"Out, get out quick!" he shouted to the frightened scientists who had been locked inside. "This boat is going to sink!" He began herding them toward the ladder leading topside. He stopped a man with gray hair and beard. "Are there any more of you?"
"They locked some of us in a storeroom at the end of the hallway."
Almost before the scientist got the words out, Pitt rushed to the storeroom door. Already the water was sloshing around his ankles. This door was too solidly built for him to kick in. "Stand back from the door!" he shouted. Then he aimed Giordino's hand cannon at the latch and fired. The big shell shattered the bolt, allowing Pitt to shove the door open with his shoulder. Nearly ten people stood stunned inside, six men and four women. "Everybody move, now! Abandon ship before she goes down!"
After he pushed the last of the scientists up the ladder and was about to follow, a second, larger blast hurled him backward against a bulkhead. The impact drove the breath from his lungs and left him gasping for air as a bump mushroomed on the back of his head. Then he momentarily blacked out. When he recovered his senses two minutes later, he found himself sitting in water that had risen to his chest. Painfully, he pushed himself to his feet and struggled up the ladder one step at a time.
There was less than a minute left before the ferry plunged to the bottom of the lake bed. He heard a strange thumping sound over the rush of the rising water. What of the people he had saved and drove up to the deck? Had they drowned? Had the guns of the patrol boat shot them like fish in a barrel with its cannon? And what of Al? Was he there to help the survivors? Still dazed from his collision with the bulkhead, he reached down inside himself for the last of his strength and pulled his shoulders and chest over the edge of the ferry's deck.
The stern of the ferry was about to go under, the water rolling up the deck and flooding into the open hatch. The thumping sound in his ears came louder and he looked up to see Giordino hanging on to a sling, seemingly floating in midair. Then Pitt saw the helicopter. Thank God Nash had a change of heart, he thought in his fogged mind.
He grabbed Giordino around the waist as strong muscular arms gripped him under his shoulders. The ferry slipped away beneath his feet and sank below the waves, just as he was hauled into the air.
"The scientists?" he gasped to Giordino. He saw none in the water.
"Lifted on board the copter," Giordino shouted above the wind and rotor noise. "The guards gave up when Nash and his team showed up and fled in the patrol boat."
"Is everybody off the island?" he asked Nash, who came over and knelt beside him.
"We even evacuated the stray cats and dogs," Nash said with a satisfied grin. "We pulled off the operation ahead of schedule and then came after you. When you didn't surface with the rest of the people, we thought you were a goner, all except Al here. Before I could stop him, he'd dropped down on the lift cable to the ferry deck. Only then did we see you appear out of the hatch."
"Lucky for me you arrived at an opportune moment."
"How long before the finale?" asked Giordino.
"As soon as we evacuated everyone from Ometepe to shore, they were transported by truck and buses to high ground, along with all the residents living within two miles of the lake." Nash paused to read the time on his wristwatch. "I estimate it will take another thirty-five minutes before they reach complete safety. When I receive word all is well, I'll send the signal to the pilot to drop his bomb."
"Did your teams meet up with a small army of uniformed women who put up a resistance?" Pitt inquired.
Nash gave him an odd look and grinned. "Wearing funny-colored jumpsuits?"
"Lavender and green?"
"They fought like Amazons," answered Nash in leftover disbelief. "Three of my men were wounded when they temporarily refrained from shooting at women who were shooting at them. We had no choice but to return fire."
Giordino stared down at the headquarters building as the helicopter passed over the facility. The windows were shattered and smoke was rolling from the tenth floor. "How many did you take down?"
"We counted at least nine bodies." Nash looked mystified. "Most of the women were knockouts, really beautiful. My men took it hard. I don't doubt some will suffer psychological problems when they return to home. They weren't trained to fire on civilian women."
"One of them didn't happen to be wearing a gold jumpsuit?" Pitt asked.
Nash thought a moment and then shook his head. "No, I didn't see anyone fitting that description." There was a pause. "Did she have red hair?"
"Yes, her hair was red."
"So were all those who died, the same red tint on all of them. They fought like crazy fanatics. It was unreal."
The helicopter remained on station over the island. Nash received word that the evacuation was successfully completed almost to the minute of his estimate. Without a second's hesitation, he issued the clearance for the B-52 to drop the bomb.
The bomber was so high in the sky, they could not see it or detect the bomb as it fell from sixty thousand feet. Nor did they see the bomb strike the volcano's slope above the Odyssey facility and penetrate deep below the surface. Seconds later, a great rumble came from the slope of Mount Concepcion. The detonation seemed more like a huge thud than the sharp boom of a bomb exploding on impact with the ground. This was quickly followed by a new sound like rolling thunder, as the slope of the volcano let loose its grip on the cone and began collapsing, picking up speed as it shot downward until it reached an incredible eighty miles an hour.
From the air it looked as if the entire research and development complex with all its buildings, docks and aircraft terminal was sliding under the lake's surface like a monstrous coin thrown by a giant hand. Clouds of debris and dust burst into the sky as an enormous wave built and rose over two hundred feet high. Then the crest curled and swept across the lake at astonishing speed, eventually crashing against the shorelines and inundating everything that stood in its path, before finally dying at its highest penetration and receding almost reluctantly back into the lake bed.
In the time it took to turn two pages in a book, the great research center created by Specter, his female directors and his Odyssey empire had vanished, along with the tunnels that were crushed flat.
The South Equatorial Current would not be diverted into the Atlantic Ocean. The Gulf Stream would flow as it had for a million years, and there would be no deep freeze across Europe and North America until the next ice age.
45
The layer of black haze began to merge with a bright white glow. The stars that had soared inside his head faded to a scant few as Dirk slowly returned to consciousness. He felt cold from the damp. Stunned by a sea of pain inside his head, he rose up on his elbows and looked around him.
He found himself in a small rectangular room, no more than five by three feet. The ceiling, floor and three walls were solid concrete. The fourth wall was filled by a rusty iron door. There was no handle on the inside. A small window no larger than a pie plate was embedded in the roof of his cell. Light filtered through it and dimly lit his tiny gray world. There was no bunk or blanket, only a hole in the floor for sanitation.
He never experienced a hangover to match the throb inside his head. There was a knot above the left ear that felt as big as a computer mouse. Rising to his feet was a major effort. If nothing else but to satisfy his curiosity, he pushed on the door. He might as well have tried to knock over an oak tree. All he wore when he went to sleep on the boat were a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Looking down, he saw that his shirt and shorts were gone and he was wearing a white silk bathrobe. It seemed so out of place with his surroundings that he could not begin to imagine its significance.