Trojan Odyssey (Dirk Pitt 17)

The flatbed car was loaded with two pickup trucks of unknown origin powered by an electrical motor. Shiny new, they looked to be fresh off the boat. Without a word between them, Pitt and Giordino threw open a door and slipped into one of the truck's cabs, crouching down below the windows and the dashboard. Their timing couldn't have been more perfect, as two security patrol cars came screaming past the train, lights flashing as they raced after the bus.

Pitt looked pleased. "Our little maneuver was missed by the cameras or they'd have come after us instead of the bus."

"About time we had some luck."

"Stay put," instructed Pitt. "I'll be right back."

He opened the door on the side of the train away from the road and lowered himself to his hands and knees. Crawling from front to back, he removed the chocks and tie-down chains that held the pickup truck to the rail car. Then he scrambled back inside.

Giordino looked at him strangely. "I can read your mind, and I can't see how we're going to drive off a moving train into a tunnel that's blocked on both ends."

"We'll worry about it when the time comes," Pitt tossed off placidly.

There is nothing on earth that remotely resembles a big tunnel-boring machine.

The TBM that dug the tunnels under Nicaragua from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific shore stretched over one hundred and twenty yards in length, followed by another hundred yards of its equipment train.

An incredibly complicated monster that looked like the first stage of a Saturn rocket, it was driven by an electric variable-speed drive that eliminated any hydraulic oil leakage and pollution. The Specter TBM fractured flakes of bedrock by the continuous rotation of a series of carbide cutters mounted on a massive steel cutter head that could cut a circular tube through hard rock fifty-two feet in diameter at the rate of one hundred and fifty feet a day. The body that enclosed the cutter head also contained the drive motors that provided the enormous power it took to thrust the cutter's teeth into the rock, and the hydraulic presses that exerted the immense pressure it took to force the TBM into solid wall and grind away the rock.

The giant machine was articulated, and its operator, who was positioned at the front of the machine, could automatically steer it with the use of a laser while he monitored the operation. The excavated muck was transported to the rear section of the TBM and passed through a rock crusher that mashed the rock into fine sand. From there, the conveyor belt carried it back toward the opposite end of the tunnel, where it was pumped out into the sea.

The train stopped two hundred yards behind the TBM and beneath the overhead conveyor to unload at a supply depot and terminal. A series of large freight elevators ran out of sight through the roof of the tunnel. A group of women in white jumpsuits exited one of the elevators and climbed into a bus. Pitt angled close to them and overheard one woman say the inspection had to be finished in eight hours so a report-could be sent to company headquarters above.

It made no sense to Pitt. Headquarters? Where above?

No one seemed to mind as he casually drove the truck from the flatbed onto the loading dock and down a ramp to the concrete road. Then he pulled over and stopped behind a row of three other electric trucks.

Giordino looked around the busy area, where at least thirty miners were engaged in operating the mass of machinery. "That was too easy."

"We're not home yet," said Pitt. "We've got to find a way out of here."

"We could always climb out through another ventilator."

"Not if we're under Lake Nicaragua."

"How about the one we came from?"

"I think we can safely forget that plan."

Giordino was absorbed, watching the operation of the big TBM. "Okay, mastermind, what's your next scenario?"

"We can't escape from this tunnel, because it isn't completed yet. Our only hope is to sneak out the Pacific side from one of the other three tunnels' ventilators."

"And if it proves impossible?"

"Then I'll have to come up with another plan."

Giordino pointed down the loading dock, where security guards were checking the ID passes of the miners. "Time to shove off. We don't exactly fit our descriptions."

Pitt held up the ID clamped to the breast pocket of his jumpsuit and stared at it with amusement. "I'm in trouble. This guy is five foot two. I'm six-three."

"What about me?" Giordino said with a sly smile. "How will I ever produce a head of long hair and a set of boobs?"

Pitt cracked the door and looked up and down the far side of the loading dock and found it deserted. "Out this way."

Giordino followed Pitt and slid across the front seat of the pickup. They hit the loading dock crouched and running before cutting into an open door of a warehouse. Sneaking around unopened crates containing replacement parts for the various equipment and TBM, they found a rear passage that took them out of the warehouse and back along the railroad track. They paused behind a row of Porta Pottis and took stock.

"It'd help if we had transportation," said Giordino, wrinkling his nose distastefully.