Clive Cussler - Trojan Odyssey

"We can't escape from this tunnel, because it isn't completed yet. Our only hope is to sneak out the Pacific side from one of the other three tunnels' ventilators."

"And if it proves impossible?"

"Then I'll have to come up with another plan."

Giordino pointed down the loading dock, where security guards were checking the ID passes of the miners. "Time to shove off. We don't exactly fit our descriptions."

Pitt held up the ID clamped to the breast pocket of his jumpsuit and stared at it with amusement. "I'm in trouble. This guy is five foot two. I'm six-three."

"What about me?" Giordino said with a sly smile. "How will I ever produce a head of long hair and a set of boobs?"

Pitt cracked the door and looked up and down the far side of the loading dock and found it deserted. "Out this way."

Giordino followed Pitt and slid across the front seat of the pickup. They hit the loading dock crouched and running before cutting into an open door of a warehouse. Sneaking around unopened crates containing replacement parts for the various equipment and TBM, they found a rear passage that took them out of the warehouse and back along the railroad track. They paused behind a row of Porta Pottis and took stock.

"It'd help if we had transportation," said Giordino, wrinkling his nose distastefully.

"Wishing will make it so," Pitt said with a big grin.

Without waiting for Giordino, he stood up, walked from behind the Porta Pottis and casually approached one of the security guards' vehicles that was parked unattended. He settled behind the wheel, turned the ignition to the electric motor and pressed his foot on the accelerator, as Giordino leaped through the opposite door. The electrical power from the batteries flowed through the front-wheel-drive, direct-coupled differential and the car silently moved away.

The Pitt luck still held. The security guards were so busy examining the miners' IDs that they did not notice their patrol car being stolen. Not only was the electric car whisper quiet, but the noise and clatter of the TBM made it impossible for them to hear the workers trying to call their attention to the car theft.

To make it look official, Giordino reached toward the dashboard and flicked the switch to the revolving lights on the forward edge of the roof. As soon as they came to the first crosscut tunnel, Pitt hung a hard left and repeated the maneuver, swinging into the main tunnel and heading toward its western portal.

Pitt assumed that the four tunnels had been excavated under Lake Nicaragua to come up beyond the narrow stretch of land separating the lake from the ocean at the old port of San Juan del Sur. Here the ventilators had to be placed before the tunnels continued out from shore.

But Pitt was wrong.

After driving several miles, they came to a massive set of pumps like the ones they had encountered on the eastern end of the tunnel network. Then the tunnel abruptly ended at another pair of gigantic doors. The trickles of water that seeped around their edges and down the tunnel gave proof that they were not surfacing near San Juan del Sur but had come to a dead end far out under the Pacific Ocean.

After Admiral Sandecker's morning run from his Watergate condominium to NUMA headquarters, he went directly to his office without stopping off at the agency gym to shower and change into a business suit. Rudi Gunn was waiting for him, a grim expression on his hawklike face. He stared over his horn-rim glasses as Sandecker sat down at his desk, wiping the sweat from his face and neck with a towel.

"What's the latest word from Pitt and Giordino?"

"Nothing in the last eight hours." Gunn was uneasy. "Not since they entered what they described as a ventilator shaft leading to a deep underground tunnel that Pitt reckoned ran through the jungle of Nicaragua from the Pacific to the Caribbean."

"No contact at all?"

"Only silence," answered Gunn. "Impossible to communicate by phone when they're deep underground."

"A tunnel running from sea to sea," murmured Sandecker, his voice dubious.

Gunn nodded slightly. "Pitt was certain of it. He also reported that the builder was the Odyssey conglomeration."

"Odyssey?" Sandecker looked at Gunn in confusion. "Again?"

Gunn nodded again.

"They seem to crop up everywhere." Sandecker rose from his desk and gazed out the window overlooking the Potomac River. He could just see the furled red sails of his little schooner docked at a marina downriver. "I'm not aware of any tunnel being dug through Nicaragua. There was talk about building an underground railroad to transport cargo on high-speed trains. But that was several years ago, and as far as I know nothing ever came of it."

Gunn opened a file, pulled out several photos and spread them on the admiral's desk. "Here are satellite photos taken over a period of several years of a sleepy little port called San Juan del Norte."

"Where did these come from?" asked Sandecker with interest.

Gunn smiled. "Hiram Yaeger tapped his library of satellite photos from the various intelligence services and programmed them into NUMA's data files."

Sandecker adjusted his glasses and began examining the photos, his eyes touching on the dates they were taken, printed on the bottom borders. After a few minutes, he looked up. "Five years ago, the port looked deserted. Then it looks like heavy equipment was barged in and dock facilities built for cargo containerships."

"You'll notice that any and all supply and equipment containers were immediately moved into prefabricated warehouses, and never came out."

"Incredible that such a vast undertaking has gone unnoticed for so long."

Gunn laid a file on the desk beside the photos. "Yaeger also obtained a report on the Odyssey's programs and operations. Their financial dealings are sketchy. Because they're headquartered in Brazil, they are not required to release profit-and-loss statements."

"What about their stockholders? Surely they must receive annual reports."

"They're not listed on any of the international stock markets because the company's wholly owned by Specter."

"Could they have funded such a project on their own?" asked Sandecker.

"As far as we can tell, they have the resources. But Yaeger believes that on a project of this magnitude, they were likely funded by the People's Republic of China, which has bankrolled Specter's Central American developments in the past."

"Sounds logical. The Chinese are investing heavily in the area and are building a sphere of influence."

"Another factor in the secrecy," explained Gunn, "is the opportunity to sidestep all environmental, social and economic impacts. Opposition by Nicaraguan activists and any problems dealing with right-of-way would simply be ignored by their government while the work progressed covertly."

"What other projects are Specter and the Red Chinese working on together?"

"Port facilities on both sides of the Panama Canal and a bridge that will cross it, scheduled to open early next year."

"But why all the secrecy?" muttered Sandecker, as he returned to his chair. "What is to be gained from it?"

Gunn threw up his hands helplessly. "Without more intelligence, we're in the dark on that score."

"We can't just sit on this thing."

"Shall we contact Central Intelligence and the Pentagon about our suspicions?" asked Gunn.

Sandecker looked pensive for a moment. Then he said, "No, we'll go direct to the president's national security advisor."

"I agree," said Gunn. "This could prove to be a very serious situation."

"Damn!" Sandecker blurted in frustration. "If only we'd hear from Pitt and Giordino. Then we might have a clue as to what's going on down there."

Having reached the dead end, Pitt and Giordino had no option but to turn around and speed back in the direction they'd come. The fourth of the four tunnels appeared deserted and devoid of all equipment. It was as empty as though men had never created it. Only the pumps on both ends, standing eerily silent, revealed a veiled purpose that Pitt was at a loss to explain.