Clive Cussler - Cyclops

Jurgens sat there, his adrenaline still flowing, basking in his triumph over the odds. His weary mind began to wander and he found himself wondering who Dirk Pitt was. Then he pressed the intercom switch.

"Mr. Steinmetz."

"Yes, Commander?"

"Welcome back to earth. We're home."

<<59>>

Pitt tool one quick comprehensive look as he stepped back into Velikov's study. Everyone was kneeling, clustered around Raymond LeBaron, who was stretched out on the floor. Jessie was holding his hand and murmuring to him. Gunn looked up at Pitt's approach and shook his head.

"What happened?" Pitt asked blankly.

"He jumped to his feet to help you and caught the bullet that cut your ear," Giordino replied.

Before kneeling, Pitt stared down a moment at the mortally wounded millionaire. The clothing that covered the upper abdomen bloomed in a spreading stain of crimson. The eyes still had life and were focused on Jessie's face. His breath came in rapid and shallow pants. He tried to raise his head and say something to her, but the effort was too great and he fell back.

Slowly Pitt sank on one knee beside Jessie. She turned and looked at him with tears trickling down her discolored cheeks. He stared back at her briefly without speaking. He could think of nothing to say to her, his mind was played out.

"Raymond tried to save you," she said huskily. "I knew they could never completely turn him inside out. In the end he came back."

LeBaron coughed, a strange rasping kind of cough. He gazed up at Jessie, his eyes dulled, face white and drained of blood. "Take care of Hilda," he whispered. "I leave everything in your hands."

Before he could say more, the room trembled as the rumble of explosives came from deep below. Quintana's team had begun destroying the electronic equipment inside the compound. They would have to leave soon, and there would be no taking Raymond LeBaron with them.

Pitt thought of all the newspaper stories and magazine articles glorifying the dying man on the carpet as a steel-blooded power merchant who could make or break executive officers of giant corporations or high-level politicians in government, a wizard at manipulating the financial markets of the world, a vindictive and cold man whose trail was littered with the bones of competing businesses he had crushed and their thousands of employees who were cast out on the streets. Pitt had read all that, but all he saw was a dying old man, a paradox of human frailty, who had stolen his best friend's wife and then killed him for a fortune in treasure. Pitt could feel no pity for such a man, no flicker of emotion.

Now the slender thread holding LeBaron on to life was about to break. He leaned over and placed his lips close to the old power broker's ear.

"La Dorada," Pitt whispered. "What did you do with her?"

LeBaron looked up, and his eyes glistened for an instant as his clouding mind took a final look at the past. His voice was faint as he summoned up the strength to answer. The words came almost as he died.

"What did he say?" asked Giordino.

"I'm not sure," replied Pitt, his expression bewildered. "It sounded like `Look on the main sight.' "

To the Cubans across the bay on the main island the detonations sounded like distant thunder and they paid no attention. No spouting volcano of red and orange lit the horizon, no fiery column of flame reaching hundreds of feet through the black sky attracted their curiosity. The sounds came strangely muffled as the compound was destroyed from within. Even the belated destruction of the great antenna went without notice.

Pitt helped Jessie to the staging area on the beach, followed by Giordino and Gunn, who was carried on a stretcher by the Cubans. Quintana joined them and dropped all caution as he shined a pencil thin flashlight in Pitt's face.

"You'd better get a patch on that ear."

"I'll survive until we reach the SPUT."

"I had to leave two men behind, buried where they'll never be found. But there are still more going out than came in. Some of you will have to double up on the water Dashers. Dirk, you carry Mrs. LeBaron. Mr. Gunn can ride with me. Sergeant Lopez can--"

"The sergeant can ride alone," Pitt interrupted.

"Alone?"

"We left a man behind too," said Pitt.

Quintana quickly swept the narrow beam at the others. "Raymond LaBaron?"

"He won't be coming."

Quintana gave a slight shrug, bowed his head at Jessie, and said simply, "I'm sorry" Then he turned away and began assembling his men for the trip back to the mother ship.

Pitt held Jessie close to him and spoke gently. "He asked you to take care of his first wife, Hilda, who still lives."

He couldn't see the surprise on her face, but he could feel her body tense.

"How did you know?" she asked incredulously.

"I met and talked with her a few days ago."

She seemed to accept that and did not ask him how he came to be at the rest home. "Raymond and I went through the ceremony and played out our roles as man and wife, but he could never completely give up or divorce Hilda."

"A man who loved two women."

"In different, special ways. A tiger in business, a lamb on the home front, Raymond was lost when Hilda's mind and body began to deteriorate. He desperately needed a woman to lean on. He used his influence to fake her death and place her in a rest home under a former married name."

"Your cue to walk on the scene." He did not like being cold, but he was not sorry.

"I was already part of his life," she said without hurt. "I was one of the senior editors of the Prosperteer. Raymond and I had carried on an affair for years. We felt comfortable together. His proposal bordered on a business proposition, a staged marriage of convenience, but it soon grew into more, much more. Do you believe that?"

"I've no talent for rendering verdicts," Pitt replied quietly.

Quintana detached himself from the shadows and touched Pitt's arm. "We're moving out. I'll take the radio receiver and lead off." He moved close to Jessie and his voice softened. "Another hour and you'll be safe. Do you think you can hold on a little longer?"

"I'll be fine. Thank you for your concern."

The Dashers were dragged across the beach and set in the water. At Quintana's command everyone mounted and set off across the black water. This time Pitt brought up the rear as Quintana, headset in place, homed in on the SPUT from headings transmitted by Colonel Kleist.

They left an island of dead in their wake. The huge compound was reduced to great broken slabs of concrete that crumbled inward. The vast array of electronic equipment and the ornate furnishings smoldered like the dying core of a volcano deep beneath the sunbleached coral sand. The giant antenna lay in a thousand twisted pieces, shattered beyond any possible repair. Within hours hundreds of Russian soldiers, led by agents of the GRU, would be crawling over the ruins, searching and sifting the sands for incriminating evidence of the forces responsible for the destruction. But the only bits and pieces their probing investigation would turn up pointed directly to the cunning mind of Fidel Castro and not the CIA.

Pitt kept his eyes locked on the shaded blue light of the Dasher straight in front of him. They were going against the tide now and the tiny craft nosed into the wave troughs and bounced over the crests like a roller coaster. Jessie's added weight slowed their speed, and he kept the accelerator pressed against its stop to keep from falling behind.

They had only traveled about a mile when Pitt felt one of Jessie's hands loosen from his waist.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

His answer was the feel of a cold gun muzzle against his chest just beneath the armpit. He dipped his head very slowly and looked down under his arm. There was indeed the black outline of an automatic pistol pressed into his rib cage, a 9-millimeter Makarov, and the hand that held it was rock steady.