Valhalla Rising (25 page)

There were no giant plunging breakers between the steep walls of the channel. Because of the deeper water in mid-channel, and with no obstructions, the surf here merely rolled forward without building and curling under, sweeping them safely through the rocks as if they were corks.

Pitt floated facedown, legs outspread, as relaxed as a turtle sleeping on the surface. His breathing was slow and steady through the snorkel. Thanks to the thruster, they were nowhere near the point of exhaustion. Giordino had released his grasp momentarily and was drifting alongside Pitt.

Neither man rolled over and looked up to see if they had been spotted. They didn’t have to bother. If they couldn’t see a guard standing on the edge of the cliff, no guard could have seen them in the darkened waters far below. Belatedly, Pitt began to wonder if the hijackers had posted guards around the lagoon. He doubted they would be that security-conscious. It was next to impossible to scale the cliffs surrounding the island in the dark and then penetrate the thick jungle while hiking over jagged lava rock. He felt certain the only pair of eyes watching for intruders was that of the guard over the channel entrance.

From the brief glimpse he’d had of the lagoon through the channel hours earlier when the
Periwinkle
had passed the entrance, he estimated that it stretched in a straight line approximately a third of a mile from the sea. Feeling the impetus of the waves slacken until they were little more than two feet high, he alerted Giordino to hang on as he engaged the thruster again.

In less than fifteen minutes, the stars above opened and spread across the sky as they passed under the high cliffs into the open lagoon. Pitt angled the thruster off to the side of the beach and kept the power on until he could feel sand beneath his feet. Only then did he shut it down.

There was no indication of inhabited structures on the beach, but the lagoon was far from deserted. Two vessels lay moored side by side in the middle of the lagoon. Their shapes and outlines were indistinguishable in the dark. As Pitt suspected, they were made even more formless by camouflage netting that was draped over both ships. But for a few dim lights emitting from their ports, they were unrecognizable. Without a closer look, it was impossible to identify the
Deep Encounter
in the black night.

“Take off your face mask,” Pitt whispered to Giordino. “The lights might reflect off our lenses.”

Leaving the thruster on the beach, they swam toward the larger of the two ships. She was anchored with her bow facing into the channel. The vessel had a graceful raked bow, the same as the research vessel, but they had to be positive. Without the slightest hesitation, Pitt pulled off his fins, handed them to Giordino and began climbing the anchor chain. It was damp but reasonably free of rust and slime. He pulled himself up until he was even with the hawse pipe and hung there for a full minute.

From the light from an open port, he could just barely make out the name on the welded letters on the bow.

They read,
Deep Encounter.

T
he hawse pipe was a good ten feet below the top edge of the bow gunnels. Without a rope and a grappling hook, there was no way Pitt and Giordino could climb onto the foredeck. The rest of the hull held out little hope of boarding either. No protrusions beckoned as a means of climbing on board. Pitt cursed his lack of planning for such an elementary contingency.

He lowered himself back down the anchor chain. “She’s
Deep Encounter,
” he informed Giordino quietly.

Giordino gazed upward, and his expression in the dim light was one of puzzlement. “How do we get aboard without a gangplank or a ladder?”

“We don’t.”

“Naturally, you have an alternate plan,” he said mechanically.

“Of course.”

“Give me the bad news.”

Pitt’s slight grin was lost in the darkness. “The hijacker’s ship is smaller. We can probably go over the stern, then work our way on board
Deep Encounter.
”

Pitt felt comfortable, on an even keel again. He’d guessed right. The pirates’ vessel was not a sailing ship bristling with muzzle-loading guns but a 135-foot utility work boat, whose stern was not only low enough for them to struggle aboard but showed them all the consideration in the world by providing a diver’s boarding ladder and a small platform.

Giordino murmured, “I hope we find a length of good old-fashioned pipe to dent heads with. I feel naked with only my bare hands.”

“I’m not concerned,” Pitt said airily. “I’ve seen what you can do with those big hams. You forget. We have the element of surprise. They won’t be expecting visitors, especially disreputable characters like us, skulking through the back door.”

Pitt was in the act of climbing over the stern railing when Giordino’s fingers dug into his arm. “What’s wrong?” he muttered, rubbing his pulped forearm.

“Someone’s standing in the shadows by the aft deckhouse, smoking a cigarette,” Giordino spoke softly in Pitt’s ear.

Pitt slowly raised his head until he could peek across the work deck. Giordino’s remarkable night vision was on target. A barely seen figure was outlined in the darkness only by the movement of his puffing on a cigarette while he leaned over the railing, enjoying the tropical air. He did not appear alert, but as though he was lost in his thoughts.

Quiet as a wraith, Giordino climbed over the stern railing, hoping the water dripping from his body couldn’t be heard above a slight breeze rocking the fronds of the palm trees, padded silently across the deck and hooked those big hands around the man’s neck, cutting off all air to the lungs. There was a brief struggle, and then the body went limp. With only a slight whisper of sound, he dragged the hijacker back to the stern and behind a large winch.

Pitt searched through the man’s clothing, discovering a large folding knife and a snub-nosed revolver. “We’re in business,” he proclaimed.

“He’s still breathing,” said Giordino. “What do we do with him?”

“Lay him on the diver’s boarding platform out of sight.”

Giordino nodded and easily lifted the hijacker over the railing and dropped him in a heap on the boarding platform, where he came within inches of rolling into the sea and drowning. “Evil deed done.”

“Let’s hope he stays in slumberland for the next hour.”

“Guaranteed.” Giordino stared into the darkness, his eyes probing the open decks. “How many of them do you think there are?”

“NUMA has two similar work boats of about the same size. They accommodate a crew of fifteen, but they can carry more than a hundred passengers.”

Pitt passed the knife to Giordino, who studied it morosely. “Why can’t I have the gun?”

“You’re the one who always watches old Errol Flynn movies.”

“He used a sword, not a cheap switchblade.”

“Just pretend.”

Without another word of complaint from Giordino, they crossed the expansive cargo and work deck at a steady, unhurried pace to a hatch on the aft bulkhead. The hatch door was closed to take full advantage of the work boat’s air-conditioning. This might have been a time to fear the unknown, but that was unacceptable. There was only the ice-cold dread that they had arrived too late to save the men and women of the
Deep Encounter.
Pitt’s mind registered the worst, but he disregarded it, just as he disregarded any concern about being killed.

They halted before coming to the gangplank between the two ships and sneaked a look inside one of the ports that had a light issuing through it. Pitt counted twenty-two of the hijackers sitting around in a large mess room playing cards, reading or watching satellite television. There were enough guns stacked around to start a revolution. None seemed the least bit wary of uninvited visitors, nor did they display any anxiety that their prisoners might escape. The mere sight made Pitt extremely uneasy. The hijackers appeared extremely lax, too lax to have fifty hostages on their hands.

“Remind me not to hire any of these guys to guard my worldly goods,” mumbled Giordino.

“They’re dressed more like professional mercenaries than backwater pirates,” muttered Pitt.

He shrugged off any inclination to seek revenge on the hijackers aboard their own vessel. One six-shot revolver and a knife against more than twenty armed men hardly offered desirable odds of success. Their primary objective was to see if anyone was still alive on the research ship, then save them if at all possible. He and Giordino flattened themselves against the port superstructure for a few moments, listening and peering into the darkness. Hearing and seeing nothing menacing, they moved soundlessly across the deck before Pitt suddenly stopped.

Giordino froze alongside and whispered, “See something?”

Pitt pointed to the wide patch of painted cardboard that was crudely taped on the side of the superstructure. “Let’s see what they’re hiding.”

Slowly, with infinite caution, he peeled off the duct tape that held the cardboard on the metal side. When he had removed most of it, he curled the end back and stared at the markings that were barely visible under the muted light falling through the ports.

He could just discern the stylized image of a three-headed dog with a serpent for its tail. Directly beneath was the word
CERBERUS
. It meant nothing to him, so he pushed the cardboard cover back in place and retaped it.

“See anything?” Giordino asked.

“Enough.”

They continued to the narrow metal gangplank laid between the two ships and crossed warily, half expecting hijackers to step out of the shadows and blast away at them with automatic weapons.

They stepped over the water onto the deck of the survey ship without encountering trouble, and paused in the shadows. Now Pitt was on home ground. He knew every inch of the
Deep Encounter
and could easily make his way along her decks blindfolded.

Giordino cupped his hand and spoke softly into Pitt’s ear. “Do you want to split up?”

“No,” Pitt whispered. “Better we stick together. Let’s start in the pilothouse and work down.”

They could have gone up the outside stairways to the pilothouse, but elected to stay out of sight of any of the hijackers who might step outside the mess room and spot them. Instead, they slipped through a hatch and moved up a companionway four decks to the pilothouse. They found it dark and empty. Pitt went into the communications room and closed the door, while Giordino stood guard outside. He picked up the Globalstar phone and dialed Sandecker’s cell phone number. While the connection went through, he checked his orange-faced Doxa dive watch. The dial read two minutes past ten. He mentally adjusted the eight-hour difference with Washington time. It would be six in the morning there. The admiral would be out running his daily routine of five miles.

Sandecker answered on his global phone. After running three miles he was still breathing normally. Time was too short for Pitt to say anything vague to throw off anyone homing in on the call. He gave a brief, concise report on finding the
Deep Encounter
and gave its exact location.

“My crew and scientific team?” asked the admiral, as if they were members of his immediate family.

“The issue is still in doubt,” answered Pitt, repeating Major Deverieux’s famous message just before the fall of Wake Island. “I will contact you when I have a positive answer.” Then he closed the connection.

He stepped from the communications room. “See or hear anything?”

“Quiet as a grave.”

“I wish,” he said moodily, “you wouldn’t use the word
grave.
”

They left the pilothouse and dropped down to the next deck below. It was the same story. The staterooms and hospital were as silent as body trays in a morgue. Pitt entered his stateroom, fumbled in a drawer and was surprised to find his faithful old Colt automatic right where he’d left it. He shoved it under the waistband of his shorts and handed the revolver to Giordino, who took it without a word. Next, Pitt retrieved a small penlight, flicked it on and swung the beam around the room. Nothing had been touched. The only item not where he’d left it in the closet was Dr. Egan’s leather case. It was sitting open on the bed.

Giordino found the same scene in his stateroom. None of his belongings had been searched or moved about.

“Nothing about these guys makes sense,” said Giordino quietly. “I never heard of hijacking pirates who weren’t interested in plunder.”

Pitt aimed the light into the passageway. “Let’s move on.”

They continued down the companionway to the deck that contained eight more staterooms, the mess room, galley, conference room and lounge. Dishes with decaying food still sat on the mess table, magazines were strewn on tables and couches in the lounge as if recently cast off by their readers. Cigarettes that had burned to their filters lay in ashtrays in the conference room. Pots and pans still sat on the galley stove, their contents turning green. It was as though everyone on board the ship had vanished in a puff of smoke.

How long Pitt and Giordino searched the area desperately hoping to find a trace of life they couldn’t be sure. Maybe five minutes, maybe as long as ten. Maybe they were waiting to hear a voice or a sound, any sound—or maybe they were just fearful of not finding answers. Pitt removed the .45 from his waistband and held it at his side, leery of firing a shot even if attacked that would alert the horde of hijackers relaxing on their ship.