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To Giordino's surprise, a car drove up and the driver notified him of Sandecker's imminent arrival. He stared at the driver as if the man were crazy. Only four hours had passed since he'd reported to Sandecker in Hawaii.
The confusion cleared away as a U.S. Navy F-22A supersonic two-place fighter lined up on the runway and touched down. Giordino watched as the sleek craft, capable of Mach 3 + speeds, taxied over to where he had parked the helicopter. The canopy slid back, and Sandecker, wearing a flight suit, climbed out onto a wing. Without waiting for a ladder, he jumped onto the asphalt.
He strode straightway over to the startled Giordino and locked him in a bear hug. "Albert, you don't know how glad I am to see you."
"I wish there were more of us here to greet you," Giordino said sadly.
"Useless to stand here consoling ourselves."
Sandecker's face was tired and lined. "Let's find Dirk."
"Don't you want to change first?"
"I'll shed this Star Wars suit while we're in flight. The Navy can have it back when I get around to returning it."
Less than five minutes later, with two metric tons of badly needed supplies tied down in the passenger/cargo compartment, they were airborne and heading over the Tasman Sea toward the smoldering remains of Gladiator Island.
Relief ships of the Australian and New Zealand navies were immediately ordered to the island with relief sup plies and medical personnel. Any commercial ship within two hundred nautical miles was diverted to offer any assistance possible at the disaster scene. Astoundingly, the loss of life was not nearly as high as first suspected from the immense destruction. Most of the Chinese laborers had escaped from the path of the firestorm and, lava flows. Half the mine supervisors survived, but of Arthur Dorsett's eighty-man security force, only seven badly burned men were found alive. Later autopsies showed that most of the dead suffocated from inhaling the ash.
By late afternoon, the eruption had substantially diminished in force. Bursts of magma still flowed from the volcanoes' fissures, but had dwindled to small streams. Both volcanoes were mere shadows of their former bulk. Scaggs had nearly disappeared, leaving only a wide, ugly crater. Winkleman remained as a massive mound less than a third of its former height.
The canopy of ash still hovered over the volcanoes as Giordino and Sandecker dropped toward the devastated island. Most of the western side of the landmass looked as if a giant wire scraper had scoured it down to bedrock. The lagoon was a swamp choked with debris and floating pumice. Little remained of Dorsett Consolidated's mining operations. What wasn't buried under ash protruded like ruins from a civilization dead for a thousand years. The destruction of vegetation was practically total.
Giordino's heart went cold when he saw no sign of the yacht carrying Pitt and Maeve in the lagoon.
The dock was scorched and had sunk in the ash-blanketed water beside the demolished warehouses.
Sandecker was horrified. He had had no idea of the scope of the catastrophe. "All those people dead," he muttered. "My fault, all my fault."
Giordino looked at him through understanding eyes. "For every dead inhabitant, there are ten thousand people who owe you their lives."
"Still . . ." Sandecker said solemnly, his voice trailing off.
Giordino flew over a rescue ship that had already anchored in the lagoon. He began decreasing his airspeed in preparation for setting down in a space cleared by Australian army engineers who had parachuted onto the disaster scene first. The rotor's downwash raised huge billows of ash, obscuring Giordino's view. He hovered and slowly worked the collective pitch and cyclic control in coordination with the throttle. Flying blind, he settled the Agusta and touched down with a hard bump. Drawing a deep breath, he sighed as the rotors wound down.
The ash cloud had hardly dissipated when a major in the Australian army, dusted from head to toe and followed by an aide, ran up and opened the entry door. He leaned in the cargo compartment as Sandecker made his way aft. "Major O'Toole," he introduced himself with a broad smile. "Glad to see you. You're the first relief craft to land."
"Our mission is twofold, Major," said Sandecker. "Besides carrying supplies, we're looking for a friend who was last seen on Arthur Dorsett's yacht."
O'Toole shrugged negatively. "Probably sunk. It'll be weeks before the tides clean out the lagoon enough for an underwater search."
"We were hoping the boat might have reached open water."
"You've had no communication from your friend?"
Sandecker shook his head.
"I'm sorry, but chances seem remote that he escaped the eruption."
"I'm sorry too." Sandecker stared at something about a million kilometers away and seemed unaware of the officer standing by the door. Then he pulled himself together. "Can we give you a hand unloading the aircraft?"
"Any help will be greatly appreciated. Most of my men are out rounding up survivors."
With the assistance of one of O'Toole's officers, the boxes containing food, water and medical supplies were removed from the cargo compartment and piled some distance from the helicopter. Failure and sadness stilled any words between Giordino and Sandecker as they returned to the cockpit in preparation for the return flight to Hobart.
Just as the rotors began to rotate, O'Toole came running up, waving both hands excitedly. Giordino opened his side window and leaned out.
"I thought you should know," O'Toole shouted above the engine exhaust. "My communications officer just received a report from a relief ship. They sighted a derelict boat drifting approximately twenty-four kilometers northwest of the island."
