Dragon dp-10 Read online

  Stacy and Salazar were shown to the cabin where Jimmy Knox lay barely conscious. A man with balding gray hair and a warm twinkle in his eyes rose from a chair by the bed and nodded.

  “Hello, I’m Harry Deerfield.”

  “Is it all right to come in?” Stacy asked.

  “Do you know Mr. Knox?”

  “We’re friends from the same British survey ship,” answered Salazar. “How is he?”

  “Resting comfortably,” said Deerfield, but the expression in his face suggested anything but a fast recovery.

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “Pediatrics actually. I took a six-week hiatus to help Owen Murphy sail his boat from the builder to San Diego.” He turned to Knox. “You up to some visitors, Jimmy?”

  Knox, pale and still, lifted the fingers of one hand in the affirmative. His face was swollen and blistered, but his eyes looked strong, and they brightened noticeably when he recognized Stacy and Salazar. “Bless the Lord you made it safely,” he rasped. “I never thought I’d see the two of you again. Where’s that mad Plunkett?”

  “He’ll be along soon,” said Stacy, giving Salazar a keep-quiet look. “What happened, Jimmy? What happened to the Invincible?”

  Knox weakly shook his head. “I don’t know. I think there was some kind of explosion. One minute I was talking to you over the underwater phone, the next the whole ship was ripped apart and burning. I remember trying to raise you, but there was no response. And then I was climbing over debris and dead bodies as the ship sank under me.”

  “Gone?” Salazar muttered, refusing to accept what he heard. “The ship sunk and our crew gone?”

  Knox gave an imperceptible nod. “I watched her go to the bottom. I shouted and kept a constant lookout for the others who might have survived. The sea was empty. I don’t know how long I floated or how far before Mr. Murphy and his crew spotted me and picked me up. They searched the immediate area but found nothing. They said I must be the only survivor.”

  “But what of the two ships that were nearby when we began our dive?” asked Stacy.

  “I saw no sign of them. They had vanished too.

  Knox’s voice died to a whisper, and it was obvious he was losing a battle to keep from slipping into unconsciousness. The will was there but the body was exhausted. His eyes closed and his head rolled slightly to one side.

  Dr. Deerfield motioned Stacy and Salazar toward the door. “You can talk again later, after he’s rested.”

  “He will recover?” asked Stacy softly.

  “I can’t say,” Deerfield hedged in good medical tradition.

  “What exactly is wrong with him?”

  “Two or more cracked ribs as far as I can tell without an X ray. Swollen ankle, either a sprain or a fracture. Contusions, first-degree burns. Those are injuries I can cope with. The rest of his symptoms are not what I’d expect from a man who survived a shipwreck.”

  “What are you talking about?” Salazar asked.

  “Fever, arterial hypotension, a fancy name for low blood pressure, severe erythema, stomach cramps, strange blistering.”

  “And the cause?”

  “Not exactly my field,” Deerfield said heavily. “I’ve only read a couple of articles in medical journals. But I believe I’m safe in saying Jimmy’s most serious condition was caused by exposure to a supralethal dose of radiation.”

  Stacy was silent a moment, then, “Nuclear radiation?”

  Deerfield nodded. “I wish I was wrong, but the facts bear me out.”

  “Surely you can do something to save him?”

  Deerfield gestured around the cabin. “Look around you,” he said sourly. “Does this look like a hospital? I came on this cruise as a deckhand. My medical kit contains only pills and bandages for emergency treatment. He can’t be airlifted by helicopter until we’re closer to land. And even then I doubt whether he can be saved with the therapeutic treatments currently available.”

  “Hang them!” Knox cried, startling everyone. His eyes blinked open suddenly, gazing through the people in the cabin at some unknown image beyond the bulkhead. “Hang the murdering bastards!”

  They stared at him in astonishment. Salazar stood shaken. Stacy and Deerfield rushed toward the bed to calm Knox as he feebly tried to lift himself to an upright position.

  “Hang the bastards!” Knox repeated with a vengeance. It was as though he was uttering a curse. “They’ll murder again. Hang them!”

  But before Deerfield could inject him with a sedative, Knox stiffened, his eyes glistened for an instant, and then a misty film coated them and he fell back, gave a great heaving sigh, and went limp.

  Deerfield swiftly applied cardiopulmonary resuscitation, fearful that Knox was too devastated by acute radiation sickness to bring back. He continued until he was panting from fatigue and sweating streams in the humid atmosphere. Finally he acknowledged sadly that he had done everything within his limited power. No man or miracle could bring Jimmy Knox back.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured between breaths.

  As if under a hypnotic spell, Stacy and Salazar slowly walked from the cabin. Salazar remained quiet while Stacy began to softly cry. After a few moments, she wiped away the tears with her hand and straightened.

  “He saw something,” she murmured.

  Salazar looked at her. “Saw what?”

  “He knew, in some incredible way he knew.” She turned and looked through the open doorway to the silent figure on the bunk. “Just before the end, Jimmy could see who was responsible for the horrible mass death and destruction.

  11

  YOU COULD TELL from his body, slim almost to the state of emaciation, that he was a fitness and nutrition fanatic. He was short, chin and chest thrust out like a banty rooster, and nattily dressed in a light blue golf shirt with matching pants and a Panama straw hat pulled tight over closely cropped red hair to keep it from blowing away. He had an exactingly trimmed red Vandyke beard that came to a point so sharp you’d swear he could stab flesh with it if he lunged suddenly.

  He stormed up the gangway of the junk, a huge cigar poked in his mouth throwing sparks from the breeze, as regally as if he was holding court. If style awards were handed out for dramatic entrances, Admiral James Sandecker, Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, would have won hands down.

  His face looked strained from the grievous news he’d received from Giordino while in flight. As soon as his feet hit Shanghai Shelly’s deck, he raised his hand at the pilot of the flying boat, who gave an acknowledging wave. The aircraft turned into the wind and bounced forward over the crests of the waves until it was airborne and soaring in a graceful bank southeast toward the Hawaiian Islands.

  Giordino and Murphy stepped forward. Sandecker focused his gaze on the junk’s owner. ,

  “Hello, Owen. I never expected to meet you out here.”

  Murphy smiled and shook hands. “Likewise, Jim. Welcome aboard. It’s good to see you.” He paused and pointed to the grimfaced NUMA team who were crowded around them on the open deck. “Now maybe someone will tell me what that big light and thunder show was on the horizon yesterday, and why all these people are popping up in the middle of the ocean.”

  Sandecker did not reply directly. He looked about the deck and up at the draped sails. “What have you got yourself here’?”

  “Had it custom built in Shanghai. My crew and I were sailing her to Honolulu and then on to San Diego, where I plan to dock her.”

  “You know each other?” Giordino asked finally.

  Sandecker nodded. “This old pirate and I went to Annapolis together. Only Owen was smarter. He resigned from the Navy and launched an electronics company. Now he’s got more money than the U.S. Treasury.”

  Murphy smiled. “Don’t I wish.”

  Sandecker suddenly turned serious. “What news of the base since you briefed me over the radio?” he asked Giordino.

  “We’re afraid it’s gone,” Giordino replied quietly. “Underwater phone communicati
ons from our remaining sub have gone unanswered. Keith Harris thinks the major shock wave must have struck shortly after we evacuated. As I reported, there wasn’t enough space to evacuate everybody in two subs. Pitt and a British marine scientist volunteered to stay below.”

  “What’s being done to save them?” Sandecker demanded.

  Giordino looked visibly cast down, as though all emotion had been drained away. “We’ve run out of options.”

  Sandecker went cold in the face. “You fell down on the job, mister. You led me to believe you were returning in the backup submersible.”

  “That was before Lowden surfaced with shorted batteries!” Giordino snapped back resentfully. “With the first sub sunk and the second inoperable, we were stonewalled.”

  Sandecker’s expression softened, the coldness was gone, his eyes saddened. He realized Giordino had been dogged by ill luck. To even suggest the little Italian had not tried his best was wrong, and he regretted it. But he was shaken by Pitt’s apparent loss too.

  To him, Pitt was the son he never had. He’d have ordered out an entire army of specially trained men and secret equipment the American public had no idea existed if fate granted him another thirty-six hours. Admiral Sandecker had that kind of power in the nation’s capital. He didn’t arrive where he was because he’d answered a help wanted ad in the Washington Post.

  He said, “Any chance the batteries can be repaired?”

  Giordino nodded over the side at the submersible rolling in the swells twenty meters away, tethered on a stern line to Shanghai Shelly. “Lowden is working like a madman trying for a quick fix, but he’s not optimistic.”

  “If anyone is to blame, it’s me,” Murphy said solemnly.

  “Pitt could still be alive,” said Giordino, ignoring Murphy. “He’s not a man who dies easily.”

  “Yes.” Sandecker paused, then went on almost absently. “He’s proven that many times in the past.”

  Giordino stared at the admiral, a spark glowing in his eyes. “If we can get another submersible out here…”

  “The Deep Quest can dive to ten thousand meters,” Sandecker said, coming back on keel. “She’s sitting on our dock in Los Angeles Harbor. I can have her loaded aboard an Air Force C-Five and on her way here by sundown.”

  “I didn’t know a C-Five could land on water,” Murphy interrupted.

  “They can’t,” Sandecker said definitely. “The Deep Quest, all twelve metric tons of her, will be air-dropped out the cargo doors.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d guess about eight hours from now.”

  “You’re going to drop a twelve-ton submersible out of an airplane by parachute?”

  “Why the hell not? It’d take a week to get here by boat.”

  Giordino stared at the deck thoughtfully. “We could eliminate a mass of problems if we worked off a support ship with launch and retrieval capacity.”

  “The Sounder is the closest ocean survey ship to our area that fits the picture. She’s sonar-mapping the seafloor south of the Aleutians. I’ll order her captain to cut his mission and head toward our position as fast as he can push her.”

  “How can I be of help?” asked Murphy. “After sinking your sub, the least I can do is offer the services of my ship and crew.”

  Giordino smiled inwardly as Sandecker lifted his arms and gripped Murphy’s shoulders. Laying on the hands, Pitt used to call it. Sandecker didn’t just ask an unsuspecting subject for a favor, he made his victims feel as if they were being baptized.

  “Owen,” the admiral said in his most reverent tone, “NUMA will be in your debt if we can use your junk as a fleet command ship.”

  Owen Murphy was no slouch when it came to recognizing a con job. “What fleet?” he asked with feigned innocence.

  “Why, half the United States Navy is converging on us,” answered Sandecker, as if his secret briefing by Raymond Jordan was common knowledge. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of their nuclear submarines was cruising under our hull this minute.”

  It was, Murphy mused, the craziest tale he’d ever heard in his life. But no one on board Shanghai Shelly, excepting the admiral himself, had the slightest notion of how prophetic his words were. Nor were they aware that the rescue attempt was the opening act for the main event.

  Twenty kilometers away, the attack submarine Tucson was running at a depth of 400 meters and closing on the junk’s position. She was early. Her skipper, Commander Beau Morton, had driven her hard after receiving orders at Pearl Harbor to reach the explosion area at full speed. On arrival, his mission was to run tests on underwater radiological contamination and salvage any floating debris that could be safely brought aboard.

  Morton casually leaned against a bulkhead with an empty coffee cup dangling in one hand, watching Lieutenant Commander Sam Hauser of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory. The Navy scientist was indifferent to Morton’s presence. He was intent on monitoring his radiochemical instruments and computing beta and gamma intensities received from probes trailing behind the submarine.

  “Are we glowing in the dark yet?” asked Morton sarcastically.

  “Radioactivity is pretty unevenly distributed,” replied Hauser. “But well below maximum permissible exposure. Heaviest concentration is above.”

  “A surface detonation?”

  “A ship, yes, not a submarine. Most of the contamination was airborne.”

  “Any danger to that Chinese junk north of us?”

  Hauser shook his head. “They should have been too far upwind to receive anything but a trace dosage.”

  “And now that they’re drifting through the detonation area?” Morton persisted.

  “Due to the high winds and turbulent seas during and immediately after the explosion,” Hauser explained patiently, “the worst of the radiation was carried into the atmosphere and far to the east. They should be within safe limits where they are.”

  The compartment phone gave off a soft hi-tech chime. Hauser picked, it up. “Yes?”

  “Is the captain there, sir?”

  “Hold on.” He handed the receiver to Morton.

  “This is the captain.”

  “Sir, Sonarman Kaiser. I have a contact. I think you should listen to it.”

  “Be right there.” Morton hung up the phone, wondering abstractedly why Kaiser didn’t routinely call over the intercom.

  The commander found Sonarman First Class Richard Kaiser leaning over his console listening through his earphones, a bewildered expression furrowing his brow. Morton’s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Ken Fazio, was pressing a spare set of phones against his ears. He looked downright dumbstruck.

  “You have a contact?” asked Morton.

  Kaiser didn’t answer immediately but went on listening for a few more moments. At last he pulled up the phone over his left ear and muttered, “This is crazy.”

  “Crazy?”

  “I’m getting a signal that shouldn’t be.”

  Fazio shook his head as if agreeing. “Beats me.”

  “Care to let me in on your secret?” Morton asked impatiently.

  “I’ll put it on the speaker,” said Kaiser.

  Morton and several officers and men who had received the news of a strange contact by osmosis gathered around the sonar enclosure, staring up at the speaker expectantly. The sounds were not perfect but they were clear enough to be understood. No high-pitched squeak of whales, no whirring crick of propeller cavitation, but rather voices singing.

  And every night when the starfish came out.

  I’d hug and kiss her so.

  Oh, what a time I had with Minnie the Mermaid

  Down in her seamy bungalow.

  Morton fixed Kaiser with a cold stare. “What’s the gag?”

  “No gag, sir.”

  “It must be coming from that Chinese junk.”

  “No, sir, not the junk or any other surface vessel.”

  “Another submarine?” Morton inquired skeptically. “A Russian maybe?”

  “Not un
less they’re building them ten times tougher than ours,” said Fazio.

  “What range and bearing?” Morton demanded.

  Kaiser was hesitant. He had the look of a little boy who was in trouble and afraid to tell the truth.

  “No horizontal compass bearing, sir. The singing is coming from the bottom of the sea, five thousand meters straight down.”

  12

  YELLOWISH OOZE, MADE up of microscopic skeletons from a marine plant called the diatom, slowly drifted away in serpentine clouds, shrouded by the total blackness of the abyssal deep.

  The bottom of the gorge where the NUMA mining station once stood had been filled by silt and rock slides into a broken, irregular plain littered with half-buried boulders and scattered wreckage. There should have been a deathly silence after the final rumblings of the earthquake died away, but a warped chorus of “Minnie the Mermaid” rose from under the desolated wasteland and rippled out into the liquid void.

  If one could have walked over the debris field to the sound source, they’d have found a single antenna shaft, bent and twisted, poking up through the mud. A grayish-pink ratfish briefly inspected the antenna but, finding it unsavory, flicked its pointed tail and lazily swam into the dark.

  Almost before the ratfish disappeared, the silt a few meters from the antenna began to stir, swirling in an ever widening vortex that was weirdly illuminated from below. Suddenly a shaft of light burst through the ooze, joined by a mechanical hand shaped like a scoop and articulated at the wrist. The steel apparition paused and straightened like a prairie dog standing on its haunches and sniffing the horizon for a coyote.

  Then the scoop arched downward, gouging through the seabed, excavating a deep trench that began to ascend at one end like a ramp. When it struck a boulder too large to fit in the scoop, a great metal claw appeared magically alongside. The claw’s talonlike pincers bit around the boulder, yanked it free from the sediment, and dropped it clear of the trench in a billowing mud cloud. The claw then swung clear, and the scoop continued digging.