ground. He taxied off the runway onto the flight line to ward the parking area for transient and privately owned aircraft. “You see a NUMA vehicle?” he shouted over his shoulder at Pitt in the back.
The familiar turquoise and white colors were not in sight. “Must be late,” said Pitt. “Or else we’re early.”
“Fifteen minutes early by the old timepiece on the instrument panel,” replied Giordino.
A small pickup truck with a flight-line attendant in the bed motioned for Giordino to follow them to an open parking space between a line of executive jet aircraft Giordino rolled to a stop when his wingtips were even with the planes on either side of him and began the procedure for shutting down the engines.
Pitt opened the passenger door and set a small step at the end of the stairs. Maeve followed him out and walked back and forth to stretch her joints and muscles, stiff and tensed after the long flight. She looked around the parking area for their transportation. “I thought someone from the ship was going to meet us,” she said between yawns.
“They must be on their way.”
Giordino passed out their traveling bags, locked up the aircraft and took cover with Pitt and Maeve under one wing while a sudden rain squall passed over the airport. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the storm moved across the bay, and the sun broke through a rolling mass of white clouds. A few minutes later, a small Toyota bus with the words HARBOR SHUTTLE painted on the sides splashed through the puddles and stopped. The driver stepped to the ground and jogged over to the aircraft. He was slim with a friendly face and dressed like a drugstore cowboy.
“One of you Dirk Pitt?”
“Right here,” Pitt acknowledged.
“Carl Marvin. Sorry I’m running late. The battery went dead in the shore van we carry aboard the Ocean Angler, so I had to borrow transportation from the harbormaster. I do hope you weren’t inconvenienced.”
“Not at all,” said Giordino sourly. “We enjoyed the typhoon during intermission.”
The sarcasm flew over the driver’s head. “You haven’t been waiting long, I hope.”
“No more than ten minutes,” said Pitt.
Marvin loaded their bags in the back of the shuttle bus and drove away from the aircraft as soon as his passengers were seated. “The dock where the ship is moored is only a short drive from the airport,” he said cordially. “Just sit back and enjoy the trip.”
Pitt and Maeve sat together, held hands like teenagers and talked in low tones. Giordino settled into the seat in front of them and directly behind the driver. He spent most of the drive studying an aerial photo of Gladiator Island that Admiral Sandecker had borrowed from the Pentagon.
Time passed quickly and they soon turned off the main road into the bustling dock area, which was quite close to the city. A fleet of international cargo vessels, representing mostly Asian shipping lines, were moored beside long piers flanked by huge storage buildings. No one paid any attention to the wandering course taken by the driver around the buildings, ships and huge cargo cranes. His eyes watched the passengers in the rearview mirror almost as often as they were turned on the piers ahead.
“The Ocean Angler is just on the other side of the next warehouse,” he said, vaguely gesturing at some unseen object through the windshield.
“Is she ready to cast off when we board?” asked Pitt.
“The crew is standing by for your arrival.”
Giordino stared thoughtfully at the back of the driver’s head. “What’s your duty on the ship?” he asked.
“Mine?” said Marvin without turning. “I’m a photographer with the film crew.”
“How do you like sailing under Captain Dempsey?”
“A fine gentleman. He is most considerate of the scientists and their work.”
Giordino looked up and saw Marvin peering back in the rearview mirror. He smiled until Marvin refocused his attention on his driving. Then, shielded by the back rest of the seat in front of him, he wrote on a receipt for aircraft fuel that was pumped aboard in Honolulu before they headed toward Wellington. He wadded up the paper and casually flipped it over his shoulder on Pitt’s lap.
Talking with Maeve, Pitt had not picked up on the words that passed between Giordino and the driver. He casually unfolded the note and read the message:
THIS GUY IS A PHONY.
Pitt leaned forward and spoke conversationally without staring suspiciously at the driver. “What makes you such a killjoy?”
Giordino turned around and spoke very softly. “Our, friend is not from the Ocean Angler.”
“I’m listening.”
“I tricked him into saying Dempsey is the captain.”
“Paul Dempsey skippers the Ice Hunter. Joe Ross is captain of the Angler.”
“Here’s another inconsistency. You and I and Rudi Gunn went over NUMA’s scheduled research project, and assigned personnel before we left for the Antarctic.”
“So?”
“Our friend up front not only has a bogus Texas accent, but he claims to be a photographer with the Ocean Angler’s film crew. Get the picture?”
“I do,” Pitt murmured. “No film crew was recruited to go on the project. Only sonar technicians and a team of geophysicists went on board, to survey the ocean floor.”
“And this character is driving us straight into hell,” said Giordino, looking out the window and toward a dockside warehouse just ahead with a large sign across a pair of doors that read:
DORSETT CONSOLIDATED MINING LTD.
True to their fears, the driver swung the bus through the gaping doors and between two men in the uniforms of Dorsett Consolidated security guards. The guards quickly followed the bus inside and pushed the switch to close the warehouse doors.
“In the final analysis, I’d have to say we’ve been had,” said Pitt.
“What’s the plan of attack?” asked Giordino, no longer speaking in a hushed voice.
There wasn’t time for any drawn-out conference. The bus was passing deeper into the darkened warehouse. “Dump our buddy Carl and let’s bust out of here.”
Giordino did not wait for a countdown. Four quick steps and he had a chokehold on the man who called himself Carl Marvin. With unbelievable speed, Giordino swung the man from behind the steering wheel, opened the entry door of the bus and heaved him out.
As if they had rehearsed, Pitt jumped into the driver’s seat and jammed the accelerator to the carpeted floorboard. Not an instant too soon, the bus surged forward through a knot of armed men, scattering them like leaves in the wake of a tornado. Two pallets holding cardboard boxes of electrical kitchen appliances from Japan sat directly in front of the bus. Pitt’s expression gave no hint that he was aware of the approaching impact. Boxes, bits and pieces of toasters, blenders and coffeemakers burst into the air as though they were shrapnel from an exploding howitzer shell.
Pitt swung a broadside turn down a wide aisle separating tiers of stacked crates of merchandise, took aim at a large metal door and crouched over the steering wheel. With a metallic clatter that sent the door whirling from its mountings, the Toyota bus roared out of the warehouse onto the loading dock, Pitt twisting the wheel rapidly to keep from clipping one leg of a towering loading crane.
This part of the dockyard was deserted. No ships were moored alongside, loading and unloading their cargo holds. A party of workers repairing a section of the pier were taking a break, sitting elbow to elbow in a row on a long wooden barricade that stretched across an access road leading from the pier as they ate their lunch. Pitt lay on the horn, spinning the wheel violently to avoid striking the workers, who froze at the sight of the vehicle bearing down on them. As the bus slewed around the barricade, Pitt almost missed it entirely, but a piece of the rear bumper caught a vertical support and spun the barricade around, slinging the dockworkers about the pier as if they were on the end of a cracked whip.
“Sorry about that!” Pitt yelled out the window as he sped past. .
He regretted not having been more observant, and belatedly realized the phony driver had purposely taken a
