Pacific Vortex! Part 8

"I wonder," Pitt muttered, "how much truth lies behind the legend."

Papaaloa leaned his elbows on the desk and gazed at Pitt over clasped hands.

"Strange," he said slowly, "most strange. He used the same words."

Pitt looked up questioningly. "He?"

"Yes, it was a long time ago. Right after World War Two. A man came to the museum every day for a week and studied every book and ma.n.u.script in our library. He was also researching the legend of Kanoli."

"There must have been others through the years who found the story interesting."

"No, you are the first since the other."

"You have a razor-sharp memory, my friend, to recall someone that far back."

Papaaloa unclasped his hands and stared at Pitt hesitantly. "I never forgot the incident simply because I never forgot the man. You see, he was a giant with golden eyes."

Beyond puzzlement lies frustration, the neutralizing cloud hiding the next move. When a man enters that cloud, he is a man outside himself, a man who moves and acts instinctively. It was in such a state that Pitt found himself half an hour before noon, minutes after leaving George Papaaloa at the museum.

His mind was confused, s.h.i.+fting gears back and forth, trying desperately to piece the first two parts of the puzzle together. An old gray Dodge truck pulled out of the museum's parking lot and followed close behind. Pitt was ready to dismiss the trailing truck as fantasy-his subconscious was beginning to see enemy agents, complete with, trench, coats and beady eyes, lurking behind every clump of philodendron. But as he drove toward Pearl Harbor, the truck stayed with him around every corner as if tied by a rope.

Pitt made another turn and increased his speed slightly, his eyes now on the rearview mirror. The truck also turned, lagged a bit, and then accelerated, closing the gap to its previous position. Pitt snaked the AC through traffic for two miles and then swung onto Mount Tantalus Drive. He drove smoothly around the hairpin curves that curled up the fern-forested mountainside of the Koolau Range, gradually pus.h.i.+ng the gas pedal a millimeter closer to the floor with each turn. Glancing in the mirror, he studied the driver of the truck who was figjhting with the wheel in a fanatical attempt to stay with the elusive little red car.

Then the unexpected happened. With no telltale warning of a blasting report, a bullet smacked into the sideview mirror on the door, shattering the tiny circular gla.s.s and then pa.s.sing through. The game was getting rough. Pitt stomped on the accelerator and put some distance between him and the pursuing Dodge.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h was using a silencer, Pitt cursed silently. It had been a stupid move driving out of town. He'd have been relatively safe in downtown traffic. Now his only hope was to get back to Honolulu before the next shot took the top of his head off. With a little luck he might happen onto a cruising police car. But Pitt was stunned by the next glance in the mirror. The truck had pulled to within ten yards of the AC's b.u.mper.

The road reached the two-thousand-foot crest and started the sharp descent in a series of meandering arcs to the city below. Pitt roared onto a mile-long straightaway and the truck made an effort to close. Pitt held his speed constant in readiness for the next corner, crouching as low as the confining interior of the AC would allow. The needle on his speedometer was touching seventy-five as the pursuing driver crossed the centerline of the road and pulled abreast. Pitt shot a look out the window; he never forgot the picture of the black, long-haired man who grinned back at him through irregular, tobacco-stained teeth. It was only a flicker in time, but Pitt saw every detail of the pockmarked face, the black burning eyes, the huge hooked nose covered by swarthy walnut skin.

All Pitt could feel was frustration; frustration at not being able to shoot back, to blow that b.a.s.t.a.r.d's face to pieces. He had a perfectly good machine gun resting behind his seat not ten inches away, and he couldn't even reach it. A contortionist four feet tall might have been able to get his hands on the Mauser's grip, but not six-foot three-inch Pitt.

The next option was to simply stop the car, get out, lean back in and grab the gun from behind the seat, unwrap the towel that covered it, pop off the safety, and begin firing. The only problem was the timing. The old truck was too close. The hook-nosed driver could have stopped his truck and pumped five shots into Pitt's guts before he'd even reached the towel-unwrapping stage.

The road ahead swept sharply to the left into a dangerous hairpin corner marked by a yellow sign whose black letters proclaimed: SLOW TO 20. Pitt drifted through the curve at fifty-five. The truck couldn't handle the centrifugal pull and lost ground, dropping back momentarily before the driver called on his ample supply of horsepower.

Plan after plan shot through Pitt's mind, each new one discarded along with the ones before. Then, as he braked for the next corner, he began to apply still heavier pressure to the accelerator while watching the rearview mirror, studying the movements of the trades driver as he began to pull even with the AC once more.

It was small consolation that the man was not aiming a gun at Pitt's cranium. He meant to force Pitt off the road, over a steep cliff that fell several hundred feet to the valley below.

Another two hundred yards and they would meet the next curve, yet Pitt maintained his speed. The gray Dodge inched closer to the sports car's front fender. One final nudge and Pitt would be airborne. Then, with only a hundred more yards to go, Pitt mashed the accelerator down hard, held it, and suddenly let up and braked. The abrupt maneuver caught the grinning stalker off guard. He had also increased his speed, attempting to stay even with his quarry, working again toward the position that would send Pitt hurtling over the cliff edge. Too late! They were on the curve.

Pitt kept braking hard; he downs.h.i.+fted, and threw the car around the bend, the tires shrieking in friction-al protest across the pavement. The AC was in a four-wheel drift, the back end beginning to break away. A quick twist to the right and the skid was compensated and then, accelerating again, Pitt shot onto the next straight. A glance in the mirror showed that the road behind him was empty. The gray truck had vanished.

He slowed down, relying on gravity and momentum to cany the car for the next half mile. Still no sign of the truck. Cautiously, Pitt spun a U-turn and drove back toward the curve, ready to crank another hundred-eigjhty-degree turn if the old Dodge should suddenly come into sight. He reached the curve, stopped the car, and got out, walking to the edge of the road.

The dust far below was settling very slowly upon the tropical underbrush. At the bottom of the drop, just beyond the base of the steep-sided cliff, the remains of the gray truck lay with its engine torn from the frame. The driver was nowhere to be seen. Pitt had almost given up searching when he spotted an inert form high on a telephone pole about a hundred feet to the left of the wreckage.

It was a grisly sight It looked as though the driver had tried to leap clear before the old Dodge began its flight over the precipice. He'd missed the edge and had fallen, tumbling through the air for nearly two hundred feet before he struck a telephone pole perched in a concrete base. The body was impaled on a metal foot spike used by telephone repairmen for line maintenance. As Pitt stood entranced, the bottom section of the pole slowly turned from brown to red as if painted by some unseen hand; like a flank of beef hanging on a meathook.

Pitt drove down Mount Tantalus past the Manoa Valley lookout until he reached the nearest house. He went up onto the vine-covered porch and asked an elderly j.a.panese woman if he might use her telephone to report the accident. The woman bowed endlessly and motioned Pitt to a phone in the kitchen. He dialed Admiral Hunter first, quickly relating the story and giving the location.

The admiral's voice came over the receiver like an amplified bullhorn, forcing Pitt to hold the blast a few inches from his ear. "Don't call the Honolulu police," Hunter bellowed. "Give me ten minutes to get our security men on the wreckage before the local traffic investigators foul up the area. You got that?"

"I think I can manage it."

"Good!" Hunter went on without touching on Pitt's saicasm. "Ten minutes. Then move your tail out to Pearl Harbor. We've got work to do."

Pitt acknowledged and hung up.

Pitt waited ten minutes, answering a mult.i.tude of questions about the crash shot in rapid fire by the little Oriental woman. Then he picked up the phone again and asked the operator for the Honolulu police. When the gravel-throated voice requested his name after he volunteered the location, he said nothing and quietly replaced the receiver in its cradle.

He thanked the owner of the house and backed away into the safety of his car. He sat there behind the wheel for a good five minutes, sweating from the humidity of the tropical heat and the unyielding leather of the bucket seat.

Something didn't Jell; something he'd missed came back to tug at his mind, some line of thought that couldn't be translated.

Then suddenly he had it. He started the car quickly and left twin streaks of Goodyear rubber on the worn asphalt as he sped back toward the wreck site. Five minutes to the telephone, twenty minutes spent dawdling as though time meant nothing, three minutes back, twenty-eight minutes in all, wasted.

He should have guessed there'd be more than one of them on his trail. The AC skidded to an abrupt stop and Pitt ran once more to the edge of the drop.

The wreckage was just as he'd left it, all twisted and torn like a child's smashed toy. The telephone pole was as he left it too, standing forlornly in the center of the palisade, its crossbars clutching wires that stretched off into infinity. The footspikes were still there too. But the driver's body had disappeared. Only the red stain remained, clotting and crystalizing under the onslaught of the morning sun.

A Quonset hut-it looked more like the dilapidated office of a salvage yard-was the saddest excuse for an operations building since the Civil War. The rusting corrugated roof and cracked, dust-coated windows were encompa.s.sed by an unkempt sea of weeds. But at the paint-chipped and weathered door, Pitt was barred by a marine sergeant armed with a bolstered automatic Colt .45.

"Your identification, please." It was more a demand than a request

Pitt held up his ID card. "Dirk Pitt. I'm reporting to Admiral Hunter."

"I'm afraid I must see your orders, sir."

Pitt wasn't in the mood for gung ho procedure. Marines irritated him, all puffy-chested, eager for a fight, looking for any excuse to break out in a chorus of the "Marine Hymn."

I'll show my papers to the officer in charge and no one else."

"My orders are..."

"Your orders are to check identification cards against a list of people who may enter the building," Pitt said coldly. "No one gave you permission to play hero and check papers." Pitt motioned at the door. "Now, if you'll be so kind."

The red-faced sergeant looked as though he could not decide whether to haul off and punch Pitt in the mouth. But he hesitated a moment, studied the icy expression on Pitt's face, turned, opened the door behind him, and nodded for Pitt to follow.

The interior of the Quonset hut was empty but for a couple of overturned chairs, a dusty file cabinet, and several faded newspapers scattered over the floor. The place smelled musty and cobwebs were dangling from the ceiling. Pitt was thoroughly puzzled until the sergeant stopped near the back of the deserted room and stomped twice on the wooded flooring. Hearing a m.u.f.fled acknowledgment, he lifted a perfectly concealed trapdoor and motioned Pitt to descend down a dimly lit stairway. Then he stepped aside as the concealed door dropped behind him, barely missing Pitt's descending head by a few inches.

Shades of Edgar Allan Poe, Pitt thought At the bottom of the stairs he pushed aside a heavy curtain and stepped into a carnival of noisy activity. Before him was a large underground bunker stretching almost two hundred feet The overhead fluorescent lights revealed an operations room to end operations rooms. From paneled wall to paneled wall lay a thick beige carpet covered by desks, computers, and teletype machines that would have easily meshed into the plushest offices of Madison Avenue.

A bevy of attractive girls in prim and proper naval uniforms un smilingly manned most of the desks, some furiously typing away at their respective video displays, some moving with fluidlike grace around the row of computers that stood in the center of the room. Twenty male officers in Navy whites stood in isolated groups examining computer readout sheets or jotting down a series of complex notations on the green chalk boards which covered the walls. The whole scene looked like a high-cla.s.s betting parlor. The only thing missing was the monotonous voice of a race announcer.

Admiral Hunter caught sight of Pitt, straightened, smiled his sly fox-toothed smile, and strode forward with his hand outstretched.

"Welcome aboard the new headquarters of the 101st, Mr. Pitt."