The swells no longer had the same hostile look nor did the clouds look as threatening. The nightly chill also diminished as they traveled north into warmer waters. The sea had tested them with cruelty and harshness, and they had passed with flying colors. Now the weather was cooperating by remaining constant and charitable.
Some people tire of looking at the sea from a tropical beach or the deck of a cruise ship, but Pitt was not among them. His restless soul and the capricious water were one, inseparable in their shifting moods.
Maeve and Giordino no longer felt as though they were struggling to stay alive. Their few moments of warmth and pleasure, nearly drowned by adversity, were becoming more frequent. Pitt's unshakable optimism, his contagious laughter, his unrelenting grasp of hope, his strength of character sustained and helped them face the worst that nature could throw at them. Never did they perceive a bare hint of depression in his perspective, whatever the situation. No matter how strained he appeared as he sighted his sextant on the stars or warily watched for a sudden change of the wind, he was always smiling.
When she realized she was falling deeply in love with him, Maeve's independent spirit fought against it.
But when she finally accepted the inevitable, she gave in to her feelings completely. She continually found herself studying his every move, his every expression as he jotted down their position on Rodney York's chart of the southern sea.
She touched him on the arm. "Where are we?" she asked softly.
"At first light I'll mark our course and figure the distance separating us from Gladiator Island."
"Why don't you give it a rest? You haven't slept more than two hours since we left the Miseries."
"I promise I'll take a nice long siesta when we're on the last leg of the voyage," he said, peering through gloom at the compass.
"Al never sleeps 'either," she said, pointing at Giordino, who never ceased examining the condition of the outriggers and the rigging holding the boat together.
"If the following wind holds and my navigating is anywhere near the mark, we should sight your island sometime early morning on the day after tomorrow."
She looked up at the great field of stars. "The heavens are lovely tonight."
"Like a woman I know," he said, eyes going from compass to the sails to Maeve. "A radiant creature with guileless blue eyes and hair like a shower of golden coins. She's innocent and intelligent and was made for love and life."
"She sounds quite appealing."
"That's only for starters. Her father happens to be one of the richest men in the solar system."
She arched her back and snuggled against his body, feeling its hardness. She brushed her lips against the mirth lines around his eyes and his strong chin. "You must be very smitten with her."
"Smitten, and why not?" he said slowly. "She is the only girl in this part of the Pacific Ocean who makes me mad with passionate desire."
"But. I'm the only girl in this part of the Pacific Ocean."
He kissed her lightly on the forehead. "Then it's your solemn duty to fulfill my most intimate fantasies."
"I'd take you up on that if we were alone," she said in a sultry voice. "But for now, you'll just have to suffer."
"I could tell Al to take a hike," he said with a grin.
She pulled back and laughed. "He wouldn't get far." Maeve secretly sensed a flow of happiness at knowing no flesh-and-blood woman stood between them. "You're a special kind of man," she whispered. "The kind every woman longs to meet."
He laughed easily. "Not so. I've seldom swept the fair sex off their feet."
"Maybe it's because they see that you're unreachable."
"I can be had if they play their cards right," he said jokingly.
"Not what I mean," she said seriously. "The sea is your mistress. I could read it in your face through the storm. It was not as if you were fighting the sea as much as you were seducing it. No woman can compete with a love so vast."
"You have a deep affection for the sea too," he said tenderly, "and the life that lives in it."
Maeve breathed in the night. "Yes, I can't deny devoting my life to it."
Giordino broke the moment by emerging from the deckhouse and announcing that one of the buoyancy tubes was losing air. "Pass the pump," he ordered. "If I can find the leak, I'll try and patch it."
"How is Marvelous Maeve holding up?" Pitt asked.
"Like a lady in a dance contest," Giordino replied. "Limber and lithe, with all her body joints working in rhythm."
"She hangs together until we reach the island and I'll donate her to the Smithsonian to be displayed as the boat most unlikely to succeed."
"We strike another storm," said Giordino warily, "and all bets are off." He paused and casually glanced around the black horizon where the stars melted into the sea. Suddenly, he stiffened. "I see a light off to port."
Pitt and Maeve stood and stared in the direction Giordino indicated with his hand. They could see a green light, indicating a ship's starboard side, and white range masthead lights. It looked to be passing far in their wake toward the northeast.
"A ship," Pitt confirmed. "About five kilometers away."
"She'll never see us," said Maeve anxiously. "We have no lights of our own."
Giordino disappeared in the deckhouse and quickly reappeared. "Rodney York's last flare," he said, holding it up.
Pitt gazed at Maeve. "Do you want to be rescued?"
She looked down at the black sea rolling under the boat and slowly shook her head. "It's not my decision to make."
"Al, how say you? A hearty meal and a clean bed strike you as tempting?"
Giordino grinned. "Not half as inviting as a second go-around with the Dorsett clan."
Pitt circled an arm around Maeve's shoulder. "I'm with him."
"Two days," Maeve murmured thankfully. "I can't believe I'll actually see my boys again."
Pitt said nothing for a moment, thinking of the unknown that lay ahead of them. Then he said gently,
"You'll see them, and you'll hold them in your arms. I promise you."
There was never any real inclination to turn from their established goal. Pitt and Giordino's minds ran as one. They had entered a zone where they were indifferent and uncaring of their own lives. They were so wrapped up in their determination to reach Gladiator Island that neither man bothered to watch as the lights of the passing ship grew smaller and gradually disappeared in the distance.
When the interisland cargo ship carrying the dismantled antenna steamed into Halawa Bay on Molokai, all hands lined the railings and stared in rapt fascination at the peculiar vessel moored in the harbor. The 228-meter-long ship, with its forest of cranes and twenty-three-story derrick rising in the middle of its hull, looked like it had been designed and constructed by an army of drunken engineers, spastic welders and Oklahoma oil riggers.
An expansive helicopter pad hung over the stern by girders as if it was an add-on accessory. The high bridge superstructure rose on the aft end of the hull, giving the ship the general look of an oil tanker, but that's where any similarity ended. The center section of hull was taken up by an enormous conglomeration of machinery with the appearance of a huge pile of scrap. A veritable maze of steel stairways, scaffolding, ladders and pipes clustered around the derrick, which reached up and touched the sky like a gantry used to launch heavy rockets into space. The raised house on the forecastle showed no sign of ports, only a row of skylight-like windows across the front. The paint was faded and chipped with streaks of rust showing through. The hull was a marine blue, while the superstructure was white. The machinery had once been painted myriad colors of gray, yellow and orange.
"Now I can die happy after having seen it all," Gunn exclaimed at the sight.
Molly stood beside him on the bridge wing and stared in awe. "How on earth did the admiral ever conjure up the Glomar Explorer?"
"I won't even venture to guess," Gunn muttered, gazing with the wonder of a child seeing his first airplane.
>
The captain of the Lanikai leaned from the door of the wheelhouse. "Admiral Sandecker is on the ship-to-ship phone, Commander Gunn."
Gunn raised a hand in acknowledgment, stepped from the bridge wing and picked up the phone.
"You're an hour late," were the first words Gunn heard.
"Sorry, Admiral. The antenna was not in pristine shape. I ordered the crew to perform routine repair and maintenance during disassembly so that it will go back together with less hassle."
"A smart move," Sandecker agreed. "Ask your captain to moor his ship alongside. We'll begin transferring the antenna sections as soon as his anchors are out."
"Is that the famous Hughes Glomar Explorer I'm seeing?" asked Gunn.
"One and the same with a few alterations," answered Sandecker. "Lower a launch and come aboard.
I'll be waiting in the captain's office. Bring Ms. Faraday."
"We'll be aboard shortly."
Originally proposed by Deputy Director of Defense David Packard, formerly of Hewlett-Packard, a major electronics corporation, and based on an earlier deep ocean research ship designed by Willard Bascom and called the Alcoa Seaprobe, the Glomar Explorer became a joint venture of the CIA, Global Marine Inc. and Howard Hughes, through his tool company that eventually became the Summa Corporation.
Construction was commenced by the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company at their shipyard facilities in Chester, Pennsylvania, and the huge vessel was immediately wrapped in secrecy, with the aid of misleading information. She was launched forty-one months later in the late fall of 1972, a remarkable achievement in technology for a vessel completely innovative in concept.
She then became famous for her raising of a Russian Golf-class submarine from a depth of five kilometers in the middle of the Pacific. Despite news stories to the contrary, the entire sub was raised in pieces and examined, a colossal feat of intelligence that paid great dividends in knowledge about Soviet submarine technology and operation.
After her brief moment of fame, no one quite knew what to do with the Explorer, so she eventually wound up in the hands of the United States government and was included in the Navy's mothball program. Until recently, she had languished for over two decades in the backwash of Suisun Bay, northeast of San Francisco.
When Gunn and Molly stepped onto the deck of the immense vessel, they felt as though they were standing in the center of an electric generating plant. Seen close up, the scope of the machinery was staggering. None of the tight security that surrounded the vessel during her first voyage was visible. They were met at the top of the boarding ramp by the ship's second officer and no one else.
"No security guards?" asked Molly.
The officer smiled as he showed them up a stairway leading to a deck below the wheelhouse. "Since this is a commercial operation and we're not on a secret mission to steal foreign naval vessels from the seafloor, no security measures are necessary."
"I thought the Explorer was in mothballs," said Gunn.
"Until five months ago," replied the officer. "Then she was leased to Deep Abyss Engineering to mine copper and manganese from the deep ocean two hundred kilometers south of the Hawaiian Islands."
"Have you begun operations?" asked Molly.
"Not yet. Much of the ship's equipment is ancient by today's standards and we've had to make some major changes, especially to the electronics. At the moment, the main engines are acting up. Soon as they're repaired, we'll be on our way."
Gunn and Molly exchanged questioning looks without voicing their concern. As if tuned to the same wavelength, they wondered how a ship that was dead in the water could get them where they had to be in time to deflect the acoustic plague.
The ship's officer opened the door to a spacious, elegant stateroom. "These quarters were reserved for Howard Hughes in the event he ever visited the ship, an event that is not known to have taken place."
Sandecker stepped forward and greeted them. "An extraordinary piece of work. I compliment you both. I take it the dismantling turned out to be a tougher job than we estimated."
"Corrosion was the enemy," Gunn admitted. "The grid connections fought us every step of the way."
"I never heard so much cursing," said Molly with a smile. "The engineers turned the air blue, believe you me."
"Will the antenna serve our purpose?" asked Sandecker.
"If the sea doesn't get too nasty and tear it apart at the seams," replied Gunn, "it should get the job done."
Sandecker turned and introduced a short plump man a few years over forty. "Captain James Quick, my aides Molly Faraday and Commander Rudi Gunn."
"Welcome aboard," said Quick, shaking hands. "How many of your people are coming with you?"
"Counting Ms. Faraday and me, I have a team of thirty-one men and five women," Gunn answered. "I hope our numbers don't cause a problem."
Quick leisurely waved a hand. "No bother. We have more empty quarters than we know what do with and enough food to last two months."
"Your second officer said you had engine problems."
"A stacked deck," said Sandecker. "The captain tells me a sailing time is indefinite."
"So it was a case of hurry up and wait," muttered Gunn.
"A totally unforeseen obstacle, Rudi, I'm sorry."
Quick set his cap on his head and started for the door. "I'll gather up my crane operators and order them to begin transferring the antenna from your ship."
Gunn followed him. "I'll come along and manage the operation from the Lanikai."
As soon as they were alone, Molly gazed at Sandecker with canny regard. "How on earth did you ever convince the government to loan you the Glomar Explorer?"
"I bypassed official Washington and made Deep Abyss Engineering an offer they couldn't refuse."
Molly stared at him. "You purchased the Glomar Explorer?"
"I chartered her," he corrected her. "Cost me an arm and half a leg."
"Is there room in NUMA's budget?"
"Circumstances demanded a quick deal. I wasn't about to haggle with so many lives in the balance. If we're proven right about the deadly acoustic convergence, I'll shame Congress out of the funds. And to be on the safe side, I hammered out a performance clause."
"Finding the Explorer nearby after the Navy refused the Roosevelt was like stumbling on a gold mine."
"What luck giveth, luck taketh away." Sandecker shook his head slowly. "The Explorer is in Molokai because of propeller shaft bearing failure during the voyage from California. Whether she can get under way and put us on site before it's too late is open to question."
The big starboard cranes used to lift machinery were soon extended outward over the open cargo deck of Lanikai. Hooks attached to the boom cables were lowered and coupled to the antenna sections before hoisting and swinging them on board the Glomar Explorer, where they were stacked on an open area of the deck in numbered sequence for reassembly.
Within two hours, the transfer was completed and the antenna sections tied down on board the Explorer. The little cargo ship pulled up her anchors, gave a farewell blast of her air horn and began moving out of the harbor, her part of the project finished. Gunn and Molly waved as the Lanikai slowly pushed aside the green waters of the bay and headed out into the open sea.
The NUMA team members were assigned quarters and enjoyed a well-deserved meal from the Explorer's expansive galley before bedding down in staterooms that had gone unused since the ship wrestled the Soviet sub from the deep waters of the Pacific. Molly had taken over the role of housemother and circulated among the team to make sure none had come down sick or had injured themselves during the antenna breakdown.
Gunn returned to the former VIP quarters once reserved for the eccentric Howard Hughes.
Sandecker, Captain Quick and another man, who was introduced as Jason Toft, the ship's chief engineer, were seated around a small game table.
"Care for a brandy?" asked Quick.
"Yes, thank you."
Sandecker sat wreathed in
cigar smoke and idly sipped the golden liquid in his glass. He did not look like a happy camper. "Mr. Toft has just informed me that he can't get the ship under way until critical parts are delivered from the mainland."
Gunn knew the admiral was churning inside, but he looked as cool as a bucket of ice on the exterior.
He looked at Toft. "When do you expect the parts, Chief?"
"They're in flight from Los Angeles now," answered Toft, a man with a huge stomach and short legs.
"Due to land in four hours. Our ship's helicopter is waiting on the ground at the Hilo airport on the big island of Hawaii to terry the parts directly to the Explorer."
"What exactly is the problem?" asked Gunn.
"The propeller shaft bearings," Toft explained. "For some strange reason, because the CIA rushed construction, I guess, the propeller shafts were not balanced properly. During the voyage from San Francisco the vibration cracked the lubricating tubes, cutting off the flow of oil to the shaft bearings.
Friction, metal fatigue, overstress, whatever you want to call it, the port shaft froze solid about a hundred miles off Molokai. The starboard shaft was barely able to carry us here before her bearings burned out."
"As I told you earlier, we're working under a critical deadline."
I fully understand the scope of your dilemma, Admiral. My engine-room crew will work like madmen to get the ship under way again, but they're only human. I must warn you, the shaft bearings are only part of the problem. The engines may not have many hours on them, having only taken the ship from the East Coast to the middle of the Pacific and then back to California, back in the 1970s, but without proper attention for the last twenty years, they are in a terrible state of neglect. Even if we should get one shaft to turn, there is no guarantee we'll get past the mouth of the harbor before breaking down again."