“What’s left of me,” Pitt replied. “I’m with AI and Maeve Fletcher.”
“I can’t believe you’re all alive,” Sandecker said as if an electrical surge was coursing through his veins.
“AI said to save him a cigar.”
“How is the little devil?”
“Testy because I won’t let him eat.”
“When we learned that you were cast adrift by Arthur Dorsett in the path of a typhoon, I moved heaven and earth to launch a massive search, but the long arm of Dorsett frustrated my rescue efforts. After almost three weeks with no word, we thought you were all dead. Tell me how you survived all this time.”
“A long story,” said Pitt. “I’d rather you brought me up-to-date on the acoustic plague.”
“A story far more involved than yours. I’ll give you the particulars when we meet. Where are the three of you now?”
“We managed to reach Gladiator Island. I’m sitting in Arthur Dorsett’s study as we speak, borrowing his telephone.”
Sandecker went numb with disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”
“The gospel truth. We’re going to snatch Maeve’s twin boys and make our getaway across the Tasman Sea to Australia.” He said it in such a way as to sound like he was walking down the street to buy a loaf of bread.
Cold fear replaced Sandecker’s earlier anxiety, but it was the shocking fear of helplessness. The news struck with such unexpectedness, such suddenness, that he was incapable of words for several seconds until Pitt’s inquiring voice finally penetrated his shock.
“Are you still there, Admiral?”
“Pitt, listen to me!” demanded Sandecker urgently. “Your lives are in extreme danger! Get off the island!’ Get off now!”
There was a slight pause. “Sorry, sir, I don’t read you—”
“I’ve no time to explain,” Sandecker interrupted. “All I can tell you is a sound ray of incredible intensity will strike Gladiator Island in less than twenty minutes. The impact will set up seismic resonance that is predicted to blow off the volcanoes on opposite ends of the island. If the eruption takes place on the western side, there will be no survivors. You and the others must escape to sea while you still can. Talk no further. I am cutting off all communications.”
Sandecker switched off his phone, capable of nothing but the realization that he had unknowingly and innocently sealed a death warrant on his best friend.
The shocking knowledge struck Pitt like the thrust of a dagger. He stared through a large picture window at the helicopter sitting on the yacht moored to the pier in the lagoon. He estimated the distance at just under a kilometer. Burdened by two young children, he figured they would need a good fifteen minutes to reach the dock. Without means of transportation, a car or a truck, it would be an extremely close timetable. The time for caution had flown as if there had never been such a time. Giordino and Maeve should have found her sons by now. They had to have found them. If not, something must have gone terribly wrong.
He turned his gaze first toward Mount Winkleman, and then swept the saddle of the island, his eyes stopping on Mount Scaggs. They looked deceptively peaceful. Seeing the lush growth of trees in the ravines scoring the slopes, he found it hard to imagine the two mounts as menacing volcanoes, sleeping giants on the verge of spewing death and disaster in a burst of gaseous steam and molten rock.
Briskly, but not in a hurried panic, he rose out of Dorsett’s leather executive chair and came around the desk. At that instant, he halted abruptly, frozen in the exact center of the room as the double doors to the main interior of the house swung open, and Arthur Dorsett walked in.
He was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a file of papers under an arm. He wore wrinkled slacks and what had once been white but was now a yellowed dress shirt with a bow tie. His mind seemed elsewhere. Perceiving another body in his study, he looked up, more curious than surprised. Seeing the intruder was in uniform, his first thought was that Pitt was a security guard. He opened his mouth to demand the reason for Pitt’s presence, then stiffened in petrified astonishment. His face became a pale mask molded by shock and bewilderment. The file fell to the floor, its papers sliding out like a fanned deck of cards. His hand dropped to his side, spilling the coffee on his slacks and the carpet.
“You’re dead!” he gasped.
“You don’t know how happy I am to prove you wrong,” Pitt commented, pleased to see that Dorsett wore a patch over one eye. “Come to think of it, you do look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“The storm ... there is no way you could have survived a raging sea.” A flicker of emotional repossession showed in the one black eye and slowly but surely grew. “How was it possible?”
“A lot of positive thinking and my Swiss army knife.” My God, this guy is big, Pitt thought, very glad he was the one pointing a gun.
“And Maeve ... is she dead?” He spoke haltingly as he studied the assault rifle in Pitt’s hands, the muzzle aimed at his heart.
“Just knowing that it causes you great annoyance and displeasure makes me happy to report she is alive and well and at this very moment about to make off with your grandsons.” Pitt stared back, green eyes locked with black. “Tell me, Dorsett. How do you justify murdering—your own daughter? Did one single woman who was simply trying to find herself as a person pose a threat to your assets? Or was it her sons you wanted, all to yourself?”
“It was essential the empire be carried on after my death by my direct descendants. Maeve refused to see it that way.”
“I have news for you. Your empire is about to come crashing down around your head.”
Dorsett failed to grasp Pitt’s meaning. “You intend to kill me?”
Pitt shook his head. “I’m not your executioner. The island volcanoes are going to erupt. A fitting end for you, Arthur, consumed by fiery lava.”
Dorsett smiled faintly as he regained control. “What sort of nonsense is that?”
“Too complicated to explain. I don’t know all the technicalities myself, but I have it on the best authority. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“You’re bloody insane.”
“0 ye of little faith.”
“If you’re going to shoot,” said Dorsett, cold anger glaring from his coal-black eye, “do it now, clean and quick.”
Pitt grinned impassively. Maeve and Giordino had yet to make an appearance. For the moment he needed Arthur Dorsett alive in case they had been captured by security guards. “Sorry, I haven’t the time. Now please turn around and go up the stairs to the bedrooms.”
“My grandchildren, you can’t have my grandchildren,” he muttered as if it was a divine statement.
“Correction, Maeve’s children.”
“You’ll never get past my security guards.”
“The two at the front gate are— what’s the word?— incapacitated.”
“Then you’ll have to murder me in cold blood, and I’ll wager everything I’ve got that you don’t have the guts for it.”
“Why is it people keep thinking I can’t stand the sight of blood?” Pitt touched his finger against the trigger of the assault rifle. “Get moving, Arthur, or I’ll shoot off your ears.”
“Go ahead, you yellow bastard,” Dorsett lashed out, pronouncing it as bahstud. “You already took one of my eyes.”
“You don’t get the picture, do you?” White-hot anger consumed Pitt at seeing Dorsett’s arrogant belligerence. He raised the rifle slightly and gently squeezed the trigger. The gun spat with a loud pop through the suppressor and a slice of Dorsett’s left ear sprayed the carpet. “Now, head for the stairs. Make a move I don’t like and you’ll get a bullet in the spine.”