The Mediterranean Caper (Dirk Pitt 2)

“If you insist.”

They both ducked below the top of the old wall, holding the sun-warmed stones with their hands to absorb any shock. Then Giordino turned the little plastic switch on the detonator.

Even at the short distance of ten or fifteen feet the sound of the explosion was nothing more than a mere thump. No shock wave trembled the ground, no black cloud of smoke or shooting flame belched from the archway, no deafening blast rattled their eardrums, only a small indefinable thump.

Swiftly, in a silence bred of expectancy, they leaped to their feet and rushed back to the iron gate. The two balls of tape were torn and smoldering, smelling like the burned out pungent odor of frizzled firecrackers. A tiny curl of smoke wound in a wake-like trail between the grill and disappeared into the damp darkness of the interior passage. The bar was still in place.

Pitt looked questioningly at Giordino. “Not enough punch?”

“It was ample,” Giordino said confidently. “The charges were the right size to do the job. Please observe" He gave the bar a vigorous kick with his heel. It remained solid, unyielding. He kicked it again, this time harder, his mouth tight from jolting pain in his heel and sole. The top end of the bar broke loose, bending its jagged and torn tip inward until it lay on a horizontal plane. A tense smile creased Giordino’s mouth and his teeth slowly spread into view.. “And now for my next trick. .

“Never mind,” Pitt snapped brusquely. “Let’s get the hell going. We’ve got to get to the villa and back in time to join the next tour.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

Pitt was already climbing through the opening in the gate. “Last night it took me eight hours to get out, we can get in in eight minutes.”

“How, you got a map?”

“Something even better,” Pitt said quietly, almost grimly, pointing at the flight bag. “Pass me the light.”

Giordino reached into the bag. pulled out a large yellow light, nearly six inches in diameter, and passed it through the opening. “It’s big enough. What is it?”

“Alien Dive Bright Aluminum casing is waterproof to a nine hundred foot depth. We’re not going diving, but it’s rugged and throws out a long narrow beam, backed by one hundred and eight thousand candlepower. That’s why I borrowed it from the ship.”

Giordino said no more, merely shrugged and slipped between the bars, following Pitt into the passage. “Hold on a second till I remove the evidence.”

Giordino’s stubby hands nimbly unwound the shredded wrappings—a pile of old fallen stones covered the smoldering remains—before he turned to face Pitt, squinting his eyes until they became accustomed to the dim light.

Pitt played his light into the darkness. “Look there on the ground. See why I don’t need the services of a detailed map?”

The powerful beam spotlighted a broken trail of dried and caked blood leading down the steep uneven stairway. In a few places the red stains lay in scattered clusters, separated by occasional tiny round specks. Pitt descended the steps shivering, not so much from the sight of his old and discarded blood, but from the sudden change in temperature from the outside afternoon heat to the damp chill of the musty labyrinth. At the bottom he took off at a half trot, the swaying light in his hand casting a series of bouncing shadows that leaped from the crack-lined ceiling to the rough hewn rock floor. The loneliness and the fear that gripped him the night before was not present. Giordino, that indestructible sawed-off package of muscle, a trusted friend for many years, was beside him now. Damned if anyone or any barrier would stop him this time, he thought doggedly.

Passage after passage, like gaping mouths in the shadows slipped by. Pitt kept his eyes trained on the ground, analyzing the dark red spots. At the honeycombed intersections he paused briefly, studying the trail. If the blood led up a tunnel and then returned it meant a dead end. Wherever the course indicated a single line he pursued it. His body was aching and his vision was hazy at the outer edges; a bad sign. He was bone tired and felt it to the deadening tips of every nerve ending. Pitt stumbled and would have gone down, but Giordino grabbed his arm in a wrench-like grip, holding him erect.

“Take it easy, Dirk,” Giordino said firmly, his voice followed by a faint echo. “No sense in overdoing it. You’re not in condition to play All American hero.”

“It’s not far,” Pitt said heavily. “The dog should lie around the next couple of bends.”

But the dog was gone. Only the hardened blood pools remained where the great white animal had thrashed out the final moments of life. Pitt stared mutely at the huge stains. The dank odor of blood permeated the passageway, adding to, but not quite overcoming, the musty atmosphere. He vividly recreated the. attack in his mind; the dog’s gleaming eyes, the leap in the dark, the knife sinking into warm flesh, and the agonized animal howl.

“Keep going,” Pitt said grimly, all weariness forgotten. “The entrance is only another eighty feet.”

They plunged on amid the black depths of the mountain. Pitt didn’t bother to watch the blood trail, he knew where he was to the inch: he so thoroughly recalled the feel of the walls and floor that he would have been completely confident of finding the door at a dead run without the flashlight and in absolute darkness. The light in his hand swayed in wild arcs as they pounded along into the modern corridor construction.

Suddenly the Dive Brite’s beam probed the massive door, holding it in a dazzling circle of light.

“This is it,” Pitt said softly between labored gasps for breath.

Giordino pushed his way past and knelt to the ground, examining the inside bolts. He wasted no time; already his fingers were probing the slight crack that separated the door from the frame molding.

“Goddamn,” he grunted.

“What is it?”

“Big sliding latch on the outside. I don’t have the equipment to jimmy it from this side.”

“Try the hinges,” Pitt murmured. He aimed the light toward the opposite side of the door. Almost before he said it, Giordino had snatched a short pointed bar from the flight bag and was prying the long pins from their rusty shafts.