“The fewer eyes around, the better.”
Eberson took a swallow of coffee, then leaned across the table.
“Do you think we can really get to the theoretically predicted levels?”
Heiland nodded, his eyes sparkling. “We’ll find out shortly.”
A few minutes later, Manny cut the motor, signaling they had arrived at their test site. They had crossed into Mexican waters, almost twenty miles from shore and well off the path of the average San Diego day sailor. The water was too deep to anchor, so the boat drifted while Heiland went to work.
Ignoring a long rectangular case strapped to the bulwarks, he opened several smaller cases that contained a pair of laptops, some cabling, and connectors. Setting the computers on a low bench, he knelt and began configuring them.
Manny poked his head out from the wheelhouse. “Doc, there’s a freighter coming up on us.”
Heiland glanced over his shoulder. “She’ll be well past us by the time we’re ready to go.” He returned his attention to the computers.
Eberson took a seat on the large crate and watched the ship approach. A midsized freighter, it seemed of recent build, by its streamlined design and lack of rust. Dark gray in color, the ship almost had a Navy look about it. The bridge windows caught Eberson’s attention. Tinted black, they gave off an odd, almost menacing look.
A few crewmen in coveralls on the main deck worked behind a large container. As the ship drew closer, he could see they were adjusting a large dish-shaped object mounted on a platform amidships. The dish was painted a drab green and turned toward the sea, rising several feet into the air like a hardened sail. The men on deck soon disappeared, and Eberson noted the ship seemed to be slowing.
“Carl, I’m not sure about this ship.” He rose uncomfortably to his feet.
“We’ve got nothing for them to see,” Heiland said. “Why don’t you pick up a rod and make like you’re here to catch a tuna.”
Eberson grabbed one of the boat’s rods from a rack and cast a weighted hook over the side, not bothering with any bait lest he actually have to fight a beast from the deep. As the freighter pulled alongside a short distance away, he tossed a friendly wave toward the blacked-out bridge.
A burning pain shot through his hand, quickly tracking down his arm to his torso. He dropped his arm and shook it, but the sensation was already spreading across his body. In seconds, it felt like a thousand red ants were biting his flesh. The fire shot to his head, where his eyes seemed to boil in their sockets.
“Carl—” he cried. The words came out in a raspy gurgle.
Heiland felt the same burning sensation on his back. Spinning around, he processed two scenes at once. One was the dying Joe Eberson, still clutching the fishing rod as he fell to the deck, his skin glowing scarlet. The other was the freighter’s shield-like device, directed at him from a few dozen yards away.
Ignoring the burning that seared through his body, he staggered to the cabin. Manny was already on the deck, gasping a last breath as blood dribbled from his nose and ears. Heiland stepped past his longtime friend as his own pain became amplified. His entire body felt inflamed. Somewhere in his consciousness, he wondered why his skin wasn’t falling off in chunks. A single urge drove him forward as he lurched to the pilot’s seat. His head felt like it was going to explode as he reached under the console, his burning fingers grasping a pair of hidden toggles. He tripped them both, then took his last breath.
4
ARE YOU GOING TO GET WET WITH ME?”
Loren Smith-Pitt stared at her husband. Just seconds ago, it seemed, he had risen from the pilot’s seat and tossed an anchor over the side of their rented speedboat. Yet now he sat on the transom, clad in wet suit and dive tank, anxious to explore the depths below. Loren could only marvel at how the sea acted like a magnet to the man, drawing him in with an unseen force.
“I think I’ll stay here and enjoy the sunshine and the clear Chilean sky,” she said. “With Congress back in session on Monday, I could use a healthy dose of fresh air.”
“For Capitol Hill, earplugs might be a better choice.”
Loren ignored her husband’s quip. A congresswoman from Colorado, Loren was only too happy to escape the partisan bickering of Washington, if only for a few days. Free from the pressures of work and an intrusive media, she felt more relaxed in another country. Dressed in a skimpy two-piece bathing suit she would never wear at home, she flaunted her curvaceous but firm body, kept trim through yoga and daily runs on a treadmill.
Stretching across the boat’s bench seat, she hung a leg over the side and dipped her toes in the water. “Yikes! That water is cold. I’m going to stay warm and dry up here, thank you very much.”
“I won’t be gone long.” Her husband stuck a regulator between his teeth, stared admiringly at his wife for a moment, then fell backward into the blue Pacific. He playfully kicked a spray of water onto his wife with a fin before he disappeared under the surface.
Toweling herself off, Loren tracked her husband’s air bubbles for a few minutes, then gazed across the horizon. The afternoon air was crystal clear, the sapphire sky nearly matching the color of the ocean. They’d anchored the red speedboat a half mile off the Chilean coast, opposite a small beach called Playa Caleta Abarca.
A towering Sheraton Hotel stood on a rock cliff nearby, its outdoor pool crowded with sun-worshiping tourists. A short distance to the south lay Valparaiso, Chile’s colorful and historic seaport long known by sailors as the “Jewel of the Pacific.” Ancient buildings climbed the steep hills ringing the city, reminding Loren of San Francisco. She noted a large white cruise ship, the Sea Splendour, anchored in the bay, shuttling passengers ashore to visit the beaches of Viña del Mar or to trek to Chile’s capital city of Santiago, sixty miles southeast.
A gentle swell rocked the speedboat as Loren turned her gaze to sea. A small yellow sailboat passed by, then tacked north toward an approaching freighter, its triangular sail fluttering. She leaned back on the padded seat, closed her eyes, and luxuriated in the warmth of the sun.
Sixty feet beneath her, Dirk Pitt had just shaken the ocean’s chill that permeated the country’s coastal waters due to the Humboldt Current. His breath rate eased as he slowed his descent. The visibility was good, about forty feet, allowing him clear view of a rocky bottom anchored with thick seaweed. Kicking his fins lazily, he glided over a coral-strewn ledge crowded with brightly colored urchins and starfish. A small school of jack mackerel eyed him for a minute or two, then darted away.
The sea relaxed Pitt in a way nothing else could. To some it was confining, but Pitt found the ocean depths produced in him an odd feeling of release that seemed to heighten his senses. It was an experience born decades ago, when he spent the better part of his youth exploring the coves along the Southern Californian coastline, free diving and bodysurfing. The allure was like that of flying, which had led him to the Air Force Academy and flight school as a young officer.
But the draw of the sea enticed him to leave the flight line and a promising military career to join a newly created federal organization, the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Created to study and protect the world’s oceans, NUMA was the perfect home for Pitt, allowing him to work on and beneath the sea, all over the world. After years as its Special Projects Director, he now found himself heading the agency, which only fortified his sense of stewardship of the world’s oceans. Loren often joked that she still competed with Pitt’s first love, his mistress called the sea.
Pitt’s quest for underwater discovery, along with a love of history, had led him to discover dozens of shipwrecks. But this afternoon, the object of his search was considerably smaller. Eyeing a thick ridge of jagged rocks that stretched into deeper water, he swam over and surveyed its crevices. After several minutes, he found what he was looking for. He plunged an arm between two boulders and pulled out a
spirited brown spiny lobster that weighed almost five pounds. He eyed its long, waving antennas for a moment and then stuffed the crustacean into a mesh dive bag and began a search for its twin.
Above the noisy rhythm of his regulated breathing, a faint tapping rippled through the water.
He held his breath to hear better. The metallic rapping repeated a familiar cadence—two short raps, two long raps, then two short raps. It wasn’t exactly the Morse code distress call of SOS, which used three dots and dashes, but Pitt guessed the intent was the same. He could not determine its direction, only that the source was nearby. It had to be Loren.
He kicked toward the surface, angling for the position of the speedboat. He spotted the anchor line and approached it, swimming hard, surfacing a few yards behind the boat. Loren was leaning over the transom, pounding a spare diver’s lead weight on the stern drive housing. Engrossed in her signaling, she didn’t notice him emerge.
“What’s wrong?” he shouted.
She looked up, and Pitt saw a desperate fear in her eyes. Lost for words, she simply pointed behind him. He spun his head around—and was engulfed in a massive shadow.
It was a ship, a massive bulk carrier, bearing down on them barely a hundred feet away. The speedboat bobbed in the direct path of the ship’s broad, high bow, which pushed an ominous mountain of white foamy water in front of it. Pitt cursed the fools on the bridge, who were either blind or asleep.
Without hesitation, he kicked and stroked furiously to the boat until he could reach an arm over the side.
“Should I start the motor?” Loren’s face was drawn. “I was afraid to try while you were underwater.”
Pitt saw the anchor line was still set, running up into a small locker on the bow. Behind him, he heard the deep rumble of the ship’s engines as its towering hulk advanced. It was too close. Any slip in cutting the anchor line or a delay in starting the motor and their boat would be smashed to bits, with them in it.
With the regulator back between his teeth, he shook his head at Loren and waved for her to come closer.
She hurried to the side and reached to help him aboard.
Instead he reached past her hand and hooked his arm around her waist.
Before she could react, she felt herself being jerked over the side. She yelped as her body hit the cold water. Kicking and floundering, she gasped for a last breath of air. The towering mountain of steel was now just yards away.
Then she was snatched like a rag doll and disappeared beneath the rippling surface.
5
THE FREIGHTER NEITHER SLOWED NOR TURNED. Its broad steel hull smacked into the speedboat, severing the anchor line before burying the tiny vessel in the bow’s wake. The small boat bounced along the ship’s hull and then remarkably popped to the surface, where it bobbed in the freighter’s receding wake, its port beam only slightly mangled.
Somewhere beneath the surface, Loren found herself clinging to her husband in a desperate plunge to the seafloor. Startled by the cold-water immersion, she nearly panicked when she felt Pitt yank her to the depths without air. Then she felt him force his regulator into her mouth while wedging her arm around his buoyancy compensator harness. Despite the cold, her nerves began to settle. She began to assist their progress by kicking as well, remembering to clear her ears as they descended deeper.
The shimmering light of the surface water grew dark as the black hull passed over them. Loren glanced up, feeling like she could reach out and touch the barnacle-encrusted plates only a few feet away.
Though they had escaped the mass of the hull, Pitt continued driving deeper with frantic kicks of his fins. His lungs felt like they would burst, which only made him push harder until they finally reached the seabed. Seeing a bus-sized rise of coral, he pulled Loren along its curved side. As their knees touched the hard bottom, he grabbed a nodule for leverage.
Loren realized her husband had not taken a breath of air for almost the entire descent. She quickly passed the regulator to his lips. Her pulse racing and her eyes wide, she peered into Pitt’s face mask. He gazed back at her calmly and winked, as if cheating death was a daily occurrence.
Pitt gratefully inhaled several deep breaths, then passed the regulator back to Loren and gazed upward. The hull was still sweeping past, while the main source of his fear, its churning bronze propeller, glinted as it drew near. Pitt threw his arms around Loren and gripped the coral mound with his gloved hands as the stern passed overhead. Even from thirty feet away, Pitt felt the suction from the enormous blades as they cut through the water. Sand swirled about them as they were tugged from the bottom. Then the ship passed, and a wash of sediment rained down upon them. Pitt released his grasp on the coral and kicked to the surface with Loren entwined around him. Their heads popped into the bright sunlight, and they eagerly inhaled the warm, fresh air.
“I thought for a second,” Loren said between gasps, “that you were going to kill me before the ship had the chance.”
“Ducking under seemed the more prudent tack.” Pitt gazed at the stern of the receding freighter noting its name, Tasmanian Star.
Loren pivoted in the opposite direction and scanned the sea as she treaded water beside him.
“They ran right over a sailboat,” she said, scanning the water for survivors. “It looked like an older couple. I could tell we were next in its path.”
“Quick thinking on your part saved us both, though your Morse code could use a little improvement.” Pitt joined her in searching the nearby waters, but neither spotted any debris.
“We can report it to the police once we get ashore,” Loren said. “They’ll catch up with the crew in Valparaiso.”
Pitt turned toward the coastline and was surprised to see their red speedboat bobbing a short distance away. A section of the port hull hung loose, and the boat sat low in the water, but it was still afloat. Pitt stroked over with Loren close behind. He bellied over the side, then pulled her aboard.
“Our clothes and lunch are gone,” she noted, shivering as the sun began to dry her body.
“My lobster, too,” Pitt said.
He stripped off his tank and wet suit, then stepped to the boat’s console. The key was still in the ignition, so he tried pushing the starter. The motor ground over several times, then sputtered to life, as the inboard compartment had remained mostly dry during the boat’s immersion. Easing the throttle forward, he glanced ahead at the fleeing freighter.
The Tasmanian Star was still proceeding on its same heading and apparent speed. Another mile or two ahead lay the harbor of Valparaiso, which curved to the west in the shape of an open bowl. The commercial port facilities were at the west end, yet the freighter was sailing toward the east. Pitt tensed as he tracked the ship’s path, then jammed the throttle to its stops.
With its bilge and cockpit filled with water, the speedboat faltered as it tried to accelerate, but it gradually surged forward, gaining speed.
Loren abandoned her efforts to bail water with a seat cushion and approached her husband. She saw a heightened intensity in his deep green eyes.
“Why aren’t we headed to shore?”
Pitt pointed at the freighter. “Look what’s ahead of her.”
Loren peered past the bulk carrier. The large white cruise ship was still anchored in the harbor—and lay exactly perpendicular to the oncoming freighter. If the Tasmanian Star didn’t change course, she would barrel right into the Sea Splendour.
“Dirk, there’s probably a thousand people aboard that ship.”
“If there’s something more than just a nearsighted helmsman driving the Tasmanian Star, hundreds could die.”
Loren grabbed Pitt’s shoulder as the speedboat lurched over a wave. The damaged boat surged and wallowed before finding its legs. The bilge pump caught up with the accumulated water, allowing the boat to rise higher as it gained speed
. The damage was all above the waterline, so Pitt had no trouble controlling the boat as it bulled its way past twenty knots, quickly gaining on the freighter.
“Can we alert the cruise ship?” Loren yelled to be heard over the straining engine.
Pitt shook his head. “We have no radio. And the ship is anchored. There’s no way they can move in time.”
“At least we could warn the passengers.”
Pitt simply nodded. That would be a tall order in the scant time available.
As they drew near the freighter’s stern, he considered his few options. There were no other boats nearby, so a radio warning was impossible. Pitt’s immediate thought was to try to board the moving ship. But as he pulled closer, he discarded the notion. There was no easy access, and even if he could somehow find a way aboard, he probably wouldn’t make it to the bridge in time. The sparkling white cruise ship lay dead ahead, barely a half mile away.
Pitt held down the button on the speedboat’s air horn as they ran past the ship’s port flank and shot past its bow. Loren jumped and waved at the forecastle, but there was no response. The Tasmanian Star neither slowed nor altered course, simply plodding ahead on its catastrophic heading. Pitt glanced at the bridge, but could see no moving figures behind the glass windows. By all appearances, it was a ghost ship out of control.
Pitt urgently scanned the surrounding waters for assistance, but there was none to be had. A handful of vessels clustered about the commercial port, a mile or so southwest, but the waters ahead were empty all the way to the curling beachfront. Empty but for the towering mass of the anchored Sea Splendour.
Crowding together on its upper deck, passengers pointed and waved at the approaching freighter. No doubt the helm watch had reported the approaching vessel, and the liner’s captain was furiously hailing the Tasmanian Star by radio. But the rogue vessel responded with silence.
On the speedboat, Pitt surveyed the length of the bulk carrier. At its stern it rode strangely high in the water.