Текст книги "Deep Six"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

55

Loren was sweating. She had never sweated so much in her life. Her evening gown was damp and plastered against her body like a second skin. The little windowless cell felt like a sauna and it was an effort just to breathe. A toilet and a bunk were her only creature comforts, and a dim bulb attached to the ceiling in a small cage glowed continuously. The ventilators, she was certain, were turned off to increase her discomfort.

When she was brought to the ship’s brig, she had seen no sign of the man she thought might be Alan Moran. No food or water had been given to her since the crew locked her up, and hunger pangs were gnawing at her stomach. No one had even visited her, and she began to wonder if Captain Pokofsky meant to keep her in solitary confinement until she wasted away.

At last she decided to abandon her attempt at vanity and removed her clinging dress. She began to do stretching exercises to pass the time.

Suddenly she heard the muted sound of footsteps outside in the passageway. Muffled voices spoke in a brief conversation, and then the door was unlatched and swung open.

Loren snatched her dress off the bunk and held it in front of her, shrinking back into a corner of the cell.

A man ducked his head as he passed through the small doorway. He was turned out in a cheap business suit that looked to her several decades out of fashion.

“Congresswoman Smith, please forgive the condition I was forced to put you in.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” she said defiantly. “Who are you?”

“My name is Paul Suvorov. I represent the Soviet government.”

Contempt flooded into Loren’s voice. “Is this an example of the way Communists treat visiting American VIP’s?”

“Not under ordinary circumstances, but you gave us no choice.”

“Please explain,” she demanded, glaring at him.

He gave her an uncertain look. “I believe you know.”

“Why don’t you refresh my memory.”

He paused to light a cigarette, carelessly tossing the match in the toilet. “The other evening when the helicopter arrived, Captain Pokofsky’s first officer observed you standing very close to the landing area.”

“So were several other passengers,” Loren snapped icily.

“Yes, but they were too far away to see a familiar face.”

“And you think I wasn’t.”

“Why can’t you be reasonable, Congresswoman. Surely you can’t deny you recognized your own colleagues.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Congressman Alan Moran and Senator Marcus Larimer,” he said, closely watching her reaction.

Loren’s eyes widened and suddenly she began to shiver in spite of the stifling heat. For the first time since she was made a prisoner, indignation was replaced by despair.

“Moran and Larimer, they’re both here too?”

He nodded. “In the next cell.”

“This must be an insane joke,” she said, stunned.

“No joke,” Suvorov said, smiling. “They are guests of the KGB, same as you.”

Loren shook her head, unbelieving. Life didn’t happen this way, she told herself, except in nightmares. She felt reality drifting slowly from her grasp.

“I have diplomatic immunity,” she said. “I demand to be released.”

“You carry no influence, not here on board the Leonid Andreyev,”said Suvorov in a cold, disinterested voice.

“When my government hears of this—”

“They won’t,” he interrupted. “When the ship leaves Jamaica on its return voyage to Miami, Captain Pokof-sky will announce with deep regret and sympathy that Congresswoman Loren Smith was lost overboard and presumed drowned.”

A numbing hopelessness seized Loren. “What will happen to Moran and Larimer?”

“I’m taking them to Russia.”

“But you’re going to kill me,” she said, more as a statement than a question.

“They represent senior members of your government. Their knowledge will prove quite useful once they’re persuaded to provide it. You, I’m sorry to say, are not worth the risk.”

Loren almost said, As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I know as much as they do, but she recognized the trap in time and remained silent.

Suvorov’s eyes narrowed. He reached over and tore the dress from in front of her and casually tossed it outside the doorway. “Very nice,” he said. “Perhaps if we were to negotiate, I might find a reason to take you with me to Moscow.”

“The most pathetic trick in the world,” Loren spat contemptuously. “You’re not even original.”

He took a step forward, his hand lashing out and slapping her on the face. She staggered back against the steel bulkhead and sagged to her knees, staring up at him, her eyes blazing with fear and loathing.

He grasped her by the hair and tilted her head back. The conversational politeness disappeared from his voice. “I always wondered what it would be like to screw a high-ranking capitalist bitch.”

Loren’s answer was to swiftly reach out and grab him in the groin, squeezing with all her might.

Suvorov gasped in agony and swung his fist, connecting with her left cheekbone just below the eye. Loren fell sideways into the corner while Suvorov clutched himself and paced the tiny cubicle like a mad animal until the stabbing ache subsided. Then he brutally picked her up and threw her onto the bunk.

He leaned over her and ripped off her underclothes. “You rotten bitch!” he snarled. “I’m going to make you wish for a quick death.”

Tears of agony coursed from Loren’s eyes as she teetered on the verge of unconsciousness. Vaguely, through the mist of pain, she could see Suvorov slowly take off his belt and wrap it around his hand, leaving the buckle free and swinging. She tried to tense her body for the coming blow as his arm lifted upward, but she was too weak.

Suddenly Suvorov seemed to grow a third arm. It snaked over his right shoulder and then locked around his neck. The belt dropped to the deck and his body stiffened.

Shock swept across Suvorov’s face, the shock of disbelief, then horror at the full realization of what was happening, and the torment as his windpipe was slowly and mercilessly crushed and his breathing choked off. He struggled against the relentless pressure, throwing himself around the cell, but the arm remained. In a sudden flash of certainty, he knew he would never live to feel the pressure ease, The terror and the lack of oxygen contorted his face and turned it reddish-blue. His starving lungs struggled for air and his arms flailed in frantic madness.

Loren tried to raise her hands over her face to shut out the horrible sight, but they refused to respond. She could only sit frozen and watch in morbid fascination as the life seeped out of Suvorov; watch his violent thrashings subside until finally the eyes bulged from their sockets and he went limp. He hung there several seconds, supported by the ghostly arm until it pulled away from his neck and he fell on the deck in a heap.

Another figure loomed in Suvorov’s place, standing inside the cell’s doorway, and Loren found herself staring into a friendly face with deep green eyes and a faint crooked grin.

“Just between you and me,” said Pitt, “I’ve never believed that rot about getting there is half the fun.”

56

Noon, a brilliant azure sky with small cottonball clouds nudged by a gentle westerly breeze, found the Leonid Andreyevpassing within eighteen miles of Cabo Maisf, the easternmost tip of Cuba. Many of the passengers sunbathing around the swimming pools took no notice of the palm-lined coastline on the horizon. To them it was just another one of the hundred islands they had passed since leaving Florida.

On the bridge, Captain Pokofsky stood with binoculars to his eyes. He was observing a small powerboat that was circling from the land on his starboard quarter. She was old, her bow nearly straight up and down, and her hull was painted black. The topsides were varnished mahogany, and the name Pilarwas lettered in gold across her transom. She looked an immaculately kept museum piece. On the ensign staff at her stern she flew the American stars and stripes in the inverted position of distress.

Pokofsky walked over to the automated ship’s control console and pressed the “slow speed” switch. Almost immediately he could feel the engines reduce revolutions. Then, waiting a few minutes until the ship had slowed to a crawl, he leaned over and pressed the lever for “all stop.”

He was about to walk out on the bridge wing when his first officer came hurrying up the companionway from the deck below.

“Captain,” he said, catching his breath. “I’ve just come from the brig area. The prisoners are gone.”

Pokofsky straightened. “Gone? You mean escaped?”

“Yes, sir. I was on a routine inspection when I found the two security guards unconscious and locked up in one of the cells. The KGB agent is dead.”

“Paul Suvorov was killed?”

The first officer nodded. “From all appearances, he was strangled.”

“Why didn’t you call me immediately over the ship’s phone?”

“I thought it best to tell you in person.”

“You’re right, of course,” Pokofsky admitted. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time. Our Cuban security people are arriving to transport the prisoners to shore.”

“If you can stall them, I’m confident a search effort will quickly turn up the Americans.”

Pokofsky stared through the doorway at the closing boat. “They’ll wait,” he said confidently. “Our captives are too important to leave on board.”

“There is one other thing, sir,” said the first officer. “The Americans must have received help.”

“They didn’t break out by themselves?” Pokofsky asked in surprise.

“Not possible. Two old men in a weakened condition and one woman could never have overpowered two security people and murdered a professional KGB man.”

“Damn!” Pokofsky cursed. He rammed a fist into a palm in exasperation, compounded equally by anxiety and anger. “This complicates matters.”

“Could the CIA have sneaked on board?”

“I hardly think so. If the United States government remotely suspected their government leaders were held on the Leonid Andreyev,their Navy would be converging on us like mad bears. See for yourself; no ships, no aircraft, and the Guantanamo Bay naval station is only forty miles away.”

“Then who?” asked the first officer. “Certainly none of our crew.”

“It can only be a passenger,” Pokofsky surmised. He fell silent, thinking. Utter stillness fell on the bridge. At last he looked up and began issuing orders. “Collect every available officer and form five-man search parties. Divide up the ship in sections from keel to sun deck. Alert the security guards and enlist the stewards. If questioned by the passengers, make up a believable pretext for entering their cabins. Changing the bed linen, repairing plumbing, inspecting fire equipment, any story that fits the situation. Say or do nothing that will cause suspicion among the passengers or set them to asking embarrassing questions. Be as subtle as possible and refrain from violence, but recapture the Smith woman and the two men quickly.”

“What about Suvorov’s body?”

Pokofsky didn’t hesitate. “Arrange a fitting tribute to our comrade from the KGB,” he said sarcastically. “As soon as it’s dark, throw him overboard with the garbage.”

“Yes, sir,” the first officer acknowledged with a smile and hurried away.

Pokofsky picked up a bullhorn from a bulkhead rack and stepped out on the bridge wing. The small pleasure boat was drifting about fifty yards away.

“Are you in distress?” he asked, his voice booming over the water.

A man with a squat body and the skin tone of an old wallet cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted back. “We have people who are quite ill. I suspect ptomaine poisoning. May we come aboard and use your medical facilities?”

“By all means,” Pokofsky replied. “Come alongside. I’ll drop the gangway.”

Pitt watched the mini-drama with interest, seeing through the sham. Two men and a woman struggled up the metal stairway, clutching their midriffs and pretending they were in the throes of abdominal agony. He rated them two stars for their performance.

After a suitable length of time for pseudodoctoring, he reasoned, Loren, Moran and Larimer would have taken their places in the pleasure boat. He also knew full well the captain would not resume the cruise until the ship was scoured and the congressmen apprehended.

He left the railing and mingled with the other passengers, who soon returned to their deck chairs and tables around the swimming pools and cocktail bars. He took the elevator down to his deck. As the doors opened and he stepped out into the passageway, he rubbed shoulders with a steward who was entering.

Pitt idly noticed the steward was Asian, probably Mongolian if he was serving on a Russian ship. He brushed past and continued to his cabin.

The steward stared at Pitt curiously. Then his expression turned to blank astonishment as he watched Pitt walk away. He was still standing there gawking when the door closed and the elevator rose without him.

Pitt rounded the corner of the passageway and spied a ship’s officer with several crewmen waiting outside a cabin three down and across from his. None of them displayed their usual shipboard conviviality. Their expressions looked deadly earnest. He fished in his pocket for the cabin key while watching out of the corner of one eye. In a few moments, a stewardess came out and said a few words in Russian to the officer and shook her head. Then they moved toward the next cabin and knocked.

Pitt quickly entered and closed the door. The tiny enclosure looked like a scene out of a Marx Brothers movie. Loren was perched on the upper pullman bunk while Moran and Larimer shared the lower. All three were ravenously attacking a tray of hors d’oeuvres that Giordino had smuggled from the dining-room buffet table.

Giordino, seated on a small chair, half in the bathroom, threw an offhand wave. “See anything interesting?”

“The Cuban connection arrived,” Pitt answered. “They’re drifting alongside, standing by to exchange passengers.”

“The bastards will have a long wait,” said Giordino.

“Try four minutes. That’s how long before we’ll all be chained and tossed on a boat bound for Havana.”

“They can’t help but find us,” Larimer uttered in a hollow voice. Pitt had seen many such washed-out men – the waxen skin, the eyes that once blazed with authority now empty, the vagrant thoughts. Despite his age and long years of self-indulgent living amid the political arena, Larimer was still a powerfully built man. But the heart and circulation were no longer up to the stress and dangers of staying alive in a hostile situation. Pitt didn’t require an internship to recognize a man who was in dire need of medical treatment.

“A Russian search party is just across the hall,” Pitt explained.

“We can’t let them imprison us again,” Moran shouted, springing to his feet and looking around wildly. “We must run!”

“You wouldn’t make the elevator,” snapped Pitt, grabbing him by the arm as he would a child throwing a tantrum. He didn’t much care for Moran. The Speaker of the House struck him as an oily weasel.

“There’s no place to hide,” said Loren, her voice not quite steady.

Pitt didn’t answer her but brushed past Giordino and went into the bathroom. He pulled back the shower curtain and turned on the hot water. Less than a minute later clouds of steam billowed into the cramped quarters.

“Okay,” Pitt directed, “everybody in the shower.”

Nobody moved. They all stared at him, standing wraithlike in the mist-filled doorway, as though he was from another earth.

“Move!” he said sharply. “They’ll be here any second.”

Giordino shook his head in bewilderment. “How are you going to get three people in that stall shower? It’s hardly big enough for one.”

“Get your wig on. You’re going in too.”

“The four of us?” Loren muttered incredulously.

“Either that or a free trip to Moscow. Besides, college kids cram entire fraternities in phone booths all the time.”

Giordino slipped the wig over his head as Pitt reentered the bathroom and turned the water to lukewarm. He placed a trembling Moran in a squatting position between Giordino’s legs. Larimer pressed his heavy body against the far corner of the stall as Loren climbed on Giordino’s back. At last they were jammed awkwardly into the stall, drenched by the flow from the shower head. Pitt was in the act of turning on the hot water in the sink to increase the steam cloud when he heard a knock on the door.

He hurried over and opened it so there was no suspicious hesitation. The ship’s first officer bowed slightly and smiled.

“Mr. Gruber, is it? Very sorry to bother you, but we’re making a routine inspection of the fire sprinklers. Do you mind if we enter?”

“Why, sure,” Pitt said obligingly. “No problem with me, but my wife’s in the shower.”

The officer nodded to the stewardess who eased past Pitt and made a show of checking the overhead sprinkler heads. Then she pointed to the bathroom door. “May I?”

“Go on in,” said Pitt good-naturedly. “She won’t mind.”

The stewardess opened the door and was enveloped in a cloud of steam. Pitt went over and leaned in the bathroom. “Hey, luv, our steward lady wants to check the fire sprinkler. All right with you?”

As the cloud began dissipating through the door, the stewardess saw a huge stringy mop of hair and a pair of heavy browed eyes peeking around the shower curtain.

“All right by me,” came Loren’s voice. “And could you bring us a couple of extra towels when you think of it?”

The stewardess simply nodded and said, “I’ll be back with the towels shortly.”

Pitt casually munched on a canapé and offered one to the first officer, who gave a polite shake of his head.

“Does my heart good to see you people so interested in the safety of the passengers,” said Pitt.

“Merely doing our duty,” said the first officer, looking curiously at the half-eaten stack of hors d’oeuvres. “I see you also enjoy our shipboard cuisine.”

“My wife and I love appetizers,” said Pitt. “We’d rather eat these than a main course.”

The stewardess came out of the bathroom and said something to the first officer. The only word Pitt made out was “nyet.”

“Sorry to have troubled you,” said the first officer courteously.

“Any time,” replied Pitt.

As soon as the door lock clicked, Pitt rushed to the bathroom. “Everybody stay just as you are,” he ordered. “Don’t move.” Then he reclined on a bunk and stuffed his mouth with caviar on thin toast.

Two minutes later the door suddenly popped open and the stewardess burst through like a bulldozer, her eyes darting around the cabin.

“Can I help you?” Pitt mumbled with a full mouth.

“I brought the towels,” she said.

“Just throw them on the bathroom sink,” Pitt said indifferently.

She did precisely that and left the cabin, throwing Pitt a smile that was genuine and devoid of any suspicion.

He waited another two minutes, then opened the door a crack and peered into the passageway. The search crew was entering a cabin near the end of the passageway. He returned to the bathroom, reached in and turned off the water.

Whoever coined the phrase They look like drowned rats must have had the poor souls huddled together in that pocket-sized shower in mind. Their fingertips were beginning to shrivel and all their clothing was soaked through.

Giordino came out first and hurled his sopping wig in the sink. Loren climbed off his back and immediately began drying her hair. Pitt helped Moran to his feet and half carried Larimer to a bunk.

“A wise move,” said Pitt to Loren, kissing her on the nape of the neck. “Asking for more towels.”

“It struck me as the thing to do.”

“Are we safe now?” asked Moran. “Will they be back?”

“We won’t be in the clear till we’re off the ship,” said Pitt. “And we can count on their paying an encore visit. When they come up dry on this search, they’ll redouble their efforts for a second.”

“Got any more brilliant escape tricks up your sleeve, Houdini?” asked Giordino.

“Yes,” Pitt replied, sure as the devil. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

57

The second engineer moved along a catwalk between the massive fuel tanks that towered two decks above him. He was running a routine maintenance check for any trace of leakage in the pipes that transferred the oil to the boilers that provided steam for the Leonid Andreyev’s27,000-horsepower turbines.

He whistled to himself, his only accompaniment coming from the hum of the turbo-generators beyond the forward bulkhead. Every so often he wiped a rag around a pipe fitting or valve, nodding in satisfaction when it came away clean.

Suddenly he stopped and cocked an ear. The sound of metal striking against metal came from a narrow walkway leading off to his right. Curious, he walked slowly, quietly along the dimly lit access. At the end, where the walkway turned and passed between the fuel tanks and the inner plates of the hull, he paused and peered into the gloom.

A figure in a steward’s uniform appeared to be attaching something to the side of the fuel tank. The second engineer approached, stepping softly, until he was only ten feet away.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

The steward slowly turned and straightened. The engineer could see he was Oriental. The white uniform was soiled with grime, and a seaman’s duffel bag lay open behind him on the walkway. The steward flashed a wide smile and made no effort to reply.

The engineer moved a few steps closer. “You’re not supposed to be here. This area is off limits to the passenger service crew.”

Still no answer.

Then the engineer noticed a strange misshapen lump pressed against the side of the fuel tank. Two strands of copper wire ran from it to a clock mechanism beside the duffel bag.

“A bomb!” he blurted in shock. “You’re planting a damn bomb!”

He swung around and began running wildly down the walkway, shouting. He’d taken no more than five steps when the narrow steel confines echoed with a noise like twin handclaps in quick succession, and the hollow-point bullets from a silenced automatic tore into the back of his head.

The obligatory toasts were voiced and the glasses of iced vodka downed and quickly refilled. Pokofsky did the honors from the liquor cabinet in his cabin, avoiding the cold, piercing gaze of the man seated on a leather sofa.

Geidar Ombrikov, chief of the KGB residency in Havana, was not in a congenial mood. “Your report won’t sit well with my superiors,” he said. “An agent lost under your command will be considered a clear case of negligence.”

“This is a cruise ship,” Pokofsky said, his face reddening in resentment. “She was designed and placed in service for the purpose of bringing in hard Western currency for the Soviet treasury. We are not a floating headquarters for the Committee for State Security.”

“Then how do you explain the ten agents our foreign directorate assigned on board your vessel to monitor the conversations of the passengers?”

“I try not to think about it.”

“You should,” Ombrikov said in a threatening tone.

“I have enough to keep me busy running this ship,” Pokofsky said quickly. “There aren’t enough hours in my day to include intelligence gathering too.”

“Still, you should have taken better precautions. If the American politicians escape and tell their story, the horrendous repercussions will have a disastrous effect on our foreign relations.”

Pokofsky set his vodka on the liquor cabinet without touching it. “There is no place they can hide for long on this ship. They will be back in our hands inside the hour.”

“I do hope so,” said Ombrikov acidly. “Their Navy will begin to wonder why a Soviet cruise liner is drifting around off their precious Cuban base and send out a patrol.”

“They wouldn’t dare board the Leonid Andreyev.”

“No, but my small pleasure boat is flying the United States flag. They won’t hesitate to come aboard for an inspection.”

“She’s an interesting old boat,” Pokofsky said, trying to change the subject. “Where did you find her?”

“A personal loan from our friend Castro,” Ombrikov replied. “She used to belong to the author Ernest Hemingway.”

“Yes, I’ve read four of his books—”

Pokofsky was interrupted by the sudden appearance of his first officer, who entered without knocking.

“My apologies for breaking in, Captain, but may I have a word in private with you?”

Pokofsky excused himself and stepped outside his cabin.

“What is it?”

“We failed to find them,” the officer announced uneasily.

Pokofsky paused for some moments, lit a cigarette in defiance of his own regulations and gave his first officer a look of disapproval. “Then I suggest you search the ship again, more carefully this time. And take a closer look at the passengers wandering the decks. They may be hiding in the crowd.”

His first officer nodded and hurried off. Pokofsky returned to his cabin.

“Problems?” Ombrikov asked.

Before Pokofsky could answer he felt a slight shudder run through the ship. He stood there curious for perhaps half a minute, tensed and alert, but nothing more seemed to happen.

Then suddenly the Leonid Andreyevwas rocked by a violent explosion that heeled her far over to starboard, flinging people off their feet and sending a convulsive shock wave throughout the ship. A great sheet of fire erupted from the port side of the hull, raining fiery steel debris and oil over the exposed decks. The blast reverberated over the water until it finally died away, leaving an unearthly silence in its wake and a solid column of black smoke that mushroomed into the sky.

What none of the seven hundred passengers and crew knew, what many of them would never come to learn, was that deep amidship the fuel tanks had detonated, blowing a gaping hole half above and half below the waterline, spraying a torrent of burning oil over the superstructure in blue and green flames, scarring the victims and blazing across the teak decks with the speed of a brushfire.

Almost instantly, the Leonid Andreyevwas transformed from a luxurious cruise liner into a sinking fiery pyre.

* * *

Pitt stirred and wondered dully what had happened. For a full minute as the shock wore off he remained prone on the deck, where he’d been thrown by the force of the concussion, trying to orient himself. Slowly he rose to his hands and knees, then hoisted his aching body erect by grabbing the inner doorknob. Bruised but still functioning, nothing broken or out of joint, he turned to examine the others.

Giordino was partly crouched, partly lying across the threshold of the shower stall. The last thing he remembered was sitting in the cabin. He wore a surprised look in his eyes, but he appeared unhurt. Moran and Loren had fallen out of the bunks and were lying in the middle of the deck. They were both dazed and would carry a gang of black and blue marks for a week or two, but were otherwise uninjured.

Larimer was huddled in the far corner of the cabin. Pitt went over and gently lifted his head. There was an ugly welt rising above the senator’s left temple and a trickle of blood dripped from a cut lip. He was unconscious but breathing easily. Pitt eased a pillow from the lower bunk under his head.

Giordino was the first to speak. “How is he?”

“Just knocked out,” Pitt replied.

“What happened?” Loren murmured dazedly.

“An explosion,” said Pitt. “Somewhere forward, probably in the engine room.”

“The boilers?” Giordino speculated.

“Modern boilers are safety-designed not to blow.”

“God,” said Loren, “my ears are still ringing.”

A strange expression came over Giordino’s face. He took a coin out of his pocket and rolled it across the hard-carpeted deck. Instead of losing its momentum and circling until falling on one side, it maintained its speed across the cabin as though propelled by an unseen hand and clinked into the far bulkhead.

“The ship’s listing,” Giordino announced flatly.

Pitt went over and cracked the door. Already the passageway was filling with passengers stumbling out of their cabins and wandering aimlessly in bewilderment. “So much for plan B.”

Loren gave him a quizzical look. “Plan B?”

“My idea to steal the boat from Cuba. I don’t think we’re going to find seats.”

“What are you talking about?” Moran demanded. He rose unsteadily to his feet, holding on to a bunk chain for support. “A trick. It’s a cheap trick to flush us out.”

“Damned expensive trick if you ask me,” Giordino said nastily. “The explosion must have seriously damaged the ship. She’s obviously taking on water.”

“Will we sink?” Moran asked anxiously.

Pitt ignored him and peered around the edge of the door again. Most of the passengers acted calm, but a few were beginning to shout and cry. As he watched, the passageway became clogged with people stupidly carrying armfuls of personal belongings and hastily packed suitcases. Then Pitt caught the smell of burning paint, quickly followed by the sight of a smoky wisp. He slammed the door and began tearing the blankets off the bunks and throwing them to Giordino.

“Hurry, soak these and any towels you can find in the shower!”

Giordino took one look at Pitt’s dead-serious expression and did as he was told. Loren knelt and tried to lift Larimer’s head and shoulders from the deck. The senator moaned and opened his eyes, looking up at Loren as if trying to recognize her. Moran cringed against the bulkhead, muttering to himself.

Pitt rudely pushed Loren aside and lifted Larimer to his feet, slinging one arm around his shoulder.

Giordino came out of the bathroom and distributed the wet blankets and towels.

“All right, Al, you help me with the senator. Loren, you hold on to Congressman Moran and stick close behind me.” He broke off and looked at everyone. “Okay, here we go.”

He yanked open the door and was engulfed by a rolling wall of smoke that came out of nowhere.

Almost before the explosion faded, Captain Pokofsky shook off stunned disbelief and rushed to the bridge. The young watch officer was pounding desperately on the automated ship console in agonized frustration.

“Close all watertight doors and actuate the fire control system!” Pokofsky shouted.

“I can’t!” the watch officer cried helplessly. “We’ve lost all power!”

“What about the auxiliary generators?”

“They’re out too.” The watch officer’s face was wrapped in undisguised shock. “The ship’s phones are dead. The damage-control computer is down. Nothing responds. We can’t give a general alarm.”