“We’ve got to bring Dirk up before the next patrol comes along,” said Giordino, carefully dropping the line again.
To Pitt, it felt as if he were being hauled topside in the time it took to fry an egg. But less than ten meters from the rim, his ascent abruptly stopped. No word of washing, no word of encouragement, only silence. It could only mean one thing. His timing was unlucky. A patrol must be approaching. Unable to see what was occurring on the ledge above, he pressed his body into a small crevice, lying rigid and still, listening for sounds in the night.
Maeve had spotted the beam of light as it swung around one wall of the Castle and immediately alerted Giordino, Quickly, he secured the line around a tree to maintain tension so Pitt wouldn’t be dropped back onto the beach, He brushed dirt and dead leaves over the section of rope that showed but had no time to conceal the grappling hook.
“What about Dirk?” Maeve whispered frantically, “He might wonder what happened and call up to us.”
“He’ll guess the plot and be as quiet as a mouse.” Giordino answered with certainty. He shoved her roughly into the underbrush beside the path. “Get in there and stay low till the guards pass by.”
Inexorably, the unswerving single beam of light grew larger as it approached. After having walked their circuit a hundred times in the past four months without seeing so much as a strange footprint, the two-man patrol should have been lax and careless. Routine inaction leads to boredom and indifference. They should have walked right on past, seeing only the same rocks, the same bends in the path, hearing the same faint beat of the surf pounding the rocks far below. But these men were highly trained and highly paid. Bored, yes, lethargic, no.
Giordino’s pulse jumped at seeing that the guards were studying every inch of the path as they walked. He could not have known that Dorsett paid a twenty-five thousand’ dollar bonus for the severed hand of every diamond smuggler that was caught. What became of the rest of the body was never known, much less discussed. These men took their work seriously. They spied something and stopped directly in front of Maeve and Giordino.
“Hello, here’s something the last patrol missed, or wasn’t here an hour ago.”
“What do you see?” asked his partner.
“Looks like a grappling hook off a boat.” The first guard dropped to one knee and brushed away the hurried camouflage. “Well, well, it’s attached to a line that drops down the cliff.”
“The first attempt to enter the island from the bluffs since that party of Canadian smugglers we caught three years ago.” Afraid to stand too close to the edge, the guard beamed his light down the cliff face, but saw nothing.
The other guard pulled out a knife and made ready to cut the line. “If any are waiting to come up from below, they’re about to be awfully disappointed.”
Maeve sucked in her breath as Giordino stepped out of the bushes onto the path. “Don’t you characters have anything better to do than wander around at night?”
The first guard froze, his knife hand raised in the air. The second guard spun around and leveled his Bushmaster M-16 assault rifle at Giordino. “Freeze in your position or I’ll fire.”
Giordino did as he was told, but tensed his legs in preparation to spring. Fear and temporary shock gripped him at realizing it was only a matter of seconds before Pitt would be hurtling toward the sea and rocks below. But the guard’s face went blank and he lowered his weapon.
His partner looked at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
He broke off, peered behind Giordino and saw a woman step into the beam of light. There was no fear in her expression, rather it was one of anger. “Put away your silly guns and behave as you were trained!” she snapped.
The guard with the flashlight beamed it at Maeve. He stood in silent surprise, peering intently into her face before finally mumbling, “Miss Dorsett?”
“Fletcher,” she corrected him. “Maeve Fletcher.”
“I ... we were told you drowned.”
“Do I look like I’ve been floating in the sea?” Maeve, in her ragged blouse and shorts, wasn’t sure how she appeared to the guards. But she knew without doubt that she didn’t look like the daughter of a billionaire diamond tycoon.
“May I ask what you’re doing here this time of the morning?” the guard asked politely but firmly.
“My friend and I decided to take a walk.”
The guard with the knife wasn’t buying it. “You’ll excuse me,” he said, grabbing the line in his free hand in readiness to slice it with his left, “but there is something very wrong here.”
Maeve stepped over and abruptly slapped the man with the leveled rifle across the cheek. The startling display of supremacy surprised both guards, and they hesitated. Swift as a coiled rattler, Giordino sprang at the nearer guard, brushing away the assault rifle and smashing his head into the man’s stomach. The guard grunted in a violent convulsion before crashing to the ground on his back. Giordino, losing his footing, toppled across the fallen guard.
In the same instant, Maeve threw herself at the guard poised to cut Pitt’s lifeline, but he swung a vicious backhand that caught her on the side of the head and stopped her in her tracks. Then he dropped the knife and threw up his assault rifle, the index finger of his right hand sliding against the trigger as he aimed the barrel at Giordino’s chest.
Giordino knew he was dead. Entangled with the offset guard, he had no time for any defensive move. He knew it was impossible to reach the guard before he saw the flash from the muzzle. He could do nothing but stiffen his body in expectation of the bullet’s impact.
But no shot rang out and no bullet struck Giordino’s flesh.
Unnoticed, a hand with an arm attached snaked over the edge of the cliff, reached up and snatched the ripe, jerking it out of the guard’s hands. Before the guard drew another breath, he was yanked into space. His final scream of terror echoed throughout the black void until it became muffled and died as if covered by a funeral shroud.
Then Pitt’s head, lit by the flashlight on the ground, raised above the cliff’s edge. The eyes blinked in the glare of the light and then the lips turned up in a slight grin.
“I believe that’s what you call flying in the face of adverse opinion.”
Maeve hugged Pitt. “You couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune moment.”
“How come you didn’t blast away with your little pop gun?” asked Giordino.
Pitt pulled the tiny automatic out of his back pocket and held it in the palm of his hand. “After the guard with the flashlight failed to find me hiding in a crevasse, I waited a minute and then pulled myself up to the edge of the cliff to see what was happening. When, I saw you were within an instant of being shot, there was no time to draw and aim. So I did the next best thing.”
“Lucky he did,” Maeve said to Giordino, “or you wouldn’t be here.”
Giordino was not one to display maudlin sentiment “Next chance I get, I’ll carry out his trash.” He glanced down at the guard who was writhing on the ground in the fetal position, clutching his abdomen. He picked up the M-16 and checked the ammo clip. “A nice addition to our arsenal.”
“What do we do with him?” asked Maeve. “Chuck him over the cliff?”
“Nothing so drastic,” answered Pitt. Instinctively, he glanced in both directions along the path leading along the ledge. “He can’t hurt us now. Better to gag and tie him up and leave him for his buddies to find. When he and his partner don’t show up to check in at the next guard station, they’re certain to come searching for them.”
“The next patrol won’t show up for another fifty minutes,” said Giordino, rapidly pulling the nylon line over the cliff’s edge onto the path. “Time enough for a good head start.”
Minutes later the guard, his eyes wide with fright and clothed only in his underwear, hung in space from the grappling hook, ten meters below the rim of the cliff top. The nylon line was wrapped around his body tightly, like a cocoon.
With Maeve as a guide, t
hey set off along the cliff path. Giordino packed the diminutive automatic pistol, while Pitt, now clad in the guard’s uniform, carried the Bushmaster M-16. They no longer felt exposed and helpless. Irrational, Pitt knew, for there must have been no less than a hundred other security guards standing watch over the mines and the island’s shoreline. That wasn’t the worst of their problems. Now that there was no returning to the Marvelous Maeve, they would have to seek other means of transport, a plan Pitt had always held in the back of his mind without the foggiest notion of how to carry it out. That wasn’t a primary concern just yet. What mattered now was finding Maeve’s boys and stealing them out of the hands of their crazy grandfather.
After traveling about five hundred meters, Maeve held up a hand and gestured into the thick underbrush. “We’ll cross the island here,” she informed them. “A road curves to within thirty meters of where we stand. If we’re careful and remain out of sight of any traffic, we can follow the road into the central housing area for Dorsett employees.”
“Where are we in relation to the volcanoes that anchor each end of the island?” asked Pitt.
“We’re about half way between and opposite the lagoon.”
“Where do you think your boys might be held?” Giordino put to her.
“I wish I knew,” she said distantly. “My first guess is the manor house, but I wouldn’t put it past my father to keep them under guard, in the security compound, or worse, they’re kept by Jack Ferguson.”
“Not a good idea to wander around like tourists looking for a restaurant,” said Pitt.
“I’m with you,” Giordino agreed. “The proper thing to do is find someone in authority with the answers and twist his arm.”
Pitt fastidiously straightened the jacket of his stolen uniform and brushed off the shoulders. “If he’s on the island, I know just the man.”
Twenty minutes later, after traveling over a road that wound in a series of hairpin turns over the spine of the island, they approached the compound that housed the mining engineers and the security guards. Keeping in the sheltered gloom of the underbrush, they skirted the detention camp for the Chinese laborers. Bright lights illuminated the barracks and open grounds, surrounded by a high electrified fence that was topped by rows of circular razor wire. The area was so heavily secured by electronic surveillance systems that no guards were walking around the perimeter.
In another hundred meters, Maeve stopped and gestured for Pitt and Giordino to drop behind a low hedge that bordered a concrete thoroughfare. One end of the road ended at a driveway that passed through a large arched gate to the Dorsett family manor house. A short distance in the opposite direction, the road split. One broad avenue trailed down a slope to the port in the center of the lagoon, where the docks and warehouses reflected a weird appearance under the eerie yellow glow of sodium-vapor lamps. Pitt took an extra minute to study the big boat tied beside the dock. Even at this distance, there was no mistaking the Dorsett yacht. Pitt was especially pleased to see a helicopter sitting on the upper deck.
“Does the island have an airstrip?” he asked Maeve.
She shook her head. “Daddy refused to construct one, preferring all his transportation by sea. He uses a helicopter to carry him back and forth from the Australian mainland. Why do you want to know?”
“A process of elimination. Our getaway bird sits yonder on the yacht,” Pitt said.
“You clever man, you had that in mind all along.”
“I was merely swept up in a orgy of inspiration,” Pitt said artfully, then asked, “How many men guard the yacht?”
“Only one, who monitors the dock security systems.”
“And the crewmen?”
“Whenever the boat is docked at the island, Daddy requires the crew to stay in quarters ashore.”
Pitt took note that the other fork in the road curved toward the main compound. The mines inside the volcanoes were alive with activity, but the central area of the Dorsett Consolidated Mining community was deserted. The dock beside the yacht appeared totally deserted under the floodlights mounted on a nearby warehouse. Everyone else, it seemed, was asleep in bed, a not uncommon circumstance at four o’clock in the morning.
“Point out the chief of security’s house,” Pitt said to Maeve.
“The mining engineers and my father’s servants live in the cluster of buildings closest to the lagoon,” answered Maeve. “The house you want sits on the southeast corner of the security guards’ compound. Its walls are painted gray.”
“I see it.” Pitt drew a sleeve across his forehead to wipe away the sweat. “Is there a way to reach it other than the road?”
“A walkway runs along the rear.”
“Let’s get moving. We don’t have a whole lot of time before daylight.”
They stayed in the shadows behind the hedge and the neatly trimmed trees that stretched alongside the paved shoulders of the road. Tall streetlights were spaced every fifty meters, the same as most city streets. Except for the soft rustle of wild grass and scattered leaves beneath their feet, the three of them moved quietly toward the gray house at the corner of the compound.
When they reached a clump of bushes outside the rear door, Pitt put his mouth to Maeve’s ear. “Have you ever been inside the house before?”
“Only once or twice when I was a little girl and Daddy asked me to deliver a message to the man who headed his security a long time ago,” she replied in a soft murmur.
“Can you say whether the house has an alarm system to detect intruders?”
Maeve shook her head. “I can’t imagine who would want to break into the security chief’s diggings.”
“Any live-in help?”
“They’re housed in a different compound.”
“The back door it is,” Pitt whispered.
“I hope we find a well-stocked kitchen,” muttered Giordino. “I’m not comfortable sneaking around in the dark on an empty stomach, a very empty stomach, I might add.”
“You can have first crack at the refrigerator,” Pitt promised.
Pitt stepped out of the shadows and slipped up to one side of the back door and peered through a window. The interior was lit only by a dim light over a hallway that ended at a stairwell leading to the second floor. Cautiously, he reached over and gently twisted the latch. There was a barely audible click as the shaft slipped from its catch. He took a deep breath and cracked the door ever so slightly. It swung on its hinges noiselessly, so he pushed it wide open and stepped into a rear entryway that opened into a small kitchen. He stepped across the kitchen and quietly closed a sliding door leading to a hallway. Then he turned on the light. At the signal, Maeve and Giordino followed him in.
“Oh, thank you, God,” muttered Giordino in ecstasy at seeing a beautifully decorated kitchen over whose counters and oven hung expensive cooking utensils fit for a gourmet chef.
“Warm air,” Maeve whispered happily. “I haven’t felt warm air in weeks.”
“I can taste the ham and eggs already,” said Giordino.
“First things first,” Pitt said quietly.
Turning the light out again, he slipped the hallway door open, leveled the assault rifle and stepped into the hallway. He cocked his head and listened, hearing only the soft noise of a heater fan. Flattening himself against the wall, he moved along the hallway under the muted light before starting up the carpeted stairway, testing each step for a squeak before setting his weight on it.
At the landing at the top of the stairs, he found two closed doors, one on either side. He tried the one to his right. The room was furnished as a private office with computer, telephones and file cabinets. The desk was incredibly orderly and free of clutter, the same as the kitchen. Pitt smiled to himself. He expected no less from the inhabitant. Sure of himself now, he stepped over to the left door, kicked it open and switched on the light.
A beautiful Asian girl, no more than eighteen, with long black silken hair falling over the side of the bed to the floor, stared in bulging-e
yed fright at the figure standing in the doorway with an assault rifle. She opened her mouth as if to scream but emitted a muted gurgling sound.
The man next to her was a cool customer. He lay on his side, eyes closed, and made no attempt to turn and look at Pitt. Pitt would have missed the fractional movement but for the apparent indifference of the man. He lightly pulled the trigger, sending two quick shots into the pillow. The muzzle blast was muffled by the gun’s suppressor and came like a pair of handclaps. Only then did the man in bed bolt upright and stare at a hand that was bleeding from a bullet through the palm.
Now the girl shrieked, but neither man seemed to care. They both waited patiently until she froze into silence.
“Good morning, Chief,” said Pitt cheerfully. “Sorry to inconvenience you.”
John Merchant blinked in the light and focused his eyes on his intruder. “My guards will have heard the screams and come on the run,” he said calmly.
“I doubt that. Knowing you, I should judge that feminine screams coming from your living quarters are considered a nightly occurrence by your neighbors.”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“How quickly they forget.”
Merchant squinted and then his mouth dropped open in recognition. His face registered abject disbelief. “You can’t―be ... you can’t be ... Dirk Pitt!”
As if prompted, Maeve and Giordino came into the room. They stood there behind Pitt, saying nothing, looking at the two people in bed as if watching a staged drama.
“This has to be a nightmare,” Merchant gasped.
“Do you bleed in your dreams?” asked Pitt, slipping his hand under Merchant’s pillow, retrieving the nine-millimeter automatic the security chief was reaching for and throwing it to Giordino. He thought the slimy little man would come around to accepting the situation, but Merchant was too stunned at seeing the ghosts of three people he thought were dead.
“I saw you cast adrift with my own eyes, before the storm struck,” Merchant said in a dull monotone. “How is it possible you all survived?”
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