"Do you think they were lost in the hurricane?"
"Not the Sprite," said Dirk in a comforting tone. "No hurricane ever born could send her to the bottom."
They went silent as Dirk turned his attention to repairing the smashed underwater radio transmitter in a futile attempt to get it operational again. There was nothing frenzied about the manner in which he began reassembling the damaged connections. He moved with a steady purpose, coldly concentrating on his work. There was no further talk as they conserved their remaining air, relying on the strength they drew from each other.
It seemed a lifetime passed as the next two hours dragged on endlessly. Above, they could see the sun had returned to sparkle the sea that brushed restlessly over Navidad Bank. Despite Dirk's obstinacy he simply could not repair their communications equipment. Finally, he was forced to give up in defeat.
He felt his breathing become more labored. For the hundredth time he scanned the gauges registering the remaining air in the undamaged tanks. All needles stood fixed on zero. Dirk moved over and gently shook Summer, who had drifted off into a light sleep brought on by the diminishing oxygen left inside Pisces.
"Wake up, sis."
Her gray eyes fluttered open and she stared up at him with a calm serenity that raised a quick flare of fraternal love within him that was classic among twins.
"Wake up, sleepyhead. We have to start breathing from the dive tank." He placed the tank between them and passed the mouthpiece of the regulator to her. "Ladies first."
Summer was achingly aware that she and Dirk were facing a situation they could not influence. Helplessness was alien to her. She had always maintained a measure of control throughout her life. This time she was totally powerless and it was pushing her into despondency.
Dirk, on the other hand, was more frustrated than helpless. He felt as though the Fates were undermining his every effort to escape their prison and eventual execution. He kept thinking there had to be a way out before they took their final breath, but he met a dead end with every plan he conceived.
The end, he came to realize, was rapidly crystallizing into dead certainty.
14
The top arc of the sun was falling below the horizon and dusk was only minutes away. The winds had fallen from a violent to a brisk breeze from the east, caressing and darkening the sea. The tension that had been building up among the crew when they learned that all communication had been lost with Pisces seemed to spill over Sea Sprite like a black cloud. The fear that harm had come to Dirk and Summer nagged at their minds.
Only one seriously damaged rigid-hull inflatable boat had survived the hurricane. The other three usually carried by Sea Sprite had been swept away by massive seas. During the high-speed run back to the original anchorage site off Navidad Bank, the boat was repaired just enough to carry three divers. Pitt, Giordino and Cristiano Lelasi, a master diver and equipment engineer from Italy who was aboard Sprite testing a new robotic vehicle, would conduct the search-and-rescue operation.
The three men were gathered in the ship's conference room along with most of the crew and concerned scientists. They listened intently as Barnum described the underwater geology to Pitt and Giordino. He paused to glance at a big twenty-four-hour clock on one bulkhead. "We should be on site in another hour."
"Since there has been no radio contact," said Giordino, "we must proceed under the belief that Pisces was damaged in the hurricane. And if Dirk's theory is correct, there is every reason to believe gigantic waves may have carried the habitat away from her last known position."
Pitt took over. "When we arrive at the habitat's position and it's gone, we'll launch our search using the grids programmed into our GPS computers. We'll fan out, with me in the middle, Al on my right and Cristiano to my left, and comb the bank toward the east."
"Why east?" asked Lelasi.
"The direction the storm was moving when it struck Navidad Bank," answered Pitt.
"I'll bring Sprite as close as I dare to the reef," advised Barnum. "I won't anchor, so I can move swiftly if the need arises. As soon as you spot the habitat and assess the position, report her condition."
"Are there any questions?" Pitt asked Lelasi.
The burly Italian shook his head.
Everyone looked at Pitt with deep compassion in their eyes and hearts. This was not a search for strangers. Dirk and Summer had been their shipmates for the past two months and were regarded as much more than simply passing acquaintances or temporary friends. They were all allied in a quest to study and protect the sea. None dared entertain the thought that the brother and sister might have been lost.
"Then let's get started," said Pitt, adding, "God bless you all for your support."
Pitt wanted one thing and one thing only, to find his son and daughter alive and unharmed. Though he had not known they existed the first twenty-two years of their lives, he had nourished a love that had mushroomed in the short time since they had shown up on his doorstep. His only regret, and a deep one, was that he was not present during their childhood. He was also deeply saddened he had not known their mother had been alive those many years.
The only other person in the world who had come to love the children as much as Pitt was Giordino. He was like a loving uncle to them, a sounding board and a hardy plank for them to lean on when their father proved stubborn or overly protective.
The dive team filed out and made their way to the boarding ladder ramp that hung over the hull into the water. A crewman had lowered the battered inflatable boat into the water and set the twin outboard motors popping away at idle.
Pitt and Giordino pulled on full wet suits this time, with reinforced padding at the knees, elbows and shoulders for protection against the sharp coral. They also decided to use air tanks instead of the re-breathing apparatus. Their full face masks were settled over their heads and a check made of their communication phones. Then, carrying their fins in one hand, they descended the ramp and climbed into the boat with their gear. As they boarded, the crewman jumped out and held the boat firmly against the ramp. Pitt stood at the console, took the wheel and eased the twin throttles forward as soon as the crewman cast off the lines.
Pitt had programmed Pisces's last known coordinates into his Global Positioning System instrument and set a direct course for the site less than a quarter of a mile away. Anxious to get there and almost afraid of what he might find, Pitt leaned on the throttles, sending the little boat whipping over the waves at nearly forty knots. When the GPS numbers indicated he was getting close, he slowed and approached their target with the motors idling.
"We should be on it," he announced.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Lelasi slipped over the side with a small splash and disappeared. In three minutes he was back on the surface. Gripping a hand rope on the gunwale, he hoisted himself into the boat, air tanks and all, with one hand and rolled onto the bottom.
Giordino surveyed the feat with amused interest. "I wonder if I can still do that."
"I know I can't," said Pitt. Then he knelt beside Lelasi, who shook his head and spoke through his headphone.
"Sorry, signore," he spoke in accented Italian. "The habitat is gone. I saw nothing but a few scattered tanks and some small debris."
"No way of telling their exact position," said Giordino soberly. "Giant waves could have carried them more than a mile."
"Then we follow," Cristiano said hopefully. "You were right, Signor Pitt. The coral appears crushed and broken in a trail toward the east."
"To save time, we'll search from the surface. Stick your heads over the sides. Al, you take the starboard. Cristiano, the port. Guide me by voice and point toward the trail of broken coral. I'll steer by your directions."
Hanging over the rounded hull of the inflatable, Giordino and Lelasi peered through their face masks into the water and traced the path of the storm-swept habitat. Pitt steered as if in a trance. Subconsciously, he aimed the bow toward the course pointed out by Giordino and Lela
si. Consciously, his mind wandered over the past two years since his son and daughter had entered his adventurous but sometimes lonely existence. He recalled the moment he met their mother in the venerable old Ala Moana Hotel on Waikiki Beach. He had been seated in the cocktail lounge in conversation with Admiral Sandecker's daughter when she appeared like a vision, her long flaming red hair cascading down her back. Her perfect body was encased in a tight, green silk Chinese-style dress split up the legs on the sides. The contrast was breathtaking. A solid bachelor who never believed in love at first sight, he knew in an instant that he was ready to die for love. Sadly, he thought she had drowned when her father's underwater dwelling off the north shore of Hawaii collapsed in an earthquake. She swam to the surface with him, but then, before he could stop her, she returned beneath the sea in an attempt to rescue her father.
He never saw her again.
"The smashed coral ends fifty feet dead ahead!" Giordino yelled, lifting his head from the water.
"Have you spotted the habitat?" Pitt demanded.
"There's no sign of it."
Pitt refused to believe him. "It couldn't have disappeared. It has to be there."
In another minute it was Lelasi's turn to shout. "I have it! I have it!"
"I see it too," said Giordino. "It's fallen into a narrow canyon. Looks like it's lying at a depth of about a hundred and ten feet."
Pitt turned off the ignition and shut the motors down. He nodded at Lelasi. "Throw out a buoy to mark the position, and mind the boat. Al and I are going down."
Already geared up, all he needed to do was slip on his fins. He pulled them over his boots and went over the side without wasting another moment. He raised his feet and eased downward through a cloud of bubbles that burst with his entry into the water. The walls of the crevasse were so narrow he found it astonishing that the habitat had fallen to the bottom without becoming lodged against the narrow walls.
The old familiar fingers of foreboding started clawing at his stomach until he stopped all movement for a moment and drew a deep breath to prepare himself for what he hoped he wouldn't find. But he couldn't shake the thought from his mind that he might arrive too late to save them.
From above as he approached, the habitat appeared to be intact. Not surprising, considering its substantial construction. Giordino arrived and motioned toward the damaged entry lock that was smashed and jammed against the coral. Pitt gestured that he saw it too. Then his breath stopped for an instant and his heart increased its beat when he spied the badly damaged tanks that supplied air to the interior. Oh God, no, he thought as he kicked down and swung around to face the big view portal. Please may they not have run out of air.
Fearful that they were not in time, he pressed his face mask against the thick plastic, his eyes trying to penetrate the gloom inside. There was a weird half-light that filtered down through the crevasse from the surface and it was like looking into a mist-shrouded cave.
He could just make out Summer lying inert on blankets on the bottom side of the habitat. It looked to him as though Dirk was leaning against the upturned floor beside her, but propped on his elbows, leaning over her. Pitt's heart leaped when he saw Dirk move. He was in the act of passing an air regulator from his mouth to hers. Overjoyed at finding his children alive, he rapped the hilt of his dive knife wildly against the view port.
The pressure gauge on the tank was in the red. The end was now only a few short minutes away.
Summer and Dirk inhaled and exhaled slowly in measured breaths to stretch their diminishing air supply as long as they could. The water outside had turned from blue-green to a gray-green as the light from the setting sun faded. He glanced at his SUB 300T orange-faced Doxa dive watch given to him by his father--7:47 p.m. They had been alone in the habitat without communication from the outside world for nearly sixteen hours.
Summer lay in a semisleep. She opened her eyes only when it was her turn to take a few breaths from the tank through the regulator, while Dirk held his, absorbing every molecule of air in his lungs. She thought she saw a movement beyond the view port. At first her fogged mind thought it was merely a large fish, but then she heard a rapping sound on the hard transparent surface. Abruptly, she sat up and stared over Dirk's shoulder.
A diver was hovering outside. He pressed his face mask against the port and waved excitedly. Seconds later, he was joined by another diver, who made happy animated motions at finding life inside the habitat.
Summer thought that she had entered a happy mood of twilight delirium but then she became aware that the men she saw in the water were real. "Dirk!" she cried. "They're here, they've found us!"
He turned and blinked in dazed relief. Then a wild realization set in as he recognized the two divers outside the port. "Oh my God, it's Dad and Uncle Al!"
They both placed their hands on the view port and laughed in exhilaration as Pitt held his gloved hands in the same position outside. Then he took a slate from his belt and wrote two words before holding it up:
YOUR AIR?
Dirk frantically searched through the jumbled mess inside Pisces until he found a felt pen and a pad of paper. He wrote in large letters and pressed the pad against the port:
10 MAYBE 15 MINUTES LEFT.
"That's cutting it pretty fine," Giordino said over his headphone.
"Damned fine," Pitt agreed.
"No way we can break the view port before their air runs out." Giordino spoke words that sickened him but had to be said. "Nothing short of a missile could blast through the view port. And even if it was possible, the water pressure at this depth would erupt into the habitat like dynamite exploding inside a pipe. The surge would crush them."
Giordino never ceased to be amazed at Pitt's cold, calculating mind. Another man might have panicked at knowing his son and daughter had only minutes before dying an agonizing death. Not Pitt. He hung poised in the water as if he was contemplating the languid movements of a tropical fish. For several seconds he seemed placid and unmotivated. When he spoke, it was in an even, distinct tone.
"Paul, are you reading me?"
"I hear and understand your dilemma. What can I do from this end?"
"I assume your tool locker is equipped with a Morphon underwater bore."
"Yes, I'm pretty sure we have one on board."
"Have it ready at the ramp when we arrive and make sure the drill is fitted with its largest circular cutting bit."
"Anything else?"
"We could use an extra pair of air tanks with regulators."
"All will be waiting when you arrive."
Then Pitt wrote on his slate and held it up in front of the view port:
HANG IN. BACK IN 10 MINUTES.
Then he and Giordino rose out of sight and vanished above.
When Pitt and Giordino ascended to the surface and vanished from view, it was as though a rainstorm had fallen on a surprise birthday party out on a lawn. Their hopes had soared at seeing their father and his best friend, but with them gone everything turned bleak again.
"I wish they hadn't left," Summer said softly.
"Not to worry. They know the score on our air. They'll be back before you know it."
"How do you suppose they're going to get us out?" Summer wondered aloud.
"If anybody can pull off a miracle, Dad and Al can."
She looked at the needle on the air tank gauge. It was quivering agonizingly closer to the end. "They'd better do it quick," she murmured softly.
Barnum had the spare tanks and the Morphon underwater drill waiting as Pitt rushed back to the ship. Expertly turning the speeding boat on a dime, Pitt brought the boat to an abrupt stop beside the ramp.
"Thank you, Paul," he said.
"I aim to please," Barnum replied, with a tight smile.
No sooner was the gear stowed on board than Pitt jammed the throttles forward and charged back to the buoy floating over Pisces.
Lelasi threw out an anchor, as Pitt and Giordino adjusted their full face masks and fell
over backward into the water. Pitt had not inflated his buoyancy compensator to obtain neutral buoyancy with the heavy twenty-pound Morphon drill. He allowed its mass to drag him to the bottom in little less than a minute, equalizing his ears as he descended. As soon as his feet were firmly planted in the sandy bottom of the crevasse, he pressed the circular cutting edge of the drill against the view port.
Before he switched the drill to rotate, he peered inside. Summer looked like she was semiconscious. Dirk waved feebly. Swiftly, Pitt laid aside the drill and wrote on his slate:
WILL DRILL HOLE FOR AIR
TANKS. STAY CLEAR OF