“A ship,” Pitt confirmed. “About five kilometers away.”
“She’ll never see us,” said Maeve anxiously. “We have no lights of our own.”
Giordino disappeared in the deckhouse and quickly reappeared. “Rodney York’s last flare,” he said, holding it up.
Pitt gazed at Maeve. “Do you want to be rescued?”
She looked down at the black sea rolling under the boat and slowly shook her head. “It’s not my decision to make.”
“Al, how say you? A hearty meal and a clean bed strike you as tempting?”
Giordino grinned. “Not half as inviting as a second go-around with the Dorsett clan.”
Pitt circled an arm around Maeve’s shoulder. “I’m with him.”
“Two days,” Maeve murmured thankfully. “I can’t believe I’ll actually see my boys again.”
Pitt said nothing for a moment, thinking of the unknown that lay ahead of them. Then he said gently, “You’ll see them, and you’ll hold them in your arms. I promise you.”
There was never any real inclination to turn from their established goal. Pitt and Giordino’s minds ran as one. They had entered a zone where they were indifferent and uncaring of their own lives. They were so wrapped up in their determination to reach Gladiator Island that neither man bothered to watch as the lights of the passing ship grew smaller and gradually disappeared in the distance.
When the interisland cargo ship carrying the dismantled antenna steamed into Halawa Bay on Molokai, all hands lined the railings and stared in rapt fascination at the peculiar vessel moored in the harbor. The 228-meter-long ship, with its forest of cranes and twenty-three-story derrick rising in the middle of its hull, looked like it had been designed and constructed by an army of drunken engineers, spastic welders and Oklahoma oil riggers.
An expansive helicopter pad hung over the stern by girders as if it was an add-on accessory. The high bridge superstructure rose on the aft end of the hull, giving the ship the general look of an oil tanker, but that’s where any similarity ended. The center section of hull was taken up by an enormous conglomeration of machinery with the appearance of a huge pile of scrap. A veritable maze of steel stairways, scaffolding, ladders and pipes clustered around the derrick, which reached up and touched the sky like a gantry used to launch heavy rockets into space. The raised house on the forecastle showed no sign of ports, only a row of skylight-like windows across the front. The paint was faded and chipped with streaks of rust showing through. The hull was a marine blue, while the superstructure was white. The machinery had once been painted myriad colors of gray, yellow and orange.
“Now I can die happy after having seen it all,” Gunn exclaimed at the sight.
Molly stood beside him on the bridge wing and stared in awe. “How on earth did the admiral ever conjure up the Glomar Explorer?”
“I won’t even venture to guess,” Gunn muttered, gazing with the wonder of a child seeing his first airplane.
The captain of the Lanikai leaned from the door of the wheelhouse. “Admiral Sandecker is on the ship-to-ship phone, Commander Gunn.”
Gunn raised a hand in acknowledgment, stepped from the bridge wing and picked up the phone.
“You’re an hour late,” were the first words Gunn heard.
“Sorry, Admiral. The antenna was not in pristine shape. I ordered the crew to perform routine repair and maintenance during disassembly so that it will go back together with less hassle.”
“A smart move,” Sandecker agreed. “Ask your captain to moor his ship alongside. We’ll begin transferring the antenna sections as soon as his anchors are out.”
“Is that the famous Hughes Glomar Explorer I’m seeing?” asked Gunn.
“One and the same with a few alterations,” answered Sandecker. “Lower a launch and come aboard. I’ll be waiting in the captain’s office. Bring Ms. Faraday.”
“We’ll be aboard shortly.”
Originally proposed by Deputy Director of Defense David Packard, formerly of Hewlett-Packard, a major electronics corporation, and based on an earlier deep ocean research ship designed by Willard Bascom and called the Alcoa Seaprobe, the Glomar Explorer became a joint venture of the CIA, Global Marine Inc. and Howard Hughes, through his tool company that eventually became the Summa Corporation.
Construction was commenced by the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company at their shipyard facilities in Chester, Pennsylvania, and the huge vessel was immediately wrapped in secrecy, with the aid of misleading information. She was launched forty-one months later in the late fall of 1972, a remarkable achievement in technology for a vessel completely innovative in concept.
She then became famous for her raising of a Russian Golf-class submarine from a depth of five kilometers in the middle of the Pacific. Despite news stories to the contrary, the entire sub was raised in pieces and examined, a colossal feat of intelligence that paid great dividends in knowledge about Soviet submarine technology and operation.
After her brief moment of fame, no one quite knew what to do with the Explorer, so she eventually wound up in the hands of the United States government and was included in the Navy’s mothball program. Until recently, she had languished for over two decades in the backwash of Suisun Bay, northeast of San Francisco.
When Gunn and Molly stepped onto the deck of the immense vessel, they felt as though they were standing in the center of an electric generating plant. Seen close up, the scope of the machinery was staggering. None of the tight security that surrounded the vessel during her first voyage was visible. They were met at the top of the boarding ramp by the ship’s second officer and no one else.
“No security guards?” asked Molly.
The officer smiled as he showed them up a stairway leading to a deck below the wheelhouse. “Since this is a commercial operation and we’re not on a secret mission to steal foreign naval vessels from the seafloor, no security measures are necessary.”
“I thought the Explorer was in mothballs,” said Gunn.
“Until five months ago,” replied the officer. “Then she was leased to Deep Abyss Engineering to mine copper and manganese from the deep ocean two hundred kilometers south of the Hawaiian Islands.”
“Have you begun operations?” asked Molly.
“Not yet. Much of the ship’s equipment is ancient by today’s standards and we’ve had to make some major changes, especially to the electronics. At the moment, the main engines are acting up. Soon as they’re repaired, we’ll be on our way.”
Gunn and Molly exchanged questioning looks without voicing their concern. As if tuned to the same wavelength, they wondered how a ship that was dead in the water could get them where they had to be in time to deflect the acoustic plague.
The ship’s officer opened the door to a spacious, elegant stateroom. “These quarters were reserved for Howard Hughes in the event he ever visited the ship, an event that is not known to have taken place.”
Sandecker stepped forward and greeted them. “An extraordinary piece of work. I compliment you both. I take it the dismantling turned out to be a tougher job than we estimated.”
“Corrosion was the enemy,” Gunn admitted. “The grid connections fought us every step of the way.”
“I never heard so much cursing,” said Molly with a smile. “The engineers turned the air blue, believe you me.”
“Will the antenna serve our purpose?” asked Sandecker.
“If the sea doesn’t get too nasty and tear it apart at the seams,” replied Gunn, “it should get the job done.”
Sandecker turned and introduced a short plump man a few years over forty. “Captain James Quick, my aides Molly Faraday and Commander Rudi Gunn.”
“Welcome aboard,” said Quick, shaking hands. “How many of your people are coming with you?”
“Counting Ms. Faraday and me, I have a team of thirty-one men and five women,” Gunn answered. “I hope our numbers don’t cause a problem.”
Quick leisurely waved a hand. “No bother. We have more
empty quarters than we know what do with and enough food to last two months.”
“Your second officer said you had engine problems.”
“A stacked deck,” said Sandecker. “The captain tells me a sailing time is indefinite.”
“So it was a case of hurry up and wait,” muttered Gunn.
“A totally unforeseen obstacle, Rudi, I’m sorry.”
Quick set his cap on his head and started for the door. “I’ll gather up my crane operators and order them to begin transferring the antenna from your ship.”
Gunn followed him. “I’ll come along and manage the operation from the Lanikai.”
As soon as they were alone, Molly gazed at Sandecker with canny regard. “How on earth did you ever convince the government to loan you the Glomar Explorer?”
“I bypassed official Washington and made Deep Abyss Engineering an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
Molly stared at him. “You purchased the Glomar Explorer?”
“I chartered her,” he corrected her. “Cost me an arm and half a leg.”
“Is there room in NUMA’s budget?”
“Circumstances demanded a quick deal. I wasn’t about to haggle with so many lives in the balance. If we’re proven right about the deadly acoustic convergence, I’ll shame Congress out of the funds. And to be on the safe side, I hammered out a performance clause.”
“Finding the Explorer nearby after the Navy refused the Roosevelt was like stumbling on a gold mine.”
“What luck giveth, luck taketh away.” Sandecker shook his head slowly. “The Explorer is in Molokai because of propeller shaft bearing failure during the voyage from California. Whether she can get under way and put us on site before it’s too late is open to question.”
The big starboard cranes used to lift machinery were soon extended outward over the open cargo deck of Lanikai. Hooks attached to the boom cables were lowered and coupled to the antenna sections before hoisting and swinging them on board the Glomar Explorer, where they were stacked on an open area of the deck in numbered sequence for reassembly.
Within two hours, the transfer was completed and the antenna sections tied down on board the Explorer. The little cargo ship pulled up her anchors, gave a farewell blast of her air horn and began moving out of the harbor, her part of the project finished. Gunn and Molly waved as the Lanikai slowly pushed aside the green waters of the bay and headed out into the open sea.
The NUMA team members were assigned quarters and enjoyed a well-deserved meal from the Explorer’s expansive galley before bedding down in staterooms that had gone unused since the ship wrestled the Soviet sub from the deep waters of the Pacific. Molly had taken over the role of housemother and circulated among the team to make sure none had come down sick or had injured themselves during the antenna breakdown.
Gunn returned to the former VIP quarters once reserved for the eccentric Howard Hughes. Sandecker, Captain Quick and another man, who was introduced as Jason Toft, the ship’s chief engineer, were seated around a small game table.
“Care for a brandy?” asked Quick.
“Yes, thank you.”
Sandecker sat wreathed in cigar smoke and idly sipped the golden liquid in his glass. He did not look like a happy camper. “Mr. Toft has just informed me that he can’t get the ship under way until critical parts are delivered from the mainland.”
Gunn knew the admiral was churning inside, but he looked as cool as a bucket of ice on the exterior. He looked at Toft. “When do you expect the parts, Chief?”
“They’re in flight from Los Angeles now,” answered Toft, a man with a huge stomach and short legs. “Due to land in four hours. Our ship’s helicopter is waiting on the ground at the Hilo airport on the big island of Hawaii to terry the parts directly to the Explorer.”
“What exactly is the problem?” asked Gunn.
“The propeller shaft bearings,” Toft explained. “For some strange reason, because the CIA rushed construction, I guess, the propeller shafts were not balanced properly. During the voyage from San Francisco the vibration cracked the lubricating tubes, cutting off the flow of oil to the shaft bearings. Friction, metal fatigue, overstress, whatever you want to call it, the port shaft froze solid about a hundred miles off Molokai. The starboard shaft was barely able to carry us here before her bearings burned out.”
“As I told you earlier, we’re working under a critical deadline.”
“I fully understand the scope of your dilemma, Admiral. My engine-room crew will work like madmen to get the ship under way again, but they’re only human. I must warn you, the shaft bearings are only part of the problem. The engines may not have many hours on them, having only taken the ship from the East Coast to the middle of the Pacific and then back to California, back in the 1970s, but without proper attention for the last twenty years, they are in a terrible state of neglect. Even if we should get one shaft to turn, there is no guarantee we’ll get past the mouth of the harbor before breaking down again.”
“Do you have the necessary tools to do the job?” Sandecker pressed Toft.
“The caps on the port shaft have been torn down and the bearings removed. Replacement should go fairly smoothly. The port shaft, however, can only be repaired at a shipyard.”
Gunn addressed himself to Captain Quick. “I don’t understand why your company didn’t have the Explorer refitted at a local shipyard after she came out of mothballs in San Francisco.”
“Blame it on the bean-counters.” Quick shrugged. “Chief Toft and I strongly recommended a refit before departing for Hawaii, but management wouldn’t hear of it. The only time spent at the shipyard was for removal of much of the early lifting equipment and the installation of the dredging system. As for standard maintenance, they insisted it was a waste of money and that any mechanical failures could be repaired at sea or after we reached Honolulu, which obviously we failed to do. And on top of that, we’re way undermanned. The original crew was 172 men, I have 60 men and women on board, mostly maritime crewmen, crane and equipment operators and mechanics to maintain the machinery. Twelve of that number are geologists, marine engineers and electronics experts. Unlike your NUMA projects, Commander Gunn, ours is a bare-bones operation.”
“My apologies, Captain,” said Gunn. “I sympathize with your predicament.”
“How soon can you get us under way?” Sandecker asked Toft, trying to keep the fatigue of the past few weeks from showing.
“Thirty-six hours, maybe more.”
The room went silent as every eye was trained on Sandecker. He fixed the chief engineer with a pair of eyes that went as cold as a serial killer’s. “I’ll explain it to you one more time,” he offered sharply, “as candidly as I can put it. If we are not on station at the convergence site with our antenna positioned in the water thirty-five hours from now, more people will die than inhabit most small countries. This is not a harebrained fantasy or the script for a Hollywood science-fiction movie. It’s real life, and I for one do not want to stand there looking at a sea of dead bodies and say `If only I’d made the extra effort, I might have prevented it.’ Whatever magic it takes, Chief, we must have the antenna in the water and positioned before 800 A.M. the day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll not promise the impossible,” Toft came back sternly. “But if we can’t make your schedule, it won’t be for the lack of my engine-room people working themselves to death.” He drained his glass and walked from she room, closing the door heavily behind him.
“I’m afraid you upset my chief engineer,” Quick said to Sandecker. “A bit harsh, weren’t you, laying the blame on him if we fail?”
Sandecker stared at the closed door thoughtfully. “The stakes are too high, Captain. I didn’t plan it this way, certainly not for the burden to sit on Chief Toft’s shoulders. But like it or not, that man holds the fate of every human being on the island of Oahu in his hands.”
At 3:30 P.M. the following afternoon, a haggard and grimy Toft stepped into the wheelhouse and announced to Sand
ecker, Gunn and Captain Quick, “The bearings in the port shaft have been replaced. I can get us under way, but the best speed I can give you is five knots with a little edge to spare.”
Sandecker pumped Toft’s hand. “Bless you, Chief, bless you.”
“What is the distance to the convergence site?” asked Quick.
“Eighty nautical miles,” Gunn answered without hesitation, having worked the course out in his mind over a dozen times.
“A razor-edge margin,” Quick said uneasily. “Moving at five knots, eighty nautical miles will take sixteen hours, which will put us on your site a few minutes before oh-eight hundred hours.”
“Oh-eight hundred hours,” Gunn repeated in a tone slightly above a whisper. “The precise time Yaeger predicted the convergence.”
“A razor-thin margin,” Sandecker echoed, “but Chief Toft has given us a fighting chance.”
Gunn’s face became drawn. “You realize, I hope, Admiral, that if we reach the area and are hit by the convergence, we all stand a good chance of dying.”
Sandecker looked at the other three men without a change of expression. “Yes,” he said quietly. “A very good chance.”
Shortly after midnight, Pitt took his final sighting of the stars and marked his chart under the light of a half-moon. If his calculations were in the ballpark, they should be sighting Gladiator Island within the next few hours. He instructed Maeve and Giordino to keep a lookout ahead while he allowed himself the luxury of an hour’s sleep. It seemed to him that he had barely drifted off when Maeve gently shook him awake.
“Your navigation was right on the button,” she said, excitement in her tone. “The island is in sight.”
“A beautiful job .of navigating, old buddy,” Giordino congratulated him. “You beat your estimated time of arrival.”
“Just under the wire too,” Maeve said, laughing. “Dead leaves are beginning to fall off the sails.”
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