Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

In the next two days, Pitt and Giordino were hard-pressed to keep up their quixotic manner. Three more planes flew over and failed to spot them. Pitt tried to hail them over the portable radio, but they were out of range. Knowing that rescuers were raking the seas to find them and coming so close without discovering them was disheartening. Their only encouraging awareness was the certainty that Admiral Sandecker was using every influence at his command to conduct an extensive search operation.

The gray skies that had dogged them all day cleared at sunset. Twilight deepened from an orange sky in the west to the velvet blue of the east. Giordino was on watch, leaning over the rim of the hatch tower. He soon developed a flair for catnapping, dozing off and then coming awake fifteen minutes later almost to the minute. Sweeping the horizon and seeing no light for the tenth time that evening, he dropped off into his temporary dreamland.

When he returned to the reality of his ordeal, he woke up to music. Initially, he thought he must have been hallucinating. He reached over the side, scooped up a handful of seawater and splashed it on his face.

The music was still there.

He could make out the tune now. Out of the night came a Strauss waltz. He recognized it as "Tales from the Vienna Woods." Then he saw a light. It looked like another star, but it was moving back and forth in a small arc on the western horizon. It was almost impossible to estimate distance across the water at night, but Giordino swore the music and the moving light were no more than four hundred yards away.

He jumped down through the hatch, groped for a flashlight and climbed up again. Now he could see the vague outline of a small vessel, and dim lights showing through square windows. He switched the flashlight on and off as fast as his thumb could move the switch, and he yelled like a sick goat.

"Over here! Over here!"

"What is it?" Pitt called out below.

"Some kind of boat!" Giordino shouted back. "I think she's headed our way!"

"Fire off a flare," Misty said excitedly.

"We don't have flares on board, Misty. We only dive during the day and ascend to the surface within easy sight of the mother ship," Pitt explained in a steady voice. Calmly, he picked up the portable radio and began calling on five different frequencies.

Misty was aching to see what was happening, but there was room for only one person at a time in the hatch tower. She could only sit and wait anxiously while Pitt tried to contact the vessel, and for Giordino to tell them whether they were about to be saved or not.

"They haven't seen us," Giordino groaned between shouts across the water and wildly waving the flashlight. The beam barely cast a glow. The batteries were about gone. "They're passing us by."

"Hello, hello, please respond," Pitt implored.

His only reply was static.

Disappointment settled over the submersible like a soaking blanket, as Giordino watched the lights begin to fade into the darkness. No one on the passing vessel had seen them, and with a sinking heart he could only watch it continue on its course toward the northwest.

"So near, yet so far," he murmured dejectedly.

Suddenly a voice cracked over the submersible's speaker. "Who am I talking to?"

"Castaways!" Pitt snapped back. "You sailed right past us. Please reverse course."

"Hold tight. I'm coming around."

"He's turning!" Giordino shouted happily. "He's coming back."

"Where off my bow are you?" the voice shouted.

"Al!" Pitt yelled up the hatch. "He wants a position."

"Tell him to steer twenty degrees to his port."

"Steer twenty degrees to your port and you should see us," Pitt relayed the message.

After a minute, the voice said, "I have you now-a dim yellow glow about a hundred yards dead ahead."

The approaching boat's owner switched on an array of exterior lights. One was a large spotlight that swept the surface of the water before finally stopping on Giordino, still waving the flashlight like a madman in the hatch tower.

"Do not be alarmed," came the voice again. "I will pass over you and stop above your little tower when it is aligned with my stern. I've dropped a ladder for you to climb aboard."

Pitt missed the rescuer's meaning. "Pass over?" he repeated. "I do not read you."

There was no reply, only Giordino's baffled voice, shouting. "I think he means to run us down!"