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"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."
