"Odd that they all have such a murderous dislike for the only member of the family who is loving and decent."
"When I escaped the island, where my sisters and I were kept virtual prisoners after Mother died, Daddy could not accept my independence. My earning my own way through university without tapping the Dorsett fortune angered him. Then, when I was living with a young man and became pregnant, instead of opting for an abortion I decided to go the whole nine months after the doctor told me I was having twins. I refused to marry the boy, so Daddy and my sisters severed all my ties to the Dorsett empire. It all sounds so mad, and I can't explain it. I legally changed my name to that of my great-great-great grandmother and went on with my life, happy to be free of a dysfunctional family."
She had been racked by wicked forces over which she had no control, and Pitt pitied her while respecting her fortitude. Maeve was a loving woman. He looked into the guileless blue eyes of a child.
He swore to himself that he would move heaven and earth to save her.
He started to say something, but out of the blackness he caught sight of the seething crest of a huge wave bearing down on them. The giant swell appeared to break across his entire field of vision. A cold dread gripped the nape of his neck as he saw three similar waves rolling behind the first.
He gave a warning shout to Giordino and flung Maeve to the floor. The swell curled down on top of the boat, inundating it with foam and spray, rolling over and pressing down the starboard quarter as it struck. The opposite side was flung into the air, and the boat twisted sideways as it fell into a deep trough, broadside to the next wall of water.
The second wave rose and touched the stars before surging over them with the force of a freight train.
The boat plunged under the black tempest, completely submerged. Overwhelmed by the maddened sea, Pitt 's only option for staying alive was to grip a buoyancy tube as tightly as possible in a replay of the earlier typhoon. To be cast overboard was to stay overboard. Any legitimate bookmaker would have preferred the odds covering the sharks over drowning.
The little boat had somehow struggled to the surface when the final two waves struck it violently in succession. They wrenched it around in a writhing inferno of raging water. The helpless passengers were plummeted under the liquid wall and immersed again. Then they were sliding down the smooth back of the final wave, and the sea went as calm as if nothing had happened. The tumultuous combers raced past and swept into the night,
"Another precision display of the sea's temper," sputtered Giordino, his arms locked in a death grip around the console. "What did we do to make her so mad?"
r /> Pitt immediately released Maeve and lifted her to a sitting position. "Are you all right?"
She coughed for several seconds before gasping, "I expect . . . I'll live. What in God's name hit us?"
"I suspect a seismic disturbance on the sea bottom. It doesn't take a quake of great magnitude to set off a series of rogue waves."
Maeve wiped the wet strands of blond hair out of her eyes. "Thankfully, the boat didn't capsize and none of us was thrown out."
"How's the rudder?" Pitt asked Giordino.
"Still hanging. Our paddle-mast survived in good shape, but our sail has a few rips and tears."
"Our food and water supply also came through in good shape," volunteered Maeve.
"Then we came through nearly unscathed," said Giordino, as though he didn't quite believe it.
"Not for long, I fear," Pitt said tautly.
Maeve stared around the seemingly uninjured boat. "I don't see any obvious damage that can't be repaired."
"Nor I," Giordino agreed after examining the integrity of the buoyancy tubes.
"You didn't look down."
In the bright moonlight they could see the grim tension that was reflected on Pitt's face. They stared in the direction he gestured and suddenly realized that any hope of survival had rapidly vanished.
There, running the entire length of the bottom hull, was a crack in the fiberglass that was already beginning to seep water.
Rudi Gunn was not into sweat and the thrill of victory. He relied on his mental faculties, a regimen of disciplined eating habits and his metabolism to keep him looking young and trim. Once or twice a week, as today, when the mood struck him, he rode a bicycle during his lunch hour, along side Sandecker, who was a jogging nut. The admiral's daily run took him ten kilometers over one of several paths that ran through Potomac Park. The exercise was by no means conducted in silence. As one man ran and the other rode, the affairs of NUMA were discussed as if they were conversing in an office.
"What is the record for someone adrift at sea?" asked Sandecker as he adjusted a sweatband around his head.
"Steve Callahan, a yachtsman, survived 76 days after his sloop sank off the Canary Islands," answered Gunn, "the longest for one man in an inflatable raft. The Guinness World Record holder for survival at sea is held by Poon Lim, a Chinese steward who was set adrift on a raft after his ship was torpedoed in the South Atlantic during World War Two. He survived 133 days before being picked up by Brazilian fishermen."
"Was either adrift during a force ten blow?"
Gunn shook his head. "Neither Callahan nor Poon Lim was hit with a storm near the intensity of the typhoon that swept over Dirk, Al and Miss Fletcher."
"Going on two weeks since Dorsett abandoned them," said Sandecker between breaths. "If they outlasted the storm, they must be suffering badly from thirst and exposure to the elements."