Valhalla Rising (21 page)

For a moment, they inspected one another warily. Then the intruder ignored Delgado and turned to Burch, speaking politely in American English. “Captain Burch, I presume.”

“And you are?”

“My name is of no consequence,” the pirate said in a tone that rasped like a file against iron. “I hope you will offer no resistance.”

“What in hell are you doing on my ship?” Burch demanded.

“We are confiscating it,” replied the intruder, with a hard edge in his tone. “No one will be harmed.”

Burch stared at him incredulously. “This ship is the property of the United States government. You don’t have the authority to simply walk on board and confiscate her.”

“Oh, but we can.” He held up the gun. “This is our authority.”

As he spoke, the three armed gunmen on the work deck began rounding up the survey ship’s crew. The work boat’s launch soon returned with ten more armed men, who stationed themselves throughout the ship.

“This is madness,” snarled Burch indignantly. “What do you hope to accomplish by this criminal act?”

The tall, dark man smiled deprecatingly. “You can’t begin to comprehend the purpose.”

An armed hijacker approached. “Sir, the ship is secure and all crew members and scientists are under guard in the dining area.”

“The engine room?”

“Awaiting your orders.”

“Then prepare to get under way. I want full speed.”

“You won’t get anywhere fast enough not to get caught,” said Delgado. “She won’t do more than ten knots.”

The hijacker laughed. “Ten knots? You shame your ship, sir. I happen to know you made twice that in speeding to the
Emerald Dolphin’s
rescue. However, even twenty knots is too slow.” He paused and motioned to the bow, where the work boat was moving into position in preparation for taking the survey ship in tow. “Between the two of us, we should be able to make over twenty-five knots.”

“Where are you taking us?” demanded Delgado, as angry as Burch had ever seen him.

“It’s not your concern,” the man rasped carelessly. “Have I your word, Captain, that you and your crew will not attempt to resist or disobey my orders?”

“You have guns,” Burch said simply. “We have no arms other than kitchen knives.”

While they talked, the tow rope was brought aboard and looped over the
Deep Encounter’s
forward bollard. Burch’s eyes suddenly took on a look of naked discomfort.

“We cannot leave!” he said sharply. “Not yet!”

The hijacker gazed at him, trying to read any sign of a crafty expression. He saw none. “Already you are questioning my orders.”

“You don’t understand,” said Delgado. “We have a submersible down on the seabed with two men and a woman inside. We can’t just leave them.”

“A pity.” The pirate shrugged indifferently. “They will have to make land on their own.”

“Impossible. That would be murder.”

“Don’t they have communications with the outside world?”

“They have only a small portable radio and an underwater acoustic phone,” explained Delgado. “They couldn’t contact another vessel or aircraft unless they were within two miles of them.”

“Good lord, man,” pleaded Burch. “When they return to the surface and find us gone, they’ll have no hope of rescue. Not this far off the shipping lanes. You’ll be signing their death warrants.”

“Not my problem.”

Enraged, Burch took a step toward the hijacker, who swiftly raised his gun and shoved the muzzle against the captain’s chest. “It would not be wise to antagonize me, Captain.”

His fists clenched at his sides, Burch stood there staring at the black man as if he was mad, then turned and gazed vacantly at the area of the sea where he had last seen the
Abyss Navigator.
“God help you if those men die,” he said, in a voice that could have cut steel. “Because you will surely pay.”

“If there is retribution,” said the pirate coldly, “you will not be the one to enforce it.”

Defeated and heartsick thinking about Pitt, Giordino and Misty, with no course of action open to them and no ground to negotiate, Burch and Delgado could only allow themselves to be led away to the dining hall by an armed guard.

Before the
Abyss Navigator
had risen to the surface, the
Deep Encounter
had long disappeared beyond the northeastern horizon.

S
andecker was working at his desk, so intent that he did not immediately notice that Rudi Gunn had entered the office and sat down across from him. Gunn was a little man with a genial disposition. The remaining wisps of hair across the top of his head, the thick horn-rimmed glasses, the inexpensive watch on his wrist suggested a dull and colorless bureaucrat who slaved away unnoticed in a cubicle behind the water cooler.

Gunn was anything
but
colorless. Number one in his class at Annapolis, he’d served with distinction in the Navy before joining Sandecker at NUMA as assistant director and chief of operations. Known to possess a brilliant mind coupled with a pragmatic instinct, he ran the day-to-day operations of NUMA with an efficiency unknown in other government agencies. Gunn was a close friend of Pitt and Giordino. He often stood behind and backed their wild, adventurous schemes that ran counter to Sandecker’s directives.

“Sorry to interrupt, Admiral, but we have a serious problem.”

“What is it this time?” asked Sandecker, without looking up, “Another project running over budget?”

“I’m afraid it’s far worse.”

Only now did the admiral glance up from his paperwork. “What do you have?”

“The
Deep Encounter
and all on board have vanished.”

There was no hint of surprise. No questioning expression. No automatic repeat of the word
vanished.
He sat with icy calm, waiting for Gunn to elaborate.

“All our radio and satellite phone inquiries have gone unanswered —” Gunn began to explain.

“There could be any one of a hundred reasons for a breakdown in communications,” Sandecker cut in.

“There are backup systems,” Gunn said patiently. “They can’t all have failed.”

“How long has it been since they last responded?”

“Ten hours.” Gunn braced himself for the outburst he was sure would come.

This time, Sandecker reacted as expected. “Ten hours! My instructions are that all survey and research ships on station maintain status reports to our communications department every two hours.”

“Your instructions were carried out to the letter.
Deep Encounter
responded as scheduled.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Someone claiming to be Captain Burch made contact every two hours and gave updated reports on the project to investigate the wreckage of the
Emerald Dolphin.
We know it was not the captain, because the voice systems recording on all our communications did not accept the voice patterns. Someone was attempting to imitate him. Did a rather poor job of it, too.”

Sandecker was taking in every word, his razor-sharp mind sorting out the consequences of what Gunn was telling him. “You are very sure of this, Rudi?”

“I can honestly say I am absolutely certain.”

“I can’t believe the ship and all on board vanished into thin air.”

Gunn nodded. “When our communications department alerted me, I took the liberty of having a friend at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency analyze satellite weather photos of the area where
Deep Encounter
was working. Photo enhancement shows no sign of the ship within a hundred miles.”

“What were weather conditions?”

“Clear skies, ten-mile-an-hour winds and calm seas.”

Sandecker was trying to sift through confusing doubts. “The ship couldn’t have just gone under for no reason. She carried no chemicals that might have destroyed her. There is no way she could have blown herself to pieces. A collision with another ship, perhaps?”

“She was out of regular shipping lanes and no other ships were close to her.”

“A phony voice giving up-to-date reports.” The admiral fixed Gunn with a piercing state. “What you’re suggesting, Rudi, is that
Deep Encounter
was hijacked.”

“It’s beginning to look that way,” acknowledged Gunn. “Short of her being sunk by an undetected submarine, a ridiculous theory at best, I see no alternative. She must have been seized and sailed out of range before the weather cameras on the satellite passed over.”

“But if she was hijacked, where did they take her? How could she have disappeared in less than two hours? I know from experience that
Deep Encounter’s
best speed is barely over fifteen knots. She couldn’t have sailed more than a hundred and fifty nautical miles since her last status report.”

“My fault,” said Gunn. “I should have asked for an extended camera range. But I made the request before I knew of the phony radio communications, and hijacking was the last thing on my mind.”

Sandecker leaned back in his chair and buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then he stiffened. “Pitt and Giordino, they were on the project,” he said, more as a statement than a question.

“The last report, given by Captain Burch himself, stated that Pitt and Giordino were aboard the
Abyss Navigator.
They were preparing to lower into the water for their descent onto the wreck.”

“This is madness!” snapped Sandecker. “Who would dare to hijack a United States government ship in the South Pacific? There are no wars or revolutions going on in that part of the world. I fail to see a motive.”

“Nor I.”

“Have you contacted the Australian and New Zealand governments and requested an extensive search?”

Gunn nodded. “They assured me of their full cooperation. Any ships near the area, military or commercial, have offered to depart from their scheduled course and begin searching.”

“Obtain from whatever source, NOAA or one of the security agencies, expanded satellite photos for a thousand-square-mile grid of that part of the Pacific. I don’t want to miss an inch. The
Deep Encounter
has to be out there somewhere. I refuse to believe she went to the bottom.”

Gunn rose from his chair and headed for the door. “I’ll see to it.”

Sandecker sat there for several moments, staring at a photo gallery that covered one wall. His eyes settled on a color picture of Pitt and Giordino standing next to a submersible, drinking from a bottle of champagne as they celebrated the discovery and salvage of a Chinese government treasure ship in Lake Michigan. He also noted that Giordino was smoking one of the admiral’s private cigars.

There was a very close friendship among the three men. Pitt and Giordino were like the sons he’d never had. In his wildest imagination, Sandecker could not believe the two men had died. He swiveled his executive chair and gazed out the window of his office on the top floor of the NUMA building overlooking the Potomac River.

“What mischief,” he muttered softly to himself under his breath, “have you two guys gotten yourself into this time?”

A
fter accepting the disappearance of the
Deep Encounter
in the vast emptiness of the sea, Pitt, Giordino and Misty settled into the tight enclosure of their submersible and concentrated on staying alive. They found no trace of flotsam or an oil slick, so optimism overcame pessimism and they assumed that for whatever reason the survey ship had sailed away and would soon return.

But night passed. The sun rose and set twice more and still no sign of the mother ship. Worry unfolded, and they began to suspect the worst when, hour after hour, their eyes scanned the limitless horizon and saw nothing but green sea and blue sky. No ship or even a high-flying jetliner made an appearance. Their onboard GPS told them they had drifted over the international date line and were moving far south of the shipping lanes. Hope of a rescue dwindled.

They also didn’t fool themselves. A passing ship would have to be almost on top of them to spot the tiny hatch of the
Abyss Navigator.
Their homing beacon reached out for twenty miles, but its signal was only programmed to be received by a navigation computer on board the
Deep Encounter.
A passing ship or aircraft was not likely to detect it. Their only hope was if a rescue craft came within a two-mile range of their little radio.