“What about boarding the nearest ship we can find?” asked Giordino.
Maeve looked doubtful. Her long blond hair floated in the water behind her like golden reeds on a pond. “If my father’s people picked up our trail, he’d find a way to force the crew to turn us over to him.”
Giordino looked at her, “You don’t think the crew would hold us until we were under the protection of local authorities?”
Pitt shook his head, flinging drops of water in a spiral. “If you were the captain of a ship or the commander in charge of dock police, would you believe a trio of half drowned rats or the word of someone representing Arthur Dorsett?”
“Probably not us,” Giordino admitted.
“If only we could reach the Ocean Angler.”
“That would be the first place they’d expect us to go,” said Maeve.
“Once we were on board, Dorsett’s men would have a fight on their hands if they tried to drag us off,” Pitt assured her.
“A moot point,” Giordino said under his breath. “We haven’t the foggiest idea where the Ocean Angler is berthed.”
Pitt stared at his friend reproachfully. “I hate it when you’re sober minded.”
“Has she a turquoise hull and white on the cabins above like the Ice Hunter?” asked Maeve.
“All NUMA ships have the same color scheme,” Giordino answered.
“Then I saw her. She’s tied to Pier 16.”
“I give up. Where’s Pier 16 from here?”
“The fourth one north of here,” replied hid.
“How would you know that?”
“The signs on the warehouses. I noticed number 19 before I drove off of Pier 20.”
“Now that we’ve fixed our location and have a direction, we’d best get a move on,” Giordino suggested. “If they have half a brain they’ll be sending down divers to look for bodies in the bus.”
“Stay clear of the pilings,” cautioned Pitt. “Beneath the surface, they’re packed with colonies of mussels. Their shells can cut through flesh like a razor blade.”
“Is that why you’re swimming in a leather jacket?” asked Maeve.
“You never know who you’ll meet,” Pitt said dryly.
Without a visual sighting, there was no calculating how far they had to go before reaching the research ship. Conserving their strength, they breaststroked slowly and steadily through the maze of pilings, out of sight of Dorsett’s men on the dock above. They reached the based Pier 20, then passed beneath the main dockyard thoroughfare, which connected to all the loading docks, be, fore turning north toward Pier 16. The better part of as hour crept by before Maeve spotted the turquoise hull reflected in the water beneath the pier.
“We made it,” she cried out happily.
“Don’t count your prize money,” Pitt warned her. “The dock might be crawling with your father’s muscle patrol.”
The ship’s hull was only two meters from the pilings. Pitt swam until he was directly beneath the ship’s boarding ramp. He reached up, locked his hands around across member that reinforced the pilings and pulled himself out of the water. Climbing the slanting beams until he reached the upper edge of the dock, he slowly raised his; head and scanned the immediate vicinity. .
The area around the boarding ramp was deserted, but a Dorsett security van was parked across the nearest entry onto the pier. He counted four men lined across an open stretch between stacks of cargo containers and several parked cars alongside the ship moored in front of the Ocean Angler.
He ducked below the edge of the dock and spoke to Maeve and Giordino. “Our friends are guarding the entrance to the pier about eighty meters away, too far to stop us from making it on board.”
No more conversation was necessary. Pitt pulled both of them onto the beam he was standing on. Then, at his signal, they all climbed over the beam that acted as a curb, dodged around a huge bollard that held the mooring lines of the ship, and with Maeve in the lead, dashed up the boarding ramp to the open deck above.
When he reached the safety of the ship, Pitt’s instincts began working overtime. He had erred badly, and the mistake couldn’t be undone. He knew when he saw the men guarding the dock begin walking slowly and methodically toward the Ocean Angler as if they were out for stroll through the park. There was no shouting or confusion. They acted as though they had expected them quarry to suddenly appear and reach the sanctuary of the ship. He knew when he looked over decks devoid of human activity that something was very, very wrong. Someone on the crew should have been in evidence on a working ship. The robotic submersibles, the sonar equipment, the great winch for lowering survey systems into the depths were neatly secured. Rare was the occasion when an engineer or scientist wasn’t fussing with hi prized apparatus. And he knew when a door opened from a companionway leading to the bridge and a familiar figure stepped out onto the deck that the unthinkable had happened.
“How nice to see you again, Mr. Pitt,” said John Merchant, snidely. “You never give up, do you?”
Pitt, in those first few moments of bitter frustration, felt an almost tangible wave of defeat wash over him. The fact that they had been effortlessly and completely snared, that Maeve was trapped in the arms of her father, that there was every likelihood that he and Giordino would be murdered, was a heavy pill to swallow.
It was all too painfully obvious that with advance warning from their agent inside NUMA, Dorsett’s men had arrived at the Ocean Angler first, and through some kind of subterfuge had temporarily subdued the captain and crew and taken over the ship just long enough to trap Pitt and the others. It had all been so predestined, so transparent that Arthur Dorsett had been certain to do something beyond the bounds of the ordinary, as a backup strategy in the event that Pitt and Giordino had slipped through his fingers and somehow come on board. Pitt felt he should have predicted it and come up with an alternate plan, but he’d underestimated the shrewd diamond tycoon. Pirating an entire ship while it was docked within stone’s throw of a major city had not crossed Pitt’s mind.
When he saw a small army of uniformed men appear from their hiding places, some with police clubs, a few leveling rubber-pellet guns, he knew hope was lost. But not irretrievably lost. Not so long as he had Giordino at his side. He looked down at Giordino to see how he was reacting to the terrible shock. As far as he could tell, Giordino looked as though he was enduring a boring classroom lecture. There was no reaction at all. He stared at Merchant as though measuring the man for a coffin, a stare, Pitt observed, that was strangely like the one with which Merchant was appraising Giordino.
Pitt put his arm around Maeve, whose brave front began to crumble. The blue eyes were desolate, the wide, waxen eyes of one who knows her world is ending. She bowed her head and placed it in her hands as her shoulders sagged. Her fear was not for herself but for what her father would do to her boys now that it was painfully obvious she had deceived him.
“What have you done with the crew?” Pitt demanded of Merchant, noting the bandage on the back of his head.
“The five men left on board were persuaded to remain in their quarters.”
Pitt looked at him questioningly. “Only five?”
“Yes. The others were invited to a party in their honor by Mr. Dorsett, at Wellington’s finest hotel. Hail to the brave explorers of the deep, that sort of tiring. As a mining company, Dorsett Consolidated has a vested interest in whatever minerals are discovered on the seafloor.”
“You were well prepared,” said Pitt coldly. “Who in NUMA told you we were coming?”
“A geologist, I don’t know his name, who keeps Mr. Dorsett informed of your underwater mining projects He’s only one of many—who provide the company with inside information from businesses and governments around the world”
“A corporate spy network.”
“And a very good one. We’ve tracked you from the minute you took off from Langley Field in Washington.”
The guards who surrounded the three made no move to restrain them. “No shackles, no handcuffs?” asked Pitt.
“My men have been commanded to assault and maim only Miss Dorsett should you and your friend attempt to escape.” Merchant’s teeth fairly gleamed under the sun between his thin lips. “Not my wish, of course. The
