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“I must look like a papoose,” Giordino grumbled.
“You sure as hell don’t feel like one.” Pitt then nodded to Summer. “Okay, lead on.”
Summer hurried ahead, peering in both directions at open corridors to see if all was clear.
They walked on, until someone approached from a side corridor; Summer waved them back. Pitt loosened his hold on Giordino and they ducked into a doorway. The footsteps of the intruder could clearly be heard along the corridor across the interchange.
For five seconds, the footsteps pounded along the cross passage. Pitt’s heart was pounding from exertion, sweat pouring down his face. One fit man against two down-and-out derelicts. Two good legs against two wobbly ones. The odds, Pitt decided, were definitely not on their side. Then the footsteps passed the interchange and faded into the other direction.
“Come, come,” Summer whispered from another doorway further down the passage. “It’s safe now.”
Pitt lifted Giordino again and struggled on.
“How’s the time?” Pitt asked.
“We aren’t going to make it,” Giordino answered grimly, “providing the missile is on schedule.”
“It’ll be on schedule,” Pitt panted. “Delphi was wrong about that. When the Navy receives no reply to the surrender offer, they’ll take it as an act of defiance and blast the seamount anyway.”
Summer took Pitt’s arm and guided him, supporting his aching, overburdened body as best she could. Pitt staggered ahead, one foot in front of the other, telling himself one more, just one more step and they would be there. Finally, as he reached the last ounce of his endurance, Summer stopped at one of the side doors. She put her ear against the panel and listened a moment. Then she quietly pushed the door ajar and stepped inside. Pitt stumbled in behind her and sank to his knees, letting Giordino slide rump first onto a lush red carpet
Summer ran up to a large bed carved into the far wall and shook the sleeping Adrian. “Wake up, Miss Hunter. Please wake upl”
Adrian’s response was a soft moan; Summer took her by the wrist and dragged her naked body from the bed.
The sleep quickly receded from Adrian’s eyes as she became aware of Pitt and Giordino on th
e floor. Making no attempt to cover her nakedness, she rushed across the room and knelt at Pitt’s side.
“Oh my God, Dirk! What happened to you? How did you get here?”
“We’ve come for you,” he said between labored breaths.
She shook her head slowly, disbelieving.
“No, no, it’s impossible. There’s no way out of this place.”
“In the next room, Summer’s bedroom, there’s a passage to the sea...”
Pitt was interrupted by a heavy rumbling explosion. The room trembled from distant shock waves. The Monitor’s missile had struck the surface of the water above the seamount. The velvet curtains swept to and fro, and several coral ornaments on a stone table clattered from the unseen force,
“No time for a recital,” Pitt snapped. “Everybody out”
Summer looked lost and confused, unable to move. “I can’t... my father.”
“Stay with us or die,” Pitt said. “This whole mountain is going to collapse any second.”
For a few seconds she didn’t move, but then another tremor shook the room, shaking her back to her senses. She ran toward her room, Adrian right behind her, as Pitt and Giordino struggled painfully to bring up the rear.
They had barely entered Summer’s exotic blue bedroom when a deafening roar and mountainous shock wave knocked them to the floor. The compression waves, rammed by a giant surge of seawater bursting through massive cracks and fissures on the top levels of the seamount, came rumbling through the passageways like an express train, crushing everything in its path.
Pitt scrambled to his feet, all pain forgotten. He slammed the corridor door closed, grabbed Adrian’s arm, and pushed her through the curtain into the exit tunnel. Then he lunged at the fallen Summer, scooped her up, and threw her sprawling in a heap on top of Adrian. At that moment, the great mirror on the ceiling fell with a shattering crash to the room below, missing Pitt by inches. A cascade of water followed the splintering glass, accompanied by a tearing, grinding rumble as the rock room tore apart
“Al!” Pitt shouted through the deluge of rock and water.
“Over here!” Giordino yelled back. He waved an arm from under a stone dressing table.
Pitt waded through the rising milky froth of the slate-colored water and grabbed Giordino’s upraised arm.
