Marverick stared through the pilothouse windshield that had miraculously failed to shatter, his face white as a lily. "That was macabre," he said in a classic understatement. "I had no idea I'd signed aboard a submarine."
No other ship could have withstood such a freak occurrence and survived without sinking to the seabed. But Sea Sprite was no ordinary ship. She had been built tough to tolerate massive polar seas. The steel on her hull was far thicker than average to fight the solid mass of ice floes. But she did not escape unscathed. All but one boat had been swept away.
Gazing astern, Barnum was amazed that his communications gear had somehow survived. Those who suffered belowdecks had no inkling how close they came to ending up forever on the bottom of the sea.
Suddenly, sunlight beamed into the pilothouse. Sea Sprite had broken into Hurricane Lizzie's giant eye. It appeared paradoxical, with a blue sky above and maniacal sea below. To Barnum it seemed evil that a sight so tantalizing could still be so menacing.
Barnum glanced at his communications officer, Mason Jar, who was standing braced against the chart table, gripping the railing with ivory knuckles, looking like he'd seen an army of ghosts. "If you can come back on keel, Mason, contact the Ocean Wanderer and tell whoever is in charge that we're coming as quickly as possible through heavy seas."
Still dazed by what he had experienced, Jar slowly emerged from shock, nodded without speaking and walked off toward the communications room as if he was in a trance.
Barnum scanned his radar system and studied the blip that he was certain was the hotel twenty-six miles to the east. Then he programmed his course into the computer and again turned over command to the computerized automated controls. When he finished, he wiped his forehead with an old red bandana and muttered, "Even if we reach her before they go on the rocks, what then? We have no boats to cross over, and if we had they'd be swamped by the heavy seas. Nor do we have a big tow winch with thick cable."
"Not a pretty thought," said Maverick. "Watching helplessly as the hotel crashes into the rocks with all those women and children on board."
"No," said Barnum heavily. "Not a pretty thought at all."
11
Heidi hadn't been home in three days. She caught catnaps on a cot in her office, drank gallons of black coffee and ate little but baloney-and-cheese sandwiches. If she was walking around the Hurricane Center like a somnambulist, it wasn't from lack of sleep but from the stress and anguish of working amid a colossal catastrophe that was about to cause death and destruction on an unheard-of scale. Though she had correctly forecast Hurricane Lizzie's horrifying power from her birth and sent out warnings early, she still felt a sense of guilt that she might have done more.
She watched the projections and images on her monitors with great trepidation as Lizzie raced toward the nearest land.
Because of her early warnings, more than three hundred thousand people had been evacuated to the mountainous hills in the center of the Dominican Republic and its neighbor, Haiti. Still, the death toll would be staggering. Heidi also feared that the storm might veer north and strike Cuba before crashing into southern Florida.
Her phone rang and she wearily picked it up.
"Any change in your forecast as to direction?" asked her husband Harley at the National Weather Service.
"No, Lizzie is still heading due east as if she's traveling on a railroad track."
"Most unusual to travel thousands of miles in a straight line."
"More than unusual. It's unheard-of. Every hurricane on record meandered."
"A perfect storm?"
"Not Lizzie," said Heidi. "She's far from being perfect. I'd class her as a deadly cataclysm of the highest magnitude. An entire fishing fleet has gone missing. Another eight ships--oil tankers, cargo ships and private yachts--have stopped transmitting. Their distress signals are no longer being received, only silence. We have to expect the worst."
"What's the latest word on the floating hotel?" asked Harley.
"At last reports, she broke her moorings and was being driven by gale-force winds and high seas toward the rocky coast of the Dominican Republic. Admiral Sandecker sent one of NUMA's research ships to its position in an effort to tow it to safety."
"Sounds like a lost cause."
"I fear that we're looking at a sea disaster beyond any in the past," said Heidi grimly.
"I'm going to head home for a few hours. Why don't you take a break and come too? I'll fix us a nice dinner."
"I can't, Harley. Not just yet. Not until I can predict Lizzie's next mood."
"With her infinite strength, that could be days, even weeks."
"I know," said Heidi slowly. "That's what scares me. If her energy doesn't begin to diminish as she passes over the Dominican Republic and Haiti, she'll strike the mainland in full force."
Summer had a fascination with the sea beginning when her mother insisted she learn to dive when she was only six years old. A small tank and air regulator was custom made for her small body and she was given lessons by the finest instructors, as was her brother Dirk. She became a creature of the sea, studying its inhabitants, its caprices and spirits. She came to understand it after swimming in its waters serene and blue. She also experienced its monumental power during a typhoon in the Pacific. But like a wife with a husband of twenty years who suddenly sees a man with a hateful and sadistic streak, she was witnessing firsthand just how cruel and malicious the sea could be.
Sitting in the front of Pisces, brother and sister stared up through the big transparent bubble at the boiling turmoil above. As the hurricane's outer rim slashed across Navidad Bank, the fury seemed remote and distant, but as its strength increased it soon became apparent that their cozy little habitat was in dire danger and ill-prepared to protect them.
The crests of the waves easily passed over them at their forty-foot depth, but soon the waves grew to towering dimensions, and when the troughs dropped down to the seabed, Dirk and Summer found the habitat completely exposed to the surface rain before the next sea swept over them.
Time after time Pisces was battered and buffeted by the unending march of the huge waves. The inner-space station was built to take the pressure of the deep and her steel shell had no problem in repelling the besieging waters. But the terrible force exerted on her outer surface soon began to move her across the bottom. The four support legs were not connected to a base. They sat individually embedded only a few inches in the coral. Only Pisces's sixty-five-ton mass kept the chamber from being lifted and hurled across the reef like an empty bottle.
Then the same pair of enormous waves that had buried Sea Sprite only twenty miles distant struck Navidad Bank, relentlessly crushing the coral and shattering its delicate infrastructure into millions of fragments. The first one pitched Pisces over on her side and sent her tumbling round and round like a barrel rolling across a rocky desert. Despite the occupants' attempts to hang on to anything solid, they were tossed about as if they were rag dolls in a blender.
The habitat was pitched and tossed for nearly two hundred yards before it came to rest, perched precariously on the edge of a narrow coral crevasse. Then the second monstrous wave struck and threw the habitat over the edge.
Pisces dropped one hundred and twenty feet to the floor of the crevasse, bumping and grinding against the coral walls during its fall, striking the bottom in a great explosion of sand particles. Pisces landed flat on its right side and lay wedged between the walls of the crevasse. Inside, everything that wasn't tied down had been thrown in a dozen different directions. Dishes, food supplies, dive equipment, bedding, personal clothing was strewn in mad confusion.
Ignoring the pain from a dozen bruises and a sprained ankle, Dirk immediately crawled to the side of his sister, who lay in a ball between the upended bunk beds. He looked into her wide gray eyes and for the first time since they were old enough to walk he saw sheer fright. He gently took her head in his hands and smiled tightly.
"How was that for a wild ride?"
/> She looked up into his face, saw the game smile and slowly breathed deeply as her fear subsided. "During the chaos I kept thinking that we were born together and we would die together."
"My sister the pessimist. We've got another seventy years to tease each other." Then he asked with concern, "Are you injured?"
She shook her head. "I wedged myself under the bunks and wasn't bounced around as badly as you." Then she looked outside the viewing bubble at the cauldron above. "The habitat?"
"Still sound and leakproof. No wave, no matter how gigantic, could break up Pisces. She's got a four-inch steel skin."
"The storm?"
"Still raging, but we'll be safe down here. The waves are passing over the canyon without causing turbulence."
Her gaze swept the jumbled clutter. "God, what a mess."
Pleased that Summer had survived the ordeal without injury, Dirk made an inspection of the life-support systems while his sister began tackling the debris. There was no hope of putting everything back where it belonged, not with the habitat lying on its side. She simply stacked everything into neat piles and laid blankets over sharp protrusions from instruments, valves, gauges and systems mountings. Without a floor, they had to climb over it all to move around. She felt strange to be existing in an environment where everything was turned on a ninety-degree angle.
She felt more secure knowing they had survived up until now. The storm could no longer threaten them in their coral canyon with its steep walls. Down deep, there was no howling wind to hear, no beating wind when the trough of a wave exposed the chamber to the atmosphere. Her fear and suspense of what might happen next began to fade. They were safe until Sea Sprite braved the hurricane and returned. And there was the warmth and comfort of her brother, who had the courage and strength of their legendary father.
But the expression of confidence she had come to expect was not in his face when he came and sat on the wall beside her, favoring the bruises on his body that were turning black and blue.
"You look glum," she said. "What is it?"
"The fall into the crevasse tore off the lines connecting the air bottles to our life-support system. According to the air pressure gauges, the four tanks that were undamaged will supply us with only fourteen hours of air before they run dry."
"What about the dive tanks we left in the entry lock?"
"Only one was left inside for a valve repair. It contains only enough to last the two of us for forty-five minutes at best."
"We could use it to go outside and bring back the others," Summer said hopefully. "Then wait a day or two until the storm deteriorates before abandoning the habitat, and use our inflatable raft to drift on the surface until rescued."
He shook his head solemnly. "The bad news is we're trapped. The hatch on the entry lock is jammed against the coral. Nothing short of dynamite could force it open far enough for us to slip outside."
Summer sighed very deeply and then said, "It looks like our fate is in Captain Barnum's hands."
"I'm sure we're still on his mind. He won't forget us."
"He should be informed of our situation."
Dirk straightened and put his hands on her shoulders. "The radio was smashed when we plunged into the crevasse."
"We could still release our homing device so they know we're alive," she said hopefully.
His voice came in a soft, controlled tone. "It was mounted on the side of the habitat that fell against the bottom. It must have been crushed. Even if it survived, there is no way to release it."
"When they come looking for us," she said tensely, "they won't have an easy time finding us down here in the crevasse."
"You can bet Barnum will send every boat and diver on board Sea Sprite to scour the reef."
"You're talking as if we had enough air for days instead of hours."
"Not to worry, sis," Dirk said confidently. "For the moment, we're safe and secure from the storm. The minute the sea flattens, the crew aboard Sea Sprite will come for us like a drunk after a case of Scotch that fell off a liquor truck." Then he added, "After all, we're their number one priority."
12
AT that moment the Pisces and her two crew members were the last thing on Barnum's mind. Anxiously, he fidgeted in his chair as his gaze ceaselessly turned from the radar monitor to the windshield and back again. The titan-sized waves had dropped from gigantic to merely huge. Like clockwork they marched in formation against Sea Sprite, pitching her up and down in a continuous motion that became monotonous. No longer did they climb more than a hundred feet. Now the distance between crest and trough averaged only forty. Still heavy, but a lake compared to the goliaths earlier. It was almost as if the sea knew it had thrown its best punch against the research ship and failed to sink her. Frustrated, it relented and admitted defeat, dwindling to little more than a nuisance.
The hours passed, with Sea Sprite making headway with as much speed as Barnum dared to push her. Normally a humorous and friendly captain, he became cold and serious as he contemplated the hopeless task staring him in the face. He saw no way he could get a towline on the Ocean Wanderer. The great tow winch and its arm-thick cable had been removed long ago when the Sea Sprite had been converted to a NUMA research ship. Now the primary winch and cable on hoard the ship was for lowering and lifting deepwater submersibles. Installed on the stern deck behind the big crane, it was grossly inadequate for towing a floating hotel with a displacement tonnage more than that of a battleship.
Barnum's eyes tried to drill through the blowing sheets of rain. "We'd have her in sight if we could see through this muck," he said.
"According to the radar she's less than two miles away," advised Maverick.
Barnum stepped into the communications compartment and spoke to Mason Jar. "Have you heard anything from the hotel?"
"Nothing, sir. She's silent as a tomb."
"God, I hope we're not too late."
"I don't want to believe that."
"See if you can raise them again. The satellite communications. The guests and management are most likely to communicate with shore stations via phone than ship-to-shore radio."
"Let me try maritime radio first, Captain. At this distance there should be less interference. The hotel must have top-of-the-line equipment for communicating with other vessels when she's towed around the seas like a barge."
"Patch onto the bridge speakers so I can speak to them when they respond."
"Yes, sir."
Barnum returned to the pilothouse in time to hear Jar's voice through the speakers.
"This is Sea Sprite to Ocean Wanderer. We are two miles southeast of you and closing. Please respond."
There was half a minute of crackling static. Then a voice boomed through the speakers.
"Paul, are you ready to go to work?"
Because of the interference, Barnum did not recognize the voice at first. He picked up the bridge radio receiver and spoke into it. "Who is speaking?"
"Your old shipmate, Dirk Pitt. I'm in the hotel along with Al Giordino."
Barnum was stunned at putting a face with the voice. "How in God's name did you two come to be on a floating hotel in a hurricane?"
"It sounded like such a swell party, we didn't want to miss it."
"You must know we don't have the equipment to tow the Wanderer."
"All we need are your big engines."
Barnum had come to learn during their years with NUMA that Pitt and Giordino wouldn't be where they were without a plan. "What's on your devious mind?"
"We've already formed work crews to help us use the hotel's mooring cables for tow cables. Once you take them aboard Sea Sprite, you can join them together, then secure them to your stern capstan where they will form a bride for towing."
"Your plan sounds crazy," said Barnum, disbelieving. "How do you expect to send tons of cable that's dragging across the seabed under a hurricane-maddened sea over to my ship?"