Dragon (Dirk Pitt 10)

"Let's hope so," Sandecker said with mounting joy. He stared at DeLuca. "Can you still hear the music?"

"Yes, sir. Once we obtained a fix, we were able to track the source.

"It's moving?"

"About five kilometers per hour across the bottom."

"He and Plunkett must have survived the earthquake and escaped in Big John," Giordino concluded.

"Have you attempted contact?" asked Sandecker of Morton.

"We've tried, but our systems are not designed to transmit in water deeper than a thousand meters."

"We can contact them with the underwater phone in the submersible," said Giordino.

"Unless. . ." Sandecker hesitated. He glanced at Morton. "Could you hear them if they were trying to contact a surface vessel, Commander?"

"If we can hear their music, we could hear their voice transmissions. Might be garbled and distorted, but I think our computers could piece together a coherent message."

"Any such sounds received?"

"None," replied Morton.

"Their phone system must be damaged," Sandecker speculated.

"Then why are they able to transmit music?"

"An emergency amplifying system locator in case the vehicle had a breakdown," answered Giordino.

"A rescue vehicle could home in on the sound. But it wasn't built for voice transmission or reception."

Morton stirred in slow anger. He did not like losing control of a situation on board his own command.

"May I ask who these people are in Big John, as you call it, and how they came to be traipsing over the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?"

Sandecker gave a negligent wave of his hand. "Sorry, Commander, a classified project." He turned his attention back to DeLuca. "You say they're on the move."

"Yes, sir." DeLuca pressed a series of buttons and the display recessed in the table revealed a section of the sea bottom in a three-dimensional holograph. To the men crowded around the table, it felt as though they were looking down into a submerged Grand Canyon from the top of an aquarium. The detail was enhanced by advanced computer and sonar digital mapping that showed the images in muted color heavy on blues and greens.

The Mendocino fracture zone dwarfed the famous tourist sight of northern Arizona, its steep escarpments averaging 3,000 meters high. The uneven rims along the great crack in the earth's submarine surface were serrated with hundreds of ridges, giving it the appearance of a huge gash through a series of sand ripples.

"The latest underwater visual technology," Morton offered proudly. "The Tucson was the first sub to have it installed."

"Code-named The Great Karnak," Sandecker said loftily. "Knows all, sees all. Our NUMA engineers helped develop it."

Morton's face, now curiously red and sullen, looked abjectly defeated in the game of one-upmanship.

But he took control and made a brave comeback. "Lieutenant, show the admiral his toy in action."

DeLuca took a short wandlike probe and traced a light beam across the floor of the display. "Your underwater vehicle emerged at this point in a small canyon just off the main fracture zone and is now traveling in a zigzag pattern up the slopes toward the top of the fracture zone's edge."

Giordino stared somberly at the flattened area where the mining project once stood. "Not much left of Soggy Acres," he said sadly.

"It wasn't built to last forever," Sandecker consoled him. "The results more than paid for the loss."

Without being asked, DeLuca enlarged the display until the fuzzy image of the DSMV could just be seen struggling up the side of a steep slope. "This is as sharp as I can bring her in."

"That's just fine," Sandecker complimented him.