Trojan Odyssey

"The tu

"I don't count that as a dazzling revelation." He began to feel she had gotten off track. "A series of tu

"Ah," Max said, holding up one hand with the index finger raised. "But do you know why they want to pump massive amounts of water through the tu

"For a huge desalinization program, an irrigation project? Hell, I don't know."

"How can humans be so dense?" Max said in frustration. "Are you ready, master?"

"If you would be so kind."

"The tu

Yaeger was confused. "What kind of environmental threat would that provoke?"

"Don't you see it?"

"There's more than enough water in the Atlantic Ocean to make up for the loss of a few million gallons."

"Not fu

"What, then?"

Max threw up her hands. "By diverting the South Equatorial Current, the temperature of the Gulf Stream would drop almost eight degrees by the time its flow reached Europe."

"And?" Yaeger probed.

"An eight-degree drop in the water that warms Europe would send the continent into a weather pattern equal to northern Siberia's."

Yaeger could not immediately grasp the enormity of Max's words, nor the unthinkable consequences. "Are you sure about this?"

"Have I ever been wrong?" Max pouted.

"Eight degrees seems like an excessive decrease," Yaeger persisted, doubtfully.

"We're only talking maybe a three-degree drop in the water temperature as the Gulf Stream cuts past Florida. But when the icy Labrador Current moves down from the Arctic and meets it after the Stream arcs past the Canadian Maritime Provinces, the temperature drop is magnified. This in turn greatly influences a further temperature decrease across Europe, altering the weather patterns and causing a disruption in the atmosphere from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean."

The horrendous scheme suddenly became crystal clear to Yaeger. Very slowly, he picked up the phone and dialed Sandecker's office. The admiral's secretary put Yaeger right through.

"Did Max come up with any answers?" asked Sandecker.

"She did."

"And?"

"Admiral," Yaeger began in a hoarse voice, "I'm afraid we have a catastrophe in the making."

34

Waiting for the helicopter that was over an hour late, Giordino happily slipped into dreamland while Pitt peered over the waters of Lake Nicaragua surrounding the lighthouse through his binoculars. The shoreline to the west was less than three miles away and he could make out a small village. He checked his map and determined that it was the town of Rivas. He then turned his attention to a large majestic island in the shape of a figure eight, no more than five miles to the west, that looked to be quite fertile and thickly forested. Pitt estimated the total area of land to be roughly one hundred and fifty square miles.

According to his map, it was called Isle de Ometepe. Pitt focused in on two volcanic mountains tied together by a narrow isthmus a couple of miles in length. The volcano on the northern end of the island rose over five thousand feet and appeared to be active by the wisp of steam that issued through the cone on top of the crater and touched the billowy clouds passing over the summit.

The southern volcano formed a perfect cone and sat dormant. Pitt judged it to be a good thousand feet lower than its mate to the north. He also estimated that the four underground tu

A quick glance at the map revealed that the active volcano was named Concepcion, while its mate was labeled Madera. He swung the glasses and totally unexpectedly found himself staring at what looked to be a vast industrial enterprise spreading over the southern slopes of Concepcion just above the isthmus. He guessed that it covered over five or six hundred acres. It struck him as being in an out-of-the-way location. It hardly seemed a practical place for a business to pour millions of dollars into an industrial complex nowhere near major transportation facilities. Unless, he mused, it was cloaked in secrecy.

Then he observed an aircraft appear from the north and line up on a runway that ran across the isthmus to the entrance of the complex. It banked around the peak of the Madera volcano and landed, taxiing to a large terminal at the end of the runway.

Pitt lowered the glasses, an expression on his face as if he was seeing something he didn't want to see. A look of deep concentration clouded his green eyes. He cleaned the lenses of the binoculars with a few drops of water from his canteen and wiped them with the tail of his shirt from under the Odyssey jumpsuit. Then he raised the glasses again, and as if to reassure himself, refocused on the aircraft.

The sun shone between a pair of clouds, bathing Isle de Ometepe in bright light. Though the aircraft seemed no larger than an ant through the glasses, there was no mistaking the lavender color reflected by the sunlight on the fuselage and wings.

"Odyssey," he muttered to himself, his mind in turmoil. Only then did he realize the facility sat directly above the tu

As he swept his gaze past the buildings rising around the base of the volcano, he paused, spotting what looked like an extensive dock area behind a row of warehouses. The warehouse roofs shielded the docks, but he could discern four cargo-loading cranes against the blue sky and realized that the complex didn't require an outside transportation system. It was totally self-sufficient.

Then three things happened almost simultaneously that alerted him to trouble.

The lighthouse began inexplicably to sway like a hula dancer. As he'd told Percy Rathbone, having grown up in California, he was familiar with earthquakes. He'd once been in a thirty-story office building on Wilshire Boulevard when a quake hit and the building began to rock and oscillate. Fortunately, the base of the building rested on giant concrete roller bearings deep underground for just such an event. This felt much the same, except the lighthouse trembled and reeled like a palm tree caught in opposing winds.

Pitt immediately turned and gazed at the Concepcion volcano, thinking that it might have erupted, but the peak appeared peaceful, with no sign of smoke or ash. He glanced down at the water and saw the surface ripple as if being shook from below by some unseen giant vibrator. One minute and what seemed an eternity later, the quake faded. Not surprisingly, it did not wake up Giordino.

The second danger came from a small lavender patrol boat that was coming from the island and headed directly toward the lighthouse. The security guards on board must have been confident of their trapped quarry. They were traveling over the water at a leisurely pace.

The third and final danger came from below their feet. What probably saved their lives in the next few seconds was an almost scarcely heard sound: a slight clink of metal against metal coming from the shaft leading to the tu