“We were swallowed by a whale,” said Giordino, pulling the window curtains closed. “We upset his tummy, and you can guess what happened next.”
“You people are crazy. Give up your weapons. You’ll never get off the island alive.”
Pitt placed the muzzle of his assault rifle against Merchant’s forehead. “The only words I want to hear from you concern the location of Miss Fletcher’s sons. Where are they?”
A spark of defiance gleamed in Merchant’s eyes. “I won’t tell you anything.”
“Then you will surely die,” said Pitt coldly.
“Strange words from a marine engineer and an oceanographer, a man who sets women and children on a pedestal, and who is respected for his word and integrity.”
“I applaud your homework.”
“You won’t kill me,” said Merchant, regaining control of his emotions. “You are not a professional assassin, nor a man who has the stomach for murder.”
Pitt gave a casual shrug. “I’d venture to say that one of your guards, the one I threw over the cliffs about half an hour ago, would disagree.”
Merchant stared at Pitt impassively, not certain whether to believe him. “I do not know what Mr. Dorsett has done with his grandsons.”
Pitt moved the rifle barrel from Merchant’s head to one knee. “Maeve, count to three.”
“One,” she began, as composed as if she were counting lumps of sugar in a cup of tea. “Two ... three.”
Pitt pulled the trigger and a bullet smashed through Merchant’s kneecap. Merchant’s mistress went into another fit of screaming until Giordino clamped his hand over her mouth.
“Can we please have some quiet? You’re cracking the plaster.”
A complete transformation came over Merchant. The evil malignity of the repellant little man was suddenly replaced with a demeanor marked by pain and terror. His mouth twisted as he spoke. “My knee, you’ve shattered my knee!” he rasped in horror.
Pitt placed the muzzle against one of Merchant’s elbows. “I’m in a hurry. Unless you wish to be doubly maimed, I suggest you speak, and speak the truth or you’ll have a tough time brushing your teeth from now on.”
“Miss Fletcher’s sons work in the mines with the other laborers. They’re kept with the others in the guarded camp.”
Pitt turned to Maeve. “It’s your call.”
Maeve looked into Merchant’s eyes, her face taut with emotion. “He’s lying. Jack Ferguson, my father’s overseer, is in charge of the boys. They would never be out of his sight.”
“Where does he hang out?” asked Giordino.
“Ferguson lives in a guest house beside the mansion so he can be at my father’s beck and call,” said Maeve.
Pitt smiled coldly at Merchant. “Sorry, John, wrong answer. That will cost you an elbow.”
“No, please, no!” Merchant muttered through teeth clenched from the pain. “You win. The twins are kept in Ferguson’s quarters when they’re not working in the mines.”
Maeve stepped forward until she was standing over Merchant, distraught and grieved at envisioning the suffering her sons were enduring. Her self-control crumbled as she slapped him sharply, several times across the face. “Six-year-old boys forced to work in the mines! What kind of sadistic monsters are you?”
Giordino wrapped his arms gently around Maeve’s waist and pulled her back into the center of the room, as she broke into anguished sobbing.
Pitt’s face reflected sorrow and anger. He moved the muzzle to within a millimeter of Merchant’s left eye. “One more question, friend John. Where sleeps the helicopter’s pilot?”
“He’s in the mining company’s medical clinic with a broken arm,” Merchant answered sullenly. “You can forget about forcing him to fly you from the island.”
Pitt nodded and smiled knowingly at Giordino. “Who needs him?” He looked about the room and nodded toward the closet. “We’ll leave them in there.”
“Do you intend to murder us?” asked Merchant slowly.
“I’d sooner shoot skunks,” Pitt pointed out. “But since you brought it up, you and your little friend will be tied up, gagged and locked in the closet.”
Merchant’s fear was obvious from the tic at one corner of his mouth. “We’ll suffocate in there.”
“I can shoot you both now. Take your pick.”
Merchant said no more and offered no resistance as he and the girl were bound with the bed sheets, torn into strips, and unceremoniously dumped into the closet. Giordino moved half the furniture in the bedroom against the door to keep it from being forced open from the inside.
“We’ve got what we came for,” said Pitt. “Let’s be on our way to the old homestead.”
“You said I could raid the refrigerator,” protested Giordino. “My stomach is going through rejection pains.”
“No time for that now,” said Pitt. “You can gorge later.”
Giordino shook his head sorrowfully as he stuffed Merchant’s nine-millimeter automatic inside his belt. “Why do I feel as though there’s a conspiracy afoot to deplete my body sugar?”
Seven o’clock in the morning. A blue sky, unlimited visibility and a sea with low swells rolling like silent demons toward unseen shores where they would crash and die. It was a normal day like most days in the tropical waters off the Hawaiian Islands, warm with more than a trace of humidity and a light breeze, generally referred to as the trade winds. It was a Saturday, a day when the beaches at Waikiki and the windward side of the island were slowly coming alive with early birds awake for an early morning dip. Soon they would be followed by thousands of local residents and vacationers looking forward to leisurely hours of swimming in surf subdued by offshore reefs, and sunbathing on heated sand later in the day. Lulled by the relaxing atmosphere, none were remotely aware that this might be their last day on earth.
The Glomar Explorer, only one of her big twin screws driving under full power, pushed steadily toward the site of the deadly acoustic convergence, the sound waves already hurtling through the sea from the four sources. She should have been running a good half hour late, but Chief Engineer Toft had pushed his crew to and beyond the edge of exhaustion. He cursed and pleaded with the engine that strained against its mounts, bound to the only operating shaft, and coaxed another half knot out of it. He swore to get the ship to its meeting with destiny with time to spare, and by God he was doing it.
Up on the starboard wing of the bridge, Sandecker peered through binoculars at a commercial version of the Navy’s SH-60B Sea Hawk helicopter, with NUMA markings, as it approached the ship from bow-on, circled once and dropped on the big ship’s stern landing pad, Two men hurried from the aircraft and entered the aft superstructure. A minute later, they joined Sandecker on the bridge.
“Did the drop go well?” Sandecker asked anxiously.
Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames nodded with a slight smile. “Four arrays of remote acoustical sensing instruments have been deployed under the surface at the required locations thirty kilometers distant from the convergence zone.”
“We laid them directly in the four estimated paths of the sound channels,” added Gunn, who had made the flight with Ames.
“They’re set to measure the final approach and intensity of the sound?” Sandecker asked.
Ames nodded. “The telemetry data from the underwater modems will be relayed by their surface flotation satellite link to the onboard processor and analyst terminal here on board the Explorer. The system works similarly to submarine acoustic locating programs.”
“Fortunately, we have a weather and current window working in our favor,” said Gunn. “All things considered, the sound waves should come together as predicted.”
“Warning time?”
“Sound travels underwater at an average of fifteen hundred meters per second,” replied Ames. “I figure twenty seconds from when the sound waves pass the modems until they strike the reflector dish under the ship.”
“Twenty seconds,” Sandecker repeated. “Damned
little time to mentally prepare for the unknown.”
“Since no one without some kind of protection has survived to describe the full intensity of the convergence, my best estimate of its duration before it is totally deflected toward Gladiator Island is approximately four and a half minutes. Anyone on board the ship who does not reach the dampened shelter will surely die horribly.”
Sandecker turned and gestured at the vivid green mountains of Oahu, only fifteen kilometers distant. “Will any effects reach the people on shore?”
“They might feel a brief but sharp pain inside their heads, but no permanent harm should come to them.”
Sandecker stared out the bridge windows at the huge mass of machinery soaring skyward in the middle of the ship. Infinite miles of cable and hydraulic lines ranged over the deck from the derrick and cranes. Teams of men and women, sitting and standing on platforms suspended in the air like those used by skyscraper window cleaners, worked at reconnecting the seemingly unending number of links on the enormous reflector shield. The giant derrick held the main frame of the shield, while the surrounding cranes lifted the smaller numbered pieces into their slots where they were then joined. Thanks to Rudi Gunn’s foresight in cleaning and oiling the connectors, all parts fit quickly and smoothly. The operation was going like clockwork. Only two more parts were left to install.
The admiral turned his gaze toward the jewel of the Pacific, easily distinguishing details of Diamond Head, the hotels strung along Waikiki Beach, the Aloha Tower in Honolulu, the homes fading into the clouds that always seemed to hover over Mount Tantalus, the jetliners landing at the international airport, the facilities at Pearl Harbor. There could be no room for error. Unless the operation went according to plan, the beautiful island would become a vast killing field.
At last he looked at the man studying the digital numbers on the ship’s computerized navigation system. “Captain Quick.”
The master of the Glomar Explorer looked up. “Admiral Sandecker.”
“How far to the site?”
Quick smiled. It was only the twentieth time the admiral had asked the same question since departing Halawa Bay. “Less than five hundred meters and another twenty minutes until we begin pinpointing the ship over the numbers your people computed for the Global Positioning System.”
“Which leaves us only forty minutes to deploy the reflector shield.”
“Thanks to Chief Toft and his engine-room crew, otherwise we never could have made it on schedule.”
“Yes,” Sandecker agreed. “We owe him big.”
The long minutes passed with everyone in the wheelhouse keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the red digital numbers of the Global Positioning System as they diminished finally to a row of zeros, indicating the ship was over the precise site where the sound rays were calculated to converge and explode with unparalleled intensity. The next project was to hold the ship in the exact spot. Captain Quick focused on programming the coordinates into the automated ship’s control system, which analyzed sea and weather conditions and controlled the thruster jets on the bow and stern. In an incredibly short time span, the Glomar Explorer had achieved station and was able to hover motionless in the water, resisting wind and current within a deviation factor of less than a meter.
Several other systems, each critical to the operation, also came into play. The pitch was feverish. Teams of engineers and technicians, electronics systems experts and scientists worked simultaneously to put the reflector shield in the precise path of the sound waves. The NUMA team, working on platforms far above the deck, made the final connections and attached the shield to the drop hook of the derrick.
Far below, one of the most unique sections of the ship stirred to life. Taking up the middle third of the ship, the 1,367 square meter Moon Pool, as it was called, filled with water as two sections of the center hull, one fore, the other aft, retracted into specially designed sleeves, The true heart of the seafloor dredging system and what had been the recovery operation of the Russian submarine, the Moon Pool was where it all came together, where the dredging hose would be extended thousands of meters deep to the minerals carpeting the ocean’s bottom and where the vast reflector shield would be lowered into the sea.
The engineering systems on board the Glomar Explorer were originally constructed to raise heavy objects from the seafloor, not to lower lighter but more expansive objects downward. Procedures were hurriedly modified for the complex operation. Minor glitches were quickly overcome. Every move was coordinated and performed with precision.
The tension on the lowering cable was increased by the derrick operator until the reflector hung free in the air. The appropriate signal by the NUMA team was given, indicating that the reflector assembly was “all completed.” The entire unit was then lowered diagonally through the rectangular Moon Pool into the sea with centimeters to spare. It was that close. The immersion time ran ten meters a minute. Full deployment by the cables securing the dish at the precise angle and depth to ricochet the sound waves to Gladiator Island took fourteen minutes.
“Six minutes and ten seconds to convergence,” Captain Quick’s voice droned over the ship’s loudspeakers. “All ship’s personnel will go to the engine-room storage compartment at the aft end of the ship and enter as you have been instructed. Do this immediately. I say immediately. Run, do not walk.”
Suddenly, everyone was dropping down ladders and scaffolding, hurrying in unison like a pack of marathon runners toward the propulsion and pump room deep in the bowels of the ship. Here, twenty ship’s crewmembers had been busily sound-isolating the supply compartment with every piece of dampening material they could lay their hands on. The ship’s towels, blankets, bedding and mattresses, along with all cushions from lounge chairs and any scraps of lumber they could scrounge were placed against ceiling, deck and bulkheads to deaden all intruding sound.
As they rushed down the passageways belowdecks, Sandecker said to Ames, “This is the agonizing part of the operation.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ames replied, agilely descending two steps at a time. “The anxiety of wondering if we made a tiny miscalculation that put us in the wrong place at the wrong time. The frustration of not knowing whether we succeeded if we don’t live through the convergence. The unknown factors are mind boggling.”
They reached the engine room storage compartment, which had been selected to ride out the convergence because of its watertight door and its total lack of air ducts. They were checked in by two ship’s officers who were counting heads and handing out sound-deadening headgear that fit over the ears. “Admiral Sandecker, Dr. Ames, please place these over your ears and try not to move around.”
Sandecker and Ames found the NUMA team members settled in one corner of the compartment and joined them, moving beside Rudi Gunn and Molly Faraday, who had preceded them. They immediately gathered around monitoring systems that were integrated with the warning modems and other underwater sensors. Only the admiral, Ames and Gunn held off using the sound deadeners so they could confer right up to the final few seconds.
The compartment quickly filled amid a strange silence. Unable to hear, no one spoke. Captain Quick stood on a small box so he could be observed by all in the room. He held up two fingers as a two-minute warning. The derrick operator, who had the farthest to travel, was the last man to enter. Satisfied that every person on the ship had been accounted for, the captain ordered that the door be sealed. Several mattresses were also pressed against the exit to muffle any sound that seeped into the confined compartment. Quick held up one finger, and the tension began to build until it lay like a mantle over the people packed closely together. All stood. There wasn’t enough room to sit or recline.
Gunn had calculated that the ninety-six men and women had less than fifteen minutes in the tight quarters before their breathable air stagnated and they were overwhelmed by the effects of asphyxiation. Already the atmosphere was beginning to grow stale. The only other immediate danger was claustroph
obia rearing its ugly head. The last thing they needed was unbridled hysteria. He gave Molly an encouraging wink and began monitoring the time while almost everyone else watched the ship’s captain as if he were a symphony orchestra conductor with poised baton.
Quick raised both hands and curled them into fists. The moment of truth had arrived. Everything now hinged on the data analyzed by Hiram Yaeger’s computer network. The ship was on station exactly as directed, the shield was in the precise position calculated by Yaeger and crosschecked by Dr. Ames and his staff. The entire operation down to the slightest detail was acted upon. Nothing less than a sudden and unusual change in sea temperature or an unforeseen seismic occurrence that significantly altered the ocean’s current could spell disaster. The enormous consequences of failure were blanked from the minds of the NUMA team.
Five seconds passed, then ten. Sandecker began to feel the prickle of disaster in the nape of his neck. Then suddenly, ominously, the acoustic sensors, thirty kilometers distant, began registering the incoming sound waves along their predicted paths.
“Good Lord!” muttered Ames. “The sensors have gone off the scale. The intensity is greater than I estimated.”
“Twenty seconds and counting!” snapped Sandecker. “Get your ear mufflers on.”
The first indication of the convergence was a small resonance that rapidly grew in magnitude. The dampened bulkheads vibrated in conjunction with a hum that penetrated the sound-deadening ear protectors. The crowded people in the confined room sensed a mild form of disorientation and vertigo. But no one was struck by nausea and none panicked. The discomfort was borne stoically. Sandecker and Ames stared at each other, fulfillment swamping them in great trembling waves.
Five long minutes later it was all over. The resonance had faded away, leaving an almost supernatural silence behind it.
Gunn was the first to react. He tore off his sound deadeners, waved his arms and shouted at Captain Quick, “The door. Open the door and let some air in here.”
Shock Wave dp-13 Page 49
