Dragon

  "No, that was an unforeseen tragedy."

  "Maybe I missed something," Pitt said harshly. "But I had this crazy idea that we were on the same side."

  "We are, Mr. Pitt, I assure you," Jordan answered quietly. He nodded at Admiral Sandecker. "Your facility, Soggy Acres as' you called it, was built under such tight secrecy that none of our intelligence agencies were aware that it was authorized."

  Pitt cut him short. "So when you got wind of the project, your nose was bent out of joint and you had to investigate."

  Jordan was not used to being on the defensive, yet he did not meet Pitt's stare. "What's done is done. I regret the tragic loss of so many people, but we cannot entirely be blamed for putting our operatives in an unfortunate position at the wrong time. We had no advance warning of a Japanese auto transport that was smuggling nuclear bombs across the ocean, nor could we predict those bombs would accidentally explode almost on top of two innocent ships and your mining colony."

  For a moment Pitt was stunned by the revelation, then his surprise was gone as quickly as it came.

  Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. He stared at Sandecker and sensed hurt as he spoke. "You knew, Admiral, you knew before you left Washington and said nothing. The Tucson wasn't on station to rescue Plunkett and me. It was there to record radioactivity and search for debris."

  It was one of the few times Pitt and Giordino ever witnessed Sandecker redden with chagrin. "The President asked that I be sworn to secrecy," he said slowly. "I've never lied to you, Dirk, but I had no choice but to remain mute."

  Pitt felt sorry for the admiral, he knew it must have been difficult to be evasive with two close friends, but he made no effort to disguise his resentment of Jordan. "Why are we here?" he demanded.

  "The President has personally approved of the selection of each individual to the team," replied Jordan.

  "You all have a background and expertise that is indispensable for the success of this operation. The admiral and Mr. Giordino will put together a project to search the ocean floor and salvage any evidence from the ship that blew up. For the record, their code is `Mercedes.' "

  Pitt's tired eyes squinted at Jordan steadily. "You only half answered the question."

  Jordan obliged him by saying, "I'm coming to it. You and Mr. Mancuso, who I believe you met, will act as a support team."

  "Support for what?"

  "For the phase of the operation that requires an underground or underwater search."

  "When and where?"

  "Yet to be determined."

  "And our code name?"

  Jordan stared at Kern, who shuffled through a file of papers and then shook his head. "They haven't been assigned one yet."

  "May the condemned create their own code?" asked Pitt.

  Jordan exchanged looks with Kern, and then shrugged. "I don't see why not."

  Pitt smiled at Mancuso. "You have a preference?"

  Mancuso lowered the pipe from his lips. "I leave it to you," he said affably.

  "Then we'll bèTeam Stutz.'

  Jordan cocked his head. "I beg your pardon."

  "I never heard of it," growled Kern.

  "Stutz," Pitt pronounced distinctly. "One of America's finest classic automobiles, built from nineteen eleven until nineteen thirty-five in Indianapolis, Indiana."

  "I like it." Mancuso nodded agreeably.

  Kern squinted at Pitt, and his eyes took on a ferrety look. "You don't strike me as taking this operation seriously."

  Jordan made an acquiescent shrug. "Whatever makes them happy."

  "Okay," Pitt said steadily, "now that vital item of the agenda is settled, I'm going to get up and walk out of here." He paused to read the orange dial on his old Doxa dive watch. "I was dragged here against my will. I've slept three hours out of the last forty-eight, and only eaten one meal in that time. I have to go to the bathroom. And I still don't know what's going down. Your plainclothes security guards and your detachment of marines can stop me, of course, but then I might get hurt and can't play on the team. Oh, yes, there is one other point that no one has thought toy bring up."

  "What point is that?" asked Kern, his anger rising.

  "I don't recall that Al and I were officially requested to volunteer."

  Kern acted as if he'd swallowed a jalapeno pepper. "What are you talking about, volunteer?"

  "You know, one who offers himself for a service of his own free will," Pitt defined stonily. He turned to Giordino. "Were you formally invited to the party, Al?"

  "Not unless my invitation was lost in the mail."

  Pitt stared defiantly into Jordan's eyes as he spoke. "That's the old ball game." Then he turned to Sandecker. "Sorry, Admiral."

  "Shall we go?" said Giordino.

  "Yes, let's."

  "You can't walk out," Kern said with deadly seriousness. "You're under contract to the government."

  "I'm not under contract to play secret agent." Pitt's voice was calm, quite unperturbed. "And unless there's been a revolution since we've returned from the bottom of the sea, this is still a free country."

  "One moment, please," said Jordan, wisely accepting Pitt's viewpoint.

  Jordan held an incredible range of power, and he was used to holding the whip hand. But he was also very astute and knew when to drift with the current, even if it flowed upstream. He stared at Pitt with curious interest. He saw no hatred, no arrogance, only a weary man who had been pushed too far. He had studied the file on NUMA's Special Projects Director. Pitt's background read like an adventure tale.

  His accomplishments were celebrated and honored. Jordan was smart enough not to antagonize a man he was damned lucky to have on the team.

  "Mr. Pitt, if you will be patient a few more minutes I will tell you what you need to know. Some details will remain classified. I don't think it wise you and certain people present at this table should have full knowledge of the situation. I don't care a damn myself, but it is for your protection. Do you understand'?"

  Pitt nodded. "I'm listening."

  "Japan has the bomb," the chief of the National Security Service revealed. "How long they've had it or how many they've built is unknown. Given their advanced nuclear technology, Japan has had the capability to build warheads for over a decade. And despite their highly touted adherence to the nonproliferation treaty, someone or some group within their power structure decided they needed a deterrent force for its blackmail value. What little we know comes after the fact. A Japanese ship carrying Murmoto automobiles and two or more nuclear devices detonated in the middle of the Pacific, taking a Norwegian passenger-cargo liner and the British survey ship and their crews with her. Why were nuclear bombs on a Jap ship`? They were smuggling them into American ports. For what purpose?

  Probably nuclear extortion. Japan may have the bomb, but she doesn't have a missile force or the long-range bombers to deliver it. So what would we do in their shoes to protect a financial power structure that reaches into every pocket of every country of the world? We smuggle nuclear weapons into any nation or combination of nations such as Europe that pose a threat to our economic empire and hide them in strategic locations. Then, if a particular country, say the U.S., gets mad after our Japanese leaders attempt to dictate policy to the White House and Congress and the business community, the Americans retaliate by refusing to pay back hundreds of billions of dollars loaned to their Treasury by our Japanese banks. They also threaten boycotts and trade barriers on all Japanese goods. Extreme measures that Senator

  Diaz and Congresswoman Loren Smith are proposing over at the Capitol as we speak. And maybe, just maybe, if the President gets riled up enough, he orders his superior military forces to blockade the Japanese islands, cutting off all our oil and vital raw materials, shutting down all our production. Follow me so far?"

  Pitt nodded. "I'm with you."

  "This backlash scenario is not farfetched, especially when the American people will someday realize they work one month out of the year to pay off debts owe
d to foreign, for the most part Japanese, creditors. Are the Japs worried? Not when they have the power to push buttons and blow up any city in the world in time for the six o'clock news. Why are we here? To stop them by finding where the bombs are hidden. And stop them before they discover we're onto them. That's where Team Buick comes in.

  Stacy is an operative with the National Security Agency. Timothy is a nuclear scientist who specializes in radioactivity detection, Team Honda, led by James and Roy, agents, will concentrate on discovering and the command center that controls the detonations. Is this frightening nightmare? Absolutely. The lives of five hundred million people in nations that compete with Japan depend on what we around this table can accomplish in the next few weeks. In a wisdom bred more of ignorance, our State Department does not allow us covert observation of friendly nations. As the front line of this nation's early warning system, we are forced to run in the shadows and die in obscurity. The alarm bells are about to be rung, and believe it or not, Mr. Pitt, this MAIT team is the last resort before a full-scale disaster. Do you get the picture?"

  "Yes. . ." Pitt said slowly. "Thank you, Mr. Jordan. I get the picture."

  "Now will you officially join the team?"

  Pitt rose, and to the astonishment of everyone present except Giordino and Sandecker, he said, "I'll think it over."

  And then he left the room.

  As he walked down the steps into the alley beside the squalid old building, Pitt turned and gazed up at the dingy walls and boarded windows. He shook his head in wonderment, then looked down at the security guard in the ragged clothes sprawled on the steps and muttered to himself, "So that's the eyes and ears of the great republic."

  Jordan and Sandecker remained in the conference room after the others had filed out.

  The crusty little admiral looked at Jordan and smiled faintly. "Do you mind my cigar?"

  Jordan made a look of distaste. "A little late in asking, aren't you, Jim?"

  "Nasty habit." Sandecker nodded. "But I don't mind blowing smoke on someone, especially when they hard-ass my people. And that's exactly what you were doing, Ray, hard-assing Pitt and Giordino."

  "You know damn well we're in a state of crisis," said Jordan seriously. "We don't have time to cater to prima donnas."

  Sandecker's face clouded. He pointed to Pitt's packet that was on the top of the stack before Jordan.

  "You didn't do your homework, or you'd know that Dirk Pitt is a bigger patriot than you and I put together. Few men have accomplished more for their country. There are few of his breed left. He still whistles `Yankee Doodle' in the shower and believes a handshake is a contract and man's word is his bond. He can also be devious as the devil if he thinks he's helping preserve the Stars and Stripes, the American family, and baseball."

  "If he knows the urgency of the situation," said Jordan, puzzled, "why did he stall and cut out?"

  Sandecker looked at him, then looked at the organization chart on the backlit screen where Kern had written in "Tea Stutz."

  "You badly underestimated Dirk," he said almost sadly. "You don't know, you couldn't know, he's probably brewing up scheme to reinforce your operation this minute."

  >

  Pitt did not go directly to the old aircraft hangar on the edge of Washington's International Airport that he called home. He gave Giordino a set of instructions and sent him off in a cab.

  He walked up Constitution Avenue until he came to a Japanese restaurant. He asked for a quiet booth in the corner, sat down, and ordered. Between the clear clam soup and a medley of sashimi raw fish, he left the table and walked to a pay phone outside the rest rooms.

  He took a small address book from his wallet and flipped through the phone numbers until he found the one he was looking for, Dr. Percival Nash (Payload Percy), Chevy Chase, Maryland. Nash was Pitt's uncle on his mother's side. The family character, Nash often bragged how he used to spike Dirk's baby formula with sherry. Pitt inserted the change and dialed the number under the name.

  He waited patiently through six rings, hoping Nash was in. He was, answering half a second before Pitt was about to hang up.

  "Dr. Nash here," came a youthful resonant voice (he was crowding eighty-two).

  "Uncle Percy, this is Dirk."

  "Oh, my goodness, Dirk. About time I heard your voice. You haven't called your old uncle in five months."

  "Four," Pitt corrected him. "I've been on an overseas project."

  "How's my beautiful sister and that dirty old politician she married? They never call me either."

  "I haven't been over to the house yet, but judging from their letters, Mom and the senator are as testy as ever."

  "What about you, nephew? Are you in good health?"

  "Fit and ready to race you around Marinda Park."

  "You remember that, do you? You couldn't have been much older than six at the time."

  "How could I forget? Every time I'd try and pass, you'd throw me in the bushes."

  Nash laughed like the jolly man that he was. "Never try to better your elders. We like to think we're smarter than you kids."

  "That's why I need your help, and was wondering if you could meet me at the NUMA Building. I need to pick your brain."

  "On what subject?"

  "Nuclear reactors for race cars."

  Nash knew instantly Pitt was dodging the real issue over the telephone. "When?" he asked without hesitation.

  "As soon as convenient."

  "An hour okay?"

  "An hour will be fine," said Pitt.

  "Where are you now?"

  "Eating Japanese sashimi."

  Nash groaned. "Ghastly stuff. God only knows what pollutants and chemicals fish swim through."

  "Tastes good, though."

  "I'm going to speak to your mother. She didn't raise y right."

  "See you in an hour, Percy."

  Pitt hung up and went back to his table. Hungry as he was, he barely touched the sashimi. He idly wondered if one of the smuggled bombs might be buried under the floor of the restaurant.

  Pitt took a cab to the ten-story NUMA Building. He paid the driver and gazed briefly up at the emerald-green solar glass that covered the walls and ended in a curving pyramidal spire at the top. No lover of the classical look of the capital's government buildings, Admiral Sandecker wanted a sleek contemporary look, and he got it. The lobby was an atrium surrounded by waterfalls and aquariums filled with exotic sea life. A huge globe rose from off the center of the sea-green marble floor, contoured with the geological furrows and ridges of every sea, large lake, and primary river on the earth.

  Pitt entered an empty elevator and pressed the button marked 10. He skipped his fourth-floor office and rode up to the communications and information network on the top level. Here was the brain center of NUMA, a storehouse of every scrap of information ever recorded on the oceans-- scientific, historical, fiction, or nonfiction. It was in this vast room of computers and memory cores where Sandecker spent a goodly percentage of NUMA's budget, a constant source of criticism from a small company of his enemies in Congress. Yet this great electronic library had saved enormous sums of money on hundreds of projects, led the way to numerous important discoveries, and helped avert several national disasters that were never reported in the news media.

  The man behind this formidable data supermarket was Hiram Yaeger.

  "Brilliant" was the compliment most often paid to Yaeger's mind, while "rumpled" distinguished his appearance. With his graying blond hair tied in a long ponytail, a braided beard, granny spectacles, and frayed, patched Levi's, Yaeger exuded the aura of a hippie relic. Strangely, he had never been one. He was a decorated, three-tour Vietnam veteran who served as a Navy SEAL. If he had remained in computer design in California and launched his own company, he might have eventually headed a booming corporation and become a very wealthy man. But Yaeger cared nothing for being an entrepreneur. He was a class-act paradox, and one of Pitt's favorite people.

  When Admiral Sandecker offer
ed him the job of command over NUMA's vast computer data complex with nearly unlimited funding, Yaeger took it, moved his family to a small farm in Sharpsburg, Maryland, and set up shop all within eight days. He put in long hours, running the data systems twenty-four hours a clay, using three shifts of technicians to accumulate and disperse ocean data to and from ongoing American and foreign expeditions around the earth.

  Pitt found Yaeger at his desk, which sat on a raised stage and revolved in the center of the vast room.

  Yaeger had it specially constructed so he could keep an all-seeing eye on his billion dollar domain. He was eating a pizza and drinking a nonalcoholic beer when he spied Pitt and jerked to his feet with a broad smile.

  "Dirk, you're back."

  Pitt climbed the stairs to Yaeger's altar, as his staff called it behind his back, and they shook hands warmly. "Hello, Hiram."

  "Sorry to hear about Soggy Acres," Yaeger said seriously, what I'm real happy to see you're still among the living. God, you look like a felon just out of solitary. Sit down and rest yourself."

  Pitt gazed longingly at the pizza. "You couldn't spare a slice, could you?"

  "You bet. Help yourself. I'll send out for another. Like a fake beer to wash it down? Sorry I can't give you the real stuff, but you know the rules."

  Pitt sat and put away a large pizza plus two slices from Yaeger's, and three beers without alcohol the computer genius kept in a small refrigerator built into his desk. Between bites, Pitt filled Yaeger in on the events leading up to his rescue, stopping short of his flight to Hawaii.

  Yaeger listened with interest and then smiled like a skeptical judge on a divorce trial. "Made a quick trip home, I see."

  "Something's come up."

  Yaeger laughed. "Here we go. You didn't rush back to eat my pizza. What's swirling in that evil mind of yours?"

  "I'm expecting a relative of mine, Dr. Percy Nash, to arrive in a few minutes. Percy was one of the scientists on the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bomb. A former director on the Atomic Energy Commission, now retired. Together with your supercomputer intelligence and Percy's knowledge of nuclear weaponry, I want to create a scenario."