Tell him yourself. I’m not lifting that helicopter off this ship without you and your crew.”
Boland’s lips arched into a grim smile. “Good luck!”
“I’ll see you on the flight pad,” was all Pitt said.
Then he turned and passed through the door.
The pilot’s seat was damp and sticky as Pitt climbed onto its vinyl padding. He went through his preflight checklist as the mist tightened around the ship. The atmosphere was heavy and all light was muted. Nothing could be seen outside the ship; the sea was gone, the sky was gone, and only a tiny world of two hundred square feet was recognizable from the cockpit windows.
He engaged the auxiliary power unit and pushed the starter switch. The APU struggled and moaned in protest as its electrical output shoved the copter’s turbine into even faster revolutions until the exhaust temperature gauge and the whine from the exhaust pad notified him of a smooth start. Then the rotor gears meshed and the giant blades began slowly beating the misty air with their peculiar swishing sound.
When the needles of the gauges on the instrument panel settled in their normal operating positions, Pitt reached over to the copilot’s seat and picked up the towel-encased Mauser. He laid the gun in his lap and quickly unwrapped it, making certain the shoulder stock was attached securely. Then he shoved the fifty-shot clip into the receiver, climbed from the cockpit, and peered into the ghostly light. Nothing could be distinguished. The landing skid offered him some protection as he crouched on his heels and aimed the gun into the gloom.
Ninety seconds was all Pitt had to wait before two spectral forms materialized over the railing at the stern and drifted menacingly toward the vibrating helicopter. Pitt waited until he was certain they were not members of the Martha Ann’s crew. Then the Mauser spat.
The pair of seminude figures fell silently as their now familiar projectile guns dropped from their hands and clattered to the steel plates of the deck Pitt swung around and scanned a full three-hundred-sixty-degree circle before he briefly inspected the fallen men. They lay twisted and limp beside each other, their life oozing from their torn chests. The green-colored, almost nonexistent attire around their hips, and the weapons they’d carried, were identical to those he’d seen on the men he’d lolled on the Starbuck. The only difference his eyes could detect, a difference he hadn’t had time to notice before, was a small plastic box that seemed to be adhered to each man’s chest under their armpits.
Before he could study the corpses in more detail, his gaze was diverted by another figure that slowly rose over the handrail. Pitt pointed the gun and fanned the trigger with one gentle kiss of the finger. A short blast shattered the sound of the copter’s whirling blades for the second time, and the indistinct form suddenly vanished backward into the mist Cautiously Pitt crept over to the handrail. He was almost on top of what he was searching for when his hand brushed against it. It was a grappling hook, its six curved prongs covered under a thick sheathing of foam rubber, its length disappearing into the unseen water below.
It was now easy for him to see how these strange men from the sea, under concealment of the fog, had silently dispatched almost a hundred ships and thousands of their crewmen to the bottom of this godforsaken piece of the Pacific Ocean.
Pitt’s thoughts were interrupted by the heavy thunder of the .45 automatics, punctuated by the sharper crack of the .30-caliber carbines. Screams from wounded men reverberated the mist. Pitt felt remote and oddly detached from the fight that was growing in intensity.
A stray bullet whined past the helicopter and dropped far out into the water. “Damn you!” Pitt shouted. One bullet into a vital part would destroy the copter.
Three shapes that became men stumbled onto the flight pad, with glazed eyes and sweat trailing down their faces. “Cmon, don’t lag,” Pitt boomed. “Get a move on!” Pitt didn’t turn as he spoke; he kept his eyes peeled into the gloom. Nearly a full minute passed before another figure ran onto the flight pad. The young sailor’s panicky headlong dash was so rapid that he slipped on the wet deck and would have skidded between the railing bars and over the side but for Pitt’s strong grasp on a flailing arm.
“Take it easy!” Pitt admonished. “It’s a long swim home.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the seaman blurted. “You can’t see the bastards; they’re on you before you have a chance.”
Pitt pushed the young seaman under the haven of the helicopter as four more men appeared out of the gray film. One was the helmsman with Farris in tow. The sole survivor of the Starbuck was mentally disconnected from the battle going on around him. He looked straight through Pitt, his eyes wide and dull with abstract unconcern.
“Set him in the copilot’s seat and strap him in tight,” Pitt ordered the helmsman. Then he turned his attention toward the forward part of the ship. He cupped his left ear and listened, picking up heavy footsteps several feet beyond the unpenetrable haze.
“Pitt, you there?” a voice yelled.
“Keep coming,” Pitt shouted back. “No sudden moves!”
“No problem there,” said the voice. “I’m lugging a wounded man.”
Out of the fog came Lieutenant Harper, the engineering officer who weighed almost two hundred fifty pounds. Over his shoulder he carried a boy who could not have been more than nineteen years of age. The boy’s face was ashen, and a thick stream of blood ran down the length of his right leg, splattering in dark, maroon-colored drops to the deck. Pitt reached out and grasped a huge bicep, pulling the massive body attached to it onto the flight pad.
“How many more behind you?”
“We’re the last.”
“Commander Boland?”
“A whole gang of those naked bastards jumped him and Lieutenant Stanley just aft of the bridge.” Harper’s voice was apologetic. “I’m afraid they got ‘em both.”
“Get the kid into the copter and see what can be done to stop the bleeding,” Pitt ordered. “And have the men form a firing line with what weapons you have left. I’m going to make one last check for wounded.”
“Watch your step, sir. You’re the only pilot we got.”
Pitt didn’t wait to answer. He jumped off the pad and lunged blindly across the deck, his feet slipping on the wet plates, his breath coming in short deep pants. Shapes loomed up in the mist and Pitt opened up with the Mauser and cut them apart Three men from the sea went down like wheat beneath a scythe. Pitt kept his finger on the trigger, spraying a path in front of him. His foot caught on a rope and he fell sprawling on the deck, the raised rivets marking a neat pattern of bruises in his chest. He lay there a moment, his injured leg throbbing in sledgehammer blows of pain. It was quiet, far too quiet; no shouting voices or gun flashes arose from the fog.
He crept along the deck, keeping to the gunwales, using the lifeboats for cover. The Mauser, he was certain, was down to its last few shells. He stuck his hand in something slimy wet. Without looking, he knew what it was. It trailed off into the gloomy void so he followed it. The stain became a trickle in some places and enlarged to a pool in others. It ended at the still, dead form of Lieutenant Stanley, the detection room officer.
Pitt felt nothing but pure anger, yet his mind was sharp and decisive. His face tightened in a mask of frustration at his impotency to do anything for Stanley. He forced himself to push on, driven by some subconscious urge that told him Boland wasn’t dead yet. And then he stopped, listening. A muffled moan came from somewhere directly in front of him.
Pitt almost came upon him before his vision did. Boland was crawling on his stomach, pulling his body across the deck, while a four-foot shaft from a fish spear protruded from his shoulder. His head was bowed and his fists were clenched; the T-shirt that covered his chest and shoulders was drenched in red.
He looked up at Pitt dazedly, his face distorted with pain. “You came back?”
“I lost my head,” Pitt said with a tight grin. “Brace yourself; that spear has to come out.” He shoved the ‘Mauser into his belt and then
gently dragged Boland to a more comfortable position against a bulkhead, keeping his eyes peeled for any more killers. He grasped the spear shaft in both hands. “Ready on the count of three.”
“Make it quick, you sadist,” Boland said, his eyes filled with pain.
Pitt increased his grip and said “One.” He placed Ms foot on Boland’s chest. “Two.” Pitt put his muscles into play and yanked hard. The blood-red spear slid free from Boland’s shoulder.
Boland lurched forward and groaned. Then he fell back against the bulkhead and stared up at Pitt through glazed eyes. “You son of a bitch,” he mumbled. “You didn’t say three.” Then his eyes rolled upward and he passed into unconsciousness.
Pitt cast the dripping spear over the side and picked up Boland’s limp body, hoisting it over his shoulder. He crouched low and ran as fast as the weight of his load and his stiffening leg would allow, using the cargo hatches and loading derricks as cover. Twice he had to freeze when he heard indistinct sounds coming from the fog. Weakly, dizzily, he pushed himself on, with the knowledge that eleven men would die if he didn’t get the helicopter off the Martha Ann’s deck. At last, his breath coming in fiery pants, he tottered onto the edge of the flight pad.
“Pitt coming through,” he gasped as loud as his tortured lungs would allow.
The strong arms of Lieutenant Harper lifted Boland from Pitt’s shoulder and carried the unconscious commander to the helicopter. Pitt pulled the Mauser from his belt and pointed the muzzle in the direction of the bows, firing till the last shell casing completed its arc and dropped to the deck. Then he climbed into the cockpit and threw himself in the pilot’s seat, certain that he had beat the odds.
Pitt didn’t bother to clasp his safety belt; he eased the throttle from idle, manuevering the helicopter cautiously upward as the rotor blades increased their humming and the landing skids lifted slowly from the flight pad. The copter rose several feet into the fog before Pitt dipped it forward and deserted the Martha Ann.
Once clear of the ship, Pitt kept his eyes on the TURN AND BANK indicator until the little ball held steady within the center of its dial. Where’s the sky? he shouted in his mind. Where? Where?
Suddenly it was there. The helicopter shot into the evening moonlight. The beating rotor blades rose higher as Pitt gained altitude, and lazily, like a homing gooney bird, the lumbering craft leveled its aluminum beak and began chasing its mooncast shadow toward the distant green palms of Hawaii.
Henry Fujima was the last of a dying breed, a fourth generation Japanese-Hawaiian, whose father, his father before him, and his father before him, had all been fishermen. For forty years during good weather, Henry doggedly pursued the elusive tuna in his hand-built sampan. The sampan fleets that Hawaii had known for so many years, were gone now. Increasing competition from the international fisheries and from irregular catches, had taken their toll of the fleet until only Henry was left to cast his solitary bamboo pole over the upper skin of the great Pacific.
He stood on the rear platform of his solid little craft, his bare feet planted stiffly against the wood, stained through the years from the oil of thousands of dead fish. He cast his line in the early morning marching swells, his mind wandering back to the old days when he fished with his father. He longingly recalled the charcoal smell of the hibachis and the laughter as the said bottles were passed from sampan to sampan when the fleet met and tied up together for the night. He closed his eyes, seeing the long dead faces, hearing the voices that spoke no more. When he opened them again, they were drawn to a smudge on the horizon.
He watched it grow and magnify into a ship, a rusty old tramp that surged through the sea. Henry had never seen a large merchantman cut through the waves so quickly. Judging from the white froth that burst nearly to the hawseholes, the ship’s speed was close to twenty-five knots. Then he froze.
The ship was holding her course and Henry was directly in her track. He tied his shirt to the fishing pole and frantically waved it back and forth. In terror he watched the bow grow over him like a monster about to swallow a fly. He screamed, but no one appeared over the high bulwarks; the bridge was empty. He stood in helpless bewilderment as the great corroded ship tore into his sampan, shattering the tired little boat into a spray of wooden splinters.
Henry struggled underwater, the barnacled plates slicing his arms as they slid past. The propellers thrashed by and only his desperate struggles kept him from being sucked into their murderous rotating blades. Reaching the surface, he was fighting to catch his breath between the swirling, chopping waves from the ship’s wake. At last he managed to keep his head above the surface, slowly treading water and rubbing the salty sting from his eyes, the blood flowing from his torn arms.
It was after ten in the morning when Pitt finally let himself into his apartment He was tired and his eyes smarted when he closed them. He limped slightly, his leg had been rebandaged, and other than a trace of stiffness, he felt nothing. All he wanted more than anything in the world was to fall into bed and forget the past twenty-four hours.
He had ignored orders to land the crew of the Martha Ann at either Pearl Harbor or on the heliport at Hickam Field. Instead he had set the helicopter down neatly on the lawn not more than two hundred feet from the emergency receiving entrance of Tripler Military Hospital, that great concrete edifice perched on a hill overlooking the south coast of Oahu. He had stood by until Boland and the young wounded seaman were quickly wheeled on their way to the operating tables before he allowed a helpful Army doctor to stitch up the gash in his leg. Then he unobtrusively slipped out a side exit, hailed a cab, and peacefully dozed during the ride to Waikiki Beach.
He couldn’t have been asleep in the familiar comfort of his own bed more than half an hour when someone began pounding on the door. At first it seemed like a distant echo in the back of his head and he tried to tune it out Then he struggled out of bed and weaved across the suite to the door and opened it.
There is a strange sort of beauty in a woman caught in the throes of fear, as though a long hidden animalistic instinct makes her fervently alive. She wore a short muumuu emblazoned with red and yellow flowers that barely covered her hips. Her chestnut eyes gazed up at him, wide, dark, and afraid.
Pitt stood there for a moment before he stepped back and motioned her in. Adrian Hunter swept by him into the apartment, turned, and threw herself into Pitt’s arms. She was shuddering and her breath came in choking sobs.
Pitt held her. “Adrian, for God’s sake.”
“They killed him,” she sobbed.
Pitt pushed her back at arm’s length and stared into her puffed and wet eyes. “What are you talking about?”
The words tumbled out of her. “I was lying there in bed with... with a friend. They came through the terrace window, three of them, so quietly we didn’t know they were even in the room until it was too late. He tried to fight with them but they carried funny little guns that made no sound. They shot him. God, they shot him a dozen times. His blood was everywhere. It was horrible.”
She trembled; Pitt steered her to the couch and held her tightly.
“I screamed and ran into the closet and locked the door,” she continued. “They laughed; they stood there and laughed. They thought I was trapped in the closet but it’s a two-way closet. It opens up into the guest bedroom. I grabbed a dress off a hook and escaped through the guest room window. I didn’t want to go to the police. I was afraid. I tried to call Daddy, but his office said he couldn’t be reached. By that time I was in a panic. I had no place else to go, no one to turn to, so I came here.”
She brushed at her eyes with her hand. She stood silhouetted against the light and Pitt could see she wore nothing beneath the muumuu. It’s a nightmare,” she whispered. “A dirty, wretched nightmare. Why did they do such a thing? Why?”
“First things first,” he said gently. “Get in the bathroom and fix your face. Your eye makeup’s halfway down your chin. Then you’re going to tell me who it was they killed.”
She pushed herself away. “I can’t.”
“Get wise,” he snapped. “There’s a dead body decorating your apartment. How long do you think you can keep it a secret?”
“I... I don’t know.”
“It’ll take the Honolulu police all of twenty minutes to put a make on him anyway. Why the martyr act? Is he a local celebrity with a wife and ten kids or what?”
“Worse. He’s a friend of my father’s.” Her eyes were pleading.
“The name,” he demanded.
“Captain Orl Cinana,” she murmured slowly. “He’s Daddy’s fleet officer.”
Pitt had enough sense to stay expressionless. It was worse than he thought He pointed toward the bathroom and simply said “Go!”
Obediently she padded to the bathroom, turned, and gave him a funny helpless smile and then closed the door. As soon as he could hear the sound of water splashing in the sink, Pitt reached for the telephone. He had better luck than Adrian. Five seconds after he told the 101st Fleet’s operator his name, Admiral Hunter was exploding on the line.
“What in hell’s the idea of not reporting to me?” Hunter charged.
“I was spun out, Admiral,” Pitt answered. “I would have been no use to you until I cleaned up and grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep. Which, thanks to your daughter, makes it impossible.”
When Hunter spoke again, it was in another voice. “My daughter? Adrian? She’s with you?”
“She’s got a dead body in her apartment She couldn’t reach you so she came here.”
Hunter paused for all of two seconds. Then he came back stronger than ever. “Give me the details.”
“From what little I can get out of her, it seems our friends from the Vortex walked in off the terrace and gunned the guy down. Adrian escaped through a double closet”
“Is she hurt?”
“No.”
“I suppose the police know about this.”