Trojan Odyssey (13 page)

H
EIDI HADN
'
T BEEN
home in three days. She caught catnaps on a cot in her office, drank gallons of black coffee and ate little but baloney-and-cheese sandwiches. If she was walking around the Hurricane Center like a somnambulist, it wasn't from lack of sleep but from the stress and anguish of working amid a colossal catastrophe that was about to cause death and destruction on an unheard-of scale. Though she had correctly forecast Hurricane Lizzie's horrifying power from her birth and sent out warnings early, she still felt a sense of guilt that she might have done more.

She watched the projections and images on her monitors with great trepidation as Lizzie raced toward the nearest land.

Because of her early warnings, more than three hundred thousand people had been evacuated to the mountainous hills in the center of the Dominican Republic and its neighbor, Haiti. Still, the death toll would be staggering. Heidi also feared that the storm might veer north and strike Cuba before crashing into southern Florida.

Her phone rang and she wearily picked it up.

“Any change in your forecast as to direction?” asked her husband Harley at the National Weather Service.

“No, Lizzie is still heading due east as if she's traveling on a railroad track.”

“Most unusual to travel thousands of miles in a straight line.”

“More than unusual. It's unheard-of. Every hurricane on record meandered.”

“A perfect storm?”

“Not Lizzie,” said Heidi. “She's far from being perfect. I'd class her as a deadly cataclysm of the highest magnitude. An entire fishing fleet has gone missing. Another eight ships—oil tankers, cargo ships and private yachts—have stopped transmitting. Their distress signals are no longer being received, only silence. We have to expect the worst.”

“What's the latest word on the floating hotel?” asked Harley.

“At last reports, she broke her moorings and was being driven by gale-force winds and high seas toward the rocky coast of the Dominican Republic. Admiral Sandecker sent one of NUMA's research ships to its position in an effort to tow it to safety.”

“Sounds like a lost cause.”

“I fear that we're looking at a sea disaster beyond any in the past,” said Heidi grimly.

“I'm going to head home for a few hours. Why don't you take a break and come too? I'll fix us a nice dinner.”

“I can't, Harley. Not just yet. Not until I can predict Lizzie's next mood.”

“With her infinite strength, that could be days, even weeks.”

“I know,” said Heidi slowly. “That's what scares me. If her energy doesn't begin to diminish as she passes over the Dominican Republic and Haiti, she'll strike the mainland in full force.”

 

S
UMMER HAD A
fascination with the sea beginning when her mother insisted she learn to dive when she was only six years old. A small tank and air regulator was custom made for her small body and she was given lessons by the finest instructors, as was her brother Dirk. She became a creature of the sea, studying its inhabitants, its caprices and spirits. She came to understand it after swimming in its waters serene and blue. She also experienced its monumental power during a typhoon in the Pacific. But like a wife with a husband of twenty years who suddenly sees a man with a hateful and sadistic streak, she was witnessing firsthand just how cruel and malicious the sea could be.

Sitting in the front of
Pisces,
brother and sister stared up through the big transparent bubble at the boiling turmoil above. As the hurricane's outer rim slashed across Navidad Bank, the fury seemed remote and distant, but as its strength increased it soon became apparent that their cozy little habitat was in dire danger and ill-prepared to protect them.

The crests of the waves easily passed over them at their forty-foot depth, but soon the waves grew to towering dimensions, and when the troughs dropped down to the seabed, Dirk and Summer found the habitat completely exposed to the surface rain before the next sea swept over them.

Time after time
Pisces
was battered and buffeted by the unending march of the huge waves. The inner-space station was built to take the pressure of the deep and her steel shell had no problem in repelling the besieging waters. But the terrible force exerted on her outer surface soon began to move her across the bottom. The four support legs were not connected to a base. They sat individually embedded only a few inches in the coral. Only
Pisces
's sixty-five-ton mass kept the chamber from being lifted and hurled across the reef like an empty bottle.

Then the same pair of enormous waves that had buried
Sea Sprite
only twenty miles distant struck Navidad Bank, relentlessly crushing the coral and shattering its delicate infrastructure into millions of fragments. The first one pitched
Pisces
over on her side and sent her tumbling round and round like a barrel rolling across a rocky desert. Despite the occupants' attempts to hang on to anything solid, they were tossed about as if they were rag dolls in a blender.

The habitat was pitched and tossed for nearly two hundred yards before it came to rest, perched precariously on the edge of a narrow coral crevasse. Then the second monstrous wave struck and threw the habitat over the edge.

Pisces
dropped one hundred and twenty feet to the floor of the crevasse, bumping and grinding against the coral walls during its fall, striking the bottom in a great explosion of sand particles.
Pisces
landed flat on its right side and lay wedged between the walls of the crevasse. Inside, everything that wasn't tied down had been thrown in a dozen different directions. Dishes, food supplies, dive equipment, bedding, personal clothing was strewn in mad confusion.

Ignoring the pain from a dozen bruises and a sprained ankle, Dirk immediately crawled to the side of his sister, who lay in a ball between the upended bunk beds. He looked into her wide gray eyes and for the first time since they were old enough to walk he saw sheer fright. He gently took her head in his hands and smiled tightly.

“How was that for a wild ride?”

She looked up into his face, saw the game smile and slowly breathed deeply as her fear subsided. “During the chaos I kept thinking that we were born together and we would die together.”

“My sister the pessimist. We've got another seventy years to tease each other.” Then he asked with concern, “Are you injured?”

She shook her head. “I wedged myself under the bunks and wasn't bounced around as badly as you.” Then she looked outside the viewing bubble at the cauldron above. “The habitat?”

“Still sound- and leakproof. No wave, no matter how gigantic, could break up
Pisces.
She's got a four-inch steel skin.”

“The storm?”

“Still raging, but we'll be safe down here. The waves are passing over the canyon without causing turbulence.”

Her gaze swept the jumbled clutter. “God, what a mess.”

Pleased that Summer had survived the ordeal without injury, Dirk made an inspection of the life-support systems while his sister began tackling the debris. There was no hope of putting everything back where it belonged, not with the habitat lying on its side. She simply stacked everything into neat piles and laid blankets over sharp protrusions from instruments, valves, gauges and systems mountings. Without a floor, they had to climb over it all to move around. She felt strange to be existing in an environment where everything was turned on a ninety-degree angle.

She felt more secure knowing they had survived up until now. The storm could no longer threaten them in their coral canyon with its steep walls. Down deep, there was no howling wind to hear, no beating wind when the trough of a wave exposed the chamber to the atmosphere. Her fear and suspense of what might happen next began to fade. They were safe until
Sea Sprite
braved the hurricane and returned. And there was the warmth and comfort of her brother, who had the courage and strength of their legendary father.

But the expression of confidence she had come to expect was not in his face when he came and sat on the wall beside her, favoring the bruises on his body that were turning black and blue.

“You look glum,” she said. “What is it?”

“The fall into the crevasse tore off the lines connecting the air bottles to our life-support system. According to the air pressure gauges, the four tanks that were undamaged will supply us with only fourteen hours of air before they run dry.”

“What about the dive tanks we left in the entry lock?”

“Only one was left inside for a valve repair. It contains only enough to last the two of us for forty-five minutes at best.”

“We could use it to go outside and bring back the others,” Summer said hopefully. “Then wait a day or two until the storm deteriorates before abandoning the habitat, and use our inflatable raft to drift on the surface until rescued.”

He shook his head solemnly. “The bad news is we're trapped. The hatch on the entry lock is jammed against the coral. Nothing short of dynamite could force it open far enough for us to slip outside.”

Summer sighed very deeply and then said, “It looks like our fate is in Captain Barnum's hands.”

“I'm sure we're still on his mind. He won't forget us.”

“He should be informed of our situation.”

Dirk straightened and put his hands on her shoulders. “The radio was smashed when we plunged into the crevasse.”

“We could still release our homing device so they know we're alive,” she said hopefully.

His voice came in a soft, controlled tone. “It was mounted on the side of the habitat that fell against the bottom. It must have been crushed. Even if it survived, there is no way to release it.”

“When they come looking for us,” she said tensely, “they won't have an easy time finding us down here in the crevasse.”

“You can bet Barnum will send every boat and diver on board
Sea Sprite
to scour the reef.”

“You're talking as if we had enough air for days instead of hours.”

“Not to worry, sis,” Dirk said confidently. “For the moment, we're safe and secure from the storm. The minute the sea flattens, the crew aboard
Sea Sprite
will come for us like a drunk after a case of Scotch that fell off a liquor truck.” Then he added, “After all, we're their number one priority.”

A
T THAT MOMENT
the
Pisces
and her two crew members were the last thing on Barnum's mind. Anxiously, he fidgeted in his chair as his gaze ceaselessly turned from the radar monitor to the windshield and back again. The titan-sized waves had dropped from gigantic to merely huge. Like clockwork they marched in formation against
Sea Sprite
, pitching her up and down in a continuous motion that became monotonous. No longer did they climb more than a hundred feet. Now the distance between crest and trough averaged only forty. Still heavy, but a lake compared to the goliaths earlier. It was almost as if the sea knew it had thrown its best punch against the research ship and failed to sink her. Frustrated, it relented and admitted defeat, dwindling to little more than a nuisance.

The hours passed, with
Sea Sprite
making headway with as much speed as Barnum dared to push her. Normally a humorous and friendly captain, he became cold and serious as he contemplated the hopeless task staring him in the face. He saw no way he could get a towline on the
Ocean Wanderer.
The great tow winch and its arm-thick cable had been removed long ago when the
Sea Sprite
had been converted to a NUMA research ship. Now the primary winch and cable on board the ship was for lowering and lifting deepwater submersibles. Installed on the stern deck behind the big crane, it was grossly inadequate for towing a floating hotel with a displacement tonnage more than that of a battleship.

Barnum's eyes tried to drill through the blowing sheets of rain. “We'd have her in sight if we could see through this muck,” he said.

“According to the radar she's less than two miles away,” advised Maverick.

Barnum stepped into the communications compartment and spoke to Mason Jar. “Have you heard anything from the hotel?”

“Nothing, sir. She's silent as a tomb.”

“God, I hope we're not too late.”

“I don't want to believe that.”

“See if you can raise them again. The satellite communications. The guests and management are most likely to communicate with shore stations via phone than ship-to-shore radio.”

“Let me try maritime radio first, Captain. At this distance there should be less interference. The hotel must have top-of-the-line equipment for communicating with other vessels when she's towed around the seas like a barge.”

“Patch onto the bridge speakers so I can speak to them when they respond.”

“Yes, sir.”

Barnum returned to the pilothouse in time to hear Jar's voice through the speakers.

“This is
Sea Sprite
to
Ocean Wanderer.
We are two miles southeast of you and closing. Please respond.”

There was half a minute of crackling static. Then a voice boomed through the speakers.

“Paul, are you ready to go to work?”

Because of the interference, Barnum did not recognize the voice at first. He picked up the bridge radio receiver and spoke into it. “Who is speaking?”

“Your old shipmate, Dirk Pitt. I'm in the hotel along with Al Giordino.”

Barnum was stunned at putting a face with the voice. “How in God's name did you two come to be on a floating hotel in a hurricane?”

“It sounded like such a swell party, we didn't want to miss it.”

“You must know we don't have the equipment to tow the
Wanderer.
”

“All we need are your big engines.”

Barnum had come to learn during their years with NUMA that Pitt and Giordino wouldn't be where they were without a plan. “What's on your devious mind?”

“We've already formed work crews to help us use the hotel's mooring cables for tow cables. Once you take them aboard
Sea Sprite,
you can join them together, then secure them to your stern capstan where they will form a bride for towing.”

“Your plan sounds crazy,” said Barnum, disbelieving. “How do you expect to send tons of cable that's dragging across the seabed under a hurricane-maddened sea over to my ship?”

There was a pause, and when the reply came Barnum could almost see the devilish grin on Pitt's face.

“We have apple-pie high-in-the-sky hopes.”

The rain abated and visibility increased from two hundred yards to nearly a mile. Suddenly the
Ocean Wanderer
loomed through the storm dead ahead.

“God, just look at her,” said Maverick. “She looks like a glass castle in a fairy tale.”

The hotel seemed regal and magnificent amid the raging sea surrounding it. The crew and scientists, who were swept up in mounting excitement, had left their cabins and crowded onto the bridge to witness the spectacle of a modern edifice where none should have existed.

“It's so beautiful,” murmured a blond, petite woman who was a marine chemist. “I never expected such creative architecture.”

“Nor I,” agreed a tall ocean chemist. “Coated with so much salt spray, she could pass for an iceberg.”

Barnum trained a pair of binoculars on the hotel, whose mass swayed back and forth under the trouncing from the waves. “Her roof deck looks like it was swept clean.”

“A miracle she survived,” muttered Maverick in wonder. “Certainly beyond all expectations.”

Barnum lowered his glasses. “Bring us around and set our stern on her windward side.”

“After we take another battering getting in position to take on a towline, Captain, what then?”

Barnum stared pensively at the
Ocean Wanderer.
“We wait,” he said slowly. “We wait and see what Pitt has up his sleeve after he waves his magic wand.”

 

P
ITT STUDIED THE
detailed plans of the mooring cables given him by Morton. He, Giordino, Morton and Emlyn Brown, the hotel's chief maintenance superintendent, were standing around a table in Morton's office.

“The cables will have to be reeled in before we know their length after parting.”

Brown, who had the wiry build of a college track-and-field miler, ran a hand through a bush of jet-black hair. “We've already reeled in what was left of them right after they snapped. I was afraid that if they snagged in the rocks it might cause the hotel to twist around under the devil's waves and cause damage.”

“How far out did cables three and four break from their moorings?”

“I can only guess, mind you, but I'd say they both gave up the ghost about two hundred, maybe two hundred and twenty yards out.”

Pitt looked at Giordino. “That doesn't leave Barnum enough safe latitude for maneuver. And if the
Ocean Wanderer
should sink, Barnum's crew will have no time to cut the cable. The
Sea Sprite
will be dragged down to the bottom along with the hotel.”

“If I know Paul,” said Giordino, “he won't hesitate to take the gamble with so many lives at stake.”

“Am I to understand, you intend to use the mooring cables as towing lines?” inquired Morton, who stood on the opposite side of the table. “I was told your NUMA vessel is an oceangoing tugboat.”

“She was once,” replied Pitt. “But no more. She was converted from an icebreaker tug into a research ship. The big winch and tow cable were removed when she was refitted. All she has now is a crane for lifting submersibles. We'll have to improvise and make do with what we've got.”

“Then what good is she?” Morton demanded angrily.

“Trust me.” Pitt looked him in the eye. “If we can make a hookup,
Sprite
has enough power in her engines to tow this hotel.”

“How will you get the ends of the cables over to the
Sea Sprite
?” Brown queried. “Once they're unreeled, they'll sink to the bottom.”

Pitt looked at him. “We float them over.”

“Float?”

“You must have fifty-gallon drums on board?”

“Very clever, Mr. Pitt. I see what you're aiming at.” Brown paused and thought a moment. “We have quite a few that contain oil for the generators, cooking oil for the kitchens and liquid soap for cleaning personnel.”

“We can use as many empty drums as you can scrape up.”

Brown turned to four of his maintenance crew, who were standing nearby. “Assemble all the empties and drain the rest as quick as you can.”

“As you and your people unreel the cables,” Pitt explained, “I want you to tie a drum every twenty feet. By making the cables buoyant, they can float and be hauled over to
Sea Sprite.
”

Brown nodded. “Consider it done—”

“If four of our cables snapped earlier,” interrupted Morton, “what makes you think these two will stand up to the stress?”

“For one thing,” Pitt rationalized patiently, “the storm has abated considerably. Two, the lines will be shorter and less prone to excessive strain. And last, we'll be towing the hotel on her narrowest beam. When she was moored, her entire front face took the brunt of the storm.”

Without waiting for a comment from Morton, Pitt turned back to Brown.

“Next, I'll need a good mechanic or machinist to splice loops or eyes to the ends of the cables, so they can be shackled together once they're wound around the
Sprite
's tow bit.”

“I'll handle that chore myself,” Brown assured him. Then he said, “I hope you have a plan for transporting the cables over to your NUMA ship? They won't float there on their own, certainly not in this sea.”

“That's the fun part,” answered Pitt. “We'll require a few hundred feet of line, preferably a thin diameter but with the tensile strength of a steel cable.”

“I have two five-hundred-foot spools of Falcron line in the storeroom. It's finely woven, thin, lightweight and could lift a Patton tank.”

“Tie two hundred-yard lengths of the Falcron line to each end of the cables.”

“I understand using the Falcron lines to pull the heavy cables to your ship, but how do you intend to get them there?”

Pitt and Giordino exchanged knowing glances.

“That will be our chore,” said Pitt with a grim smile.

“I hope it won't take long,” Morton said darkly, pointing out the window. “Time is a commodity we've little left.”

As if they were spectators at a tennis match, all heads turned in unison and saw that the menacing shoreline was little more than two miles away. And as far as they could see in either direction, an immense surf was pounding on what seemed a never-ending ridge of rocks.

 

J
UST INSIDE AN
air-conditioning equipment room in one corner of the hotel, Pitt spread the contents of his large bundle across the floor. First he slipped on his custom shorty neoprene wet suit. He preferred this abbreviated suit for the job at hand because the water was blessed with tropical temperatures and he saw no need for a heavy suit, wet or dry. He also enjoyed the ease of movement because the arms above the elbows and legs below the knees were open. Then came his buoyancy compensator, followed by a ScubaPro dive mask. He cinched his weight belt and checked the quick-release safety snap.

Next he sat down as one of the hotel maintenance men helped mount a closed-circuit rebreather on his back. He and Giordino agreed that a compact rebreathing unit offered greater freedom of movement than two bulky steel air tanks. As with regular scuba gear, the diver inhales through a regulator, breathing compressed gas from a tank. But then the expired air is saved and recycled back through canisters that remove the carbon dioxide while replenishing the oxygen in the tank. The SIVA-55 unit they were using was developed for military underwater covert operations.

His final check was the underwater communications system from Ocean Technology Systems. A receiver was attached to the strap of his mask. “Al, do you hear me?”

Giordino, who was going through the same procedure on the opposite corner of the hotel, answered in a voice that seemed wrapped in cotton. “Every word.”

“You sound unusually coherent.”

“Give me a hard time and I'll resign and head up to the cocktail lounge.”

Pitt smiled at his friend's ever-constant sense of humor. If he could rely on anyone in the world, it was Giordino. “Ready when you are.”

“Say when.”

“Mr. Brown.”

“Emlyn.”

“Okay, Emlyn, have your people stand by the winches until we give the signal to pay out the cables and drums.”

Answering from the rooms where the great mooring cable winches were mounted, Brown acknowledged, “Just say the word.”

“Keep your fingers crossed,” said Pitt, as he pulled on his dive fins.