As twin brother and sister, Dirk and Summer were very close, yet, unlike identical twins, they went their separate ways when not on the job. Summer was dating a young career diplomat with the State Department to whom her grandfather, the senator, had introduced her. Dirk pretty much played the field, not forming any close attachment and preferring a variety of girls as different in looks as they were in personality and taste. Though cut from the same cloth as his father, Dirk didn't share all the same interests. True, they both loved old cars and aircraft and had a passion for the sea, but there any similarity ended. Dirk liked to race motorcycles cross-country and enter in powerboat races. He was driven to compete on his own skills. On the other hand, his father was rarely competitive in a solitary sense, choosing to take part in sports that called for a team effort. Where young Dirk entered individual competition in track-and-field events at the University of Hawaii, Dirk the elder played football, becoming a star quarterback at the Air Force Academy.
Finally, after exhausting all conversation on Odysseus and his voyage, they decided it was time to turn in. Summer went below and slept in one of the berths while Dirk elected to sleep up on deck on the cushions in the cockpit under the open sky.
At four in the morning, the sea was black as obsidian. A light rain came that blotted out the stars. One could have walked off the deck into the water and never known it until he felt the splash. Dirk pulled an oilcloth over him and contentedly returned to dreamland.
He did not come awake at the sound of a boat engine, because there was no boat and no engine. They came from the water, silently, like ghosts flying around tombstones on Halloween night. There were four of them, three men and one woman. Dirk did not hear the gentle touch of feet on the boarding ladder that he had neglected to pull up. Without realizing it, he made it easy for them to creep on board. Some people wakened in the night by intruders react in different ways. Dirk had no time to react. Unlike his father, he had yet to learn not to trust in luck or fate and always to follow the old Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. Before he knew strangers were on Dear Heart, the oilcloth was pulled up around his head, and a club or a baseball bat or a truncheon, he never knew, came down on the back of his head and sent him far beyond dreamland, falling into a deep black pit that never seemed to end.
44
The preparations to evacuate Isle de Ometepe came down to the wire. It took four days for Secretary of State George Hampton to convince Nicaraguan president Raul Ortiz that the American intentions were purely humanitarian. He promised that once the evacuation was completed, all American forces would leave the country. Jack Martin and Admiral Sandecker worked on Nicaraguan scientists who, once briefed on the looming disaster, lent their full support to the operation.
As expected, local government officials who were in Specter's pockets because of bribes, fought the intrusion. Those close to the Red Chinese also had their marching orders and put up a fight. But as Martin proposed at the conference, he and Sandecker put the fear of God into the leaders of the country by describing the potential catastrophe and the estimated number of dead within a mile of the lake. All opposition was quickly drowned in a river of panic.
Working closely with General Juan Morega, chief of the Nicaraguan armed forces, General Stack had all elements of his special rescue force in place. Once permission was given, he moved quickly. All boats around the lake were commandeered to evacuate residents of towns and villages that had no major roads available by which to flee. Trucks and U.S. Army helicopters carried the rest to high ground. At the same time a special fighting force was assembled to assault the Odyssey facility.
No one doubted that Odyssey security would put up a fight to keep their covert project and scientists who were held in illegal captivity an ongoing secret. There was also the fear that Specter would murder and dispose of the scientists' bodies so no trace was left of their existence. General Stack was sympathetic, but the possibility of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars lost in shattered economies outweighed twenty or thirty lives. He gave orders that the facility and its workers be evacuated as swiftly as possible, including the scientists if they were still on the island.
He put Pitt under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bonaparte Nash, called Bony by those close to him. A member of a Marine recon team, Nash welcomed Pitt and Giordino at the helicopter evacuation team's temporary base across the lake at the small city of San Jorge on the western shore. Blond hair cropped short, a body tight from muscles built from long hours of exercise, he had a round, soft face with friendly blue eyes that betrayed the toughness that lurked beneath.
"Real good to meet you, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino. I was briefed on your qualifications as members of NUMA. Quite impressive. I trust you can lead me and my men to the building where the scientists are kept prisoner."
"We can," Pitt assured him.
"But as I understand it, you were only there once."
"If we found it at night," said Giordino testily, "we can find it in broad daylight."
Nash laid out a large satellite photo of the facility on a small table. "I have five CH-forty-seven Chinook helicopters, each carrying thirty men. My plan is to land one at the air terminal, the second at the docks, a third alongside the building you described as the security headquarters and a fourth in a park area between a row of warehouses.
You two will come along with me in the fifth to make certain we have the right building where the scientists are held."
"If I might make a suggestion," offered Pitt. He pulled a pen from the breast pocket of his flowered shirt and tapped it on a building beside a palm-lined street. "This is the main headquarters building. You can land on the roof and seize the top executives of Odyssey before they have time to escape in their own helicopter."
"How do you know this?" Nash inquired thoughtfully.
"Al and I stole a copter from the roof when we evaded capture six days ago."
"They have at least ten security guards in the building that your men will have to deal with," said Giordino.
Nash looked at them with growing respect, but still not certain whether to fully believe them.
"There were security guards when you escaped?"
Pitt saw Nash's reservation. "Yes, four of them."
Giordino picked up on it too. "Overpowering them was like taking candy from a baby."
"I was told you guys were marine engineers," said Nash, confused.
"We do that too," Giordino said glibly.
"Okay, if you say so." Nash gave a slight disconcerted shake of his head. "Now, then, I can't issue you any weapons. You'll be along for the ride as guides. You'll leave any fighting to me and my men."
Pitt and Giordino glanced at each other with a twinkle in their eyes. Pitt's .45 and Giordino's .50 caliber auto were concealed in the back of the waistband behind their pants under loose tropical shirts.
"If we get into trouble," said Giordino. "We'll throw rocks until your men rescue us."
Nash wasn't sure if he liked these two wisecracking men. He held up his wrist and studied his watch. "We take off in ten minutes. You'll ride with me. After we land, you make certain we've got the right building. We can't lose a minute wandering around lost after we land, if we're to save the