Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

"There is a guard in a house on the cliffs above the entrance to the channel. I'm guessing that besides keeping a lookout for intruders, he has enough firepower to stop any ship leaving the lagoon."

"What brought you to that conclusion?" asked Giordino.

"If one didn't know better, you'd think the hijackers were guarding a flower garden against marauding deer. Two men guarding fifty, the rest sitting around like they were on vacation? Not likely. They have to be confident that this ship could never get through to the open sea if the crew somehow managed to regain control. The channel is a good four hundred feet deep in its center. Deep Encounter could easily be sent to the bottom and never be found, while the pirate ship would still have plenty of water under her keel to sail out of the lagoon."

"It's a black night," said Burch. "We might be able to sneak out to sea without the guard spotting us."

"No good," said Pitt. "The minute you get under way, the hijackers

on board their ship will know about it and give chase. They're bound to get wise when the anchor comes up and the engines begin pounding. The first thing they'd do is alert the channel entrance guard. I've got to get there first and remove the threat."

"I'll come with you," Giordino said firmly.

Pitt shook his head. "You

're the best man to repel boarders before the ship slips away."

"Horatio at the bridge - that's me."

"You'll never get there in time," said House. "It's a good half mile uphill through the jungle."

Pitt held up his small penlight. "This will light my way. Besides, the hijackers have to have a well-beaten path between here and the guardhouse."

Giordino shook Pitt's hand. "Good luck, pal."

"Same to you."

And then Pitt was gone.

20

It was odd the way the crew hurried about their duties as calmly as if they were leaving the dock in San Francisco. There were no wasted words. It was equally odd that there was no discussion about the danger they were in. There was no apprehension, no foreboding. The scientists, bent on keeping out from underfoot, went to their staterooms and stayed there.

Captain Burch crouched low on the bridge wing, staring through the darkness at the hijackers' workboat. He held the ship's portable phone to his mouth and said softly, "Ready when you are, Chief."

"Then bring up the anchor," replied House. "Soon as it's off the bottom, call me and I'll give her every pound of torque these engines got in them."

"Stay tuned," said Burch. There was a time when anchors were brought up by crewmen operating switches and levers. All Burch had to do with the modern systems on board the Deep Encounter was punch a code into the computer. Then it was all automatic. But there was nothing he could do, there was nothing anybody could do, to muffle the rattle and clank as the chain scraped through the hawsehole into the chain locker.

His years of experience told Burch the instant that the anchor broke free of the bottom. "Okay, Chief. Full speed. Take us the hell out of here."

Down below in his kingdom, House's hands played over the control panel. He felt a measure of pleased satisfaction as he felt the propellers bite the water and drag down the stern as the ship lurched forward.

Giordino took the automatic rifles gathered from the two hijackers he and Pitt had overpowered and stationed himself behind the gunnel a few feet away from the gangplank leading to the pirate ship. He lay on the deck, one rifle held in the crook of his arm. The other rifle he laid on the deck beside him next to the revolver. He didn't fool himself into thinking he could win a heavy firefight. But his line of fire could easily keep boarders off the survey vessel once it got under way. He could have pushed the gangplank between the two ships into the water, but thought better of making any unnecessary sound. It would fall of its own accord after the Deep Encounter began to move away.

He felt the vibrations through the deck as Chief Engineer House switched on the big generators and set the diesel electric engines at full speed. Two of the survey ship's crewmen crawled along the deck under the steel gunnel shields and cast off the mooring lines to the work boat from the starboard bollards, before scrambling back inside the undercover of the superstructure.

Now comes the fun part, Giordino thought to himself, as he heard the clatter from the anchor chain. To the people on board Deep Encounter, the sound came like twenty hammers striking an anvil. True to expectations, three of the hijackers rushed out of the mess room to see what the noise was about.

Confused at seeing the anchor of the Deep Encounter being raised and unaware that their partners in crime had been subdued, one started yelling at the top of his voice. "Stop, stop! You can't leave ahead of schedule. Not without a crew!"

It was not in Giordino's nature to lie quiet. "Don't need no crew,"he said, in a grating voice, still mimicking the frog-throated hijacker. "I'm gonna do the job myself."

There was growing confusion as more of the hijackers burst out onto the deck. Then a familiar rasping voice shouted out, "Who are you?" "Sam!" "You're not Sam. Where is he?"

Giordino could feel the beat of the engines increase as the ship began to make headway. Another few seconds and the gangplank would be pulled off the ship. "Sam sez you're a drooling imbecile who can't be trusted to raise a toilet seat."

Curses and shouts erupted as a crowd of hijackers made a run for the gangplank. Two of them made it and were halfway across when Giordino took careful aim and shot them in the knees. One hijacker fell backward on the work boat, the other sagged, clutching the railing on the gangplank, crying out in pain. At that moment, the end of the gangplank fell away as the survey ship got under way and began her dash through the channel.