ON the trip back to Washington, Pitt read the entries from the log of the Madras as exactingly copied in a leather-bound notebook in Roxanna Mender’s delicate and flowing hand. Despite the smooth ride of the Rolls, he had to look up from time to time and gaze into the distance to keep from getting carsick.
“Find anything interesting?” Perlmutter asked, as Mulholland drove over the George Mason Bridge, which spans the Potomac River.
Pitt lifted his eyes from the notebook. “Indeed I have. Now we know the approximate location where the crew of the Madras discovered their skull, and much, much more.”
12
THE ROLLS-ROYCE CAME TO a stop at the old aircraft hangar that Pitt called home on a deserted end of Washington’s International Airport. The decrepit-looking hangar, built in 1936, looked as if it had been long abandoned. Weeds surrounded its rusting corrugated walls and the windows were heavily boarded over.
No sooner had Hugo slipped from behind the wheel than two heavily armed men, dressed in camouflage fatigues, seemed to materialize out of nowhere and stand with automatic rifles at the ready. One leaned in the window, while the other stood face-to-face with Mulholland, as if daring him to make a menacing move. “One of you better be Dirk Pitt,” snapped the man peering into the backseat.
“I’m Pitt.”
The guard studied his face for a moment. “ID, sir.” It was not a request but an order.
Pitt flashed his NUMA identification, and the guard raised his weapon and smiled. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re under orders to protect you and your property.”
Pitt assumed the men were with a little-known federal protective security agency. Their agents were highly trained to protect government employees whose lives were threatened. “I’m grateful for your concern and dedication.”
“The other two gentlemen?”
“Good friends.”
The security guard handed Pitt a small remote alarm. “Please carry this with you at all times while you are in your residence. At the slightest hint of danger, press the transmit button. We’ll respond within twenty seconds.”
The security guard didn’t offer his name, and Pitt didn’t ask.
Mulholland had the trunk open, and Pitt retrieved his duffel bag. At that moment, he noticed the two security guards had vanished. He looked around the hangar grounds and scanned the empty fields off to the side of the main runway. It was as if they had never been. Pitt could only guess that they were concealed under the earth.
“I’ll have Hugo drive by NUMA headquarters and drop off your obsidian heads,” said Perlmutter.
Pitt placed a hand on Mulholland’s shoulder. “Very gently, carry them to the lab on the sixth floor and give them to the scientist in charge. His name is Harry Matthews.”
Mulholland cracked a faint grin that was equal to a wide-toothed grin from anyone else. “I’ll make every effort not to drop them.”
“Good-bye, St. Julien. And thank you.”
“Not at all, my boy. Drop over for dinner first chance you get.”
Pitt watched as the old Rolls moved over the dirt road leading to an airport security gate, trailing a wisp of dust behind its bumper. He looked up at an old worn light pole and saw a tiny security camera mounted on the top. Perhaps that would satisfy his curiosity as to where the security guards were hiding by having recorded their movements.
With a small remote, he deactivated the hangar’s extensive alarm system and opened a door that appeared to have been frozen shut since World War II. He hoisted the duffel bag on his shoulder and walked inside. The interior was dustproof and dark. Not a crack of light showed anywhere. Then he closed the door and pressed a light switch, throwing the hangar into a blaze of light and a prism of color.
The floor of the hangar, painted in a gleaming white epoxy, was covered with an array of fifty antique and classic automobiles painted in a myriad of bright colors. Other displays included a German jet aircraft from World War II and a Ford trimotor aircraft from the early 1930s that was called a Tin Goose. A turn-of-the-century railroad car sat on raised rails against one wall of the hangar. As if added for conversation pieces, there was a cast-iron bathtub with an outboard motor, and a peculiar inflatable raft with a makeshift cabin and mast. The entire collection was guarded by a tall Haida Indian totem pole.
Pitt paused to sweep his eyes over the eclectic collection and scan the wording on many of the vintage signs that hung from the high arched ceiling, including the Burma Shave signs. Satisfied everything was in its place, he climbed a wrought-iron spiral staircase to his apartment above the floor of the warehouse.
The interior looked like a nautical museum. Glass-encased ship models blended with wooden-spoke helms and compass binnacles, ship’s bells, and copper and brass diver’s helmets. The living room, study, single bedroom with bath, and the kitchen/dining room measured no more than eleven hundred square feet.
Though he was tired beyond feeling, he unpacked the duffel bag and threw his dirty clothes on the floor of the small closet that held his washer and dryer. Then he stepped into the bathroom and took a long shower, turning the hot steaming water against one wall of the stall while he rested against the floor on his back with his legs straight up in one corner. He was relaxing with a Juan Julio silver tequila on the rocks when a ship’s bell announced the presence of a visitor at the front door.
Pitt peered into one of the four TV monitors mounted between two bookshelves and recognized NUMA’s deputy director, Rudi Gunn, standing on his doorstep. He pressed a switch on a remote and said, “Come on in, Rudi. I’m upstairs.”
Gunn climbed the staircase and entered the apartment. A small man with thinning hair and a Roman nose, Gunn gazed through thick horn-rimmed glasses. A former commander in the Navy and first in his class at the Naval Academy, Gunn was highly intelligent and well respected among the staff at NUMA. His blue eyes were wide and magnified behind the lenses of his glasses, and he had a dazed expression on his face.
“Two guys with automatic rifles in camouflage gear scared the hell out of me until I proved I was a friend of yours from NUMA.”
“Admiral Sandecker’s idea.”
“I knew he hired a security agency, but I had no idea they had magical powers and could appear out of nowhere. All that was missing was a puff of smoke.”
“They’re very efficient,” said Pitt.
“I was briefed on your situation in Telluride,” said Gunn, sinking into a chair. “The word circulating around town is that your life isn’t worth two cents.”
Pitt brought him a glass of iced tea from the kitchen. Gunn seldom drank anything with alcohol except an occasional beer. “Not to those jokers from the Fourth Empire. I suspect they’ll spare no expense to inter me in a tomb.”
“I took the liberty of looking under a few rocks.” Gunn paused and downed half the glass of iced tea. “I met with some friends at the CIA—”
“What interest could the CIA possibly have in a domestic crime?”
“They suspect the killers you ran up against in the Pandora Mine might be part of an international crime syndicate.”
“Terrorists?” asked Pitt.
Gunn shook his head. “They’re not religious or cult-driven fanatics. But their agenda is still secret. CIA operatives, Interpol agents—nobody’s been able to penetrate the organization yet. All the foreign intelligence agencies know is that it exists. Where it operates from or who controls it, they haven’t a clue. Their killers show up, as they did in Telluride, murder their victims, and vanish.”
“What crimes are they involved in, besides murder?”
“That seems to be a mystery, too.”
Pitt’s eyes narrowed. “Who ever heard of a crime syndicate with no motives?”
Gunn shrugged. “I know it sounds crazy, but they have yet to leave even a tiny thread.”
“They’ve got two of the scum in Telluride to interrogate.”
Gunn’s eyebrows rose. “You haven’t heard?”
“Hear
d what?”
“A Sheriff Eagan from Telluride, Colorado, called Admiral Sandecker only an hour ago. The prisoners were found dead.”
“Damn!” Pitt snapped irritably. “I expressly told the sheriff to search them for cyanide pills.”
“Nothing so mundane as poison. According to Eagan, a bomb was smuggled into their jail cell. They were blown to pieces, along with a deputy who was on guard nearby.”
“Life is cheap to these people,” Pitt said acidly.
“So I gathered.”
“What’s the next step?”
“The admiral is sending you on a deep-sea geological project in the middle of the Pacific, where you’ll be reasonably safe from any more assassination attempts.”
Pitt grinned slyly. “I won’t go.”
“He knew you’d say that.” Gunn grinned back. “Besides, you’re too important in the investigation to send off to the boondocks. As it stands, you’ve had more contact with this group than anyone else, and lived to tell about it. High-level investigators want to talk to you. Eight o’clock in the morning . . .” He paused to hand Pitt a slip of paper. “Here’s the address. Be there. Drive your car into the open garage and wait for instructions.”
“Are James Bond and Jack Ryan coming, too?”
Gunn made a wry face. “Funny.” He finished off the iced tea and walked outside onto the balcony overlooking the fabulous collection below. “That’s interesting.”
“What?”
“You referred to the assassins as being from the Fourth Empire.”
“Their words, not mine.”
“The Nazis called their hideous dreamworld the Third Reich.”
“Most all the old Nazis are dead, thankfully,” said Pitt. “The Third Reich died with them.”
“Did you ever take a course in German?” inquired Gunn.
Pitt shook his head. “The only words I know are ja, nein, and auf Wiedersehen.”
“Then you don’t know that the English for ‘Third Reich’ is ‘Third Empire.’ ”
Pitt went taut. “You’re not suggesting they’re a bunch of neo-Nazis?”
Gunn was about to reply when a great whoosh sound came, like a jet fighter using its afterburner, and was followed immediately by an earsplitting screech of metal and a streak of orange flame that flashed across the interior of the hangar before disappearing through the far wall. Two seconds later, an explosion rattled the hangar and shook the wrought-iron balcony. Dust fell from the metal roof and settled on the shiny cars, dulling their bright paint. A weird silence trailed the fading rumble from the explosion.
Then came the rattle of prolonged gunfire, followed quickly by another, more muted explosion. Both men stood frozen, gripping the balcony railing.
Pitt found words first. “The bastards!” he hissed.
“What in God’s name was that?” asked Gunn in shock.
“Damn them. They fired a missile into my hangar. The only thing that saved us from being blasted to shreds was that it didn’t explode. The warhead smashed through one thin corrugated wall and out the other without the detonator in its nose striking a heavy structural beam.”
The door burst open and the two security guards came running onto the floor of the hangar, pulling to a halt beneath the spiral staircase. “Are you injured?” asked one.
“I believe the word is shaken,” said Pitt. “Where did it come from?”
“A handheld launcher fired from a helicopter,” answered the guard. “Sorry we let it get so close. We were conned by the markings—it was supposed to be from a local television station. We did fire on it, however, and bring it down. It crashed in the river.”
“Nice work,” said Pitt sincerely.
“Your friends certainly don’t spare any expense, do they?”
“They obviously have money to burn.”
The guard turned to his partner. “We’re going to have to increase our perimeter.” Then he looked around the hangar. “Any damage?” he asked Pitt.
“Only a couple of holes in the walls big enough to fly kites through.”
“We’ll see that they’re repaired immediately. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Pitt said, becoming even more angered as he stared at the coating of dust on his expensive cars. “Please call in a cleaning crew.”
“Maybe you should reconsider that project in the Pacific,” said Gunn.
Pitt seemed not to have heard him. “Fourth Reich, Fourth Empire, whoever they are, they’ve made a very serious mistake.”
“Oh?” said Gunn, looking curiously at his trembling hands as if they belonged to someone else. “What mistake is that?”
Pitt was staring up at the gaping, jagged holes in his hangar’s walls. There was a cold malignity glaring out of his opaline green eyes, a malignity Gunn had seen on at least four other occasions, and he shivered involuntarily.
“So far, the bad guys have had all the fun,” said Pitt, his mouth twisted in a crooked grin. “Now it’s my turn.”
13
PITT WATCHED HIS SECURITY-CAMERA tapes before going to bed and saw that the guards had done their homework. Using maps of the airport’s underground drainage system, they’d found a large concrete pipe eight feet in diameter that carried away the rain and melted snow runoff from the airport’s run-ways, taxiways, and terminal areas. The drainage pipe ran within ninety feet of Pitt’s hangar. At a maintenance access, unseen in the high weeds, the guards had set up a well-camouflaged observation post.
Pitt considered walking over and offering them coffee and sandwiches, but it was only a passing thought. The last thing he needed to do was compromise their security cover.
He had just dressed and finished a quick breakfast when a truck loaded with materials to repair the holes in the hangar stopped on the road outside. An unmarked van pulled up behind the truck and several women in coveralls stepped out. The security guards did not reveal their presence, but Pitt knew they were closely observing the scene. One of the workmen walked over to him.
“Mr. Pitt?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll get in, make the repairs, clean up the mess and get out as fast as we can.”
Pitt watched in awe as men began unloading old rusting corrugated sheets that nearly matched those on the hangar walls. “Where did you find those?” he asked, pointing.
“You’d be surprised how the government keeps track of old building materials,” the foreman replied. “What you see came off the roof of an old warehouse in Capital Heights.”
“Our government is more efficient than I gave them credit for.”
He left them to their work and was about to slip behind the wheel of a turquoise-colored NUMA Jeep Cherokee, when a black split-window Sting Ray Corvette stopped on the road. Giordino leaned out the passenger’s window and yelled, “Need a lift?”
Pitt jogged to the car and climbed in, folded his legs, and settled in the leather seat. “You didn’t tell me you were coming by.”
“I was told to be at the same place as you at eight o’clock. Thought we might as well share a ride.”
“You’re okay, Al,” said Pitt cheerfully, “I don’t care what they say about you.”
GIORDINO turned the Corvette off Wisconsin Avenue onto a small residential side street in Glover Park near the Naval Observatory. The street, only one block in length, was shaded by century-old elm trees. Except for a single house hidden behind high hedges, the block was empty. No parked cars, no people strolling the sidewalks.
“You sure we didn’t make a wrong turn?” said Giordino.
Pitt looked through the windshield and pointed. “We’re on the right street, and since that’s the only house in sight, this must be the place.”
Giordino turned into the second entrance of a circular driveway but kept going straight, to the rear of the house, instead of stopping under the front porte cochere. Pitt studied the three-story brick structure as Giordino steered toward a detached garage at the back. The house looked to have been built for someone of impo
rtance and wealth sometime after the Civil War. The grounds and house appeared immaculately maintained, but the curtains were all drawn, as if its tenants were away for an extended length of time.
The Corvette rolled into the garage, whose double doors were spread open. The interior was vacant, except for scattered garden tools, a lawn mower, and a tool bench that looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades. Giordino turned off the ignition, placed the shift lever in Park, and turned to Pitt.
“Well, what now?”
His answer came as the doors automatically closed. A few seconds later, the car began to fall slowly through the floor of the garage on an elevator. But for a barely audible hum, the ride was soundless. Pitt tried to estimate the rate of descent and distance, but it became dark. After what he guessed was a drop of nearly a hundred feet, the elevator came to a gentle stop. An array of lights flashed on and they found themselves in a fair-size concrete parking garage filled with several cars. Giordino pulled the Corvette into an empty stall between a turquoise Jeep Cherokee with “NUMA” painted on the front doors and a Chrysler limousine. The Jeep, they knew, was Admiral Sandecker’s. He insisted that all NUMA transportation vehicles be four-wheel-drive suburban utility vehicles, so they could be driven in the worst weather.
A Marine guard stood at the entrance to a metal doorway. “Think the car is okay here,” said Giordino impishly, “or should I lock it?”
“Just a gut feeling,” answered Pitt, “but I have the feeling it’s not going anywhere.”
They exited the car and walked over to the uniformed guard, who wore the three stripes of a sergeant on his sleeves. He nodded and greeted them. “You must be Dirk Pitt and Albert Giordino. You’re the last to arrive.”
“Don’t you want to see our IDs?” asked Giordino.
Atlantis Found (A Dirk Pitt Novel) Page 14