Valhalla Rising (22 page)

Water was the first priority. Fortunately, rainsqualls were frequent. A vinyl mat that covered the floor of the sub was spread out and held over the hatch; it caught the rain and sent it down a crease into the water bottles they’d carried on the dive. After the sandwiches were consumed, they began a project for catching fish. Using tools carried on board for emergency repairs, Pitt fashioned a series of hooks, while Misty relied on her artistic talent for making colorful lures out of any material she could find. For fishing lines, Giordino disassembled electronic wiring and connected it to the hooks and lures. Not relying on one line, they cast out several and were rewarded with three small fish that Misty identified as frigate mackerel before they were quickly cut up, used for bait and chummed in the water to attract more fish. Within ten hours, they had a small stock of raw fish, expertly scaled and gutted by Misty. They ate sushi style, down to the last morsel. It had little taste, but no one complained so long as it supplied nourishment.

After endless conjecturing about the whereabouts of
Deep Encounter
and its crew and scientists, they finally gave up in frustration and discussed, debated and philosophized every subject from politics to food to ocean technology. Anything to take the edge off the tedium while one of them stood in the hatch to catch rain or scour the sea for a vessel while the others charted their drift and paid out the fishing lines.

The substance they had retrieved from the wreck had been carefully removed from the basket soon after breaking the surface and placed in a plastic bag. With nothing but time on their hands, they spent endless hours speculating about its chemical composition.

“How far have we drifted?” Misty asked for the hundredth time, shading her eyes from the glare as she spoke to Pitt at her feet below the hatch.

“Almost thirty-two miles southeast by east since this time yesterday,” he answered.

“At that rate we should make the coast of South America in another six months,” she said grimly.

“Either there or Antarctica,” muttered Giordino.

“We’ve been there,” said Pitt. “I’ve never developed a fondness for vacationing in the same place twice.”

“I’ll make your feelings known to the wind and currents.”

“Maybe we could rig a sail with the floor mat,” said Misty.

“With ninety-five percent of their mass underwater, submersibles aren’t known for their ability to sail before the wind.”

“I wonder if Admiral Sandecker is aware of our situation?” said Misty softly.

“Knowing him as we do,” said Pitt confidently, “I’ll bet he’s moving heaven and hell to launch a search-and-rescue operation.”

Giordino was curled up in his seat, dreaming of a thick porterhouse steak, medium rare. “I’d give a year’s pay to know where
Deep Encounter
is at this moment.”

“No sense in rehashing that mystery,” said Pitt. “We won’t have a clue until we’re fished out of the sea.”

The fourth day broke under gloomy skies. The routine never varied. Catch water if possible, catch fish if possible, and search the horizon. Conditions did not worsen, nor did they improve. Each person stood a two-hour watch. The hatch tower of the submersible only protruded four feet above the water, so the person on duty usually got soaked when the swells slapped over the top rim. Giordino dropped all the weights, but the heavy mass still tended to pull the craft under the crest of most waves. The little sub rolled sickeningly, but fortunately its crew had long ago become immune to
mal de mer,
all three having spent nearly half their lives at sea.

Pitt fashioned a spearhead by carving with his Swiss army knife on the plastic back of a clipboard that Misty had used to make notes. During Giordino’s watch, he speared a three-foot white-tipped shark. A bland-tasting feast soon followed, washed down with their last pint of water.

During Misty’s watch, an aircraft flew within a mile of the drifting submersible. Despite her frantic waving of the floor mat, the aircraft continued on. “It was a rescue plane,” she cried, barely holding back her emotions. “He flew right over and didn’t see us.”

“We’re awfully hard to spot,” Pitt reminded her.

Giordino nodded in agreement. “They’ll never detect us from an altitude much more than five hundred feet. Our hatch tower is too tiny. From the air we’re as obvious as a flyspeck on a barn door.”

“Or a penny on a golf course,” Pitt added.

“Then how will they ever find us?” Misty asked, her resolve beginning to crack.

Pitt gave her a comforting smile and hugged her. “The law of averages,” he said. “They’re bound to catch up.”

“Besides,” Giordino chimed in, “we’re lucky. Aren’t we, pal?”

“As lucky as they come.”

Misty wiped a glistening eye, straightened her blouse and shorts and ran a hand through her cropped hair. “Forgive me. I’m not as tough as I thought I was.”

In the next two days, Pitt and Giordino were hard-pressed to keep up their quixotic manner. Three more planes flew over and failed to spot them. Pitt tried to hail them over the portable radio, but they were out of range. Knowing that rescuers were raking the seas to find them and coming so close without discovering them was disheartening. Their only encouraging awareness was the certainty that Admiral Sandecker was using every influence at his command to conduct an extensive search operation.

The gray skies that had dogged them all day cleared at sunset. Twilight deepened from an orange sky in the west to the velvet blue of the east. Giordino was on watch, leaning over the rim of the hatch tower. He soon developed a flair for catnapping, dozing off and then coming awake fifteen minutes later almost to the minute. Sweeping the horizon and seeing no light for the tenth time that evening, he dropped off into his temporary dreamland.

When he returned to the reality of his ordeal, he woke up to music. Initially, he thought he must have been hallucinating. He reached over the side, scooped up a handful of seawater and splashed it on his face.

The music was still there.

He could make out the tune now. Out of the night came a Strauss waltz. He recognized it as “Tales from the Vienna Woods.” Then he saw a light. It looked like another star, but it was moving back and forth in a small arc on the western horizon. It was almost impossible to estimate distance across the water at night, but Giordino swore the music and the moving light were no more than four hundred yards away.

He jumped down through the hatch, groped for a flashlight and climbed up again. Now he could see the vague outline of a small vessel, and dim lights showing through square windows. He switched the flashlight on and off as fast as his thumb could move the switch, and he yelled like a sick goat.

“Over here! Over here!”

“What is it?” Pitt called out below.

“Some kind of boat!” Giordino shouted back. “I think she’s headed our way!”

“Fire off a flare,” Misty said excitedly.

“We don’t have flares on board, Misty. We only dive during the day and ascend to the surface within easy sight of the mother ship,” Pitt explained in a steady voice. Calmly, he picked up the portable radio and began calling on five different frequencies.

Misty was aching to see what was happening, but there was room for only one person at a time in the hatch tower. She could only sit and wait anxiously while Pitt tried to contact the vessel, and for Giordino to tell them whether they were about to be saved or not.

“They haven’t seen us,” Giordino groaned between shouts across the water and wildly waving the flashlight. The beam barely cast a glow. The batteries were about gone. “They’re passing us by.”

“Hello, hello, please respond,” Pitt implored.

His only reply was static.

Disappointment settled over the submersible like a soaking blanket, as Giordino watched the lights begin to fade into the darkness. No one on the passing vessel had seen them, and with a sinking heart he could only watch it continue on its course toward the northwest.

“So near, yet so far,” he murmured dejectedly.

Suddenly a voice cracked over the submersible’s speaker. “Who am I talking to?”

“Castaways!” Pitt snapped back. “You sailed right past us. Please reverse course.”

“Hold tight. I’m coming around.”

“He’s turning!” Giordino shouted happily. “He’s coming back.”

“Where off my bow are you?” the voice shouted.

“Al!” Pitt yelled up the hatch. “He wants a position.”

“Tell him to steer twenty degrees to his port.”

“Steer twenty degrees to your port and you should see us,” Pitt relayed the message.

After a minute, the voice said, “I have you now—a dim yellow glow about a hundred yards dead ahead.”

The approaching boat’s owner switched on an array of exterior lights. One was a large spotlight that swept the surface of the water before finally stopping on Giordino, still waving the flashlight like a madman in the hatch tower.

“Do not be alarmed,” came the voice again. “I will pass over you and stop above your little tower when it is aligned with my stern. I’ve dropped a ladder for you to climb aboard.”

Pitt missed the rescuer’s meaning. “Pass over?” he repeated. “I do not read you.”

There was no reply, only Giordino’s baffled voice, shouting. “I think he means to run us down!”

Pitt’s first thought was that they had been found by someone out to kill them, maybe even the same group behind the man who had tried to murder Kelly Egan. He put his arms around Misty. “Hold on to me for the collision. Then hurry through the hatch before we go under. I’ll you push through.”

She started to say something, but then buried her face in his chest as his strong arms embraced her. “Call out when you’re sure of a collision!” he ordered Giordino. “Then jump clear!”

Giordino prepared to launch himself out of the hatch tower as he stared aghast at the brightly lit vessel bearing down on him. It looked like no oceangoing yacht he’d ever seen. It was shaped like a great green-and-white manta or devil ray, with its cephalic forward fins encircling its huge plankton-gathering mouth. A wide sloping deck on the bow swept up and around a large arched picture window and then past a circular wheelhouse.

His state of mind quickly turned from dire apprehension to vast relief as the twin catamaran hulls slipped past the submersible with five feet of clearance to spare on either side. He gazed in awe as the underhull of the main superstructure moved overhead slowly until the submersible was directly below the stern between the twin hulls. Almost on reflex, he grabbed a chrome ladder built like a small staircase that abruptly appeared less than two feet away.

Only then did he think to bend down and report to Pitt and Misty. “Not to worry. It’s a catamaran. We’re directly under his stern.” Then he disappeared.

Misty came out of the hatch like a champagne cork, astounded at her first view of the incredible vessel above. She stood on the luxurious rear deck with its table and couches without remembering scrambling up the stairway.

Pitt reset the beacon on the submersible, then closed and secured the hatch before climbing onto the catamaran. For a few moments, they stood there alone. No crew or passengers greeted them. The boat moved forward as the helmsman steered the vessel clear of the submersible. After traveling two hundred yards, the boat slowed and drifted. They watched as a figure stepped down from the wheelhouse.

He was a large man, the same height as Pitt but fifteen pounds heavier. He was also thirty years older. His gray hair and beard gave him the appearance of an old waterfront wharf rat. His blue-green eyes had a glint to them, and he readily smiled as he examined his catch.

“Three of you,” he said in amazement. “I thought there was only one in that little life raft.”

“Not a life raft,” said Pitt. “A deep ocean submersible.”

The old man started to say something, discarded his thoughts and simply said, “If you say so.”

“We’re investigating the wreck of a sunken cruise ship,” explained Misty.

“Yes, the
Emerald Dolphin.
I’m aware of it. A terrible tragedy. A miracle so many people survived.”

Pitt didn’t elaborate on their role in the rescue, but simply offered their rescuer a brief summary of how they came to be lost at sea.

“Your ship was not there when you surfaced?” the old man inquired skeptically.

“It had vanished,” Giordino assured him.

“It is imperative that we call our headquarters in Washington and advise the director of NUMA that we’ve been found and picked up.”

The old man nodded. “Of course. Come on up to the wheelhouse. You can use the ship-to-shore radio or the satellite telephone. You can even send e-mail if you wish. The
Periwinkle
has the finest communications systems of any yacht on the water.”

Pitt studied the old man. “We’ve met before.”

“Yes, I suspect we have.”

“My name is Dirk Pitt.” He turned to the others. “My shipmates, Misty Graham and Al Giordino.”

The old man warmly shook hands with all. Then he turned and grinned at Pitt.

“I’m Clive Cussler.”

P
itt looked at the old man curiously. “You get around.”