Dragon

  "The before shot," said Jordan.

  Meeker nodded. "The next two are from the Sky King taken after the explosion, revealing two shattered hulks on the bottom. The third has disintegrated. Except for a few scattered pieces of her engines on the seabed, there is virtually nothing left of her."

  "Which one was she?" Jordan asked slowly, as if anticipating the answer.

  "We made positive IDs on the two that sank intact." Meeker paused to turn from the photographs and look into Jordan's eyes as if to underscore his answer. "The ship that was transporting the bomb was the Japanese auto carrier."

  Jordan sighed and leaned back in the chair. "It doesn't come as a great shock that Japan has the bomb. They've had the technology for years."

  "The giveaway came when they built a liquid-metal fastbreeder reactor. Fissioning with fast neutrons, the breeder creates more plutonium fuel than it burns. The first step in producing nuclear weaponry."

  "You've done your homework," said Jordan.

  "I have to know what to look for."

  "Like an elusive, yet-to-be-discovered factory for nuclear weapons production," Jordan said acidly.

  Meeker looked at him unwaveringly, then smiled. "Your ground intelligence hasn't got a clue where they're making them either.

  "True," Jordan admitted. "The Japs have accomplished an incredible cover-up. I've a hunch their government leaders are in the dark as well."

  "If their production facility was aboveground, our new satellite detection array would have nailed it."

  "Odd there are no areas of unusual radioactivity.'

  "We've detected nothing outside their electrical power reactors and a nuclear waste dump near a coastal town called Rokota."

  "I've seen the reports," said Jordan. "They sank a four-thousand-meter shaft to throw their waste.

  Could it be we've overlooked something?"

  Meeker gave a negative shake of his head. "We've yet to detect indications of extensive construction or the right type of traffic in and out of the area."

  "Damn!" Jordan snapped. "Japan freely sails the oceans with nuclear bombs destined for United States ports while we sit on our thumbs without knowing the site where they're manufactured, their final destinations, or the plan behind the whole operation."

  "You did say `bombs,' plural?" asked Meeker.

  "The readings from the seismographic center in Colorado show there was a second detonation a millisecond after the first."

  "Too bad you couldn't have launched a major operation to find the answers ten years ago."

  "With what funding?" Jordan grunted. "The last administration gutted intelligence-gathering budgets. All that politicians are interested in are Russia and the Middle East. The last people the State Department will allow us to probe are our good buddies in Japan. Two retired agents we've had to keep under contract are all we're allowed there. Israel is another nation that's off limits. You wouldn't believe the times we were ordered to look the other way while the Mossad pulled off deceptions the Arabs took the blame for."

  "The President will have to give you full discretionary power when you show him the seriousness of the situation."

  "I'll know first thing in the morning after I brief him." Jordan's smooth, polished mask was showing a tiny crack, and his voice turned ice cold. "No matter how we attack this thing, we'll be playing catch-up.

  What scares me, really puts the fear of God in me, is that we're already too late to cut off the plot in midstream."

  The sounds of voices came through the door. The play was over and the audience was flowing into the lobby.

  Jordan came to his feet. "I'll have to break off and make an appearance or my wife will play iceberg on the ride home. Thanks for alerting me to your bird's discovery."

  "There is one more thing," said Meeker. He slipped another photograph out of the file folder and held it up to the light.

  Jordan peered at an object in the center of the photo. "Looks like some kind of big farm tractor.

  What's the significance?"

  "What you see is an unknown deepsea vehicle driving over the sea bottom five thousand meters below the surface, not more than twenty kilometers from the explosion area. You know who owns it or what it's doing there?"

  "Yes. . ." Jordan said slowly. "I didn't, but I do now. Thank you, Curtis."

  Jordan turned from a totally mystified Meeker, opened the door, and melted into the throng leaving the theater.

  >

  True to his word, Pitt drove the mauled DSMV free of its buried prison. The metal tracks shrieked as they ground their way through the lava rock, a centimeter at a time. With tortured sluggishness the great vehicle clawed its way to the surface of the sea bottom, shook off the stone and ooze that trailed in a huge cloudy river from its rear end, and rolled onto the barren terrain.

  "We're clear," Plunkett cried in delight. "Jolly well done."

  "Jolly well done," Pitt mimicked. He switched on computer control and called up a series of geographical displays on the monitor. "A miracle we broke out with no pressure leaks or mechanical damage."

  "My dear fellow, my faith in you is as deep as the sea. . . ah, we're under. I didn't doubt your fortitude for a minute."

  Pitt spared him a curious stare. "If you're taken in that easily, I have a bridge in New York I'd like to sell you."

  "What was that about a bridge'?"

  "Do you play?"

  "Yes, I'm quite good. Won more than a few tournaments. And you?"

  "I deal a mean hand of Old Maid."

  The exchange was slightly less than bizarre considering their predicament, but they were men absorbed in their element and well aware of the danger of being trapped in the abyssal depths. If either Pitt or Plunkett felt any fear, he didn't show it.

  "Now that we've escaped the landslide, what's the plan?" asked Plunkett as calmly as if he was requesting another cup of tea.

  "The plan is to go up," Pitt answered, pointing toward the roof.

  "Since this magnificent old crawler has no buoyancy and we've a good five kilometers of ocean above us, how do you expect to accomplish the impossible?"

  Pitt grinned.

  "Just sit back and enjoy the seascape. We're going to take a little ride through the mountains."

  "Welcome aboard, Admiral." Commander Morton gave a razor-edge salute and extended his hand, but the greeting was purely official. He was not happy and made no attempt at hypocrisy. "A rare occasion when we're ordered to surface at sea during a cruise to take on visitors. I have to tell you I don't like it."

  Sandecker smothered a smile as he stepped from the Shanghai Shelly's launch onto the bridge of the partially surfaced sail tower of the Tucson. He shook Morton's hand with a casual unconcern and a dominating posture that, if anything, made his presence seem like an everyday affair.

  "I didn't pull strings to have you deviate from operational procedure so I could drop in for cocktails, Commander. I'm here on presidential order. If it's an inconvenience, I'll be happy to return to the junk."

  A pained expression crossed Morton's face. "No offense, Admiral, but Soviet satellites--"

  "Will photograph us in vivid color for the entertainment of their intelligence analysts. Yes, yes, but we don't really care what they see or think." Sandecker turned as Giordino climbed aboard. "My assistant project director, Al Giordino."

  Unconsciously almost, Morton acknowledged Giordino with a half salute and showed them through a hatch down to the control center of the sub. They followed the commander into a small compartment with a transparent plotting table with a recessed interior that provided a three-dimensional sonar view of the seabed.

  Lieutenant David DeLuca, the Tucson's navigation officer, was leaning over the table. He straightened as Morton made the introductions and smiled warmly. "Admiral Sandecker, this is an honor. I never missed your lectures at the academy."

  Sandecker beamed. "I hope I didn't put you to sleep.

  "Not at all. Your accounts of NUMA projects were fascin
ating.

  Morton flicked a glance at DeLuca and nodded down at the table. "The admiral is most interested in your discovery."

  "What can you show me, son?" Sandecker said, placing a hand on DeLuca's shoulder. "The message was you've picked up unusual sounds on the seabed."

  DeLuca faltered for a moment. "We've been receiving strange music--"

  " 'Minnie the Mermaid?' " Giordino blurted.

  DeLuca nodded. "At first, but now it sounds like John Philip Sousa marches."

  Morton's eyes narrowed. "How could you possibly know?"

  "Dirk," Giordino said definitely. "He's still alive."

  "Let's hope so," Sandecker said with mounting joy. He stared at DeLuca. "Can you still hear the music?"

  "Yes, sir. Once we obtained a fix, we were able to track the source.

  "It's moving?"

  "About five kilometers per hour across the bottom."

  "He and Plunkett must have survived the earthquake and escaped in Big John," Giordino concluded.

  "Have you attempted contact?" asked Sandecker of Morton.

  "We've tried, but our systems are not designed to transmit in water deeper than a thousand meters."

  "We can contact them with the underwater phone in the submersible," said Giordino.

  "Unless. . ." Sandecker hesitated. He glanced at Morton. "Could you hear them if they were trying to contact a surface vessel, Commander?"

  "If we can hear their music, we could hear their voice transmissions. Might be garbled and distorted, but I think our computers could piece together a coherent message."

  "Any such sounds received?"

  "None," replied Morton.

  "Their phone system must be damaged," Sandecker speculated.

  "Then why are they able to transmit music?"

  "An emergency amplifying system locator in case the vehicle had a breakdown," answered Giordino.

  "A rescue vehicle could home in on the sound. But it wasn't built for voice transmission or reception."

  Morton stirred in slow anger. He did not like losing control of a situation on board his own command.

  "May I ask who these people are in Big John, as you call it, and how they came to be traipsing over the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?"

  Sandecker gave a negligent wave of his hand. "Sorry, Commander, a classified project." He turned his attention back to DeLuca. "You say they're on the move."

  "Yes, sir." DeLuca pressed a series of buttons and the display recessed in the table revealed a section of the sea bottom in a three-dimensional holograph. To the men crowded around the table, it felt as though they were looking down into a submerged Grand Canyon from the top of an aquarium. The detail was enhanced by advanced computer and sonar digital mapping that showed the images in muted color heavy on blues and greens.

  The Mendocino fracture zone dwarfed the famous tourist sight of northern Arizona, its steep escarpments averaging 3,000 meters high. The uneven rims along the great crack in the earth's submarine surface were serrated with hundreds of ridges, giving it the appearance of a huge gash through a series of sand ripples.

  "The latest underwater visual technology," Morton offered proudly. "The Tucson was the first sub to have it installed."

  "Code-named The Great Karnak," Sandecker said loftily. "Knows all, sees all. Our NUMA engineers helped develop it."

  Morton's face, now curiously red and sullen, looked abjectly defeated in the game of one-upmanship.

  But he took control and made a brave comeback. "Lieutenant, show the admiral his toy in action."

  DeLuca took a short wandlike probe and traced a light beam across the floor of the display. "Your underwater vehicle emerged at this point in a small canyon just off the main fracture zone and is now traveling in a zigzag pattern up the slopes toward the top of the fracture zone's edge."

  Giordino stared somberly at the flattened area where the mining project once stood. "Not much left of Soggy Acres," he said sadly.

  "It wasn't built to last forever," Sandecker consoled him. "The results more than paid for the loss."

  Without being asked, DeLuca enlarged the display until the fuzzy image of the DSMV could just be seen struggling up the side of a steep slope. "This is as sharp as I can bring her in."

  "That's just fine," Sandecker complimented him.

  Looking at the tiny speck against the infinite desolation, it was impossible for any of them to believe there were two living, breathing men inside it. The moving projection seemed so real, they had to fight to keep from reaching out and touching it.

  Their thoughts varied to the extreme. DeLuca imagined he was an astronaut peering down at life on an alien planet, while Morton was reminded of watching a truck on a highway from an aircraft flying at thirty thousand feet. Sandecker and Giordino both visualized their friend struggling against a hostile atmosphere to stay alive.

  "Can't you rescue them with your submersible?" queried Morton.

  Giordino clutched the rail around the display table until his knuckles went ivory. "We can rendezvous, but neither craft has an air lock to transfer them from one to the other under tons of water pressure. If they attempted to leave Big John at that depth, they'd be squashed to a third their size."

  "What about hoisting them to the surface with a cable?"

  "I don't know of a ship equipped to carry six kilometers of cable thick enough to support its own weight and that of the DSMV."

  "The Glomar Explorer could do it," said Sandecker. "But she's on an oil drilling job off Argentina.

  Impossible for her to cut off operations, re-equip, and get here inside of four weeks."

  Morton began to understand the urgency and the frustration. "I'm sorry there is nothing my crew and I can do."

  "Thank you, Commander." Sandecker sighed heavily. "I appreciate that."

  They all stood silent for the next full minute, their eyes focused on the image of the miniature vehicle as it crept across the display like a bug climbing the side of a culvert.

  "I wonder where he's headed," murmured DeLuca.

  "What was that?" asked Sandecker as if he had suddenly awakened.

  "Since I've been tracking him, he's been traveling in a set direction. He'll go into a series of switchbacks when the slope steepens, but after it flattens out again he always returns to his original course."

  Sandecker, staring at DeLuca, suddenly knew. "Dirk's heading for high ground. Lord, I almost wrote him off without considering his intentions."

  "Plot an approximate course destination," Morton ordered DeLuca.

  DeLuca programmed his navigational computer with the data, then eyed the monitor, waiting for the compass projection. The numbers flashed almost instantly.

  "Your man, Admiral, is on a course bearing three-three-four."

  "Three-three-four," Morton repeated firmly. "Nothing ahead but dead ground."

  Giordino looked at DeLuca. "Please enlarge the sector ahead of the DSMV."

  DeLuca nodded and broadened the display area in the direction Giordino requested. "Looks pretty much the same except for a few seamounts."

  "Dirk is making for Conrow Guyot," Giordino said flatly.

  "Guyot?" asked DeLuca.

  "A seamount with a smooth summit," Sandecker explained. "A submarine volcanic mountain whose top was leveled by wave action as it slowly sank beneath the surface."

  "What's the depth of the summit?" Giordino questioned DeLuca.

  The young navigation officer pulled a chart from a cabinet under the table and spread it across the transparent top. "Conrow Guyot," he read aloud. "Depth three hundred and ten meters."

  "How far from the DSMV?" This from Morton.

  DeLuca checked the distance with a pair of dividers against a scale at the bottom of the chart.

  "Approximately ninety-six kilometers."

  "At eight kilometers per hour," Giordino calculated, "then doubling the distance to allow for uneven terrain and detours around ravines, with luck they should reach the top of Conrow around this time to
morrow."

  Morton's eyes turned skeptical. "Climbing the guyot may bring them closer to the surface, but they'll still be three hundred meters or nearly a thousand feet short. How does this guy--?"

  "His name is Dirk Pitt," Giordino helped him.

  "Okay, Pitt. How does he expect to make it topside-- swim?"

  "Not from that depth," said Sandecker promptly. "Big John is pressurized to one atmosphere, the same as we're standing in at sea level. The outside water pressure down there is thirty-three times heavier. Even if we could supply them with hightech dive gear and a helium-oxygen gas mixture for deep-water breathing, their chances are nil."

  "If the sudden increase in pressure as they left Big John didn't kill them," Giordino added,

  "decompression sickness on the way to the surface would."

  "So what does Pitt have up his sleeve?" Morton persisted.

  Giordino's eyes seemed to peer at something beyond the r head. "I don't have the answer, but I suspect we'd better t of one damn quick."

  >

  The sterile gray expanse gave way to a forest of oddly sculptured vents protruding from the seafloor.

  They rose like distorted chimneys and spouted hot-365 Celsius-clouds of black steam that was quickly smothered by the cold ocean.

  "Black smokers," announced Plunkett, identifying them under the probing lights of Big John.

  "They'll be surrounded by communities of sea creatures," Pitt said without removing his eyes from the navigational display on his control monitor. "We charted over a dozen of them during our mining surveys."

  "You'd better swing clear. I'd hate to see this brute run over them."

  Pitt smiled and took manual control, turning the DSMV to avoid the strange colony of exotic sea life that thrived without sunlight. It was like a lush oasis in the desert, covering nearly a square kilometer of seafloor. The wide tracks of the intruding monster skirted the spewing vents and the entwining thickets of giant tube worms that gently leaned with the current as though they were marsh reeds swaying under a breeze.