Текст книги "Trojan Odyssey"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

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 whooshas 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 yourspecialty," 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."