Deep Six (45 page)

“Oh, my God, please help us?”

“How many are you?”

“Myself and two children.”

“Pass out the kids.”

The face disappeared and quickly a boy about six years of age was thrust through the narrow port. Pitt set him between his legs, keeping the blanket suspended above the two of them like a tent. Next came a little girl no more than three. Incredibly she was sound asleep.

“Give me your hand,” Pitt ordered, knowing in his heart it was hopeless.

“I can’t get through!” the woman cried. “The opening is too small.”

“Do you have water in the bathroom?”

“There’s no pressure.”

“Strip naked!” Pitt shouted in desperation. “Use your cosmetics. Smear your body with facial creams.”

The woman nodded in understanding and disappeared inside. Pitt turned and, clutching a child under each arm, rushed to the rail. With great relief he spied Giordino treading water, looking up.

“Al,” Pitt called. “Catch.”

If Giordino was surprised to see Pitt collar two more children he didn’t show it. He reached up and gathered them in as effortlessly as if they were footballs.

“Jump!” he yelled to Pitt. “She’s going over.”

Without lingering to answer, Pitt raced back to the cabin port. He realized with only a small corner of his mind that saving the mother was a sheer act of desperation. He passed beyond conscious thought; his movements seemed those of another man, a total stranger.

The air was so hot and dry his perspiration evaporated before it seeped from his pores. The heat rose from the deck and penetrated the soles of his shoes. He stumbled and nearly fell as a heavy shudder ran through the doomed ship, and she gave a sudden lurch as the deck dropped on an increasing angle to port. She was in her final death agony before capsizing and sinking to the sea bottom.

Pitt found himself kneeling against the slanting cabin wall, reaching through the port. A pair of hands clasped his wrists and he pulled. The woman’s shoulders and breasts squeezed past the opening. He gave another heave and then her hips scraped through.

The flames were running up and licking at his back. The deck was dropping away beneath his feet. He held the woman around the waist and leaped off the edge of the cabin as the
Leonid Andreyev
rolled over, her propellers twisting out of the water and arching toward the sun.

They were sucked under by the fierce rush of water, swirled around like dolls in a maelstrom. Pitt lashed out with his free hand and feet and struggled upward, seeing the glimmering surface turn from green to blue with agonizing slowness.

The blood pounded in his ears and his lungs felt as though they were filled with angry wasps. The thin veil of blackness began to tint his vision. He felt the woman go limp under his arm, her body creating an unwelcome drag against his progress. He used up the last particles of oxygen, and a pyrotechnic display flared inside his head. One burst became a bright orange ball that expanded until it exploded in a wavering flash.

He broke through the surface, his upturned face directed at the afternoon sun. Thankfully he inhaled deep waves of air, enough to ease the blackness, the pounding and the sting in his lungs. Then he quickly circled the woman’s abdomen and squeezed hard several times, forcing the salt water from her throat. She convulsed and began retching, followed by a coughing spell. Only when her breathing returned to near normal and she groaned did he look around for the others.

Giordino was swimming in Pitt’s direction, pushing one of the deck chairs in front of him. The two children were sitting on top, immune to the tragedy around them, gaily laughing at Giordino’s repertory of funny faces. ,

“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to turn up,” he said.

“Bad pennies usually do,” said Pitt, keeping the children’s mother afloat until she recovered enough to hang on to the deck chair.

“I’ll take care of them,” said Giordino. “You better help Loren. I think the senator’s bought it.”

His arms felt as if they were encased in lead and he was numb with exhaustion, but Pitt carved the water with swift even strokes until he reached the floating jetsam that supported Loren and Larimer.

Gray-faced, her eyes filled with sadness, Loren grimly held the senator’s head above water. Pitt saw with sinking heart she needn’t have bothered; Larimer would never sit in the Senate again. His skin was mottled and turning a dusky purple. He was game to the end, but the half-century of living in the fast lane had called in the inevitable IOU’s. His heart had gone far beyond its limits and finally quit in protest.

Gently, Pitt pried Loren’s hands from the senator’s body, and pushed him away. She looked at him blankly as if to object, then turned away, unable to watch as Larimer slowly drifted off, gently pushed by the rolling sea.

“He deserves a state funeral,” she said, her voice a husky whisper.

“No matter,” said Pitt, “as long as they know he went out a man.”

Loren seemed to accept that. She leaned her head on Pitt’s shoulder, the tears intermingling with the salt water on her cheeks.

Pitt twisted and looked around. “Where’s Moran?”

“He was picked up by a Navy helicopter.”

“He deserted you?” Pitt asked incredulously.

“The crewman shouted that he only had room for one more.”

“So the illustrious Speaker of the House left a woman to support a dying man while he saved himself.”

Pitt’s dislike for Moran burned with a cold flame. He became obsessed with the idea of ramming his fist into the little ferret’s face.

Captain Pokofsky sat in the cabin of the powerboat, his hands clasped over his ears to shut out the terrible cries of the people drowning in the water and the screams of those suffering the agony of their burns. He could not bring himself to look upon the indescribable horror or watch the
Leonid Andreyev
plunge out of sight to the seabed two thousand fathoms below. He was a living dead man.

He looked up at Geidar Ombrikov through glazed and listless eyes. “Why did you save me? Why didn’t you let me die with my ship?”

Ombrikov could plainly see Pokofsky was suffering from severe shock, but he felt no pity for the man. Death was an element the KGB agent was trained to accept. His duty came before all consideration of compassion.

“I’ve no time for rituals of the sea,” he said coldly. “The noble captain standing on the bridge saluting the flag as his ship sinks under him is so much garbage. State Security needs you, Pokofsky, and I need you to identify the American legislators.”

“They’re probably dead,” Pokofsky muttered distantly.

“Then we’ll have to prove it,” Ombrikov snapped ruthlessly. “My superiors won’t accept less than positive identification of their bodies. Nor can we overlook the possibility they may still be alive out there in the water.”

Pokofsky placed his hands over his face and shuddered. “I can’t—”

Before the words were out of his mouth, Ombrikov roughly dragged him to his feet and shoved him out on the open deck. “Damn you!” he shouted. “Look for them!”

Pokofsky clenched his jaws and stared at the appalling reality of the floating wreckage and hundreds of struggling men, women and children. He choked off a sound deep inside him, his face blanched.

“No!” he shouted. He leaped over the side so quickly, suddenly, neither Ombrikov nor his crew could stop him. He hit the water swimming and dove deep until the white of his uniform was lost to view on the surface.

The boats from the container ship hauled in the survivors as fast as they could reach them, quickly filling to capacity and unloading their human cargo before returning to the center of the flotsam to continue the rescue. The sea was filled with debris of all kinds, dead bodies of all ages, and those still fighting to live. Fortunately the water was warm and none suffered from exposure, nor did the threat of sharks ever materialize.

One boat jockeyed close to Giordino, who helped lift the mother and her two children on board. Then he scrambled over the freeboard and motioned for the helmsman to steer toward Pitt and Loren. They were among the last few to be fished out.

As the boat slipped alongside, Pitt raised his hand in greeting to the short, stocky figure that leaned over the side.

“Hello,” Pitt said, grinning widely. “Are we ever glad to see you.”

“Happy to be of service,” replied the steward Pitt had passed earlier at the elevator. He was also grinning, baring a set of large upper teeth parted by a wide gap.

He reached down, grasped Loren by the wrists and pulled her effortlessly out of the water and into the boat. Pitt stretched out his hand, but the steward ignored it.

“Sorry,” he said, “we have no more room.”

“What—what are you talking about?” Pitt demanded. “The boat is half empty.”

“You are not welcome aboard my vessel.”

“You damned well don’t even own it.”

“Oh, but I do.”

Pitt stared at the steward in sheer incredulity, then slowly turned and took one long comprehensive look across the water at the container ship. The name of the starboard bow was
Chalmette,
but the lettering on the sides of the containers stacked on the main deck read “Bougainville.” Pitt felt as though he’d been kicked in the stomach.

“Our confrontation is a lucky circumstance for me, Mr. Pitt, but I fear a misfortune for yourself.”

Pitt stared at the steward. “You know me?”

The grin turned into an expression of hate and contempt. “Only too well. Your meddling has cost Bougainville Maritime dearly.”

“Tell me who are you?” asked Pitt, stalling for time and desperately glancing in the sky for a Navy recovery helicopter.

“I don’t think I’ll give you the satisfaction,” the steward said with all the warmth of a frozen food locker.

Unable to hear the conversation, Loren pulled at the steward’s arm. “Why don’t you bring him on board? What are you waiting for?”

He turned and savagely backhanded her across the cheek, sending her stumbling backward, falling across two survivors who sat in stunned surprise.

Giordino, who was standing in the stern of the boat, started forward. A seaman produced an automatic shotgun from under a seat and rammed the wooden shoulder stock into his stomach. Giordino’s jaw dropped open; he gasped for breath and lost his footing, dropping partially over the side of the boat, arms trailing in the water.

The steward’s lips tightened and the smooth yellow features bore no readable expression. Only his eyes shone with evil. “Thank you for being so cooperative, Mr. Pitt. Thank you for so thoughtfully coming to me.”

“Get screwed!” Pitt snapped in defiance.

The steward raised an oar over his head. “Bon voyage, Dirk Pitt.”

The oar swung downward and clipped Pitt on the right side of his chest, driving him under the water. The wind was crushed from his lungs and a stabbing pain swept over his rib cage. He resurfaced and lifted his left arm above his head to ward off the next inevitable blow. His move came too late. The oar in the hands of the steward mashed Pitt’s extended arm down and struck the top of his head.

The blue sky turned to black as consciousness left him, and slowly Pitt drifted under the lifeboat and sank out of sight.

59

THE PRESIDENT’S WIFE
entered his second-floor study, kissed him good night and went off to bed. He sat in a soft high-back embroidered chair and studied a pile of statistics on the latest economic forecasts. Using a large yellow legal pad, he scribbled a prodigious amount of notes. Some he saved, some he tore up and discarded before they were completed. After nearly three hours, he removed his glasses and closed his tired eyes for a few moments.

When he opened them again, he was no longer in his White House study, but in a small gray room with a high ceiling and no windows.

He rubbed his eyes and looked once more, blinking in the monotone light.

He was still in the gray room, only now he found himself seated in a hard wooden chair, his ankles strapped to square carved legs and his hands to the armrests.

A violent fear coursed through him, and he cried for his wife and the Secret Service guards, but the voice was not his. It had a different tonal quality, deeper, more coarse.

Soon a door that was recessed into one wall swung inward and a small man with a thin, intelligent face entered. His eyes had a dark, bemused look, and he carried a syringe in one hand.

“How are we today, Mr. President?” he asked politely.

Strangely, the words were foreign, but the President understood them perfectly. Then he heard himself shouting repeatedly, “I am Oskar Belkaya, I am not the President of the United States, I am Oskar—” He broke off as the intruder plunged the needle into his arm.

The bemused expression never left the little man’s face; it might have been glued there. He nodded toward the doorway and another man wearing a drab prison uniform came in and set a cassette recorder on a Spartan metal table that was bolted to the floor. He wired the recorder to four small eyelets on the table’s surface and left.

“So you won’t knock your new lesson on the floor, Mr. President,” said the thin man. “I hope you find it interesting.” Then he switched on the recorder and left the room.