the lights of the capital. Stylishly attired in a short black cocktail dress after attending a party with the admiral, she gazed with amusement at Sandecker's nervousness.

"Why don't you sit down, Jim, before you wear out the carpet?"

He stopped and came over to her, placing a hand against her cheek. "Forgive me for ignoring you, but I've got a situation with two of my people down in Nicaragua." He sat down heavily beside her. "What if I told you that our east coast and Europe were going to suffer severe winters the likes of which we've never seen."

"We can always survive a bad year."

"I'm talking centuries."

She set her glass on a patio table. "Certainly not with global warming."

"With global warming," he said firmly.

The phone rang and he marched in and picked it up from his penthouse office desk.

"Yes?"

"Rudi, Admiral," came Gunn's voice. "Still no word."

"Have they made entry?"

"We've heard nothing since they left on a jet ski across the lake from Granada."

"I don't like it," Sandecker muttered. "We should have heard from them by now."

"We should leave jobs like this to the intelligence agencies," said Gunn.

"I agree, but there was no stopping Dirk and Al."

"They'll make it," Gunn said reassuringly. "They always do."

"Yes," Sandecker said heavily. "But someday the law of averages will catch up and their luck will run out."

39

The guards were as surprised to see the group exit the elevator as Pitt was to see them. Three wore the blue jumpsuits of security guards, the fourth was a woman dressed in green. Pitt guessed she was of a higher rank than the men. Unlike the others, she carried no assault rifle. Her only weapon was a small automatic pistol in a belt holster on her hip. Pitt quickly took the initiative. He walked up to the woman.

"Are you in charge here?" he asked, in a voice calm and authoritative.

The woman, taken back momentarily, stared at him. "I'm in charge. What are you doing here?"

Relieved that she spoke English, he motioned to the Lowenhardts. "We found these two wandering around the fourth floor. Nobody seemed to know how they came to be there. We were told to turn them over to the guards on the roof. That's you."

The woman studied the Lowenhardts, who were looking at Pitt with growing shock and fear in their eyes.

"I know these people. They are scientists who work on the project. They're supposed to be confined to their quarters."

"There was a disturbance, a vehicle caught fire. They must have escaped during the commotion."

The female guard, looking confused, did not question how the Lowenhardts came to be in the headquarters building. "Who told you to bring them to the roof?"

Pitt shrugged. "A lady in a lavender jumpsuit."

The three guards, with their assault rifles held at the ready, appeared to relax. They seemed to buy the story, even if their superior was doubtful. "What are your work positions?" she demanded.

Giordino took a few steps toward the helicopter, turned his head away and looked as if he was admiring it. Pitt stared directly into the woman's eyes. "We work in the tunnels. Our supervisor sent us topside for two days' rest." Out of the corner of one eye he saw Giordino slowly, imperceptibly, move behind the guards.

The story worked before. He hoped it would work again. It did. The woman nodded.

"That doesn't explain why you were in headquarters this time of night."

"We've been ordered back down tomorrow and were instructed to come here and pick up our passes."

He missed on that one. "What passes? I know of no passes issued to tunnel workers. Your identification badges should suffice."

"I only do what I'm told," he said, acting irritated. "Do you want to take charge of these prisoners or not?"

Before she could reply, Giordino had his big gun in one hand. In one lightning motion, he lashed the barrel against one guard's head and then swung it hard against the head of the second guard. The third removed his hands from his rifle when he saw the gaping muzzle of Giordino's .50 caliber automatic aimed between his eyes.

"That's much better," Pitt said quietly. He turned to Giordino and smiled. "A credible piece of work."

Giordino returned a slight grin. "I thought so."

"Take their guns."

The woman's hand crept toward her holstered pistol.

Pitt said, "I wouldn't if I were you."

The female guard's face was a mask of wrath, but she was smart enough to know the odds were against her. She raised her hands as Giordino removed her gun. "Who are you?" she hissed.

"I wish people would stop asking me that." Pitt pointed at the guard still standing. "Remove your uniform. Quickly!"

The guard quickly unzipped the front of his jumpsuit and stepped out of it. Pitt did the same with his black suit. Then he slipped into the blue one.

"Down on the roof next to your men," Pitt ordered the woman and the half-naked guard.

"What are you up to?" Giordino inquired casually.

"Like the airlines, I hate taking off with a half-empty aircraft."

Without further probing, Giordino knew what Pitt had on his mind. He stood in front and over his prisoners so they could see his gun muzzle swing from head to head. He looked at the Lowenhardts. "Time to board," he said firmly.

Obediently and without complaint, the two elderly people climbed into the helicopter, as Pitt walked toward the elevator. A few seconds later, the door closed and he was gone.

Inside an office penthouse on the tenth floor below the roof stretched a magnificent flow of rooms. The lavender suite, as it was appropriately named, was decorated as if swept by a tidal wave of the same color. The enormous ceilings were trimmed around the edges in lavender, with large domes painted in scenes depicting strange religious rituals and dances performed by women in flowing dresses under backgrounds of scenic forests surrounding lakes and mythical mountains. The vast wall-to-wall carpet was lavender flecked with gold, its thickness almost ankle-deep. The furniture was carved from white marble shaped like throne chairs often displayed on a Grecian vase.

They were padded with thick lavender cushions. The chandeliers were coated with a deep iridescent lavender, their crystals surrounding the lights dyed to match. The walls were done in the same universal color, but in a rich velvet. High massive curtains were cut and draped from the same material. Sensual, exotic, decadent, a true dream fantasy, the effect stunned the eye of the viewer far beyond any sight they might have ever imagined.

Two women were seated on a long marble couch, reclined luxuriously in massively thick cushions. An ornately sculptured glass table stood between them with a bucket containing a vintage champagne whose bottle bore a custom lavender label. One of the women was attired in a golden gown, the other was dressed in purple. Their long red hair matched precisely, as if they used the same bottle of dye and same hairstylist. If they had not moved, an observer might have thought they were part of the outrageous decor.

The lady in purple sipped her champagne from a tulip-stemmed glass and said in a voice devoid of inflection: "Our timetable is on schedule. Ten million units of Macha will be ready for retail sale by the first snowfall. After that, our friends in China will have their assembly lines operating at full production. Their new factories will go on line by the end of summer and production will soar to two million units a month."

"Are distribution channels in place?" asked the lady in gold, who was devastatingly beautiful.

"Warehouses either constructed or rented throughout Europe and the northeastern United States are already receiving shipments from China's cargo fleet."

"We were fortunate that Druantia was able to step into her father's shoes and increase our desperate need for platinum."

"Without it we could never have met the demand."

"Have you arrived at a time to open the tunnels?"

The lady in purple nodded. "September tenth is the date calculated by our scientists. They estimated that it will take sixty days to bring down the temperature of the Gulf Stream to where it will cause extreme cold in the northern latitudes."

The lady in gold smiled and poured another glass of champagne. "Then everything is in place."

The other nodded and raised her glass. "To you, Epona, who will soon become the most powerful woman in the history of the world."

"And to you, Flidais, who made it happen."

Pitt surmised correctly that the main office suite would be on the top floor below the roof. The secretaries and office workers had left hours earlier and the halls were empty when he stepped from the elevator. Wearing the blue coveralls of a security guard, he had no problem walking past two other guards, who paid him scant attention as he passed into the anteroom of the main suite. He found it unguarded so he very quietly pushed open the door and stepped inside, eased the door closed, turned and froze in astonishment, overwhelmed by the tidal wave of the decor.

He heard voices in the next room and slipped between a wall and lavender curtains draped over an arched doorway that were pulled back by gold sashes. He saw the two women lounging in luxury on the couch and scanned the ostentatious suite that would have, in his mind, made the fanciest brothel look like a shack by a railroad track. The occupants were alone. He stepped past the drapes and stood in the middle of the doorway, admiring the beauty of the two women as they continued conversing without turning and finding an intruder in their midst.

"Will you be leaving soon?" Flidais asked Epona.

"In a few days. I have to take care of a little damage control in Washington. A congressional committee is investigating our newly acquired mining operations in Montana. The state's politicians are upset because we're taking all of the iridium ore for our own use and leaving none for sale to U.S. commercial enterprises or their government."

Epona leaned back comfortably in the thick pillows. "And you, my dear friend, what is on your agenda?"

"I've hired an international investigation company to track down the two men who penetrated our security and roamed the tunnels before escaping through the lighthouse ventilator."

"Any idea of their identities?"

"I suspect they were members of the National Underwater and Marine Agency. The same ones I escaped from after they destroyed our yacht."

"You think our efforts for secrecy have been compromised?"

Flidais shook her head. "I don't think so. At least not yet. Our agents have reported no activity by U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the tunnels. There has been a strange silence. It's as if those devils from NUMA disappeared off the face of the earth."

"We need not be unduly concerned. It's too late for the Americans to stop our operation. And besides, it's doubtful they've discovered the tunnel's true purpose. Only eight more days and they'll be open and pumping the South Equatorial Current into the Pacific."

"I'm hoping the reason for their silence is that they haven't put two and two together and found a threat."

"That would explain their inaction."

"On the other hand," Epona said, thoughtfully, "one would think they'd seek retaliation for the murder of a member of their crew."

"An execution that was a matter of necessity," Flidais assured her.

"I disagree," said Pitt. "Cold-blooded murder is never a matter of necessity."

There was a stunned moment in time, the champagne glass held between Epona's manicured fingers fell silently to the thick carpet. Both heads whirled around, their long hair snapping around like whips. The long-lashed eyes flashed from surprise to irritation at being interrupted by an unauthorized intrusion by one of their own security personnel. Then came surprise at seeing Pitt's Colt aimed in their direction.

Pitt caught the flick of Epona's eyes toward a small golden remote on the carpet under the glass table. Her foot began slipping toward it. "Not a smart move, dear heart," he said casually.

The foot stopped, her toe inches from one of the buttons. Then she slowly withdrew her foot.

In that instant Flidais recognized Pitt. "You!" she said sharply.

"Hello, Rita, or whatever you call yourself." His eyes swept the room. "You seem to have come up in the world."

The amber-brown eyes glared at him in cold anger. "How did you get in here?"

"Don't you like my designer jumpsuit?" he said, as if modeling at a fashion show. "It's amazing the doors they open."

"Flidais, who is this man?" Epona asked, studying Pitt as one would a specimen in a zoo.

"My name is Dirk Pitt. Your friend and I met off the east coast of Nicaragua. As I recall, she wore a yellow bikini and owned an elegant yacht."

"Which you destroyed," Flidais hissed like a flared cobra.

"I don't recall you giving us a choice."

"What do you want?" inquired Epona, staring at him through jade eyes flecked with gold.

"I think it only fair that Flidais — is that what you call her? — answer for her crimes."

"May I ask what you have in mind?" she asked, staring at him enigmatically.

This woman was a class act, Pitt decided, nothing fazed her, not even the muzzle of his gun. "I'm taking her on a little flight north."

"Just like that."

Pitt nodded. "Just like that."

"And if I refuse," Flidais snarled contemptuously.

"Let's just say you won't enjoy the consequences."

"If I don't do as you say, you'll kill me. Is that it?"

He placed the muzzle of his Colt .45 against the side of her face next to her left eye. "No, I'll simply blow out your eyeballs. You'll live to old age, blind and ugly as sin."

"You're crude and vulgar, like most men," said Epona indignantly. "I'd have expected no less from you."

"It's nice to know I didn't disappoint such an astute and beautiful lady."

"You need not patronize me, Mr. Pitt."

"I'm not patronizing you, Epona, I'm tolerating you." He got to her on that one, he thought, pleased with himself. "Perhaps we'll meet again someday under more enjoyable circumstances."

"Do not count your blessings, Mr. Pitt. I don't see a happy life in your future."

"Funny, you don't look like a gypsy."

He nudged Flidais softly in the back of one shoulder with his gun and followed her from the room. He stopped in the doorway and turned to Epona. "Before I forget, it wouldn't be wise to open the tunnels and divert the South Equatorial Current to send Europe into a deep freeze. I know of a lot of people who might not like it."

He took Flidais by the arm and led her lively but not hurriedly through the arched doorway, down the hallway and into the elevator. Once inside, Flidais stood straight and smoothed her flowing gown. "You're not only boorish, Mr. Pitt, but you're exceedingly stupid as well."

"Oh, how so?"

"You'll never leave the building. There are security personnel on every floor. You don't stand a prayer of passing through the lobby without being apprehended."

"Who said anything about going through the lobby?"

Flidais's eyes widened as the elevator moved up and stopped on the roof. He prodded her out onto the roof as the doors opened. "I don't mean to rush you, but things are about to heat up around here."

She saw the guards lying on the ground with Giordino standing over them, nonchalantly sweeping the barrel of an assault rifle from one head to the other. Then her gaze turned to the idle helicopter and she knew any hope of her security guards intercepting Pitt and his partner had flown away on the night air. Seeking a final desperate avenue, her eyes blazed at Pitt. "You can't pilot a helicopter."

"Sorry to disappoint you," Pitt answered in a patient tone. "Both Al and I can fly this bird."

Giordino glanced at Flidais, took in her elegant gown and smiled nastily. "I see you found Rita. You pick her up at a party?"

"A party of two downing expensive vintage champagne. Her name is Flidais. She's coming with us. Keep an eye on her."

"Both eyes," Giordino said icily.

Pitt glanced briefly at Flidais as he entered the helicopter. The glare had gone out of the eyes. The calm and lack of fear had altered to trepidation.

He briefly glanced at the helicopter before he moved swiftly into the cockpit and sat in the pilot's seat. It was an McDonnell-Douglas Explorer model with twin Pratt & Whitney turboshaft engines built by MD Helicopters of Mesa, Arizona. He was pleased to see that it was a rotor craft with an antitorque system that eliminated the tail rotor.

He checked to be sure the fuel shutoff valve was on and took the cyclic and collective friction off. Then, with the pedals and throttles moving smoothly, the circuit breakers in and the mixture to full rich, he turned the master switch on. Next came the ignition, and both engines began turning over, eventually reaching idling rpms. Finally, Pitt made certain all warning lights were out.

He leaned out the side window and shouted to Giordino over the whine of the twin turbines. "Jump aboard!"

Giordino was not as polite as Pitt. He literally lifted Flidais off her feet and flung her inside the rotor craft. Then he climbed in and closed the big sliding door. The interior was stylish and elegant with four large leather seats with burled-walnut consoles, one containing a compact office system with computer, fax and a satellite television phone. The console between the opposite seats held a bar with crystal decanters and glasses.

The Lowenhardts sat with seat belts buckled, staring mutely at Flidais who was still sprawled on the floor where Giordino had thrown her. Giordino reached under her arms, pulled her erect and dropped her into a seat, buckling her seat belt. He handed the assault rifle to Claus Lowenhardt.

"If she lifts her little finger, shoot her."

Having no love for his former female captors, Claus relished the opportunity.

"Our agents will be waiting for you when we land in Managua," Flidais said scornfully.

"That's comforting to know."

Giordino turned quickly, entered the cockpit and dropped into the copilot's seat. Pitt glanced at the elevator doors and saw them close. Alerted by the woman in the suite, security guards were waiting for it to descend before they could swarm up to the roof. He reached down and pulled up on the collective, lifting the helicopter into the air. Then he pushed the cyclic forward, the nose dipped and the MD Explorer leaped from the roof of the building. Pitt quickly brought the aircraft up to its top speed of one hundred and eighty-four miles an hour, soaring over the Odyssey facility toward the airstrip stretching between the volcanic mountains. As soon as he reached the slopes of the Madera volcano, he banked the Explorer around the peak and brought it down less than thirty feet above the trees before crossing over the shore above the waters of the lake.

"Not heading for Managua, I hope," said Giordino, putting on his earphones. "Her Royal Highness said her flunkies will be waiting for us."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Pitt said with a wide grin. "That's why we're heading west out over the Pacific before cutting south to San Jose, Costa Rica."

"Do we have enough fuel?"

"Once we take her to cruising speed, we should make it with a couple of gallons to spare."

Pitt skimmed the surface, staying out of contact with Odyssey's radar systems, before crossing over the spit of land on the west side of the lake. Ten miles out to sea, he turned south and slowly increased altitude as Giordino locked in a course for San Jose. For the rest of the flight, Giordino kept a wary eye on the fuel gauges.

There was a light overcast, not thick enough for rain but just enough to blot out the stars. Pitt was tired, more worn-out than he could ever remember. He turned over the controls to Giordino and slouched in his seat, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. There was still one more job to do before he could allow himself the luxury of sleep. He pulled the satellite phone from a waterproof bag and dialed Sandecker's private line.

The admiral's voice came through the earpiece almost immediately. "Yes!"

"We're out," Pitt said wearily.

"About time."

"There was little need for an extended tour."

"Where are you now?"

"In a stolen helicopter on our way to San Jose, Costa Rica."

Sandecker paused to take it in. "You didn't feel you had to snoop around the facility during the daylight hours?"

"We had a break," said Pitt, fighting to keep from nodding off.

"You collected the data we need?" Sandecker asked impatiently.

"We have everything," replied Pitt. "Through the use of scientists he took as hostages, Specter has perfected fuel cell technology by using nitrogen instead of hydrogen. The Red Chinese are cranking out millions of electrical heat-generating units, which will be distributed and ready for sale when they open the tunnels and the freeze hits the U.S. coast and Europe this winter."

"Are you telling me this crazy scheme is all for the sale of fuel cells?" Sandecker said incredulously.

"You're talking hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention the power that will come from owning the monopoly. No matter how you slice it, the world economy will be in Specter's pocket when the first snow starts to fall."

"You're certain Specter has perfected the technology when the best minds in the world have yet to make a breakthrough," Sandecker persisted.

"Specter has the best minds," Pitt countered. "You'll get the story from two of them who worked on the project."

"They're with you?" Sandecker said with growing anticipation.

"Sitting just behind me along with the woman who murdered Renee Ford."

Sandecker looked like a batter who had hit a home run with his eyes shut. "You have her too?"

"Charter a plane for us in San Jose and we'll set her in your lap by this time tomorrow."

"I'll put Rudi right on it," said Sandecker, pleasure and excitement evident in his voice. "Come to the office with your party as soon as you land."

There was no reply.

"Dirk, are you still there?"

Pitt had dozed off and was blissfully unaware that he had broken the connection.

40

The Air Canada jet bumped through a thick cloud whose soft white curves showed the first orange tint from the setting sun. As the plane began its slow descent toward Guadeloupe, Summer gazed through her window and watched the deep, dark blue-purple water below turn to light blue and then turquoise as the aircraft flew over the reefs and lagoons. Sitting next to her in the aisle seat, Dirk studied a chart of the waters around the Isles des Saintes, a group of islands to the south of Guadeloupe.

She stared with growing curiosity as the two main islands of Basse-Terre and Grande-Terre merged together in the shape of a butterfly. Basse-Terre formed the western wing and was blanketed with thickly forested hills and mountains. Surrounded by lush ferns, its rain forest contains some of the Caribbean's highest waterfalls, which flow down from the island's loftiest peak, La Soufriere, a smoldering volcano that rises above forty-eight hundred feet. Both islands, with a total land area the size of Luxembourg, were separated by a narrow channel filled with mangroves called the Riviere Salee.

The eastern wing of the butterfly, Grande-Terre was a contrast to Basse-Terre. The island is mostly dominated by flat terrain and rolling hills, much of which is cultivated in sugarcane, the major source for the three distilleries that produce Guadeloupe's fine rums.

Summer's heart rose in anticipation of enjoying some of the island's many black and white sand beaches that were romantically edged with swaying palms. Deep down, she knew it was probably wishful thinking. Once she and Dirk had finished their survey for Odysseus' lost fleet, Admiral Sandecker would no doubt order them home without allowing a few days of rest and enjoyment. She made up her mind to stay, regardless of the consequences of incurring the admiral's wrath.

The plane made a wide circle that took it over Pointe-a-Pitre, the commercial capital of Guadeloupe. She looked down at the red tile roofs mingled with those of corrugated metal. The pleasant town was embellished by a picturesque square in its center surrounded by outdoor shops and cafes. The narrow streets seemed busy and lively, with people heading home for dinner. Few drove cars. Many of them walked while most rode motorcycles and motor scooters. Lights were already beginning to flicker on in the little houses around the port city. Ships were tied to docks, with little fishing boats coming into harbor after a day's catch.

The pilot settled the plane on the landing approach to Guadeloupe's Pole Caraibes Airport. The landing gear thumped as the wheels dropped and locked, and the wing flaps hummed into a downward position. For a brief instant, the last of the setting sun flashed into the windows before the plane settled onto the runway with the usual bounce, protest of tires and shrill whine of the reverse thrust of the turbines as the plane braked before taxiing to the terminal.

Summer always loved early evenings in the tropics. The offshore breezes usually came up and blew away the worst of the day's heat and humidity. She loved the smell of wet vegetation after a rain and the aroma of the ever-present tropical flowers.

"How's your French?" Dirk asked Summer as they descended the boarding stairs from their aircraft at the Guadeloupe airport.

"About as good as your Swahili," she said, looking radiant in a vibrant flowered skirt and matching blouse. "Why do you ask?"

"Only the tourists speak English. The locals speak French or a French-Creole dialect."

"Since neither of us majored in languages in school, we'll just have to use sign language."

Dirk gave his sister a long look and then laughed. He handed her a small book. "Here's an English-French dictionary. I'll lean on you for any translations."

They walked into the terminal and followed the first passengers off the plane to Health and Immigration. The immigration agent looked up at them before he stamped their passports. "In Guadeloupe for business or pleasure?" he asked in fluent English.

Summer wrinkled her pert nose at Dirk. "Pleasure," she replied, flashing what appeared to be a large diamond ring on her left hand. "We're on our honeymoon."

The agent coolly eyed her breasts, nodded and smiled approvingly as he pounded the stamp on blank passport pages. "Enjoy your stay." He said it in a tone that bordered on the unvirtuous.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Dirk asked, "What is this stuff about our being on a honeymoon? And where did you get that ring?"

"I thought acting as newlyweds was a good cover," she answered. "The ring is glass. It cost me all of eight dollars."

"I hope no one takes a close look at it or they'll think I'm the cheapest husband in the world."

They walked into the luggage area, where they had to wait twenty minutes for their bags to arrive. After loading them onto a cart, they cleared customs and moved into the lobby of the terminal. A small crowd of thirty or so people stood waiting to greet friends and relatives. One little man in a white suit with the medium-dark skin of a Creole held a little sign that read: pitt.

"That's us," said Dirk. "This is Summer and I'm Dirk Pitt."

"Charles Moreau." The little man held out his hand. His eyes were as black as ink and he had a nose that looked sharp enough to fight a duel. He came up to Summer's shoulders in a body that was as slim as a sapling. "Your flight was only ten minutes late. That has to be some kind of record." Then he bowed, took Summer's hand and brushed his lips over her knuckles in true continental fashion. "Admiral Sandecker said you were a handsome couple."

"I assume he also told you we are brother and sister."

"He did. Is there a problem?"

Dirk glanced at Summer, who smiled in mock innocence. "Just wanted to be clear on that point."

Summer and Moreau moved through the exit doors while Dirk followed with the baggage cart. An attractive raven-haired woman wearing the traditional Creole dress — a full vividly colored skirt in a madras plaid of orange and yellow, matching headdress and a white lace blouse with petticoat and scarf draped over one shoulder — walked squarely into Dirk from the side. Wise in the ways of travel, he immediately patted the pocket that held his wallet, but it was still in place.

She stood there, massaging her shoulder. "I'm so sorry. It was my fault."

"Are you hurt?" Dirk asked solicitously.

"Now I know what it feels like to run into a tree." Then she looked up at him and smiled openly. "I'm Simone Raizet. Perhaps I'll see you around town."

"Perhaps," Pitt replied, without offering his name.

The woman nodded at Summer. "You have a handsome and charming man."

"He can be on occasion," Summer said with a trace of sarcasm.

The woman then turned and walked into the terminal.

"What do you make of that?" said Pitt, bemused.

"You can't say she wasn't brazen," muttered Summer.

"Most strange," said Moreau. "She gives the impression she lives here. I was born on this island, and I've never laid eyes on her before."

Summer looked vaguely concerned. "If you ask me, the collision was preplanned."

"I agree," said Dirk. "She was after something. I don't know what. But our encounter didn't look accidental."

Moreau led them across the street to the parking lot and stopped at a BMW 525 sedan. He pushed the security lock on his key ring and opened the trunk. Dirk deposited the luggage and they settled into the seats. Moreau pulled out onto the road leading to Pointe-a-Pitre.

"I've reserved a small suite with two rooms for you at the Canella Beach Hotel, one of our most popular hotels, and one where a young couple on a budget might stay. Admiral Sandecker's instructions stated that you were to keep a low profile during your search for treasure."

"Historical treasure," Summer corrected him.

"He's right," said Dirk. "If word leaked that NUMA was on a treasure hunt, we'd be mobbed."

"And thrown off the islands," added Moreau. "Our government has strict laws protecting our underwater heritage."

"If we're successful," said Summer, "your people will inherit an epoch-making discovery."

"All the more reason to keep your expedition secret."

"Are you an old friend of the admiral?"

"I met James many years ago when I was the Guadeloupe consul in New York. Since I've retired, he hires me on occasion for NUMA business in and around this part of the Caribbean."

Moreau drove through the lush green hills down to the harbor and around the city along the southeast shore of Grande-Terre, until he reached the outskirts of the town of Gosier. Then he took a small dirt road that wound around back to the main thoroughfare.

Summer gazed through her window and admired the houses that sat amid lush, beautifully maintained gardens. "Giving us a tour of the country?"

"A taxicab has been hanging on us rather closely since we left the airport," said Moreau. "I wanted to see if he was following us."

Dirk turned in his seat and peered through the rear window. "The green Ford?"

"The same."

Moreau left the residential section and skirted around a steady stream of buses, tourists on motor scooters and the city's fleet of taxis. The driver of the green Ford taxi struggled to keep up, but was hindered by the slow-moving traffic. Moreau expertly threaded his way around two buses that blocked both sides of the road. He made a sharp right turn onto a narrow street that ran between rows of homes whose quaint architectural style was French Colonial. He made another left-hand turn and then another at the next block until he was on the main road again. The taxi swung over a path beside the road around the buses, gained the lost distance and stuck to Moreau's rear bumper like glue.

"It's interested in us, all right," said Dirk.

"Let us see if I can lose him," said Moreau.

He waited until there was a break in the traffic. Then, instead of turning, he shot straight ahead and darted through the traffic onto the street across the main road. The taxi driver was impeded by the stream of motor scooters, cars and buses a good thirty seconds before he could break through and take up the chase.

Turning a corner and temporarily losing sight of the taxi, Moreau swung into the driveway of a house and parked behind a large oleander bush. A few moments later the green taxi swept past the driveway at high speed and was soon lost in a dust cloud. They remained waiting for a few minutes before Moreau backed out of the driveway and joined the traffic rush again on the main road.

"We've lost him, but I'm afraid it may be only temporary."

"Having missed us," mused Dirk, "he may pull the same trick and wait for us."

"I doubt it," said Summer confidently. "My money says he's still on a wild-goose chase."

"You lose." Dirk laughed, pointing through the windshield toward the green Ford that was parked along the side of the road, its driver talking excitedly over a cell phone. "Pull over next to him, Charles."

Coming up behind the taxi slowly, Moreau suddenly pulled around and stopped inches away. Dirk leaned out the window and knocked on the door of the taxi.

"Are you looking for us?"

The startled driver took one look at Dirk's grinning face, dropped the cell phone, jammed his foot on the accelerator and tore off down the palm-lined road toward the town of Sainte-Anne, his wheels spinning in the gravel of the shoulder until they struck the asphalt and shrieked in protest. Moreau pulled the car over and stopped, watching the taxi disappear in the traffic ahead.

"The lady at the airport and now this," Moreau said quietly. "Who can be interested in a pair of representatives from NUMA on a diving expedition?"

"The word treasure is a powerful aphrodisiac and spreads like an epidemic," said Summer. "Somehow, word of our intent arrived ahead of us."

Dirk stared thoughtfully into the distance at the point in the road where the taxi had vanished. "We'll know for certain tomorrow who's following in our wake when we sail over to Branwyn Island."

"Are you familiar with Branwyn Island?" Summer asked Moreau.

"Enough to know that it's dangerous to go near it," Moreau said quietly. "It used to be called Isle de Rouge, French for red, because of its reddish volcanic soil. The new owner renamed it. I'm told Branwyn was a Celtic goddess known as the Venus of the Northern Seas and the deity of love and beauty. Conversely, among the more superstitious natives it lives up to its reputation as the island of death."

Dirk was enjoying the warm, scented breeze through his open window. "Because of treacherous reefs or heavy surf?"

"No," answered Moreau, braking so two children in colorful dresses could cross the road. "The person who owns the island does not like trespassers."

"According to our computer department's data search," said Summer, "the owner is a woman by the name of Epona Eliade."

"A very mysterious lady. As far as we know she has never set foot on Basse-Terre or Grande-Terre."

Summer brushed her hair that was becoming stringy from the dampness. "Ms. Eliade must have caretakers if she maintains an elegant home on Branwyn Island."

"Satellite photos show an airfield, a few buildings and an odd circle of tall columns and an elegant house," said Moreau. "It's claimed that fishermen or tourists who tried to land on the island were later found dead. They usually washed up at a beach on Basse-Terre many miles away."

"What about police investigations?"

Moreau slowly shook his head as he switched on his headlights in the growing dusk. "They found no evidence of foul play and could never prove the victims had actually set foot on the island."

"Couldn't local forensic experts determine how the victims died?"

Moreau gave a quick laugh. "The bodies were usually examined by a local doctor, or even a dentist, who happened to be available when and where they came ashore. Due to decomposition any results were speculation. Most all were written off as drownings." Then he added, "And yet, rumors circulated that the victims' hearts had been cut out."

"Sounds morbid," muttered Summer.

"More like distorted rumors," said Dirk.

"All the more reason to stay a safe distance offshore."

"Not possible if we intend to do a subbottom survey of the harbor."

"Just keep a sharp eye out," said Moreau. "I'll give you my cell phone number. If you spot trouble, call me immediately. I'll have a police patrol boat on its way within ten minutes."

Moreau continued down the road for another two miles before turning into the driveway leading to the hotel, and stopped at the entrance. A porter hurried out and opened the car door for Summer.

Dirk came around to the rear of the car and opened the trunk so the porter could take their luggage and bags of dive gear into the hotel and up to their suites.

"You're within walking distance of a variety of restaurants, shops and entertainment clubs," said Moreau. "I'll pick you up at nine o'clock tomorrow morning and take you to the dock, where I've chartered a boat for your search. The subbottom profiler, underwater metal detecter and jet probe that Commander Rudi Gunn airfreighted from Florida is on board and ready for operation. I also had a small compressor mounted on the deck to run your excavation dredge and jet probe."

"You were very thorough," Dirk complimented him.

"We're grateful for your help and courtesy," said Summer as he gallantly kissed her hand.

"And thank you for the interesting ride from the airport," added Dirk, shaking Moreau's hand.

"Not entirely of my doing," Moreau said with a little smile. Then his face clouded. "Please be cautious. There is something going on here that is beyond our grasp. I don't want you to end up like the others."

Dirk and Summer stood in the entrance to the hotel lobby and watched Moreau drive through the front gate. "What do you think of all this?" asked Summer.

"I don't have the vaguest idea," Dirk said slowly. "But I'd give my right arm if Dad and Al were here."

41

The reception committee was far different than before when Pitt and Giordino exited the jet. No beautiful congress-woman and no elegant classic car. The plane was surrounded by a uniformed security force from a nearby Army base. The cars involved were one black Lincoln Town Car, a turquoise NUMA Navigator and a white unmarked van.

Rudi Gunn was standing beside the Navigator as Pitt and Giordino dropped down the steps and touched the ground. "I wonder if I'm ever going to see a shower and a steak dinner," moaned Giordino, thinking Sandecker had sent Gunn to transport them to NUMA headquarters.

"We have nobody to blame but ourselves for getting into this mess," Pitt sighed.

"Spare me the pitiful groans," said Gunn, smiling. "You'll be glad to know the admiral doesn't want you guys around until tomorrow afternoon. A meeting is set up at the White House at two. You'll be debriefed by the president's advisors."

The Lowenhardts deplaned and came over to Pitt and Giordino. Hilda stood on her toes and kissed Pitt on both cheeks, as Claus pumped Giordino's hand. "How can we ever thank you?" she said, her voice choking with emotion.

"We owe you more than we can ever repay," Claus said, beaming, as he caught sight of the buildings of Washington.

Pitt put an arm around his shoulder. "You'll be well looked after and I've been assured that your children will be protected and flown here as soon as possible."

"I promise that your people will have our wholehearted cooperation. We'll gladly share our total knowledge of nitrogen fuel cell technology with your scientists." He turned. "Right, Hilda?"

"Yes, Claus," she said, smiling. "Our discovery will be a gift to the entire world."

They said their goodbyes as the Lowenhardts were escorted to the Lincoln by an FBI agent for the trip to a safe house in Washington.

Pitt, Giordino and Gunn then watched as Flidais was hustled from the plane by two burly FBI agents, handcuffed to a stretcher and shoved into the van. She glanced at Pitt with a look of absolute loathing. He grinned and waved before the doors were closed. "I'll send cookies to your cell."

Then he and Giordino climbed into the NUMA Navigator, with Gunn acting as chauffeur. Gunn drove across the tarmac to a guard gate, showed his pass and was waved through. He made a left turn onto a tree-lined street and headed for the nearest bridge over the Potomac.

"Now maybe we can settle down and be left alone for a while," Giordino said wistfully, slouching down in the rear seat and half closing his eyes, ignoring the scenic green, fully leafed trees as they marched past. "I could have been home four days ago, wining and dining a lovely lady, but no, you insisted we stay and infiltrate Specter's sanctum sanctorum."

"I don't recall having to beg you," Pitt said without apology.

"You caught me in a moment of madness."

"Don't kid yourself. If our information is acted upon quickly, we will have helped save the U.S. and Europe from some very nasty weather."

"Who's to stop Odyssey from opening the tunnels?" said Giordino. "The Nicaraguan government, a U.S. Special Forces team, an empty appeal from the United Nations? The European diplomats will talk themselves into a coma while their countries turn into ice cubes. None will have the guts to bring down the curtain on Odyssey before it's too late to act."

Pitt knew Giordino wasn't far off the mark. "You're probably right, but it's out of our hands now. We gave the warning. We can do no more."

Gunn swung over the bridge toward Alexandria, where Giordino had his condominium. "You certainly made the admiral a happy man. He's the man of the hour at the White House. Your discovery is still under wraps for obvious reasons, but as soon as the president's security advisors come up with a plan to stop Specter and Odyssey's rotten operation, all hell will break loose. Once they get wind of it, the news media will go wild and NUMA will reap the harvest."

"All well and good," muttered Giordino indifferently. "You taking me home first?"

"Since you're the closest," said Gunn. "Then I'll head up the Mount Vernon Highway and drop Dirk off at his hangar."

A few minutes later, a weary Giordino pulled his bags from the rear of the Navigator and trudged up the stairs to his building that had once been a warehouse built during the Civil War and later remodeled into luxury condos. He turned and gave a slight wave before disappearing inside.

After a short drive along the Potomac River, Gunn passed through the gate of Ronald Reagan National Airport and drove along a dirt road to Pitt's old hangar that stood several hundred yards off the end of the runways. Built in the early nineteen thirties to house the aircraft of a long-vanished airline, Pitt had managed to have it declared a historic landmark after buying and refurbishing it as a place to store and maintain his classic car and aircraft collection.

"You picking me up for the meeting?" Pitt asked as he exited the car.

Gunn shook his head and cracked a smile. "I'm not on the guest list. The Secret Service will send a car for you."

Pitt turned and pressed a series of codes into his exotic security system as the Navigator drove up the road, trailing a wisp of dust behind the rear bumper. He opened the door that looked weatherworn with cracked and peeling paint and stepped inside.

The sight never failed to excite him. It was something out of a luxury car dealer's elegant showroom. The entire interior walls, rounded roof and floor were painted a bright white, which enhanced the dazzling display of vivid colors on a fleet of thirty classic automobiles. Besides the Marmon V-16, there was a 1929 Duesenberg, a 1932 Stutz, a 1929 L-29 Cord and a 1936 Pierce-Arrow with a matching factory trailer. Parked together in a row were a 1936 Ford hot rod, Dirk's Meteor sports car and a bright red 1953 J2X Allard. Two aircraft sat in the back of the hangar, an early-nineteen-thirties Ford Trimotor and a World War II Messerschmitt 262 jet. Along one wall stretched a long Pullman car emblazoned with the words Manhattan limited across its side. The only objects that seemed out of place were the upper cabin of a sailboat mounted on a rubber raft and a bathtub with an outboard motor mounted on one end.

He climbed up the circular iron steps to his apartment that ran along the north end of the hangar, tiredly carrying his gear bag and suitcase on his shoulders. The interior of the apartment looked like the sales floor of a nautical antique shop. Furniture from old sailing ships, paintings of seascapes and models of ships on shelves built into the walls filled the living room. The floor was from the teak deck of a steamship that ran aground off the island of Kauai in Hawaii.

He unpacked his bag and threw the old clothes in a hamper next to his washer/dryer, took off what he was wearing and dropped them in as well. Thankfully, he stepped into the teakwood shower, turned the water as warm as he could take it and soaped down, vigorously scrubbing his skin until it tingled. When he was through, he toweled off and walked to his bed, settled across the bedspread and instantly fell asleep.

Darkness had fallen when Loren Smith let herself into the hangar with her own key. She came up and looked around the apartment for Pitt, having been alerted to his arrival by Rudi Gunn. She found him lying naked across the bed, deep asleep. Her lips spread into a sensual smile as she leaned over and pulled a bedspread over him.

When Pitt awoke six hours after he dropped off, he could see stars through the overhead skylights. His nostrils also detected the aroma of steak on the stove's grill. He saw the bedspread over his body and smiled to himself, knowing Loren had put it there. He rose and pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a flowered silk shirt, then slipped into a pair of sandals.

Loren looked lovely in a snug pair of white shorts and a striped silk blouse, her arms and legs tanned from sunning on the deck of her apartment. She gave out a small sigh when Pitt reached around her waist with his arms and squeezed as he nuzzled her neck.

"Not now," she said in mock irritation, "I'm busy."

"How did you know I was dreaming about a steak for the last five days?"

"I don't have to be a psychic to know that's all you ever eat. Now sit down and mash the potatoes."

Pitt did as he was told and sat down at his dining table that was cut, stained and polished from an old ship's cargo hatch. He mashed the potatoes in a bowl and spooned them onto two plates as Loren delivered a porterhouse steak sliced in two. Then she set a Caesar salad on the table and sat down to eat while Pitt opened a cold bottle of Martin Ray Chardonnay.

"I hear you and Al had a rough time of it," she said, cutting her steak.

"A few close scrapes, but nothing that called for medical attention."

She looked into his eyes, violet meeting green. Her face was soft but her manner was intent. "You're getting too old to get into trouble. It's time you slowed down."

"Retire and play golf five days a week at a club? I don't think so."

"You don't have to retire but there are research expeditions you could direct that wouldn't be half as dangerous as some you've been involved with."

He poured her a glass and sat back and watched as she sipped it down. He studied her glamorous features and hair, her delicate ears, her gracefully sculptured nose, the firm chin and high cheekbones. She could have had any man in Washington, from the president's cabinet members to the senators to the congressmen, the wealthy lobbyists and attorneys, the visiting business moguls and foreign dignitaries, but for twenty years, despite several short affairs, she had never loved anyone but Pitt. She'd stray and return to him time after time. She was older now, there were tiny lines around her eyes, and her figure, though firm from exercise, was less accented by rounded curves. Yet, put her in a room with a bevy of beautiful young women, and every male eye would have locked on Loren. She never had to vie with competition.

"Yes, I could stay at home more," he said slowly, never taking his eyes away from her face. "But I would have to have a reason."

As if she hadn't heard, she said, "My term in Congress will be up soon, and you know I've announced that I'm not going to run again."

"Have you thought about what you're going to do when you're on the beach?"

She shook her head slowly. "I've had several offers to head up various organizations, and at least four lobbyists and three legal firms have asked me to join their ranks. But I'd rather retire, do some traveling, write that book on the inside dealings of Congress I've always wanted to write, and spend more time painting."

"You missed your calling," Pitt said, touching her hand from across the table. "Your landscapes are very professional."

"What about you?" she asked, thinking she knew the answer. "Will you and Al be chasing off again, flirting with death and trying to save the oceans of the world?"

"I can't speak for Al, but for me the wars are over. I'm going to grow a white beard and play with my old cars until they push my wheelchair into the nursing home."

She laughed. "Somehow I can't picture that."

"I was hoping you might come with me."

She tensed and stared at him through widening eyes. "What are you saying?"

He took her hand and gripped it tightly. "What I'm saying, Loren Smith, is that I think the time has come for me to beg for your hand in marriage."

She stared at him in disbelief. "You wouldn't… you couldn't be joking," she said, her voice choking.

"I'm deadly serious," he said, seeing the tears form in her violet eyes. "I love you, I loved you for what seems an eternity, and I want you to be my wife."

She sat there trembling, the iron maiden of the House of Representatives, the lady who never backed down despite the political pressure, the woman who was as strong as or stronger than any man in Washington. Then she took back her hand and held it with the other over her eyes as she sobbed uncontrollably.

He came around the table and embraced her around the shoulders. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

She looked up, tears flooding her eyes. "You fool, don't you know how long I've waited to hear those words?"

Pitt was bewildered. "When the subject came up before, you always said marriage was out of the question because we were already married to our work."

"Do you always believe everything a woman tells you?"

Pitt gently raised her to her feet and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Forgive me for being late as well as stupid. But the question still stands. Will you marry me?"

Loren threw her arms around his neck and flooded his face with kisses. "Yes, you fool," she said in the throes of ecstasy. "Yes, yes, yes!"

42

When he awoke in the morning, Loren had already left for her apartment to shower and change for another day's battle in Congress. He felt a glow remembering her joyful embraces with her arms held tight around him through the night. Though he had a meeting to attend at the White House, he didn't feel in the mood to put on a business suit and play the role of bureaucrat. Besides, his mind was made up to retire so he felt he no longer had to impress presidential advisors. Instead he wore slacks, a golf shirt and a sport coat.

Another black Lincoln, driven by a Secret Service agent, was waiting when he walked from his hangar. The driver, broad-shouldered, but with a fairly substantial belt line, said nothing as he sat behind the wheel, letting Pitt open his own rear door. The journey to Al's condo was conducted in silence.

After Giordino eased into the rear seat next to Pitt, it soon became clear that the driver was not taking the normal route toward the White House. Giordino leaned over the front seat. "Excuse me, pal, but aren't you taking the long way around?"

The driver kept his eyes straight ahead and did not answer.

Giordino turned to Pitt with an expression of circumspection. "A real chatterbox, this guy."

"Ask him where he's taking us."

"How about it?" Giordino spoke directly into the driver's ear. "If not the White House, what's our destination?"

Still no answer. The driver ignored Giordino and steered the car as if he was a robot.

"What do you think?" Giordino muttered. "Should we stick an ice pick in his ear at the next stoplight and hijack the car?"

"How do we know he's actually with the Secret Service?" said Pitt.

The driver's face remained impassive as reflected in the rearview mirror. He reached an arm over his shoulder with his hand displaying his Secret Service identification.

Giordino peered at the ID. "He's genuine. He has to be with a name like Otis McGonigle."

"I'm glad it's not the White House," Pitt said, yawning as if bored. "The people inside are so drab and dreary. And what's worse, they think the country will go to the dogs without them."

"Especially those toadies who protect the president," Giordino added.

"You mean those deadheads who stand around with little radios in their ears wearing sunglasses that went out of fashion thirty years ago?"

"The same."

Still no response, not even a twitch of irritation.

Pitt and Giordino gave up trying to get a rise out of the agent and sat quietly for the rest of the trip. McGonigle stopped at a heavy iron gate. A guard in the uniform of the White House police recognized the driver, stepped into his guardhouse and pressed a switch. The gate swung open and the car rolled down a ramp into a tunnel. Pitt was familiar with the tunnels deep beneath Washington that led into most of the government buildings around the Capitol. Former President Clinton had often used them during his forays around the city nightspots.

After what Pitt estimated was nearly a mile, McGonigle stopped the car in front of an elevator, got out and opened the rear door.

"Okay, gentlemen, we've arrived."

"He talked," Giordino said, looking around the tunnel. "But how? I don't see his ventriloquist."

"You guys will never get hired at the Comedy Club," muttered McGonigle, refusing to be drawn in. He stood aside as the doors opened. "I'll await your return with bated breath."

"I don't know why, but I like you," Giordino said, slapping the agent on the back as he stepped into the elevator. He failed to see the response as the door closed before the agent could react.

The elevator did not go up, but descended for what seemed a quarter of a mile before it slowed and the doors noiselessly slid open. Here they found an armed Marine standing in dress uniform beside a steel door. He carefully checked Pitt and Giordino, comparing their faces with photographs. Satisfied, he pressed a code on the side of the door and stood aside as it swung open. He merely motioned for them to enter, without speaking.

They found themselves in a long conference room with enough technical communications equipment to support a major war room. TV monitors and visual displays of maps and photographs covered three walls. Sandecker rose from a chair and greeted them.

"Well, you two have really opened a Pandora's box this time."

"I hope the results of our investigation proved useful," said Pitt modestly.

"Useful is a major understatement." He turned as a tall, gray-haired man in a black pin-striped suit with a red tie approached. "I believe you know the president's security advisor, Max Seymour."

Pitt shook the outstretched hand. "I've met him on occasion at my father's Saturday-afternoon barbecues."

"Senator Pitt and I go back a long way," said Seymour warmly. "How is your lovely mother?"

"Except for arthritis, she's doing fine," replied Pitt.

Sandecker quickly made the introductions of the other three men standing around one end of the long table. Jack Martin, White House science advisor; Jim Hecht, assistant director of the CIA; and General Arnold Stack, whose exact job at the Pentagon was never fully revealed. They all sat down as Sandecker asked Pitt to report on what he and Giordino found in the tunnels and at the Odyssey development center on Isle de Ometepe.

After a secretary announced that her recorder was on and receiving, Pitt started off first, trading off every few minutes with Giordino, filling in what the other overlooked. They described the broad spectrum of events and scenes they had witnessed, enhanced by their conclusions. No questions interrupted their report until they wrapped up by telling of their escape off the island with the Lowenhardts and the murderous woman from Odyssey.

The president's men took a few moments to digest the enormity of the looming disaster. Max Seymour looked across the table with an icy smile on his face at Jim Hecht of the CIA. "Seems like your people dropped the ball on this one, Jim."

Hecht shrugged uncomfortably. "No directives were received from the White House to investigate. We saw little cause to send in operatives because our satellite photos showed no indication of a major construction project that could prove detrimental to the security of the United States."

"And the development facility on Ometepe?"

"We checked it," answered Hecht, becoming annoyed with Seymour's questions, "and found it was engaging in alternative power research. Our analysts saw nothing that revealed Odyssey was researching and developing weapons of death or destruction. So we moved on, since our main objective is observing and analyzing the Republic of China's penetration into Central America, in particular, the Canal Zone."

Jack Martin said, "I find it troubling that our best scientific efforts are still years away from producing an efficient fuel cell power system. Not only did Odyssey make an astonishing technical breakthrough, but the Red Chinese are already manufacturing millions of units."

"We can't lead the world in everything, every time," said General Stack. He nodded at Pitt and Giordino. "What you're telling us is that Odyssey lured away a number of the world's leading scientists who were conducting research into fuel cells, took them to the facility in Nicaragua and then coerced them into developing a practical and efficient product."

Pitt nodded. "That is correct."

"I can name at least four of our own scientists who left their research laboratories at universities and quietly disappeared," said Martin.

Hecht looked at Pitt. "Are you certain the Lowenhardts will cooperate and give us the technical data we require to re-create their advance in nitrogen fuel cells?"

"They agreed up and down the line after I promised them that their children would be flown under guard to the United States for a family reunion and protected from now on."

"Good thinking," said Sandecker with a glint in his eyes, "even if you did step beyond your authority."

"It seemed the honorable thing to do," Pitt came back, with a sly grin.

Jack Martin doodled on a notepad. "As soon as they've recovered from their ordeal and are rested, we'll begin interviewing them." He gazed at Pitt across the table. "What did they tell you about the cell's inner workings?"

"Only that after they determined that hydrogen was impractical as a fuel they began experimenting with nitrogen because it makes up seventy-eight percent of Earth's air. By drawing it out of the atmosphere along with oxygen, they ingeniously created a fuel cell that was self-sustaining and powered by natural gases, with only pure water as waste. According to Claus they engineered an ingeniously simple unit with less than eight parts. It was this simplicity that enabled the Chinese to produce so many units so quickly."

General Stack looked grim. "Such huge production numbers in such a short space of time is astonishing."

"Something of that magnitude would have called for a staggering amount of platinum to coat the anodes that separate the gas into protons and electrons," explained Martin.

Hecht replied, "Over the past ten years, Odyssey has accumulated eighty percent of the world's platinum-producing mines. A phenomenon that has cost the auto industry dearly since they rely on platinum for a number of engine parts."

"Once we have the Lowenhardts' blueprint in our hands," said Seymour, "we'll have the same problem of finding enough platinum to match Chinese production."

"They did say they had yet to design a fuel cell to power automobiles," Giordino commented.

Martin said, "By using the Lowenhardts' data and by making an all-out effort, we might get the jump on Odyssey and the Chinese in that field."

"Certainly worth a try," said General Stack, "now that the groundwork has been achieved and the technology laid in our lap."

"Which brings us to a plan about how to deal with Odyssey and the tunnels," continued Stack, his eyes straying across the table to Seymour.

"Sending Special Forces to block a series of tunnels is not the same as sending troops to subdue a dictator who has built up an arsenal of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons like Saddam in Iraq," Seymour spelled out. "I cannot in good conscience advise the president to use force."

"But the results of a terrible freeze above the thirtieth parallel could be just as deadly."

"Max is right," said Martin. "Convincing the rest of the world of the danger would border on the impossible."

"Regardless of how you approach the dilemma," Sandecker said, "those tunnels must be blocked and blocked fast. Once they are opened and millions of gallons of water from the Atlantic is flowing into the Pacific, they'll be much more difficult to destroy."

"How about sending in a small covert team with explosives to do the job?"

"They'd never penetrate Odyssey's security," counseled Giordino.

"You and Dirk made it in and out," said Sandecker.

"We weren't carrying a hundred tons of explosives, which is what it will take to do the job."

Pitt had left his chair and moved around the room, studying the monitors and maps on the walls. He found particular interest in a large satellite photo of the Odyssey R&D facility on Ometepe. He moved in closer and examined the slope of Mount Concepcion and a thought began to form. Finally, he turned and stepped back to the table.

"A B-fifty-two drop of two-thousand-pound penetrating bombs would do it," suggested Stack.

"We can't go around dropping bombs on friendly countries," said Seymour, "despite the threat."

"Then you admit the potential for a deep freeze is a threat to the nation's security," Stack cornered him.

"That part of the equation goes without saying," Seymour said wearily. "What I'm saying is there must be a logical solution that won't make the president and the United States government look like inhuman monsters to the nations of the world."

"And lest we forget," Hecht said with a tight, canny smile, "the political implications and fallout in the next election if we make the wrong decisions."

"There might be another approach," said Pitt slowly, while still looking at the satellite photo. "An approach that would satisfy everyone involved."

"All right, Mr. Pitt," said General Stack dubiously, "how do we destroy the tunnels without sending in the Special Forces or a squadron of bombers?"

Pitt held their attention, every eye was trained on him. "I propose we give the job to Mother Nature."

They all looked at him, waiting for an explanation, their minds beginning to think he may have lost some gray matter. Martin, the scientist, broke the silence.

"Could you please explain?"

"According to geologists, a slope of the Concepcion volcano on Ometepe is slipping. This was no doubt caused by the tunnel excavation under the outer edge of the volcano. When Al and I were in the tunnel closest to its core, we could feel a substantial rise in temperature."

"Well over a hundred degrees," Giordino added.

"The Lowenhardts told us that one of the scientists held hostage, a Dr. Honoma from the University of Hawaii—"

"One of the scientists on our list of the missing," interrupted Martin.

"Dr. Honoma predicted that a sudden slip was possible at any time that would cause the volcano's flank to collapse, with catastrophic results."

"How extensive would be the catastrophic results?" asked the general, not entirely sold on the report.

"The entire Odyssey research center and everybody in it would be buried under millions of tons of rock that would launch a tidal wave around the lake that would wipe out every town and village along the shoreline."

"This certainly isn't a situation we considered," said Hecht.

Seymour gave Pitt a long, considering gaze. "If what you say is true, the mountain will do the job for us and destroy the tunnels."

"That's one scenario."

"Then all we have to do is sit and wait."

"Geologists haven't witnessed enough volcanic slope collapses to form a timetable. The wait might last a few days or a few years. Then it would be too late to avert the freeze."

"We can't just sit on our hands," Stack spoke in a hard tone, "and watch helplessly as the tunnels go into operation."

"We could sit on our hands," said Pitt, "but there is another way."

"Kindly tell us what you've got in mind," Sandecker demanded impatiently.

"Inform the Nicaraguan government that our scientists have monitored the slippage on Concepcion volcano by satellite, and its slope is ready to collapse at any hour. Scare the hell out of them. Describe a possible death toll in the thousands, then feed them the bait."

Seymour looked confused. "Bait?"

"We offer to provide massive aid in helping the people inside the facility and the inhabitants around Lake Nicaragua to evacuate the area and head for high ground. Once they are free and clear, you can drop a bomb into the side of the volcano from fifty thousand feet without anybody being the wiser, set off the slide and destroy the tunnels."

Sandecker leaned back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the surface of the table. "It sounds too simple, too elementary for such an enormous event."

"From what I know of the area," said Martin, "Mount Concepcion is still active. A bomb might set off an eruption."

"Dropping the bomb down the volcano's crater might induce an eruption," said Pitt. "But we should be safe if we guide it to explode below the base of the volcano's slope."

For the first time, General Stack smiled. "I believe Mr. Pitt has something. The simplicity is what makes it logical. I propose we investigate the possibilities."

"What about the workers below in the tunnels?" asked Seymour. "They wouldn't have a chance of escaping."

"Not to worry," replied Giordino. "They would have left a good twenty-four hours before the tunnels were to be opened to the sea."

"We can't waste time," Pitt cautioned. "I overheard the two women in Odyssey's headquarters say they were going to open the tunnels in eight days. That was three days ago. We're now down to five."

Hecht peered over a pair of reading glasses at Seymour. "It's up to you, Max, to get the ball rolling. We'll need the president's approval to proceed."

"I'll have that within the hour," Seymour said confidently. "My next job is to convince Secretary of State Hampton to launch immediate negotiations with the Nicaraguan officials to allow our rescue force to enter the country." He glanced at Stack. "And you, General, I'll rely on you to set up and direct the evacuation." Then it was Jack Martin's turn. "Jack, it will be your job to put the fear of God in the minds of the Nicaraguan government that the catastrophe is very real and imminent."

"I'll help on that score," offered Sandecker. "I'm very close with two of the country's ocean scientists."

Last, Seymour stared at Pitt and Giordino. "We owe you gentlemen a great debt. I only wish I knew how to repay it."

"There is something," Pitt said, grinning, exchanging looks with Giordino. "There is this Secret Service agent we know by the name of Otis McGonigle. Al and I would like to see him promoted."

Seymour shrugged. "I think I can arrange that. Any particular reason you've selected him?"

"We have great rapport," Giordino answered. "He's a credit to the service."

"There is one other favor," said Pitt, looking at Hecht. "I'd like to see your file on Specter and the Odyssey conglomerate."

Hecht nodded. "I'll have one of my couriers bring it to NUMA headquarters. You think there is anything in it that may prove useful to this situation?"

"I don't know," Pitt said honestly. "But I am certainly going to give it a hard look."

"My analysts have already studied it in depth, but no flags went up."

"Perhaps, just perhaps," said Pitt, "I might run across something that was missed."

43

Moreau, dressed in white shorts, white open shirt and high kneesocks, was waiting for Dirk and Summer at precisely nine o'clock as they exited the lobby of the hotel with the duffel bags containing their dive gear. The doorman set their bags in the trunk and they all climbed into the 525 BMW under a light rain deposited by a single cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky. The wind was gentle and barely fluttered the fronds of the palm trees.

The drive to the wharf where Moreau had arranged for their chartered boat to be moored was a short two miles down a winding road to the water. He pulled onto a narrow stone jetty that extended from the shore over water that altered from a yellow-green to a blue-green as it deepened. He stopped above a boat that was nestled against the dock like a duckling to its mother, fenders like feathers bumping from stone to fiberglass hull as she dipped in the gentle waves flowing in from the lagoon. The name in gold letters across her stern read:

DEAR HEART.

She was a pretty little sailboat, a masthead sloop with her mainsail and jib going to the top of the mast. Twenty-six feet in length with a nine-foot beam, her draft was only a few inches over four feet. She had three hundred and thirty-one square feet of sail area and a small ten-horsepower auxiliary diesel engine. Her cabin comfortably slept two with a head, shower and a small galley. As Moreau had promised, a Fisher metal detector and a Klein subbottom profiler were mounted and ready for operation in the cockpit. Dirk dropped down a ladder to the deck and caught the bags as they were dropped by Moreau, before carrying them down to the cabin.

"A safe voyage," said Moreau to Summer. "I shall keep my cell phone on my person at all times. Please call if you encounter trouble."

"We shall," said Summer confidently. Then she slipped lithely down the ladder and joined Dirk as he started the little diesel. At his signal, Moreau cast off the lines and stood on the dock, an expression of dire concern on his face as the little boat's diesel engine knocked across the lagoon and out into the sea.

Once they cleared the last buoy, Dirk ran the mainsail and jib up the mast, with Summer at the wheel. The canvas was crimson red against the blue sky. It flapped back and forth until set by the wind. The sail puffed out and the boat began to slip smartly across the growing swells rolling from offshore. Dirk looked along the deck. Everything was scrubbed and bright. Dear Heart looked to be less than a year old, her brass work and chrome gleamed under the sun, and her deck looked well-scrubbed.

She was a sleek and smart sailer, slipping through the water and taking the swells like a cat running across a lawn. A random gust from a passing squall chopped the blue water and flecked the crests of the waves with foam. Then they were out of it and into smooth seas and dry air again. Beyond her bowsprit the sea stretched like a giant carpet.

"How far to Branwyn?" asked Summer, deftly heeling Dear Heart over on her beam to gain another knot in speed as the water seethed past her lee rail.

"About twenty-three miles," replied Dirk. "Put her on a heading due south. No need for a detailed course. The island has a distinctive light tower on the eastern end."

Dirk removed his shirt and trimmed the sail in his shorts. Summer had slipped off her dress and changed into a green bikini with floral designs. Her hands were poised and steady on the wheel and she steered the boat over the crests and troughs of the waves with a deft touch, keeping one eye on the islands looming on the horizon and the other on the compass.

Her flowing red hair blew free behind her head and she had the look of a sailor who was going on a day trip from Newport Beach to Catalina Island. After an hour, she lifted a pair of binoculars to her eyes with one hand and stared into the distance. "I think I see the light tower," she said, pointing.

Dirk followed her extended arm and finger. He could not quite make out the tower, but a smudge across the horizon line soon became the low shape of an island. "That will be Branwyn. Steer straight toward it. The harbor lies on her south shore."

A school of flying fish burst from the water in front of the bow and flashed away in all directions. Some leaped alongside the boat as if hoping for food to be thrown over. Then they were replaced by five dolphins, who cavorted around the boat like clowns who wanted applause.

Now the island showed distinctly only three miles distant. The light tower was clearly visible, as was the three-story house on the nearest beach. Dirk picked up the binoculars and peered at the house. No human was visible and the windows looked shuttered. There was a dock running from a sandy beach, but no boat was moored alongside.

They changed places. Dirk took the wheel while Summer went up to the bow, hung on to the rigging and gazed at the island. It was ugly, as islands went. No thick underbrush filled with tropical flowers, no palm trees arched over the beach. Most islands have their own smell. The aroma of moldy vegetation, tropical plants and the scent of its people and their cooking, the pungent smell of smoke from burned fields mixed with that of copra and coconut oil. This island had an essence of death about it, as if it reeked of evil. Her ears picked up the distant rumble of surf as it struck a reef surrounding a lagoon in front of the house. Now she could see a low building on the end of a long runway that must have served as a hangar. But like Dirk, she saw no sign of life. Branwyn was like an abandoned graveyard.

Dirk kept well off the reef while keeping a wary eye over the side at the water that was as clear as water in a bathroom sink. The bottom came into view, a smooth sandy bottom clear of coral. He glanced at the echo sounder every few seconds to make sure the seabed didn't take a sudden rise toward the keel. With a firm hand on the wheel, he steered around the island until he came up on the southern end. He consulted his chart and made a slight course change before he turned and entered the channel as determined by the echo sounder. The rolling waves of the sea turned choppy here, as he sailed through a hundred-yard gap in the outer reef.

It was a tricky entrance. The current was pushing him to port. He thought that Odysseus and his crews must have found entering the harbor duck soup for mariners who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Their advantage in navigating unruly waters was that they could throw out their oars and row. Dirk could have started the engine, but like a pilot with an aircraft that could land by autopilot, he preferred to use his own skills and take her in himself.

Once through the straits, the water calmed and he watched the bottom slowly pass under the keel. He turned the wheel back over to Summer and dropped the sails. Then he started the little diesel and began inspecting the interior of the harbor.

It was small, no more than half a mile in length and half again as much in width. While Summer leaned over the side and inspected the bottom for any unusual anomalies, he leisurely cruised back and forth across the harbor, trying to get a feel for the current and imagining himself on the deck of one of Odysseus' ships, trying to predict where the ancient mariners might have anchored so many centuries ago.

Finally, he settled in an area that was sheltered from the prevailing winds by a rise on the island, a sandy mound that rose nearly a hundred feet above the shoreline. He shut off the engine and dropped the bow anchor by flicking a switch in the cockpit that lowered it by a winch.

"This looks about as good a place as any to go over the side and inspect the bottom."

"It looks flat as a dining room floor," said Summer. "I saw no humps or contours. It stands to reason that wood from a Celtic shipwreck would have rotted away thousands of years ago. Any pieces that survived have to be buried."

"Let's dive. I'll test the consistency of the sand and silt. You swim around and do a visual inspection."

After they put on their dive gear, Dirk checked the anchor to be sure it was snug on the bottom and wouldn't break loose and allow the boat to drift away. Not that it would go far in the harbor. Without the need for wet suits to protect their bodies from cold water temperatures or sharp coral, they went over the side in ten feet of water in only their bathing suits. The water was almost as clear as glass. Visibility was nearly two hundred feet, the temperature warm in the middle eighties, perfect diving conditions.

Forty minutes later, Dirk climbed up the boarding ladder to the deck and removed his air tank and weight belt. He had run a metal probe beneath the surface of the sand, checking for a harder clay layer beneath but found fifteen feet of soft sand before striking bedrock. He sat there for a few minutes, watching Summer's air bubbles travel around the boat. Soon, she was climbing aboard and paused on the boarding ladder to carefully set a coral-encrusted object on the deck. Then she stood with water trickling down her body onto the teak deck as she slipped out of her dive gear.

"What have you got?" asked Dirk.

"I don't know, but it feels too heavy for a rock. I found it a hundred yards offshore, protruding out of the sand."

Dirk scanned the shoreline, still seemingly deserted. He had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if they were being watched.

He picked up the object and gently chipped away the encrustation with his dive knife. Soon the object took on the look of a bird with outstretched wings.

"Looks like an eagle or swan," he said. Then the tip of his knife cut a small scratch that showed silver. "The reason it's heavy is because it's cast out of lead."

Summer took it in her hands and stared at the wings and the beaked head that was turned to the right. "Could it be ancient Celt?"

"The fact that it's sculpted out of lead is a good sign. Dr. Chisholm told me that, besides tin, one of the main attractions of Cornwall was its lead mines. Did you mark the site where you found it?"

She nodded. "I left my probe in the sand with a little orange flag on it."

"How far out?"

"About fifty feet in that direction," she said, pointing.

"Okay, before we dredge or probe with the water jet, we'll run over your site with the metal detector. The side-scan sonar won't be of much use if all the ship wreckage is buried."

"Maybe we should have had Rudi send a magnetometer."

Dirk smiled. "A magnetometer detects the magnetic field of iron or steel. Odysseus sailed long before the Iron Age appeared. A metal detector will read iron besides most other metals, including gold and bronze."

Summer turned on the Fisher Pulse 10 detector as Dirk connected the cable from the meter and audio readouts to the tow fish encasing the sensor. Then he lowered the tow fish over the side, leaving just enough cable so that it wouldn't drag on the bottom at slow surveying speed. His final task was to raise the anchor.

"Ready?" he asked.

"All set," answered Summer.

Turning over the diesel engine, Dirk began making closely spaced survey lines over the target area, mowing the lawn until they struck an anomaly. After only fifteen minutes, the needle on the meter began to zig and zag in unison with an increased buzzing sound over Summer's earphones.

"We're coming up on something," she announced.

Then came a slight zip in sound and a brief swing of the needle as they passed over Summer's metal probe that was sticking out of the bottom.

"Get a good reading?" asked Dirk.

Summer was about to answer in the negative when the needle began wildly sweeping back and forth, indicating a metallic object or objects passing under the keel. "We have a pretty good mass down there. What direction are we running?"

"East to west," replied Dirk, marking the target coordinates from his global positioning instrument.

"Run over the site again, but this time from north to south."

Dirk did as he was told, passing beyond the target for a hundred yards before swinging Dear Heart on a ninety-degree turn heading north to south. Again the meter and audio sound went wild. Summer penciled the meter readings in a notebook and looked up at Dirk standing at the wheel.

"The target is linear, about fifty feet in length with a broad dipolar signature. It looks to have a minimal but dispersed mass, similar to what you'd expect from a broken-up sailing vessel."

"It seems to be in the expected range of an old wreck. We'd better check it out."

"How deep is the water?"

"Only ten feet."

Dirk eased the boat around again, shut down the engine and let the Dear Heart drift with the current. When the GPS numbers began to match those of the anomaly, he dropped the anchor. Then he fired up the compressor.

They put on their dive gear and dropped into the water from opposite sides of the boat. Dirk turned the valve for the water jet and pushed it into the sand in the manner of kids pushing the nozzle of a hose into the ground to make a hole. After five attempts and feeling nothing solid, he suddenly felt the tip of the probe strike a hard object three feet beneath the surface of the sandy bottom. Several more probes later and he had laid out a grid, with Summer's metal shaft sticking up on an outside corner.

"Something down there, all right," he said, spitting out his mouthpiece as they surfaced. "About the right size for an ancient ship."

"Could be anything," said Summer sensibly, "from the wreck of an old fishing boat to trash dumped off a barge."

"We'll know as soon as we dig a hole with the induction dredge."

They swam back to the boat, attached the hose to the dredge and dropped it into the water. Dirk volunteered for the dirty job of excavation while Summer stayed aboard to watch the compressor.

He pulled the hose after him that was attached to a metal pipe that sucked the sand from the bottom and shot it out of a second hose that he laid several feet away to scatter the muck. The dredge acted like a vacuum cleaner as it burrowed into the bottom. The sand was soft, and in less than twenty minutes he had dug a crater four feet across and three feet deep. Then at slightly less than four feet he uncovered a round object, which he identified as an ancient terra-cotta oil jug, like one Dr. Boyd showed in photos during the conference at NUMA. He very carefully sucked the sand away from it until he could lift and set it outside the crater. Then he returned to his work.

Next came a terra-cotta drinking cup. Then two more. These were followed by the hilt and badly eroded blade of a sword. He was about to quit and bring his trove to the surface, when he removed the overburden from a round object in the shape of a dome, with two protrusions sprouting from it. As soon as he'd uncovered fifty percent of it, his heartbeat abruptly increased from sixty beats to a hundred. He recognized what Homer had described in his works as a Bronze Age helmet with horns.

Dirk finished removing the ancient artifact from its resting place of over three thousand years and gently laid it in the yellow sand beside the other discoveries. Standing in the crater amid the swirling sand and working the dredge was tiring work. He had been down nearly fifty minutes and found what he came for, evidence that Odysseus' fleet had come to grief in the West Indies and not the Mediterranean. His air was about gone, and though he could have sucked the air tank dry and easily reached the surface only ten feet away by exhaling a single breath, it was time to take a break. The next step was to bring the artifacts safely aboard Dear Heart. Holding the helmet as though it was a newborn baby, he ascended.

Summer was waiting at the boarding ladder to take his weight belt and air tank. He lifted the helmet out of the water and carefully handed it to her. "Take it," he said. "But treat it gently. It's badly eroded." Then, before she could comment, he jackknifed and dove to retrieve the other artifacts.

As he climbed on the boat, Summer had emptied their ice chest of drinks and was immersing the artifacts in salt water to preserve them. "Cool," she repeated three times. "I can't believe what I'm seeing. A helmet, an honest-to-goodness ancient bronze helmet."

"We were exceedingly lucky," said Dirk, "to find them so early in the game."

"Then these are from Odysseus' fleet."

"We won't know for sure until experts like Dr. Boyd and Dr. Chisholm can make an identification. Fortunately, they were buried in the silt, which preserved them all these years."

After a light lunch and relaxing for another hour, while Summer gently cleaned some of the outer layers of marine concretion without damaging the artifacts, Dirk went back down to operate the dredge.

This trip he found four copper ingots and one ingot of tin. They were oddly shaped with concave edges, a fair indication that they came from the Bronze Age. Next he uncovered a stone hammer. At four and a half feet, he struck fragmentary wooden planks and beams. One section of beam measured two feet long by five inches thick. Maybe, just maybe, Dirk thought, a dendrochronology lab would be able to date the growth rings from the tree it was cut from. By the time he carried the artifacts to the surface and hauled in the dredge, it was late in the afternoon.

He found Summer gazing at a magnificent sunset with clouds painted red-orange from the enlarged ball of the sun as it fell toward the horizon. She helped him off with his gear. "I'll fix dinner if you'll open a bottle of wine."

"How about a little cocktail to celebrate?" Dirk said, smiling. "I bought a bottle of good Guadeloupe rum at the hotel. We have ginger ale, I'll make rum collinses."

"They'll have to be room temperature. I threw out the ice from the chest when you brought aboard the first artifacts so I could use it as a preservation tank."

"Now that we have a productive site with artifacts," said Dirk, "I think that tomorrow we'll search and survey for the other ships in Odysseus' fleet."

Summer looked wistfully at the water that was turning to a dark blue as the sun vanished into the sea. "I wonder how much treasure is down there."

"There may not be any."

She saw the doubt in his eyes. "What makes you say that?"

"I can't be certain, but I believe the site I worked had been disturbed."

"Disturbed?" she said skeptically. "Disturbed by whom?"

As Dirk spoke, he stared apprehensively at the buildings on the island. "It seemed to me the artifacts had been moved about by human hands rather than by tides and shifting sand. It was almost as if they had been stacked on top of one another in a pile that was foreign to nature."

"We'll worry about it tomorrow," Summer said, turning from the magnificent twilight. "I'm starved and thirsty. Get busy on those rum Collinses."

It was after dark when Summer finished heating conch soup and boiling a pair of lobsters that she had caught during her dive. For dessert she served bananas Foster. Then they lay on the deck, stared at the stars and talked until nearly midnight, listening to the water slap lightly against Dear Heart's hull.

As twin brother and sister, Dirk and Summer were very close, yet, unlike identical twins, they went their separate ways when not on the job. Summer was dating a young career diplomat with the State Department to whom her grandfather, the senator, had introduced her. Dirk pretty much played the field, not forming any close attachment and preferring a variety of girls as different in looks as they were in personality and taste. Though cut from the same cloth as his father, Dirk didn't share all the same interests. True, they both loved old cars and aircraft and had a passion for the sea, but there any similarity ended. Dirk liked to race motorcycles cross-country and enter in powerboat races. He was driven to compete on his own skills. On the other hand, his father was rarely competitive in a solitary sense, choosing to take part in sports that called for a team effort. Where young Dirk entered individual competition in track-and-field events at the University of Hawaii, Dirk the elder played football, becoming a star quarterback at the Air Force Academy.

Finally, after exhausting all conversation on Odysseus and his voyage, they decided it was time to turn in. Summer went below and slept in one of the berths while Dirk elected to sleep up on deck on the cushions in the cockpit under the open sky.

At four in the morning, the sea was black as obsidian. A light rain came that blotted out the stars. One could have walked off the deck into the water and never known it until he felt the splash. Dirk pulled an oilcloth over him and contentedly returned to dreamland.

He did not come awake at the sound of a boat engine, because there was no boat and no engine. They came from the water, silently, like ghosts flying around tombstones on Halloween night. There were four of them, three men and one woman. Dirk did not hear the gentle touch of feet on the boarding ladder that he had neglected to pull up. Without realizing it, he made it easy for them to creep on board. Some people wakened in the night by intruders react in different ways. Dirk had no time to react. Unlike his father, he had yet to learn not to trust in luck or fate and always to follow the old Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. Before he knew strangers were on Dear Heart, the oilcloth was pulled up around his head, and a club or a baseball bat or a truncheon, he never knew, came down on the back of his head and sent him far beyond dreamland, falling into a deep black pit that never seemed to end.

44

The preparations to evacuate Isle de Ometepe came down to the wire. It took four days for Secretary of State George Hampton to convince Nicaraguan president Raul Ortiz that the American intentions were purely humanitarian. He promised that once the evacuation was completed, all American forces would leave the country. Jack Martin and Admiral Sandecker worked on Nicaraguan scientists who, once briefed on the looming disaster, lent their full support to the operation.

As expected, local government officials who were in Specter's pockets because of bribes, fought the intrusion. Those close to the Red Chinese also had their marching orders and put up a fight. But as Martin proposed at the conference, he and Sandecker put the fear of God into the leaders of the country by describing the potential catastrophe and the estimated number of dead within a mile of the lake. All opposition was quickly drowned in a river of panic.

Working closely with General Juan Morega, chief of the Nicaraguan armed forces, General Stack had all elements of his special rescue force in place. Once permission was given, he moved quickly. All boats around the lake were commandeered to evacuate residents of towns and villages that had no major roads available by which to flee. Trucks and U.S. Army helicopters carried the rest to high ground. At the same time a special fighting force was assembled to assault the Odyssey facility.

No one doubted that Odyssey security would put up a fight to keep their covert project and scientists who were held in illegal captivity an ongoing secret. There was also the fear that Specter would murder and dispose of the scientists' bodies so no trace was left of their existence. General Stack was sympathetic, but the possibility of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars lost in shattered economies outweighed twenty or thirty lives. He gave orders that the facility and its workers be evacuated as swiftly as possible, including the scientists if they were still on the island.

He put Pitt under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bonaparte Nash, called Bony by those close to him. A member of a Marine recon team, Nash welcomed Pitt and Giordino at the helicopter evacuation team's temporary base across the lake at the small city of San Jorge on the western shore. Blond hair cropped short, a body tight from muscles built from long hours of exercise, he had a round, soft face with friendly blue eyes that betrayed the toughness that lurked beneath.

"Real good to meet you, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino. I was briefed on your qualifications as members of NUMA. Quite impressive. I trust you can lead me and my men to the building where the scientists are kept prisoner."

"We can," Pitt assured him.

"But as I understand it, you were only there once."

"If we found it at night," said Giordino testily, "we can find it in broad daylight."

Nash laid out a large satellite photo of the facility on a small table. "I have five CH-forty-seven Chinook helicopters, each carrying thirty men. My plan is to land one at the air terminal, the second at the docks, a third alongside the building you described as the security headquarters and a fourth in a park area between a row of warehouses.

You two will come along with me in the fifth to make certain we have the right building where the scientists are held."

"If I might make a suggestion," offered Pitt. He pulled a pen from the breast pocket of his flowered shirt and tapped it on a building beside a palm-lined street. "This is the main headquarters building. You can land on the roof and seize the top executives of Odyssey before they have time to escape in their own helicopter."

"How do you know this?" Nash inquired thoughtfully.

"Al and I stole a copter from the roof when we evaded capture six days ago."

"They have at least ten security guards in the building that your men will have to deal with," said Giordino.

Nash looked at them with growing respect, but still not certain whether to fully believe them.

"There were security guards when you escaped?"

Pitt saw Nash's reservation. "Yes, four of them."

Giordino picked up on it too. "Overpowering them was like taking candy from a baby."

"I was told you guys were marine engineers," said Nash, confused.

"We do that too," Giordino said glibly.

"Okay, if you say so." Nash gave a slight disconcerted shake of his head. "Now, then, I can't issue you any weapons. You'll be along for the ride as guides. You'll leave any fighting to me and my men."

Pitt and Giordino glanced at each other with a twinkle in their eyes. Pitt's .45 and Giordino's .50 caliber auto were concealed in the back of the waistband behind their pants under loose tropical shirts.

"If we get into trouble," said Giordino. "We'll throw rocks until your men rescue us."

Nash wasn't sure if he liked these two wisecracking men. He held up his wrist and studied his watch. "We take off in ten minutes. You'll ride with me. After we land, you make certain we've got the right building. We can't lose a minute wandering around lost after we land, if we're to save the hostages before Odyssey guards execute them."

Pitt nodded. "Fair enough."

In precisely ten minutes he and Giordino were buckled into their seats inside the big Chinook transport helicopter with Lieutenant Colonel Nash. They were accompanied by thirty big, silent purposeful-looking men dressed in camouflaged combat fatigues with armored vests, huge guns that looked like arms out of a science fiction movie, and an assortment of rocket launchers.

"Tough bunch," Giordino said admiringly.

"I'm glad they're on our side," Pitt agreed.

The pilot lifted the helicopter off the ground and took off across the beach over the lake. It was a short hop of fifteen miles to the Odyssey center. The entire operation was based on surprise. Colonel Nash's plan of operation was to subdue the guards, rescue the hostages and then evacuate the hundreds of workers in boats that were already on their way around the lake to Ometepe. Soon as the last person was off the island and safely ashore on high ground, Nash was to give the signal to the pilot of a B-52 bomber circling at sixty thousand feet to drop a massive ground-penetrating concussion bomb on the base of the mountain, unleashing a flank avalanche that would collapse the tunnels and sweep the research and development facility into the lake.

It seemed to Pitt that they had no sooner taken off than the helicopter stopped, hovered for a few seconds and set down. Nash and his men leaped from the seats through the open hatch and shouted for the security guards at the fenced gate to the hostage quarters to throw down their arms.

The other four copters had landed and received sporadic fire from a few security guards who had no idea they were up against an elite force. Seeing that resistance was hopeless, they quickly surrendered as fast as they could drop their weapons and raise their hands. They had not been hired to fight professional forces, only to protect the facility, and none had a death wish.

Pitt, with Giordino right on his heels, rushed through the gate and burst in the front door of the building ahead of Nash and his men. The guards inside, although hearing shots elsewhere on the facility, were stunned to find themselves looking down the muzzles of two very large automatic pistols before they had a chance to realize what was happening. They froze not so much in shock as in fear.

Nash was more than surprised to see Pitt and Giordino with weapons, he was madder than hell. "Give me those guns!" he demanded.

He was ignored, as Pitt and Giordino began kicking in the doors to the rooms. The first, second, third and fourth. They were all empty. Pitt rushed back to the guards that were being escorted from the building by Nash's team. He grabbed the nearest guard and jammed the Colt against the man's nose, flattening it.

"English!"

"No, senor."

"Dónde están los cientificos?"

The guard's eyes widened as they crossed and focused on the muzzle mashing his nose. "Ellos fueron tornados lejos a la darsena y colocados en el transbordador."

"What's going on?" Nash demanded. "Where are the hostages?"

Pitt pulled the Colt back from the man's nose as it began to bleed. "I asked him where the scientists were. He said they were taken to the docks and put on a ferry."

"It looks as if they're transporting them out onto the lake before sinking the ferry with everyone on it," said Giordino grimly.

Pitt looked at Nash. "We'll need your men and a copter to go after them before the Odyssey guards can scuttle the ferry."

Nash shook his head. "Sorry, no can do. My orders are to secure the base and evacuate all personnel. I can't spare any men or a helicopter."

"But these people are vital to our national interest," Pitt argued. "They hold the key to fuel cell technology."

Nash's face was hard as stone. "My orders stand."

"Then loan us a grenade launcher and we'll go after the ferry ourselves."

"You know I can't issue weapons to civilians."

"You're a big help," snapped Giordino. "We haven't time to waste debating with a hard nose." Giordino nodded toward a golf cart like the one he drove in the tunnels. "If we can't stop them on the dock, maybe we can grab one of Odyssey's patrol boats."

Pitt threw Nash a look of disgust and then he and Giordino ran for the cart. Eight minutes later, with Giordino at the wheel, they sped onto the dock. An agonized look swept Pitt's face as he saw an old ferryboat pulling out into the lake, followed by a patrol boat.

"Too late," groaned Giordino. "They've taken along a patrol boat to remove the guards after they blow out the bottom of the barge."

Pitt ran to the opposite side of the dock and spotted a small outboard tied to a piling no more than twenty yards away. "Come on, the Good Ship Lollipop awaits." Then he took off, running toward the boat.

It was an eighteen-foot Boston Whaler with a one-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower Mercury motor. Pitt started the motor while Giordino cast off the lines. Giordino had barely thrown the lines onto the dock when Pitt shoved the throttle to its top and the little Whaler leaped over the water as if kicked in the stern and took off after the wakes of the ferry and patrol boat.

"What do we do when we reach them?" Giordino yelled over the roar of the motor.

"I'll think of something when the time comes," Pitt shouted back.

Giordino eyed the rapidly closing distance between the vessels. "You'd better come up with something quick. They have assault rifles against our popguns, and the patrol boat has a nasty cannon on its bow."

"Try this," Pitt said loudly. "I'm going to swing around and come in with the ferry between us and the patrol boat. That will neutralize its field of fire. Then we come alongside the ferry and jump on board."

"I've heard of worse schemes," Giordino said glumly, "but not in the last ten years."

"It looks like two, maybe three, guards on the upper deck next to the wheelhouse. Take my Colt and play two-gun desperado. If you intimidate them, maybe they'll throw up their hands and surrender."

"I won't hold my breath."

Pitt cranked the wheel and spun the Whaler in a broad arc, circling around the ferry before the crew of the patrol boat could bring their bow gun to bear. The boat bounced over the crest of a small wave from the ferry's wake and dropped into the trough as a barrage of bullets flew harmlessly overhead. Giordino replied by squeezing both triggers as fast as his fingers could pull. The hail of bullets caught the guards by surprise. One dropped to the deck with a bullet in the leg. Another spun around, clutching his shoulder, while the third dropped his weapon and raised his hands.

"See," said Pitt, "I told you so."

"Sure, after I put two of them out of action."

Twenty yards from the ferry Pitt eased back on the throttle and gave the wheel a light twist to starboard. With a deft touch from years of practice, he slipped the Whaler along the ferry's hull with barely a bump. Giordino beat him on board and was disarming the guards as Pitt leaped onto the deck. "I inserted a full clip." He threw Pitt his .50 caliber automatic. "Take it!"

Pitt grabbed it and dropped through an open hatch and scrambled down the ladder below. His feet no sooner landed on the deck of a corridor than a rumble came from the engine room that shook the ferry. One of the guards had set off the detonators and the resulting explosion blasted a hole in the bilge of the hull. Pitt was knocked off his feet, but recovered instantly and ran through the central corridor, kicking in doors as he went.

"Out, get out quick!" he shouted to the frightened scientists who had been locked inside. "This boat is going to sink!" He began herding them toward the ladder leading topside. He stopped a man with gray hair and beard. "Are there any more of you?"

"They locked some of us in a storeroom at the end of the hallway."

Almost before the scientist got the words out, Pitt rushed to the storeroom door. Already the water was sloshing around his ankles. This door was too solidly built for him to kick in. "Stand back from the door!" he shouted. Then he aimed Giordino's hand cannon at the latch and fired. The big shell shattered the bolt, allowing Pitt to shove the door open with his shoulder. Nearly ten people stood stunned inside, six men and four women. "Everybody move, now! Abandon ship before she goes down!"

After he pushed the last of the scientists up the ladder and was about to follow, a second, larger blast hurled him backward against a bulkhead. The impact drove the breath from his lungs and left him gasping for air as a bump mushroomed on the back of his head. Then he momentarily blacked out. When he recovered his senses two minutes later, he found himself sitting in water that had risen to his chest. Painfully, he pushed himself to his feet and struggled up the ladder one step at a time.

There was less than a minute left before the ferry plunged to the bottom of the lake bed. He heard a strange thumping sound over the rush of the rising water. What of the people he had saved and drove up to the deck? Had they drowned? Had the guns of the patrol boat shot them like fish in a barrel with its cannon? And what of Al? Was he there to help the survivors? Still dazed from his collision with the bulkhead, he reached down inside himself for the last of his strength and pulled his shoulders and chest over the edge of the ferry's deck.

The stern of the ferry was about to go under, the water rolling up the deck and flooding into the open hatch. The thumping sound in his ears came louder and he looked up to see Giordino hanging on to a sling, seemingly floating in midair. Then Pitt saw the helicopter. Thank God Nash had a change of heart, he thought in his fogged mind.

He grabbed Giordino around the waist as strong muscular arms gripped him under his shoulders. The ferry slipped away beneath his feet and sank below the waves, just as he was hauled into the air.

"The scientists?" he gasped to Giordino. He saw none in the water.

"Lifted on board the copter," Giordino shouted above the wind and rotor noise. "The guards gave up when Nash and his team showed up and fled in the patrol boat."

"Is everybody off the island?" he asked Nash, who came over and knelt beside him.

"We even evacuated the stray cats and dogs," Nash said with a satisfied grin. "We pulled off the operation ahead of schedule and then came after you. When you didn't surface with the rest of the people, we thought you were a goner, all except Al here. Before I could stop him, he'd dropped down on the lift cable to the ferry deck. Only then did we see you appear out of the hatch."

"Lucky for me you arrived at an opportune moment."

"How long before the finale?" asked Giordino.

"As soon as we evacuated everyone from Ometepe to shore, they were transported by truck and buses to high ground, along with all the residents living within two miles of the lake." Nash paused to read the time on his wristwatch. "I estimate it will take another thirty-five minutes before they reach complete safety. When I receive word all is well, I'll send the signal to the pilot to drop his bomb."

"Did your teams meet up with a small army of uniformed women who put up a resistance?" Pitt inquired.

Nash gave him an odd look and grinned. "Wearing funny-colored jumpsuits?"

"Lavender and green?"

"They fought like Amazons," answered Nash in leftover disbelief. "Three of my men were wounded when they temporarily refrained from shooting at women who were shooting at them. We had no choice but to return fire."

Giordino stared down at the headquarters building as the helicopter passed over the facility. The windows were shattered and smoke was rolling from the tenth floor. "How many did you take down?"

"We counted at least nine bodies." Nash looked mystified. "Most of the women were knockouts, really beautiful. My men took it hard. I don't doubt some will suffer psychological problems when they return to home. They weren't trained to fire on civilian women."

"One of them didn't happen to be wearing a gold jumpsuit?" Pitt asked.

Nash thought a moment and then shook his head. "No, I didn't see anyone fitting that description." There was a pause. "Did she have red hair?"

"Yes, her hair was red."

"So were all those who died, the same red tint on all of them. They fought like crazy fanatics. It was unreal."

The helicopter remained on station over the island. Nash received word that the evacuation was successfully completed almost to the minute of his estimate. Without a second's hesitation, he issued the clearance for the B-52 to drop the bomb.

The bomber was so high in the sky, they could not see it or detect the bomb as it fell from sixty thousand feet. Nor did they see the bomb strike the volcano's slope above the Odyssey facility and penetrate deep below the surface. Seconds later, a great rumble came from the slope of Mount Concepcion. The detonation seemed more like a huge thud than the sharp boom of a bomb exploding on impact with the ground. This was quickly followed by a new sound like rolling thunder, as the slope of the volcano let loose its grip on the cone and began collapsing, picking up speed as it shot downward until it reached an incredible eighty miles an hour.

From the air it looked as if the entire research and development complex with all its buildings, docks and aircraft terminal was sliding under the lake's surface like a monstrous coin thrown by a giant hand. Clouds of debris and dust burst into the sky as an enormous wave built and rose over two hundred feet high. Then the crest curled and swept across the lake at astonishing speed, eventually crashing against the shorelines and inundating everything that stood in its path, before finally dying at its highest penetration and receding almost reluctantly back into the lake bed.

In the time it took to turn two pages in a book, the great research center created by Specter, his female directors and his Odyssey empire had vanished, along with the tunnels that were crushed flat.

The South Equatorial Current would not be diverted into the Atlantic Ocean. The Gulf Stream would flow as it had for a million years, and there would be no deep freeze across Europe and North America until the next ice age.

45

The layer of black haze began to merge with a bright white glow. The stars that had soared inside his head faded to a scant few as Dirk slowly returned to consciousness. He felt cold from the damp. Stunned by a sea of pain inside his head, he rose up on his elbows and looked around him.

He found himself in a small rectangular room, no more than five by three feet. The ceiling, floor and three walls were solid concrete. The fourth wall was filled by a rusty iron door. There was no handle on the inside. A small window no larger than a pie plate was embedded in the roof of his cell. Light filtered through it and dimly lit his tiny gray world. There was no bunk or blanket, only a hole in the floor for sanitation.

He never experienced a hangover to match the throb inside his head. There was a knot above the left ear that felt as big as a computer mouse. Rising to his feet was a major effort. If nothing else but to satisfy his curiosity, he pushed on the door. He might as well have tried to knock over an oak tree. All he wore when he went to sleep on the boat were a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Looking down, he saw that his shirt and shorts were gone and he was wearing a white silk bathrobe. It seemed so out of place with his surroundings that he could not begin to imagine its significance.

Then his thoughts turned to Summer. What had happened to her? Where was she? He could remember nothing except watching a half-moon rise over the sea before falling asleep on the boat. The ache in his head began to subside slightly. He came to realize that someone must have clubbed him on the head, then carried him ashore and put him in this cell. But what of Summer. What had happened to her? Desperation began to seep into his mind. His situation looked hopeless. He could do nothing trapped in a concrete box. Escape seemed impossible.

It was sometime late in the afternoon when Dirk heard a sound outside his cell. There came the click of a lock turning and the door swung outward. A woman with blond hair, blue eyes and wearing a green jumpsuit stood with a large automatic pistol in her hand, aimed squarely at his chest.

"You will come with me," she said softly, without the slightest harsh quality.

In another setting Dirk would have found her quite attractive, but here, she seemed as nasty as the Wicked Witch of the West. "Where to?" he asked.

She prodded him in the back with the muzzle of her gun without replying. He was marched down a long corridor past several iron doors. Dirk wondered if Summer was behind one of them. They came to a stairway at the end and he began climbing without being told. At the top, they passed through a door into a marble-floored entry with walls embedded with millions of pieces of mosaic gold tile. The chairs were covered in lavender-dyed leather and the tables with inlaid lavender-stained wood. He thought it gaudy and overdone.

The female guard escorted him to a huge pair of gold-gilded doors, knocked and then stood aside as they were opened from within. She motioned for him to enter.

Dirk was stunned at the sight of four beautiful women with flowing red hair in lavender and gold gowns sitting around a long conference table carved from a solid block of red coral. Summer was also sitting at the table, but attired in a white gown. He rushed over to her and grasped her by the shoulders.

"Are you all right?"

She turned slowly and looked up at him as if in a trance. "All right? Yes, I'm all right."

He could see that she was heavily drugged. "What have they done to you?"

"Please sit down, Mr. Pitt," ordered the woman seated at the head of the table, who was attired in a gold gown. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and musical, but touched with arrogance.

Dirk sensed a movement behind him. The guard had withdrawn from the room and closed the door. For a brief instant, he thought that even though the women outnumbered him, he could do enough damage to incapacitate them and make a run for it with Summer, but he could see that she was so heavily sedated that she couldn't run anywhere. He slowly pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table and sat down. "Can I inquire as to your intentions regarding my sister and me?"

"You may," said the woman obviously in charge. Then she ignored him and turned to the woman on her right. "You searched their boat?"

"Yes, Epona. We found dive gear and underwater detection equipment."

"I apologize for any intrusion," said Dirk, "but we thought the island was deserted."

Epona stared at him, her eyes hard and cold. "We have ways of dealing with trespassers."

"We were on an archaeological expedition to find ancient shipwrecks. Nothing more."

She glanced at Summer, then back to Dirk. "We know what you were searching for. Your sister was most cooperative in providing us with a full report."

"After you drugged her," said Dirk, maddened within an inch of coming across the table after the woman.

It was as if she read his mind. "Do not think of resisting, Mr. Pitt. My guards will respond in an instant."

Dirk forced himself to relax and act indifferent. "So what did Summer tell you?"

"That you and she work for the National Underwater and Marine Agency and that you were here looking for Odysseus' lost fleet that Homer described as being sunk by the Laestrygonians."

"You have read Homer."

"I live and breathe Homer the Celt, not Homer the Greek."

"Then you know the true story of Troy and of Odysseus' voyage across the ocean."

"The reason my sisters and I are here. Ten years ago, through long years of research, we concluded that it was the Celts and not the Greeks who fought the Trojans, and not for the love of Helen but the tin deposits in Cornwall to make bronze. Like you, we retraced Odysseus' wake across the Atlantic. You might be interested in learning that his fleet was not destroyed by huge rocks thrown by the Laestrygonians, but was destroyed by a hurricane."

"And the treasure from his lost fleet?"

"Salvaged eight years ago and used to build our Odyssey financial empire."

Dirk sat quite still, but his hands were trembling out of sight under the table. A warning light blinked on inside his head. These women might allow Summer to live, but he doubted they would let him see another sunrise. "May I ask what the treasure consisted of?"

Epona shrugged. "I see no reason to conceal the results. There is no mystery to our achievement. Our salvage teams recovered over two tons of golden objects, plates, sculptures and other decorative Celtic objects. They were masters of intricate metalworking. These, along with thousands of other ancient artifacts, we sold on the open market around the world, netting just over seven hundred million dollars."

"Wasn't that risky?" asked Dirk. "The French, who own Guadeloupe, the Greeks and the nations of Europe that were once ruled by the Celts, didn't they step in and demand ownership of the treasures?"

"The secret was well-kept. All the buyers of the artifacts wished to remain anonymous and all the transactions were discreetly completed, including the gold, which was placed in depositories in China."

"You mean the People's Republic of China, of course."

"Of course."

"What about the salvage operators and their divers? They would have expected a share of the spoils, and keeping them quiet would not have been easy."

"They received nothing," said Epona, with a sardonic inflection, "and the secret died with them."

The innuendo was not lost on Dirk. "You murdered them?" He said it as if it was a fact rather than an assumption.

"Let's simply say, they joined Odysseus' crews who were lost," she hesitated and then smiled enigmatically. "Nobody who ever came to this island lived to tell of it. Even tourists who anchored their boat in the harbor or simple fishermen who became too curious. They could not tell what they have seen."

"So far I haven't seen anything worth dying for."

"And you won't."

Dirk felt a moment of uneasiness. "Why the fiendishness? Why murder innocent people? Where are you sociopaths coming from, and what do you hope to accomplish?"

There was just the slightest edge of anger in Epona's voice. "You are quite correct, Mr. Pitt. My sisters and I are all sociopaths. We conduct our lives and our fortunes without emotion. That is why we have come so far and accomplished so much in such a few short years. If left to their own devices, sociopaths could rule the world. They are not possessed by morality, nor influenced or hindered by ethics. Complete absence of sentiment makes it easier to achieve their goals. Sociopaths enjoy the highest level of genius and nothing else matters. Yes, Mr. Pitt, I am a sociopath and so is our sisterhood of goddesses."

"The sisterhood of goddesses," Dirk repeated very slowly, accenting each word. "So you have elevated yourselves to deities. Being mortal isn't good enough for you."

"The great leaders of the past were all sociopaths and a few came very close to ruling the world."

"Like Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun and Napoleon. The mental institutions are overflowing with inmates who have dreams of grandeur."

"They all failed because they overestimated their power. We do not intend to make that mistake."

Dirk looked around the table at the beautiful women. It did not go unnoticed that his sister's red hair matched theirs as well. "Despite the fact you have the same hair color, you can't all be blood siblings."

"No, we are not actually related."

"When you say we, who do you include?"

"The women of the sisterhood. We, Mr. Pitt, are of the Druid religion. We follow the long-lost teachings of the Celtic Druids handed down through the centuries."

"The ancient Druids were more myth than fact."

Irritation flickered at the corners of Epona's lips. "They have existed for five thousand years."

"They're only the stuff of which legends are made. No records of their religion and rituals existed until one hundred years before Christ."

"No written records, but their knowledge and spheres of power were handed down by word of mouth through hundreds of generations. The Druids originated in the ancient Celtic tribes. Circled around the campfires at night, they offered their people dreams of happiness amid the day-to-day toil to stay alive. They conceived their mysticism, philosophy and perception. They became gifted at creating a religion that inspired and enlightened the Celtic world. They acted as doctors, magicians, seers, mystics, advisors and, perhaps most important, they became teachers who aroused a desire for learning. Because of them, a higher intelligence began to spread throughout the Western world. To become a Druid, young men and women studied up to twenty years until they became walking encyclopedias. Diogenes the Greek said the Druids were the world's wisest philosophers. Many Druids were women who became goddesses and were worshiped throughout Celtic culture."

Dirk shrugged. "Druidism was a pathetic illusion. It was also evil. They held human sacrifice then, and today you conduct murder and go about your business as if the people you killed never existed. Druidism died centuries ago and you won't accept it."

"Like most men, you have stone for a brain. Druidism, though ancient in concept, is as relevant and alive today as it was five thousand years ago. What you don't realize, Mr. Pitt, is that we are experiencing a Renaissance. Because Druidism has a timeless wisdom and is spiritual and charismatic, it has been reborn around the world."

"Does it still include human sacrifice?"

"If the ritual calls for it."

Dirk was repulsed by the thought that these women could actually believe in and take part in religious sacrifice as an excuse for murder. He began to see that if he couldn't take Summer and flee the island, the same fate was likely in store for them. He stared at the polished surface of the table, composing himself, and noted there was a long metal curtain rod that would make a good weapon.

Epona paused. "By adhering to the principles of Druidism, my sisters and I have helped raised a formidable business that reaches around the world in real estate, construction and development, fields that men traditionally dominate, but we found that collectively we could outsmart them at every turn. Yes, we built an empire, one so powerful that soon we will control the economy of most of the Western world through our development of fuel cell technology."

"Technology can be duplicated in time. No one, not even your empire, can hold a monopoly for long. There are too many great scientific minds and the money to back them to improve your model."

Epona spoke equably. "They have all been left at the starting gate. Once our operation is up and running, it will be too late."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. What operation?"

"Your friends at NUMA know."

Dirk was only half listening. He was intrigued by the fact that none of the other women around the table spoke. They sat there like figures in a wax museum. He studied them to see if they were drugged, but saw no indication. He began to realize that they were under the total spell of Epona. It looked as if they were brainwashed.

"They apparently didn't bother to inform me. I know nothing of this operation you speak of."

"Under my direction, Mr. Specter…" She paused. "Do you know of him?"

"Only what I've read in the newspapers," Dirk lied. "He's some kind of wealthy eccentric, like Howard Hughes."

"Mr. Specter is also the genius behind Odyssey's success. What we have accomplished is due to his superior intelligence."

"I had the impression you were the brains of the outfit."

"My sisters and I carry out Mr. Specter's directives."

A knock came at the door and a woman in the green jumpsuit entered, walked around the table and handed a piece of paper to Epona before leaving the room. Epona studied the message and her expression crumpled from arrogance to horror. She looked as if she had been struck and a hand flew to her mouth. Finally, as though in a daze, she announced in a voice choked with emotion, "This is from our office in Managua. Our Ometepe research center and the tunnels have been destroyed by a collapse of the Concepcion volcano."

The news was received in utter anguish and astonishment. "It's gone, all gone?" asked one of the women in total disbelief.

Epona slowly nodded. "It's been confirmed. The center now lies at the bottom of Lake Nicaragua."

"Was everyone killed?" asked another. "Were there no survivors?"

"The workers were all saved by a fleet of boats around the lake and helicopters from United States Special Forces that attacked our headquarters Our sisters, who heroically defended our headquarters building, were all killed."

Epona rose and moved away from her chair. She took Summer by the arm and pulled her to her feet. Then the two of them walked haltingly toward the door as if one was in a dream and the other a nightmare. Epona turned, the red-contoured lips spread in a leer. Her head tilted toward Dirk a fraction.

"Enjoy your last few hours on Earth, Mr. Pitt."

Then the door opened, the guard walked in and pressed the muzzle of her gun against Dirk's temple as he came to his feet, knocking over the chair, and made a move toward Epona with murder in his eyes. He stopped dead in his tracks, raging with frustration.

"And bid farewell to your sister. You won't be enjoying her company again."

Then she placed her arm around Summer and led her from the room.

46

The sun blazed down on the asphalt outside the private aircraft terminal of the Managua International Airport as Pitt and Giordino stood under a covered patio and watched the NUMA Citation jet land. The pilot took it down to the last turnout and taxied back to the terminal. As soon as the plane came to a halt, the door was opened from the inside and Rudi Gunn stepped to the ground.

"Oh, no," Giordino groaned. "I can smell it in the air. We're not going home."

Gunn did not walk toward them but motioned for them to approach the plane. As they neared, he said, "Climb aboard, we haven't time to spare."

Without comment Pitt and Giordino threw their bags into the cargo compartment. They had no sooner sat down and snapped their seat-belt buckles than the turbines roared and the plane was speeding down the runway and rising into the air.

"Don't tell me," said Giordino dryly, "we're going to spend eternity in Nicaragua."

"Why the rush?" Pitt asked Gunn.

"Dirk and Summer have disappeared," Gunn said without prelude.

"Disappeared," said Pitt, with a sudden flash of apprehension in his eyes. "Where?"

"Guadeloupe. The admiral sent them to an offshore island to search for the remains of Odysseus' fleet of ships thought to be destroyed there during his voyage from Troy."

"Go on."

"Mr. Charles Moreau, who is our representative for that part of the Caribbean, called last night and said that all communication with your son and daughter had ceased. Repeated attempts to contact them proved fruitless."

"Was there a storm?"

Gunn shook his head. "The weather was ideal. Moreau rented a plane and flew over Branwyn Island, where Dirk and Summer were headed. Their boat had vanished and there was no sign of them on or around the island."

Pitt felt as if a great weight was pressing against his chest. The appalling possibility that his children might be injured or dead was barred from his mind. For a moment he was incapable of believing harm had come to them. But then he looked into the face of the usually taciturn Giordino and saw a look of deep concern.

"We're headed there now," Pitt said, as if it was a point of fact.

Gunn nodded. "We'll land at the airport in Guadeloupe. Moreau has arranged for a helicopter to take us directly to Branwyn."

"Any speculation as to what might have happened to them?" asked Giordino.

"All we know is what Moreau has told us."

"What of this island? Are there inhabitants? A fishing village?"

A grave expression spread across Gunn's face. "The island is privately owned."

"By whom?"

"A woman by the name of Epona Eliade."

Surprise showed in Pitt's opaline green eyes. "Epona, yes, of course, it would be her."

"Hiram Yaeger ran an extensive check on her. She's at the top level of Odyssey and is reported to be Specter's right hand." He stopped and gazed at Pitt. "You know her?"

"We met briefly when Al and I rescued the Lowenhardts and snatched Flidais. It looked as though she was high in the Odyssey hierarchy. I understand she wasn't killed during the fighting at Odyssey's research center."

"Apparently she slipped through the net before the center was destroyed. Admiral Sandecker asked the CIA to trace her. One of their agents reported that her private plane was detected by satellite on a landing approach to the airfield on Branwyn Island."

Pitt was holding in his fear with difficulty. Then he said in quiet certainty, with unshakable conviction in his voice, "If Epona is responsible for any harm that might come to Dirk or Summer, she'll never live to collect her retirement pay."

Dusk had turned to dark when the NUMA jet landed in Guadeloupe and taxied to a private hangar. Moreau was standing beside the ground crew as Pitt, Giordino and Gunn exited the plane. He introduced himself and quickly escorted them less than a hundred feet to a waiting helicopter.

"An old Bell JetRanger," said Giordino, admiring the beautifully restored old helicopter. "I haven't seen one of those in a while."

"It's used for tourist sight-seeing," explained Moreau. "It was all I could arrange on short notice."

"She'll do just fine," said Pitt.

He threw his duffel bag inside and entered the craft, moving to the cockpit, where he conversed briefly with the pilot, a man in his early sixties with many thousands of hours in the air in two dozen different types of aircraft. After he lost his wife to cancer and retired as chief pilot on a major airline, Gordy Shepard had come to Guadeloupe and taken a part-time job flying tourists around the islands. His hair was a neatly brushed bush of gray that complemented his black eyes.

"That's a maneuver I haven't attempted in a long time," said Shepard, after hearing Pitt's instructions. "But I think I can handle it for you."

"If not," Pitt said with a taut grin, "my friend and I will hit the water with the force of cannonballs."

Outside, Gunn thanked Moreau and closed the door as the rotor blades began to slowly revolve, increasing their beat until the pilot lifted the craft off the ground.

It took less than fifteen minutes to cover the twenty-seven miles from the airport to the island. At Pitt's request, once they were over water, the pilot flew without lights. Flying above the sea at night was like sitting blindfolded in a closet sealed with duct tape. Using the light beacon on the island as a guide, Shepard flew an unerring straight line for the south shore.

Back in the passenger compartment, Pitt and Giordino opened the duffel bag and put on wet suits and nothing else except hard rubber boots. They carried no scuba gear, fins or masks, only weight belts to compensate for the buoyancy of the neoprene wet suits. The only equipment Pitt took was his satellite phone inside a small waterproof bag tightly belted to his stomach. Then they moved to the rear of the compartment and opened the cargo hatch.

Pitt nodded at Gunn. "Okay, Rudi, I'll call in case we need a quick getaway."

Gunn held up his phone and grinned. "It shall remain glued to my hand until you tell me to evacuate you, Al and the kids off the island."

Though he didn't fully share Gunn's optimism, he was grateful for the show of confidence. He lifted a phone from a vertical base on the bulkhead and called the pilot. "All set back here."

"Stand ready," instructed Shepard. "We'll be coming up over the harbor in three minutes. You sure you've got enough water depth for your dive?"

"Jump," Pitt corrected him. "If you programmed the correct GPS coordinates and stop on them, we should have enough water to cushion us from striking the bottom."

"I'll do my best," acknowledged Shepard. "Then your friend, Mr. Gunn, and I will make it look like we're flying on toward another nearby island before circling back and waiting for your call to come and get you."

"You know the drill."

"I wish you boys luck," Shepard said over the phone, as he closed communications to the passenger compartment. Then he straightened in his seat with both hands and feet on the controls and focused his mind on the maneuver coming up.

The island looked dark, as if it was deserted, the only light was the beacon above its metal frame. Pitt could just vaguely distinguish the faint outline of the buildings and the Stonehenge replica in the middle of the island on a slight rise. It would be a tricky approach, but Shepard seemed as calm as a mobster in a box seat at the Kentucky Derby, knowing the fastest horse was about to throw the race because he paid off the jockey.

Shepard brought the old Bell JetRanger in from the sea right up the center of the channel into the harbor. In the rear, Pitt and Giordino stood poised in the cargo door. The airspeed was nearly a hundred and twenty miles an hour when Shepard's hands and feet danced over the controls and the helicopter stood on its tail and came to an abrupt stop, twisting to starboard and allowing Pitt and Giordino to jump unobstructed through the door into the darkness. Then Shepard pushed the helicopter forward and picked up speed again, banking around the island and heading out to sea. The entire maneuver went off flawlessly. To anyone observing on the island, it hardly looked like the helicopter came to a stop.

Holding their breath, Pitt and Giordino dropped thirty feet before striking the water. Despite their attempts to fall cleanly feet first, the sudden tilt of the helicopter prevented a smooth jump. They found themselves tumbling through the air and doubled up with arms clasped around their knees to prevent smashing into the solid wall of liquid in a flat position that could have badly injured them or at least knocked the wind out of their lungs and rendered them unconscious. The neoprene wet suits absorbed most of the harsh impact, as they struck the surface and plunged nearly ten feet into the deep before losing all momentum.

Feeling like they'd run a gauntlet through sadists beating on them with flat boards, they stroked to the surface just in time to see a pair of searchlights flash on and sweep the water until they found their target and lit up the helicopter like a Christmas tree ornament. Shepard was an old pro who had flown in Vietnam. He anticipated what would happen next. He suddenly dipped the helicopter toward the sea in a steep dive just as a hail of automatic-rifle fire split the night and sprayed the area a good hundred feet behind the tail rotor. Then he spun the aircraft wildly and clawed for altitude. Again the gunfire went wide.

Shepard knew his antics wouldn't keep the wolves from his door much longer, not with the searchlights clinging to him like leeches. Second-guessing the gunmen on the island, he brought the Bell to a quick stop and hovered for a split second. The gunmen, having learned their lesson, led the helicopter and fired at its intended path, but Shepard had conned them again. The trajectory of their fire tore through the air fifty feet in front of the cockpit.

Incredibly, Shepard had gained over half a mile on the gunners and swooped away as the parting shots stitched the fuselage, worked their way toward the cockpit and shattered the windshield. A bullet struck Shepard's arm and passed through his biceps without hitting bone. Gunn had flung himself down and forward and took a small crease on the top of his head that would have removed half his skull if he hadn't ducked.

In the water, Pitt watched with growing relief as the helicopter flew beyond the range of the island's gunners and vanished into the darkness. Not knowing if Gunn or Shepard had been injured, he knew that they could not return as long as concentrated fire swept the skies above the island.

"They can't return until we take out the searchlights," said Giordino, floating on his back as leisurely as if he was in the pool at his condo.

"We'll worry about that little problem after we find out what happened to Dirk and Summer." Pitt stared at the island, his voice firm with the confidence of a man who was gazing at something unseen by others. Then he saw the searchlights lower their beams and begin sweeping over the waters of the harbor.

They dove under, not wasting a breath on warning the other, knowing their instincts were tightly bonded over the years. Pitt rolled over on his back at ten feet and stared up at the surface, seeing the glow of the brilliant light flash over the surface with the brightness of the sun. Only when the lights moved off did they surface and catch a breath. They had been down over a minute, but neither gasped for air, having practiced the art of holding their breath for deep dives without breathing equipment.

When the light beams above danced away, they surfaced, took a breath and dove again. Warily watching the movements of the searchlight and timing its sweep to gain air, they began stroking toward shore that was little more than a hundred yards away. At last the lights blinked out and they could resume swimming on the surface. Ten minutes later their feet touched sand. They rose to their feet, dropped their weight belts and crept into the shadows beneath a bank of rocks, resting for a few moments while appraising the situation.

"Where to?" asked Giordino in a whisper.

"We've landed south of the house and about two hundred yards east of the Stonehenge replica," Pitt replied quietly.

"A folly," said Giordino.

"What?"

"Fake castles and facsimile ancient structures are called follies. Remember?"

"It's burned in my brain," Pitt muttered. "Come on. Let's scout around, find and sabotage the searchlights. It won't do to have them expose us like a pair of rabbits."

It took them another eight minutes to locate the twin searchlights. They almost stumbled on them in the dark. The only thing that saved them from being discovered by the guards manning the lights was their black wet suits, which made them almost invisible in the night. They discerned the outlines of one man lounging on his back in the sand while another peered out to sea with night glasses. Not expecting intruders from their rear creeping onto the raised stand mounting the lights from behind, they were not alert.

Giordino came out of the darkness silently, but the squeak of his rubber-soled boots gave him away and the man with the night glasses spun around in time to see a shadow coming at him out of the night. He grabbed an automatic rifle propped on its butt against the light mount and swung the muzzle toward Giordino. He never pulled the trigger. Pitt had come up from the opposite side five steps ahead of his friend. He snatched the rifle out of the guard's hands and clubbed him over the head with the stock. Then Giordino was on the guard relaxing on the ground, knocking him unconscious with a well-delivered fist to the side of the jaw.

"Doesn't it give you a comfortable feeling to know we're armed?" said Giordino buoyantly, as he disarmed the guards and handed Pitt one of the rifles.

Pitt didn't bother to reply, as he unlatched the lenses of the searchlights, swung them open and lightly, with the slightest of sound, smashed the filaments. "Let's check the house next. Then your folly."

There was no moon, but they took no chances and moved slowly, cautiously, barely seeing the ground beneath their feet. The hard rubber boots protected their feet from the sharp coral that lay between patches of smooth sand. They found a frond under a palm tree and dragged it behind to obscure their footprints. If they couldn't get off the island before daylight, they would have to find a place to hide out until Moreau and Gunn could arrange a rescue.

The house was a large colonial structure with a wide veranda running around the entire building. They crept onto the veranda, moving silently in their rubber-soled boots. A single light could be seen through a crack in the boards over the windows, put there to protect them from the ravages of a hurricane-inspired gale. Pitt moved on his hands and knees to the window and peered through the crack. The room on the other side was bare of furniture. The interior had the look of a house that hadn't been lived in for years.

Unable to see a need for further stealth, Pitt stood and said to Giordino in a normal tone, "This place is abandoned and has been for a long time."

The expression of puzzlement on Giordino's face was not visible in the darkness. "That doesn't make sense. The owner of an exotic island in the West Indies who never stays in the only house. What is the purpose of owning such a spot?"

"Moreau said aircraft and people came in and out during certain times of the year. They must have some other place for guests to stay."

"It would have to be underground," said Giordino. "The only surface structures are the house, the folly and a small aircraft maintenance hangar."

"Then why the armed reception committee?" mused Pitt. "What is Epona trying to hide?"

He was answered by the abrupt sound of strange music, followed by an array of colored lights that flashed on and around the Stonehenge folly.

The door to Dirk's cell clanged as it was thrown open against its stop. The afternoon heat lingered and the small airspace was still sweltering hot. The female guard motioned him out into the hallway with the muzzle of her rifle. Dirk felt a sudden cold, as if he had stepped into a refrigerator. Goose bumps ran down his arms and across his back. He knew it was useless to question the guard. She would tell him nothing of interest.

They did not enter the exotically decorated room, but passed through a door and stepped into a long concrete corridor that appeared to stretch into infinity. They walked for what seemed almost an entire mile before coming to a circular staircase that wound upward for what Dirk estimated as four stories. At the top, a landing led through a stone arch to a large thronelike chair that sat dimly illuminated by a golden light. Two women in blue gowns stepped out of the darkness and chained him to rings clamped into the chair. One of them tied a black silk gag over his mouth. Then all three women faded back into the darkness.

Suddenly, an array of lavender-colored lights flashed on and swirled around the interior of a concave stone amphitheater bowl built without seats for an audience. Next a set of laser beams lit the black sky, illuminating a series of columns spaced around the bowl and a larger outer ring of black lava columns. Only then did Dirk see a huge block of black stone shaped like a sarcophagus. He tensed and threw himself forward, only to be stopped by the chains as he identified it as some kind of altar used for sacrificial rituals. Sheer horror widened his eyes above the gag as he recognized Summer in a white gown spread-eagled on top of the great black stone, as if somehow bound to the hard surface. A cold fear ran through him as he struggled like a madman in a futile attempt to break his chains or pull them from their rings. Despite a strength enhanced by adrenaline, his efforts were in vain. No humans numbering less than four Arnold Schwarzeneggers could have broken the links of the chains or pulled them out of the stone chair. Still, he fought until he hadn't the strength to struggle any longer.

The lights suddenly blinked out and the odd sounds of Celtic music echoed among the upright stones. Ten minutes later they flashed on again, revealing the thirty women in their colorful flowing gowns. Their red hair gleamed under the lights and the silver flecks on their skin twinkled like stars. Then the lights spiraled as they had many times before as Epona appeared in her golden peplos gown. She stepped up to the black sacrificial altar, raised her hand and began to chant, "O daughters of Odysseus and Circe, may life be taken from those who are not worthy."

Epona's voice droned on, pausing as the other women raised their arms and chanted in unison. As before, the chant was repeated, becoming louder before dropping off to inaudible whispers as they lowered their arms.

Dirk could see that Summer was oblivious to her surroundings. She stared at Epona and the columns rising around the altar, not seeing them. There was no fear in her eyes. She was so heavily drugged that she had no concept of the threat on her life.

Epona reached inside the folds of her gown and raised the ceremonial dagger above her head. The other women came up the steps and surrounded their goddess, also producing daggers held above their heads.

Dirk's green eyes were stricken, they were the eyes of someone who knows his world will soon be shrouded in tragedy. He screamed in anguish, but the sound of his voice was muted by the gag.

Epona then uttered the death chant: "Here lies one who should not have been born."

Her knife and the knives of the others glinted under the swirling lights.

47

In the split second before she and the others could plunge their daggers into Summer's helpless body, two phantoms encased entirely in black materialized as if by magic in front of the altar. The tall figure grabbed Epona's upraised wrist, twisted it and forced her to her knees, to the utter shock of the women surrounding Summer.

"Not tonight," said Pitt. "The show is over."

Giordino moved like a cat around the altar, swinging the barrel of his gun from one woman to another in case they had any ideas of interfering. "Stand back!" he ordered harshly. "Drop your knives and move to the edge of the steps."

Keeping the muzzle of his rifle pressed against Epona's breast with one hand, Pitt coolly went about freeing Summer, who was bound to the altar by a single strap across her stomach.

Confused and fearful, the red-haired women slowly backed away from the altar and grouped together, as if impelled by an instinctive urge of protection. Giordino wasn't fooled for an instant. Their sisters had fought the Special Forces on Ometepe like tigers. His muscles tensed as he saw they made no move to drop their daggers, and began moving in a circle around him. Giordino knew this wasn't the time for niceties, such as asking them again to drop their daggers. He took careful aim, squeezed the trigger of his rifle and shot off the left earring of the woman who looked as if she carried the weight of authority.

Now Giordino stiffened when he saw the woman seemed incapable of pain or emotion. No hand lifted to feel the pain and the trickle of blood from her earlobe. She merely fixed Giordino with a fixed look of rage.

He snapped over his shoulder at Pitt, who was busily trying to unbuckle the strap binding Summer to the top of the stone. "I need some help. These crazy females are acting like they're about to charge."

"That's only the half of it. The island's security guards will come running when they get wise that all is not well."

Pitt looked up and saw the thirty women begin moving back toward the altar. It went against all his breeding and upbringing to unmercifully shoot a woman, but there was more than their own lives at stake. His children would die too if they didn't stop thirty hard-core members of the sisterhood from rushing them with slashing knives. It was as if a pack of wolves were circling a pair of lions. With guns against knives, one against five still gave the men an advantage, but a mass rush of fifteen against one was too one-sided.

Pitt stopped in the act of freeing a drugged Summer. In the same instant, Epona jerked her wrist out of Pitt's grip, slicing a deep cut in his palm with a razor-sharp ring. He grabbed her hand and glanced at the ring that gashed his hand. It held a tanzanite stone cut in the design of the Uffington horse. He disregarded the stabbing pain and pushed her away. Then he brought up his rifle.

Unable to murder but at least maim to keep his closest friend and children from a bloody death, he calmly fired off four shots that struck the nearest women in the feet. All four went down with cries of pain and shock. The others hesitated, but hyped-up with anger and fanaticism they began to press forward, making threatening motions with the daggers.

No more mentally geared to kill a woman than Pitt, Giordino slowly, methodically, took Pitt's cue and began shooting the women in the feet, downing five of them who crumpled in a heap together.

"Stop!" Pitt shouted. "Or we will shoot to kill."

Those still unscathed paused and looked down at their sisters writhing at their feet. One of them, who was dressed in a silver gown, raised her dagger high over her head and let it drop with a clang onto the stone floor. Slowly, one by one, the others followed suit until they all stood with empty hands outstretched.

"Tend to your wounded!"

Quickly, Pitt finished releasing Summer, as Giordino covered the women and kept an eye out for any alerted guards. He cursed himself at finding that Epona had escaped and vanished during the melee. Seeing Summer was in no condition to walk on her own, Pitt threw her over his shoulder and made his way to the throne, where he rapidly pried apart the rings holding Dirk's chains with the barrel of his weapon.

After pulling his gag off, Dirk gasped, "Dad, where in God's name did you and Al come from?"

"I guess you could say we dropped from the sky," said Pitt, happily embracing his son.

"You cut it close. Another few seconds and…" His voice trailed off at the grim thought.

"Now we have to figure a way out of here." Then Pitt stared into Summer's glazed eyes. "Is she all right?" he asked Dirk.

"Those Druid witches drugged her to the gills."

Pitt wished that he still had Epona clutched in his hands. But there was no sign of her. She had deserted her sisters and disappeared into the darkness beyond the ritual stones. He removed the satellite phone from the pack around his waist and dialed a number. After a long pause, Gunn's voice came over the receiver. "Dirk?"

"What's your status?" asked Pitt. "It looked as if you took hits."

"Shepard took a bullet through his upper arm, but it was a clean wound and I bandaged it up the best I could."

"Can he still fly?"

"He's a tough old dog. Too mad not to fly."

"How about you?"

"One bounced off my head," Gunn answered buoyantly, "but I suspect the bullet took the worst of it."

"Are you airborne?"

"Yes, about three miles north of the island." Then Gunn asked hesitantly, "Dirk and Summer?"

"Safe and sound."

"Thank God for that. Are you ready to be picked up?"

"Come and get us."

"Can you tell me what you found?"

"Answers to questions come later."

Pitt switched off the phone and looked down at Summer, who was being brought back to reality by Giordino and Dirk as they walked her back and forth to get her circulation restored. While waiting for the helicopter, he walked around the sacrificial block, watching for any sign of Epona's security guards, but none appeared. Then the lights around the stones blinked out and his world turned black as silence settled over the pagan amphitheater.

By the time Gunn and Shepard reappeared, the roar of jet engines could be heard on the island's airstrip as several planes took off, one almost on the tail of the one in front. Confident now there was no danger from guards appearing out of the night, Pitt informed Shepard that he could turn on his landing lights when they arrived to lift them up. When the helicopter arrived and hovered briefly before descending, Pitt could see they were alone inside the bowl of the ritual stones. All the women had vanished. He looked up into a cloudless sky carpeted with a million stars, wondering what destination Epona was headed for. What were her plans now that her freakish operation that would have caused undue suffering to millions of people lay in ruins beneath Lake Nicaragua?

She would be a wanted woman now that it was known she had conducted criminal acts for her boss, Specter. International law enforcement agencies would be on her trail. Every aspect of Odyssey's operations would be investigated. Lawsuits would fill courts in Europe and America. Whether Odyssey could survive the scrutiny was doubtful. And what of Specter? What was his role in the scheme? He was the man at the top, so he had to be responsible. What force governed the relationship between Specter and Epona? The questions spun in Pitt's mind without answers.

The enigma would have to be solved by others, he thought. His role, and that of Giordino, was thankfully finished. He turned his thoughts to more mundane matters, like his own future. He looked up as Giordino came over and stood next to him.

"This may be a strange time to bring this up," said Giordino almost as if he was meditating. "But I've been giving it a lot of thought, especially during the past ten days. I've come to the conclusion that I'm getting too old to be chasing around the oceans and getting involved with Sandecker's crazy ventures. I'm tired of madcap exploits and wild escapades or expeditions that come within inches of halting my productive love life. I can't do all the things I used to do. My joints ache and my sore muscles take twice as long to heal."

Pitt looked at him and smiled. "So what's your point?"

"The admiral has a choice. I can either be put out to pasture and find a cushy job with an ocean engineering company or he can put me in charge of NUMA's underwater technical equipment department. Any job where I don't have to be maimed or shot at."

Pitt turned and stared for a long moment over the restless black sea. Then he gazed at Dirk and Summer, as his son helped his daughter to board the aircraft. They were his future.

"You know," he said finally. "You've been reading my mind."