Gunn looked at him and made a wan smile. "I never second guess the Admiral."
If either of them had known or even guessed how wrong they were, they'd have threatened the pilot with great bodily harm if he didn't turn the plane around and fly them directly back to Cairo.
Their ground time at an oil company airstrip outside of Port Harcourt was short and sweet. Within minutes they were airborne in a helicopter beating out over the Gulf of Guinea. Forty minutes later, the craft was hovering over the Sounder, a NUMA-owned research vessel Pitt and Giordino knew quite well, having directed survey projects aboard her on three different occasions. Built at a cost of eighty million dollars, the 120-meter ship was loaded with the most sophisticated seismic, sonar, and bathymetric systems afloat.
The pilot swung around the huge crane on the Sounder's stern and settled onto the landing pad aft of the superstructure. Pitt was the first to step down to the deck, followed by Gunn. Giordino, moving like a zombie, brought up the rear, yawning every step of the way. Several crewmen and scientists, who were old friends, met and exchanged greetings with them as the rotor blades spun to a stop and the helicopter was tied down.
Pitt knew his way about and headed up a ladder to the hatch that led to one of the Sounder's marine laboratories. He passed through the counters piled with chemical apparatus and into a conference and lecture room. For a working research ship, the room was pleasantly furnished like an executive boardroom with a long, mahogany table and comfortably padded leather chairs.
A black man stood in front of a large, rear projection screen with his back to Pitt. He seemed engrossed in a graphic diagram that imaged on the screen. He was at least twenty years older than Pitt and much taller. Pitt guessed him at slightly over 2 meters tall with the loose-limbed movements of an ex-basketball player written all over him.
But what caught and locked the eye of Pitt and his two friends was neither the colored graphics on the screen nor the incredibly tall presence of the stranger It was the other figure in the conference room, a short, trim and .yet commanding figure who leaned indifferently with one hand on the table while the other held a huge unlit cigar. The narrow face, the cold, authoritative blue eyes, the flaming but now graying red hair and precisely trimmed beard gave him the image of a retired naval admiral, which, as the blue blazer with the embroidered gold anchors on the breast pocket suggested, was exactly what he was.
Admiral James Sandecker, the driving force behind NUMA, straightened, smiled his barracuda smile, and stepped forward, his hand
extended.
"Dirk! AI!" The greeting came as if he was surprised by their unexpected visit. "Congratulations on discovering the pharaoh's funeral barge. A beautiful job. Well done." He noticed Gunn and merely nodded. "Rudi, I see you rounded them up without incident."
"Like lambs to a slaughter," Gunn said with a grim smile.
Pitt gave Gunn a hard look, then turned to Sandecker. "You pulled us off the Nile in a hell of a hurry. Why?"
Sandecker feigned a hurt expression. "No hello or glad to see you. No greeting at all for your poor old boss who had to cancel a dinner date with a ravishing, wealthy, Washington socialite and fly 6000 kilometers just to compliment your performance."
"Why is it your highly dubious blessing fills me with anxiety?"
Giordino dropped moodily into a chair. "Since we did so good, how about a nice fat raise, a bonus, a quick flight home, and a two-week vacation with pay?"
Sandecker said with forbearance, "The ticker tape parade down Broadway comes later. After you've taken a leisurely cruise up the Niger River."
"The Niger?" Giordino muttered moodily. "Not another shipwreck search."
"No shipwreck."
"When?" asked Pitt.
"You start at first light," answered Sandecker.
"What exactly do you want us to do?"
Sandecker turned to the towering man at the projection screen. "First things first. Allow me to introduce Dr. Darcy Chapman, chief ocean toxicologist at the Goodwin Marine Science Lab in Laguna Beach."
"Gentlemen," said Chapman in a deep voice that sounded like it rose out of a well. "A sincere pleasure to meet you. Admiral Sandecker has filled me in on your exploits together. I'm truly impressed."
"You used to play with the Denver Nuggets," muttered Gunn, bending back at the waist to stare up into Chapman's eyes.
"Until the knees gave out," Chapman grinned. "Then it was back to school for my doctorate in environmental chemistry."
Pitt and Gunn shook hands with Chapman. Giordino merely waved wearily from his chair. Sandecker picked up a phone and ordered breakfast from the galley.
"Might as well get comfortable," he said briskly. "We've got a lot of ground to cover before dawn."
"You do have a rotten job for us," Pitt said slowly.
"Of course it's a rotten job," Sandecker said matter-of-factly. He nodded at Dr. Chapman, who pressed a button on the screen's remote control. A colored map showing the meandering course of a river appeared on the screen. "The Niger River. Third longest in Africa behind the Nile and Congo. Oddly, it begins in the nation of Guinea, only 300 kilometers from the sea. But it flows northeast and then south for 4200 kilometers before emptying into the Atlantic at its delta on the coast of Nigeria. And somewhere along its course . . . somewhere a highly toxic poison is entering the current and being swept into the ocean. There, it's creating a catastrophic upheaval that is . . . well, incalculable in terms of a potential doomsday."