Atlantis Found (Dirk Pitt 15)

Gasping for breath, with one arm clutching his midsection, Pitt found the light and switched it on. One quick glance at Sandecker's desk and he knew the intruder's mission. The admiral was fanatical about keeping a clean desk. Papers and files were put carefully in a drawer each evening before he left for his Watergate apartment. The surface was empty of Yaeger's report on the ancient seafarers.

His stomach feeling as if it had been tied in a huge knot, Pitt ran to the elevators. The one with the thief was going down, the other elevator was stopped on a floor below. He frantically pushed the button and waited, taking deep breaths to get back on track. The elevator doors spread and he jumped in, pressing the button for the parking lot. The elevator descended quickly without stopping. Thank God for Otis elevators, Pitt thought.

He was through the doors before they opened fully and ran to the hot rod just as a pair of red taillights vanished up the exit ramp. He threw open the driver's door, pushed Loren to one side, and started the engine.

Loren

looked at him questioningly. "What's the emergency?"

"Did you see the man who just took off?" he asked, as he depressed the clutch, shifted gears, and stomped the accelerator pedal.

"Not a man, but a woman wearing an expensive fur coat over a leather pantsuit."

Loren would notice such things, Pitt thought, as the Ford's engine roared and the tires left twin streaks of rubber on the floor of the parking garage amid a horrendous squealing noise. Shooting up the ramp, he hit the brakes and skidded to a stop at the guardhouse. The guard was standing beside the driveway, staring off into the distance.

"Which way did they go?" Pitt shouted.

"Shot past me before I could stop them," the security guard said dazedly. "Turned south onto the parkway. Should I call the police?"

"Do that!" Pitt snapped, as he slung the car out onto the street and headed for the Washington Memorial Parkway only a block away. "What kind of car?" he tersely asked Loren.

"A black Chrysler 300M series with a three-point-five-liter, 253 horsepower engine. Zero to fifty miles an hour in eight seconds."

"You know its specifications?" he asked dumbly.

"I should," Loren answered briefly. "I own one, have you forgotten?" "It slipped my mind in the confusion."

"What's the horsepower of this contraption?" she shouted above the roar of the flathead engine.

"About 225," Pitt replied, back-shifting and throwing the hot rod into a four-wheel drift upon entering the parkway.

"You're outclassed."

"Not when you consider we weigh almost a thousand pounds less," Pitt said calmly, as he pushed the Ford through the gears. "Our thief may have a higher top-end speed and handle tighter in the turns, but I can out-accelerate her."

The modified flathead howled as the rpms increased. The needle of the speedometer on the dashboard behind the steering wheel was approaching ninety-five when Pitt flicked the switch to the Columbia rear end and pushed the car into overdrive. The engine revolutions immediately dropped off as the car accelerated past the hundred-mph mark.

Traffic was light at one o'clock in the morning on a weekday, and Pitt soon spotted the black Chrysler 300M under the bright overhead lights of the parkway and began to overhaul it. The driver was traveling twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, but not pushing the sleek car anywhere near its potential speed.

The driver moved into the empty right-hand lane, seemingly more intent on avoiding the police than worried about the possibility of a car pursuing her from the NUMA building.

When the Ford was within three hundred yards of the newer car, Pitt began to slow down, tucking in behind slower-moving cars, attempting to remain out of sight. He began to feel supremely self-confident, thinking his quarry hadn't noticed him, but then the Chrysler swung a hard turn onto the Francis Scott Key bridge. Reaching the other side of the Potomac River, it cut a tight left turn and then a right into the residential section of Georgetown, fishtailing around the corner, the tires screeching in protest.

"I think she's on to you," said Loren, shivering from the cold wind sweeping around the windshield.

"She's smart," Pitt muttered in frustration at losing the game. He gripped the old banjo-style steering wheel and swung it to its stop, throwing the Ford into a ninety-degree turn. "Instead of speeding away in a straight line, she's taking every corner in hopes of gaining enough distance until she can turn without us seeing which direction she took."

It was a cat-and-mouse game, the Chrysler pulling ahead out of the turns, the sixty-five-year-old hot rod regaining the lost yardage through its greater acceleration. Seven blocks, and still the cars were an equal distance apart, neither one gaining or closing the gap.

"This is a new twist," muttered Pitt, grimly clutching the wheel.

"What do you mean?"

He glanced at her, grinning. "For the first time I can remember, I'm the one who's doing the pursuing."

"This could go on all night," said Loren, clutching the door handle as if ready to eject in case of an accident.

"Or until one of us runs out of gas," Pitt shot back in the middle of a hard turn.