Finally reaching the side of the barge, he yanked himself up and through the railing and collapsed on the deck. He afforded himself just a few seconds of rest, then ripped off his dive gear and scanned the deck for Summer, shouting her name. Met with a silent response, he stood up and grabbed Dahlgren's air line and began reeling him toward the barge. The Texan disappeared under the water for several seconds before reappearing, as larger ocean-borne waves rolled over him. He had regained consciousness and slowly kicked his legs and arms in a mostly futile attempt at propulsion. With his arms fatigued nearly to the breaking point, Dirk pulled him alongside the barge, then tied off the air line on the rail. Reaching into the water, he grabbed Dahlgren by the collar and hoisted him aboard.
Dahlgren rolled onto the deck, then teetered to a sitting position. He clumsily pulled off his dive helmet and gazed at Dirk with blurry eyes. Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he winced as his fingers rolled over a baseball-sized lump.
"What in blazes happened down there?" he asked in a slurred voice.
"Before or after the airlift used your skull for batting practice?" Dirk replied.
"So that was the sucker that hit me. I remember getting yanked off the bottom, then my air went dry. I hit my pony tank and was preparing to ascend when the lights went out."
"Lucky thing you cranked on your emergency air. It took me a few minutes to ditch the airlift and get you to the surface amid the tow ride."
"Thanks for not throwing me back," Dahlgren smiled, his senses slowly returning. "So where's Summer?
And why are we twenty miles from shore?" he asked, noting the rugged coast of Hawaii receding in the distance.
"I don't know," Dirk said solemnly.
As Dahlgren rested, Dirk searched the shack and examined the rest of the barge for signs of Summer's disappearance. When he returned, Dahlgren could tell by the look on his face that the news was not good.
"Radio is gone. Zodiac is gone. Generator is missing. And all of our mooring lines were cut at deck level."
"And we're drifting to China. Pirates in Hawaii?"
"Or treasure hunters thinking we had a gold ship." Dirk stared back toward the island. He could no longer see the cove but knew the black ship was still there.
"The ship we heard roll in?" Dahlgren asked, his vision too fuzzy to see for himself.
"Yes."
"Then Summer must be aboard her."
Dirk silently nodded. If she was on the ship, then she might be all right. It was something to hope for. But hope was fleeing his grasp by the minute as they moved farther and farther away from land. They had to help themselves before they could help Summer. Drifting across the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a powerless barge, they could float for weeks before approaching a passing ship. Hope, Dirk thought grimly as he watched the island shrink in size, was for a quick means back to shore.
-45-
The last place in the world that Rudi Gunn wanted to be was back in the Russian-built truck bouncing over a rough dirt road. But that's exactly where he found himself. His back, rear, and legs all ached from the constant jarring. With every rut and pothole sending his teeth chattering, he was convinced that the truck manufacturer had neglected to install shocks and springs on the vehicle.
"The suspension on this thing must have been designed by the Marquis de Sade," he grimaced as they rolled over a harsh bump.
"Relax," Giordino grinned from behind the wheel. "This is the smooth section of the highway."
Gunn turned a lighter shade of pale, observing that the highway consisted of a weathered pair of dirt tracks through the high steppe grass. They had bounced across the open lands since midday, en route to Borjin's compound of Xanadu. They had to rely on Pitt and Giordino's collective memory to find their way there and several times were forced to guess which of the myriad of tracks to follow over the rolling hills. Familiar landmarks confirmed they were on the right route as they approached the small mountain range to the southeast that they knew housed the estate.
"Another two hours, Rudi," Pitt said, gauging the distance out the windshield, "and your troubles will be over."
Gunn silently shook his head, having the distinct feeling that his troubles were just beginning. A follow-up phone call from Hiram Yaeger before they departed Ulaanbaatar had added a new sense of urgency and gravity to their mission. The revelation that an odd series of earthquakes had been occurring in Mongolia was impossible to ignore.
"We're just scratching the surface on establishing a correlation, but this much we know," Yaeger said in a weary voice. "A series of earthquakes have rocked several areas in north-central Mongolia, as well as a dispersed area in and around the southern border of China. The earthquakes are unique from the norm in that their epicenters are relatively close to the surface. They mostly have been moderately sized quakes, as measured on the Richter scale, yet have produced high-intensity surface waves, which can be particularly destructive. Dr. McCammon has discovered that the foreshocks that preceded each quake are nearly uniform in intensity, which is inconsistent with a naturally occurring earthquake."
"So you think there is some sort of man-made activity that is inducing the earthquakes?" Pitt asked.
"As unlikely as it sounds, the seismological records seem to indicate as much."
"I know that oil drilling sometimes generates earthquakes, and underground nuclear testing has suspected links. I recall that when the old Rocky Flats Arsenal near Denver began injecting contaminated water deep into the ground, earthquakes shook the surrounding area. Have you determined if there is some sort of major drilling operation going on? Or perhaps some nuclear testing by Mongolia's neighbor to the south?"
"The epicenters in the northern part of the country have been located in a mountainous region east of Ulaanbaatar, a remote and rugged area, from what we've been able to determine. And a drilling-induced quake would not show the uniform preshock seismicity, according to Max. As far as the southern-area quakes, we would see it in the seismic profiles if a nuclear test blast had occurred."
"Then let me take a guess and say that brings us to the late Dr. von Wachter."
"Give that man a cookie," Yaeger said. "When Max told us that von Wachter had been killed in a landslide in the Khentii Mountains east of Ulaanbaatar, the light went on. The coincidence was too great.
We concluded that his acoustic seismic array, or an offshoot of the technology, must have something to do with the earthquakes."
"That doesn't seem possible," Gunn said. "You would need a tremendous shock wave to set things off."
"That's the general perception," Yaeger replied. "But Dr. McCammon, working with Max and some other seismologists, has a theory on that. We spoke to a colleague of von Wachter's, who had been told by the doctor of his success at reflection imagery. The secret of his detailed imaging, if you will, was the ability to condense and packet the acoustic waves emitted into the ground. Normally transmitted sound waves behave like a pebble thrown into a pond, rippling out in all directions. Von Wachter developed a means of packeting the waves so that they remained concentrated in a narrow band as they penetrate the earth. The resulting waves, as they reflect back to the surface, apparently produce a crisp, detailed image far beyond any existing technology. Or so the colleague stated."
"So how do you get from a seismic image to an earthquake?" Gunn persisted.
"By two leaps of faith. First, that von Wachter's system produces a detailed image that visibly identifies active subterranean faults and fault lines. That is hardly a stretch of the imagination for shallow faults, which existing technologies can already detect."