Dirk Pitt 1 - Pacific Vortex (13 page)

“What do you mean?” Pitt said quietly, controlling his voice.

“They'll kill you if they knew you used the radio.” The voice sounded remote and distant.

“They?”

Pitt's hand crept down to Barf and closed over the handgrip. The thing in the doorway took no notice.

“You don't belong here,” the apparition went on vacantly. “You're not dressed like the others.”

The man himself was clothed in dirty rags that resembled a naval noncom's dungarees, but there was no indication of rank. The eyes were dull and the body thin and wasted. Pitt decided to try a long shot.

“Are you Commander Dupree?”

“Dupree?” the man echoed. "No, Farris, Seaman First Class Farris.*'

“Where are the others, Farris? Commander Dupree, the officers, your shipmates?”

“I don't know. They said they would kill them if I touched the radio.”

“Is anyone else on board?”

“They keep two guards at all tunes.”

“Where?”

“They could be anywhere.”

“Oh, my God!” Pitt gasped, his body suddenly taut. “March!” He leaped to his feet and pulled Farris into the radio operator's chair. “Wait here. Do you understand me, Farris? Don't move.”

Farris nodded dully. “Yes, sir.”

Barf held in front of him, Pitt moved swiftly from compartment to compartment, stopping every few seconds to listen. There was no sign of Lieutenant March, and the only sound came from the humming of the duct fans. He stepped into what he immediately recognized as the sick bay. There was an operating table, cabinets filled with neatly labeled bottles, surgical instruments, an X-ray machine, and even a dentist's chair. There was also a crumpled shape lying between the beds that jutted from the far bulkhead. Pitt bent down, although he knew who the inert form had to be.

March was lying on his side, his arms and legs twisted in rubbery grotesqueness, his body fluid circling the body in a congealing pool. Two small round holes bled on a direct line from his chest to the back of his spine; he lay on the cold steel deck, the eyes open, staring unseeing at the blood that had emptied from his veins. Moved by an instinct as old as man, Pitt gently reached down and closed March's eyes.

As a shadow crept horizontally across the deck and then vertically up the bulkhead, Pitt snapped his body in a half arc and rammed the point of Barf into the stomach of the man standing behind him and pulled the trigger. The black outline against the white paint also betrayed the blurred shape of either a gun or a club in one of the intruder's hands, and, if Pitt had wasted a fraction of a second, he'd have been as dead as March. As it was, he barely had time to see that his assailant was a tall, hairy man, wearing only a brief green cloth around his loins. The face was intelligent, almost handsome, with blue eyes and a burled mass of blond hair. The features Pitt soon forgot. It was the next agonized moment in time that he carried to his grave.

The carbon dioxide hissed as it unleashed its immense pressure into pliant, human flesh. The man's body instantly bloated in a distorted monstrosity of ugliness, the stomach protruding together with the small balloonlike pieces of skin that formed between the ribs. The abject look of horror on the face was wiped out in half a second as his grayish-green innards shot from his nose and ears in a fine spray coating the deck for six feet in each direction, and the mouth contorted to twice its size as a great mass of bloody tissue and pieces of internal organs vomited forth in a cascade of red, slimy matter over the inflated torso in unison with the eyeballs which popped out of both sockets and hung swaying over the puffed cheeks. The arms went straight out to the sides and the hideously deformed figure fell backwards to the deck, slowly deflating to its previous size as the carbon dioxide escaped from the body's orifaces.

Pitt, the bile rising in his throat, turned from the sickening sight, leaned down, and picked up March, carefully laying him on one of the beds. He covered the young lieutenant with a blanket Pitt's eyes were sad and bitter. He knelt beside the still form as if to say: I shouldn't have let you die. Dammit to hell, March. I shouldn't have let you die.

Pitt stood up, his legs unsteady. The game had changed drastically now. The Vortex had scored close to home.

He turned again to the deformed body on the deck and realized that he was staring at his first tangible evidence. This was no supernatural being from outer space. This was a two-armed, two-legged human being that bled like everyone else.

Pitt didn't wait to see more. If there was another one of them lurking nearby, Pitt knew he wouldn't get another chance at killing them from the inside out The gas canister held only one shot Pitt felt helpless, but suddenly it came to him; the weapon he'd seen in the shadow on the wall, the weapon that had killed March. In two steps, he had found it under the surgical table. He hadn't noticed it before because it was shaped more like a small glove with the index finger pointing, than a standard pistol. The grip was the five-finger type in which each finger had its own special rest and support The hand fit the stock as though it had been poured in. Only a short two-inch barrel protruding above the thumb indicated a firing chamber. There was no trigger in the usual sense, but a small button set so that the tip of the finger rested on its sleeve, ready to fire with only an ounce or two of pressure.

Pitt didn't wait to test it Quickly he reached the radio room, grabbed a protesting Farris by the arm, and raced toward the escape hatch.

They almost made it. Ten more steps across the engine and reactor room and they would have reached the torpedo room door. Pitt braked suddenly, his feet digging in, driving backward against the force of Farris's forward motion behind him as he came face-to-face with a massive mountain of a man wearing only brief green shorts and holding the same type of odd weapon that Pitt clutched in his hand.

Pitt lucked out—surprise was on his side. He had expected and feared an untimely confrontation. The other man clearly had not There was no “who are you?” or “what are you doing here?” Only the pressure of Pitt's fingers on the button and an almost inaudible serpentlike hiss as his weapon spoke first.

The projectile from Pitt's gun—he still wasn't sure what it was that spat out of the tiny barrel—hit the man high on the forehead at point-blank range. The stranger jerked back violently against the turbine, then fell forward, head and chest striking heavily on the deck Then, even before the man uttered his last gasp, Pitt had stepped around him and was shoving Farris through the doorway into the torpedo room.

Farris stumbled and fell, sprawling on the deck, taking Pitt down with him, but not before Pitt had smashed his leg just below the knee on the door sill and dropped the weapon. The sharp pain felt as though his leg had been suddenly hacked off. But it was not the pain that paralyzed him as he struggled to rise from the deck, but rather a numbing fear, the realization that he'd blundered by dashing headlong into the forward torpedo room. He groped frantically for the strange gun, knowing it was too late, knowing

that either of the two men standing in the compartment could kill him with ridiculous ease.

“Pitt?” said the smaller of the two men.

Pitt was certain that his ears and his mind were deceiving him. Then he found himself gazing into the face of the Martha Ann's helmsman.

Pitt blurted: “You followed us?”

“Commander Boland thought you and March must   be about out of air,” answered the helmsman. “So he sent us down with auxiliary tanks. We came in through the escape compartment. We never expected to find it dry.”

Pitt's numbed senses were forging back now. “We haven't much time. Can you flood this compartment?”

The helmsman stared at him. The other man, Pitt recognized as one of the deckhands, merely looked blank. “You want to flood  .”

“Yes, dammit. I want to fix it so no one will be able to raise this ship for at least a month.”

“I can't do it . . .” the helmsman said hesitantly.

“There's no time to waste,” Pitt said softly. “March is already dead, and we will be too if we don't hurry.”

“Lieutenant March dead? I don't understand. Why flood . . .”

“It doesn't matter,” Pitt said, staring directly into the helmsman's eyes. “Ill take full responsibility.” Even before the words were out, the same empty, worthless phrase he'd given to March haunted him.

The other seaman pointed at Farris, sitting on the deck, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. "Who's her

“A survivor of the Starbuck's crew,” Pitt answered. “We've got to get him topside. He needs medical attention in the worst way.”

If the seaman was surprised at meeting someone who should have been dead for months, he didn't show it. Instead, he simply nodded at Pitt's gashed and bleeding leg. “Looks like you could use some of that yourself.”

The leg had lost all feeling. Pitt was thankful there was no telltale lump that betrayed a fracture. “I'll survive.” He turned back to the helmsman. “Flood this compartment!”

“You win,” the helmsman said mechanically. “But only under protest . . .”

“Protest it is,” Pitt said impatiently. “Can you do it?”

“No matter what we did, a good salvage crew could blow her out inside of two days. The escape hatch in this compartment is the only way anyone could get in from the outside, so that's some help as long as the sub's power supply can't be reached. Best solution would be to jam the emergency valves closed to prevent blowing and jam the torpedo tubes open to keep the sea coming in. Then disconnect the extraction pumps in case whoever tries to clear the compartment plugs in an outside power source. Probably take them a day and a half to figure out what we've done, and then three or four hours to put everything back in order and pump out and pressurize the compartment.”

“Then I suggest you start by securing the door to the engine room.”

“There is another way to add a few extra hours,” the helmsman said slowly.

“Which is?”

“Shut down the reactors.”

“No,” Pitt said firmly. “When we're ready, we won't be in a position to afford the luxury of reactor start-up time.”

The helmsman looked at Pitt without expression. “God help us if you screw up.” He turried to the other seaman. “Disconnect the pumps and tnrpw open the inner torpedo tube doors. I'll handle the vents and the exterior tube doors from the outside.” He faced Pitt. “Okay, Pitt, the evil deed is about to be done. But if you're wrong, we'll be the oldest men in Uncle Sam's Navy before we're through paying for this.”

Pitt grinned. “With a little luck, you may even get a medal.”

The helmsman offered a sour expression. 1 doubt that, sir. I doubt that very much."

Boland knew how to pick his men. The two salvage men went about their business as calmly and efficiently as if they were mechanics in the pits at the Indianapolis Speedway on Memorial Day. Everything went off smoothly. The helmsman went out through the escape hatch to open the outer torpedo tube doors and jam the exhaust vents, and it seemed to Pitt that he had barely wrapped his leg with a torn piece of blanket from an empty bunk when the helmsman was giving the prearranged all-finished tapping signal on the hatch. Then Pitt hauled Farris up into the escape tube while the other seaman began opening the valves to let the sea into the lower compartment. When the incoming water had reached equal pressure with only an air bubble two feet from the ceiling, he dove down and unclamped the torpedo tube doors. He was amusingly surprised to see a blue parrot fish swim nonchalantly out of the tube and into the compartment.

Pitt had to force Farris to don the air tank and regulator, and he slipped the face mask over the uncomprehending eyes.

Til see that he makes it, sir." The seaman had squeezed next to Farris and held him in a vicelike grip around the waist.

Pitt, grateful to be rid of the responsibility, merely nodded a thanks and donned his own diving gear, substituting a fresh air tank for the one he'd drained on the descent. Then the seaman tapped on the hatch with the butt end of a knife and let the helmsman have the honor of cracking the cover from the outside.

In theory, they could have all ridden to the surface in the air bubble as it escaped from the submarine, but theory doesn't always allow for the unexpected, like Pitt's air valve getting hung up on the lip of the escape hatch and being left behind. For a minute he was poised there, watching helplessly as the others shot to the surface, never once noticing that Pitt had missed their bubblelike elevator.

Pushing his weight downward until the valve came free was relatively easy, but when he swam out into the open sea, another unexpected threat came his way: a Sphyrna Levini, eighteen feet of hammerhead shark. For a moment Pitt thought the great gray two-thousand-pound bulk, one of the few species of sharks known to attack humans, was going to ignore him and pass overhead. But then in an unerased moment in time, he watched the broad, flattened head turn and approach, its mouth a mass of razor-sharp teeth curved into a vicious expression.

Pitt's Barf was lying useless, back on the submarine; his only weapon, and a pitifully inadequate one at that, was the small, glove-shaped gun that had killed March. As the shark was homing in on the blood clouded around his leg, Pitt stared spellbound at the shark as it swam effortlessly toward him, curving slightly in a circle staring at him from one great eye on the end of the hammer.

It cut its arc even smaller, narrowing the gap until it brushed by him only a few inches away; Pitt lashed out with his left hand and rammed his fist against the monster's gills. What a useless, almost comical gesture, he thought, but the unexpected contact surprised the shark, and Pitt felt the pressure of water as the shark spun and swam away. But then it made a U-turn and came back. Pitt kept facing it, kept kicking his fins frantically. He stole a look at the surface, no more than thirty feet away, but he wasn't going to make it; the man-eater was on its second pass and Pitt was down to his last ace.

Pitt held out the gun and carefully aimed; the shark had but to open its mouth and Pitt's hand would be clenched between its teeth. As the creature moved in, Pitt squeezed the button trigger and shot it squarely in the cold, tranquil left eye.

The shark rolled by and thrashed wildly, the rush of water whirling Pitt in a mad backward somersault as though he were being caught by a breaking surf. With all his strength he recovered and broke for the surface, keeping a wary eye on the shark, glancing skyward so he wouldn't ram his head into the keel of the Martha Ann. A shadow fell across him; he peered up to see the helmsman twenty feet above, motioning Pitt in his direction. Pitt didn't need an engraved invitation. He made the distance in ten seconds. Then he turned and waited for the next attack. The great board-headed murder machine had halted and staring menacingly out of its good right eye, its powerful fins barely propelling the massive body through the water. Suddenly it spun about and unpredictably swam off at incredible speed, disappearing in the dark blue of the water.

Exhausted and shaken, Pitt gratefully let himself be pulled up onto the diving platform where helping hands removed his diving gear. He was totally exhausted. Then he looked up and found Boland standing, grimly staring down at him.

“Where's March?” Boland's tone was edged with ice.

“Dead,” Pitt replied simply.

“These things happen,” he said, and walked away.

Pitt stared at the drink in his hand. His face was devoid of expression but his eyes were tired and red. The brilliant tropical sunset threw its final rays of the day through a porthole and sparkled off the ice floating in the Scotch. Pitt rolled the glass over his forehead, mingling the condensation with his perspiration. He had finished giving Boland the whole story. And now, when he should have relaxed, he somehow sensed that the terrible events of the past hour were only the beginning of something even more sinister.

“You're not to blame yourself for March's murder,” Boland said earnestly. 'If you had become trapped in the escape chamber, and if he'd drowned, then it would have been on your hands. But God only knows there was no way you could have foreseen a pair of killers roaming the Starbuckl"

“Come off it, Paul,” Pitt said wearily. “I forced that boy to enter the sub. If I hadn't been so eager to prove a point he'd be alive now.”

“Okay. A life has been lost, but the staggering importance of what you found more than offsets a single Me. If it cost me every man in this crew to return the Starbuck safely to the security of Pearl Harbor, I wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice them all, and that includes you and me.”

“I appreciate what you're trying to do, Paul,” said Pitt.

Boland smiled. “I'm a nice guy because of your influence with admirals. Beyond that, I think you're a pretty shrewd operator. I believe your insane act of flooding the forward torpedo compartment has a Machiavellian scheme behind it. Got an explanation?”

“Simple,” Pitt said briefly. “I sabotaged the Starbuck to keep her on the bottom for a few days.”

“Go on,” Boland said. There was no smile now.

“To begin with, there were two armed men down there, and Seaman Farris, who was starved and mistreated. The Starbuck was his prison. He couldn't escape because there was no place to go. Even the guards came on in shifts. From where, I can't guess, but they didn't live on the sub.”

“How can you say for sure?”

“The epicurean in me. I checked the galleys in the crew's mess and the officer's wardroom. There wasn't a hint of groceries. The guards had to eat. Even Farris couldn't last six months without food. Either there's a McDonald's in the neighborhood we don't know about, or those guys go home for lunch. I strongly suspect the latter. Whoever they are and wherever they come from, they're lurking around down there right now, waiting for an opportune moment to grab the Martha Ann. If we disappear like the rest, the Navy Department can kiss off the Starbuck for good. That's why I flooded the torpedo compartment. If our mystery pals get wise to the Martha Ann's real intent, it stands to reason they'd move the Starbuck the hell out of the area before the Navy steamed over the horizon.”

“We could airlift a crew here inside of three hours.”

“Too late. We've been on borrowed time ever since we anchored. Whatever happened to those other ships will probably happen to us.”

Boland looked skeptical. “The whole idea sounds pretty fantastic. According to radar, there isn't another vessel within five hundred miles, and sonar reports the area clear of any submarines. Where in God's name can they come from?”

“If I knew the answer to that one,” Pitt said irritably, “I'd demand a raise in pay . . . and get it.”

“Unless you can come up with a tighter case than that,” Boland responded, “we'll remain anchored here till morning. Then at dawn we'll begin raising the Starbuck.”

“Wishful thinking,” Pitt said. “By dawn the Martha Ann will be lying beside the Starbuck.”

“You forget,” Boland persisted quietly, “I can radio Pearl Harbor and have air support overhead before dark.”

“Can you?” Pitt asked.

Boland thought he had an unnecessarily positive look in his penetrating green eyes, but with Pitt it was hard to be sure. Pitt's expression showed exactly what Dirk Pitt wanted it to show and no more.

“Has Admiral Hunter acknowledged your calls?”

“We've only sent on maritime frequency, the same as you from the submarine.”

“Doesn't it strike you as odd that Hunter hasn't sent a communication concerning the discovery of the Starbuck? You said it yourself. My call from the submarine was heard by every transmitter within a thousand miles. How come none broke in to say 'screw you,' or 'how's the weather?' Why haven't Hunter or Gunn requested details? Chances are you'll find nothing got through, even that phony bit about the burned propeller shaft bearing.”

Pitt struck home this time. Boland raised an eyebrow and then calmly touched one of several intercom switches and said: “This is Commander Boland. Open communication to Pearl on Code Overland Six. Let me know as soon as they acknowledge.”