suspect. Their intelligence-gathering must be good if they saw through the admiral's scheme to smuggle the five of us and the boat into Bluefields.'
Giordino appeared from below with Pitt's dive gear. He didn't require intuition to accept Pitt's theory. From their many years together since elementary school, he knew Pitt rarely if ever misinterpreted events. Their trust in each other's vision was more than a simple bond. Many times in the past their minds had acted as one.
'We better move quickly,' Pitt advised strongly. 'The longer we hang around, the sooner our friends know we're onto them. They'll be expecting to see a fireworks display in the next ten minutes.'
The message came through. No one needed any urging. They quickly coordinated their efforts and assigned themselves sections of the boat to search while Pitt stripped to his shorts and strapped on his air tanks and regulator. He didn't bother, nor did he take the time, to slip into a wet suit. Without its buoyancy he felt no necessity to be hindered by a weight belt. Inserting the regulator's mouthpiece between his teeth, he strapped a small tool kit around his left leg, gripped a dive light in his right hand and stepped over the stern.
The water felt warmer than the air above. Visibility was almost diamond clear. Shining the light downward, he could make out a flat, sandy, nondescript bottom eighty feet below. Pitt felt remarkably comfortable as the tepid water pressed against his body. The hull below the waterline was free of growth, having been dry-docked and scraped clean before Sandecker ordered
He moved from the rudder and propellers toward the bow, swinging the light from port to starboard and back. There was always the danger of a curious shark, nosing its way toward the light, but in all his years of diving Pitt had seldom crossed paths with the murder machines of the deep. He concentrated instead on the object caught in the beam of his dive light, protruding like a tumor from the keel amidships. His suspicions confirmed, he stroked his fins slowly until he was staring at what he knew without the slightest doubt was an explosive device no more than ten inches in front of his face mask.
Pitt was no bomb expert. All he could determine was that some kind of oval-shaped cannister about three feet in length and eight inches wide had been attached to the aluminum hull where it met the keel. Whoever had placed the cannister had anchored it with an adhesive tape impervious to liquid and strong enough to maintain a grip against the drag from the water as the boat cruised through the channel.
There was no way he could tell what type of explosive was being used, but it looked to him like a classic case of overkill. It seemed far more than enough to blast
He clamped the dive light under an armpit and gently placed both hands on the cannister. One deep breath and he attempted to pull the cannister away from the hull. Nothing happened. He increased his effort, but it was fruitless. Without a firm base to stand on, Pitt could exert too little force to overcome the adhesive. He backed off, reached into the tool kit strapped to his leg and pulled out a small fisherman's knife with a curved blade.
Under the light, he took a quick glance at the orange dial on his ancient Doxa dive watch. He had been down four minutes. He had to hurry before Specter's agent onshore got wise that something was up. Very cautiously slipping the edge of the knife under the cannister as far as he dared, Pitt sliced the blade through the tape as if he was sawing a piece of wood. Whoever had attached the bomb used enough tape to choke a whale. Though he had split the tape in four different areas, the cannister still remained stuck to the hull.
Putting the knife back in the kit, Pitt gripped both ends, curled his body until his finned feet were planted firmly against the keel and heaved, praying that only an electronic signal would set it off. The cannister abruptly came off the hull with such momentum that Pitt was hurled through the water nearly six feet before drifting to a stop. It was then, as he held the explosives in his hands, that he realized he was gasping air from his tank like a pump, while his heart felt like it was trying to beat through his rib cage.
Without waiting for his heart to slow and his breathing to return to normal, Pitt swam along the keel and surfaced beside the rudder at the stern. No one was visible. They were all busily searching the interior of the boat. He spit out his mouthpiece and shouted.
'I could use some help!' He wasn't surprised that Giordino was the first to respond.
The little Italian burst through the engine room hatch and leaned over the transom. 'What have you got?'
'Enough explosives to disintegrate a battleship.'
'You want me to lift it on board?'
'No.' Pitt gasped, as a wave washed over his head. 'Tie a long line to a life raft and throw it over the stern.'
Giordino asked no questions as he hurried up a ladder to the roof of the deckhouse. There he feverishly yanked one of the two life rafts out of its cradle, where it was stowed untied so it could float free should the boat sink. Renee and Dodge appeared on the deck just in time to catch the raft as Giordino let it slide over the wheelhouse roof to the deck below.
'What's happening?' asked Renee.
Giordino nodded to Pitt's head bobbing in the water aft of the stern. 'Dirk found an explosive device fastened to the hull.'
Renee peered over the transom at the cannister revealed under the glow of Pitt's dive light. 'Why doesn't he drop it on the bottom?' she murmured, her tone laced with fear.
'Because he has a plan,' Giordino answered patiently. 'Now give me a hand dropping the raft over the side.'
Dodge said nothing, as the three of them manhandled the heavy raft over the railing into the water with a splash that covered Pitt's head. Kicking his fins furiously, he rose out of the water up to his chest, lifted the heavy cannister over his head and carefully lowered it onto the bottom of the raft, terribly aware that he could be overplaying his luck. His only consolation was that he would never realize he was sent to the great beyond until it was over.
Only after the cannister was safely secured inside the raft did Pitt utter a long sigh of relief.
Giordino dropped the boarding ladder and helped Pitt climb on board. As Giordino removed his air tanks, Pitt said, 'Pour a few gallons of fuel into the raft, then pay out the line as far as it will go.'
'You expect us to tow a raft full of explosives covered in gasoline?' Dodge asked hesitantly.
'That's the idea.'
'What happens when it passes the buoy with the transmitter?'
Pitt looked at Dodge and flashed a crooked grin. 'Then it will go bang.'
20
When entering the harbor from seaward, the port buoy marking the sides of the channel is usually painted green with a matching colored light on top, and is given an odd number. The starboard buoy directly opposite is red, mounts a red light and sports an even number. As
Except for Giordino, who took the helm, everyone huddled on the stern deck and stared expectantly over the top of the transom as the outer harbor buoys came even with
Secure in the knowledge that Pitt had discovered the explosives, and having witnessed him placing the cannister in the life raft before allowing it to fall astern, Ford and Dodge still half expected a fiery eruption that would destroy the boat. As they peered warily at the life raft, a small orange shape against the black water a hundred and fifty yards astern, you could have cut the cloud of apprehension with a chain saw until
Then the tension mounted again, this time even higher as the raft was towed closer and closer to the buoys. Fifty yards, then twenty-five.
Renee instinctively ducked and placed her hands over her ears. Dodge crouched and turned his back toward the stern while Pitt and Giordino calmly gazed aft, as if waiting for a shooting star to dart through the stars.
'Soon as she blows,' Pitt said to Dodge, 'switch off our running lights so they think we've evaporated.'
He had no sooner finished giving the order than the life raft vaporized.
