With little room to maneuver, Joe continued to cover up, unable to even open his arms and clinch the other fighter. Kurt looked at the clock. This was the last round, but there was over a minute to go.
It didn’t look like Joe would make the bell. Then a moment presented itself. As the Scandinavian wound up to deliver another hammer blow, he opened himself up.
At that very instant, Joe dropped his shoulder and fired an uppercut. It caught Thor on the chin and snapped his head backward. From the look of things, Thor hadn’t expected anything but defense from Joe at that point. Kurt saw the man’s eyes roll as he stumbled backward.
Joe stepped forward and fired a heavy right, sending Thor to the canvas.
The crowd oohed in surprise. Joe’s cheerleaders shrieked with pleasure, like young girls watching the Beatles step off an airplane. The ref began to count.
The Scandinavian fighter rolled onto his hands and knees by “Four,” while Joe danced around the ring like Sugar Ray Leonard. By “Six,” Thor was using the ropes to help himself up, and Joe looked a little less happy about things. By “Eight,” Thor was standing, looking clearheaded and glaring across the ring. Joe’s face had turned decidedly sour.
The ref grabbed Thor’s gloves and looked ready to send him back into the fight.
And then the bell rang.
The round was over, the fight was over. It was ruled a draw. Nobody was happy but everybody cheered.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, with his debt to society paid, a few autographs signed, and at least one new phone number in his pocket, Joe Zavala sat with Kurt, ripping the tape off his hands and then pressing an ice bag to his eye.
“That’ll teach you to run over people’s cows,” Kurt said, using a pair of scissors to help Joe with the tape.
“Next time I fight,” Joe said, “you sit in the back row. Or, better yet, find something else to do.”
“What are you talking about?” Kurt asked. “I thought that went well.”
Joe had to laugh. Kurt was as good and loyal a friend as Joe had ever known, but he did have a penchant for glossing over the downside of things. “I’ve always wondered about your definition of ‘well.’”
With the tape off, Joe moved the bag of ice to the back of his neck as Kurt explained what had happened aboard the Kinjara Maru.
It sounded as odd to him as it had seemed to Kurt. “Sixth sense going off?” he asked.
“Three alarms,” Kurt said.
“Funny thing,” Joe said, “I hear the same sound in my head right now. But I think it’s for a different reason.”
Kurt laughed. “All I want is a look,” he insisted. “Do you think the Barracuda can get us there?”
“There might be a way to do it,” Joe replied. “But only as an ROV. I wouldn’t trust the mods to keep anyone safe at that depth. Plus, there would be no room for us anyway.”
Kurt smiled. “What are you thinking?”
“We could build a small outer hull and encase the Barracuda inside it,” he began.
As Joe spoke he could see the design in his head, could feel the shape beneath his hands. He designed things intuitively. He did the math just to back up what he already knew.
“We fill that compartment with a noncompressing liquid, or hyperpressurize it with nitrogen gas. Then we flood the interior of the Barracuda itself or pressurize it to several atmospheres as well, and the three-stage gradient should help balance out the forces. Neither the outer hull nor the inner hull would have to handle all the pressure.”
“What about the instrumentation and the controls?” Kurt asked.
Joe shrugged. “Not a problem,” he said. “Everything we put inside is waterproofed and designed for a high-pressure environment.”
“Sounds good,” Kurt said.
He looked pleased. Joe knew he would be. And so he dropped the bomb.
“There is one minor problem.”
Kurt’s gaze narrowed. “What’s that?”
“Dirk called me before you got here.”
“And?”
“He gave me orders not to let you talk me into anything reckless.”
“Reckless?”
“He knows us too well,” Joe said, guessing it took one adventurous, even “reckless,” mind to know the workings of another.
Kurt nodded, smiling a bit. “That he does. On the other hand, ‘reckless’ gives us a lot of leeway.”
“Sometimes you scare me,” Joe said. “Just putting that on the record.”
“Draw up the plans,” Kurt said. “The race is in two days. After that, we’re on our own.”
Joe smiled, liking the challenge. And while he feared the wrath of Dirk Pitt if they lost NUMA’s million-dollar Barracuda, he was pretty certain that he and Kurt had built up enough markers to cover it if they did.
Besides, if the stories he’d been told were true, Dirk had lost a few of Admiral Sandecker’s more expensive toys over the years. How angry could he really get?
11
AS HE STRODE THROUGH THE PASSAGEWAY of the NUMA vessel Matador, Paul Trout had to duck each time he came to a bulkhead and its watertight door. While anyone over six feet had to crouch at the bulkheads or risk a nasty whack of the head, Paul was six-foot-eight in bare feet, with wide shoulders and long limbs. He all but had to contort himself to make it through unscathed.
An avid fisherman who preferred the outdoors, Paul was simply not designed for the tight quarters found inside a modern vessel. Naturally, he spent much of his time in one ship or another, twisting himself into small machinery-filled compartments, bending his spine like a pretzel to fit into submersibles, or even just walking the inner passageways of the ship.
On another day he would have detoured outside onto the main deck before walking the length of the ship, but the Matador was currently operating off the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. It was winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and both the wind and sea were up already.
Climbing through another hatch, Paul reached a more spacious compartment. He peered inside. The dimly lit room was quiet, with most of the light coming from glowing dials, backlit keyboards, and a trio of high-definition, flat-screen monitors.
A pair of scruffy-looking researchers sat in front of the outboard monitors, while in between them, on a plate of backlit glass marked with a grid, stood a shapely woman with hands outstretched as if she were balancing on a tightrope. A visor covered her eyes and held her wine red hair like a band, while strange-looking gauntlets with wires running from them encased her hands. On her feet a set of high-tech boots sprouted wires of their own, all of which ran to a large computer a few feet behind her.
Paul smiled to himself as he watched his wife, Gamay. She looked like a robotic ballerina. She moved her head to the right, and the picture on the monitors moved similarly, bright lights illuminating a smooth, sediment-covered surface with a jagged hole in what had once been the hull of a British naval vessel.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “there’s the entry point of the Exocet missile that sank your proud ship.”
“It doesn’t look all that bad, really,” one of the men said, his English accent as thick as his beard.
The Sheffield was the first major British casualty of the Falklands War, hit by a French-made missile that didn’t detonate but still ignited fires that raged throughout the ship.
She survived for six days after the attack before sinking during an attempt to tow her to port.
“Bloody French,” the other Englishman said. “Probably just getting back at us for Waterloo and Trafalgar.”