Pitt and Maeve sat together, held hands like teenagers and talked in low tones. Giordino settled into the seat in front of them and directly behind the driver. He spent most of the drive studying an aerial photo of Gladiator Island that Admiral Sandecker had borrowed from the Pentagon.
Time passed quickly and they soon turned off the main road into the bustling dock area, which was quite close to the city. A fleet of international cargo vessels, representing mostly Asian shipping lines, were moored beside long piers flanked by huge storage buildings. No one paid any attention to the wandering course taken by the driver around the buildings, ships and huge cargo cranes. His eyes watched the passengers in the rearview mirror almost as often as they were turned on the piers ahead.
"The Ocean Angler is just on the other side of the next warehouse," he said, vaguely gesturing at some unseen object through the windshield.
"Is she ready to cast off when we board?" asked Pitt.
"The crew is standing by for your arrival."
Giordino stared thoughtfully at the back of the driver's head. "What's your duty on the ship?" he asked.
"Mine?" said Marvin without turning. "I'm a photographer with the film crew."
"How do you like sailing under Captain Dempsey?"
"A fine gentleman. He is most considerate of the scientists and their work."
Giordino looked up and saw Marvin peering back in the rearview mirror. He smiled until Marvin refocused his attention on his driving. Then, shielded by the back rest of the seat in front of him, he wrote on a receipt for aircraft fuel that was pumped aboard in Honolulu before they headed toward Wellington.
He wadded up the paper and casually flipped it over his shoulder on Pitt's lap.
Talking with Maeve, Pitt had not picked up on the words that passed between Giordino and the driver. He casually unfolded the note and read the message:
THIS GUY IS A PHONY.
Pitt leaned forward and spoke conversationally without staring suspiciously at the driver. "What makes you such a killjoy?"
Giordino turned around and spoke very softly. "Our, friend is not from the Ocean Angler."
"I'm listening."
"I tricked him into saying Dempsey is the captain.
"Paul Dempsey skippers the Ice Hunter. Joe Ross is captain of the Angler."
"Here's another inconsistency. You and I and Rudi Gunn went over NUMA's scheduled research project, and assigned personnel before we left for the Antarctic."
"So?"
"Our friend up front not only has a bogus Texas accent, but he claims to be a photographer with the Ocean Angler's film crew. Get the picture?"
"I do," Pitt murmured. "No film crew was recruited to go on the project. Only sonar technicians and a team of geophysicists went on board, to survey the ocean floor."
"And this character is driving us straight into hell," said Giordino, looking out the window and toward a dockside warehouse just ahead with a large sign across a pair of doors that read: DORSETT CONSOLIDATED MINING LTD.
True to their fears, the driver swung the bus through the gaping doors and between two men in the uniforms of Dorsett Consolidated security guards. The guards quickly followed the bus inside and pushed the switch to close the warehouse doors.
"In the final analysis, I'd have to say we've been had," said Pitt.
"What's the plan of attack?" asked Giordino, no longer speaking in a hushed voice.
There wasn't time for any drawn-out conference. The bus was passing deeper into the darkened warehouse. "Dump our buddy Carl and let's bust out of here."
Giordino did not wait for a countdown. Four quick steps and he had a chokehold on the man who called himself Carl Marvin. With unbelievable speed, Giordino swung the man from behind the steering wheel, opened the entry door of the bus and heaved him out.
As if they had rehearsed, Pitt jumped into the driver's seat and jammed the accelerator to the carpeted floorboard. Not an instant too soon, the bus surged forward through a knot of armed men, scattering them like leaves in the wake of a tornado. Two pallets holding cardboard boxes of electrical kitchen appliances from Japan sat directly in front of the bus. Pitt's expression gave no hint that he was aware of the approaching impact. Boxes, bits and pieces of toasters, blenders and coffeemakers burst into the air as though they were shrapnel from an exploding howitzer shell.
Pitt swung a broadside turn down a wide aisle separating tiers of stacked crates of merchandise, took aim at a large metal door and crouched over the steering wheel. With a metallic clatter that sent the door whirling from its mountings, the Toyota bus roared out of the warehouse onto the loading dock, Pitt twisting the wheel rapidly to keep from clipping one leg of a towering loading crane.
This part of the dockyard was deserted. No ships were moored alongside, loading and unloading their cargo holds. A party of workers repairing a section of the pier were taking a break, sitting elbow to elbow in a row on a long wooden barricade that stretched across an access road leading from the pier as they ate their lunch. Pitt lay on the horn, spinning the wheel violently to avoid striking the workers, who froze at the sight of the vehicle bearing down on them. As the bus slewed around the barricade, Pitt almost missed it entirely, but a piece of the rear bumper caught a vertical support and spun the barricade around, slinging the dockworkers about the pier as if they were on the end of a cracked whip.
"Sorry about that!" Pitt yelled out the window as he sped past. .
He regretted not having been more observant, and belatedly realized the phony driver had purposely taken a roundabout route to confuse them. A ploy that worked all too well. He had no idea which way to turn for the entrance to the highway leading into the city.
A long truck and trailer pulled in front of him, blocking off his exit. He frantically cramped the steering wheel in a crazy zigzag to avoid smashing into the huge truck There was a loud metallic crunch, followed by the smashing of glass and the screech of tortured metal as the bus sideswiped the front end of the truck. The bus, its entire right side gouged and smashed, bounced wildly out of control. Pitt corrected and fishtailed the shattered vehicle until it straightened. He pounded the steering wheel angrily at seeing fluid spraying back over the newly cracked windshield. The impact had sprung the radiator from its mounts and loosened the hoses to the engine. That wasn't the only problem. The right tire was blown and the front suspension knocked out of alignment.
"Do you have to hit everything that comes across your path?" Giordino asked irritably. He sat on the floor on the undamaged side of the bus, his huge arms circled around Maeve.
"Thoughtless of me," said Pitt. "Anyone hurt?"
"Enough bruises to win an abuse lawsuit," said Maeve bravely.
Giordino rubbed a swelling knot on one side of his head and gazed at Maeve woefully. "Your old man is a sneaky devil. He knew we were coming and threw a surprise ply."
"Someone at NUMA must be on his payroll." Pitt spared Maeve a brief glance. "Not you, I hope."
"Not me," Maeve said firmly.
Giordino made his way to the rear of the bus and stared out the window for signs of pursuit. Two black vans careened around the damaged truck and took up the chase "We have hounds running up our exhaust pipe."
"Good guys or bad?" asked Pitt.
"I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but they ain't wearing white hats."
"You call that a positive identification?"
"How about, they have Dorsett Consolidated Mining logos painted on their doors."
"You sold me."
"If they come any closer, I could ask for their driver's license."
"Thank you, I have a rearview mirror."
"You'd think we'd have left enough wreckage to have a dozen cop cars on our tails by now," grumbled Giordino. "Why aren't they doing their duty and patrolling the docks? I think it only fitting they arrest you for reckless driving."
"If I know Daddy," said Maeve, "he paid them to take a holiday."
With no coolant, the engine rapidly he
ated up and threw clouds of steam from under the hood. Pitt had almost no control over the demolished vehicle. The front wheels, both splayed outward, fought to travel in opposite directions. A narrow alleyway between two warehouses suddenly yawned in front of the bus.
Down to the final toss of the dice, Pitt hurled the bus into the opening. His luck was against him. Too late he realized the alleyway led onto a deserted pier with no exit except the one he passed through.
"The end of the trail," Pitt sighed.
Giordino turned and looked to the rear again. "The posse knows it. They've stopped to gloat over their triumph."
"Maeve?"
Maeve walked to the front of the bus. "Yes?" she said quietly.
"How long can you hold your breath'""
"I don't know; maybe a minute."
"Al? What are they doing?"
"Walking toward the bus, holding nasty-looking clubs."
"They want us alive," said Pitt. "Okay, gang, take a seat and hold on tight."
"What are you going to do?" asked Maeve.
" We, love of my life, are going for a swim. Al, open all the windows. I want this thing to sink like a brick."
"I hope the water's warm," said Giordino as he unlatched the windows. "I hate cold water."
To Maeve, Pitt said, "Take several deep breaths and get as much oxygen as you can into your bloodstream. Exhale and then inhale as we go over the side."
"I bet I can swim underwater farther than you," she said with gutsy resolve.
"Here's your chance to prove it," he said admiringly.
"Don't waste time waiting for an air pocket. Go out the windows on your right and swim under the pier as soon as the water stops surging inside the bus."
Pitt reached behind the driver's seat, unzipped his overnight bag, retrieved a nylon packet and stuffed it down the front of his pants, leaving a larger-than-life bulge.
"What in the world are you doing?" asked Maeve.
"My emergency goody bag," explained Pitt. "I never leave home without it."
"They're almost on us," Giordino announced calmly.
Pitt slipped on a leather coat, zipped it to his collar, turned and gripped the wheel. "Okay, let's see if we can get high marks from the judges."
He revved up the engine and shifted the automatic transmission into sow. The battered bus jerked forward, right front tire flapping, steam billowing so thick he could hardly see ahead, gathering speed for the plunge. There was no railing along the pier, only a low, wooden horizontal beam that acted as a curb for vehicles. The front wheels took the brunt of the impact. The already weakened front suspension tore away as the wheelless chassis ground over it, the rear tires tearing rubber as they spun, pushing what was left of the Toyota bus over the side of the pier.
The bus seemed to fall in slow motion before the heavier front end dropped and struck the water with a great splash. The last thing Pitt remembered before the windshield fell inward and the seawater surged through the open passenger door was the loud hiss of the overheated engine as it was inundated.
The bus bobbed once, hung for an instant and they sank into the green water of the bay. All Dorsett's security people saw when they ran to the edge of the dock and looked down, was a cloud of steam, a mass of gurgling bubbles and a spreading oil slick. The waves created by the impact spread and rippled into the pilings beneath the pier. They waited expectantly for heads to appear, but no indication of life emerged from the green depths.
Pitt guessed that if the docks could accommodate large cargo ships the water depth had to be at least fifteen meters. The bus sank, wheels down, into the muck on the bottom of the harbor, disturbing the silt, which burst into a rolling cloud. Pushing away from the wheel, he stroked toward the rear of the bus to make sure Maeve and Giordino were not injured and had exited through a window. Satisfied they had escaped, he snaked through the opening and kicked into the blinding silt. When he burst into the clear, visibility was better than he had expected, the water temperature a degree or two colder. The incoming tide brought in fairly clean water, and he could easily distinguish the individual pilings under the pier. He estimated visibility at twenty meters.
He recognized the indistinct shapes of Maeve and Giordino about four meters in front, swimming strongly into the void ahead. He looked up, but the surface was only a vague pattern of broken light from a cloudy sky. And then suddenly the water darkened considerably as he swam under the pier and between the pilings. He temporarily lost the others in the shadowy murk, and his lungs began to tighten in complaint from the growing lack of air. He swam on an angle toward the surface, allowing the buoyancy of his body to carry him upward, one hand raised above his head to ward off imbedding something hard and sharp in his scalp. He finally surfaced in the midst of a small sea of floating litter. He sucked in several breaths of salty air and swung around to find Maeve and Giordino bobbing in the water a short distance behind him.
They swam over, and his regard for Maeve heightened when he saw her smiling. "Show-off," she whispered, aware that voices could be heard by the Dorsett men above. "I bet you almost drowned trying to outdistance me."
"There's life in the old man yet," Pitt murmured.
"I don't think anyone saw us," muttered Giordino. " I was almost under the dock before I broke free of the silt cloud."
Pitt motioned in the general direction of the main dock area. "Our best hope is to swim under the pier until we can find a safe place to climb clear."
"What about boarding the nearest ship we can find?" asked Giordino.
Maeve looked doubtful. Her long blond hair floated in the water behind her like golden reeds on a pond. "If my father's people picked up our trail, he'd find a way to force the crew to turn us over to him."
Giordino looked at her, "You don't think the crew would hold us until we were under the protection of local authorities?"
Pitt shook his head, flinging drops of water in a spiral. "If you were the captain of a ship or the commander in charge of dock police, would you believe a trio of half drowned rats or the word of someone representing Arthur Dorsett?"
"Probably not us," Giordino admitted.
"If only we could reach the Ocean Angler."
"That would be the first place they'd expect us to go," said Maeve.
"Once we were on board, Dorsett's men would have a fight on their hands if they tried to drag us off,"
Pitt assured her.
"A moot point," Giordino said under his breath. "We haven't the foggiest idea where the Ocean Angler is berthed."
Pitt stared at his friend reproachfully. "I hate it when you're sober minded."
"Has she a turquoise hull and white on the cabins above like the Ice Hunter?" asked Maeve.
"All NUMA ships have the same color scheme," Giordino answered.
"Then I saw her. She's tied to Pier 16."
"I give up. Where's Pier 16 from here?"
"The fourth one north of here," replied hid
"How would you know that?"
"The signs on the warehouses. I noticed number 19 before I drove off of Pier 20."
"Now that we've fixed our location and have a direction, we'd best get a move on," Giordino suggested. "If they have half a brain they'll be sending down divers to look for bodies in the bus."
"Stay clear of the pilings," cautioned Pitt. "Beneath the surface, they're packed with colonies of mussels. Their shells can cut through flesh like a razor blade."
"Is that why you're swimming in a leather jacket?" asked Maeve.
"You never know who you'll meet," Pitt said dryly.
Without a visual sighting, there was no calculating how far they had to go before reaching the research ship. Conserving their strength, they breaststroked slowly and steadily through the maze of pilings, out of sight of Dorsett's men on the dock above. They reached the based Pier 20, then passed beneath the main dockyard thoroughfare, which connected to all the loading docks, be, fore turning north toward Pier 16.
The better part of as hour c
rept by before Maeve spotted the turquoise hull reflected in the water beneath the pier.
"We made it," she cried out happily.
"Don't count your prize money," Pitt warned her. "The dock might be crawling with your father's muscle patrol."
The ship's hull was only two meters from the pilings. Pitt swam until he was directly beneath the ship's boarding ramp. He reached up, locked his hands around across member that reinforced the pilings and pulled himself out of the water. Climbing the slanting beams until he reached the upper edge of the dock, he slowly raised his; head and scanned the immediate vicinity. .
The area around the boarding ramp was deserted, but a Dorsett security van was parked across the nearest entry onto the pier. He counted four men lined across an open stretch between stacks of cargo containers and several parked cars alongside the ship moored in front of the Ocean Angler.
He ducked below the edge of the dock and spoke to Maeve and Giordino. "Our friends are guarding the entrance to the pier about eighty meters away, too far to stop us from making it on board."
No more conversation was necessary. Pitt pulled both of them onto the beam he was standing on.
Then, at his signal, they all climbed over the beam that acted as a curb, dodged around a huge bollard that held the mooring lines of the ship, and with Maeve in the lead, dashed up the boarding ramp to the open deck above.
When he reached the safety of the ship, Pitt's instincts began working overtime. He had erred badly, and the mistake couldn't be undone. He knew when he saw the men guarding the dock begin walking slowly and methodically toward the Ocean Angler as if they were out for stroll through the park. There was no shouting or confusion. They acted as though they had expected them quarry to suddenly appear and reach the sanctuary of the ship. He knew when he looked over decks devoid of human activity that something was very, very wrong. Someone on the crew should have been in evidence on a working ship.