"So you are the ubiquitous Dirk Pitt."
"I am," Pitt answered, feeling a sense of triumph at pressing the right button. "I didn't know my fame traveled so quickly."
"I see you wasted no time in arriving in the Antarctic from Colorado."
"I would have been here sooner, but I had several of your buddies' bodies to dispose of."
"Are you testing my patience, Mr. Pitt?"
The conversation was becoming inane, but Pitt egged on the U-boat commander to gain time. "No, I only wish for you to explain your weird behavior. Instead of attacking a helpless unarmed ocean research ship, you should be in the North Atlantic torpedoing impotent merchant ships."
"We ceased hostilities in April of 1945."
Pitt did not like the look of the machine gun mounted on the forward section of the conning tower and pointing in his direction. He knew time was running out and was certain the U-boat meant to destroy the Polar Storm and everybody on it. "And when did you launch the Fourth Reich?"
"I see no reason to carry this conversation any further, Mr. Pitt." The voice came as tonelessly as a newscaster giving a weather report in Cheyenne, Wyoming. "Goodbye."
Pitt didn't need to be poked by a sharp stick in the eye to know what was coming. He dove behind an ice hummock in the same instant the machine gun on the conning tower opened up. Bullets buzzed through the air and made strange hissing sounds as they struck the ice. He lay in a slight depression behind the hummock, unable to move. Only now did he regret wearing the NUMA turquoise Arctic gear.
The bright color against the white ice made him an ideal target on which to train their sights.
From where he lay, he could look up at the superstructure of the Polar Storm. So close, yet so far. He began wiggling out of his Arctic suit, stripping it away until he was down to a wool sweater and woolen pants. The boots would prove too clumsy to run in, so he removed them, down to his thermal socks. The hail of bullets stopped, the gunner probably wondering if his fire had struck Pitt.
He rubbed snow on his head so his black hair would not be obvious against the white. Then he peered over a lip of the hummock. The gunner was leaning against his weapon, but the U-boat commander was looking through binoculars in Pitt's direction. After several moments, he could see the commander turn and point toward the ship. The gunner swung his weapon in the direction his captain motioned.
Pitt inhaled a deep breath and took off, sprinting across the ice, pumping his legs and zigzagging with almost the same agility he'd used many years before when playing quarterback for the Air Force Academy, only this time there was no Al Giordino to run interference for him. The ice slashed his socks and cut into his feet, but he shook off the pain.
He had dashed thirty yards before the crew of the U-boat woke up and began firing again. But their shells went high and behind him. Before they corrected and began to lead him, it was too late. He had curled around the rudder of the Polar Storm a second before bullets smashed into the steel, chipping the paint like angry bees.
Safe on the side of the ship away from the submarine, he slowed and caught his breath. The gangway had been pulled up and Gillespie had ordered the ship into a 180-degree turn at Full Ahead, but a rope ladder was thrown over the side. Pitt thankfully jogged along the ship as it increased speed, grasping the ladder and hoisting himself up, just as the jagged ice chunks thrown aside by the bow slid past under his stocking feet.
As soon as he reached the railing, Cox lifted him over and stood him on the deck. "Welcome back,"
he said, with a broad smile.
"Thank you, Ira," Pitt gasped.
"The captain would like you on the bridge."
Pitt simply nodded and padded across the deck to the ladder leading up to the ship's bridge.
"Mr. Pitt."
Turning, he said, "Yes?"
Cox nodded at the bloody footprints Pitt left on the deck. "You might ask the ship's doctor to take a look at your feet."
"I'll make an appointment first thing."
Standing out on the bridge wing, Gillespie was studying the U-boat, her black hull floating rigid amid the ice where she had surfaced. He turned as Pitt hobbled up the ladder. "You had a nasty encounter."
"It must have been something I said."
"Yes, I heard your little exchange."
"Has the commander contacted you?"
Gillespie gave a curt shake of his head. "Not a word."
"Can you get through to the outside world?"
"No. As we suspected, he's effectively jammed all satellite communications."
Pitt stared at the sub. "I wonder what's he's waiting for."
"If I were him, I'd wait until the Polar Storm swings around and heads toward the open sea. Then he'll have us in position for an easy beam shot."
"If that's the case," said Pitt grimly, "it won't be long now."
As if reading the U-boat commander's mind, he saw a puff of smoke from the barrel of the deck gun, instantly followed by an explosion that erupted in the ice immediately behind the icebreaker's big stern.
"That was close," said Bushey, standing in front of the control console.
Evie, who was standing in the door to the bridge, had a dazed expression on her face. "Why are they shooting as us?"
"Get below!" Gillespie bellowed at her. "I want all nonessential crew, scientists, and passengers to stay below on the port side away from the sub."
Rebelliously, she snapped several shots of the U-boat with her camera before heading below to a safer part of the ship. Another explosion erupted, but with a different sound. The shell struck the helicopter pad on the stern and blew it into a tangled mass of smoking wreckage. Soon, another shell screamed through the frigid air and smashed into the ship's funnel with a deafening crash that ripped it like an ax striking an aluminum can. The Polar Storm shuddered, seemed to hesitate, and then, straining, resumed pounding through the ice.
"We're opening the gap," Cox called.
"We have a considerable way to go before we're out of range," said Pitt. "Even then, he can submerge and pursue us beyond the ice pack."
The sub's machine gun opened up again, and its shells stitched a pattern across the bow of the icebreaker and up the forward superstructure until they found the glass windows of the bridge and blew them into a thousand shards. The shells tore across the bridge, smashing into anything that rose more than three feet off the deck. Pitt, Gillespie, and Cox instinctively fell and flattened themselves to the deck, but Bushey was two seconds too slow. A bullet tore through his shoulder, a second creased his jaw.
The U-boat's deck gun spat again. The shell struck just aft of the bridge in the mess room, a vicious blow that smashed in the bulkhead with a blasting impact that made the Polar Storm tremble from bow to stern. The concussion smothered and reverberated all around them. Everyone on the bridge was hurled about across the deck like rag dolls. Gillespie and Cox had been thrown against the chart table. Bushey, already lying on the deck, was sent rolling under the shattered remains of the control console. Pitt wound up half in and half out of the doorway to the bridge wing.
He pulled himself erect, not bothering to count the bruises and glass cuts. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils, and his ears rang, cutting off all other sounds. He staggered over to Gillespie and knelt beside him. The explosion had smashed his chest against the chart table, breaking three, maybe four, ribs. His eardrums were bleeding. Blood also seeped from one pant leg. The captain's eyes were open but glassy.
"My ship," he moaned softly, "those scum are destroying my ship."
"Do not move," Pitt ordered him. "You might have internal injuries."
"What in hell is happening up there?" came the voice of the chief engineer over the only speaker still functioning. His voice was nearly lost in the beat and roar of the engine room.
Pitt snatched the ship's phone. "We're under attack by a submarine. Give us every bit of power you've got. We must get out of range before we're shot to scrap."
"We have damage and i
njuries down here."
"You'll have a lot worse," Pitt snapped, "if you don't keep us on Full Speed."
"Jake," groaned Gillespie. "Where's Jake?"
The first officer lay unconscious and bleeding, with Cox leaning dazedly over him. "He's down," Pitt answered simply. "Who's your next in command?"
"Joe Bascom was my second officer, but he returned to the States in Montevideo because his wife was having a baby. Get Cox."
Pitt motioned to the big third officer. "Ira, the captain wants you."
"Have we come completely around?" asked Gillespie.
Cox nodded. "Yes, sir, we're heading out of the ice floe on course zero-five-zero."
Pitt gazed at the U-boat with hypnotic captivation, waiting with unblinking eyes for the next shell from the deck gun. He didn't have to wait long. At that moment, he saw the Angel of Death streaking across the ice. Punching through the starboard lifeboat, a large launch capable of carrying sixty people, the shock wave sent the ship reeling convulsively onto her port side. The sledgehammer blast disintegrated the lifeboat before it exploded against the bulkhead separating the boat deck from the galley. There was a swirl of flame and smoke amid splinters and blasted railings and boat davits. Soon, the entire length of the starboard boat deck was afire, the flames unfolding through shredded gashes in the deck and bulkhead.
Before anyone on the bridge could recover, another projectile left the muzzle of the sub's deck gun and screeched toward the battered icebreaker like a hysterical banshee. Then it struck in a crescendo of eruptions that nearly tore off the bow, throwing the anchor chains into the air like pinwheels. Still the Polar Storm surged on.
The ship was rapidly increasing its distance from the submarine. The machine gun on the conning tower became ineffective and went quiet. But the gap was not widening nearly fast enough. When it became apparent to the U-boat crew there was a slim chance the icebreaker might escape its range, they began doubling their efforts to load and fire. The rounds were coming every fifteen seconds, but not all struck the ship. The faster pace caused several shells to miss, one flying high enough to slice off the ship's radar and radio mast.
The attack and destruction had happened so quickly that Gillespie had no time to consider surrendering the ship and saving all on board. Only Pitt knew better. The Fourth Empire was not about to allow any of them to escape. It was their intention that all would die, their bodies entombed in the icebreaker as it plunged a thousand feet to the bottom of the cold, indifferent sea.
The ice was becoming thinner the closer Polar Storm came to the open sea, and the battered ship lunged though the pack, smashing it beneath her bow, her engines throbbing and her propellers thrashing the cold waters. Pitt weighed the chances of heading toward the sub and ramming her, but the distance was too great. Not only would the research ship have to suffer a barrage of shells fired at point-blank range, but the U-boat would have easily dropped safely below the surface before the Polar Storm could reach her.
The starboard boat was little more than a pile of smoldering splinters, with the smashed remains of its bow and stern hanging from twisted davits. Smoke was billowing ominously from the jagged shell holes, but as long as the engine room remained without a mortal hit, the Polar Storm would plow forward. The bridge was a field of broken debris and shattered glass, decorated in places with gleaming red blood.
"Another quarter of a mile and we should be out of range!" Pitt shouted above the din.
"Steady as she goes," ordered Gillespie, painfully rising to a sitting position on the deck, his back against the chart table.
"The electronic controls are shot away," said Cox. "The rudder is locked in place, there is no control. I fear we're making a circle back toward that damned sub."
"Casualties?" asked Gillespie.
"As far as I can tell, the scientists and most of the crew are unharmed," Pitt answered. "The part of the ship in which they're riding out the fight is still untouched."
"Some fight," muttered Cox through a bleeding lip. "We can't even throw snowballs."
The sky tore apart again. An armor-piercing shell ripped through the hull and passed through the engine room, shearing electrical cables and fuel lines before crashing out the other side without exploding.
None of the engine room crew was injured, but the damage was done, the big diesel engines lost their revolutions and quietly turned to a stop.
"That last hit cut and burst the fuel lines," the chief engineer's voice shouted out over the speaker.
"Can you make repairs?" asked Cox desperately.
"I can."
"How long will you need?"
"Two, maybe three, hours."
Cox looked at Pitt, who turned and stared at the U-boat. " We've bought the farm," Cox said.
"It looks that way" Pitt's voice was grave. "They can sit there and blast away at us until there's nothing but a hole in the ice. You'd better give the order to abandon ship, Dan. Maybe some of the crew and scientists can make it across the floe to the mainland and hold out in the ice cave until help arrives."
Gillespie wiped a stream of blood from his cheek and nodded. "Ira, please hand me the ship's phone."
Pitt stepped defeatedly onto the bridge wing, which looked as if it had been mangled by a scrapyard auto crusher. He gazed astern toward the Stars and Stripes, which flew defiantly. Then he looked up at the turquoise NUMA ensign that flapped in ragged concert with the breeze. Finally, he refocused his attention on the U-boat. He saw the muzzle of the deck gun flash and heard the shell shriek between the radar mast and the demolished funnel, dropping and exploding in the ice one hundred yards beyond. It was, Pitt knew, a minor reprieve.
Then a flash out of the corner of one eye and a quick glance past the U-boat. Abruptly, he exhaled a breath as a wild wave of relief swept over him at seeing a tiny trail of white smoke and flame against a blue sky.
Ten miles away, a surface-to-surface missile burst through the ice floe, arched above the horizon, reached its zenith, and then plunged unerringly downward toward the U-boat. One moment the sub was floating in the ice. The next, it was enveloped in a tremendous burst of orange, red, and yellow flame that mushroomed high into the gray overcast. The U-boat's hull split in two, the stern and bow rising skyward independent of each other. Amidships, there was a great maelstrom of fire and smoke. There was a billowing cloud of steam as a final stab of flame gushed across the ice. Then she slid under and fell to the bottom.
It all happened so quickly, Pitt could hardly believe his eyes. "She's gone," he muttered in astonishment.
The stunned silence that followed the demise of the U-boat was broken by a voice over the speaker.
"Polar Storm, do you read me?"
Pitt snatched up the radio phone. "We read you, Good Samaritan."
"This is Captain Evan Cunningham, commander of the United States nuclear attack boat Tucson.
Sorry we could not have arrived sooner."
" `Better late than never' certainly applies in this case," replied Pitt. "Can you loan us your damage-control crew? We're in a bad way."
"Are you taking on water?"
"No, but we're pretty much of a mess topside, and the engine room took a hit."
"Stand by to take on a boarding crew. We'll be alongside in twenty minutes."
"Champagne and caviar will be waiting."
"Where did they come from?" asked a stunned Cox.
"Admiral Sandecker," answered Pitt. "He must have leaned on the naval chief of staff."
"Now that the U-boat is no longer jamming. . . our satellite signals," said Gillespie haltingly, "I suggest you call the admiral. He'll want a report on our damage and casualties."
Cox was tending to Bushey, who appeared to be regaining consciousness. "I'll take care of it," Pitt assured the captain. "Rest easy until we get you to sick bay and the doctor can work on you."
"How's Bushey?"
"He'll live. He has a nasty wound, but he should be back on his feet in a couple of weeks. You suffered
more than anybody on board."
"Thank God for that," Gillespie gasped bravely.
As Pitt dialed NUMA headquarters in Washington, his thoughts turned to Giordino on St. Paul Island less than fifteen hundred miles away. Lucky devil, he thought. He pictured his good buddy sitting in a fancy gourmet restaurant in Cape Town with a ravishing lady in a seductive dress, ordering a bottle of vintage South African wine.
"The luck of the draw," Pitt muttered to himself on the skeleton of what was left of the bridge. "He's warm, and I'm freezing half to death."
<<19>>
"Why is it Dirk gets all the choice projects?" groused Giordino. "I'll bet as we speak, he's sleeping in a warm, comfortable cabin on board the Polar Storm with his arms around some gorgeous female marine biologist."
He was soaked and shivering under the wind-driven sleet as he stumbled across the rocky slope toward the cave, carrying an armload of small branches he and Gunn had cut from scattered scrub brush they'd found growing around the mountain.
"We'll be warm, too, once the wood dries enough to catch fire," said Gunn. Walking slightly ahead of Giordino with his arms loaded with straggly branches almost bare of leaves, he thankfully stepped through the archway and into the tunnel. He threw his burden on the rocky floor and collapsed in a sitting position against one wall.
"I fear all we're going to do with this stuff is make a lot of smoke," Giordino murmured, removing his dripping foul-weather gear and wiping the water that had dribbled down his neck with a small hand towel.
Gunn handed Giordino a cup of the now cold coffee from the thermos, and the last of the granola bars.
"The last supper," he said solemnly.
"Did Sandecker give you any idea as to when he can get us off this rock pile?"
"Only that transportation was on the way."
Giordino examined the dial of his watch. "It's been four hours. I'd like to make Cape Town before the pubs close."
"He must not have been able to charter another tilt-rotor and a pilot, or they'd have been here by now."
Giordino tilted his head, listening. He moved through the tunnel until he was standing under the archway. The sleet had fallen off to a light sprinkling rain. The overcast was breaking up, and patches of blue sky emerged between the swiftly moving clouds. For the first time in several hours, he could see far out to sea.