Havana Storm (Dirk Pitt 23)

With an angry resignation, Summer slid into the pilot’s seat and gazed into the darkness, wondering how much longer she had left to live.

69

A trickle of cold sweat ran down Pitt’s back as he watched the Starfish being deposited on the pile of explosives. The ROV’s underwater cameras tracked the bulk cutter as it left the submersible and crawled to the utility platform, which had been separately lowered to the seafloor. The cutter stopped alongside the platform and used its manipulator to pluck up the end of the coiled detonator tube filled with TNT.

The bulk cutter reversed course and began crawling back toward the explosives trench, unraveling the tube along its side. It eventually pulled the snake-like detonator tube clear of the utility platform, trailing a wire cable. Tagged with small floats, the cable led to the surface, where a console operator a few rows ahead of Pitt could ignite the charge on command.

Pitt glanced around the control room and dismissed any thought of trying to commandeer the bulk cutter. Three men operated its controls from an expanded console near the front of the room. Near it was a side exit door, guarded by a pair of armed soldiers. Farther back was an unoccupied table used for the auxiliary cutter, followed by a half-dozen staggered workstations that controlled the ROVs, the utility platform, and numerous shipboard cameras.

Nearest Pitt was one of the ROV control stations: a large table topped with several monitors and a joystick control system. A slight man in military fatigues and cap hunkered over the controls, engrossed in tracking the movements of the bulk cutter with his ROV’s camera.

Pitt watched the camera’s view of the detonator tube trailing beside the cutter and had an idea. He’d need some help, but it was all that time allowed.

The key was the ROV and its operator station at the back of the room. Weaponless, Pitt stepped to a nearby bookshelf filled with technical manuals. He selected the thickest one, then crept back to the station. As the operator focused on the controls, he never noticed Pitt step behind him and smash the binder into his temple.

The operator let out a muted grunt as he tumbled from his chair, a communications headset flying off him. Pitt instantly slipped an arm around his throat and squeezed in a tight choke hold. The dazed man gave little resistance as Pitt dragged him out the back door with a few quick steps. The action went undetected. While the front of the control room was brightly illuminated by the video screen, the rear was virtually black.

Outside, the operator regained his bearings and tried to break free. Pitt didn’t give him the opportunity, swinging him forward and driving him into a bulkhead. The man didn’t throw up an arm in time and connected headfirst with the steel wall. His skull made a loud clang, and Pitt felt him go limp.

“I’m sure Díaz offers workmen’s comp,” Pitt muttered. He dragged the man behind a storage locker and removed his cap. Placing it on his own head, he hurried back to the control room and took his place at the ROV controls.

Díaz was yelling and pointing at the big screen, and Pitt immediately saw why. The unmanned ROV had drifted to the bottom and was sitting idle, its main camera pointed at a rock. Pitt kept his face hidden behind the monitors as he grope

d for the toggle and thruster controls. An experienced hand at operating ROVs, Pitt managed to raise the vehicle and move it forward, quieting Díaz’s complaints.

He quickly gained a feel for the ROV, which operated much like a backyard, radio-controlled helicopter. He guided the ROV across the bottom, pursuing the tracks of the bulk cutter until the cutter and its trailing detonator tube came into view.

There were two monitors on his operator’s desk, which relayed video feeds from separate cameras on the front and back of the ROV. Only the front view was displayed on the screen at the front of the room. He experimented with the commands and found the drop-down menu for picture quality.

Díaz wanted to see the detonator tube being inserted and he voiced his wishes from his command seat. Pitt began distorting the picture quality. In frustration, Díaz ordered another ROV to take over and dropped Pitt’s ROV from the big screen.

He readjusted the picture and was relieved to see that the bulk cutter was retracing its tracks toward the Starfish. Pitt quelled the urge to peek in on Summer and studied the flank of the bulk cutter and its trailing explosives.

The cutter crept slowly past the Starfish and proceeded another twenty feet before stopping. Its manipulator reached out to its full lateral extension, swinging the detonator tube from its side.

At Díaz’s command, the tube was released. The forward section coiled into the drill hole, disappearing several feet beneath the base of the trench. The remaining section of tube, with its firing line attached, fell at an angle atop the trench filled with ANFO. Once detonated, the TNT in the tube would initiate a concentrated blast at the heart of the thermal vent’s fissure—and set off the ANFO in a broad eruption.

Pitt followed the drop with the ROV, turning it to face the trench. He eased the ROV back from the fissure to provide a panoramic view of the trench. Careful to avoid passing the second ROV’s camera, he drove the ROV toward the Starfish.

As the yellow submersible loomed up, he spotted Summer in the pilot’s seat. He feverishly hoped she would help him save her life.

70

The rattling sound on the exterior lock signaled everyone in the Sargasso Sea’s lab that the door was about to open. All the occupants scurried to the back of the bay, where they ducked beneath a large desk. Everyone except Dirk and Giordino, who stood at separate angles to the door shielded by a pair of lab benches.

The door flung open and the helmsman Ross was again shoved into the lab at the point of a muzzle. A commando followed him in and looked about. His eyes squinted in puzzlement. It wasn’t the concealed crew at the back of the lab that baffled him as much as the attire of Dirk and Giordino.

Each had a shop towel wrapped around his nose and mouth while wearing crude goggles cut from plastic water bottles. Before the commando could respond, Giordino sidearmed a glass beaker in his direction. The gunman ducked as the beaker struck the door above his head, releasing upon him a shower of glass and liquid.

“Ross, get down!” Dirk yelled.

The helmsman dove to the floor as the commando sprayed the room with gunfire. Anticipating the move, Dirk and Giordino dropped beneath the lab benches. The firing soon stopped as the gunman dropped his weapon and began rubbing his eyes, which were flooding with tears.

At the sound of the shooting, a second commando came rushing through the door. Dirk popped from behind the bench and let his weapon fly. Another sealed glass beaker, it smashed into the doorframe inches above the man. He, too, was instantly overcome, choking and hacking as his eyes swelled.

The pain-inducing liquid was a homemade batch of tear gas concocted from chemicals in the lab. Aided by the ship’s biologist Kamala Bhatt, Dirk had mixed iodine with portions of nitric acid and an acetone solvent and heated it in a sealed container with a match. The mixture was a crude facsimile of riot-control tear gas.

They had tested a small sample on a volunteer crewman, whose red, watery eyes an hour later vouched for its efficacy. Giordino had found a pair of empty beakers in a cabinet, which proved the perfect delivery vehicle.