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"I'm Morton. Who are you and why are you here?"
A glove was removed and a hand extended. "My name is Dirk Pitt. I'm special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency." He turned to a short man with dark curly hair and heavy eyebrows who looked to be descended from a Roman gladiator. "This is my assistant director, Al Giordino. We came to effect a tow for the hotel."
"I was told the company tugs could not leave port."
"Not Odyssey tugs, but a NUMA research ship capable of towing a vessel the size of your hotel."
Willing to snatch at any straw, Morton motioned Pitt and Giordino into his private elevator and escorted them down to his office.
"Forgive the cold reception," he said, offering them a chair. "I was given no warning of your arrival."
"We haven't had much time to prepare," Pitt answered indifferently. "What is your current status?"
Morton shook his head bleakly. "Not good. Our pumps are barely staying ahead of the flooding, the structure is in danger of collapsing, and once we run onto the rocks surrounding the Dominican Republic"--he paused and shrugged--"then a thousand people, including yourselves, are going to die."
Pitt's face became as hard as granite. "We're not running on any rocks."
"We'll need the services of your maintenance personnel to assist us in hooking up with our ship," said Giordino.
"Where is this ship?" Morton questioned, his voice suggesting doubt.
"Our helicopter's radar put her less than thirty miles away."
Morton looked out the window at the ominous walls surrounding the hurricane's eye. "Your ship will never get here before the storm closes in again."
"Our NUMA Hurricane Center measured the eye at sixty miles in diameter and her speed at twenty miles an hour. With a little luck, she'll get here in time."
"Two hours to reach us and one to make the hookup," said Giordino, glancing at his watch.
"There is, I believe," said Morton in an official tone, "a matter of marine salvage to discuss."
"There is nothing to discuss," said Pitt, annoyed at being delayed. "NUMA is a United States government agency dedicated to ocean research. We are not a salv
age company. This is not a no-cure, no-pay arrangement. If successful, our boss, Admiral James Sandecker, won't charge your boss, Mr. Specter, one thin dime."
Giordino grinned. "I might mention, the admiral has a love of expensive cigars."
Morton simply stared at Giordino. He was at a loss over how to deal with these men who had dropped from the sky unannounced and calmly informed him that they were going to save the hotel and everyone in it. They hardly looked like his salvation.
Finally, he acquiesced. "Please tell me what you gentlemen need."
The Sea Sprite refused to die. She went deeper than anyone could have believed a ship would dive and live. Totally immersed, her bow and stern buried deeply in the water, no one thought she could come back. For agonizing seconds, she seemed to hang suspended in the gray-green void. Then slowly, laboriously, her bow began to rise fractionally as she struggled defiantly back toward the surface. Then her thrashing screws dug in and propelled her forward. At last she burst into the fury of the storm again, her bow thrusting above the water like a porpoise. Her keel crashed down, jolting every plate in her hull that was weighted down with tons of water that flowed across her decks and cascaded back into the sea. The demonic gale had thrown her worst punch at the tough little ship and she had survived the boiling cauldron. Time and again she had suffered the great swirling mass of wind and water. It was almost as if Sea Sprite had a human determination about her, knowing without reservation that there was nothing left the sea could throw at her that she couldn't brush aside.
Marverick stared through the pilothouse windshield that had miraculously failed to shatter, his face white as a lily. "That was macabre," he said in a classic understatement. "I had no idea I'd signed aboard a submarine."
No other ship could have withstood such a freak occurrence and survived without sinking to the seabed. But Sea Sprite was no ordinary ship. She had been built tough to tolerate massive polar seas. The steel on her hull was far thicker than average to fight the solid mass of ice floes. But she did not escape unscathed. All but one boat had been swept away.
Gazing astern, Barnum was amazed that his communications gear had somehow survived. Those who suffered belowdecks had no inkling how close they came to ending up forever on the bottom of the sea.
Suddenly, sunlight beamed into the pilothouse. Sea Sprite had broken into Hurricane Lizzie's giant eye. It appeared paradoxical, with a blue sky above and maniacal sea below. To Barnum it seemed evil that a sight so tantalizing could still be so menacing.
Barnum glanced at his communications officer, Mason Jar, who was standing braced against the chart table, gripping the railing with ivory knuckles, looking like he'd seen an army of ghosts. "If you can come back on keel, Mason, contact the Ocean Wanderer and tell whoever is in charge that we're coming as quickly as possible through heavy seas."
Still dazed by what he had experienced, Jar slowly emerged from shock, nodded without speaking and walked off toward the communications room as if he was in a trance.
Barnum scanned his radar system and studied the blip that he was certain was the hotel twenty-six miles to the east. Then he programmed his course into the computer and again turned over command to the computerized automated controls. When he finished, he wiped his forehead with an old red bandana and muttered, "Even if we reach her before they go on the rocks, what then? We have no boats to cross over, and if we had they'd be swamped by the heavy seas. Nor do we have a big tow winch with thick cable."
"Not a pretty thought," said Maverick. "Watching helplessly as the hotel crashes into the rocks with all those women and children on board."
