Poseidon's Arrow (Dirk Pitt 22)

It was audio static, emanating from a ceiling speaker wired to the shipboard intercom. Then a voice roared through the cabin, as well as the rest of the ship. “Señor Pablo, please report to the bridge. Señor Pablo, to the bridge.”

Pablo shook his head and gazed at the speaker with disgust. Fumbling to button his shirt, he stared at Ann with hungry eyes. “We shall resume our visit later.” He eased out of the cabin and locked the door behind him.

Ann wilted in her corner, tears of relief wetting her cheeks for the reprieve she feared was only temporary.

Leaving her cabin, Pablo climbed to the bridge and approached the captain with irritation. “What is it?”

“An urgent call for you on the sat phone.” The captain motioned toward a waiting handset.

Pablo shook off his alcoholic stupor and spoke into the receiver. The conversation was one-sided. Pablo remained quiet until ending the call by saying, “Yes, sir.” Then he turned to the captain. “How far are we from the canal?”

The captain adjusted the scale on a navigation screen. “Just over six hundred miles.”

Pablo looked at the digital map and studied the nearby coastline.

“We need to make an emergency trip into Puerto Cor

tés, Honduras, to pick up some paint and cargo.”

“A delivery to the estate?”

“No, a requirement on board.”

“But we have only a skeleton crew aboard the Salzburg.”

“Then I’ll need every man’s full effort,” Pablo said, “or skeletons they will become.”

62

PITT HONORED ZHOU’S REQUEST AND HEADED west through the jungle. He thought about circling back and trying to locate the boat that Zhou had most certainly arrived in but ultimately figured it would be well concealed. As he pushed through the brush, Pitt wondered who the man was and why he’d been sent to destroy Bolcke’s operations. Not that Pitt didn’t harbor similar feelings, but he presumed the motive had more to do with the trade in rare earth elements than for humanitarian reasons.

Soon after they had parted, the sun had dropped from the sky, and the canopied jungle turned dark. Pitt stumbled through clouds of mosquitoes that appeared at dusk to feast on his exposed skin. The going became treacherous as the dense world around him gradually faded to black. He found himself walking into sharp branches or tripping over unseen logs, but there was nothing he could do about it.

The dogs continued their pursuit, slow and methodical. Pitt had hoped the trackers would follow Zhou’s trail, but they still tracked his scent. Pitt could tell by the sporadic barking that they were perhaps just a few hundred yards behind. He stopped and listened every few minutes, trying to gauge their position.

As the jungle enveloped him, he lost any reference for finding direction. The sound of the dogs became his only clue. Fearful of accidentally backtracking into the teeth of the searchers, he kept a careful ear out for their barking.

The jungle came alive at night with a concert of strange hoots, calls, and cries. Pitt kept his sharp stick in one hand in case the cries came not from a bird or frog but from a jaguar or caiman.

The noises helped take Pitt’s mind off his fatigue. Without Zhou’s water and protein bar, he might have collapsed, but the minimal nourishment kept him going. Fatigue oozed from his bones, making every step painful. Being unused to the hot, steamy environment only added to his lethargy. Tempted to stop and lie down, he thought of Giordino and the other prisoners, and his feet kept moving.

Though his clothes had dried after his earlier swim, now they were soaked from endless sweat. He prayed for rain, knowing it would help him elude the trackers. But the normally reliable Panamanian skies failed to cooperate, offering nothing more than an occasional drizzle.

He slipped on a patch of mud, then pulled himself onto a tree stump and rested. The darkness also seemed to have slowed the trackers. A distant barking told him he still held a comfortable lead, but he soon spied a faint glow through the foliage from the searcher’s lights.

Pitt dragged himself to his feet and pressed on into the gauntlet of unseen branches. Hour by hour, the night wore on in a cycle of plodding, tripping, and stumbling through the jungle. Always, the din of dogs overshadowed the jungle’s other sounds.

Moving like a zombie, Pitt staggered through a grove of bamboo—then took a step and felt only air. He collapsed over the lip of a narrow ravine, tumbling headfirst down a grassy hill and into a small stream. He sat there for several minutes, the cool water washing away the pain of his bruises and lacerations. Overhead, a seam of twinkling stars provided a faint but welcome light.

The water would give him the chance to escape the pursuing dogs. After refilling Zhou’s canteen, he shuffled down the center of the creek. The water seldom came past his knees, but it was deep enough to mask his tracks. With the starlight, he found the going easier, even as he slipped and fell in the streambed. He followed it for what felt like miles but was in fact only a few hundred yards.

Reaching a low bank, he hobbled up the stream’s opposite bank and entered a grove of kapok trees. A low branch beckoned, and he shimmied onto it and rested.

The jungle had quieted, and he heard few noises except the stream. He no longer detected the chase dogs, giving him hope that he had finally given them the slip. As he leaned against the trunk, he realized the pursuit had been almost as taxing mentally as it was physically.

He was fighting the urge to sleep when he heard a rustling in the bushes across the stream. He looked over his shoulder as a yellow glow bounced through the foliage. He froze as the silhouette of a large dog materialized above the far stream bank, sniffing the ground.

Pitt cursed his bad luck. Following the streambed, he had inadvertently reversed his track and traveled toward his pursuers.