Pacific Vortex! (Dirk Pitt 1)

If, as Dupree indicates, the Starbuck was riding on the surface, it seems odd that Carter, Farris, and Metford could not clear the bridge and go below in less than thirty seconds. It is inconceivable that he would have secured the hatches and left the men to their fate. It is just as inconceivable that there was no time to save them-it was not a likely possibility that the Starbuck sank like a stone.

Meanwhile, we sealed off the hatches and vents. I then ordered all ballast blown and hard rise on the planes; it was too late; little tearing sounds and groans forward meant the ship had plowed into the sea bottom bow on.

It seems reasonable to assume that with all ballast tanks blown, and the bow buried in only one hundred sixty feet of water, the stern section of the Starbuck’s three-hundred-twenty-foot hull might still extend above the surface. Such was not the case.

We now lie on the bottom. The deck canted eight degrees to starboard with a down angle of two degrees. Except for the forward torpedo room, all other compartments are secure and showing no signs of water. We are all dead now. I have ordered the men to resign the game. My folly killed us all.

The most fantastic mystery yet. Allowing twenty-five feet from keel to topside, the distance from the aft escape hatch to the surface was one hundred thirty-five feet; a moderate ascent for a man with a self-contained breathing apparatus, a device carried on all submarines for crew members. During World War II, eight men from the sunken submarine Tang, swam one hundred eighty feet to the surface, surviving on nothing but lung power.

The last few sentences are all the more bewildering. What precipitated Dupree’s madness? Was he overwhelmed by the stress of the whole nightmarish situation? He further retreated from reality.

Food gone, air only good for a few hours at best. Drinking water gone after the third day.

Impossible! With the nuclear reactor operable-and there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t-the crew could survive for months. The freshwater distillation units could easily provide a more than ample supply of drinking water, and with a few precautionary measures, the life support system which purified the sub’s atmosphere and produced oxygen, would have sustained sixty-three men comfortably until it ceased to function, an unlikely event. Only the food presented a long-range problem. Yet, since the Starbuck was outward bound the food stock should have been enough, if rationed, to last ninety days. Everything hinged on the reactor. If it died, the men died.

My way is clear, I feel strangely at peace. I ordered the ship’s doctor to give the men injections to halt their suffering. I will, of course, be the last to go.

My God! Is it possible Dupree could actually order the mass murder of his surviving crew?

They’ve come again. Carter is tapping on the hull. Mother of Christ! Why does his ghost torture us so?

Dupree had fallen over the edge and entered the realm of total madness. How can it be after only five days?

We can hold them but a few hours more. They have nearly broken through the hatch in the aft escape compartment. No good, no good... [illegible]. They mean to kill us, but we will outwit them in the end. No satisfaction, no victory. We shall all be dead.

&nb

sp; Who in the hell does he mean by “they?” Is it possible another vessel, perhaps a Russian spy trawler, was trying to rescue the crew?

It is dark on the surface now, and they have stopped work. I will send this message and the last pages of the log to the surface in the communications capsule. Good chance they’ll miss it at night Our position is [the first figures are crossed out] 32°43’15”N- 161°18’22”W.

The position doesn’t figure. It’s over five hundred miles from the Starbuck’s last reported position. Not nearly enough time between the last radio contact and Dupree’s final position for the Starbuck to travel the required distance, even at flank speed.

Do not search for us; it can only end in vain. They cannot allow a trace to be found. The shameful trick they used. If I had but known, we might well be alive to touch the sun. Please see this message is delivered to Admiral Leigh Hunter, Pearl Harbor.

The final enigma. Why me? To my knowledge, I have never met Commander Dupree. Why did he single out me as the recipient of the Starbuck’s last testament?

Pitt hunched over the bar of the old Royal Hawaiian Hotel, staring vacantly at his drink, as his mind wandered over the events of the day. They flickered past his unblinking eyes and dissolved into a haze. One scene refused to fade away: the memory of Admiral Hunter’s pallid face as he read the contents of the capsule-the terrible senselessness of the Starbucks tragic fate, and the bewildering, paranoiac words of Commander Dupree.

After Hunter had finished, he slowly looked up and nodded at Pitt Pitt shook the admiral’s leathery outstretched hand in silence, mumbled his good-bye to the other officers, and, as if in an hypnotic state, slowly walked from the room. He could not remember driving through the twisting traffic flow of Nimitz Highway. He could not remember entering his hotel room, showering and dressing, and leaving in search of some opaque, unknown objective. Even now, as he slowly swirled the Scotch within the glass, his ears heard nothing of the babble of tongues around him in the cocktail lounge.

There was something strangely sinister about his discovery of the Starbuck’s final message, he idly reflected. There was a wary, retrospective thought that fought desperately to surface from the inner recesses of his brain. But it faded and fell back into the nothingness from which it came.

Out of the corner of his eye Pitt caught a man further down the bar holding up a glass in his direction, gesturing the offer of a free drink. It was Captain Orl Cinana. Like Pitt, he was dressed casually in slacks and a flowered Hawaiian aloha shirt. Cinana came over and leaned on the bar beside him. He was still sweating and dabbed at his forehead and wiped his palms almost constantly with a handkerchief he carried.

“May I do the honors?” Cinana said with a smile that smacked of insincerity.

Pitt held up a full glass. “Thanks, but I haven’t made a dent in the one I’ve got.”

Pitt had taken little notice of Cinana earlier at Pearl Harbor, but now he was mildly surprised to see something he’d missed. Except for the fact that Cinana outweighed Pitt by a paunchy fifteen pounds, they could have passed for cousins.

Cinana swirled the ice around in his Rum Collins, nervously avoiding Pitt’s expressionless gaze.

“I’d like to apologize again for that little misunderstanding this afternoon.”

“Forget it, Captain. I wasn’t exactly a paragon of courtesy myself.”

“A nasty business, the Starbuck’s loss.” Cinana took a swallow from his glass.