Pacific Vortex! (Dirk Pitt 1)

“I’ll see that he makes it, sir.” The seaman had squeezed next to Farris and held him in a vicelike grip around the waist.

Pitt, grateful to be rid of the responsibility, merely nodded a thanks and donned his own diving gear, substituting a fresh air tank for the one he’d drained on the descent. Then the seaman tapped on the hatch with the butt end of a knife and let the helmsman have the honor of cracking the cover from the outside.

In theory, they could have all ridden to the surface in the air bubble as it escaped from the submarine, but theory doesn’t always allow for the unexpected, like Pitt’s air valve getting hung up on the lip of the escape hatch and being left behind. For a minute he was poised there, watching helplessly as the others shot to the surface, never once noticing that Pitt had missed their bubblelike elevator.

Pushing his weight downward until the valve came free was relatively easy, but when he swam out into the open sea, another unexpected threat came his way: a Sphyrna Levini, eighteen feet of hammerhead shark. For a moment Pitt thought the great gray two-thousand-pound bulk, one of the few species of sharks known to attack humans, was going to ignore him and pass overhead. But then in an unerased moment in time, he watched the broad, flattened head turn and approach, its mouth a mass of razor-sharp teeth curved into a vicious expression.

Pitt’s Barf was lying useless, back on the submarine; his only weapon, and a pitifully inadequate one at that, was the small, glove-shaped gun that had killed March. As the shark was homing in on the blood clouded around his leg, Pitt stared spellbound at the shark as it swam effortlessly toward him, curving slightly in a circle staring at him from one great eye on the end of the hammer.

It cut its arc even smaller, narrowing the gap until it brushed by him only a few inches away; Pitt lashed out with his left hand and rammed his fist against the monster’s gills. What a useless, almost comical gesture, he thought, but the unexpected contact surprised the shark, and Pitt felt the pressure of water as the shark spun and swam away. But then it made a U-turn and came back. Pitt kept facing it, kept kicking his fins frantically. He stole a look at the surface, no more than thirty feet away, but he wasn’t going to make it; the man-eater was on its second pass and Pitt was down to his last ace.

Pitt held out the gun and carefully aimed; the shark had but to open its mouth and Pitt’s hand would be clenched between its teeth. As the creature moved in, Pitt squeezed the button trigger and shot it squarely in the cold, tranquil left eye.

The shark rolled by and thrashed wildly, the rush of water whirling Pitt in a mad backward somersault as though he were being caught by a breaking surf. With all his strength he recovered and broke for the surface, keeping a wary eye on the shark, glancing skyward so he wouldn’t ram his head into the keel of the Martha Ann. A shadow fell across him; he peered up to see the helmsman twenty feet above, motioning Pitt in his direction. Pitt didn’t need an engraved invitation. He made the distance in ten seconds. Then he turned and waited for the next attack. The great board-headed murder machine had halted and staring menacingly out of its good right eye, its powerful fins barely propelling the massive body through the water. Suddenly it spun about and unpredictably swam off at incredible speed, disappearing in the dark blue of the water.

Exhausted and shaken, Pitt gratefully let himself be pulled up onto the diving platform where helping hands removed his diving gear. He was totally exhausted. Then he looked up and found Boland standing, grimly staring down at him.

“Where’s March?” Boland’s tone was edged with ice.

“Dead,” Pitt replied simply.

“These things happen,” he said, and walked away.

Pitt stared at the drink in his hand. His face was devoid of expression but his eyes were tired and red. The brilliant tropical sunset threw its final rays of the day through a porthole and sparkled off the ice floating in the Scotch. Pitt rolled the glass over his forehead, mingling the condensation with his perspiration. He had finished giving Boland the whole story. And now, when he should have relaxed, he somehow sensed that the terrible events of the past hour were only the beginning of something even more sinister.

“You’re not to blame yourself for March’s murder,” Boland said earnestly. ‘If you had become trapped in the escape chamber, and if he’d drowned, then it would have been on your hands. But God only knows there was no way you could have foreseen a pair of killers roaming the Starbuck!”

“Come off it, Paul,” Pitt said wearily. “I forced that boy to enter the sub. If I hadn’t been so eager to prove a point he’d be alive now.”

“Okay. A life has been lost, but the staggering importance of what you found more than offsets a single life. If it cost me every man in this crew to return the Starbuck safely to the security of Pearl Harbor, I wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice them all, and that includes you and me.”

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Paul,” said Pitt.

Boland smiled. “I’m a nice guy because of your influence with admirals. Beyond that, I think you’re a pretty shrewd operator. I believe your insane act of flooding the forward torpedo compartment has a Machiavellian scheme behind it. Got an explanation?”

“Simple,” Pitt said briefly. “I sabotaged the Starbuck to keep her on the bottom for a few days.”

“Go on,” Boland said. There was no smile now.

“To begin with, there were two armed men down there, and Seaman Farris, who was starved and mistreated. The Starbuck was his prison. He couldn’t escape because there was no place to go. Even the guards came on in shifts. From where, I can’t guess, but they didn’t live on the sub.”

“How can you say for sure?”

“The epicurean in me. I checked the galleys in the crew’s mess and the officer’s wardroom. There wasn’t a hint of groceries. The guards had to eat. Even Farris couldn’t last six months without food. Either there’s a McDonald’s in the neighborhood we don’t know about, or those guys go home for lunch. I strongly suspect the latter. Whoever they are and wherever they come from, they’re lurking around down there right now, waiting fo

r an opportune moment to grab the Martha Ann. If we disappear like the rest, the Navy Department can kiss off the Starbuck for good. That’s why I flooded the torpedo compartment. If our mystery pals get wise to the Martha Ann’s real intent, it stands to reason they’d move the Starbuck the hell out of the area before the Navy steamed over the horizon.”

“We could airlift a crew here inside of three hours.”

“Too late. We’ve been on borrowed time ever since we anchored. Whatever happened to those other ships will probably happen to us.”

Boland looked skeptical. “The whole idea sounds pretty fantastic. According to radar, there isn’t another vessel within five hundred miles, and sonar reports the area clear of any submarines. Where in God’s name can they come from?”

“If I knew the answer to that one,” Pitt said irritably, “I’d demand a raise in pay . . . and get it.”

“Unless you can come up with a tighter case than that,” Boland responded, “we’ll remain anchored here till morning. Then at dawn we’ll begin raising the Starbuck.”

“Wishful thinking,” Pitt said. “By dawn the Martha Ann will be lying beside the Starbuck.”