Clive Cussler - Cyclops

She shook her head weakly. "No. I would only increase your chances of getting caught."

"Sorry," Pitt said flatly. "Like it or not, you're coming."

"Don't you understand," she pleaded. "You're the only hope for saving all of us. If you make it back to the States and tell the President what's happening here, Velikov will have to keep us alive."

"What does the President have to do with this?"

"More than you know."

"Then Velikov was right. There is a conspiracy."

"Don't waste time conjecturing. Go, please go. By saving yourself you can save all of us."

Pitt felt an overwhelming surge of admiration for Jessie. She looked like a discarded doll now, battered and helpless, but he realized her outer beauty was matched by an inner one that was brave and resolute. He leaned over and kissed her lightly on puffed and split lips.

"I'll make it," he said confidently. "Promise me you'll hang on till I get back."

She tried to smile, but her mouth couldn't respond. "You crazy clown. You can't return to Cuba."

"Watch me."

"Good luck," she murmured softly. "Forgive me for messing up your life."

Pitt grinned, but the tears were welling in his eyes. "That's what men like about women. They never let us get bored."

He kissed her again on the forehead and turned away, his tanned fists white-knuckled by his side.

The climb up the emergency-shaft ladder made Pitt's arms ache, and when he reached the top he rested for a minute before pushing the lid aside and crouching in the darkness of the garage. The two soldiers were still engaged in a game of chess. It seemed to be a nightly routine to pass the boring hours of standby duty. They seldom bothered to glance at the vehicles parked outside their office. There was no reason to anticipate trouble. They were probably mechanics, Pitt reasoned, not security guards.

He reconnoitered the garage area-- tool benches, lubrication racks, oil and parts storage, trucks, and construction equipment. The trucks had spare five-gallon fuel cans attached to their beds. Pitt lightly tapped the cans until he found one that was full. The rest were all half empty or less. He groped around a tool bench until he found a rubber tube and used it to siphon gas from one of the truck's tanks. Two cans containing ten gallons were all he could carry. The problem he faced now was getting them through the vent in the roof.

Pitt took a towrope that was hanging from one wall and tied the ends to the handles on the gas cans. Holding the middle in a loop, he climbed to the support girders. Slowly, watching to see that the mechanics kept their attention on the chess game, he pulled the cans to the roof one at a time and pushed them ahead of him into the vent.

In another two minutes he was lugging them across the yard into the culvert that ran under the wall. He quickly spread the bars apart and hurried outside.

The sky was clear and the quarter-moon floated in a sea of stars. There was only a whisper of wind and the night air was cool. He fervently hoped the sea was calm.

For no particular reason he skirted the opposite side of the road this time. It was slow going. The heavy cans soon made his arms feel as though they were separating at the joints. His feet sank into the soft sand, and he had to stop every two hundred yards to catch his breath and allow the growing ache in his hands and arms to subside.

Pitt tripped and sprawled on the edge of a wide clearing surrounded by a thick grove of palm trees, so thick their trunks almost touched each other. He reached out and swept around with his hands. They touched a metal network that blended into the sand and became nearly invisible.

Curious, he left the gas cans and crawled cautiously around the edge of the clearing. The metal grid rose two inches off the ground and extended across the entire diameter. The center dropped away until it became concave like a bowl. He ran his hands over the trunks of the palm trees circling the rim.

They were fake. The trunks and fronds were constructed out of aluminum tubes and covered with realistic sheathing made from sanded plastic. There were over fifty of them, painted with camouflage to deceive American spy planes and their penetrating cameras.

The bowl was a giant dish-shaped radio and television antenna and the bogus palm trees were hydraulic arms that raised and lowered it. Pitt was stunned at the implication of what he had accidentally discovered. He knew now that buried under the sands of the island was a vast communications center.

But for exactly what purpose?

Pitt had no time to reflect. But he was determined more than ever to get free. He continued walking in the shadows. The village was farther than he remembered. He was a mass of sweat and panted heavily from exhaustion when he finally stumbled into the yard where he'd hidden the outboard motor under the bathtub. He thankfully dropped the gas cans and lay down on the old mattress and dozed for an hour.

Although he could not afford the time, the short rest refreshed him considerably. It also allowed his mind to create. An idea crystallized that was so incredibly simple in concept he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it before.

He carried the gas cans down to the lagoon. Then he returned for the outboard. Looking through piles of trash, he located a short plank that showed no rot. The last chore was the hardest. Necessity was the mother of invention, Pitt kept telling himself.

Forty-five minutes later, he had dragged the old bathtub from its resting place in the yard down the road to the water's edge.

Using the plank as a transom, Pitt bolted the outboard to the rear of the tub. Next he cleaned out the fuel filter and blew out the lines. A piece of tin bent in a cone served as a funnel to fill the outboard's tank. By holding his thumb over the bottom hole he could also use it for a bailing can. His final act before stuffing a rag plug in the drain was to knock off the bathtub's four webbed feet with an iron bar.

He pulled at the starter cord twelve times before the motor sputtered, caught, and began to purr. He shoved the tub into deeper water until it floated. Then he climbed in. The ballast weight of his body and the two full gas cans made it surprisingly stable. He lowered the propeller shaft into the water and pushed the gear lever to Forward.

The oddball craft slowly moved out into the lagoon and headed for the main channel. A shaft of moonlight showed the sea was calm, the swells no more than two feet. Pitt concentrated on the surf. He had to pass through the breaking waves and place as much distance between himself and the island by sunrise as possible.

He slowed the motor and timed the breakers, counting them. Nine heavies crashed one behind the other, leaving a long trough separating the tenth. Pitt pushed the throttle to Full and settled in the stern of the tub. The next wave was low and crashed immediately in front of him. He took the impact of the churning foam bow-on and plowed through. The tub staggered, then the propeller bit the water and it surged over the crest of the following wave before it curled.

Pitt let out a hoarse shout as he broke free. The worst was over. He knew he could only be discovered by sheer accident. The bathtub was too small to be picked up by radar. He eased up on the throttle to conserve the motor and the fuel. Dragging his hand in the water, he guessed his speed at about four knots. He should be well clear of Cuban waters by morning.

He looked up at the heavens, took his bearings, picked out a star to steer by, and set a course for the Bahama Channel.

<3>SELENOS 8

October 30, 1989

Kazakhstan, USSR

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With a fireball brighter than the Siberian sun, Selenos 8 rose into a chilly blue sky carrying the 110-ton manned lunar station. The super rocket and four strap-on boosters, generating 14 million pounds of thrust, threw out a tail of orange-yellow flame 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide. White smoke burst around the launch pad and the rumble from the engines rattled glass twelve miles away. At first it lifted so ponderously that it hardly seemed to be moving at all. Then it picked up speed and thundered skyward.