Clive Cussler - Lost City

Gamay had her face pressed against another view port. "There's a real ugly guy out there," she whispered. "He's got a gun."

"Same here," Trout said. "They want us to climb out."

"What should we do?" Sandy said.

Someone started banging on the hull.

"Our welcoming party is becoming impatient," Gamay said.

"So I see," Trout said. "Unless we can figure out how to turn the Alvin into an attack sub, I suggest that we do whatever they want us to."

He reached up and opened the hatch. Warm, damp air rushed in and the same face he had seen in the view port was framed in the circular opening. The man gestured at Trout and pulled out of view. Trout stuck his head and shoulders through the hatch and saw that the Alvin was surrounded by six armed men.

Moving slowly, Trout climbed out onto the sub's hull. Sandy emerged and the color drained from her face when she saw the reception party. She froze in place until Gamay gave her a nudge from below and Trout helped her down to the metal deck.

The Alvin had come to rest in a brightly lit compartment as big as a three-car garage. The air was heavy with the smell of the sea. Water dripped from the Alvin's hull and gurgled down drains in the deck. The muted hum of engines could be heard in the distance. Trout surmised that they were in the air lock of an enormous submarine. At one end of the chamber, the walls curved to meet each other in a horizontal crease like the inside of a large mechanical mouth. The submarine must have gulped the Alvin down like a grouper eating a shrimp.

A guard punched a wall switch and a door opened in the bulkhead opposite the mechanical mouth. The same guard pointed the way with the barrel of his gun. The prisoners stepped through the door

way into a smaller room that looked like a robot factory. Hanging from wall racks were at least a dozen "moon suits," whose thick joined arms ended in grasping claws. From his work with NUMA, Trout knew that the suits were human-shaped submersibles used for diving for long periods at extreme depths.

The door hissed shut and the prisoners marched along a passageway between three guards in front and three taking up the rear. The navy-blue jumpsuits the guards wore had no identification markings of any sort. The men were muscular, hard-looking types with close-cropped hair, and they moved with the assurance of trained military men. They were in their thirties and forties too old to be raw recruits. It was impossible to guess their nationalities because they had kept silent, preferring to communicate their wishes with gun gestures. Trout guessed they were mercenaries, probably special warfare types. The parade made its way through a network of passageways. Eventually, the prisoners were shoved into a cabin and the door clicked shut behind them. The small stateroom had two bunks, a chair, an empty closet and a head.

"Cozy," Gamay said, taking in the tight accommodations. "This must be the third-class cabin," Trout said. He had a dizzy spell and put his hand against the bulkhead to steady himself. Seeing the concern in Gamay's face, he said, "I'm okay. But I need to sit down."

"You need some first aid," Gamay said.

While Trout sat on the edge of a bunk, Gamay went into the head and ran cold water over a towel. Trout placed the towel on his temple to keep the swelling down. Sandy and Gamay took turns going back to the sink to replenish the cold-water compress. Eventually, the swelling was reduced. With great care, Trout adjusted his bow tie, which was hanging half off his neck, and he combed his hair with his fingers.

"Better?" Gamay said.

Newly refreshed, Trout grinned and said, "You always told me that I'd get a big head someday."

Sandy laughed in spite of her fears. "How can you two be so calm?" she said in wonder.

Trout's unflappability was less bravado than pragmatism and faith in his own abilities. As a member of NUMA's Special Operations Team, Trout was not unused to danger. His laid-back academic demeanor disguised an innate toughness passed down by his hardy New England forebears. His great-grandfather had been a surf man in the Lifesaving Service, where the motto was "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back." His fishermen grandfather and father had taught him seamanship and respect for the sea, and Trout had learned to rely on his own ingenuity.

With her slim athletic body and graceful movements, her luxuriant dark red hair and flashing smile, Gamay was sometimes mistaken for a fashion model or an actress. Few would have believed that she had been a tomboy growing up in Wisconsin. Although she had grown into a woman who possessed every desirable feminine trait possible, she was no hothouse flower. Rudi Gunn, the assistant director at NUMA, had recognized her intelligence when he suggested she be brought into the agency with her husband. Admiral Sandecker readily accepted Gunn's suggestion. Since then, Gamay had displayed her intelligence and cool resourcefulness on many missions with the Special Assignments Team.

"Calmness has nothing to do with it," Gamay said. "We're simply being practical. Like it or not, we're stuck here for the time being. Let's use deductive reasoning to figure out what happened."

"Scientists are not supposed to draw any conclusions until we're ready to support them with facts," Sandy said. "We don't have all the facts."

"You learned the scientific method well," Trout said. "As Ben Jonson said, there's nothing like the prospect of a hanging to focus a person's mind. Since we don't have all the facts, we can use scientific dead reckoning to get us where we want to go. Besides, we don't have anything else to do. First, we know for sure that we've been kidnapped and we're being held prisoner in a large submarine of curious design."

"Could this be the vehicle that made those tracks through the Lost City?" Sandy said.

"We don't have the facts to support that theory," Trout said. "But it wouldn't be impossible to design a submersible that could crawl along on the sea floor. NUMA had something like that a few years ago."

"Okay, then what's it doing here? Who are these people? And what do they want with us?"

"I have the feeling that those questions will soon be answered," Gamay said.

"You're talking more like a swami than a scientist," Sandy said. Gamay touched her finger to her lips and pointed at the door. The handle was turning. Then the door opened and a man stepped into the cabin. He was so tall he had to duck his head under the jamb. The newcomer was dressed in a jumpsuit like the others, except for its lime-green color. He closed the door quietly behind him and gazed at the captives.

"Please relax," he said. "I'm one of the good guys." "Let me guess," Trout said. "Your name is Captain Nemo and this is the Nautilus."

The man blinked in surprise. He had expected the prisoners to be cowed.

"No, it's Angus MacLean he said with a soft Scottish burr. "Dr. MacLean I'm a chemist. But you're right about this submarine. It's every bit as wonderful as Nemo's vessel."

"And we're all characters in a Jules Verne novel?" Gamay said. MacLean replied with a heavy sigh. "I wish it were that easy. I don't want to unduly alarm you," he said with a quiet seriousness,

"but your lives may depend upon our conversation in the next few minutes. Please tell me your names and what your profession is. I plead with you to be truthful. There is no brig on this vessel."

The Trouts understood the unspoken message. No brig meant no prisoners. Trout looked into MacLean kindly blue eyes and decided to trust him.

"My name is Paul Trout. This is my wife, Gamay. We're both with NUMA. This is Sandy Jackson, the pilot of the Alvin."

"What's your scientific background?"

"I'm an ocean geologist. Gamay and Sandy are both marine biologists."

MacLean serious face dissolved into a smile of relief. "Thank God," he murmured. "There's hope."