The truck showed no mercy, pinning the Geely against the steel barrier in hope of propelling it over or through the rail, then down the hillside. But as the vehicles exited the curve, the side rail came to an end, replaced by a series of squat concrete pillars. The sedan slid past the side rail and smashed head-on into the first concrete post.
The car struck with a loud clap that echoed across the landscape. On the opposite hill, a young ranch hand was startled awake by the crash. Sitting upright in an open lean-to he shared with a dozen goats, he peered toward the road beyond. An Army truck was skidding to a halt just past a mangled car. One of the car’s headlights still shone, illuminating the truck a few yards ahead. The boy grabbed his sandals to go lend help, then stopped and watched.
A man in fatigues emerged from the truck. The soldier glanced around as if ensuring no one was watching, then strode toward the car, a flashlight in one hand and a dark object in the other.
Inside the car, Ortiz groaned from the pain of a separated shoulder and a broken nose, having been flung into the headrest. He gathered his senses as warm blood flowed down his chin. “Roberto?”
The driver sat motionless, slumped over the wheel. Roberto’s neck had snapped, killing him instantly, after he had rocketed into the windshield. The Chinese export car had no air bags.
As reality sank in, Ortiz sat up an
d saw the Army truck through the shattered windshield. He wiped his bloodied face and watched as the soldier approached, carrying a dark object.
“Help me. I think my arm is broken,” he said as the soldier pried open the passenger door.
The soldier gave him a cold gaze and Ortiz realized he was not there to offer aid. Sitting helpless, he watched as the soldier raised his arm and swung at him with the object. An instant before it crushed his skull, the minister recognized it as an ordinary tire iron.
4
The diver thrust his legs in a scissors kick, propelling his body swiftly through the clear water. He kept his face down to scan the sandy seafloor that stretched before him like a ragged beige carpet. Detecting a movement on the bottom, he slowed, angling toward the object. It wasn’t a fish but something resembling a huge, brightly colored crab.
The creature traveled on long, spider-like appendages that seemed to rotate along its sides. It emitted a faint blue glow from its eyes, which peered coldly ahead. The diver followed the mock crab as it crawled toward a high protrusion of coral. The crab butted against the coral, then backtracked and tried again. Once more the coral stopped its progress.
The diver watched the crab repeat the movement several times before swimming close and swatting its back. Its blue eyes turned black and its legs stopped clawing. The diver grabbed the crab, tucked it under one arm, and kicked to the surface.
He broke the water amid a gentle swell, close to a modern research ship painted bright turquoise. Side-swimming to a hydraulic dive platform off the stern, he deposited the crab and hoisted himself aboard.
Al Giordino was a short man with the burly build of a professional wrestler combined with the toughness of an elder crocodile. His muscular arms and legs fairly burst the seams of his wetsuit as he rose to his feet, spit out his regulator, and yanked off his dive mask. He brushed away a lock of curly brown hair plastered to his forehead and waved to a man on deck to raise the dive platform.
A minute later, the platform creaked to a stop at deck level. Giordino gathered up the crab with an irksome look and stomped onto the deck. He froze at the sight of the crewman who had raised the platform. It was Dirk Pitt.
Giordino grinned at the sight of his boss and old friend. “Escaped from the tower of power again, I see.”
“Just making sure the NUMA technology budget isn’t being spent on cheap rum and dancing girls.”
Giordino shot Pitt a pained look. “I told you, I’ve sworn off cheap rum since my last pay raise.”
Pitt smiled as he helped Giordino remove his tank and weight belt. Friends since childhood, the two had worked together for years, forging a bond tighter than brothers. As founding employees of NUMA, their underwater scrapes were legendary within the agency. Giordino now headed up NUMA’s Underwater Technology division, spending much of his time field-testing new remote sensing devices and submersible vehicles.
Pitt nodded toward the mechanical crab. “So who’s your arachnoid friend?”
“We call it the Creepy Crawler.” Giordino placed it on a workbench and began stripping off his wetsuit. “It’s designed for extended deepwater survey duty.”
“Power source?” Pitt asked.
“A small fuel cell, which processes hydrogen from seawater. We designed it to crawl across the bottom of the murky depths for upward of six months. We can deploy it from a submersible or even drop it over the side of a ship. With preprogrammed guidance, it will crawl along a directed path until reaching a designated end point. Then she’ll float to the surface and emit a satellite signal that tells us where to pick her up.”
“I assume she’s recording her travels?”
Giordino patted the mechanical creature. “This one’s loaded with a battery of sensors and a video camera, which is activated at periodic intervals. We have a half dozen more in the lab that can be configured with a variety of sensing devices, depending on the mission.”
“Might come in handy when we get to the Cayman Trench.”
Giordino arched a brow. “I figured you didn’t come down to Key West for lunch and a drink at Sloppy Joe’s. Why the Cayman Trench?”
“It’s near the heart of a string of dead zones that have cropped up in a line between Jamaica and the western tip of Cuba.” Pitt summarized his meeting with Gunn and Yaeger in Washington.
“Any idea of the source?” Giordino asked.