Clive Cussler - Shock Wave

Pitt woke and thought he was in some bottomless pet or a cave deep in the earth. Or at least in the depths of some underground cavern where there was only eternal darkness. Desperately, he tried to feel his way out, but it was like stumbling through a labyrinth. Lost in the throes of a nightmare, doomed to wander forever in a black maze, he thought vaguely. Then suddenly, for no more than the blink of an eye, he saw a dim light far ahead. He reached out for it and watched it grow into dark clouds scudding across the sky.

“Praise be, Lazarus is back from the dead.” Giordino’s voice seemed to come from a city block away, partially drowned out by the rumble of traffic. “And just in time to die again, by the look of the weather.”

As he became fully conscious, Pitt wished he could return to the forbidding labyrinth. Every square centimeter of his body throbbed with pain. From his skull to his knees, it seemed every bone was broken. He tried to sit up, but stopped in mid-motion and groaned in agony. Maeve touched his cheek and. cradled his shoulders with one arm. “It will hurt less if you don’t try to move.”

He looked up into her face. The sky-blue eyes were wide with caring and affection. As if she were weaving a spell, he could feel her love falling over him like gossamer, and the agony slipped away as if drawn from his veins.

“Well, I certainly made a mess of things, didn’t I?” he murmured.

She slowly shook her head, the long blond hair trailing across his cheeks. “No, no, don’t think that. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”

“Merchant’s boys worked you over pretty good before throwing you off the yacht. You look like you were used for batting practice by the Los Angeles Dodgers.”

Pitt struggled to a sitting position. “Dorsett?”

“I suspect you may have fixed one of his eyes so he’ll look like a real pirate when he slips on his eye patch. Now all he needs is a dueling scar and a hook.”

“Boudicca and Deirdre carried him inside the salon during the brawl,” said Maeve. “If Merchant had realized the full extent of Father’s injury, there is no telling what he might have done to you.”

Pitt’s gaze swept an empty and ominous sea through eyes that were swollen and half closed “They’re gone?”

“Tried to run us over before they cut and ran to beat the storm,” said Giordino. “Lucky for us the neoprene floats on our raft, and without an engine that’s all you can call it, rebounded off the yacht’s bows. As it was, we came within a hair of capsizing.”

Pitt refocused his eyes on Maeve. “So they left us to drift like your great-great-great-grandmother, Betsy Fletcher.”

She stared at him oddly. “How did you know about her? I never told you.”

“I always investigate the women I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“And a short life it’ll be,” said Giordino, pointing grimly to the northwest. “Unless my night-school class in meteorology steered me wrong, we’re sitting in the path of what they call in these parts a typhoon, or maybe a cyclone, depending how close we are to the Indian Ocean.”

The sight of the dark clouds and the streaks of lightning followed by the threatening rumble of thunder was enough to make Pitt lose heart as he peered across the sea and listened to the increasing wind. The margin between life and death had narrowed to a paper’s, thickness. Already the sun was blotted out and the sea turned gray. The tiny boat was minutes away from being swallowed by the maelstrom.

Pitt hesitated no longer. “The first order of the day is to rig a sea anchor.” He turned to Maeve. “We’ll need my leather jacket and some line and anything that will help create a drag to keep us from capsizing in heavy seas.”

Without a word, she slipped out of the coat and handed it to him while Giordino rummaged in a small storage locker under a seat. He came up with a rusty grappling hook attached to two sections of nylon line, one five meters, the other, three meters. Pitt laid open the jacket and filled it with everyone’s shoes and the grappling hook, along with some old engine parts and several corroded tools Giordino had scrounged from the storage locker.

Then he zipped it up, knotted the sleeves around the open waistband and collar and tied the makeshift bundle to the shorter nylon line. He cast it over the side and watched it sink before tying the other end of the line solidly to the walk-around console mounted with the useless controls for the missing outboard engine.

“Lie on the floor of the boat,” ordered Pitt, tying the remaining line around the center console. “We’re in for a wild ride. Loop the line around your waists and tie off the end so we won’t lose the boat if we capsize and are thrown in the sea.”

He took one last look over the neoprene buoyancy tubes at the menacing swells that swept in from a horizon that lifted and dropped. The sea was ugly and beautiful of the same time. Lightning streaked through the purple-black clouds, and the thunder came like the roll from a thousand drums. The tumult fell on them without pity. The full force of the gale, accompanied by a torrential rain, a drenching downpour that blocked out the sky ant turned the sea into a boiling broth of foam, struck them less then ten minutes later. The drops, whipped by a wind that howled like a thousand banshees, pelted them so hard it stung their skin.

Spray was hurled from wave crests that rose three meters above the troughs. All too quickly the waves reached a height of seven meters, broken and confused, striking the boat from one direction and then another. The wind increased its shrieking violence as the sea doubled its frightening onslaught against the frail boat and its pitiful passengers. The boat was stewing and corkscrewing violently as it was tossed up on the wave crests before being plunged into the troughs. There was no sharp dividing line between air and sea. They couldn’t tell where one began and the other left off.

Miraculously, the sea anchor was not torn away. It did its duty and exerted its drag, preventing the sea gone berserk from capsizing the boat and throwing everyone into the murderous waters from which there was no return. The gray waves curled down upon them, filling the boat’s interior with churning foam, soaking them all to the skin, but tending to pull the center of gravity deeper in the water, giving an extra fraction of stability. The twisting motion and the choppy rise and fall of the boat whirled their cargo of seawater around their bodies, making them feel they were being whipped inside a juice blender.

In a way, the size of the tiny craft was a blessing. The neoprene tubes around the sides made it as buoyant as a cork. No matter how violent the tempest, the durable hull would not burst into pieces, and if the sea anchor held, it would not capsize. Like the palms that leaned in the wind from gale-force winds, it would endure. The next twenty-four minutes passed like twenty-four hours, and as they hung on grimly to stay alive, Pitt found it hard to believe the storm had not overwhelmed them. There was no word, no description for the misery.

The never-ending walls of water poured into the boat, leaving the three of them choking and gasping until the boat was thrust up and onto the crest of the next swell. There was no need for bailing. The weight of the water filling the interior helped keep them from capsizing. One second they were struggling to keep from floating over the sides of the tubes, the following second preparing for the next frenzied motion, as they fell into a trough, to keep from being slung into the air.

With Maeve between them, each with one arm-protectively draped over her body, Pitt and Giordino braced their feet against the sides for support. If one of them was thrown froth the boat, there could be no chance of rescue. No soul could survive alone in the writhing sea. The downpour cut visibility to a few meters, and they would quickly be lost to view.