Havana Storm (Dirk Pitt 23)

“Release the stern line,” Pitt said, “then go to the wheelhouse and see if you can start her.”

“What if someone’s aboard?”

“They probably won’t be armed.” He patted the AK-47 under his arm.

Pitt ran to free the bow and spring mooring lines, then jumped onto the tug’s narrow deck. He raced to the bow, where several towlines from the barge were wrapped around a trio of bollards. The lines had been drawn tight and Pitt worked feverishly to release them.

Ahead of him on the barge, he heard the cries of men trying to douse the flames, while others ran to quell the dock fire. It would be short order before the two injured soldiers would alert the others of their presence. He was relieved to hear the tug’s diesel engine churn to life behind him.

Freeing the last of the barge lines, he scrambled across the squat deck and dashed to the wheelhouse, clutching the AK-47. Bursting through an open side door, he stopped in his tracks.

The wheelhouse was cramped and dim, but he could clearly see Molina standing with an arm locked around Summer’s neck and a pistol held to her temple.

“Put down your weapon,” Molina said. “It is not time to leave just yet.”

Behind him, he heard the sound of additional men charging from the dock and boarding the tug. Pitt could only look at his daughter in anguish as he slowly dropped his weapon to the deck.

52

Rudi, you’re here early.”

Vice President James Sandecker burst into the foyer of his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building like a rabid hyena. A fitness fanatic, he was dressed in a black jogging suit and followed by two out-of-breath Secret Service agents in similar attire.

“I wanted to catch you first thing.” Rudi Gunn was seated waiting on a sofa. “How was your morning run?”

The worst-kept secret in Washington was that the Vice President took a three-mile run around the Mall at five-thirty every morning, much to the chagrin of his security detail.

“A D.C. cab nearly T-boned one of my boys here, but otherwise it’s a glorious morning to be pounding the pavement.”

Sandecker opened the door to his office and waved Gunn in as the two agents waited outside for plainclothes replacements. The Vice President took his place behind a massive desk built from the timbers of a Confederate blockade runner. A retired admiral, Sandecker had been the founding head of NUMA, and Gunn had been one of the first he had hired. He still considered NUMA his baby, and kept close relations with Gunn and Pitt. “What brings you here so early?”

“It’s the Sargasso Sea. She was operating in the Florida Straits, about thirty miles northeast of Havana. Voice and data links have now been nonresponsive for more than twenty-four hours.”

“Any distress calls or emergency beacons?”

“No, sir.”

“She’s captained by Malcomb Smith, isn’t she?”

“That’s correct.”

“He’s a good man.”

“Pitt and Giordino are also aboard.”

Sandecker pulled out a thick cigar, his lone vice, and lit it up. “What were they doing off of Cuba? You weren’t helping the CIA, were you?”

“No, nothing like that. They were tracking a series of toxic mercury plumes that have cropped up in the Caribbean.” Gunn explained the sites they’d surveyed off the southern coast of Cuba. “Pitt believes the mercury plumes are the result of an underwater mining operation targeting hydrothermal vents. We’ve traced seismic events to each of the areas consistent with the signature of land mining explosions.”

“Underwater blasting?”

“That’s what we think. Pitt was tracking some activity at a site in the Florida Straits when we lost contact.”

“Who’s responsible for the mining?” Sandecker asked.

“We don’t know yet, but we suspect Cuban involvement.”

“Have you searched for the ship?”