Pacific Vortex Read online

  “You made the mistake of reading the capsule’s message. This alone takes you from the ranks of innocent bystander, and classifies you as top secret material. Also, the 101st Fleet wants to borrow our new long-range FXH helicopter. None of the Navy’s pilots are checked out on it. You are. And, if an unfriendly nation got it in their heads to try and locate and salvage Uncle Sam’s newest and most advanced nuclear sub before we do - it’s first come, first serve in international waters - you’re a sitting duck for their undercover agents to kidnap in order to discover the Starbuck’s position.”

  “It’s nice to be known and loved,” Pitt said. “But you forget; I’m not the only one who knows the Starbuck’s final resting place

  “Yes, but you’re the easiest to come by. Hunter and his staff are safely confined to Pearl Harbor, working around-the-clock in an attempt to clear up the puzzle.” The admiral paused, stuck a massive cigar in his face, lit it, and puffed meditatively. “Knowing you like I do, my boy, an enemy agent wouldn’t have to use muscle. They’d simply send their most seductive Mata Hari to the nearest bar and let you pick her up.”

  Sandecker noticed the sudden look of pain that gripped Pitt’s face but he went on.

  “I might add, for your own information, that the 101st Fleet is one of the finest undercover salvage operations in the world.”

  “Undercover?”

  “Talking to you is like floundering on a reef,” Sandecker said with forbearance. “Admiral Hunter and his men have raised a British bomber from the water only ten miles from the Cuban shore right under the nose of Castro. Then they salvaged the New Century off Libya, the Southwind in the Black Sea, the Tari Maru within sight of the lights of China. In each case the ships were all salvaged by the 101st before the nations whose waters the vessels sank in, knew the score. Don’t underestimate Hunter and his gang of underwater scrap mongers. They’re second to none.”

  “The Starbuck,” Pitt said, “why all the cloak and dagger?”

  “For one thing, Dupree’s final position is an impossibility. The only way the Starbuck could possibly be where his message said it lay, was for the ship to fly. A feat marine architects haven’t as yet accomplished. Not with ten thousand tons of steel, at any rate.”

  Pitt looked steadily at Sandecker. “It’s got to be out there. Underwater detection systems are far more advanced now. It doesn’t figure that the Starbuck remains lost, or that a massive search turned up absolutely nothing.”

  Sandecker held up his empty glass and stared at it “As long as there are seas, ships, and men, there will be strange unsolved mysteries. The Starbuck is only one.”

  Pitt stood under the shower nozzle; the steaming hot water opening his pores. After finishing under a heavy spray of cold water, he stepped out, toweled, and shaved the stubble from the night before, taking his time. He hadn’t the slightest intention of arriving at Hunter’s headquarters on time. Mustn’t spoil the old bastard my first day on the job, he thought, grinning in the mirror.

  He decided on a white suit with a pink shirt. As he went through the intricacy of tying his tie, it occurred to him that it might not be a bad idea to carry a little protection. Summer had failed, but nevertheless, Pitt began to see the odds of his living to a ripe old age fade with each passing hour. He wasn’t about to compete in hand-to-hand combat with highly trained, professional intelligence agents.

  The Mauser, Model 712 Schnell Fueur Pistole Serial Number 47405, could only be described as a positively bloodthirsty firearm. It was a unique handgun due to its ability to fire one shot at a time or, automatically, like a machine gun. It was the perfect weapon to induce terror into any poor unfortunate who found himself gazing helplessly into its muzzle.

  Pitt casually tossed the gun onto the bed and reached into the suitcase again, retrieving a wooden shoulder holster. The narrow end had a metal railing that slid on a notch in the broomstick-styled grip, converting the gun into a carbine for long-distance targets; it also served as a grasp when firing on full automatic. Pitt then inserted the gun into the holster and, along with a fifty-shot clip, wrapped the ugly killing machine in a beach towel.

  Before the elevator reached the lobby, it obediently halted at every other floor to take on new passengers until it could hold no more. Pitt wondered to himself what thoughts his fellow riders might entertain if they’d had any inkling of what he carried under the towel. After the throng bumped shoulders as they spilled into the lobby, Pitt remained and punched the panel button marked B and rode down to the basement parking area. He unlocked the AC Cobra, shoved the Mauser into a narrow space behind the driver’s seat, and climbed in behind the wheel.

  He eased the car up the exit ramp and joined the traffic flow of Kalakaua Avenue, aiming its blunt snout toward the northern end of the city. The palm trees lining the street leaned their arched trunks over the block-long rows of contemporary-designed shops and offices, while the sidewalks snaked in a dense-moving column of tourists dressed in brightly colored shirts and dresses. The sun was strong and the savage glare bounced off the asphalt, causing Pitt to squint before he groped over the narrow dashboard for his sunglasses.

  He was already over an hour late for his meeting with Hunter, but there was something he had to do, some small hunch in the back of his brain that begged for a chance to be heard. He didn’t quite know what he expected to find as the tires crunched the red volcanic pebbles that lined the driveway, but he had driven two miles out of his way and there was no reason not to see it through. He parked the car and walked past a small, neatly carved sign that read: BERNICE PAUAHI BISHOP MUSEUM OF POLYNESIAN ETHNOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY.

  The main hall, with its balconies circling the upper levels, was crowded with neatly spaced exhibits of outrigger canoes, stuffed fish and birds, replicas of primitive grass huts, and strange, ugly carvings of ancient Hawaiian gods. Pitt spotted a tall, white-haired, proudly erect man arranging a collection of shells in a glass case. George Papaaloa had the true Hawaiian look, the wide brown face, the jutting chin, large lips, misty brown eyes, and a graceful way of effortlessly moving his body. He looked up and, recognizing Pitt, he waved.

  “Ah, Dirk. Your visit makes my day one of joy. Come into my office where we can sit down.”

  Pitt followed him into a neat Spartan office. The furniture was ancient, but refinished in a varnished sheen, and the books lining the walls were free of dust. Papaaloa sat down behind the desk and motioned Pitt toward a Victorian settee.

  Tell me, my friend, have you discovered King Kamehameha’s final resting place?”

  Pitt leaned back. “I spent the better part of last week diving along the Kona Coast and found nothing that resembled a burial cave.”

  “Our legends say he was placed in a cavern beneath the water. Maybe it was one of the rivers.”

  “You know better than I, George, that during the dry season your rivers are nothing more than dry gulches.”

  Papaaloa shrugged. “Perhaps it is best that his burial place is never found and that his remains lie in peace.”

  “No one wants to disturb your king. There is no treasure involved. Kamehameha the Great would be a great archaeological find. Nothing more. And, instead of some damp old cave, his bones would rest in a fine new tomb in Honolulu, revered by all.”

  Papaaloa’s eyes looked sad. “I wonder if our great king would appreciate being gawked at by you haoles”

  “I think he could tolerate we mainland haoles if he knew that eighty percent of his kingdom was now populated by Orientals.”

  “Sad, but true. What the Japanese failed to take with bombs in the forties, they took with cash in the seventies and eighties. Someday it wouldn’t surprise me to get up and see the rising sun waving in the tradewinds over the Iolani Palace.” Papaaloa looked at Pitt steadily, his face expressionless. “There isn’t much time left for my people. Two, maybe three generations and we will be totally melted into the other races. My heritage dies with me. I am the last of my family with pure Hawaiian blood.” He wav
ed his arm around the room. “That’s why I have made this place my life’s work. To preserve the culture of a dying race, my race.”

  Papaaloa stopped, gazing off vacantly out a small window at the Koolau Mountains. “My mind wanders more as I get older. Now then, you didn’t come here to hear an old man ramble on. What’s on your mind?”

  “I want to know something about an area of the sea called the Pacific Vortex.”

  Papaaloa’s eyes narrowed. “Pacific Vor... ah yes, I know the place you mean.” He looked thoughtful for a few moments and then spoke softly, almost in a whisper.

  A ka makani hema pa

  Ka Mauna o Kanoli Ikea

  A kanaka ke kauahiwi hoopii.

  “Hawaiian is a very musical tongue,” Pitt said.

  Papaaloa nodded. “That’s because it has only seven consonants: h, k, I, m, n, p, and w. There can be no more than one consonant to a syllable. Translated in English the poem means:

  When the south wind blows The mountain of Kanoli is seen And the summit seems peopled.

  “Kanoli?” Pitt asked.

  “A mythical island to the north. According to legend, many centuries ago a family tribe left the islands far to the southwest, probably Tahiti, and traveled in a large canoe across the great ocean to join other tribesmen who had immigrated to Hawaii decades before. But the gods were angry at the people’s flight from their homeland, so they changed the position of the stars, causing the navigator of the canoe to lose his way. They missed Hawaii by traveling many miles to the north where they sighted Kanoli and landed there. The gods had truly punished the tribe, for Kanoli was a barren island with few coconut and fruit trees, taro plants, and no cool, clear streams of pure water. The people made sacrifices and cried out to the gods for forgiveness. Their pleas went ignored, so the people threw off their cruel gods and worked very hard under the harshest of obstacles to make Kanoli a garden. Many died in the attempt, but after several generations the people of Kanoli had built a great civilization out of the volcanic rock of the island, and, pleased at their accomplishment, they proclaimed themselves as their own gods.”

  Pitt said “Sounds like the trials of our Pilgrims, Quakers, and Mormons.”

  Papaaloa uttered a long negative sigh. “Not the same. Your people kept their religion as a staff to lean on. The natives of Kanoli saw themselves as better than the gods they had once worshiped. After all, had they not built a paradise without them? They had overstepped the bounds of mortals. They began to raid Kauai, Oahu, Hawaii, and the other islands, killing and pillaging, taking the fairest of women back as slaves. The primitive Hawaiians were helpless. How could you fight men who acted and fought like gods? Their only hope was their faith in their own deities. They prayed for deliverance and they were heard. The gods of the Hawaiians caused the sea to rise up and bury the evil Kanolians forever.”

  “My people also have a similar legend of a land being swallowed by the sea. It was called Atlantis.”

  “I’ve read of it. Plato describes it quite romantically in his Timaeus and Critias.”

  “It seems you’re an authority on myths other than Hawaiian.”

  Papaaloa smiled. “Legends are like knots on a string; one leads to another. I could tell you of tales handed down through the centuries in many faraway lands that are very nearly identical to, but predate, those of the Christian Bible.”

  “Clairvoyants predict Atlantis will rise again.” “The same is said of Kanoli.”

  “I wonder,” Pitt muttered, “how much truth lies behind the legend.”

  Papaaloa leaned his elbows on the desk and gazed at Pitt over clasped hands.

  “Strange,” he said slowly, “most strange. He used the same words.”

  Pitt looked up questioningly. “He?”

  “Yes, it was a long time ago. Right after World War Two. A man came to the museum every day for a week and studied every book and manuscript in our library. He was also researching the legend of Kanoli.”

  “There must have been others through the years who found the story interesting.”

  “No, you are the first since the other.”

  “You have a razor-sharp memory, my friend, to recall someone that far back.”

  Papaaloa unclasped his hands and stared at Pitt hesitantly. “I never forgot the incident simply because I never forgot the man. You see, he was a giant with golden eyes.”

  Beyond puzzlement lies frustration, the neutralizing cloud hiding the next move. When a man enters that cloud, he is a man outside himself, a man who moves and acts instinctively. It was in such a state that Pitt found himself half an hour before noon, minutes after leaving George Papaaloa at the museum.

  His mind was confused, shifting gears back and forth, trying desperately to piece the first two parts of the puzzle together. An old gray Dodge truck pulled out of the museum’s parking lot and followed close behind. Pitt was ready to dismiss the trailing truck as fantasy-his subconscious was beginning to see enemy agents, complete with, trench, coats and beady eyes, lurking behind every clump of philodendron. But as he drove toward Pearl Harbor, the truck stayed with him around every corner as if tied by a rope.

  Pitt made another turn and increased his speed slightly, his eyes now on the rearview mirror. The truck also turned, lagged a bit, and then accelerated, closing the gap to its previous position. Pitt snaked the AC through traffic for two miles and then swung onto Mount Tantalus Drive. He drove smoothly around the hairpin curves that curled up the fern-forested mountainside of the Koolau Range, gradually pushing the gas pedal a millimeter closer to the floor with each turn. Glancing in the mirror, he studied the driver of the truck who was figjhting with the wheel in a fanatical attempt to stay with the elusive little red car.

  Then the unexpected happened. With no telltale warning of a blasting report, a bullet smacked into the sideview mirror on the door, shattering the tiny circular glass and then passing through. The game was getting rough. Pitt stomped on the accelerator and put some distance between him and the pursuing Dodge.

  The son of a bitch was using a silencer, Pitt cursed silently. It had been a stupid move driving out of town. He’d have been relatively safe in downtown traffic. Now his only hope was to get back to Honolulu before the next shot took the top of his head off. With a little luck he might happen onto a cruising police car. But Pitt was stunned by the next glance in the mirror. The truck had pulled to within ten yards of the AC’s bumper.

  The road reached the two-thousand-foot crest and started the sharp descent in a series of meandering arcs to the city below. Pitt roared onto a mile-long straightaway and the truck made an effort to close. Pitt held his speed constant in readiness for the next corner, crouching as low as the confining interior of the AC would allow. The needle on his speedometer was touching seventy-five as the pursuing driver crossed the centerline of the road and pulled abreast. Pitt shot a look out the window; he never forgot the picture of the black, long-haired man who grinned back at him through irregular, tobacco-stained teeth. It was only a flicker in time, but Pitt saw every detail of the pockmarked face, the black burning eyes, the huge hooked nose covered by swarthy walnut skin.

  All Pitt could feel was frustration; frustration at not being able to shoot back, to blow that bastard’s face to pieces. He had a perfectly good machine gun resting behind his seat not ten inches away, and he couldn’t even reach it. A contortionist four feet tall might have been able to get his hands on the Mauser’s grip, but not six-foot three-inch Pitt.

  The next option was to simply stop the car, get out, lean back in and grab the gun from behind the seat, unwrap the towel that covered it, pop off the safety, and begin firing. The only problem was the timing. The old truck was too close. The hook-nosed driver could have stopped his truck and pumped five shots into Pitt’s guts before he’d even reached the towel-unwrapping stage.

  The road ahead swept sharply to the left into a dangerous hairpin corner marked by a yellow sign whose black letters proclaimed: SLOW TO 20. Pitt drifted throu
gh the curve at fifty-five. The truck couldn’t handle the centrifugal pull and lost ground, dropping back momentarily before the driver called on his ample supply of horsepower.

  Plan after plan shot through Pitt’s mind, each new one discarded along with the ones before. Then, as he braked for the next corner, he began to apply still heavier pressure to the accelerator while watching the rearview mirror, studying the movements of the trades driver as he began to pull even with the AC once more.

  It was small consolation that the man was not aiming a gun at Pitt’s cranium. He meant to force Pitt off the road, over a steep cliff that fell several hundred feet to the valley below.

  Another two hundred yards and they would meet the next curve, yet Pitt maintained his speed. The gray Dodge inched closer to the sports car’s front fender. One final nudge and Pitt would be airborne. Then, with only a hundred more yards to go, Pitt mashed the accelerator down hard, held it, and suddenly let up and braked. The abrupt maneuver caught the grinning stalker off guard. He had also increased his speed, attempting to stay even with his quarry, working again toward the position that would send Pitt hurtling over the cliff edge. Too late! They were on the curve.

  Pitt kept braking hard; he downshifted, and threw the car around the bend, the tires shrieking in friction-al protest across the pavement. The AC was in a four-wheel drift, the back end beginning to break away. A quick twist to the right and the skid was compensated and then, accelerating again, Pitt shot onto the next straight. A glance in the mirror showed that the road behind him was empty. The gray truck had vanished.

  He slowed down, relying on gravity and momentum to carry the car for the next half mile. Still no sign of the truck. Cautiously, Pitt spun a U-turn and drove back toward the curve, ready to crank another hundred-eighty-degree turn if the old Dodge should suddenly come into sight. He reached the curve, stopped the car, and got out, walking to the edge of the road.

  The dust far below was settling very slowly upon the tropical underbrush. At the bottom of the drop, just beyond the base of the steep-sided cliff, the remains of the gray truck lay with its engine torn from the frame. The driver was nowhere to be seen. Pitt had almost given up searching when he spotted an inert form high on a telephone pole about a hundred feet to the left of the wreckage.