Clive Cussler - Trojan Odyssey

"One of them didn't happen to be wearing a gold jumpsuit?" Pitt asked.

Nash thought a moment and then shook his head. "No, I didn't see anyone fitting that description." There was a pause. "Did she have red hair?"

"Yes, her hair was red."

"So were all those who died, the same red tint on all of them. They fought like crazy fanatics. It was unreal."

The helicopter remained on station over the island. Nash received word that the evacuation was successfully completed almost to the minute of his estimate. Without a second's hesitation, he issued the clearance for the B-52 to drop the bomb.

The bomber was so high in the sky, they could not see it or detect the bomb as it fell from sixty thousand feet. Nor did they see the bomb strike the volcano's slope above the Odyssey facility and penetrate deep below the surface. Seconds later, a great rumble came from the slope of Mount Concepcion. The detonation seemed more like a huge thud than the sharp boom of a bomb exploding on impact with the ground. This was quickly followed by a new sound like rolling thunder, as the slope of the volcano let loose its grip on the cone and began collapsing, picking up speed as it shot downward until it reached an incredible eighty miles an hour.

From the air it looked as if the entire research and development complex with all its buildings, docks and aircraft terminal was sliding under the lake's surface like a monstrous coin thrown by a giant hand. Clouds of debris and dust burst into the sky as an enormous wave built and rose over two hundred feet high. Then the crest curled and swept across the lake at astonishing speed, eventually crashing against the shorelines and inundating everything that stood in its path, before finally dying at its highest penetration and receding almost reluctantly back into the lake bed.

In the time it took to turn two pages in a book, the great research center created by Specter, his female directors and his Odyssey empire had vanished, along with the tunnels that were crushed flat.

The South Equatorial Current would not be diverted into the Atlantic Ocean. The Gulf Stream would flow as it had for a million years, and there would be no deep freeze across Europe and North America until the next ice age.

The layer of black haze began to merge with a bright white glow. The stars that had soared inside his head faded to a scant few as Dirk slowly returned to consciousness. He felt cold from the damp. Stunned by a sea of pain inside his head, he rose up on his elbows and looked around him.

He found himself in a small rectangular room, no more than five by three feet. The ceiling, floor and three walls were solid concrete. The fourth wall was filled by a rusty iron door. There was no handle on the inside. A small window no larger than a pie plate was embedded in the roof of his cell. Light filtered through it and dimly lit his tiny gray world. There was no bunk or blanket, only a hole in the floor for sanitation.

He never experienced a hangover to match the throb inside his head. There was a knot above the left ear that felt as big as a computer mouse. Rising to his feet was a major effort. If nothing else but to satisfy his curiosity, he pushed on the door. He might as well have tried to knock over an oak tree. All he wore when he went to sleep on the boat were a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Looking down, he saw that his shirt and shorts were gone and he was wearing a white silk bathrobe. It seemed so out of place with his surroundings that he could not begin to imagine its significance.

Then his thoughts turned to Summer. What had happened to her? Where was she? He could remember nothing except watching a half-moon rise over the sea before falling asleep on the boat. The ache in his head began to subside slightly. He came to realize that someone must have clubbed him on the head, then carried him ashore and put him in this cell. But what of Summer. What had happened to her? Desperation began to seep into his mind. His situation looked hopeless. He could do nothing trapped in a concrete box. Escape seemed impossible.

It was sometime late in the afternoon when Dirk heard a sound outside his cell. There came the click of a lock turning and the door swung outward. A woman with blond hair, blue eyes and wearing a green jumpsuit stood with a large automatic pistol in her hand, aimed squarely at his chest.

"You will come with me," she said softly, without the slightest harsh quality.

In another setting Dirk would have found her quite attractive, but here, she seemed as nasty as the Wicked Witch of the West. "Where to?" he asked.

She prodded him in the back with the muzzle of her gun without replying. He was marched down a long corridor past several iron doors. Dirk wondered if Summer was behind one of them. They came to a stairway at the end and he began climbing without being told. At the top, they passed through a door into a marble-floored entry with walls embedded with millions of pieces of mosaic gold tile. The chairs were covered in lavender-dyed leather and the tables with inlaid lavender-stained wood. He thought it gaudy and overdone.

The female guard escorted him to a huge pair of gold-gilded doors, knocked and then stood aside as they were opened from within. She motioned for him to enter.

Dirk was stunned at the sight of four beautiful women with flowing red hair in lavender and gold gowns sitting around a long conference table carved from a solid block of red coral. Summer was also sitting at the table, but attired in a white gown. He rushed over to her and grasped her by the shoulders.

"Are you all right?"

She turned slowly and looked up at him as if in a trance. "All right? Yes, I'm all right."

He could see that she was heavily drugged. "What have they done to you?"

"Please sit down, Mr. Pitt," ordered the woman seated at the head of the table, who was attired in a gold gown. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and musical, but touched with arrogance.

Dirk sensed a movement behind him. The guard had withdrawn from the room and closed the door. For a brief instant, he thought that even though the women outnumbered him, he could do enough damage to incapacitate them and make a run for it with Summer, but he could see that she was so heavily sedated that she couldn't run anywhere. He slowly pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table and sat down. "Can I inquire as to your intentions regarding my sister and me?"

"You may," said the woman obviously in charge. Then she ignored him and turned to the woman on her right. "You searched their boat?"

"Yes, Epona. We found dive gear and underwater detection equipment."

"I apologize for any intrusion," said Dirk, "but we thought the island was deserted."

Epona stared at him, her eyes hard and cold. "We have ways of dealing with trespassers."

"We were on an archaeological expedition to find ancient shipwrecks. Nothing more."

She glanced at Summer, then back to Dirk. "We know what you were searching for. Your sister was most cooperative in providing us with a full report."

"After you drugged her," said Dirk, maddened within an inch of coming across the table after the woman.

It was as if she read his mind. "Do not think of resisting, Mr. Pitt. My guards will respond in an instant."

Dirk forced himself to relax and act indifferent. "So what did Summer tell you?"

"That you and she work for the National Underwater and Marine Agency and that you were here looking for Odysseus' lost fleet that Homer described as being sunk by the Laestrygonians."

"You have read Homer."

"I live and breathe Homer the Celt, not Homer the Greek."

"Then you know the true story of Troy and of Odysseus' voyage across the ocean."

"The reason my sisters and I are here. Ten years ago, through long years of research, we concluded that it was the Celts and not the Greeks who fought the Trojans, and not for the love of Helen but the tin deposits in Cornwall to make bronze. Like you, we retraced Odysseus' wake across the Atlantic. You might be interested in learning that his fleet was not destroyed by huge rocks thrown by the Laestrygonians, but was destroyed by a hurricane."