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The ferocity of the sudden storm of air pressure lashed the trees against each other before they were crushed flat and incinerated, their charred remains swept toward the shoreline. Any trees and undergrowth that escaped the rolling inferno were left standing blackened and dead. Already, the ground was littered with birds that dropped out of the sky, choked to death by the gases and fumes that Winkleman had discharged into the atmosphere.
As if guided by a heavenly hand, the ungodly ooze swept over the security compound but bypassed the Chinese laborers' detention camp by a good half a kilometer, thereby saving the lives of three hundred miners. Horrendous in scope, its only redeeming quality was that it traveled no faster than the average human could run. The gushing magma from Mount Winkleman wreaked terrible damage, but caused little loss of life.
But then came Mount Scaggs' turn.
From deep within its bowels, the volcano named after the captain of the Gladiator gave out a deep-throated roar like a hundred freight trains rolling through a tunnel. The crater hurled out a tremendous ash cloud, far greater than the one belched by Winkleman. It twisted and swirled into the sky, a black, evil mass. As ominous and frightening as it looked, the ash cloud was only an opening act for the drama yet to come.
Scaggs' western slope could not resist the deep-rooted stress ascending from thousands of meters below. The liquified rocks, now a white-hot mass, hurtled toward the surface. With immeasurable pressure it ripped a jagged crack on the upper slope, releasing an inferno of boiling mud and steam that was accompanied by a single, thunderous explosion that scattered the magma into millions of fragments.
A gigantic frenzy of molten lava shot from the slope of the volcano like a cannon barrage. An enormous quantity of glowing magma was purged in a pyroclastic flow, a tumultuous compound of incandescent rock fragments and heated gas that travels over the ground like liquid molasses but at velocities exceeding 160 kilometers per hour. Gaining speed, it avalanched down the flank of the volcano with a continuous roar, disintegrating the slope and throwing a fearsome windstorm in front of it that reeked of sulphur.
The effect of the superheated steam of the pyroclastic flow as it relentlessly swept forward was devastating, enveloping everything in a torrent of raining fire and scalding mud. Glass was melted, stone buildings were flattened, any organic object was instantly reduced to ashes. The seething horror left nothing recognizable in its wake.
The horrifying flow outran the canopy of ash that still cast an eerie pall across the island. And then the fiery magma plunged into the heart of the lagoon, boiling the water and creating a mad turbulence of steam that sent white plumes billowing into the sky. The once beautiful lagoon quickly lay under an ugly layer of gray ash, dirty mud and shredded debris swept ahead of the catastrophic flow of death.
The island used by men and women for greed, an island that some believed deserved to die, had been annihilated. The curtain was coming down on its agony.
Giordino had lifted the sleek British-built Agusta Mark II helicopter from the deck of the yacht and reached a safe distance from Gladiator Island before the spray of blazing rock fell over the dock and the yacht. He could not see the full scope of the devastation. It was hidden by the immense ash cloud that had reached a height of three thousand meters above the island.
The incredible twin eruptions were not only a scene of hideous malevolence but of awesome beauty also. There was a sense of unreality about it. Giordino felt as if he were looking down from the brink of hell.
Hope flared when he observed the yacht suddenly come to life and charge across the waters of the lagoon toward the channel cut in the encircling reef. Badly wounded or not, Pitt had somehow managed to get the boat under way. However fast the yacht could fly over the sea, it was not fast enough to outrun the gaseous cloud of flaming ash that scorched everything in its path before plunging across the lagoon.
But then any hope vanished as Giordino watched the uneven race in growing horror. The inferno swept over the yacht's churning wake, closing the gap until it smothered the craft and blotted it from all view of the Agusta Mark II. From a thousand feet in the air it appeared that no one could have lived for more than a few seconds in that hellish fire.
Giordino was overcome with anguish for being alive when the mother of the children strapped together in the copilot's seat and a friend who was like a brother were dying in the holocaust of fire below.
Cursing the eruption, cursing his helplessness, he turned from the horrendous sight. His face was drained white as he flew more on instinct than experience. His inner pain, he knew, would never fade. His old surefire cockiness had died with Gladiator Island. He and Pitt had traveled a long road, with one always there to save the other in times of peril. Pitt was not the type to die, Giordino had told himself on numerous occasions when it looked like his friend was in the grave. Pitt was indestructible.
A spark of faith began to build inside Giordino. He glanced at the fuel gauges. They registered full.
After studying a chart clipped to a board hanging below the instrument panel, he decided on a westerly course toward Hobart, Tasmania, the closest and best place to land with the kids. Once the Fletcher twins were in the safe hands of the authorities, he would refuel and return to Gladiator Island, if for nothing else than to try to retrieve Pitt's body for his mother and father in Washington.
He was not about to let Pitt down. He had not done so in life and he wasn't about to do so in death.
Strangely, he began to feel more at ease. After figuring his flight time to Hobart and back to the island, he began talking to the little boys, who had lost their fear and peered excitedly out the cockpit window at the sea below.
Behind the helicopter, the island became an indistinct silhouette, similar in outline to the one it had offered the emaciated survivors aboard the raft of the Gladiator on another day one hundred and forty-four years before.
Seconds after he was, sure Giordino had lifted the helicopter off the yacht and was safely in the air, Pitt pushed himself to his feet, wetted a towel from the sink in the bar and wrapped it around Maeve's head. Then he began piling cushions, chairs, every piece of furniture he could lift over Maeve until she was buried. Unable to do more to protect her from the approaching sea of fire, he stumbled into the wheelhouse, clutching his side where one bullet had plunged into the abdominal muscle, made a small perforation in his colon and lodged in the pelvic girdle. The other bullet had glanced off a rib, bruised and deflated one lung and passed out through his back muscles. Fighting to keep from falling into the black, nightmarish pool clouding his eyes, he studied the instruments and controls of the boat's console.
Unlike the helicopter's, the yacht's fuel gauges read empty. Dorsett's crew did not bother to refuel until they were alerted that one or more of the Dorsett family was preparing for a voyage. Pitt found the proper switches and kicked over the big Blitzen Seastorm turbodiesel engines. They had no sooner rumbled to idling rpms when he engaged their Casale V-drives and pushed the throttles forward. The deck beneath his feet shuddered as the bow lifted and the water behind the stern whipped into foam. He took manual control of the helm to steer a course toward the open sea.
Hot ashes fell in a thick blanket. He could hear the crackling and the growling of the approaching tempest of fire. Flaming rocks fell like hail, hissing in clouds of steam as they hit
the water and sank beneath the surface. They dropped endlessly out of the sky after having been thrown a great distance by the tremendous pressures coming out of Mount Scaggs. The column of doom engulfed the docks and seemed to take off in pursuit of the yacht, rolling across the lagoon like an enraged monster from the fiery depths of hell. And then it was on top of him in full fury, descending over the yacht in a whirling convoluted mass two hundred meters high before Pitt was able to clear the lagoon. The boat was pitched for ward as it was struck a staggering blow from astern. The radar and radio masts were swept clean away, along with the lifeboats, railings and deck furniture. The boat struggled through the blazing turbulence like a wounded whale. Flaming rocks crashed on the superstructure roof and decks, smashing the once beautiful yacht into a shattered hulk.
The heat in the wheelhouse was searing. Pitt felt as if someone had rubbed his skin with a red-hot salve. Breathing became agonizingly difficult, especially so because of the collapsed lung. He fervently prayed that Maeve was still alive back in the salon. Gasping for air, clothing beginning to smolder, hair already singed, he stood there desperately gripping the helm. The superheated air forced its way down his throat and into his lungs till each intake of breath was an agony. The roar of the firestorm in his ears combined with the pounding of his heart and the surge of his blood. His only resources to resist the blazing assault were the steady throb of the engines and the sturdy construction of the boat.
When the windows around him began to crack and then shatter, he thought he would surely die. His whole mind, his every nerve was focused on driving the boat forward as though he could by sheer willpower force her ahead faster. But then abruptly the heavy blanket of fire thinned and dropped away as the yacht raced into the clear. The dirty gray water went emerald green and the sky sapphire blue. The wave of fire and scalding mud had finally lost its momentum. He sucked in the clean salt air like a swimmer hyperventilating before making a free dive into the depths. He did not know how badly he was injured, and he did not care. Excruciating pain was stoically endured.
At that moment, Pitt's gaze was drawn by the upper head and body of an immense sea creature that rose out of the water off the starboard bow. It appeared to be a giant eel with a round head a good two meters thick. The mouth was partially open and he could see razor-sharp teeth in the shape of rounded fangs. If its undulating body were straightened out, Pitt estimated its length at between thirty and forty meters. It traveled through the water at a speed only slightly slower than the yacht.
"So Basil exists," Pitt muttered to himself in the empty wheelhouse, the words aggravating his burning throat. Basil was no stupid sea serpent, he surmised. The enormous eel was fleeing his scalding habitat in the lagoon and heading for the safety of the open sea.
Once through the channel, Basil rolled forward into the depths, and with a wave of his huge tail, disappeared.
Pitt nodded a goodbye and turned his attention back to the console. The navigational instruments were no longer functioning. He tried sending a Mayday over both the radio and satellite phone, but they were dead. Nothing seemed to function except the big engines that still drove the yacht through the waves. Unable to set the boat on an automatic course, he tied the helm with the bow pointed west toward the southeastern coast of Australia and set the throttle a notch above idle to conserve what little fuel remained. A rescue ship responding to the catastrophe on Gladiator Island was bound to spot the crippled yacht, stop and investigate.
