Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

In the same moment, the crew on the other side of the hull pulled open the port hatch, allowing a cross-ventilation of air to blow in and suck out the bad air. Stepping inside, both crews found bodies lying on the deck and went to work attempting to resuscitate them. Giordino recognized one of them as Captain Baldwin.

Giordino had his own priority and did not pause. He rushed into the lobby, turned and dashed through the passageway toward the bow and up the stairs to the control room. He ran with a sinking heart, gasping the foul air that was slowly being reoxygenated. He charged into the control room with a growing dread in his chest, a dread that he was too late to save his dearest friend since childhood. He stepped over the inert form of O'Malley and knelt beside Pitt, who was lying outstretched on the deck, eyes closed, seemingly not breathing. Giordino wasted no time feeling for a pulse but bent down to apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Bu

t suddenly, to his astonishment, those mesmeric green eyes fluttered open and a voice whispered, "I hope this concludes the entertainment part of the program."

Never were so many people so close to dying at the same time. And never had so many cheated the old man with the scythe and that three-headed dog that guarded Hades. It was a near thing, little short of miraculous, that none of the passengers or crew of the Golden Marlin actually died. All were brought back from the brink of death. Only seventeen, mostly elderly men and women, were airlifted by Coast Guard helicopters to hospitals in Miami, and all but two recovered without any harmful effects. The remaining two were released a week later after suffering severe headaches and trauma.

Most revived as fresh air was recirculated throughout the boat. Only about fifty-two required resuscitation with oxygen equipment. Captain Baldwin was feted by the news media and the directors of the Blue Seas Cruise Lines as a hero who'd helped prevent what might have been a major tragedy, as was the boat's doctor, John Ringer, whose courageous efforts had helped immeasurably in keeping the death toll at zero. Captain Turner and his crew also received acclaim and honors from the Navy for their part in the rescue.

Only a very few knew of the role Pitt and Giordino had played in saving the ship and all its passengers and crew. By the time the news media learned that the man who'd helped save over two thousand people from the Emerald Dolphin was also instrumental in the raising of the Golden Marlin, he and Giordino were gone, having been picked by a NUMA helicopter from the pad on the stern of the Alfred Aultman.

Any attempts by reporters to track Pitt down for interviews failed. It was as though he had fallen in a hole and covered it up.

Part Three

THOUSAND-YEAR

TRAIL

33

JULY 31, 2003 TOHONO LAKE, NEW JERSEY

Tohono Lake was off the beaten track as far as lakes went in New Jersey. There were no lakeside homes. It was on private land owned by the Cerberus Corporation for the use of its top management. Employees were provided with another resort lake thirty miles away for their pleasure. Because the lake was isolated, there were no fences around it. The only security was a locked gate five miles away on a road that wound through the low hills and heavily forested land before reaching a comfortable three-story lodge built of logs; the lodge faced the lake and came with a dock with a boat-house protecting canoes and rowboats. No motorized boats were allowed on the lake.

Fred Ames was not a director of Cerberus. He wasn't even a lower-level employee, but one of several local people who paid no attention to the No Trespassing signs and hiked into the lake to fish. He set up a small camp behind the trees surrounding the lakefront. The lake was stocked with largemouth bass and rarely fished, so it didn't take an old pro long to catch several five-to-ten-pound bass before noon. He was about to step into the water wearing his waders and begin casting when he noticed a large black limousine pull up and stop at the boat ramp. Two men got out with their fishing gear, while the chauffeur pulled one of the several boats sitting beside the ramp down to the water.

For big-time corporate executives, Ames thought it unusual for them not to use an outboard motor. Instead, one of them rowed the boat out to the middle of the lake, where he let it drift while both men tied on their bass plugs and began casting. Ames melted back into the forest and decided to warm a pot of coffee on his Coleman stove and read a paperback book until the corporate fishermen left.

The man who sat in the center of the boat and rowed was slightly under six feet and reasonably trim for a man of sixty. He had reddish-brown hair with no gray, topping a tanned face. Everything about him seemed exactingly sculptured in marble by an ancient Greek. His head, jaw, nose, ears, arms, legs, feet and hands seemed in perfect scale. The eyes were almost as blue-white as those on a husky, but not piercing. Their soft look was often misread as warm and friendly, when they were actually dissecting everyone in range. His movements-rowing, tying his bass plug and then casting-were precisely measured without wasted motion.

Curtis Merlin Zale was a perfectionist. There was nothing left of the boy who used to hike across cornfields to complete his chores. After his father died, he'd dropped out of school at twelve to run the family farm, and had educated himself. By the time he was twenty, he had accumulated the largest farm in the county and hired a manager to run it for his mother and three sisters.

Demonstrating a cunning mind and a shrewd tenacity, he'd forged school records to get himself admitted to New England's most prestigious business school. Despite his lack of education, Zale was blessed with a brilliant mind and photographic memory. He'd graduated with honors and gone on to receive a Ph.D. in economics.

From then on, his life followed a pattern: he'd launch companies, build them until they were extremely successful and then sell them. By the time he was thirty-eight, he was America's ninth-richest man, with a net worth in the billions. He then bought an oil company low in profits but high in leases around the country, including Alaska. Ten years later, he combined it with an old, solid chemical company. Eventually, he merged his holdings into one giant conglomerate called Cerberus.

No one really knew Curtis Merlin Zale. He made no friends, never attended parties or social functions, never married nor sired children. His love was power. He bought and sold politicians as if they were pedigreed dogs. He was ruthless, tough and as cold as the Ice Age. No opponents in his business transactions ever met with success. Most ended up defeated and broken, the victims of dirty, treacherous fights that went far beyond ethical business procedures.

Because he was extremely shrewd and cautious, there was never the slightest suspicion that Curtis Merlin Zale had risen to success through blackmail and murder. Strangely, not one of his business associates, the news media or his enemies, ever had cause to wonder about the deaths of the people who crossed swords with him. Many who stood in his way died from what seemed to be natural causes- heart attacks, cancer and other common diseases. A number died of accidents-cars, guns or drowning. A few simply disappeared. No trail ever led to Zale's door.

Curtis Merlin Zale was a cold-blooded sociopath without a shred of conscience. He could kill a child as easily as he would step on an ant.

He fixed his blue-white eyes on his chief security officer, who was clumsily trying to untangle the line on his reel. "I find it most peculiar that three vital projects planned with such meticulous forethought and computerized analysis should have failed."

Unlike the stereotyped Asian, James Wong had never acquired an inscrutable look. Big for his culture, he was a former major with the Special Forces, highly disciplined and as swift and deadly as a black mamba and puff adder entwined. He was the chief of Zale's dirty tricks and enforcement organization, the Vipers.

"Events happened beyond our control," he said, maddened at the snarl in his fishing reel. "The Emerald Dolphin came apart when those NUMA scientists unexpectedly appeared and then managed to dive down and survey her. Then, when we hijacked the survey crew, they managed to escape. And now, according to my intelligence sources, NUMA personnel were instrumental in saving the Golden Marlin. It's as if they appear like the plague."

"How do you explain it, Mr. Wong? They're an oceanographic agency-not a military, intelligence or investigative department of the government, but an agency devoted to sea research. How are they able to frustrate activities devised and carried out by the finest professional mercenaries money can buy?"

Wong laid down his rod and reel. "I could not have predicted NUMA's tenacity. It was just bad luck."

"I do not endure mistakes lightly," said Zale tonelessly. "Chance occurrences are due to poor planning, blunders to incompetence."

"No one regrets failure more than I," said Wong.

"I also find that foolish stunt by Ono Kanai in New York especially disturbing. I still can't understand why he cost us the loss of an expensive antique aircraft while attempting to shoot down a planeful of children. Who authorized the incident?"