Cyclops dp-8

by Clive Cussler

  "Correct."

  "What does he intend to do with us?"

  "Eventually hand out the honors you all so richly deserve. But his main concern is stopping your people on the moon from starting a war."

  Porter paused when the waitress brought over a bottle of chilled white wine. He expertly pulled the cork and poured one glass. He took a large sip and swished the wine around in his mouth and nodded. "Quite good." Then he filled Hagen's glass.

  "Fifteen years ago, Mr. Hagen, our government made a stupid mistake and gave away our space technology in a sucker play that was heralded as a `handshake in space'. If you remember, it was a much publicized joint venture between American and Russian space programs that called for our Apollo astronauts to team up and meet with the Soyuz cosmonauts in orbit. I was against it from the beginning, but the event occurred during the détente years and my voice was only a cry in the wilderness. I didn't trust the Russians then and I don't trust them now. Their whole space program was built on political propaganda and damned little technical achievement. We exposed the Russians to American technology that was twenty years ahead of theirs. After all this time Soviet space hardware is still crap next to anything we've created. We blew four hundred million dollars on a scientific giveaway. The fact we kissed the Russians' asses while they reamed ours only proves Barnum's moral about `one born every minute.' I made up my mind to never let it happen again. That's why I won't stand dumb and let the Russians steal the fruits of the Jersey Colony. If they were technically superior to us, there is no doubt in my mind they would bar us from the moon."

  "So you agree with Leo that the first Russians to land on the moon must be eliminated."

  "They'll do everything in their power to grab every scientific windfall from our moon base they can touch. Face reality, Mr. Hagen. You don't see our secret agents buying Russian high technology and smuggling it to the West. The Soviets have to rely on our progress because they're too stupid and nearsighted to create it on their own."

  "You don't have a very high regard for the Russians," said Hagen.

  "When the Kremlin decides to build a better world rather than divide and dictate to it, I might change my mind."

  "Will you help me find Leo?"

  "No," the senator said simply.

  "The least the `inner core' can do is listen while the President pleads his case."

  "Is that why he sent you?"

  "He hoped I could find all of you while there is still time."

  "Time for what?"

  "In less than four days the first Soviet cosmonauts land on the moon. If your Jersey Colony people murder them their government might feel justified in shooting down a space shuttle or the space lab."

  The senator looked at Hagen, his eyes turning to ice. "An interesting conjecture. I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

  <<33>>

  Pitt used the catch from his watchband as a screwdriver to remove the screws holding the hinges to the wardrobe. He then slid the flat side of one hinge between the door latch and the strike. It was a near perfect fit. Now all he had to do was wait until the guard showed up with his dinner.

  He yawned and lay on the bed, his thoughts turning to Raymond LeBaron. His image of the famous publisher-tycoon was chipped and cracked. LeBaron did not measure up to his hard reputation. He gave the appearance of a man who was running scared. Not once did he quote Jessie, Al, or Rudi. Surely they would have relayed a message of encouragement. There was something very fishy about LeBaron's actions.

  He sat up at the sound of the door latch turning. The guard entered, holding a tray in one hand. He held it out to Pitt, who set it on his lap.

  "What gourmet delight have you brought this evening?" Pitt inquired cheerfully.

  The guard gave a distasteful twist of his lips and shrugged indifferently. Pitt couldn't blame him. The tray held a small loaf of doughy, tasteless bread and a bowl of god-awful chicken stew.

  Pitt was hungry, but more important he needed to keep his strength. He forced the slop down, somehow managing to keep from gagging. Finally he passed the tray back to the guard, who silently took it and then pulled the door closed as he stepped into the corridor.

  Pitt leaped from the bed, dropped to his knees, and slipped one of the wardrobe hinges between the latch and the doorjamb, preventing the bolt from passing through the strike into the catch. In almost the same motion he pressed his shoulder against the door and tapped the second hinge on it to imitate the click of the latch snapping into place.

  As soon as he heard the guard's footsteps fade down the corridor he eased open the door slightly, peeled a piece of tape from a bandage covering a cut on his arm, and stuck it over the latch shaft so the door would remain unlocked.

  Removing his sandals and stuffing them into his waistband, he eased the door closed, taped a hair across the crack, and soundlessly padded down the empty corridor, pressing his body close against the wall. There was no sign of any guards or security equipment.

  Pitt's first goal was to find his friends and plan an escape, but twenty yards down the corridor he discovered a narrow, circular emergency shaft with a ladder that led upward into darkness. He decided to see where it went. The climb seemed endless and he realized it was taking him past the upper levels of the underground facility. At last his groping hands touched a wooden cover above his head. He leaned his upper back against it and slowly applied pressure. The cover creaked loudly as it lifted.

  Pitt sucked in his breath and froze. Five minutes came and went and nothing happened, nobody shouted, and when he finally eased the cover high enough, he found himself looking out across the concrete floor of a garage containing several military and construction vehicles. The structure was large, eighty by a hundred feet and perhaps fifteen feet to a ceiling supported by row of steel girders. The parking area was dark, but there was an office at one end whose interior was brightly lit. Two Russians in Army fatigues were sitting at a table playing chess.

  Pitt snaked from the exit shaft, skirted behind the parked vehicles, and crawled under the windows of the office until he reached the main entry door. Coming this far from his cell was surprisingly easy but now defeat had arrived where he least expected it. The door was electric. There was no way he could activate it without alerting the chess players.

  Staying in the shadows, he moved along the walls searching for another entrance. In his mind he knew it was a lost cause. If this building was on the surface it was probably another covered mound with the large vehicle entry door as the only means of getting in and out.

  He made a complete circuit of the walls and returned to the spot where he started. Disheartened, he was about to give up when he looked upward and spotted an air vent mounted on the roof. It appeared large enough to squeeze through.

  Pitt quietly climbed on top of a truck, reached over his head, and pulled himself onto a support girder. Then he inched his way about thirty feet to the vent and squirmed his way to the outside. The rush of fresh, humid air felt invigorating. He guessed that the dying wind of the hurricane was only blowing at about twenty miles an hour. The sky was only partially overcast and there was a quarter moon that provided enough visibility to vaguely make out objects within a hundred feet.

  His next problem was to get beyond the high wall enclosing the compound. The guardhouse by the gate was manned, so there would be no repeat of his entry two nights ago.

  In the end, luck came to his aid once again. He walked along a small drainage culvert that passed under the wall. He ducked under but was brought up short by a row of iron bars. Fortunately they were badly rusted from the tropical salt air and he easily bent them apart.

  Three minutes later Pitt was well clear of the installation, jogging through the palm trees lining the sunken road. There were no signs of guards or electronic surveillance cameras and the low shrubs helped conceal his silhouette against the light-colored sand. He ran at an angle toward the beach until he was up against the electrified fence.

  Eventually
, he came to the section damaged by the hurricane. It had been repaired, but he knew it was the correct spot because the fallen palm tree that had caused the break was lying nearby. He dropped to his knees and began scooping the sand from under the fence. The deeper he dug the more the walls of his trench kept sliding and filling in the bottom. Nearly an hour passed before he formed a crater deep enough for him to wiggle on his back through to the other side.

  His shoulder and kidney ached and he was sweating like a soaked sponge. He tried to retrace his steps to the landing site by the rocks on the beach. None of the landscape seemed the same under the dim light of the moon, not that he could recall how it looked when beaten flat by hurricane winds and with his eyes mostly closed.

  Pitt wandered up and down the beach, probing between the rock formations. He was almost ready to give up and quit when his eye caught the moon's glint on an object in the sand. His hands reached out and touched the fuel tank of the inflatable boat's outboard motor. The shaft and propeller were buried in the sand about thirty feet from the high-tide line. He dug away the damp sand until he could pull the motor free. Then he hoisted it over his shoulder and began walking down the beach away from the Russian compound.

  Pitt had no idea where he was going or where he was going to hide the motor. His feet dug into the sand and the burden of sixty pounds made it tough going. He had to stop every few hundred yards and rest.

  He had walked about two miles when he met a weed-covered road that passed through several rows of deserted and decaying houses. Most of them were little more than shacks and they nestled around a small lagoon. It must have once been a fishing village, Pitt thought. He could not know it was one of the settlements whose residents had been forcefully uprooted to the mainland during the Soviet takeover.

  He gratefully shrugged off the motor and began rummaging in the houses. The walls and roofing were made from corrugated iron sheets and scrap wood. Little of the furnishings remained. He found a boat pulled up on the beach, but any hope of using it was crushed. The bottom was rotted away.

  Pitt considered building a raft, but it would take too long, and he couldn't run the risk of putting together something under the double handicap of working in darkness with no tools. The end result would not offer much peace of mind in rough water.

  The luminous dial on his watch read 1:30. If he wanted to find and talk to Giordino and Gunn, he'd have to get a move on. He wondered what to do about fuel for the outboard motor, but there was no time to search now. He calculated it would take him a good hour to regain his cell.

  He found an old cast-iron bathtub lying outside a collapsed shed. He placed the outboard motor on the ground and turned the tub upside down over it. Then he threw some tires and a rotting mattress on top and walked backward, brushing sand over his footprints with a palm frond until he stood a good seventy-five feet away.

  Sneaking back in went more smoothly than sneaking out. All he had to remember was to restraighten the bars in the culvert. Belatedly, he wondered why the island compound wasn't crawling with security guards, but then it came to him that the area was constantly overflown by American spy planes whose cameras had the uncanny ability to produce photographs that could read the name on a golf ball from ninety thousand feet.

  The Soviets must have figured it was better to trade heavy security for the appearance of a lifeless, abandoned island. Cuban dissidents fleeing Castro's government would ignore it and any Cuban exile commandos would certainly bypass it for the mainland. With no one landing and no one escaping, the Russians had nothing to guard against.

  Pitt dropped through the air ventilator and stealthily made his way back across the garage and down the exit shaft. The corridor was still quiet. He checked his door and saw the hair was still in place.

  His plan now was to find Gunn and Giordino. But he didn't want to crowd his luck. Although their imprisonment was lax, there was always the problem of a chance discovery. If Pitt was caught outside his cell now, it would spell the end. Velikov and Gly were sure to keep him tightly locked away if they didn't outright execute him.

  He felt he had to risk it. There might not be another opportunity. Any sound echoed throughout the concrete corridor. He would be able to hear footsteps in plenty of time to regain his cell if he didn't probe too far.

  The room next to his was a paint locker. He searched it for a few minutes but found nothing useful. Two rooms across the corridor were empty. The third held plumbing supplies. Then he unlatched another door and found himself staring into the surprised faces of Gunn and Giordino. He quickly slipped inside, careful to keep the door's bolt from engaging.

  "Dirk!" Giordino cried.

  "Keep it down," Pitt whispered.

  "Good to see you, buddy."

  "Have you checked this place for ears?" Pitt asked.

  "Thirty seconds after they pitched us in," answered Gunn. "The room is clean."

  It was then Pitt saw the dark shades of purple around Giordino's eyes. "I see you've met with Foss Gly in room six."

  "We had an interesting conversation. Pretty much one-sided, though."

  Pitt looked at Gunn but saw no marks. "What about you?"

  "He's too smart to beat my brains out," said Gunn with a taut smile. He pointed to his broken ankle. The cast was gone. "He gets his kicks by twisting my foot."

  "What about Jessie?"

  Gunn and Giordino exchanged grim looks. "We fear the worst," said Gunn. "Al and I heard a woman's screams late in the afternoon as we stepped out of the elevator."

  "We were coming from an interrogation by that slimy bastard Velikov."

  "Their system," explained Pitt. "The general uses the velvet glove and then turns you over to Gly for the iron fist treatment." He angrily paced the tiny room. "We've got to find Jessie and get the hell out of here."

  "How?" asked Giordino. "LeBaron has paid a visit and made a point of stressing the hopelessness of escaping the island."

  "I don't trust rich and reckless Raymond as far as I can throw this building," said Pitt acidly. "I think Gly has beaten him into jelly."

  "Agreed."

  Gunn twisted to his side in his bunk, favoring the broken ankle. "How do you intend on leaving the island?"

  "I found and stashed the outboard motor for insurance if I can't steal a boat."

  "What?" Giordino stared at Pitt incredulously. "You walked out of here?"

  "Not exactly a garden stroll," Pitt replied. "But I scouted an escape route to the beach."

  "Stealing a boat is impossible," Gunn said flatly.

  "You know something I don't."

  "My smattering of Russian came in handy. I've begun developing a prison grapevine through the guards. I was also able to glean a few details from Velikov's papers in his office. One item of interesting information is that the island is supplied at night by submarine."

  "Why so complicated?" muttered Giordino, "Seems to me surface transportation would be more efficient."

  "That calls for docking facilities that can be seen from the air," explained Gunn. "Whatever is going on around here, they want to keep it damned quiet."

  "I'll second that," said Pitt. "The Russians have gone to a lot of work to make the island look deserted."

  "No wonder it shook them up when we walked through the front door," Giordino said thoughtfully. "That explains the interrogation and torture."

  "All the more reason to make a break and save our lives."

  "And alert our intelligence agencies," Gunn added.

  "When do you plan to cut out?" asked Giordino.

  "Tomorrow night, right after the guard brings dinner."

  Gun gave Pitt a long, hard stare. "You'll have to go it alone, Dirk."

  "We came together, we'll leave together."

  Giordino shook his head. "You can't carry Jessie and us on your back too."

  "He's right," said Gunn. "Al and I are in no condition to crawl fifty feet. Better we stay than foul your chances. Take the LeBarons and swim like hell for the States."
>
  "I can't risk taking Raymond LeBaron into our confidence. I'm positive he would inform on us. He lied up a storm claiming the island is nothing but a businessmen's retreat."

  Gunn shook his head in disbelief. "Whoever heard of a retreat run by the military that tortured its guests."

  "Forget LeBaron." Giordino's eyes went black with fury. "But for God's sake, save Jessie before that son of a bitch Gly kills her."

  Pitt stood there confused. "I can't go off and leave you two behind to die."

  "If you don't," said Gunn gravely, "you'll die too, and no one will be left alive to tell what's happening here."

  <<34>>

  The mood was somber but softened by the long gap in time. No more than one hundred people had assembled for the early morning ceremony. In spite of the President's presence, only one network bothered to send a television crew. The small crowd stood quietly in a secluded corner of Rock Creek Park and listened to the conclusion of the President's brief address.

  ". . . and so we have gathered this morning to pay belated tribute to the eight hundred American men who died when their troopship, the Leopoldville, was torpedoed off the port of Cherbourg, France, on Christmas Eve of 1944."

  "Never has such a wartime tragedy been denied the honor it deserved. Never has such a tragedy been so completely ignored."

  He paused and nodded toward a veiled statue. The shroud was pulled away, revealing a solitary figure of a soldier, standing brave with grim determination in the eyes, wearing a GI overcoat and full field gear with an M-1 carbine slung over one shoulder. There was a pained dignity about the life-sized bronze fighting man, heightened by the wave of water that lapped around his ankles.

  After a minute of applause, the President, who had served in Korea as a lieutenant in an artillery company of the Marine Corps, began pumping hands with survivors of the Leopoldville and other veterans of the Panther Division. As he worked his way toward the White House limousine he suddenly stiffened when he shook the hand of the tenth man in line.

  "A moving speech, Mr. President," said a recognizable voice. "May we talk in private?"