“Do you love me too, if only a little bit?”
“I love you with all my soul.”
She raised a hand and lightly touched his scorched face. “My huckleberry friend, always waitin’ round the bend. Hold me tight. I want to die in your arms.”
“You’re not going to die,” he said, unable to control the fabric of his heart as it tore in pieces. “We’re going to live a long life together, cruising the sea while we raise a boatload of kids who swim like fish.”
“Two drifters off to see the world,” she said in a low whisper.
“There’s such a lot of world to see,” Pitt said, repeating the words to the song.
“Take me across Moon River, Dirk, carry me across ...” Her expression almost seemed joyful.
Her eyes fluttered and closed. Her body seemed to wilt like a lovely flower under a frigid blast of cold. Her face became serene like a peacefully sleeping child’s. She was across and waiting on the other shore.
“No!” he cried, his voice like a wounded animal baying in the night.
All life seemed to flow out of Pitt too. He no longer clung to consciousness. He no longer fought the black mist closing in around him. He released his hold on reality and embraced the darkness.
Giordino’s plan for a quick, turnaround flight to Gladiator Island was dashed almost from the beginning.
After using the Agusta’s state-of-the-art satellite communications system to brief Sandecker on board the Glomar Explorer in Hawaii, he contacted air-and-sea rescue units in both Australia and New Zealand and became the first person to announce the disaster to the outside world. During the remainder of the flight to Hobart, he was continually besieged with requests from high-level government officials and reporters from the news media for accounts of the eruption and assessment of the damage.
Upon approaching the capital city of Tasmania, Giordino flew along the steep foothills bordering Hoban, whose commercial district was located on the west bank of the Derwent River. Locating the airport, he called the tower. The flight controllers directed him to set down in a military staging area half a kilometer from the main terminal. He was stunned to see a huge crowd of people milling about the area as he hovered over the landing site.
Once he shut down the engine and opened the passenger door, everything was accomplished in an orderly manner. Immigration officials came on board and arranged for his entry into Australia without a passport. Social services authorities took custody of Maeve’s young sons, assuring Giordino that as soon as their father was located, they would be placed in his care.
Then as Giordino finally set foot on the ground, half starved and exhausted almost beyond redemption, he was attacked by an army of reporters shoving microphones under his nose, aiming TV cameras at his face and shouting questions about the eruption.
The only question he answered with a smile on his face was to confirm that Arthur Dorsett was one of the first casualties of the holocaust.
Finally, breaking free of the reporters and reaching the office of the airport’s security police, Giordino called the head of the U.S. consulate, who reluctantly agreed to pay for the refueling of the helicopter, but only for humanitarian purposes. His return flight to Gladiator Island was again delayed when Australia’s Director of Disaster Relief asked if Giordino would help out by airlifting food and medical supplies back to the island in the Agusta. Giordino graciously gave his consent and then impatiently paced the asphalt around the helicopter while it was refueled and passenger seats were removed to make more room before the needed provisions were loaded on board. He was thankful when one of the relief workers sent him a bag full of cheese sandwiches and several bottles of beer.
To Giordino’s surprise, a car drove up and the driver notified him of Sandecker’s imminent arrival. He stared at the driver as if the man were crazy. Only four hours had passed since he’d reported to Sandecker in Hawaii.
The confusion cleared away as a U.S. Navy F-22A supersonic two-place fighter lined up on the runway and touched down. Giordino watched as the sleek craft, capable of Mach 3 + speeds, taxied over to where he had parked the helicopter. The canopy slid back, and Sandecker, wearing a flight suit, climbed out onto a wing. Without waiting for a ladder, he jumped onto the asphalt.
He strode straightway over to the startled Giordino and locked him in a bear hug. “Albert, you don’t know how glad I am to see you.”
“I wish there were more of us here to greet you,” Giordino said sadly.
“Useless to stand here consoling ourselves.” Sandecker’s face was tired and lined. “Let’s find Dirk.”
“Don’t you want to change first?”
“I’ll shed this Star Wars suit while we’re in flight. The Navy can have it back when I get around to returning it.”
Less than five minutes later, with two metric tons of badly needed supplies tied down in the passenger/cargo compartment, they were airborne and heading over the Tasman Sea toward the smoldering remains of Gladiator Island.
Relief ships of the Australian and New Zealand navies were immediately ordered to the island with relief sup plies and medical personnel. Any commercial ship within two hundred nautical miles was diverted to offer any assistance possible at the disaster scene. Astoundingly, the loss of life was not nearly as high as first suspected from the immense destruction. Most of the Chinese laborers had escaped from the path of the firestorm and, lava flows. Half the mine supervisors survived, but of Arthur Dorsett’s eighty-man security force, only seven badly burned men were found alive. Later autopsies showed that most of the dead suffocated from inhaling the ash.
By late afternoon, the eruption had substantially diminished in force. Bursts of magma still flowed from the volcanoes’ fissures, but had dwindled to small streams. Both volcanoes were mere shadows of their former bulk. Scaggs had nearly disappeared, leaving only a wide, ugly crater. Winkleman remained as a massive mound less than a third of its former height.
The canopy of ash still hovered over the volcanoes as Giordino and Sandecker dropped toward the devastated island. Most of the western side of the landmass looked as if a giant wire scraper had scoured it down to bedrock. The lagoon was a swamp choked with debris and floating pumice. Little remained of Dorsett Consolidated’s mining operations. What wasn’t buried under ash protruded like ruins from a civilization dead for a thousand years. The destruction of vegetation was practically total.
Giordino’s heart went cold when he saw no sign of the yacht carrying Pitt and Maeve in the lagoon. The dock was scorched and had sunk in the ash-blanketed water beside the demolished warehouses.
Sandecker was horrified. He had had no idea of the scope of the catastrophe. “All those people dead,” he muttered. “My fault, all my fault.”
Giordino looked at him through understanding eyes. “For every dead inhabitant, there are ten thousand people who owe you their lives.”
“Still ...” Sandecker said solemnly, his voice trailing off.
Giordino flew over a rescue ship that had already anchored in the lagoon. He began decreasing his airspeed in preparation for setting down in a space cleared by Australian army engineers who had parachuted onto the disaster scene first. The rotor’s downwash raised huge billows of ash, obscuring Giordino’s view. He hovered and slowly worked the collective pitch and cyclic control in coordination with the throttle. Flying blind, he settled the Agusta and touched down with a hard bump. Drawing a deep breath, he sighed as the rotors wound down.
The ash cloud had hardly dissipated when a major in the Australian army, dusted from head to toe and followed by an aide, ran up and opened the entry door. He leaned in the cargo compartment as Sandecker made his way aft. “Major O’Toole,” he introduced himself with a broad smile. “Glad to see you. You’re the first relief craft to land.”