Shock Wave (Dirk Pitt 13)

"Have it your way," said Overmeyer. "But it doesn't alter the situation. I cannot let you have the Roosevelt."

"Not even for a lousy seventy-two hours?"

"Not even for seventy-two seconds."

Sandecker suddenly halted his pacing, sat down in a chair and stared Overmeyer in the eye. "Level with me, John. Who put the handcuffs on me?"

Obviously flustered, Overmeyer could not hold the stare and looked away. "That's not for me to say."

"The fog begins to clear," said Sandecker. "Does George Cassidy know he's being cast as a villain?"

"Not to my knowledge," Overmeyer answered honestly.

"Then who in the Pentagon is stonewalling my operation?"

"You didn't hear this from me."

"We served together on the Iowa. You've never known me to expose a friend's secrets."

"I'd be the last man to doubt your word," Overmeyer said without hesitation. This time he returned Sandecker's stare. "I don't have absolute evidence, mind you, but a friend at the Naval Weapons Testing Center hinted that it was the President himself who dropped the curtain on you, after some unnamed snitch at the Pentagon let your request for an aircraft carrier slip to the White House. My friend also suggested that scientists close to the President thought your acoustic plague theory was off the wall."

"Can't they get it through their collective academic heads that people and untold numbers of sea life have already died from it'?"

"Apparently not."

Sandecker sagged in his chair and expelled a long breath. "Stabbed in the back by Wilbur Hutton and the President's National Science Board."

"I'm sorry, Jim, but word has gone out in Washington circles that you're some kind of fanatical kook.

It may well be that the President wants to force you to resign from NUMA so he can put a political crony in your place."

Sandecker felt as if the executioner's axe was rising. "So what? My career is unimportant. Can't I get through to anyone? Can't I get it across to you, Admiral, that you and every man under your command on the island of Oahu will be dead in three days?"

Overmeyer looked at Sandecker with great sadness in his eyes. It is a difficult thing for a man to believe another is breaking down, especially if that man is his friend. "Jim, to be honest, you terrify me. I want to trust your judgment, but there are too many intelligent people who think your acoustic plague has as much chance of actually occurring as the end of the world."

"Unless you give me the Roosevelt," said Sandecker evenly, "your world will cease to exist on Saturday at eight o'clock in the morning."

Overmeyer shook his head grimly. "I'm sorry, Jim, my hands are tied. Whether I believe your prediction of doom or not, you know damned well I can't disobey orders that come down from my Commander-in-Chief."

"If I can't convince you, then I guess I'd better be on my way." Sandecker came to his feet, started for the door and turned. "Do you have family here at Pearl?"

"My wife and two visiting granddaughters."

"I hope to God I'm wrong, but if I were you, my friend, I'd get them off the island while you still can."

The giant dish was only half dismantled by midnight. The interior of the volcano was illuminated by incandescent brilliance and echoed with the sounds of generators, the clank of metal against metal and the curses of the dismantling crew. The pace remained frantic from start to finish. The NUMA men and women sweated and fought bolted connections that were rusted together from lack of upkeep and repair.

Sleep was never considered, nor were meals. Only coffee as black as the surrounding sea was passed around.

As soon as a small section of the steel-reinforced fiberglass dish was removed from the main frame, the crane picked it up and set it on the flatbed of a waiting truck. After five sections were stacked one on top of the other and tied down, the truck exited the interior of the volcano and drove toward the port of Kaumalapau on the west coast, where the antenna parts were loaded on board a small ship for transport to Pearl Harbor.

Rudi Gunn was standing shirtless, sweating from the humidity of a steamy night, directing a team of men laboring strenuously to disconnect the main hub of the antenna from its base. He was constantly consulting a set of plans for the same type of antenna used in other space tracking facilities. The plans came from Hiram Yaeger, who had obtained them by breaking into the corporate computer system of the company that had originally designed and constructed the huge dishes.

Molly, who had changed into a more comfortable khaki blouse and shorts, sat nearby in a small tent, manning the communications and fielding any problems that arose during the dismantling operation and transportation of parts to the loading dock. She stepped out of the tent and handed Gunn a cold bottle of beer.

"You look like you could use a little something to wet your tonsils," she said.

Gunn nodded thankfully and rolled the bottle across his forehead. "I must have consumed twenty liters of liquid since we got here."