Prodded into the helicopter, he was buckled into a bench seat beside the open cargo door. The guards took seats opposite him. One leaned forward and gave the pilot a thumbs-up sign. The rotor spooled up, and a few seconds later the transport helicopter rose into the sky. Pitt looked down in helplessness as he watched Summer being escorted into the office building with Díaz and Molina. Then the mining facility slipped away beneath him, replaced by an empty expanse of blue ocean.
The Cubans reconvened in Díaz’s office, where he took a moment to admire the Aztec stone. “I received an interesting report from a contact in the United States,” he said to Summer. “Your friend, Perlmutter, is quite a fruitful historian.”
She glared at Díaz. “Did you hurt him?” she asked with fire on her tongue.
“He is perfectly fine, although short a few documents. Documents that indicated the other half of the stone was not destroyed on the Maine after all.”
“So the treasure is still in play?” Molina asked.
“Very much so.”
Summer held her temper. Her father had started to describe a link he had discovered in the office between the stone and a lost treasure. But the guards had forced him to sit silently.
“So where is the other stone?” Molina asked.
“If Perlmutter’s data is correct,” Díaz said, “the stone was stolen from the Maine during her sinking. It was presumably placed aboard a steam packet named San Antonio that immediately left Havana. The American Navy apprehended her off the East Coast, but the vessel sank before they could recover the stone.”
Díaz smiled. “According to the naval records, the San Antonio lies in fifty fathoms, some fourteen miles due east of Punta Maisí.”
“You can locate the wreck with the oil survey ship Kelowna,” Molina said. “She’s still under charter for another month.”
“Actually, I’m sending you to go find the wreck, Silvio, just as soon as the Algonquin leaves the dock.” He glared at Summer. “I will personally oversee the remaining excavations to ensure there are no more interruptions.”
“I will notify the crew of the Kelowna at once.”
Díaz passed a paper to Molina. “Here are the San Antonio’s presumed coordinates. Take the Kelowna and initiate survey operations until you locate the wreck. I’ll join you as soon as I am able.”
“If we find it first, we shall do nothing until your arrival.” Molina nodded toward Summer. “What about the girl?”
Díaz looked her up and down and smiled. “The girl shall be coming with me.”
56
The Army helicopter flew low over the water, hugging the northern coastline of Cuba a hundred yards offshore. Its thumping rotor caught the attention of those below, eliciting friendly waves from solitary fishermen in small boats and young children playing in the surf.
Pitt stared out the open cargo door, computing his odds of escape. The helicopter had a three-man flight crew, plus the two guards. He had little chance of overpowering all five. The open door gave a potential opportunity, though a plunge to his death wasn’t what he had in mind. He studied the helicopter more closely.
The aged Mi-8 was a classic military transport helicopter, capable of ferrying twenty-four soldiers in its long cabin. Pitt observed that this particular craft had been modified for search-and-rescue operations. A rescue basket, along with stacks of life preservers, was stowed in the aft fuselage, while a spooled-cable winch was mounted above the open cargo door. Pitt casually glanced at the Spanish-labeled controls on the winch, identifying a lever that raised and lowered the lifting hook.
Pitt found the rest of the interior of classic military design: bare-bones, with exposed bulkheads. An ex–Air Force pilot with a keen mechanical aptitude, Pitt tracked a myriad of cables and hydraulic lines that crisscrossed the interior. When his foot knocked against a small fire extinguisher beneath his seat, a crude plan came together. Foolhardy though it might be, it was better than facing a firing squad in Havana.
It would all come down to timing—and the men across from him. The guards were professional soldiers, but they had been on duty most of the prior day and night. One was already dozing, while the other regarded Pitt through tired eyes.
Pitt gave the soldier his best disinterested look and closed his eyes. Placing his hands in his lap, he pretended to sleep. He held the pose for several minutes before risking a peek. The second soldier was still awake but had shifted his body to gaze out the forward cockpit window.
With tiny, incremental movements, Pitt unclasped his seat belt, covering the act with one hand. He shifted in his seat, dropping the other hand beneath his knee until it grazed the fire extinguisher. The guard looked his way for a moment and Pitt froze. But then he resumed staring at the rushing water below.
Pitt slowly tightened his fingers around the fire extinguisher, took a deep breath, and sprang from his seat. He swung the steel canister in a wide arc. But rather than attacking the guards, he smashed the base of the extinguisher into a side bulkhead. It wasn’t just a random strike. He had targeted a pair of stainless steel lines that crimped under the heavy blow.
“Hey!” The open-eyed guard looked at Pitt like he was deranged. He reached for the rifle on his lap, but Pitt was quicker. He flipped the extinguisher around, yanked its safety pin, and squeezed the handle, shooting a stream of monoammonium phosphate into the faces of both guards. As the first guard blindly raised his gun, Pitt hurled the extinguisher at him for good measure.
“Adiós,” he said as he smacked the rescue hoist lever down. Pitt grasped a small ball hook that unraveled from the cable winch, took a quick step, and dove out the open cargo door.
It took a few moments for the guard to wipe his eyes clear and train his rifle on the prisoner. By then, Pitt was gone.
“Land the helicopter at once!” he shouted to the pilots.
The pilot ignored him as a ribbon of red lights flashed across the cockpit controls and the helicopter began bucking in the air.
“She’s not getting any fuel,” the copilot said. “Both engines.”
The pilot checked the gauges. “But the external tanks are full.” He switched the fuel supply from one external tank to the other, but it made no difference. The helicopter’s twin motors continued to sputter.
Pitt had chosen his target well, crimping the twin steel lines near the engine cowling labeled Combustible de aviación. Unfortunately for the pilot, they fed the motors fuel from both external tanks. Pitt had correctly guessed the internal tank had been emptied on the flight in, though its reserve contained enough to keep the motors running for a few minutes. With only seconds to react, the pilot couldn’t see past the fact that he knew the external tanks were still full.
The chopper’s motors coughed and sputtered, then died in quick tandem. Only the sound of the cockpit alarms and the dying whine of the rotors now cut the air.
The pilot pushed the nose forward and tried to coax out a glide, but the heavy armored craft would have none of it. The big chopper swooped a short distance, then dropped like a sack of concrete.
It struck the water nose-first, the cockpit instantly crumpling, while the main rotor sheared off and tumbled across the surf. The open fuselage bobbed for a second, then plunged under the waves, carrying all of its occupants to the depths below.
57
Jumping from the cargo door, Pitt nearly lost his grip on the rescue line. The ball hook dug into the back of his hands, painfully preventing him from sliding off. With his arms outstretched over his head, he dangled just beneath the skids as the helicopter began to convulse.
The winch gradually fed out more cable, but he cursed its slowness. He had hoped to drop quickly to a jumping point, but he was still too high. He had no choice but to wait for the line to descend—as the helicopter above him engaged in a slow dance of death. Fortunately, the guards were too preoccupied to throw the winch lever and halt his
descent.
The line jerked sharply as the helicopter stuttered and slowed. It was all Pitt could do to keep a grip on the steel hook and cable as he swung wildly beneath the chopper. Though he and the helicopter had both lost altitude, he was still dangerously high.
He glanced up, seeing the helicopter’s main rotor slow as the motors sputtered—and then quit altogether. When the pilot dipped the nose into a shallow dive, the rescue line fell slack. Pitt dropped almost twenty feet before the line snapped taut, nearly ripping his arms from their sockets.
He was dragged forward and down as the helicopter briefly accelerated under the force of its dive before losing all momentum. The motion caused Pitt to swing ahead of the chopper. Fearful of being crushed under it, he let go of the line and tucked into a ball.
Though now only thirty feet above the water, he was still propelled forward at a high speed. He smacked the ocean hard, tumbling underwater before fighting his way to the surface.
Pitt gasped. The impact knocked the wind from him. He tried to stretch and swim, but a pain shooting from his shoulder kept him from extending his left arm over his head. He kicked and clawed with his good right arm to keep afloat.
He looked in time to see the helicopter cartwheeling past just a few yards in front of him. He ignored the hissing from the helicopter as its remains sank. Instead, he set his sights on an empty sand beach in the distance. Easing into a sidestroke, he swam several yards before holding up in pain.
He paddled slowly, feeling a crosscurrent carrying him toward a wave-battered stretch of shoreline. With a determined breath, Pitt turned toward the sand beach and began kicking and stroking against the current. The pain surged through him, but he forged on until a ripple of white foam beckoned at the surf line. His feet touched bottom, and he staggered toward a thick stand of foliage up the beach. A warm trickle flowed down his neck and left shoulder and he realized the cable hook had gouged him when he jumped.
Pitt staggered exhausted to the bushes. Approaching a tall banyan tree, the exertion, pain, and loss of blood finally reached their zenith. He fell to his knees and collapsed in a heap on the soft sand.
58
Captain to the bridge, please. Captain to the bridge.”
Bill Stenseth retrieved the handheld radio that blared with the call and held it to his lips. “Aye, on my way.”
The veteran sea captain abandoned his morning inspection of the engine room and climbed to the Caroline’s bridge. As one of the newest research ships in the NUMA fleet, the Caroline was built with a central moon pool and a massive A-frame on its stern for deploying a myriad of underwater vehicles. Like all NUMA ships, the vessel’s hull was painted turquoise.
A young officer in a starched white uniform approached Stenseth the instant he stepped onto the bridge. “Sorry to bother you, Captain, but we received an odd message over the radio.”
“What is it, Roberts?”
“An incoming aircraft has requested we pick up three divers in the water off our port bow.”
Stenseth glanced out the bridge window. The Caroline was sitting at anchor in a gentle swell less than a quarter mile from a small Bimini island called South Cat Cay.
“There’s nobody in the water that we’ve been able to see,” Roberts said.
“Who made the call?”
“We don’t know. They wouldn’t identify themselves.”
A seaman on the far side of the bridge pointed toward the bow. “Incoming helicopter, sir.”
Stenseth stepped onto the bridge wing and watched as a white helicopter approached at low altitude. It was a commercial Bell 407 civil utility helicopter, commonly used by law enforcement and for offshore transport.
The chopper circled the Caroline once and hovered off its port bow, dropping almost to wave height. A side door slid open and three men in dive gear leaped out, splashing into the water below. A large orange container was tossed out after them. The helicopter rose from the surface, waggled its main rotor, and took off in the direction it had come.
Stenseth watched the men surface near the ship. “Get a Zodiac in the water—now!”
Before the Caroline’s crew could deploy the inflatable boat, the divers swam to the ship’s stern with their container in tow. A dive platform was lowered and the men climbed aboard with their equipment.
Stenseth waited at the rail as the platform was raised to deck height. The shortest of the three divers stepped forward and extended his hand to the captain as he pulled off his dive mask. “Hi, Bill. Good to see you.”
Stenseth looked agape as he recognized the man normally seen wearing horn-rimmed glasses. “Rudi, is that you?”
Gunn smiled and motioned to the other divers. “My apologies for the surprise visit. I think you know Jack Dahlgren and Pierce Russell.”
“Yes,” Stenseth nodded at the men. “But why the air drop? We could have picked you up onshore.”
“Time is of the essence. Plus, when you are defying the Vice President of the United States, you want as few people to know as possible.”
“Know what?” Stenseth asked.
“It’s the Sargasso Sea. We have reason to believe she’s been hijacked near Havana. For reasons that are beyond my pay grade, Vice President Sandecker has refused to issue help—and in fact ordered us not to intervene.” Gunn shook his head. “But I can’t do it. The crew may be in danger, so we’ve got to find out what’s going on.”
“Aren’t Pitt and Giordino aboard?”
“Yes, which makes things more unnerving. The ship went silent a couple of days ago. They were investigating an undersea mercury plume and may have stumbled on its source.”
“The Cubans?”
“We don’t know.”
“So that explains the anonymous commercial helicopter ride.”
“The pilot thinks we’re here on a secret mission to track dolphins. He wasn’t too happy about making a round trip from Miami and dropping us in the sea, but he was well paid for his services.”
“You’re really sticking your neck out, Rudi, but I’ll be glad to help,” Stenseth said. “Pitt has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.”
“I knew I could rely on you.”
“What can we do to help?”
Gunn pointed across the ship’s open deck. A sleek underwater vehicle with a fiberglass hull was parked on a wooden cradle.
“I need you to tell me two things,” Gunn said. “First, that the Bullet over there is fully operational. Second, that you can get the Caroline under way within the hour.”
It was Stenseth’s turn to smile. “The Bullet just needs a full tank of gas and she’s ready to run. As for the Caroline, if we’re not headed to Cuba at flank speed in twenty minutes, you can have my job.”
“Thanks, Bill. Every second may count.”
“We’re on it.” Stenseth took a step toward the bridge, then hesitated. “By the way, what’s in the orange box?”
Gunn’s eyebrows arched as he replied to the captain with a straight face.
“Insurance.”
59
Summer sat on the dock in the morning sun for over an hour, an armed guard close by. Her thoughts centered on her father and what had become of him.
As sweat trickled down her brow, a blue dot appeared on the horizon, growing ever larger. It eventually morphed into a sleek crew boat, which raced to the dock under the power of twin turbocharged diesels. Summer was escorted into its air-conditioned passenger cabin, where she watched as several small crates of high explosives were loaded onto the stern deck.
Díaz and Molina appeared on the dock a short time later. They shook hands, then Díaz hopped aboard and the boat roared away from the dock. Summer suppressed a chill as he entered the cabin and took a seat next to her.
“A slight deviation in plans,” he said. “We will be making a short stop at your old vessel, the Sargasso Sea
.”
“I may return to the ship?”
Díaz laughed. “No, my dear. I don’t believe you will want to. You shall be joining me instead on the Sea Raker.”
“You don’t know the damage you’ll create by destroying those thermal vents.”
“You don’t know the money and power I’ll forgo if I don’t.” He smiled. “Of course, it may turn out to be a pittance compared with what our Aztec stones are concealing.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It’s the reason I went to Mexico. Our survey ship discovered the canoe near Jamaica, on which the gold figurine was found. We now know from your codex that the canoe was one of many that sailed from the Aztec empire. Dr. Torres was kind enough to confirm the figurine was of a known Aztec design. There must have been much more on the other canoes.”
“A single gold figurine seems like a leap of faith to me,” Summer said.
“It was the only artifact remaining with the canoe. I believe the canoe sank slowly, allowing the crew to escape to the other canoes with most of their cargo.”
“Perhaps. But you now have the location of the other stone. Why don’t you stop this insane blasting of the thermal vents and go recover the treasure?”
“And let you and your father go?”
Summer looked into the dark, sadistic eyes of Díaz and found anything but sympathy.
“No, I think not,” Díaz said, answering his own question. He rose to his feet. “You see, my brother and I have a larger destiny to fulfill.”
He strode off to the bridge as the Sargasso Sea appeared before them, leaving Summer to wonder the identity of Díaz’s brother.
The twin commando inflatables were still tied alongside the NUMA ship as the crew boat pulled next to a drop-down accommodation ladder. The crates of explosives were transferred aboard first and then Díaz climbed to the Sargasso Sea’s main deck. The commando leader Calzado met him at the rail.