Trojan Odyssey

The water felt warmer than the air above. Visibility was almost diamond clear. Shining the light downward, he could make out a flat, sandy, nondescript bottom eighty feet below. Pitt felt remarkably comfortable as the tepid water pressed against his body. The hull below the waterline was free of growth, having been dry-docked and scraped clean before Sandecker ordered Poco Bonito south.

He moved from the rudder and propellers toward the bow, swinging the light from port to starboard and back. There was always the danger of a curious shark, nosing its way toward the light, but in all his years of diving Pitt had seldom crossed paths with the murder machines of the deep. He concentrated instead on the object caught in the beam of his dive light, protruding like a tumor from the keel amidships. His suspicions confirmed, he stroked his fins slowly until he was staring at what he knew without the slightest doubt was an explosive device no more than ten inches in front of his face mask.

Pitt was no bomb expert. All he could determine was that some kind of oval-shaped ca

There was no way he could tell what type of explosive was being used, but it looked to him like a classic case of overkill. It seemed far more than enough to blast Poco Bonito into a thousand fragments and her crew into tiny shreds of flesh and bone. It was hardly a pretty thought.

He clamped the dive light under an armpit and gently placed both hands on the ca

Under the light, he took a quick glance at the orange dial on his ancient Doxa dive watch. He had been down four minutes. He had to hurry before Specter's agent onshore got wise that something was up. Very cautiously slipping the edge of the knife under the ca

Putting the knife back in the kit, Pitt gripped both ends, curled his body until his fi

Without waiting for his heart to slow and his breathing to return to normal, Pitt swam along the keel and surfaced beside the rudder at the stern. No one was visible. They were all busily searching the interior of the boat. He spit out his mouthpiece and shouted.

"I could use some help!" He wasn't surprised that Giordino was the first to respond.

The little Italian burst through the engine room hatch and leaned over the transom. "What have you got?"

"Enough explosives to disintegrate a battleship."

"You want me to lift it on board?"

"No." Pitt gasped, as a wave washed over his head. "Tie a long line to a life raft and throw it over the stern."

Giordino asked no questions as he hurried up a ladder to the roof of the deckhouse. There he feverishly yanked one of the two life rafts out of its cradle, where it was stowed untied so it could float free should the boat sink. Renee and Dodge appeared on the deck just in time to catch the raft as Giordino let it slide over the wheelhouse roof to the deck below.

"What's happening?" asked Renee.

Giordino nodded to Pitt's head bobbing in the water aft of the stern. "Dirk found an explosive device fastened to the hull."

Renee peered over the transom at the ca

"Because he has a plan," Giordino answered patiently. "Now give me a hand dropping the raft over the side."

Dodge said nothing, as the three of them manhandled the heavy raft over the railing into the water with a splash that covered Pitt's head. Kicking his fins furiously, he rose out of the water up to his chest, lifted the heavy ca

Only after the ca

Giordino dropped the boarding ladder and helped Pitt climb on board. As Giordino removed his air tanks, Pitt said, "Pour a few gallons of fuel into the raft, then pay out the line as far as it will go."

"You expect us to tow a raft full of explosives covered in gasoline?" Dodge asked hesitantly.

"That's the idea."

"What happens when it passes the buoy with the transmitter?"

Pitt looked at Dodge and flashed a crooked grin. "Then it will go bang."

20

When entering the harbor from seaward, the port buoy marking the sides of the cha

Except for Giordino, who took the helm, everyone huddled on the stern deck and stared expectantly over the top of the transom as the outer harbor buoys came even with Poco Bonito's bow.

Secure in the knowledge that Pitt had discovered the explosives, and having witnessed him placing the ca

Then the tension mounted again, this time even higher as the raft was towed closer and closer to the buoys. Fifty yards, then twenty-five.

Renee instinctively ducked and placed her hands over her ears. Dodge crouched and turned his back toward the stern while Pitt and Giordino calmly gazed aft, as if waiting for a shooting star to dart through the stars.

"Soon as she blows," Pitt said to Dodge, "switch off our ru

He had no sooner finished giving the order than the life raft vaporized.

The sound of the explosion thundered and echoed through the straits between the bluffs as the concussion rolled across the water, slapped their faces and rocked the boat. The darkness became a nightmare of flame and fiery debris as a great boiling upthrust of white water twenty feet wide burst out of a crater in midcha