Summer quietly got up, stepped to a door on the opposite side, and slipped out, only to come face-to-face with another guard, his hand on the bolt of his rifle. He backed her into the control room, shoving her with his gun muzzle digging into her stomach.
Díaz witnessed the act and marched over with a shake of his head.
“A valiant, if fruitless, effort,” he said.
“Why don’t you just let me go? I can’t halt your undersea destruction now.”
“You don’t care for our hospitality? Then have it your way. You can indeed depart the Sea Raker.” He sneered. “Only it won’t be aboard my crew boat.”
66
Pounding the seas at almost thirty knots, Ramsey’s Gold Digger located the Sea Raker on its radar in less than two hours. Pitt spent the intervening time trying to hail the Sargasso Sea but was met with only silence. Even a last-minute call to Rudi Gunn at NUMA headquarters went unanswered.
The last vestiges of daylight streaked the western horizon as the Sea Raker loomed ahead. Ramsey radioed the mining vessel, then turned to Pitt.
“They were quite surprised and very unhappy to hear from me. They tried to beg off a visit since they are conducting operations. They didn’t explain what they are doing here.” He rubbed his chin. “I said, being just as surprised finding them in the Caribbean, that it was just a brief social call and I certainly wasn’t here for an inspection, so they agreed. They’ll be rather shocked if you’re part of the boarding party.”
“Too many people might recognize me coming in the front door,” Pitt said, peering at the mining ship and adjacent barge. “I’ll have to try the back door. Can you position yourself off Sea Raker’s port bow and shield your launch from the ship when you deploy it?”
“Not a problem.” Ramsey relayed the request to the yacht’s captain, then gave Pitt a handheld marine radio. “You’re on your own, I’m afraid. We’ll loiter about the area a few miles away until we hear from you.”
“Thanks, Mark.” Pitt shook the Canadian’s hand.
“Watch yourself. And good luck.”
The Gold Digger turned away from the Sea Raker as its launch was lowered off the stern. Ramsey and his hefty bodyguard sat on the forward bench as the pilot engaged the outboard and sped toward the mining ship.
On the Sea Raker’s opposite deck, Díaz and his crew were engaged in their own launching exercise, deploying the bulk cutter. Dangling at its side like an ornament on a Christmas tree was the Starfish, suspended by the cutter’s manipulator. Both machines were quickly swallowed by the sea as the ship’s drum winch released a steady stream of support cable. Díaz watched them submerge into the black water, then stepped to the opposite side of the ship to greet Ramsey.
The Gold Digger’s launch sailed along the ship’s port rail to its lowered ladder. Ramsey and his bodyguard leaped onto the ladder and up the steps to the Sea Raker’s deck. Díaz was there waiting with several armed soldiers standing loosely behind him.
“Mr. Ramsey, a pleasant surprise.” Díaz’s tone was anything but pleasant.
“Hello, Juan. I was on my way to New Orleans when my captain spotted you.”
“I’m glad you can visit. Come, let’s have a drink.”
Díaz led him forward to the ship’s wardroom, where an attendant fixed them drinks.
“What are you doing in Cuba?” Ramsey said. “You’re supposed to be working off Nicaragua.”
“The site proved to be a disappointment. We decided to redeploy here for some test excavations that looked promising from an earlier seismic survey.”
“Do you have authorization to dig here?” Ramsey asked.
“The approvals have been made through the necessary channels.”
“I admire your efficiency. How is the ship working out?”
“She’s been outstanding. We had a learning curve on managing the excavation equipment, but now we are operating at high efficiency.”
“Yes, that’s why I would have preferred you use my crew.”
Díaz ignored the comment. “I’m sorry you didn’t come at a more opportune moment. We are just deploying one of the cutters for a test run.”
“Could I see your seismic survey data? I’ve been studying a lot of undersea terrain in this region lately. Perhaps I could be of help.”
“I’m afraid the data isn’t aboard ship.”
Ramsey saw through the lie. “Have you completed an environmental impact assessment for this area?”
“Our scientists have determined there is no impact.”
“Even with blasting?”
“Blasting?” Díaz replied with a wary look. “We are not conducting any blasting.”
“Our charter specifies full environmental impact assessments and minimally invasive operations in the course of any mining activity. I’ve built a lifetime’s reputation on safe and friendly mining techniques. I must insist that the contract stipulations be followed.”
“Of course. I’ll have the reports sent to you next week.”
Díaz drained his drink and rose to his feet. “It was nice of you to stop by, Mr. Ramsey. I hope you have a pleasant journey to New Orleans.”
Ramsey slowly finished his drink. With a sick feeling, he realized that everything Pitt had told him about Díaz was true. He had signed away his ship to mercenaries under the protection of the Cuban government—and they were about to unleash a vast environmental disaster. The situation left him with little recourse.
“It is later than I thought,” Ramsey said. “Thank you for the drink, Juan. I best get going.”
They exited the wardroom and returned to the deck. Walking past the bulk cutter hangar, Ramsey noticed a crewman in a hazmat suit sweeping up some seafloor residue. It made him think of Pitt and he glanced over the rail at the barge tied alongside.
Bidding Díaz good-bye, he climbed down to his waiting launch and cast off toward his yacht. As the illuminated outline of the Sea Raker receded behind him, Ramsey kicked at a loose tarp on the floorboard and muttered to the breeze, “Good luck, Dirk Pitt. You’re going to need it.”
67
Crouched behind a pallet of explosives on the barge, Pitt watched Ramsey’s launch sail away as his mind returned to his daughter. The discovery that Díaz was aboard the Sea Raker changed everything. It gave him hope that Summer might be aboard, but it also changed his strategy. He’d planned to sneak aboard and somehow disable the mining equipment. But if Summer was aboard, he would have to find her first.
With Ramsey’s help, he’d made it this far. Covered by a tarp, he’d hid on the floor of the launch as Ramsey visited the Sea Raker. While the Canadian met with Díaz, the launch’s pilot idled the boat off the mining ship’s side and let it drift astern. When a few nosy ship hands at the rail grew bored and wandered off, the pilot eased alongside the barge and signaled Pitt. With a quick leap, he boarded unseen.
He crossed the barge, moving quickly from crate to crate. A heavy white powder littered the deck, which he knew was the ANFO from some spilled bags. The barge was only half full of crated explosives, indicating a large portion had already been deployed on one of the thermal vents. The delivery means was in service a few yards ahead of the barge: a steel-grated platform suspended by a thick drop cable. Pitt watched as several crewmen loaded a long, coiled tube onto the platform and lowered it over the side.
He made his way to the rear of the barge and climbed aboard the Sea Raker when he spotted no one about. The ship was otherwise alive with activity. He could only assume the crew was preparing to blow the thermal vent. An uneasy feeling began to creep over him. He might be too late to prevent it.
He shook his doubts aside, knowing his top priority was to find Summer.
He crept forward, holding to the shadows, but progressed only a short distance when a work crew came up behind him, lugging a replacement cutter head for the auxiliary mining machi
ne. One man tripped under the burden, twisting his ankle and dropping his end of the weight. A supervisor, straining under the load on the opposite side, noticed Pitt standing nearby.
“You, over there. Come give us a hand.”
Pitt was trapped. If he assisted the men, the bright deck lights would reveal he wasn’t part of the crew. If he ignored the supervisor, he would create an undue suspicion.
Spotting a door to a nearby prefabricated structure, he took a chance. Shrugging at the supervisor, he motioned toward the door, stepped over, and turned the handle. His luck held and the door opened. He ducked inside as the supervisor shouted a curse in his direction.
Pitt had expected to walk into an equipment locker but found himself at the back of the mining control room. Multiple video images illuminated the big screen while chatter from computer station operators rattled off the steel walls. Pitt eased into a dark corner when he saw Díaz directing the operation from his armchair down front.
Several ROVs flitted about the sea bottom, displaying the massive cache of ANFO explosives piled into the slit trench. One ROV turned upward, its camera capturing the arrival of the bulk cutter as it dropped to the seabed and vanished in a cloud of sediment.
The current blew the water clear as the ROV moved in for a closer view. When it turned to capture the side of the cutter, Pitt nearly choked. Clasped by the cutter’s manipulator and held to its side like a bread basket was the NUMA submersible Starfish.
Yet it wasn’t the appearance of the Starfish that startled Pitt. What took his breath away was the sight of his daughter, sitting alone and helpless in the pilot’s seat of the stricken submersible.
68
Ninety minutes.
That was the remaining life of the Starfish’s battery reserves. Once the power failed and the carbon dioxide scrubbers ceased, Summer would die a slow death from asphyxiation. Unless hypothermia from the cold struck first.
When Díaz and his men forced her into the submersible and lowered it over the side, she knew he didn’t intend for her to surface again. She immediately activated the life-support systems, while shutting off all nonessential power drains. She was thankful her father had powered down everything when they were brought aboard the Sea Raker, leaving her some remaining battery charge.
Once on the seafloor, she realized ninety minutes was a false hope. As the bulk cutter’s treads began turning and the big machine lurched forward, she saw the massive pit filled with explosives. Her death would come soon—and violently.
The cutter trudged to the edge of the trench and stopped. Its manipulator arm rotated outward, swinging the Starfish from its side. An operator on the surface released the manipulator’s grip and the submersible dropped into the trench, landing upright on a carpet of explosives.
A pair of ROVs captured the scene, their lights blinding Summer as they buzzed about the submersible. They gradually pulled away, hovering over the bulk cutter as it crawled into the darkness.
Summer peered out the viewport until the ROVs faded to a small speck of light. Then she went to work.
She had one last gambit: the fact she could still make the submersible buoyant. The ROV may have destroyed the sub’s external thrusters on their first encounter, but it hadn’t hampered the Starfish’s ability to surface.
Summer powered the ballast tank pumps and initiated a purge to empty the flooded tanks. She waited for a reaction, but nothing happened. There was normally a hissing of compressed air, followed by a gurgle of expelled water, but now there was only silence. She checked the power and circuit breakers and tried a second time.
Again nothing. Then she checked the compressed air cylinder that supported the ballast tank. The gauge read zero. The Sea Raker’s crew had emptied the cylinder to prevent such an attempt.
Glancing out the viewport at the bed of explosives, she tried not to panic. She took a deep breath—and thought of one more option. The Starfish was fitted with twin lead weights that could be jettisoned for lift in an emergency. Her father had released one set of weights when they tried to escape the bulk cutter, but another still remained.
She climbed behind the seat, where under a floor panel she found a secondary release. Grabbing the handle, she twisted it to the drop position.
Nothing happened.
The Sea Raker’s crew had done their handiwork there, too, securing the weight so it couldn’t be released. Díaz had made sure her last voyage was a one-way trip.
With an angry resignation, Summer slid into the pilot’s seat and gazed into the darkness, wondering how much longer she had left to live.
69
A trickle of cold sweat ran down Pitt’s back as he watched the Starfish being deposited on the pile of explosives. The ROV’s underwater cameras tracked the bulk cutter as it left the submersible and crawled to the utility platform, which had been separately lowered to the seafloor. The cutter stopped alongside the platform and used its manipulator to pluck up the end of the coiled detonator tube filled with TNT.
The bulk cutter reversed course and began crawling back toward the explosives trench, unraveling the tube along its side. It eventually pulled the snake-like detonator tube clear of the utility platform, trailing a wire cable. Tagged with small floats, the cable led to the surface, where a console operator a few rows ahead of Pitt could ignite the charge on command.
Pitt glanced around the control room and dismissed any thought of trying to commandeer the bulk cutter. Three men operated its controls from an expanded console near the front of the room. Near it was a side exit door, guarded by a pair of armed soldiers. Farther back was an unoccupied table used for the auxiliary cutter, followed by a half-dozen staggered workstations that controlled the ROVs, the utility platform, and numerous shipboard cameras.
Nearest Pitt was one of the ROV control stations: a large table topped with several monitors and a joystick control system. A slight man in military fatigues and cap hunkered over the controls, engrossed in tracking the movements of the bulk cutter with his ROV’s camera.
Pitt watched the camera’s view of the detonator tube trailing beside the cutter and had an idea. He’d need some help, but it was all that time allowed.
The key was the ROV and its operator station at the back of the room. Weaponless, Pitt stepped to a nearby bookshelf filled with technical manuals. He selected the thickest one, then crept back to the station. As the operator focused on the controls, he never noticed Pitt step behind him and smash the binder into his temple.
The operator let out a muted grunt as he tumbled from his chair, a communications headset flying off him. Pitt instantly slipped an arm around his throat and squeezed in a tight choke hold. The dazed man gave little resistance as Pitt dragged him out the back door with a few quick steps. The action went undetected. While the front of the control room was brightly illuminated by the video screen, the rear was virtually black.
Outside, the operator regained his bearings and tried to break free. Pitt didn’t give him the opportunity, swinging him forward and driving him into a bulkhead. The man didn’t throw up an arm in time and connected headfirst with the steel wall. His skull made a loud clang, and Pitt felt him go limp.
“I’m sure Díaz offers workmen’s comp,” Pitt muttered. He dragged the man behind a storage locker and removed his cap. Placing it on his own head, he hurried back to the control room and took his place at the ROV controls.
Díaz was yelling and pointing at the big screen, and Pitt immediately saw why. The unmanned ROV had drifted to the bottom and was sitting idle, its main camera pointed at a rock. Pitt kept his face hidden behind the monitors as he groped for the toggle and thruster controls. An experienced hand at operating ROVs, Pitt managed to raise the vehicle and move it forward, quieting Díaz’s complaints.
He quickly gained a feel for the ROV, which operated much like a backyard, radio-controlled helicopter. He guided the ROV across the bottom, purs
uing the tracks of the bulk cutter until the cutter and its trailing detonator tube came into view.
There were two monitors on his operator’s desk, which relayed video feeds from separate cameras on the front and back of the ROV. Only the front view was displayed on the screen at the front of the room. He experimented with the commands and found the drop-down menu for picture quality.
Díaz wanted to see the detonator tube being inserted and he voiced his wishes from his command seat. Pitt began distorting the picture quality. In frustration, Díaz ordered another ROV to take over and dropped Pitt’s ROV from the big screen.
He readjusted the picture and was relieved to see that the bulk cutter was retracing its tracks toward the Starfish. Pitt quelled the urge to peek in on Summer and studied the flank of the bulk cutter and its trailing explosives.
The cutter crept slowly past the Starfish and proceeded another twenty feet before stopping. Its manipulator reached out to its full lateral extension, swinging the detonator tube from its side.
At Díaz’s command, the tube was released. The forward section coiled into the drill hole, disappearing several feet beneath the base of the trench. The remaining section of tube, with its firing line attached, fell at an angle atop the trench filled with ANFO. Once detonated, the TNT in the tube would initiate a concentrated blast at the heart of the thermal vent’s fissure—and set off the ANFO in a broad eruption.
Pitt followed the drop with the ROV, turning it to face the trench. He eased the ROV back from the fissure to provide a panoramic view of the trench. Careful to avoid passing the second ROV’s camera, he drove the ROV toward the Starfish.
As the yellow submersible loomed up, he spotted Summer in the pilot’s seat. He feverishly hoped she would help him save her life.