“Who do you think is driving the bus?” Giordino smiled broadly as he nodded toward the cockpit.
Without another word, Loren ran up the aisle and threw open the cockpit door. Pitt sat in the pilot’s seat, heavily concentrating on flying an aircraft that was new to him. He didn’t blink or turn his head as she slipped her hands around his neck and down inside his borrowed Suma Corporation flight suit and kissed him at least a dozen times.
“You’re alive,” she said joyfully. “Suma said you were dead.”
“It hasn’t exactly been a fun-filled day,” Pitt managed between her kisses. “Does this mean you’re glad to see me?”
She lightly dragged her nails over his chest. “Can’t you ever get serious?”
“Lady, right now I’m about as serious as I can get. I’ve got eight people depending on me to fly an aircraft I’ve never touched before. And I better get the hang of it real quick or we’re all going body surfing.”
“You can do it,” she said confidently. “Dirk Pitt can do anything.”
“I wish people wouldn’t say that,” Pitt groaned. He gave a quick tic of his head to his right. “Take the co-pilot’s seat and play with the radio. We’ve got to call in the cavalry before the samurai air force takes up the chase. No way we can outrun jet fighters.”
“Suma doesn’t own the Japanese military.”
“He owns everything else around here. I’m not taking any chances. Switch on the radio, I’ll give you the frequency.”
“Where are we going?”
“The Ralph R. Bennett.”
“A boat?”
“A ship,” Pitt corrected her. “A U.S. Navy detection and tracking ship. If we get to her before we’re intercepted, we’re home free.”
“They wouldn’t dare shoot us down with Hideki Suma on board.”
Pitt’s eyes flickered from the instrument panel to the water rushing by below. “Oh, how I hope you’re right.”
Behind them, Giordino was trying but failing to soothe Toshie, who was hissing and striking out like a hysterical rat. She spat at him but narrowly missed his cheek, catching him on the ear. Finally he grabbed her from the rear and held her in a tight vise grip.
“I realize I don’t make a good first impression,” he said happily, “but to know me is to love me.”
“You Yankee pig!” she cried.
“Not so, my Italian ancestors would never admit to being Yankees.”
Stacy ignored Giordino and the struggling Toshie and tightly bound Suma to one of several plush leather chairs in the luxurious executive main cabin. Disbelief was written all over his face.
“Well, well, well,” said a happy Mancuso. “Surprise, surprise, the big man himself came along for the ride.”
“You’re dead. You’re all supposed to be dead,” he muttered incredulously.
“Your buddy Kamatori is the one who’s dead,” Mancuso sadistically informed him.
“How?”
“Pitt stuck him on the wall.”
Pitt’s name seemed to act as a stimulant. Suma came back on keel and he said, “You have made a disastrous mistake. You will unleash terrible forces by taking me hostage.”
“Fair is fair. Now it’s our turn to act mean and nasty.”
The human voice can’t exactly imitate the hiss of a viper, but Suma came pretty close to it. “You are too stupid to understand. My people will launch the Kaiten Project when they have learned what you’ve done.”
“Let them try,” Weatherhill fairly purred. “In about another three minutes your Dragon Center is going to have its lights put out.”
The robotic electrical inspector Otokodate soon found the explosive charge taped to the ribbon of fiber optics. He deftly removed it and rolled back to his console. He studied the package for several moments, recognizing the timer for what it was, but his memory had not been programmed to analyze plastic explosives, and he had no concept of its purpose. He transmitted a signal to his superior in robotic control.
“This is Otokodate at power center five.”
“Yes, what is it?” answered a robot monitor.
“I wish to communicate with my supervisor, Mr. Okuma.”
“He is not back from tea yet. Why are you transmitting?”
“I have found a strange object attached to the primary fiberoptic bundle.”
“What sort of object?”
“A pliable substance with a digital timing device.”
“Could be an instrument left behind by a cable engineer during installation.”
“My memory does not contain the necessary data for a positive identification. Do you wish me to bring it to control for examination?”
“No, remain at your station. I’ll send a courier down to collect.”
“I will comply.”
A few minutes later a courier robot named Nakajima that was programmed to navigate every passageway and corridor and pass through the doors to all office and work areas in the complex entered the power center. As ordered, Otokodate unwittingly turned over the explosive to Nakajima.
Nakajima was a sixth-generation mechanical rover that could receive voice commands but not give them. It silently extended its articulated gripper, took the package, deposited it in a container, and then began the trip to robotic control for inspection.
Fifty meters from the power center door, at a point well removed from humans and critical equipment, the C-8 plastic detonated with a thundering roar that rumbled throughout the concrete passageways of level five.
The Dragon Center was designed and built to withstand the most severe earthquakes, and any structural damage was minimal. The Kaiten Project remained intact and operational. The only result of Weatherhill’s explosive charge was the almost total disintegration of courier rover Nakajima.
57
THE ROBOGUARDS ALERTED their security command to the stray drama in the garden before Pitt had lifted the tilt-turbine cleat the hedged confine. At first the robots’ warning was discounted as a malfunction of visual perception, but when an immediate search failed to turn up Suma, the security command offices became a scene of frenzied confusion.
Because of his monumental ego and fetish for secrecy, Hideki Suma had failed to groom a top-level executive team to act in an emergency if he was beyond reach. In panic, his security directors turned to Kamatori but quickly discovered all private phones and pages went unanswered, nor were signals to his personal roboguards acknowledged.
A special defense team, backed by four armed robots, rushed to Kamatori’s quarters. The officer in charge knocked loudly, but receiving no reply, he stepped aside and ordered one of the robots to break in the locked door. The thick etched glass partition was quickly smashed into fragments.
The officer cautiously stepped through the empty video viewing room and advanced slowly into the trophy room, his jaw dropping in stunned disbelief. Moro Kamatori hung, shoulders hunched over, in an upright position, his eyes wide open and blood streaming from his mouth. His face was contorted in pain and rage. The officer stared vacuously at the hilt of a saber protruding from Kamatori’s groin, the blade running through his body and pinning him to the wall.
Like a man in a daze, the officer could not believe he was dead and gently shook Kamatori and talked to him. After a minute it finally broke through that the born-too-late samurai warrior wasn’t going to speak again, ever. And then, for the first time, the officer realized the prisoners were gone and Kamatori’s roboguards were frozen where they stood.
The confusion was magnified by the news of Kamatori’s killing and the almost simultaneous explosion on level five. The ground-to-air missiles installed around the island rose from their hidden bunkers, poised and ready for launch but put on hold due to the uncertainty of Suma’s presence on the plane.
But soon the action became purposeful and controlled. The remote video recordings of the roboguards were replayed, and it was clearly seen that Suma was forced aboard the aircraft.