Clive Cussler - Lost City

"Need a ride?" he said.

Austin nodded. "I wouldn't mind a shower, too."

"And a shot of tequila," Zavala said.

"And a long hot bath," said Skye, getting into the swing of things.

"All in due time," Trout said, leading them back to the helicopter, where Gamay sat at the controls. She greeted them with a flashing smile.

They belted themselves in, and a moment later the helicopter rose above the trees, circled around the dark smoldering hole where Chateau Fauchard had been and headed for freedom.

No one on the aircraft looked back..

THE LINE OF SHIPS was stretched out from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Maine along the edge of the Continental Shelf off the Atlantic coast of the United States.

Days before, the fleet of NUMA vessels and naval warships had moved into place from all points of the compass and established their original defensive perimeter a hundred miles to the east of the shelf, in the hope of repelling the invasion far from shore. But they had been swept back by the inexorable advance of the silent enemy.

The turquoise NUMA helicopter had been in the air since dawn, following a course that took it over the elongated armada. The helicopter was east of Cape Hatteras when Zavala, who was at the controls, looked out the window and said, "It's like the Sargasso Sea on hormones out there."

Austin lowered his binoculars and he smiled thinly. "The Sargasso Sea is like a rose garden compared to this mess."

The ocean had developed a split personality. To the west of the ships, the water was its normal dark blue, flecked here and there by whitecaps. To the east, beyond the picket line, the dull sea was an un

healthy yellow-green, where interlocking tendrils of Gorgon weed had formed a mat on the surface as far as the eye could see.

Austin and Zavala had watched from the helicopter as various ships tried different techniques in an effort to halt the relentless drift of the weed. The warships had fired broadside salvos with their big guns. Soggy geysers erupted, but the holes the shells punched in the mat closed up within minutes. Planes launched from aircraft carriers attacked the weed with bombs and rockets. They proved as ineffectual as a mosquito biting an elephant. Incendiary devices fizzled on the top of the thick mat, whose main bulk lay below the surface. Fungicide sprayed from planes was washed away as soon as it hit the water.

Austin asked Joe to circle over two ships that were trying to stop the movement of the weed with the use of pipe booms that were strung between the vessels. It was an exercise in futility. The surface barrier worked for about five minutes. Pushed by the enormous pressure from a moving mass that extended backior miles, the weed simply piled up against the booms, surged over the pipes and buried them.

"I've seen enough," Austin said in disgust. "Let's go back to the ship."

Racine Fauchard was dead, nothing but shriveled flesh and brittle bones buried under the ruins of her once-proud chateau, but the first part of her plan had exceeded far beyond her dreams. The Atlantic Ocean was becoming the big swamp that she had promised.

Austin took consolation in the fact that Racine and her homicidal son Emil would not be around to take advantage of the chaos they had caused. But that still didn't solve the disaster the Fauchards had set into motion. Austin had encountered other human adversaries who, like the Fauchards, embodied pure evil, and he had managed to deal with them. But this unnatural, mindless phenomenon was beyond his ken.

They flew for another half hour. Austin saw from the wakes of the ships below that they were drawing back to avoid being caught up in the advancing weed.

"Stand by for landing, Kurt," Zavala warned.

The helicopter angled down toward a U.S. navy cruiser, and moments later it landed on the deck helipad. Pete Muller, the ensign they had met when his ship was guarding the vessels at the Lost City, was waiting to greet them.

"How's it look?" Muller yelled over the thrump of the rotors.

Austin was grim-faced. "About as bad as it gets."

He and Zavala followed Muller to a briefing room belowdecks. About thirty men and women were seated in rows of metal folding chairs drawn up in front of a large wall screen. Austin and Zavala quietly slipped into a couple of chairs in the back row. Austin recognized some of the NUMA scientists in the audience but knew only a few of the uniformed people from the armed forces and the suits from various governmental agencies charged with public security.

Standing in front of the screen was Dr. Osborne, the Woods Hole phycologist who had introduced the Trouts to the Gorgonweed menace. He was wielding a remote control in one hand and a laser pointer in the other. Displayed on the screen was a chart showing the circulation of water in the Atlantic Ocean.

"Here's where the infestation starts, in the Lost City," he said. "The Canaries' current carries the weed down past the Azores, flows westward across the Atlantic Ocean where it joins the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream moves northerly along the continental shelf. Eventually, it joins the North Atlantic current, which takes it back to Europe, completing the North Atlantic gyre." He swirled the red laser dot in a circle to make his point. "Any questions?"

"How fast does the Gulf Stream move?" someone asked. "About five knots at its peak. More than a hundred miles a day." "What's the present state of the infestation?" Muller asked.

Osborne clicked the remote and the circulation chart disappeared. A satellite photo of the North Atlantic took its place. An irregular yellowish band that resembled a great deformed donut ran in a rough circle around the edge of the ocean, close to the continents.

"This real-time composite satellite photo gives you an idea of the current areas of Gorgonweed infestation," Osborne said. "Now I'll show you our computer projection of the further spread." The picture changed. In the new photo the ocean was totally yellow, except for a few dark blue holes in the central Atlantic.

A murmur ran through the audience.

"How long before it gets to that stage?" Muller asked.

Osborne cleared his throat as if he were having a hard time getting the words out. "A matter of days."

There was a collective gasp at his answer.

He clicked the remote. The picture zoomed in on the eastern seaboard of North America. "This is the area of immediate concern. Once the weed reaches the shallower waters of the continental shelf, we're really in trouble. For a start, it will destroy the entire fishing industry along the east coast of the United States and Canada and northwestern Europe. We've been trying various measures of at-sea containment. I saw Mr. Austin enter the room a few minutes ago. Would you like to bring us up-to-date, Kurt?"

Not really, Austin thought as he made his way to the front of the room. He scanned the pale faces in front of him. "My partner, Joe Zavala, and I just completed an aerial survey of the picket line that has been established along the edge of the continental shelf." He described what they had seen. "Unfortunately," he concluded, "nothing made a dent."

"What about chemicals?" a government bureaucrat asked.

"Chemicals are quickly dissipated by water and wind," Austin said. "A little seeps down, and it may kill a few tendrils, but Gorgonweed is so thick that the chemical doesn't go all the way through.

We're talking about a vast area. Even if you were able to cover it you'd end up poisoning the ocean."

"Is there anything that could destroy a large area?" Muller asked.

"Sure. A nuclear bomb," Austin said, with a bleak smile. "But even that would be ineffectual with thousands of square miles of ocean. I'm going to recommend that booms be erected around major harbors. We'll try to keep our major ports clear so we can buy time."