There was no moon, but they took no chances and moved slowly, cautiously, barely seeing the ground beneath their feet. The hard rubber boots protected their feet from the sharp coral that lay between patches of smooth sand. They found a frond under a palm tree and dragged it behind to obscure their footprints. If they couldn't get off the island before daylight, they would have to find a place to hide out until Moreau and Gunn could arrange a rescue.
The house was a large colonial structure with a wide veranda running around the entire building. They crept onto the veranda, moving silently in their rubber-soled boots. A single light could be seen through a crack in the boards over the windows, put there to protect them from the ravages of a hurricane-inspired gale. Pitt moved on his hands and knees to the window and peered through the crack. The room on the other side was bare of furniture. The interior had the look of a house that hadn't been lived in for years.
Unable to see a need for further stealth, Pitt stood and said to Giordino in a normal tone, "This place is abandoned and has been for a long time."
The expression of puzzlement on Giordino's face was not visible in the darkness. "That doesn't make sense. The owner of an exotic island in the West Indies who never stays in the only house. What is the purpose of owning such a spot?"
"Moreau said aircraft and people came in and out during certain times of the year. They must have some other place for guests to stay."
"It would have to be underground," said Giordino. "The only surface structures are the house, the folly and a small aircraft maintenance hangar."
"Then why the armed reception committee?" mused Pitt. "What is Epona trying to hide?"
He was answered by the abrupt sound of strange music, followed by an array of colored lights that flashed on and around the Stonehenge folly.
The door to Dirk's cell clanged as it was thrown open against its stop. The afternoon heat lingered and the small airspace was still sweltering hot. The female guard motioned him out into the hallway with the muzzle of her rifle. Dirk felt a sudden cold, as if he had stepped into a refrigerator. Goose bumps ran down his arms and across his back. He knew it was useless to question the guard. She would tell him nothing of interest.
They did not enter the exotically decorated room, but passed through a door and stepped into a long concrete corridor that appeared to stretch into infinity. They walked for what seemed almost an entire mile before coming to a circular staircase that wound upward for what Dirk estimated as four stories. At the top, a landing led through a stone arch to a large thronelike chair that sat dimly illuminated by a golden light. Two women in blue gowns stepped out of the darkness and chained him to rings clamped into the chair. One of them tied a black silk gag over his mouth. Then all three women faded back into the darkness.
Suddenly, an array of lavender-colored lights flashed on and swirled around the interior of a concave stone amphitheater bowl built without seats for an audience. Next a set of laser beams lit the black sky, illuminating a series of columns spaced around the bowl and a larger outer ring of black lava columns. Only then did Dirk see a huge block of black stone shaped like a sarcophagus. He tensed and threw himself forward, only to be stopped by the chains as he identified it as some kind of altar used for sacrificial rituals. Sheer horror widened his eyes above the gag as he recognized Summer in a white gown spread-eagled on top of the great black stone, as if somehow bound to the hard surface. A cold fear ran through him as he struggled like a madman in a futile attempt to break his chains or pull them from their rings. Despite a strength enhanced by adrenaline, his efforts were in vain. No humans numbering less than four Arnold Schwarzeneggers could have broken the links of the chains or pulled them out of the stone chair. Still, he fought until he hadn't the strength to struggle any longer.
The lights suddenly blinked out and the odd sounds of Celtic music echoed among the upright stones. Ten minutes later they flashed on again, revealing the thirty women in their colorful flowing gowns. Their red hair gleamed under the lights and the silver flecks on their skin twinkled like stars. Then the lights spiraled as they had many times before as Epona appeared in her golden peplos gown. She stepped up to the black sacrificial altar, raised her hand and began to chant, "O daughters of Odysseus and Circe, may life be taken from those who are not worthy."
Epona's voice droned on, pausing as the other women raised their arms and chanted in unison. As before, the chant was repeated, becoming louder before dropping off to inaudible whispers as they lowered their arms.
Dirk could see that Summer was oblivious to her surroundings. She stared at Epona and the columns rising around the altar, not seeing them. There was no fear in her eyes. She was so heavily drugged that she had no concept of the threat on her life.
Epona reached inside the folds of her gown and raised the ceremonial dagger above her head. The other women came up the steps and surrounded their goddess, also producing daggers held above their heads.
Dirk's green eyes were stricken, they were the eyes of someone who knows his world will soon be shrouded in tragedy. He screamed in anguish, but the sound of his voice was muted by the gag.
Epona then uttered the death chant: "Here lies one who should not have been born."
Her knife and the knives of the others glinted under the swirling lights.
47
In the split second before she and the others could plunge their daggers into Summer's helpless body, two phantoms encased entirely in black materialized as if by magic in front of the altar. The tall figure grabbed Epona's upraised wrist, twisted it and forced her to her knees, to the utter shock of the women surrounding Summer.
"Not tonight," said Pitt. "The show is over."
Giordino moved like a cat around the altar, swinging the barrel of his gun from one woman to another in case they had any ideas of interfering. "Stand back!" he ordered harshly. "Drop your knives and move to the edge of the steps."
Keeping the muzzle of his rifle pressed against Epona's breast with one hand, Pitt coolly went about freeing Summer, who was bound to the altar by a single strap across her stomach.
Confused and fearful, the red-haired women slowly backed away from the altar and grouped together, as if impelled by an instinctive urge of protection. Giordino wasn't fooled for an instant. Their sisters had fought the Special Forces on Ometepe like tigers. His muscles tensed as he saw they made no move to drop their daggers, and began moving in a circle around him. Giordino knew this wasn't the time for niceties, such as asking them again to drop their daggers. He took careful aim, squeezed the trigger of his rifle and shot off the left earring of the woman who looked as if she carried the weight of authority.
Now Giordino stiffened when he saw the woman seemed incapable of pain or emotion. No hand lifted to feel the pain and the trickle of blood from her earlobe. She merely fixed Giordino with a fixed look of rage.
He snapped over his shoulder at Pitt, who was busily trying to unbuckle the strap binding Summer to the top of the stone. "I need some help. These crazy females are acting like they're about to charge."
"That's only the half of it. The island's security guards will come running when they get wise that all is not well."
Pitt looked up and saw the thirty women begin moving back toward the altar. It went against all his breeding and upbringing to unmercifully shoot a woman, but there was more than their own lives at stake. His children would die too if they didn't stop thirty hard-core members of the sisterhood from rushing them with slashing knives. It was as if a pack of wolves were circling a pair of lions. With guns against knives, one against five still gave the men an advantage, but a mass rush of fifteen against one was too one-sided.
Pitt stopped in the act of freeing a drugged Summer. In the same instant, Epona jerked her wrist out of Pitt's grip, slicing a deep cut in his palm with a razor-sharp ring. He grabbed her hand and glanced at the ring that gashed his hand. It held a tanzanite stone cut in the design of the Uffington horse. He disregarded the stabbing pain and pushe
d her away. Then he brought up his rifle.
Unable to murder but at least maim to keep his closest friend and children from a bloody death, he calmly fired off four shots that struck the nearest women in the feet. All four went down with cries of pain and shock. The others hesitated, but hyped-up with anger and fanaticism they began to press forward, making threatening motions with the daggers.
No more mentally geared to kill a woman than Pitt, Giordino slowly, methodically, took Pitt's cue and began shooting the women in the feet, downing five of them who crumpled in a heap together.
"Stop!" Pitt shouted. "Or we will shoot to kill."
Those still unscathed paused and looked down at their sisters writhing at their feet. One of them, who was dressed in a silver gown, raised her dagger high over her head and let it drop with a clang onto the stone floor. Slowly, one by one, the others followed suit until they all stood with empty hands outstretched.
"Tend to your wounded!"
Quickly, Pitt finished releasing Summer, as Giordino covered the women and kept an eye out for any alerted guards. He cursed himself at finding that Epona had escaped and vanished during the melee. Seeing Summer was in no condition to walk on her own, Pitt threw her over his shoulder and made his way to the throne, where he rapidly pried apart the rings holding Dirk's chains with the barrel of his weapon.
After pulling his gag off, Dirk gasped, "Dad, where in God's name did you and Al come from?"
"I guess you could say we dropped from the sky," said Pitt, happily embracing his son.
"You cut it close. Another few seconds and..." His voice trailed off at the grim thought.
"Now we have to figure a way out of here." Then Pitt stared into Summer's glazed eyes. "Is she all right?" he asked Dirk.
"Those Druid witches drugged her to the gills."
Pitt wished that he still had Epona clutched in his hands. But there was no sign of her. She had deserted her sisters and disappeared into the darkness beyond the ritual stones. He removed the satellite phone from the pack around his waist and dialed a number. After a long pause, Gunn's voice came over the receiver. "Dirk?"
"What's your status?" asked Pitt. "It looked as if you took hits."
"Shepard took a bullet through his upper arm, but it was a clean wound and I bandaged it up the best I could."
"Can he still fly?"
"He's a tough old dog. Too mad not to fly."
"How about you?"
"One bounced off my head," Gunn answered buoyantly, "but I suspect the bullet took the worst of it."
"Are you airborne?"
"Yes, about three miles north of the island." Then Gunn asked hesitantly, "Dirk and Summer?"
"Safe and sound."
"Thank God for that. Are you ready to be picked up?"
"Come and get us."
"Can you tell me what you found?"
"Answers to questions come later."
Pitt switched off the phone and looked down at Summer, who was being brought back to reality by Giordino and Dirk as they walked her back and forth to get her circulation restored. While waiting for the helicopter, he walked around the sacrificial block, watching for any sign of Epona's security guards, but none appeared. Then the lights around the stones blinked out and his world turned black as silence settled over the pagan amphitheater.
By the time Gunn and Shepard reappeared, the roar of jet engines could be heard on the island's airstrip as several planes took off, one almost on the tail of the one in front. Confident now there was no danger from guards appearing out of the night, Pitt informed Shepard that he could turn on his landing lights when they arrived to lift them up. When the helicopter arrived and hovered briefly before descending, Pitt could see they were alone inside the bowl of the ritual stones. All the women had vanished. He looked up into a cloudless sky carpeted with a million stars, wondering what destination Epona was headed for. What were her plans now that her freakish operation that would have caused undue suffering to millions of people lay in ruins beneath Lake Nicaragua?
She would be a wanted woman now that it was known she had conducted criminal acts for her boss, Specter. International law enforcement agencies would be on her trail. Every aspect of Odyssey's operations would be investigated. Lawsuits would fill courts in Europe and America. Whether Odyssey could survive the scrutiny was doubtful. And what of Specter? What was his role in the scheme? He was the man at the top, so he had to be responsible. What force governed the relationship between Specter and Epona? The questions spun in Pitt's mind without answers.
The enigma would have to be solved by others, he thought. His role, and that of Giordino, was thankfully finished. He turned his thoughts to more mundane matters, like his own future. He looked up as Giordino came over and stood next to him.
"This may be a strange time to bring this up," said Giordino almost as if he was meditating. "But I've been giving it a lot of thought, especially during the past ten days. I've come to the conclusion that I'm getting too old to be chasing around the oceans and getting involved with Sandecker's crazy ventures. I'm tired of madcap exploits and wild escapades or expeditions that come within inches of halting my productive love life. I can't do all the things I used to do. My joints ache and my sore muscles take twice as long to heal."
Pitt looked at him and smiled. "So what's your point?"
"The admiral has a choice. I can either be put out to pasture and find a cushy job with an ocean engineering company or he can put me in charge of NUMA's underwater technical equipment department. Any job where I don't have to be maimed or shot at."
Pitt turned and stared for a long moment over the restless black sea. Then he gazed at Dirk and Summer, as his son helped his daughter to board the aircraft. They were his future.
"You know," he said finally. "You've been reading my mind."
PART FIVE
Exposed
48
September 11, 2006
Washington. D.C.
At nine o'clock in the morning, three days after he and his offspring returned to his hangar, Pitt adjusted the tie to his sincere suit, as he called it, his one and only tailored black pin-striped suit with vest. Then he buttoned the vest and set an antique gold pocket watch in one pocket, draping a gold chain through a buttonhole with the weighted end going into a pocket on the opposite side. It was not often he wore the suit, but this was a very special day.
Specter had been apprehended by Federal marshals when his pilot made the mistake of landing in San Juan, Puerto "Rico, for fuel during a flight to Montreal. He was served with a subpoena to appear and testify before a congressional committee that was investigating his shady mining operations within United States territory. The marshals took him into custody and transported him to Washington so there was no way he could flee to another country Because his attempted operation to freeze North America and Europe took place outside the nation's jurisdiction in a foreign country, he was exempt from Federal prosecution. If anything, the committee had its hands tied. There was little hope of a legal victory. The most they could accomplish was to expose Specter's dealings and hamstring any of his future operations inside the United States.
Epona, however, had escaped the net and her whereabouts were totally unknown. She was another matter the committee planned to question Specter about.
Pitt made one last check in an antique upright mirror that had come from the first-class stateroom of an old steamship. His only departure from the rest of the Washington herd was a gray-and-white paisley tie. His thick black curly hair was neatly brushed and his green eyes were clear with their usual twinkle, despite the lack of sleep from an all-night tryst with Loren. He walked over to his desk and picked up the knife he'd taken from Epona on Branwyn Island. The hilt was encrusted with rubies and emeralds, the blade was thin and sharpened on both sides. He slipped it into the inside breast pocket of his coat.
He stepped down his ornate iron circular staircase to the floor filled with old land and air vehicles. A NUMA Navigator SUV stood in
front of the main door. It was a big car to drive the busy streets of the capital, but he found it responsive and enjoyed the comfortable ride. The NUMA name and color also provided him with a government vehicle that provided parking places not available for personal cars.
He drove over the bridge into the core of the city and parked in a government-only parking area two blocks from the Capitol Building. Once he climbed the great staircase and entered under the dome, he followed Loren's instructions to the meeting room where the investigation was being held. Not wishing to pass through the doors open to journalists and the public, he walked through the corridors until he came to a Capitol security guard who stood beside the door reserved for the House of Representatives' committee, their aides and lawyers.
Pitt gave the guard a slip of paper and asked him to give it to Congresswoman Loren Smith.