Founder of a mining empire that owned the world's major reserves of platinum and the other five metals in its group in New Zealand, Hall was a hard-driving executive who established his success by taking over the mines when they were on the verge of bankruptcy and turning them into profit makers before borrowing against them for new acquisitions in Canada and Indonesia. A widower who lost his wife in a car accident three years previously, Hall leaves a son, Myron, who is a successful artist, and a daughter, Rowena, who, as executive vice president, will become board chairman and take over the day-to-day management of the conglomerate.
Amazingly, according to most Wall Street economists, stock in Hall Enterprises rose ten points after word spread of his presumed death. In most circumstances when the head of a large corporation dies, the stock falls, but brokers reported heavy buying by several unknown speculators. Most mining experts predict that Rowena Westmoreland will sell her father's holdings to the Odyssey Corporation, since it is known that Odyssey's founder, Mr. Specter, has made an offer above and beyond any other mining conglomerate's bid.
A memorial service will be held for friends and family at Christ-church Cathedral on Wednesday next at 2:00 P.M.
Ten days later an item appeared in the business sections of the world's leading newspapers:
Mr. Specter of the Odyssey Corporation has purchased the Hall Mining Company for an undisclosed sum from the late Westmoreland Hall's family. Chairman and major stockholder Rowena Westmoreland will continue to run day-to-day operations as chief executive officer.
There was no mention that all the processed platinum ore was now being purchased by Ling Ho Limited in Beijing and shipped in Chinese cargo ships to an industrial center on the coast of Fukien Province.
37
The wind off the Pacific bumped the water on the lake into a mild chop. Though the lake was large, the tide was minimal and the temperature was a mild eighty degrees. The silence over the dark waters was fractured by the harsh whirr of a jet ski's motor. Unseen by human eyes, it raced through the night at a speed of over fifty knots, invisible to radar because of a soft rubber mantle that absorbed the radio wave pulse and stopped the echo from returning to the radar's transmitter.
Pitt steered the Polaris Virage TX with Giordino on the rear seat and a bag full of equipment in the bow storage. Along with their dive gear, they also carried their stolen Odyssey employee jumpsuits, except this time the photos on the IDs matched their faces, with Giordino's features retouched to at least resemble a husky woman. While waiting for their dive gear to be flown in from Washington, they had gone to a photo shop and arranged for their pictures to be taken and reinserted inside the laminated plastic ID holders. The shop's owner charged them a pretty price, but asked no questions.
As they rounded the shoreline below the Madera volcano side of the island, they skirted the isthmus, staying a mile off a sandy beach that stretched between the two mountains. The lights of the complex shone brightly against the black of Mount Concepcion. No blackout here. The Odyssey management felt safe and snug guarded by their army of security agents and array of detection equipment.
Pitt slowed the jet ski as they approached the dock area, where a large COSCO containership was brightly lit under a sea of floodlights. Pitt noted that the cranes were off-loading the cargo containers onto trucks parked beneath the hull. No cargo was going on. He began to think the complex was more than a research and development center. It had to have a connection with the tunnels that ran under it.
Sandecker had finally agreed on the mission in principle. Yaeger and Gunn had filled Pitt and Giordino in on the purpose of the tunnels. It then became imperative in everyone's mind that whatever information they gained inside the complex might be vital for the discovery of Specter's motives for covering Europe in ice.
The Virage TX was painted a charcoal gray that blended into the black water. Contrary to what is shown in the movies where agents sneak around in black skintight suits, dark gray has less visibility under the stars at night. The three-cylinder engine was massaged by NUMA engineers to put out one hundred and seventy horsepower. Noise reduction was also modified to reduce exhaust noise by ninety percent.
Speeding across the black water, the only sounds came from the slap of the bow and the muted hum of the tuned pipe exhaust. They had reached the outer edge of the Isle de Ometepe in half an hour after leaving a deserted wharf south of Granada.
Pitt eased back on the throttle as Giordino studied a basic, handheld radar detector. "How's it look?" Pitt asked.
"Their beam sweeps past us without pausing, so they must not be reading us."
"We were wise to take the precaution of finishing the trip underwater," Pitt said, tipping his head toward a pair of searchlights that were sweeping the water for five hundred yards off the shore.
"I make it about a quarter of a mile."
"Our depth sounder reads the bottom at only twenty-two feet. We must be out of the main channel."
"Time to abandon ship and get wet," Giordino said, motioning toward a patrol boat that appeared around the end of a long dock.
Already in their light wet suits, they quickly pulled their dive gear and packs from the jet ski's storage areas. The Virage was a stable craft and they could stand while helping each other slip into their oxygen closed-circuit rebreathers, of a type used by the military for shallow-water operations. After quickly going through the predive checking procedures, Giordino slid into the water while Pitt tied the hand grips in a straight position. Then he aimed the jet ski on a course toward the west shore of the lake and set the throttle as he slid off. Neither man took a backward glance at the speeding craft before diving beneath the surface. Though they were using communication equipment, they took no chances of losing each other in the ink-black water. They clipped the ends of a ten-foot line to their weight belts.
Pitt preferred the oxygen closed-circuit rebreather. The semi--closed circuit rebreathers were more efficient for deepwater work, but they left telltale signs of bubbles on the surface. Breathing one hundred percent oxygen, the rebreather was the only true bubble-free diving system, the reason they were used by military divers on covert missions. There could be no detection on the surface because the system eliminated all indications of bubble exhaust. It took specialized training to use the system efficiently without problems, but Pitt and Giordino were no strangers to rebreathers, having used them for twenty years.
Neither man spoke. Giordino trailed behind, tracing Pitt's movement by using a shaded underwater penlight that sent out a thin beam that was next to impossible to spot from the surface. Pitt saw the bottom slope down as they came to the main ship channel. He leveled off, checked his compass and began kicking toward the Odyssey dock. Far into the distance, magnified by the water, he and Giordino could hear the thrash of the patrol boat's twin screws.
Relying on his compass and computer displaying GPS positions, they homed in on the section under the main dock where it met the shoreline. They swam slowly and steadily, seeing the water on the surface become a shade less black as they came closer to the lights beaming over the entire dock area. They could also see the sweep of the searchlights as their yellow shafts streaked across the surface above them.
The water became more transparent, and they began to see the yellow glow turn brighter on the water surface. Another hundred yards and they could make out the faintly shimmering outline of the dock pilings. They skirted around the big COSCO containership, staying far enough away so no idle crewman could see them under the surface. All activity had come to a standstill on the dock. The big cranes became immobile and the warehouses were closed and deserted as the trucks moved away.
Suddenly, Pitt felt the back of his neck tingle and he sensed a movement in the water as a huge shape materialized out of the gloom and swiped Pitt's shoulder with its tail and disappeared. He stiffened and Giordino immediately sensed the rope go slack.
"What is it?" Giordino demanded.
"I think we're being stalked by a
carcharhinid."
"A shark?"
"A Lake Nicaragua bull shark, with blunt-nosed snout, big and gray, eight to nine feet."
"Do freshwater sharks bite?"
"Show me one who isn't carnivorous."
Pitt swept the narrow beam of the penlight in a circle, but it failed to pierce the murky water for more than ten feet. "We'd better circle the wagons."
Giordino swiftly picked up on the meaning and swam to Pitt's side and turned until they were back to back, facing in opposite directions to cover three hundred and sixty degrees. As if reading the other's thoughts, they pulled their dive knives from the sheaths attached to their lower legs and held them as if pointing swords.
Their nemesis returned and slowly spiraled around them, moving closer with each circle. Its gray skin was ominously illuminated under the tiny glow of their penlights, a big repulsive beast staring at them from one black eye as large as the rim on a coffee cup, with a wide jaw showing triangular rows of serrated teeth like a snarling dog. It turned sharply and eased past the divers for a closer look, never having seen such strange fish with appendages that did not resemble its usual victims. It had the look of a gluttonous monster trying to make up its mind whether the two weird fish that had intruded into its domain would make a palatable meal. It seemed curious that its prey made no move to dart away.
Pitt knew the sinister murder machine was not quite ready to attack. The mouth was only slightly open and the lips had not pulled away from the hideous teeth. He decided that offense was the best defense and he lunged at the creature, thrusting his knife and making a slashing swipe across the shark's nose, the only tender spot on its taut body.
The shark rolled away, trailing a streak of blood, confused and angered by the sudden show of resistance from what should have been an easy kill. Then it turned, hovered for a few moments, flipped its tail fins and came at them with phenomenal speed in a movement dead silent, straight for the kill.
Pitt had only one trick left in his bag. He shined the beam of the penlight directly into the shark's right eye. The unexpected flash temporarily blinded the killer just enough to induce it to veer and roll to his right, mouth opening in anticipation of biting into flesh and bone. Pitt kicked fiercely, twisting his body to one side as the shark flashed past, using its pectoral fin to push it away. The yawning jaws clamped shut on empty water. Then Pitt lashed out with the knife and gashed the monster in its black lifeless eye.
Two things could have happened. The maddened shark could have attacked without further hesitation, provoked by pain and anger, or it could have swum away, half blinded, giving up the battle for easier prey.
Fortunately, it swam away and did not return.
"That was about as close as we ever came to being a special on a dinner menu," Giordino said, in a vague tone still tinged with tension.
"He would probably have digested me and spit you out for tasting bad," Pitt came back.
"We'll never know whether he enjoyed Italian food."
"Let's get a move on before one of his pals comes nosing around."
They continued on but with greater caution than before, feeling a sense of relief as the lights from the docks now provided them with a good thirty feet of underwater visibility. Finally, they reached the pilings under the dock and swam between them before surfacing and staring up at the wooden planking, where they floated, getting their wind and waiting to see if they had set off any security sensors. After a few minutes, no sounds of approaching security guards were heard from above.
Pitt said, "We'll follow the dock until it reaches the shore before we surface again."
This time Giordino moved off into the lead, with Pitt following. The bottom came up sharply and they were relieved to find a sandy beach free of rocks. Crouching under the dock and shielded from the overhead lights, they removed their dive gear and wet suits, opened their waterproof bags and retrieved their Odyssey jumpsuits and hard hats. Slipping on socks and shoes, they checked their ID badges to see they were attached in the proper position before stepping warily into the open.
A single guard sat in a small house at the edge of a paved road that passed by the entrance to the dock. He was eyeballing a TV channel that was running an old American movie in Spanish. Pitt scanned the area but saw only the single guard.
"Shall we test our presence?" he said to Giordino, face-to-face for the first time since they dove in the water.
"You want to observe his reaction when we walk by?"
"Now or never to see if we can freely move throughout the facility."
They walked casually past the guardhouse. The security guard, wearing the male black jumpsuit, caught their movement and came out onto the road. "La parada?" he shouted, a frown on his face.
"La parada?" Giordino repeated.
"It means halt."
"Para qué está usted aqui? Usted debe estar en sus cuartos."
"Here's your chance to flash your Spanish," said Giordino, his fingers tightening around the grip of his gun beneath the jumpsuit.
"What Spanish," said Pitt benignly. "I forgot most of what I learned in high school."
"Take a guess. What did he say?"
"He wants to know what are we're doing here. Then he said we're supposed to be in our quarters."
"Not bad." Giordino grinned. He walked up to the guard as if he didn't have a care in the world. "Yo no hablo el español," he said in a high-pitched voice in a sad attempt to mimic a woman.
"Very good," Pitt complimented him in turn.
"I've been to Tijuana." Giordino approached the guard and shrugged helplessly. "We're Canadian."
The guard frowned as he looked at Giordino. If his mind could be read, it would reveal that the woman inside the white uniform jumpsuit was the ugliest he'd ever seen. Then his frown turned to a smile. "Oh, si, Canadians, I speak English." He pronounced it Englais.
"I know we're supposed to be in the barracks," said Pitt, smiling back. "We only wanted to take a little walk before going to sleep."
"No, no, that is not allowed, amigos," said the guard. "You are not allowed out of your assigned area after eight o'clock."
Pitt threw up his hands. "Sorry, amigo, we were talking and didn't notice we had wandered into the wrong area. Now we're lost. Can you direct us to the barracks?"
The guard came over and shined a flashlight on their badges and studied them. "You from the dig?"
"Si, we're from the dig. Our superior sent us topside for a few days' rest."
"I understand, senor, but you must return to your quarters. It is regulations. Just follow the road and turn left at the water tower. Your building is thirty meters to the left."
"Gracias, amigo," said Pitt. "We're on our way."
Satisfied Pitt and Giordino were not intruders, the guard returned to his little house.
Giordino said, "Well, we passed the first test."
"Best we hide out somewhere until daylight. Not healthy to wander around here in the dead of night. Too suspicious. The next guard who stops us might not be so friendly."
They followed the guard's directions until they came to a long row of buildings. They moved in the shadows through the edge of a grove of palm trees, studying the entrances to the living quarters for the employees of Odyssey.
All but the fifth and last building were free of guards. That building had two guards stationed at the entrance, while another two patrolled the perimeter outside a high surrounding fence.
"Whoever lives there must not be popular with Odyssey," said Pitt. "It looks like a prison."
"The occupants must be held captive."
"Agreed."
"Then we break into one that's open."
Pitt shook his head. "No, we enter this one. I want to talk to those who are held inside. We may learn more from them about Odyssey's operation."
"No way we're going to bluff our way in."
"Looks like a small shed next door. Let's move around, keeping the trees as cover, and check it out."
"Y
ou never take the easy path," Giordino groaned at seeing that Pitt's face held a remote and thoughtful expression under the glow of the lights lining the street.
"No fun if it's simple," Pitt said seriously.
Like burglars slinking through a residential neighborhood, they moved through the trees, taking advantage of the thin curling trunks until they reached the edge of the grove. Crouched and running, they covered another thirty yards until they reached the rear of the shed. Edging around one corner, they found a side door. Giordino tried the latch. It was open and they slipped inside. Flashing their penlights around the interior, they found that it was an equipment garage that held a street sweeper.