30
Pitt and Giordino had no sooner stepped through the door of the tool shed than a voice in Spanish hailed them from around the corner of the building.
Giordino calmly replied and made empty motions with his hands.
Evidently satisfied with the answer, the guard went back to walking his beat around the tool sheds. Pitt and Giordino waited a moment, then moved out onto the road that led toward the heart of the shipyard.
'What did the guard say, and what did you answer?' asked Pitt.
'He wanted a cigarette, and I told him we didn't smoke.'
'And he didn't challenge you.'
'He did not.'
'Your Spanish must be better than I thought. Where did you learn it?'
'Haggling with the vendors on the beach at my hotel in Mazatlan,' Giordino answered modestly. 'And when I was in high school, I was taught a few phrases by my mother's cleaning girl.'
'I'll bet that wasn't all she taught you,' Pitt said ironically.
'That's another story,' said Giordino, without missing a beat.
'From now on, we'd better lay off English when we're within earshot of the shipyard workers.'
'Out of curiosity, what kind of side arm are you packing?'
'My old tried-and-true Colt .45. Why do you ask?'
'You've carried that old relic ever since I've known you. Why don't you trade it in for a more modern piece?'
'It's like an old friend,' Pitt said quietly. 'It's saved my tail more times than I can count.' He nodded at the bulge in Giordino's coveralls. 'How about you?'
'One of the Para-Ordnance 10+1s we took off those clowns at the Pandora Mine.'
'At least you have good taste.'
'And it was free, too,' Giordino said, smiling. Then he nodded toward the main buildings of the shipyard. 'Which one are we heading for?'
Pitt consulted his compact directional computer, whose monitor was programmed with the layout of the shipyard. He looked up the road running adjacent to the docks on one side and bordered on the other by giant metal warehouses. He pointed at a twenty-story building rising above the warehouses a good mile up the road. 'The tall building on the right.'
'I've never seen a shipbuilding facility this big,' said Giordino, staring over the giant complex. 'It beats anything in Japan or Hong Kong.'
They stopped suddenly and stared at the nearest supership, like yokels from the boondocks, heads tilted back looking up at their first view of tall city buildings. An executive jet aircraft whined in on its approach before flaring out and touching down on the long landing deck atop the behemoth. The sounds of the engines echoed across the water, up the slopes of the mountains, and back again. The sight was staggering. Even the most sophisticated Hollywood special effects could not come close to replicating the real thing.
'None of the shipyards around the world have the capacity to build ships this grand,' said Pitt, standing and gazing overwhelmed at the gargantuan ship moored along the dock, its hull seeming to stretch nearly to infinity. No single building on earth, including the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York placed end to end, could have matched the inconceivable size of the Wolfs' ark.
Except for the great bow, the vessel did not resemble a ship. Rather, it looked like a modern skyscraper laid on its side. The entire superstructure was sided in armored and tinted glass with the strength of low-alloy steel. Gardens with trees could be seen on the other side of the glass, flourishing amid rock gardens set in large parklike atmospheres. There were no promenade or outer decks or balconies. All the decks were completely enclosed. A conventional pointed bow swept up the superstructure on a gradual angle to the landing deck in what Pitt recognized as an apparent strategy to reduce the crushing impact of a giant tidal wave.
He observed the stern of the ship with more than a passing interest. Beginning at the waterline, twenty parallel pierlike projections that Pitt reckoned to be two hundred feet in length extended astern, beneath a high roof supported with fifty-foot-high Grecian-sculpted pillars. The piers doubled as shrouds for the ship's propellers and as piers to moor fleets of powerboats, hydrofoils, and hovercraft. Wide staircases and glass elevators rose from the forward end of the piers into the main superstructure. Improbable as it seemed, the gigantic vessel had its own marina, where boats could be moored and lifted from the water between the piers when the ship was under way.
Pitt studied the thousands of workers who crowded the docks and open decks. The operation to fit out and supply the ship seemed to be in a frenzied rush. Towering cranes rolled on rails up and down the dock, lifting wooden crates into huge open cargo hatches set into the hull. The spectacle was too unreal to grasp. It seemed unbelievable that these floating cities were never meant to sail through the fjord and reach the sea. Their primary purpose was to survive great tidal waves before being carried by the backwash into deep water.
There was no slinking in the shadows, because the bright lights eliminated them. Pitt and Giordino walked leisurely along the wide road quay, waving to an occasional passing guard, who didn't give them a second look. Pitt quickly observed that most of the workers moved around the immense facility and the ships in electric golf-type carts. He began looking around for one, and soon spied several parked in front of a large warehouse.
Pitt set off toward the carts, followed by Giordino, who could not tear his eyes from the ships. 'This place is too vast to cover on foot,' said Pitt. 'Me, I'd rather ride.'
The battery-operated carts looked to be available to any worker who wanted to requisition one. Several were parked around a large charging unit, cords running to sockets beneath the front seats. Pitt pulled the plug on the first one in line. Throwing the electrical spools and paint cans in the rear cargo bed of the cart, they climbed onto the front seat. Pitt turned the ignition key and set off as though it were a procedure he had executed at the yard for years.
They drove past a long string of warehouses until they came to the tall building that held the shipyard offices. The entrance of the second dock extended from the road along the shore. The second floating leviathan that was moored alongside had a more austere appearance than the one that was expected to carry its residents into a new world. This vessel was designed to carry agricultural cargo. Various species of trees and shrubbery were hauled aboard in big trailers that were pulled up wide cargo ramps into the hull. Hundreds of long cylindrical containers, labeled 'Plant Seed,' were stacked on the dock waiting to be loaded aboard. A long convoy of farm equipment, trucks and tractors of different sizes, harvest combines, plows, and every other piece of machinery imaginable was driven inside the cavernous hull.
'These people mean to launch a new world order on a grand scale,' Pitt said, still trying to absorb the immensity of it all.
'What do you want to bet one of the other ships is carrying two of every kind of animal?'
'I won't bet,' Pitt replied curtly. 'I just hope they had the foresight to leave the flies, mosquitoes, and venomous reptiles behind.'
Giordino spread his lips to make some suitable comeback, thought better of it, and stepped out of the cart, as Pitt parked it beside the steps leading into the modern, glass-walled office building. Retrieving the electrical cable and paint cans, they walked inside and approached a long counter manned by two security guards. Giordino flashed his most sociable smile and spoke softly in Spanish to one of the guards.
The guard simply nodded and threw a thumb in the direction of the elevators. 'What line did you feed him this time?' queried Pitt, as they stepped inside, but not before he peered with one eye around the elevator door and spied one guard pick up a phone and speak excitedly. Then he stepped back and the doors closed.
'I said we were ordered by one of the Wolfs to make electrical repairs behind a wall in the penthouse suite on the tenth floor, then mend and repaint the wall when we were finished. He didn't give me the least argument.'
Pitt scanned the elevator for TV cameras but found none. It's almost as if they have no fear of covert actions, he thought. Or else they know we're here and have laid a trap. He might have been whistling in the dark, but he didn't trust the Wolfs as far as he could throw that floating monstrosity outside. He also sensed that the
