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The shore had drawn closer, less than two miles distant. The water was becoming more violent, with waves slashing in every direction. The boat was rocked violently, as if shook by a huge vibrator. The brown crud had thickened until it looked like pure, unadulterated mud.
Giordino stepped to the door of the pilothous
e and hailed Pitt. "The water temperature has taken a jump. It returned to a normal eighty-three degrees in the last mile."
"How do you explain that?"
"No more than you can."
Dodge was having trouble accepting any of it. The water temperature's sudden increase, the unmarked rise on the seabed, the incredible amount of brown crud rising from nowhere. It was just inconceivable.
Pitt wasn't buying it either. Everything they'd discovered went against the known laws of the sea. Volcanoes were known to rise from the depths, but not an upheaval of mud and silt. This should have been a liquid, live environment where fish of every variety existed. Here there were no living creatures. They might have swum or crawled across the bottom once. Now they were either dead and buried under a mountain of crud or had migrated to clear water. Nothing grew, nothing lived. It was a world of the dead, covered over with toxic muck that seemed to have materialized from nowhere.
Giordino was having a difficult time keeping the boat on an even keel. The waves were not high, no more than five feet, but unlike waves generated in one direction by the winds of a storm, these whipped and buffeted the boat from every point of the compass. Another two hundred yards and the water went crazy with uncontrolled violence.
"A mass of mad mud," Renee spoke, as if gazing at a mirage. "Pretty soon it will become an island--"
"Sooner than you think," Giordino yelled, hauling the throttles into reverse. "Hang on. The bottom has come up beneath us." The boat yawed, but it was too late. The bow struck the rising muck, throwing everyone forward, and stuck fast. The bow wave died away and the propellers thrashed madly, chopping the mud into an ivory-brown froth as they tried to pull Poco Bonito off the mysterious rise. With the boat imprisoned in the mud, they felt like unproductive spectators.
"Cut the engines," Pitt ordered Giordino. "High tide is in another hour. Wait and try then. In the meantime, we'll carry all the heavy material and supplies to the stern of the boat."
"Do you really think that by moving a few hundred pounds, you can raise the bow enough to slip off the mud pile?" asked Renee doubtfully.
Pitt was already hauling a large coil of rope toward the transom. "Add another seven hundred pounds of bodies, and who knows? We just might get lucky."
Though every man and one woman worked as though their lives depended on it, it took the better part of the next hour to stack luggage, food supplies, nonessential equipment and furniture as far back on the stern deck as possible. The fishing nets and traps used to disguise the boat were thrown overboard, along with the bow anchors.
Pitt gazed at the hands on his Doxa watch. "High tide in thirteen minutes and then the moment of truth."
"The moment has come sooner than you thought," said Giordino. "We have a vessel approaching from the north on radar. And she's coming fast."
Pitt snatched up the binoculars and peered into the distance. "Appears to be a yacht."
Gunn shaded his eyes from the eastern sun and gazed out over the brown crud. "The same one that attacked us last night?"
"I didn't get a good look at her in the dark through the night glasses. But I think it's safe to say there is little doubt of it being the same vessel. Our friends have tracked us down."
"No time like the present," said Giordino, "to get a head start on the posse."
Pitt herded everyone to the very edge of the Poco Bonito's transom. Giordino took the helm and looked astern. Making certain they all had a firm grip on the railing, Pitt nodded a signal for reverse full power. The mighty diesels reverberated as Giordino pushed the throttles as far as they could go. The boat slewed and fishtailed, but was stuck fast. The thickness of the brown crud acted as a glue, adhering to the keel of Poco Bonito. Even with the crew and a ton of solid substance crammed against the transom, the forward part of the boat had raised but two inches. Not enough to break loose.
Pitt hoped for a wave to lift the bow, but no waves came. The thick brown substance laid the sea flat as a newspaper. The engines strained and the propellers dug into the muck, but nothing happened. All eyes had turned to the yacht that was approaching at high speed directly toward them.
Now that he saw her clearly in the daylight, Pitt estimated her overall length at one hundred and fifty feet. Unlike the standard white, the mega-yacht was painted lavender, like he'd seen on the Odyssey pickup truck at the dock. A masterpiece of craftsmanship, she was the essence of oceangoing luxury. She carried a twenty-foot powerboat as a tender and a six-passenger helicopter.
She was near enough for him to make out her name in gold letters: EPONA. Below the name, painted across the bulkhead of the second deck, was the same Odyssey logo of a running horse. A flag flying from the communications antenna also flaunted the golden horse on a lavender background.
Pitt observed two crewmen feverishly preparing to lower the tender while several others took up positions on the long forward deck, weapons in hand. None made any attempt at taking cover. They were lulled by the belief that a fishing boat had no bite and took no precautions. The hair on the nape of Pitt's neck rose a fraction as he spotted a pair of the men loading a rocket launcher.
"She's coming straight for us," muttered Dodge uneasily.
"They don't look like any pirates I ever read about," Giordino shouted from inside the pilothouse over the roar of the engines. "They never captured ships from an elegant yacht. Ten will get you twenty, it was stolen."
"Not stolen," Pitt retorted. "It belongs to Odyssey."
"Is it me, or are they everywhere?"
Pitt turned and called out, "Renee!"
