The NUMA submersible piloted by Dave Lowden surfaced half a kilometer off the junk’s beam. Thanks to the skilled ship handling of Murphy’s helmsman, Shanghai Shelly came to a smart stop less than two meters from the sub’s hatch tower. This time, all the submersible’s crew, except Lowden, stepped aboard dry.
Giordino rushed back on deck after alerting Admiral Sandecker of the situation and advising the pilot of the flying boat to land alongside the junk. He stared straight down at Lowden, who was standing half in and half out of the sub.
“Stand by,” hailed Giordino. “I want to take her back down.”
Lowden waved negatively. “No can do. We developed a leak in the battery casing. Four of them shorted. Not nearly enough power left for another dive.”
Lowden’s voice trailed away in icy silence. In the blank numbness of total failure, Giordino struck his fist against the railing. The NUMA scientists and engineers, Stacy and Salazar, even the crew of the junk, stared mutely into the beaten expression that lined his face.
“Not fair,” he muttered in a sudden seething anger. “Not fair.”
He stood there a long time, staring down into the unsympathetic sea as if penetrating its depths. He was still standing there when Admiral Sandecker’s aircraft appeared from the clouded sky and circled the drifting junk.
Stacy and Salazar were shown to the cabin where Jimmy Knox lay barely conscious. A man with balding gray hair and a warm twinkle in his eyes rose from a chair by the bed and nodded.
“Hello, I’m Harry Deerfield.”
“Is it all right to come in?” Stacy asked.
“Do you know Mr. Knox?”
“We’re friends from the same British survey ship,” answered Salazar. “How is he?”
“Resting comfortably,” said Deerfield, but the expression in his face suggested anything but a fast recovery.
“Are you a doctor?”
“Pediatrics actually. I took a six-week hiatus to help Owen Murphy sail his boat from the builder to San Diego.” He turned to Knox. “You up to some visitors, Jimmy?”
Knox, pale and still, lifted the fingers of one hand in the affirmative. His face was swollen and blistered, but his eyes looked strong, and they brightened noticeably when he recognized Stacy and Salazar. “Bless the Lord you made it safely,” he rasped. “I never thought I’d see the two of you again. Where’s that mad Plunkett?”
“He’ll be along soon,” said Stacy, giving Salazar a keep-quiet look. “What happened, Jimmy? What happened to the
“I saw no sign of them. They had vanished too.
Knox’s voice died to a whisper, and it was obvious he was losing a battle to keep from slipping into unconsciousness. The will was there but the body was exhausted. His eyes closed and his head rolled slightly to one side.
Dr. Deerfield motioned Stacy and Salazar toward the door. “You can talk again later, after he’s rested.”
“He will recover?” asked Stacy softly.
“I can’t say,” Deerfield hedged in good medical tradition.
“What exactly is wrong with him?”
“Two or more cracked ribs as far as I can tell without an X ray. Swollen ankle, either a sprain or a fracture. Contusions, first-degree burns. Those are injuries I can cope with. The rest of his symptoms are not what I’d expect from a man who survived a shipwreck.”
“What are you talking about?” Salazar asked.
“Fever, arterial hypotension, a fancy name for low blood pressure, severe erythema, stomach cramps, strange blistering.”
“And the cause?”
“Not exactly my field,” Deerfield said heavily. “I’ve only read a couple of articles in medical journals. But I believe I’m safe in saying Jimmy’s most serious condition was caused by exposure to a supralethal dose of radiation.”
Stacy was silent a moment, then, “Nuclear radiation?”
Deerfield nodded. “I wish I was wrong, but the facts bear me out.”
“Surely you can do something to save him?”
Deerfield gestured around the cabin. “Look around you,” he said sourly. “Does this look like a hospital? I came on this cruise as a deckhand. My medical kit contains only pills and bandages for emergency treatment. He can’t be airlifted by helicopter until we’re closer to land. And even then I doubt whether he can be saved with the therapeutic treatments currently available.”
“Hang them!” Knox cried, startling everyone. His eyes blinked open suddenly, gazing through the people in the cabin at some unknown image beyond the bulkhead. “Hang the murdering bastards!”
They stared at him in astonishment. Salazar stood shaken. Stacy and Deerfield rushed toward the bed to calm Knox as he feebly tried to lift himself to an upright position.
“Hang the bastards!” Knox repeated with a vengeance. It was as though he was uttering a curse. “They’ll murder again. Hang them!”
But before Deerfield could inject him with a sedative, Knox stiffened, his eyes glistened for an instant, and then a misty film coated them and he fell back, gave a great heaving sigh, and went limp.
Deerfield swiftly applied cardiopulmonary resuscitation, fearful that Knox was too devastated by acute radiation sickness to bring back. He continued until he was panting from fatigue and sweating streams in the humid atmosphere. Finally he acknowledged sadly that he had done everything within his limited power. No man or miracle could bring Jimmy Knox back.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured between breaths.
As if under a hypnotic spell, Stacy and Salazar slowly walked from the cabin. Salazar remained quiet while Stacy began to softly cry. After a few moments, she wiped away the tears with her hand and straightened.
“He saw something,” she murmured.
Salazar looked at her. “Saw what?”
“He knew, in some incredible way he knew.” She turned and looked through the open doorway to the silent figure on the bunk. “Just before the end, Jimmy could see who was responsible for the horrible mass death and destruction.
He stormed up the gangway of the junk, a huge cigar poked in his mouth throwing sparks from the breeze, as regally as if he was holding court. If style awards were handed out for dramatic entrances, Admiral James Sandecker, Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, would have won hands down.
His face looked strained from the grievous news he’d received from Giordino while in flight. As soon as his feet hit Shanghai Shelly’s deck, he raised his hand at the pilot of the flying boat, who gave an acknowledging wave. The aircraft turned into the wind and bounced forward over the crests of the waves until it was airborne and soaring in a graceful bank southeast toward the Hawaiian Islands.
Giordino and Murphy stepped forward. Sandecker focused his gaze on the junk’s owner. ,
“Hello, Owen. I never expected to meet you out here.”
Murphy smiled and shook hands. “Likewise, Jim. Welcome aboard. It’s good to see you.” He paused and pointed to the grimfaced NUMA team who were crowded around them on the open deck. “Now maybe someone will tell me what that big light and thunder show was on the horizon yesterday, and why all these people are popping up in the middle of the ocean.”
Sandecker did not reply directly. He looked about the deck and up at the draped sails. “What have you got yourself here’?”
“Had it custom built in Shanghai. My crew and I were sailing her to Honolulu and then on to San Diego, where I plan to dock her.”
“You know each other?” Giordino asked finally.
Sandecker nodded. “This old pirate and I went to Annapolis together. Only Owen was smarter. He resigned from the Navy and launched an electronics company. Now he’s got more money than the U.S. Treasury.”
Murphy smiled. “Don’t I wish.”
Sandecker suddenly turned serious. “What news of the base since you briefed me over the radio?” he asked Giordino.
“We’re afraid it’s gone,” Giordino replied quietly. “Underwater phone communications from our remaining sub have gone unanswered. Keith Harris thinks the major shock wave must have struck shortly after we evacuated. As I reported, there wasn’t enough space to evacuate everybody in two subs. Pitt and a British marine scientist volunteered to stay below.”
“What’s being done to save them?” Sandecker demanded.
Giordino looked visibly cast down, as though all emotion had been drained away. “We’ve run out of options.”
Sandecker went cold in the face. “You fell down on the job, mister. You led me to believe you were returning in the backup submersible.”
“That was before Lowden surfaced with shorted batteries!” Giordino snapped back resentfully. “With the first sub sunk and the second inoperable, we were stonewalled.”
Sandecker’s expression softened, the coldness was gone, his eyes saddened. He realized Giordino had been dogged by ill luck. To even suggest the little Italian had not tried his best was wrong, and he regretted it. But he was shaken by Pitt’s apparent loss too.
To him, Pitt was the son he never had. He’d have ordered out an entire army of specially trained men and secret equipment the American public had no idea existed if fate granted him another thirty-six hours. Admiral Sandecker had that kind of power in the nation’s capital. He didn’t arrive where he was because he’d answered a help wanted ad in the Washington Post.
He said, “Any chance the batteries can be repaired?”
Giordino nodded over the side at the submersible rolling in the swells twenty meters away, tethered on a stern line to Shanghai Shelly. “Lowden is working like a madman trying for a quick fix, but he’s not optimistic.”
“If anyone is to blame, it’s me,” Murphy said solemnly.
“Pitt could still be alive,” said Giordino, ignoring Murphy. “He’s not a man who dies easily.”
“Yes.” Sandecker paused, then went on almost absently. “He’s proven that many times in the past.”
Giordino stared at the admiral, a spark glowing in his eyes. “If we can get another submersible out here…”
“The Deep Quest can dive to ten thousand meters,” Sandecker said, coming back on keel. “She’s sitting on our dock in Los Angeles Harbor. I can have her loaded aboard an Air Force C-Five and on her way here by sundown.”
“I didn’t know a C-Five could land on water,” Murphy interrupted.
“They can’t,” Sandecker said definitely. “The Deep Quest, all twelve metric tons of her, will be air-dropped out the cargo doors.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d guess about eight hours from now.”
“You’re going to drop a twelve-ton submersible out of an airplane by parachute?”
“Why the hell not? It’d take a week to get here by boat.”
Giordino stared at the deck thoughtfully. “We could eliminate a mass of problems if we worked off a support ship with launch and retrieval capacity.”
“The Sounder is the closest ocean survey ship to our area that fits the picture. She’s sonar-mapping the seafloor south of the Aleutians. I’ll order her captain to cut his mission and head toward our position as fast as he can push her.”
“How can I be of help?” asked Murphy. “After sinking your sub, the least I can do is offer the services of my ship and crew.”
Giordino smiled inwardly as Sandecker lifted his arms and gripped Murphy’s shoulders. Laying on the hands, Pitt used to call it. Sandecker didn’t just ask an unsuspecting subject for a favor, he made his victims feel as if they were being baptized.
“Owen,” the admiral said in his most reverent tone, “NUMA will be in your debt if we can use your junk as a fleet command ship.”
Owen Murphy was no slouch when it came to recognizing a con job. “What fleet?” he asked with feigned innocence.
“Why, half the United States Navy is converging on us,” answered Sandecker, as if his secret briefing by Raymond Jordan was common knowledge. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of their nuclear submarines was cruising under our hull this minute.”
It was, Murphy mused, the craziest tale he’d ever heard in his life. But no one on board Shanghai Shelly, excepting the admiral himself, had the slightest notion of how prophetic his words were. Nor were they aware that the rescue attempt was the opening act for the main event.
Twenty kilometers away, the attack submarine
Morton casually leaned against a bulkhead with an empty coffee cup dangling in one hand, watching Lieutenant Commander Sam Hauser of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory. The Navy scientist was indifferent to Morton’s presence. He was intent on monitoring his radiochemical instruments and computing beta and gamma intensities received from probes trailing behind the submarine.
“Are we glowing in the dark yet?” asked Morton sarcastically.
“Radioactivity is pretty unevenly distributed,” replied Hauser. “But well below maximum permissible exposure. Heaviest concentration is above.”
“A surface detonation?”
“A ship, yes, not a submarine. Most of the contamination was airborne.”
“Any danger to that Chinese junk north of us?”
Hauser shook his head. “They should have been too far upwind to receive anything but a trace dosage.”
“And now that they’re drifting through the detonation area?” Morton persisted.
“Due to the high winds and turbulent seas during and immediately after the explosion,” Hauser explained patiently, “the worst of the radiation was carried into the atmosphere and far to the east. They should be within safe limits where they are.”
The compartment phone gave off a soft hi-tech chime. Hauser picked, it up. “Yes?”
“Is the captain there, sir?”
“Hold on.” He handed the receiver to Morton.
“This is the captain.”
“Sir, Sonarman Kaiser. I have a contact. I think you should listen to it.”
“Be right there.” Morton hung up the phone, wondering abstractedly why Kaiser didn’t routinely call over the intercom.
The commander found Sonarman First Class Richard Kaiser leaning over his console listening through his earphones, a bewildered expression furrowing his brow. Morton’s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Ken Fazio, was pressing a spare set of phones against his ears. He looked downright dumbstruck.