'That's only the half of it. The island's security guards will come running when they get wise that all is not well.'
Pitt looked up and saw the thirty women begin moving back toward the altar. It went against all his breeding and upbringing to unmercifully shoot a woman, but there was more than their own lives at stake. His children would die too if they didn't stop thirty hard-core members of the sisterhood from rushing them with slashing knives. It was as if a pack of wolves were circling a pair of lions. With guns against knives, one against five still gave the men an advantage, but a mass rush of fifteen against one was too one-sided.
Pitt stopped in the act of freeing a drugged Summer. In the same instant, Epona jerked her wrist out of Pitt's grip, slicing a deep cut in his palm with a razor-sharp ring. He grabbed her hand and glanced at the ring that gashed his hand. It held a tanzanite stone cut in the design of the Uffington horse. He disregarded the stabbing pain and pushed her away. Then he brought up his rifle.
Unable to murder but at least maim to keep his closest friend and children from a bloody death, he calmly fired off four shots that struck the nearest women in the feet. All four went down with cries of pain and shock. The others hesitated, but hyped-up with anger and fanaticism they began to press forward, making threatening motions with the daggers.
No more mentally geared to kill a woman than Pitt, Giordino slowly, methodically, took Pitt's cue and began shooting the women in the feet, downing five of them who crumpled in a heap together.
'Stop!' Pitt shouted. 'Or we will shoot to kill.'
Those still unscathed paused and looked down at their sisters writhing at their feet. One of them, who was dressed in a silver gown, raised her dagger high over her head and let it drop with a clang onto the stone floor. Slowly, one by one, the others followed suit until they all stood with empty hands outstretched.
'Tend to your wounded!'
Quickly, Pitt finished releasing Summer, as Giordino covered the women and kept an eye out for any alerted guards. He cursed himself at finding that Epona had escaped and vanished during the melee. Seeing Summer was in no condition to walk on her own, Pitt threw her over his shoulder and made his way to the throne, where he rapidly pried apart the rings holding Dirk's chains with the barrel of his weapon.
After pulling his gag off, Dirk gasped, 'Dad, where in God's name did you and Al come from?'
'I guess you could say we dropped from the sky,' said Pitt, happily embracing his son.
'You cut it close. Another few seconds and…' His voice trailed off at the grim thought.
'Now we have to figure a way out of here.' Then Pitt stared into Summer's glazed eyes. 'Is she all right?' he asked Dirk.
'Those Druid witches drugged her to the gills.'
Pitt wished that he still had Epona clutched in his hands. But there was no sign of her. She had deserted her sisters and disappeared into the darkness beyond the ritual stones. He removed the satellite phone from the pack around his waist and dialed a number. After a long pause, Gunn's voice came over the receiver. 'Dirk?'
'What's your status?' asked Pitt. 'It looked as if you took hits.'
'Shepard took a bullet through his upper arm, but it was a clean wound and I bandaged it up the best I could.'
'Can he still fly?'
'He's a tough old dog. Too mad not to fly.'
'How about you?'
'One bounced off my head,' Gunn answered buoyantly, 'but I suspect the bullet took the worst of it.'
'Are you airborne?'
'Yes, about three miles north of the island.' Then Gunn asked hesitantly, 'Dirk and Summer?'
'Safe and sound.'
'Thank God for that. Are you ready to be picked up?'
'Come and get us.'
'Can you tell me what you found?'
'Answers to questions come later.'
Pitt switched off the phone and looked down at Summer, who was being brought back to reality by Giordino and Dirk as they walked her back and forth to get her circulation restored. While waiting for the helicopter, he walked around the sacrificial block, watching for any sign of Epona's security guards, but none appeared. Then the lights around the stones blinked out and his world turned black as silence settled over the pagan amphitheater.
By the time Gunn and Shepard reappeared, the roar of jet engines could be heard on the island's airstrip as several planes took off, one almost on the tail of the one in front. Confident now there was no danger from guards appearing out of the night, Pitt informed Shepard that he could turn on his landing lights when they arrived to lift them up. When the helicopter arrived and hovered briefly before descending, Pitt could see they were alone inside the bowl of the ritual stones. All the women had vanished. He looked up into a cloudless sky carpeted with a million stars, wondering what destination Epona was headed for. What were her plans now that her freakish operation that would have caused undue suffering to millions of people lay in ruins beneath Lake Nicaragua?
She would be a wanted woman now that it was known she had conducted criminal acts for her boss, Specter. International law enforcement agencies would be on her trail. Every aspect of Odyssey's operations would be investigated. Lawsuits would fill courts in Europe and America. Whether Odyssey could survive the scrutiny was doubtful. And what of Specter? What was his role in the scheme? He was the man at the top, so he had to be responsible. What force governed the relationship between Specter and Epona? The questions spun in Pitt's mind without answers.
The enigma would have to be solved by others, he thought. His role, and that of Giordino, was thankfully finished. He turned his thoughts to more mundane matters, like his own future. He looked up as Giordino came over and stood next to him.
'This may be a strange time to bring this up,' said Giordino almost as if he was meditating. 'But I've been giving it a lot of thought, especially during the past ten days. I've come to the conclusion that I'm getting too old to be chasing around the oceans and getting involved with Sandecker's crazy ventures. I'm tired of madcap exploits and wild escapades or expeditions that come within inches of halting my productive love life. I can't do all the things I used to do. My joints ache and my sore muscles take twice as long to heal.'
Pitt looked at him and smiled. 'So what's your point?'
'The admiral has a choice. I can either be put out to pasture and find a cushy job with an ocean engineering company or he can put me in charge of NUMA's underwater technical equipment department. Any job where I don't have to be maimed or shot at.'
Pitt turned and stared for a long moment over the restless black sea. Then he gazed at Dirk and Summer, as his son helped his daughter to board the aircraft. They were his future.
'You know,' he said finally. 'You've been reading my mind.'
PART FIVE
Exposed
48
At nine o'clock in the morning, three days after he and his offspring returned to his hangar, Pitt adjusted the tie to his sincere suit, as he called it, his one and only tailored black pin-striped suit with vest. Then he buttoned the vest and set an antique gold pocket watch in one pocket, draping a gold chain through a buttonhole
