Clive Cussler - Cyclops

Ten minutes later they had covered only fifty yards. Pitt couldn't push on much longer. His arms were going numb and he was losing his grip on Giordino. He closed his eyes and blindly began to count the steps, staying in a straight line by brushing his right shoulder against the fence, certain the hurricane must have cut off the power source.

He heard Jessie shouting something, and he opened one eye in a narrow slit. She was pointing vigorously ahead. Pitt sank to his knees, gently lowered Giordino to the ground, and looked past Jessie. A palm tree had been uprooted by the insane wind and hurled through tire air like some monstrous javelin, landing on the fence and crushing it against the sand.

With appalling abruptness, night closed in and the sky went pitch black. Blindly, they stepped over the flattened fence like sightless drones, reeling and falling, driven on by instinct and some inner discipline that wouldn't allow them to lie down and give up. Jessie gamely kept the lead. Pitt had slung Giordino over a shoulder and held on to the waistband of Gunn's swim trunks, not so much for support as to prevent them from becoming separated.

A hundred yards, then another hundred yards, and suddenly Gunn and Jessie seemed to drop into the ground as if they were swallowed up. Pitt released his grip on Gunn and fell backward, grunting as Giordino's full weight fell across his chest, forcing the air from his lungs. He scrambled from under Giordino and stretched his hand gropingly forward into the dark until he felt nothing there.

Jessie and Gunn had fallen down a steep, eight-foot slope into a sunken road. He could just make out their vague outlines huddled in a heap below.

"Are you injured?" he called.

"We already hurt so much we can't tell." Gunn's voice was muffled by the gale, but not so muffled Pitt couldn't tell it came through clenched teeth.

"Jessie?"

"I'm all right. . . I think."

"Can you give me a hand with Giordino?"

"I'll try."

"Send him down," said Gunn. "We can manage it."

Pitt eased Giordino's limp figure over the edge of the slope and lowered him gently by the arms. The others held him by the legs until Pitt could scramble down beside them and take up the heavy bulk. Once Giordino was stretched comfortably on the ground, Pitt looked around and took stock.

The sunken road provided a shelter from the gale-force wind. The blowing sand had dropped off and Pitt could finally open his eyes. The road's surface was made up of crushed seashells and appeared hard packed and little used. No sign of light was visible in either direction, which wasn't too surprising when Pitt considered that any local inhabitants would have evacuated the shoreline before the full energy of the hurricane struck.

Both Jessie and Gunn were very nearly played out, their breath coming in short, tortured rasps. Pitt was aware his own breathing was fast and labored, and his heart pounding like a steam engine under full load. Exhausted and battered as they were, Pitt reflected, it still felt like paradise to lie behind a barrier that reduced by half the main drive of the gale.

Two minutes later Giordino began to groan. Then he slowly sat up and looked around, seeing nothing.

"Jesus, it's dark," he muttered to himself, his mind crawling from a woolly mist.

Pitt knelt beside him and said, "Welcome back to the land of the walking dead."

Giordino raised his hand and touched Pitt's face in the darkness. "Dirk?"

"In the flesh."

"Jessie and Rudi?"

"Both right here."

"Where is here?"

"About a mile from the beach." Pitt didn't bother to explain how they survived the landing or how they arrived at the road. That could come later. "Where are you hurt?"

"All over. My rib cage feels like it's on fire. I think my left shoulder is dislocated, one leg feels like it was twisted off at the knee, and the base of my skull where it meets the neck throbs like hell." He swore disgustedly. "Damn, I blew it. I thought I could bring us through the rocks. Forgive me for screwing up."

"Would you believe me if I told you we'd all be fish food if it wasn't for you?" Pitt smiled and then gently probed Giordino's knee, guessing that the injury was a torn tendon. Then he turned his attention to the shoulder. "I can't do anything about your ribs, knee, or thick skull, but your shoulder is out of place, and if you're in the mood I think I can manipulate it back where it belongs."

"Seems I recall you doing that to me when we played football in high school. The team doctor raised holy hell. Said you should have let him do it."

"That's because he was a sadist," Pitt said, grasping Giordino's arm. "Ready?"

"Go on, tear it off."

Pitt yanked and the joint snapped into place with an audible pop. Giordino let out a gasp that died into a relieved sigh. Pitt felt around in the dark beside the road until he found a stout branch that had been torn off a small scrub pine, and gave it to Gunn to use as a staff in place of a crutch. Jessie clutched one of Gunn's arms to steady him, while Pitt hoisted Giordino onto his sound leg and supported him with an arm around his waist.

This time Pitt led the way, mentally flipping a coin and heading up the road to their right, plodding close to the high embankment to shelter their progress from the unabating onslaught of the storm. Now the going was easier. No deep sand to wade through, no fallen trees to stumble over, not even the wind-propelled rain to torture them, for the edge of the slope caused it to fly over their heads. Just the graded flat of the road leading off into the stricken darkness.

After an hour had passed, Pitt figured they had hobbled about a mile. He was about to call a rest stop when Giordino suddenly stiffened and stopped so unexpectantly that he lost Pitt's support and toppled to the road.

"Barbecue!" he yelled. "Smell it? Somebody's barbecuing beef."

Pitt sniffed the air. The aroma was faint, but it was there. He lifted Giordino and pushed ahead. The smell of steaks broiling over charcoal grew stronger with every step. In another fifty yards they met with a massive iron gate whose bars were welded in the shape of dolphins. A wall topped by broken glass stretched into the darkness on either side and stood astride a guardhouse. Not surprisingly, in light of the hurricane, it was vacant.

The gate, reaching a good twelve feet toward the ebony sky, was locked, but the outer and inner doors of the guardhouse were open, so they walked through. A short distance beyond, the road ended in a circular drive that passed in front of what seemed in the stormy dark to be a large mound. As they approached, it became a castlelike structure whose roof and three sides were covered over with sandy soil and planted with palmetto trees and native scrub brush. Only the front of the building lay exposed, starkly barren with no windows and only one huge, mahogany door artistically carved with lifelike fish.

"Reminds me of a buried Egyptian temple," said Gunn.

"If it wasn't for the ornate door," said Pitt, "I'd guess it was some kind of military supply depot."

Jessie set them straight. "A subinsulator house. Soil is an ideal insulation against temperatures and weather. Same principle as the sod houses on the early American prairie. I know an architect who specializes in designing them."

"Looks deserted," observed Giordino.

Pitt tried the doorknob. It turned. He eased the door open. The aroma of food wafted out from somewhere within the darkened interior.

"Doesn't smell deserted," said Pitt.

The foyer was paved in tile with a Spanish motif and was lit by several large candles set on a tall stand. The walls were carved blocks of black lava rock and their only decoration was a gruesome painting of a man hanging from the fanged mouth of a snakelike sea monster. They entered and Pitt pulled the door closed behind them.