Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

He began to squeeze, and a black cloud fell over Kelly 's eyes. "No, please," she pleaded, her voice becoming little more than a rasping whisper.

"Sweet dreams, dear heart."

Then a voice behind him said, "Your technique for romancing women leaves a lot to be desired."

The red-haired killer released Kelly's throat and spun around in a movement as quick as a cat's. A shadowy figure was standing in the doorway, one outstretched hand casually resting on the door latch, his face dark and silhouetted by the light behind him in the passageway. Quickly, the killer whipped into a martial-arts position, his hands poised in the air, and launched his foot at the intruder.

Unknown to the killer and Kelly, Pitt had heard the screams and silently opened the door, then stood there for a few brief seconds, appraising the situation and devising contingency tactics. There was no time to go for help. The girl would be dead before anyone arrived to back him up. He immediately sensed this was a dangerous man who was no stranger to killing. Men such as this had to have a concrete reason for coldly murdering a defenseless woman. He braced himself for the attack he knew would come.

In a violent corkscrew motion, he twisted out of the doorway into the passageway as the killer's leg and foot sliced through the air. The intended blow missed Pitt's head by an inch and impacted on the frame of the door. The ankle bone broke cleanly with an audible crack.

Any other man would have writhed in agony. Not this one, not this hunk thick with muscle and trained to ignore pain. The killer glanced up and down the passageway to make sure Pitt was alone and had no help, and then he came forward, arms and hands moving rhythmically in martial-arts motions. Then he leaped toward his prey, hands chopping the air like axes.

Pitt stood as if frozen, feigning fear, until the last microsecond. Then he dropped to the deck and rolled toward his assailant, whose momentum caught him off balance and carried him over and beyond Pitt, tripping on his body and crashing in a heap to the deck. Pitt was on the red-haired killer like lightning. Using every pound of his body, he pinned the man to the deck, digging one knee into an unprotected back and clapping his hands violently against the ears.

The man's eardrums burst as though an icepick had been jabbed from one side of his head to the other. The killer uttered a ghastly howl and convulsively wrenched to one side, hurling Pitt against a closed door. Pitt was stunned at the brutal strength of the man and his seeming immunity to pain. Half on his back, he lashed out with both feet, not into the killer's groin, but smashing down on the broken ankle.

No outcry this time, only a snarl and a hissing through clenched teeth. The face twisted into a hideous grimace, the eyes glinting with ferocity. He was hurt now, truly hurt. But he was still the aggressor, and he continued his advance toward Pitt, dragging his mangled foot behind him. Altering his strategy, he gathered himself for the next assault on Pitt.

It didn't take a wizard's gray matter for Pitt to realize that he was no match for a highly trained killer with a body like a demolition ball on a crane. Pitt backed away, knowing his only advantage was faster footwork, now that his adversary could only perform on one leg, eliminating any possibility of a vicious kick to the head.

Pitt had never taken a martial-arts course in his life. He had boxed during his years at the Air Force Academy, but his wins usually equaled his losses. He had learned the tactics of free-for-all fighting after having survived a number of barroom brawls. Lesson one, which he'd learned early on, was never fight close-in with your fists. Fight with your brain and any object that you can throw, shove or swing at your attacker-a bottle, chair or whatever. The survival rate without injuries was much higher among those who fought from the outside in.

Suddenly Kelly appeared in the doorway behind the killer. She was holding the leather case as though it were growing out of her chest. The red-haired executioner was so focused on Pitt that he didn't detect her presence.

Pitt saw an opportunity. "Run!" he shouted to Kelly. "Run up the stairs and out onto the deck!"

The killer hesitated, not certain whether Pitt was trying the age-old bluff. But he was a true professional, who studied his victims. He saw the tiny shift in Pitt's eyes and whirled around as Kelly ran toward the stairway leading up to the open work deck. Focusing on his main target, he took off after Kelly, half running, half hobbling, fighting the agony that erupted from his fractured ankle.

It was the move Pitt had hoped for.

Now it was his turn to attack. He sprinted forward and leaped on the back of the killer. It was a brutal football tackle, using the combined impetus of both their bodies to bring the runner down from behind, falling with all his weight on the other's body while ramming his face and head into the deck.

Pitt heard his attacker's head hit the thinly carpeted steel deck with a sickening thump and a crack and felt the body go limp. If not a fracture, the skull must have suffered a concussion, he thought. For a moment, Pitt lay on top of the man, breathing heavily, waiting for his heart to slow. He blinked his eyes as he felt the sting of sweat trickling into them and rubbed the sleeve of his coat across his face.

It was then he noticed the killer's head was twisted in an unnatural position and the eyes were open and unseeing.

Pitt reached down and pressed his fingers against the jugular vein. There was no hint of a pulse. The killer was dead. He must have struck his head at an angle, forcing it sideways and breaking the neck, Pitt concluded. He sat back on the deck and leaned against the closed door to the compartment where batteries were stored, and assessed the situation. None of it made sense. All Pitt knew for certain was that he happened to walk onto the scene of an attempted murder of a woman he had rescued from drowning. Now he was sitting there staring at a total stranger he had accidentally murdered. He looked into the man's unseeing eyes and murmured to himself, "I'm as rotten as you are."

Then he thought of the woman.

Pitt came to his feet, stepped over the sprawled body of the dead man and hurried up the stairs to the outer deck. The work deck was crowded with survivors who were holding on to safety ropes strung by the Deep Encounter's, crew. They stood uncomplaining as the rain lashed their heads and shoulders while they moved in line and climbed into the Earl of Wattlesfield's rescue boats for the trip to the container ship.

Pitt rushed through the line searching for the woman with the leather case, but she was not in the group that was being transported across the water. It was as if she had vanished. One look at the boats having unloaded and on their way back to the survey ship told him that she could not have left the Deep Encounter. She must still be on board.

He had to find her. How else could he explain the dead body to Captain Burch? And how else would he ever find out what was going on?

7

Things were finally looking up for the Deep Encounter. By late afternoon, except for ten who were too injured to be moved, all but one hundred of the survivors from the Emerald Dolphin had been ferried over to the Earl of Wattlesfield. Without the horde of survivors on board, the battered survey ship rose five feet out of the water. The crew then went to work and shored up the badly damaged hull plates, which reduced the incoming flow and enabled the pumps to gain on the flooding.

The Australian guided-missile frigate arrived and added their boats to the ferry operation, taking the survivors who'd dropped down the ropes from t

he bow and relieving the exhausted boat crews from Deep Encounter. Thankfully, the storm passed almost as suddenly as it arrived and the sea settled down to a mild chop.

McFerrin was the last man off the survey vessel. Before he boarded the containership's boat, he personally thanked the entire crew and scientists. "Your rescue of so many souls will go down in the annals of sea history," he told them, to expressions of modest embarrassment.

"I regret we couldn't have saved them all," Burch said quietly.