“Nobody smiled,” Woodson observed sourly. He had drifted off to the far wall of the cavern, trying for the widest possible lens angle.
“Next time, yell sex.” Spencer joked back.
“It wouldn’t matter,” Woodson grunted. “None of you know what it means anyway.”
Pitt grinned and moved off. He rolled forward and jackknifed. diving to the bottom like an airplane on a strafing run. The others followed, spaced out at ten-foot intervals.
The forest of counterfeit kelp was thick and nearly impenetrable. Thin branches rose from the bottom to the surface, flaring into a wide, spreading canopy. Hersong was right: it was a work of art. Even at arm’s length Pitt couldn't have told the plastic from the real thing. He unsheathed the knife and began slicing his way through the brown swaying stems. Working his way forward, stopping only to untangle his air tank, he finally broke into another tunnel. The second had a larger diameter than the first but was much shorter in length. After four stout kicks, Pitt surfaced in a new cavern, only to be enveloped in the unending white. mist Every few moments, the splash of a head breaking the water, announced the arrival of another member of the team.
“See anything?” The voice was Spencer’s.
“Not yet,” Pitt replied. Mechanically, his eyes strained unblinkingly into the damp gloom. He thought he saw something now, something more imagined than real. Gradually, he became aware of a dark shape, materializing out of the fog. And then suddenly, it was absolutely and concretely there the smooth, black metal hull of a submarine. Pitt spat out his mouthpiece, swam over to the sub and grabbed hold of’ the bow planes, pulling himself onto the deck.
Pitt’s mind became absorbed in the submarine. At least ten times he’d wondered how he'd react, how he would feel when he finally touched the heroin’s underwater carrier. Elation at being proved right — that and more. Anger and disgust flooded over him. If they could only talk, what tales of insidious tragedies these steel plates could relate.
“Please drop your spear on the deck and keep very, very still.” The voice behind Pitt was hard, and so was the gun barrel that dug into his spine. He eased the pole spear slowly to the wet deck. “Good. Now order your men to drop their weapons on the bottom. No tricks. A concussion grenade in the water can turn a swimmer into an ugly mass of jelly.”
Pitt nodded at the five floating heads. “You heard the man. Drop the spear guns… the knives too.
There’s no sense in antagonizing these nice people. I’m sorry men. It looks like I’ve blown it.”
There was nothing else left to say. Pitt had led these five men into a trap from which they might never escape alive. All emotion left him, he was conscious now only of time. On cue, Pitt raised his hands over his head and slowly turned around.
“Major Pitt, you are an uncommonly aggravating young man.”
Bruno von Till stood on the deck of the submarine, grinning like Fu Manchu about to feed a victim to the crocodiles. His eyes were narrowed slits beneath the skin-topped head, and he seemed, at least to Pitt, to radiate a personal and long-practiced repulsiveness. But something was wrong, terribly wrong. The old German had both hands in his jacket pockets; he carried no gun. It was the man beside him who held the gun — a mountain of a man with a face of carved stone and a torso like a tree trunk. Von Till’s eyes fully opened, and his voice rose in a mocking tone.
“Forgive me for not offering introductions, Major.” Von Till gestured toward his companion. “But I understand that you and Darius have already met.”
17
“You seem surprised to see me, Major,” Darius murmured satanically. “I can’t tell you what a great pleasure it is to meet you again under more favorable terms.” He jammed the nasty looking Luger against Pitt’s throat “Please do not move and force me to kill you prematurely. Your quick and sudden death would only cheat me out of a great deal of personal satisfaction and pleasure. I said I had an account to settle with you and your ugly little friend; now the hour has arrived to repay my debt for the pain I have suffered at your hands or more correctly feet.”
Pitt did his damnedest to look casual. “Sorry to disappoint you but Giordino stayed home this trip.”
“Then his punishment shall be added to yours.”
Darius smiled pleasantly. then lowered the gun and calmly shot Pitt in the leg. The sharp crack of the Luger amplified to a thunderclap within the rock-walled cavern. A blow — like the thrust of a red hot poker — jerked Pitt sideways and knocked him backward two steps. Somehow, he never really knew how, he managed to remain on his feet The nine millimeter bullet had torn through the fleshy part of his thigh. missing the bone by a scant quarter of an inch and leaving a neat little reddish hole at the entrance and a slightly larger one at the exit. The burning sensation quickly left, and his leg became numb with shock, the real pain, he was sure, would soon follow.
“Come now, Darius,” von Till spoke reprovingly.
“Let us not over-indulge ourselves in crudity. We have more important matters to resolve before you pursue your little ‘eye-for-an-eye’ sport. My apologies, Major Pitt, but you must admit, you have only yourself to blame. Your well-aimed kick in such a delicate location will require Darius to limp for at least another two weeks.”
“I’m only sorry I didn’t boot him twice as hard,”
Pitt said through clenched teeth.
Von Till ignored him. He said to the men in the water: “Drop your diving equipment on the bottom, gentlemen. Then climb up on deck. Quickly, we have little time to waste.”
Thomas raised his mask and threw an if-looks-could-kill stare at von Till “We’re damn well comfortable right where we are.”
Von Till shrugged. “Very well, it seems you need an incentive.” He turned and shouted into the dim shadows of the cavern. “Hans, the lights!”
Suddenly, a string of overhead flood lights burst on, illuminating the cavern from ceiling to water. Pitt could now see that the submarine was moored to a floating dock that began at a tunnel entrance on the far wall and extended two hundred feet across the water like an enormous wooden tongue. The domed ceiling was much lower in this inner cavern as compared to the outer one, but its horizontal area was several times larger; the square footage would have easily equaled a football field. Along the right wall, on an overhanging ledge, five men stood in frozen immobility, their hands gripped on leveled machine pistols.
Each was dressed in the same style of uniform that Pitt had previously seen on von Till’s chauffeur. There was no mistaking the business-like manner in which they aimed their weapons at the men in the water.
“I think you’d better do as the man says,” Pitt advised.
The mist returned, but the burning lights kept it to a minimum, dooming any chance for escape. Spencer and Hersong climbed aboard the sub first, followed by Knight and Thomas. Woodson, as usual, was last, still clutching his camera in defiance of von Till's commands.
Knight helped Pitt off with his airtank. “Let me take a look at your leg, sir.” Gently he eased Pitt to a sitting position on the deck. Then he removed the lead weights from his weight belt and wrapped the nylon webbing around Pitt’s wound, stemming the blood flow. He looked up at Pitt and grinned. “It seems as though everytime I turn around, you’re bleeding.”
“A messy habit I can’t rid myself of lately—”
Pitt stopped short. The mist was disappearing again, and the lights had now exposed a second submarine moored on the opposite side of the dock. He surveyed both subs comparing them. The one he and his men rested on had a flush deck from stem to stern, no projections anywhere. The other sub was different; it still retained its original conning tower, a massive structure that sat on its hull like a distorted half-bubble. Three men, backs turned to the drama, behind them, were busily removing the machine guns from a shattered airplane that sat on the broad deck.