Giordino adjusted a spectral imaging scope over his face mask and switched it on. The landscape suddenly materialized before his eyes, slightly fuzzy but distinct enough to see pebbles on the ground half an inch in diameter. He turned to Pitt.
"Time to go?"
Pitt nodded. "Since you can see our way on land, you lead off and I'll take over when we reach the water."
Giordino simply gave a brief nod and said nothing. Until they could safely penetrate the security defenses around the shipyard, there was nothing to say. Pitt did not require telepathic powers to know what was in Giordino's mind. He was mentally relivi
ng the same thing as Pitt.
They were back six thousand miles in distance and twenty hours in time in Admiral Sandecker's office in the NUMA headquarters, talking their way into what had to be a scheme born under a cloud of madness.
"MISTAKES were made," said the admiral solemnly. "Dr. O'Connell is missing."
"I thought she was under round-the-clock surveillance by security agents," Pitt said, annoyed at Ken Helm.
"All anyone knows at this point is that she drove her daughter to get some ice cream. While the wards sat outside the store in their car, Dr. O'Connell and her daughter went inside and never came out. It seems impossible that such a spur-of-the-moment event by O'Connell could be known in advance by the abductors."
"Meaning the Wolfs." Pitt slammed his fist on the table. "Why do we continually underestimate these people?"
"I suppose you'll be even less happy to hear the rest," Sandecker said somberly.
Pitt looked at him, his face clouded with exasperation. "Let me guess. Elsie Wolf has disappeared from the clinic, along with the body of her cousin, Heidi."
Sandecker wiped an imaginary speck from the polished surface of the conference table. "Believe me, it must have taken a magician," said FBI agent Ken Helm. "The clinic has the latest technology in security-detection equipment."
"Didn't your surveillance cameras reveal her escape?" asked Pitt irritably. "Elsie obviously didn't walk through the front door with her dead cousin thrown over her shoulder."
Helm gave a brief tilt of his head. "The cameras were fully operational, and the monitors observed every second. I'm sorry-- no, shocked-- to say that no trace of the breakout was recorded."
"These people must have the ability to slip through cracks," said Giordino, who had seated himself at the opposite end of the table from Sandecker. "Or else they developed a pill for invisibility."
"Neither," said Pitt. "They're shrewder than we are."
"All that we have, and it's fifty percent speculation," Helm admitted, "is that an executive jet belonging to Destiny Enterprises took off from an airport near Baltimore and set a course due south--"
"To Argentina," Pitt finished.
"Where else would they take her?" added Giordino. "Doesn't figure they'd keep her in the States, where they have little or no control over government investigative agencies."
Ron Little of the CIA cleared his throat. "The question is why? At one time we were led to believe they wanted to eliminate Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino, and Dr. O'Connell because of their discoveries of the chamber in Colorado and its inscriptions. But now, too many people are knowledgeable about the messages left by the ancient people. So the effort to keep it secret becomes immaterial."
"The only practical answer is that they need her expertise," suggested Helm.
"When I asked Elsie Wolf how many Chambers the Amenes had built, she claimed there was a total of six," Pitt said. "We had found two and they had found one. Of the others, two were destroyed by natural causes. Only one remains unfound, and she said it was somewhere in the Andes of Peru, but the directions were vague. I'll bet that despite all the experts in their computer software division, they couldn't crack the code giving instructions on how to find the remaining lost chamber."
"So they snatched her, thinking she could crack the code," said Sandecker.
"Makes sense," Helm said slowly.
Giordino leaned across the table. "Knowing Pat only a short time as I do, I have my doubts she'd cooperate."
Little smiled. "They also have Dr. O'Connell's fourteen-year-old daughter. All the Wolfs have to do is threaten to harm her."
"She'll talk," Helm said gravely. "She has no choice."
"So we go in and get her out," said Pitt.
Little looked at him doubtfully. "We have no way of knowing exactly where they're holding her."