Clive Cussler - Trojan Odyssey

The Odyssey representative looked at Pitt in disbelief. "How dare you?"

He smiled devilishly. "You've made such an impression on me that I'm stealing you away to a better world."

"You're crazy!"

"Like a fox." The elevator stopped on the eighth floor, but Pitt pushed the close door button. The doors remained shut, the motor hummed and it continued upward to its last stop on the roof above the tenth floor.

"What is going on here?" For the first time she took a good look at the Lowenhardts, who seemed amused by the exchange. Her face clouded. "I know these people. They're supposed to be confined at night in the prison building. Where are you taking them?"

"To the nearest bathroom," Pitt answered nonchalantly.

The woman didn't know whether to stop the elevator or scream. Confused, she fell back on her womanly instinct and opened her mouth to scream. Pitt showed no hesitation in ramming his right fist into her jaw. She went down like a sack of wet flour. Giordino grabbed her under the arms before she hit the floor and pulled her into a corner, where she was out of sight when the doors opened.

"Why didn't you simply gag her?" asked Hilda, shocked at seeing Pitt brutally strike the woman.

"Because she would have bitten my hand, and I didn't feel in a chivalrous mood to let her do it."

Agonizingly, with apparently infinite slowness, the elevator rose the final few feet of its ascent and reached the stop on the tenth floor leading to the roof. After it eased smoothly to a halt, the doors spread apart and they exited.

Right into a group of four uniformed security guards who had been standing out of sight behind a large air-conditioning unit.

The atmosphere was one of calm if not an equal level of anxiety in Sandecker's penthouse apartment at the Watergate in Washington. He paced the floor under a trail of blue smoke from one of his mammoth, specially wrapped cigars. Some men might have acted as gentlemen with ladies present rather than enshrouding them with tobacco fumes, but not the admiral. They either accepted his noxious habit or he didn't entertain them. And, despite this liability, single ladies of Washington passed over his doorstep with surprising frequency.

Considered a prestigious catch because he was an unmarried widower with a daughter and three grandchildren who lived in Hong Kong, Sandecker was besieged with dinner invitations. Either fortuitously or unluckily, depending upon how one looked at it, he was constantly introduced to single ladies looking for a husband or a relationship. Amazingly, the admiral was a master at juggling five ladies at the same time, one of the reasons he was a fitness nut.

His lady of the evening, Congresswoman Bertha Garcia, who stepped into the office of her late husband, Marcus, was sitting on the balcony, drinking a glass of fine port while viewing the lights of the capital. Stylishly attired in a short black cocktail dress after attending a party with the admiral, she gazed with amusement at Sandecker's nervousness.

"Why don't you sit down, Jim, before you wear out the carpet?"

He stopped and came over to her, placing a hand against her cheek. "Forgive me for ignoring you, but I've got a situation with two of my people down in Nicaragua." He sat down heavily beside her. "What if I told you that our east coast and Europe were going to suffer severe winters the likes of which we've never seen."

"We can always survive a bad year."

"I'm talking centuries."

She set her glass on a patio table. "Certainly not with global warming."

"With global warming," he said firmly.

The phone rang and he marched in and picked it up from his penthouse office desk.

"Yes?"

"Rudi, Admiral," came Gunn's voice. "Still no word."

"Have they made entry?"

"We've heard nothing since they left on a jet ski across the lake from Granada."

"I don't like it," Sandecker muttered. "We should have heard from them by now."

"We should leave jobs like this to the intelligence agencies," said Gunn.

"I agree, but there was no stopping Dirk and Al."

"They'll make it," Gunn said reassuringly. "They always do."

"Yes," Sandecker said heavily. "But someday the law of averages will catch up and their luck will run out."

The guards were as surprised to see the group exit the elevator as Pitt was to see them. Three wore the blue jumpsuits of security guards, the fourth was a woman dressed in green. Pitt guessed she was of a higher rank than the men. Unlike the others, she carried no assault rifle. Her only weapon was a small automatic pistol in a belt holster on her hip. Pitt quickly took the initiative. He walked up to the woman.

"Are you in charge here?" he asked, in a voice calm and authoritative.

The woman, taken back momentarily, stared at him. "I'm in charge. What are you doing here?"

Relieved that she spoke English, he motioned to the Lowenhardts. "We found these two wandering around the fourth floor. Nobody seemed to know how they came to be there. We were told to turn them over to the guards on the roof. That's you."

The woman studied the Lowenhardts, who were looking at Pitt with growing shock and fear in their eyes.

"I know these people. They are scientists who work on the project. They're supposed to be confined to their quarters."

"There was a disturbance, a vehicle caught fire. They must have escaped during the commotion."

The female guard, looking confused, did not question how the Lowenhardts came to be in the headquarters building. "Who told you to bring them to the roof?"

Pitt shrugged. "A lady in a lavender jumpsuit."

The three guards, with their assault rifles held at the ready, appeared to relax. They seemed to buy the story, even if their superior was doubtful. "What are your work positions?" she demanded.

Giordino took a few steps toward the helicopter, turned his head away and looked as if he was admiring it. Pitt stared directly into the woman's eyes. "We work in the tunnels. Our supervisor sent us topside for two days' rest." Out of the corner of one eye he saw Giordino slowly, imperceptibly, move behind the guards.

The story worked before. He hoped it would work again. It did. The woman nodded.

"That doesn't explain why you were in headquarters this time of night."

"We've been ordered back down tomorrow and were instructed to come here and pick up our passes."

He missed on that one. "What passes? I know of no passes issued to tunnel workers. Your identification badges should suffice."

"I only do what I'm told," he said, acting irritated. "Do you want to take charge of these prisoners or not?"

Before she could reply, Giordino had his big gun in one hand. In one lightning motion, he lashed the barrel against one guard's head and then swung it hard against the head of the second guard. The third removed his hands from his rifle when he saw the gaping muzzle of Giordino's .50 caliber automatic aimed between his eyes.

"That's much better," Pitt said quietly. He turned to Giordino and smiled. "A credible piece of work."

Giordino returned a slight grin. "I thought so."

"Take their guns."

The woman's hand crept toward her holstered pistol.

Pitt said, "I wouldn't if I were you."

The female guard's face was a mask of wrath, but she was smart enough to know the odds were against her. She raised her hands as Giordino removed her gun. "Who are you?" she hissed.

"I wish people would stop asking me that." Pitt pointed at the guard still standing. "Remove your uniform. Quickly!"

The guard quickly unzipped the front of his jumpsuit and stepped out of it. Pitt did the same with his black suit. Then he slipped into the blue one.

"Down on the roof next to your men," Pitt ordered the woman and the half-naked guard.