Dirk, Giordino, and Gunn were all on the bridge when Summer’s frantic voice burst over the radio.
“Summer, this is Explorer. Go ahead,” Gunn replied calmly.
“Rudi, we found the galley inside the cave. But three armed men showed up. I escaped, but Dad’s still in there, and they’re trying to kill him.”
“Take it easy, Summer. We’re on our way. Try to hide until we get there, and keep yourself out of danger.”
Kenfield had already turned the Explorer around and was accelerating to top speed by the time Gunn hung up the transmitter. Dirk stepped forward and looked out the bridge window.
“We’re six or seven miles away,” he lamented to Gunn. “We’ll never get there in time.”
“He’s right,” Giordino said. “Stop the boat.”
“What do you mean, stop the boat?” Gunn cried.
“Give us two minutes to launch the Bullet, and we’ll get there in a flash.”
Gunn considered the request a moment. Even to Gunn, Pitt was more than a boss, he was like a brother. If the tables were reversed, he knew exactly what Pitt would do.
“All right,” he said with reservation. “Just don’t get yourselves killed.”
Dirk and Giordino immediately bolted for the door.
“Al, I’ll meet you on deck,” Dirk told him. “I need to grab something on the way.”
“Just don’t miss the bus,” Giordino replied, then disappeared aft.
Dirk hustled down to the ship’s lower deck, which housed the crew accommodations. Sprinting to his father’s cabin, he burst in, stepping up to a small, built-in work desk. Above the desk was a shelf of books, and Dirk quickly scanned their titles. His eyes halted when he spotted a heavy, leather-bound edition of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Ripping the book off the shelf, he quickly flipped the cover open for a second.
“‘To the great white beast, Ishmael,’ ” he muttered, then tucked the book under his arm and darted out of the cabin.
97
PITT HAD NEARLY FORGOTTEN ABOUT ZAKKAR, WHO HAD finally clambered over the bow and now shouted for his partner. Met with silence, the Arab flicked on Salaam’s penlight and aimed it at the aft end of the deck. The light’s beam played upon the figure of Pitt, who stood with a shield in his hand and an upturned grin on his face.
But Pitt was already diving over the other side of the mast when Zakkar’s Uzi barked, sending a burst over his head and into the raised steering deck. Pitt didn’t wait for his accuracy to improve, quickly snaking across the deck and launching himself down the companionway as Zakkar chased after him.
The body of Ali lay barely visible in the small patch of light that reached the lower deck from above. Pitt could see that the Arab’s head was tilted at an unnatural angle, his neck having snapped in the fall. Pitt quickly knelt alongside the body, searching the surrounding deck for the gun, but it wasn’t there. Let loose during Ali’s fall, it had bounced into one of the recessed rowing stations nearby. Pitt had left his flashlight on the upper deck while throwing the pilum and had no chance of locating the gun in the pitch-blackness.
As Zakkar charged aft overhead, Pitt moved forward, groping along a center walkway that divided the rowing stations on either side of the ship. He had left all his Roman weapons above deck and now found himself defenseless in the unlit bay. His only hope was to get up the forward companionway as Zakkar descended in the stern.
But Zakkar knew he had his man on the run and didn’t hesitate dropping down the aft ladder. Pitt could hear him descending and shuffled faster, spotting a faint ray of light ahead, which he knew was the open companionway.
His feet dropping to the lower deck, Zakkar spent only a second examining the dead figure of Ali before playing the small flashlight beam across the deck. He detected a movement at the far end, then locked the light on Pitt struggling to reach the forward ladder. He immediately aimed and fired a burst ahead of him.
Pitt dove for the deck as the bullets chewed into the wood around him. Several small crates were stacked near the base of the companionway, and he quickly crawled forward, ducking behind them for cover. Zakkar stepped closer and fired again, splintering one of the crates just inches from Pitt’s head.
Unarmed, Pitt was in a hopeless situation. His only real chance was to somehow scale the ladder before Zakkar moved any closer. He again searched for a weapon, but only spotted another skeleton lying nearby. The long-expired body had belonged to another Roman legionary, as the bones were clad in an armored tunic and helmet. The dead soldier must have fallen through the companionway when he was killed in battle, Pitt surmised. Studying the armor for a moment, he suddenly reached over and plucked them off the dried bones.
By the fourth century, the Roman soldier had turned to iron for much of his protective gear. Brutally heavy, it could withstand the sharpest spears and strongest swords. And perhaps, Pitt considered, it just might resist the slugs from a 9mm Uzi submachine pistol. Pitt slipped on the heavy circular helmet, which had an enlarged back piece that swooped outward to protect the neck. He then studied the armored breastplate. Known as a cuirass, it was an iron sheet molded in the shape of a man’s chest, with matching back plate. Pitt could see it was obviously made for a man shorter than himself.
Wasting no time in trying to fit in the cuirass, he simply flung the twin plates onto his back, tying them around his throat with a leather strap. Crawling to the base of the companionway, he looked up at the deck overhead, took a deep breath, then sprang up the ladder as fast as his arms and legs could propel him.
/>
Zakkar was still fifty feet away, running down the aisle with his penlight aimed at the ladder, when he saw Pitt spring up it. The experienced killer immediately stopped and raised his weapon. Holding the light beneath the barrel with his left hand, he took careful aim at Pitt and pulled the trigger.
The wood around Pitt exploded in a shower of splinters as the bullets sprayed into the ladder’s supporting bulkhead. He felt three hard thumps on his back that knocked him forward like the blows of a sledgehammer, but he was able to keep moving. With his arms and legs pumping, he jumped onto the open deck as a second fusillade shredded the top of the ladder where his feet had just been.