Loren finished the last sip of her brandy. `An agent assigned to brief my office claimed the agency did not conduct a major investigation because they saw no threat to United States security or interests."
Pitt stared thoughtfully beyond the walls of the restaurant. "Al Giordino and I were in a Chilean fjord several years ago during a search for a liner hijacked by terrorists. The hijackers had hidden the ship near a glacier. From what I recall of the islands and waterways north of the Straits of Magellan, there are no channels wide and deep enough to permit passage of such gargantuan vessels."
"Maybe they were not intended to sail the seven seas," suggested Loren. "Maybe they were built simply to ride out the predicted cataclysm."
"As fantastic as it seems," said Pitt, attempting to accept the incredible concept, "you're close to the truth. The Wolfs must have spent billions betting on the end of the world."
Pitt became quiet, and Loren could see he was absorbed in his thoughts. She rose from the table and walked to the ladies' room, allowing him time to sift through the conceptions running through his head. Although he found it difficult to accept, he began to see why the later generations of the Wolf family were genetically engineered.
The old Nazis who'd fled Germany were long gone, but they had left in their place a family of superpeople who would be strong enough to survive the coming cataclysm and then take over what was left of the civilized world and rebuild it into a new one, controlled and directed under their exacting standards of superiority.
29
The gray granite cliffs of the gorge rose like giant shadows before they were blotted out by the night sky. Below, the blue-white ice of the glacier glittered and flashed from the glow of a three-quarter moon. The 11,800-foot snow-mantled peak of Cerro Murallon, starlit and cloud-free, soared above the western slopes of the southern Andes before dropping steeply toward the sea, as its chasms became filled with age-old glaciers from a distant past. The night was clear and sharp and the sky ablaze. Revealed from the light of the Milky Way, a small vehicle darted through the menacing walls of the gorge like a bat scanning a desert canyon for food.
It was fall in the Southern Hemisphere, and light snow had already fallen on the upper elevations. Tall conifers marched up the rugged slopes before stopping at the timberline, where the barren rocks took over and rose to the sharp and jagged mountain summits. There wasn't a man-made light to be seen in any direction. Pitt imagined that the scene in daylight would have been one of majestic beauty, but at ten o'clock at night, the steep cliffs and rocky crags became dark and threatening.
The Moller M400 Skycar wasn't much larger than a jeep Cherokee, but it was as stable in flight as a much larger aircraft, and capable of being piloted down city streets and parked in a residential garage. The aerodynamic design, with its sloping, conical bow, gave it a look somewhere between a General Motors car of the future and a rocket fighter out of Star Wars. The four lift/thrust nacelles each held two counter-rotating engines, enabling the Moller to lift off the ground like a helicopter and move horizontally like a conventional aircraft at a cruising speed of three hundred miles an hour, with an operational ceiling of 30,000 feet. Lose an engine or two and it could still land safely without discomfort to the passengers. Even if it suffered a catastrophic component failure, dual airframe parachutes would be deployed to lower the Skycar and its occupants to the ground, undamaged and unhurt.
Sensors and fail-safe systems protected against all errors in the flight mechanisms or computers. The vehicle's four computers constantly monitored all systems, and maintained automatic control on a preset flight path directed by Global Positioning System satellites that guided it over rivers and mountains and through valleys and canyons. The enormously efficient guidance system eliminated the need for a pilot.
Pitt's view of the environment outside the cockpit was limited. He seldom bothered to stare through the canopy. He didn't care to see the plane's shadow under the dim light from the moon whisking over the uneven rocks below, flitting over the tops of the trees, lifting over sharp rises before they could be seen ahead. He especially wasn't interested in seeing how the plane and its shadow almost blended into one. He could watch the flight's path through the virtual reality topographical display, while the automatic navigation equipment flew the Skycar to its preprogrammed destination. Turbulence was dampened by the quick, automatic reaction of the vanes below the engines commanded by the automatic stabilization system.
Pitt found it disconcerting to sit with his arms crossed while the aircraft swept in and around mountains in the dead of night without the slightest assistance from a human brain and hands. He had little choice but to put his trust in the computer guidance system and let it do the flying. If Giordino, seated next to him, was unduly concerned about the computer failing to avoid collision with the side of a mountain, no trace of it showed in his face. Giordino calmly read an adventure novel under a cockpit light, while Pitt turned his attention to a nautical chart showing the underwater depths of the fjord leading to the Wolf shipyard.
There was no plan to fly at safe heights above the tallest of the peaks. This was a stealth mission. The powerful, efficient rotary thrusters were taking them to their destination well out of sight of radar and laser detection.
Both men's bodies were sweating up a storm inside their DUI CF200 series dry suits, which were worn over radiant insulating underwear, but neither of them complained. By dressing for cold-water diving before the flight, they saved time changing after touchdown.
Pitt punched in a code and read the numbers on the box. "Two hundred and twelve miles since we lifted off the ship at Punta Entrada outside of Santa Cruz."
"How much farther?" asked Giordino without looking up from the pages of his novel.
"A little less than fifty miles and another fifteen minutes should put us in the hills above the Wolf shipyard." The exact landing site had been programmed into the computer from an enhanced photo taken from a spy satellite.
"Just enough time to knock out another chapter."
"What's so interesting that you can't tear yourself away from the book?"
"I'm just to the part where the hero is about to rescue the gorgeous heroine who is within seconds of being ravished by the evil terrorists."
"I've read that plot before," Pitt said wearily. He refocused his eyes on the virtual reality display that pictured the terrain ahead in extreme detail through a powerful night-vision scope mounted in the nose of the M400. It was like traveling inside a pinball machine. The mountainous landscape approached and flashed past in a blur. A box in the corner displayed speed, altitude, fuel range, and distance to their destination in red and orange digital numbers. Pitt recalled using a similar system on the aircraft they had flown searching for the hijacked cruise ship over an area of the Chilean fjords not more than a hundred miles south of their present position.
Pitt looked out the bubble canopy at the glacier below. He breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the worst of the mountains fall behind. The moon's rays reflected on a smooth glacier with irregular crevasses slicing through its surface every half mile. The ice spread wider as it flowed toward its rendezvous with the fjord before melting and emptying into the sea.
They were through the worst of the mountains now, and Pitt could discern lights on the horizon beyond the glacier. He knew they were not stars, because they were clustered and twinkling at too low an altitude. He also knew that because of the crisp atmosphere, the lights were much farther away than they looked. Then gradually, almost imperceptibly, he became aware of other light clusters against a plain of pure black. Another five minutes and they were solidly, unmistakably there, the lights of four monstrous ships that blazed like small cities in the night.
"Our objective is in sight," he said evenly, without emotion.
"Damn!" muttered Giordino. "Just when I was coming to the exciting climax."
"Relax. You have another ten minutes to finish it. Besides, I already know how it comes out."
&nb
sp; Giordino looked over at him. "You do?"
Pitt nodded seriously. "The butler did it."
Giordino gave a menacing Fu Manchu squint to his eyes and went back to his book.
The Moller M400 did not fly directly over the lights of the shipyard and the great ships nearby in the fjord. Instead, as if it had a mind of its own, which it did, it banked on a course southwest. Pitt could do little but gaze at the blaze of lights rising on the starboard side of the aircraft.
"Finished." Giordino sighed. "And in case you're interested, it wasn't the butler who killed ten thousand people, it was a mad scientist" He stared out the canopy at the thousands of lights. "Won't they pick us up on their detection systems?"
"A slim possibility at best. The Moller M400 is so small, it's invisible to all but the most sophisticated military radar."
"I hope you're right," said Giordino, stretching. "I'm very modest when it comes to welcome committees."
Pitt beamed a little penlight on his chart. "At this point the computer is giving us a choice between swimming underwater for two miles or walking four miles across a glacier to reach the shipyard."
"Hiking across a glacier in the dark doesn't sound inviting," said Giordino. "What if Mrs. Giordino's little boy falls down a crevasse and isn't found for ten thousand years?"
"Somehow I can't picture you lying in a display case in a museum, being stared at by thousands of people."
"I see nothing wrong with being a star attraction from another time," Giordino said pompously.
"Did it ever occur to you that you'd probably be viewed in the nude? You'd hardly set an example as a manly specimen from the twenty-first century."
"I'll have you know I can hold my own with the best of them."
All further conversation came to an end as the Moller's ground speed began to fall away and it lost altitude. Pitt elected to make their approach underwater, and he programmed the computer, instructing it to land at a preplanned site near the shoreline that had been pinpointed by satellite photo analysts at the CIA. Minutes later, the M400's cascade vane systems on the engines altered their thrust through the duct exits and the craft came to a complete stop, hovering in the air in preparation for setting down. All Pitt could see in the darkness was that they were about thirty feet over a narrow ravine. Then the Moller descended and lightly touched the hard-rock ground. Seconds later, the engines ceased their revolutions and the systems shut down. The navigation readout proclaimed that it had landed only four inches off its programmed mark.
"I've never felt so useless in my life," said Pitt.
"It does tend to make one feel redundant," Giordino added. Only then did he peer out of the canopy. "Where are we?"
"In a ravine about fifty yards from the fjord."
Pitt unlatched the canopy, raised it, and stepped out of the flying vehicle onto the hard ground. The night was not silent. The sounds of shipyard machinery working around the clock could be heard over the water. He opened the rear seat and storage section and began passing the dive gear to Giordino, who laid the air tanks, back-mounted buoyancy compensators, weight belts, fins, and masks in a parallel row. They both pulled on their boots and hoods, slipped into the compensators, and hoisted the twin air tanks onto each other's back. Both carried chest packs, containing handguns, lights, and Pitt's trusty Globalstar phone. The final items of equipment they removed from the M400 were two Torpedo 2000 diver propulsion vehicles, with dual battery-powered hulls, attached in parallel, that looked like small rockets. Their top speed under water was 4.5 miles an hour, with a running time of one hour.
Pitt strapped a small directional computer, similar to the one he'd used in the Pandora Mine, on his left arm and set it to lock in on the GPS satellites. He then punched in a code that translated the data onto a tiny monitor that showed their exact position in relation to the shipyard and the fjord's channel leading to it.
Giordino adjusted a spectral imaging scope over his face mask and switched it on. The landscape suddenly materialized before his eyes, slightly fuzzy but distinct enough to see pebbles on the ground half an inch in diameter. He turned to Pitt.
"Time to go?"
Pitt nodded. "Since you can see our way on land, you lead off and I'll take over when we reach the water."
Giordino simply gave a brief nod and said nothing. Until they could safely penetrate the security defenses around the shipyard, there was nothing to say. Pitt did not require telepathic powers to know what was in Giordino's mind. He was mentally reliving the same thing as Pitt.
They were back six thousand miles in distance and twenty hours in time in Admiral Sandecker's office in the NUMA headquarters, talking their way into what had to be a scheme born under a cloud of madness.
"MISTAKES were made," said the admiral solemnly. "Dr. O'Connell is missing."
"I thought she was under round-the-clock surveillance by security agents," Pitt said, annoyed at Ken Helm.
"All anyone knows at this point is that she drove her daughter to get some ice cream. While the wards sat outside the store in their car, Dr. O'Connell and her daughter went inside and never came out. It seems impossible that such a spur-of-the-moment event by O'Connell could be known in advance by the abductors."
"Meaning the Wolfs." Pitt slammed his fist on the table. "Why do we continually underestimate these people?"
"I suppose you'll be even less happy to hear the rest," Sandecker said somberly.
Pitt looked at him, his face clouded with exasperation. "Let me guess. Elsie Wolf has disappeared from the clinic, along with the body of her cousin, Heidi."
Sandecker wiped an imaginary speck from the polished surface of the conference table. "Believe me, it must have taken a magician," said FBI agent Ken Helm. "The clinic has the latest technology in security-detection equipment."
"Didn't your surveillance cameras reveal her escape?" asked Pitt irritably. "Elsie obviously didn't walk through the front door with her dead cousin thrown over her shoulder."
Helm gave a brief tilt of his head. "The cameras were fully operational, and the monitors observed every second. I'm sorry- no, shocked- to say that no trace of the breakout was recorded."
"These people must have the ability to slip through cracks," said Giordino, who had seated himself at the opposite end of the table from Sandecker. "Or else they developed a pill for invisibility."
"Neither," said Pitt. "They're shrewder than we are."
"All that we have, and it's fifty percent speculation," Helm admitted, "is that an executive jet belonging to Destiny Enterprises took off from an airport near Baltimore and set a course due south-"
"To Argentina," Pitt finished.
"Where else would they take her?" added Giordino. "Doesn't figure they'd keep her in the States, where they have little or no control over government investigative agencies."
Ron Little of the CIA cleared his throat. "The question is why? At one time we were led to believe they wanted to eliminate Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino, and Dr. O'Connell because of their discoveries of the chamber in Colorado and its inscriptions. But now, too many people are knowledgeable about the messages left by the ancient people. So the effort to keep it secret becomes immaterial."
"The only practical answer is that they need her expertise," suggested Helm.
"When I asked Elsie Wolf how many Chambers the Amenes had built, she claimed there was a total of six," Pitt said. "We had found two and they had found one. Of the others, two were destroyed by natural causes. Only one remains unfound, and she said it was somewhere in the Andes of Peru, but the directions were vague. I'll bet that despite all the experts in their computer software division, they couldn't crack the code giving instructions on how to find the remaining lost chamber."
"So they snatched her, thinking she could crack the code," said Sandecker.
"Makes sense," Helm said slowly.
Giordino leaned across the table. "Knowing Pat only a short time as I do, I have my doubts she'd cooperate."
Little smiled. "They al
so have Dr. O'Connell's fourteen-year-old daughter. All the Wolfs have to do is threaten to harm her."
"She'll talk," Helm said gravely. "She has no choice."
"So we go in and get her out," said Pitt.
Little looked at him doubtfully. "We have no way of knowing exactly where they're holding her."
"Their shipyard in Chile. The Wolfs are so maniacal about a coming doomsday that I'm betting the family has congregated on the ships in preparation for the deluge."
"I can provide you with satellite photos of the shipyard," said Little. "But I have to tell you, our analysts believe their security systems make the ships inaccessible and unapproachable by land, sea, or air."
"Then we'll go in underwater."
"You can expect underwater sensors."
"We'll find a way around that problem."
"I can't agree to this," Sandecker said quietly. "Too much is on the line for NUMA. This is a job for Special Operations Forces or a Navy SEAL team."
"Finding and rescuing Pat O'Connell and her daughter is only part of our plan," explained Pitt. "No one is better qualified than Al and I to investigate Destiny Enterprise's immense shipbuilding project. Less than a year ago, we performed a clandestine search under the hull of the former liner United States in a submersible at a shipyard in Hong Kong. In this circumstance, there has to be a method to the madness behind the Wolf family spending billions of dollars to build ships that can't reach the sea."
"The FBI can't help you on this one," said Helm. "It's half a world out of our territory."
Little nervously folded and unfolded his hands. "Other than providing information, I'm afraid my agency's hands are tied. The State Department would squelch any involvement by the CIA to intervene."
Pitt looked at Sandecker and smiled tightly. "It seems we're elected."
Sandecker did not smile in return. "Are you sure there is a desperate urgency to penetrate the Wolfs' operation?"
"I do," Pitt said heavily. "I also believe, and I can't tell you why, that there is a far more sinister purpose behind their undertaking. A purpose with horrible consequences."
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