"An explosion of molten lava," Sandecker repeated mechanically. "Dear God, what have we done?
Hundreds of lives will be lost."
"Don't be in a rush to confess your sins," said Bakewell seriously. "There are no women and children known to be on Gladiator Island. You've already saved the lives of countless families on Oahu from certain extinction. Your action is bound to wake up the White House and State Department to the threat.
Sanctions and legal actions against Dorsett Consolidated Mining will occur, I guarantee it. Without your intervention the acoustic plague would have continued, and there is no telling what harbor city the next convergence zone might have intersected."
"Still . . . I might have ordered the reflector shield to divert the sound waves toward an uninhabited landmass," said Sandecker slowly.
"And watch it surge through another unsuspecting fishing fleet or cruise ship. We all agreed this was the safest path. Give it a rest, Jim, you have no reason to condemn yourself."
"You mean I have no choice but to live with it."
"What is Dr. Ames' estimate of the sound wave's arrival at Gladiator?" inquired Bakewell, steering Sandecker away from a guilt trip.
Sandecker glanced at his watch. "Twenty-one minutes to impact."
"There's still time to warn the inhabitants to evacuate the island."
"My people in Washington have already tried to alert Dorsett Consolidated Mining management of the potential danger," said Sandecker. "But under orders from Arthur Dorsett, all communications between his mining operations and the outside have been cut off."
"It sounds almost as if Dorsett wanted something to happen."
"He's taking no chances of interference before his deadline."
"There is still a possibility no eruption will happen. The sound ray's energy might dissipate before impact."
"According to Dr. Ames' calculations, there's little chance of that," said Sandecker. "What is your worst case scenario?"
"Mount Scaggs and Mount Winkleman are described as shield volcanoes, having built gently sloping mounds during their former activity. This class is seldom highly explosive like cinder cones, but Scaggs and Winkleman are not ordinary shield volcanoes. Their last eruption was quite violent. The experts here at the observatory expect explosions around the base or flanks of the mounds that will produce rivers of lava."
"Can anyone on the island survive such a cataclysm?" asked Sandecker.
"Depends on which side the violence takes place. Al, most no chance if the volcanoes blow out toward the inhabited part of the island on the west."
"And if they blow to the east?"
"Then the odds of survival should rise slightly, even with repercussions from enough seismic activity to bring down most if not all of the island's buildings."
"Is there a danger of the eruption causing tidal waves?"
"Our analysis does not indicate a seismic disturbance with the strength to produce monstrous tidal activity," explained Bakewell. "Certainly nothing on the magnitude of the Krakatoa holocaust near Java in 1883. The shores of Tasmania, Australia and New Zealand shouldn't be touched by waves higher thaw one and a half meters."
"That's a plus," Sandecker sighed
"I'll get back to you when I know more," said Bakewell. "Hopefully, I've given you the worst, and all news from now on will be good."
"Thank you, Charlie. I hope so too."
Sandecker switched off the phone and stood there thoughtfully. Anxiety and foreboding did not show on his face, not a twitch of an eyelid, not even a tightening of the lips, but there was a dread running deep beneath the surface. He did not notice Rudi Gunn approaching him until he felt his shoulder tapped.
"Admiral, there is another call for you. It's from your office in Washington."
Sandecker switched on the phone and spoke into it again. "This is Sandecker."
"Admiral?" came the familiar voice of his longtime secretary, Martha Sherman. Her normally formal tone was nervous with excitement. "Please stand by. I'm going to relay a call to you."
"Is it important?" he asked irritably. "I'm not in the mood for official business."
"Believe me, you'll want to take this call," she informed him happily. "One moment while I switch you over."
A pause, then, "Hello," said Sandecker. "Who's this?"
"Good morning from Down Under, Admiral. What's this about you dawdling around blue Hawaii?"
Sandecker was not the kind of man to tremble, but he trembled now and felt as if the deck had fallen from under his feet. "Dirk, good Lord, is it you?"
"What's left of me," Pitt replied. "I'm with AI and Maeve Fletcher."
"I can't believe you're all alive," Sandecker said as if an electrical surge was coursing through his veins.
"AI said to save him a cigar."
"How is the little devil?"
"Testy because I won't let him eat."
"When we learned that you were cast adrift by Arthur Dorsett in the path of a typhoon, I moved heaven and earth to launch a massive search, but the long arm of Dorsett frustrated my rescue efforts.
After almost three weeks with no word, we thought you were all dead. Tell me how you survived all this time."
"A long story," said Pitt. "I'd rather you brought me up-to-date on the acoustic plague."
"A story far more involved than yours. I'll give you the particulars when we meet. Where are the three of you now?"
"We managed to reach Gladiator Island. I'm sitting in Arthur Dorsett's study as we speak, borrowing his telephone."
Sandecker went numb with disbelief. "You can't be serious."
"The gospel truth. We're going to snatch Maeve's twin boys and make our getaway across the Tasman Sea to Australia." He said it in such a way as to sound like he was walking down the street to buy a loaf of bread.
Cold fear replaced Sandecker's earlier anxiety, but it was the shocking fear of helplessness. The news struck with such unexpectedness, such suddenness, that he was incapable of words for several seconds until Pitt's inquiring voice finally penetrated his shock.
"Are you still there, Admiral?"
"Pitt, listen to me!" demanded Sandecker urgently. "Your lives are in extreme danger! Get off the island!' Get off now!"
There was a slight pause. "Sorry, sir, I don't read you--"
"I've no time to explain," Sandecker interrupted. "All I can tell you is a sound ray of incredible intensity will strike Gladiator Island in less than twenty minutes. The impact will set up seismic resonance that is predicted to blow off the volcanoes on opposite ends of the island. If the eruption takes place on the western side, there will be no survivors. You and the others must escape to sea while you still can. Talk no further. I am cutting off all communications."
Sandecker switched off his phone, capable of nothing but the realization that he had unknowingly and innocently sealed a death warrant on his best friend.
The shocking knowledge struck Pitt like the thrust of a dagger. He stared through a large picture window at the helicopter sitting on the yacht moored to the pier in the lagoon. He estimated the distance at just under a kilometer. Burdened by two young children, he figured they would need a good fifteen minutes to reach the dock. Without means of transportation, a car or a truck, it would be an extremely close timetable. The time for caution had flown as if there had never been such a time. Giordino and Maeve should have found her sons by now. They had to have found them. If not, something must have gone terribly wrong.
He turned his gaze first toward Mount Winkleman, and then swept the saddle of the island, his eyes stopping on Mount Scaggs. They looked deceptively peaceful. Seeing the lush growth of trees in the ravines scoring the slopes, he found it hard to imagine the two mounts as menacing volcanoes, sleeping giants on the verge of spewing death and disaster in a burst of gaseous steam and molten rock.
Briskly, but not in a hurried panic, he rose out of Dorsett's leather executive chair and came around the desk. At that instant, he halted abruptly, frozen in
the exact center of the room as the double doors to the main interior of the house swung open, and Arthur Dorsett walked in.
He was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a file of papers under an arm. He wore wrinkled slacks and what had once been white but was now a yellowed dress shirt with a bow tie. His mind seemed elsewhere. Perceiving another body in his study, he looked up, more curious than surprised.
Seeing the intruder was in uniform, his first thought was that Pitt was a security guard. He opened his mouth to demand the reason for Pitt's presence, then stiffened in petrified astonishment. His face became a pale mask molded by shock and bewilderment. The file fell to the floor, its papers sliding out like a fanned deck of cards. His hand dropped to his side, spilling the coffee on his slacks and the carpet.
"You're dead!" he gasped.
"You don't know how happy I am to prove you wrong," Pitt commented, pleased to see that Dorsett wore a patch over one eye. "Come to think of it, you do look like you've seen a ghost."
"The storm . . . there is no way you could have survived a raging sea." A flicker of emotional repossession showed in the one black eye and slowly but surely grew. "How was it possible?"
"A lot of positive thinking and my Swiss army knife." My God, this guy is big, Pitt thought, very glad he was the one pointing a gun.
"And Maeve . . . is she dead?" He spoke haltingly as he studied the assault rifle in Pitt's hands, the muzzle aimed at his heart.
"Just knowing that it causes you great annoyance and displeasure makes me happy to report she is alive and well and at this very moment about to make off with your grandsons." Pitt stared back, green eyes locked with black. "Tell me, Dorsett. How do you justify murdering - your own daughter? Did one single woman who was simply trying to find herself as a person pose a threat to your assets? Or was it her sons you wanted, all to yourself?"
"It was essential the empire be carried on after my death by my direct descendants. Maeve refused to see it that way."
"I have news for you. Your empire is about to come crashing down around your head."
Dorsett failed to grasp Pitt's meaning. "You intend to kill me?"
Pitt shook his head. "I'm not your executioner. The island volcanoes are going to erupt. A fitting end for you, Arthur, consumed by fiery lava."
Dorsett smiled faintly as he regained control. "What sort of nonsense is that?"
"Too complicated to explain. I don't know all the technicalities myself, but I have it on the best authority. You'll just have to take my word for it."
"You're bloody insane."
"0 ye of little faith."
"If you're going to shoot," said Dorsett, cold anger glaring from his coalblack eye, "do it now, clean and quick."
Pitt grinned impassively. Maeve and Giordino had yet to make an appearance. For the moment he needed Arthur Dorsett alive in case they had been captured by security guards. "Sorry, I haven't the time.
Now please turn around and go up the stairs to the bedrooms."
"My grandchildren, you can't have my grandchildren," he muttered as if it was a divine statement.
"Correction, Maeve's children."
"You'll never get past my security guards."
"The two at the front gate are-- what's the word?-- incapacitated."
"Then you'll have to murder me in cold blood, and I'll wager everything I've got that you don't have the guts for it."
"Why is it people keep thinking I can't stand the sight of blood?" Pitt touched his finger against the trigger of the assault rifle. "Get moving, Arthur, or I'll shoot off your ears."
"Go ahead, you yellow bastard," Dorsett lashed out, pronouncing it as bahstud. "You already took one of my eyes."
"You don't get the picture, do you?" White-hot anger consumed Pitt at seeing Dorsett's arrogant belligerence. He raised the rifle slightly and gently squeezed the trigger. The gun spat with a loud pop through the suppressor and a slice of Dorsett's left ear sprayed the carpet. "Now, head for the stairs.
Make a move I don't like and you'll get a bullet in the spine."
There was no hint of pain in the bestial black eye. Dorsett smiled a menacing smile that sent an involuntary shiver through Pitt. Then slowly, he put a hand to his shattered ear and turned toward the door.
At that instant Boudicca walked into the study, majestically straight and handsomely proportioned in a form, fitting silk robe that stopped several centimeters above her knees, not recognizing Pitt in the guard's uniform, and not realizing her father was in immediate danger. "What is it, Daddy? I thought I heard a gunshot-"Then she noticed the blood seeping through fingers pressed against his head. "You're hurt!"
"We have unwelcome visitors, Daughter," said Dorsett. Almost as if he had eyes in the back of his head, he knew that Pitt's attention was focused briefly on Boudicca. Unwittingly, she didn't fail him. As she rushed toward him to assess the damage, she caught sight of Pitt's face out of the corner of one eye.
For an instant her face reflected confusion, then abruptly her eyes widened in recognition.
"No . . . no, it's not possible."
It was the distraction Dorsett had prepared for. In a violent twisting motion, he whirled around, one arm striking the gun barrel and knocking it aside.
Pitt instinctively pulled the trigger. A spray of bullets blasted into a painting of Charles Dorsett over a fireplace mantel. Physically weakened and dead on his feet from lack of sleep, Pitt's reaction time was a fraction longer than it should have been. The strain and exhaustion of the past three weeks had taken their toll. He watched in what seemed slow motion as the assault rifle was torn from his hands and sent flying across the room before smashing through a window.
Dorsett was on Pitt like a maddened rhino. Pitt clutched him, struggling to stay on his feet. But the heavier man was swinging his huge fists like pile drivers, his thumbs gouging at Pitt's eyes. Pitt twisted his head and kept his eyes in their sockets, but a fist caught him on the side of the head above one ear.
Fireworks burst inside his brain, and he was swept by a wave of dizziness. Desperately, Pitt crouched and rolled to his side to escape the rain of blows.
He jumped in the opposite direction as Dorsett lunged at him. The old diamond miner had sent many a man to the hospital with only his bare hands, backed by arms and shoulders thick with muscle. During his rough-and tumble youth in the mines, he had prided himself on never having to resort to knives and guns.
His bulk and power were all he required to put away anyone with the nerve to stand up to him. Even at an age when most men turned to flab, Dorsett retained a body as hard as granite.
Pitt shook his head to clear his sight. He felt like a battered prizefighter, desperately holding on to the ropes until the bell for the end of the round, struggling to bring his mind back on track. Few were the martial-arts experts who could put down Dorsett's irresistible mass of sheer muscle. Pitt was beginning to think the only thing that would slow the diamond merchant was an elephant gun. If only Giordino would charge over the hill. At least he had a nine-millimeter automatic. Pitt's mind raced on, adding up viable moves, dismissing the ones certain to end with broken bones. He dodged around the desk, stalling for time, facing Dorsett and forcing a smile that made his face ache.
Pitt had learned long ago after numerous barroom fights and riots that hands and feet were no match against chairs, beer mugs and whatever else was handy to crack skulls. He glanced around for the nearest weapon.
"What now, old man? Are you going to bite me with your rotting teeth?"
The insult had the desired effect. Dorsett roared insanely and lashed out with a foot at Pitt's groin. His timing was off by a fractional instant, and his heel only grazed Pitt's hip. Then he leaped across the desk.
Pitt calmly took one step back, snatched up a metal desklamp and swung it with strength renewed by wrath and hatred.
Dorsett tried to lift an arm to ward off the blow, but he was a fraction slow. The lamp caught him on the wrist, snapping it before hurtling on agai
nst the shoulder and breaking the collarbone with a sharp crack. He bellowed like a stricken animal and came after Pitt again with a look of black malevolence heightened by pain and pure savagery. He threw a vicious punch at Pitt's head.
Pitt ducked and jammed the base of the lamp downward. It connected somewhere below Dorsett's knee on the shin, but the momentum of the flying leg knocked the lamp from Pitt's hand. There was a clunk on the carpet. Now Dorsett was coming back at him almost as if he were completely uninjured.
The veins were throbbing on the sides of his neck, the eye blazed and there were dribbles of saliva at the ends of his cracked, gasping mouth. He actually seemed to be laughing. He had to be mad. He mumbled something incoherent and leaped toward Pitt.
Dorsett never reached his victim. His right leg collapsed, and he crashed to the floor on his back. Pitt's swing of the lamp base had broken his shinbone. This time Pitt reacted like a cat. With a lightning move, he sprang onto the desk, tensed and jumped.
Together, Pitt's feet hurtled downward, ramming soles and heels into Dorsett's exposed neck. The malignant face, single eye gleaming black, yellowed teeth bared, seemed to stretch in shock. A huge hand groped the empty air. Arms and legs lashed out blindly. An agonized animal sound burst from his throat, a horrible gurgling sound that came through his crushed windpipe. Then Dorsett's body collapsed as all life faded away and the sadistic light in his eye blinked out.
Pitt somehow managed to remain standing, panting through clenched teeth. He stared at Boudicca, who strangely had made no move to help her father. She looked down at the dead body on the carpet with the uncaring but fascinated expression of a witness at a fatal traffic accident.
"You killed him," she said finally in a normal tone of voice.