Arctic Drift

“Dirk, I need a reload on the muskets,” he shouted down the ladderway, but there was no answer. He aimed the shotgun at the side rail, then readied two percussion-cap pistols in his lap. Just a few more shots and he’d be helpless, unless Pitt arrived quickly.

Near the base of the ladderway, a tall figure slowly waded through a mass of antique armament lying on the deck and peered up. Giordino sat ten feet above, perched on the top two steps with his eyes fixated on the side rail. Had he looked down, he probably wouldn’t have even spotted Zak staring at him from the dimly lit lower deck. Zak contemplated letting his security team finish the job but figured it would be more expedient to kill Giordino himself. Shifting the ship’s logbook into his left arm, he steadied his feet and raised his automatic pistol at Giordino.

He failed to detect the sound of pained steps shuffling down the passageway somewhere behind him. But he flinched when a loud warning cry suddenly echoed down the corridor just as he was about to squeeze the trigger.

“Al! ”

Zak turned and gazed down the passageway in disbelief. Standing beneath a candle lantern twenty feet away and looking like death personified was Dirk Pitt. His face was a bloody mess from a dozen glass cuts while an ugly purple knot glistened on his forehead. His right sleeve was wet with crimson, matching his left leg, and a bloody trail followed him down the corridor. He held no weapons and leaned on his good leg with a grimace of agony on his face. But battered and shot, he stared at Zak with complete defiance.

“You’re next,” Zak hissed, then turned his focus back up to Giordino, who had returned Pitt’s call but was still unaware of the situation below. Zak aimed the Glock at Giordino a second time but was distracted by a bright blur that flashed toward him. Turning to Pitt, he saw that the wounded man had hurled the candle lantern at him. A weak throw, Zak thought to himself, as the lantern fell short of the mark. He gazed at Pitt and snickered with a shake of his head as the lantern shattered near his feet.

Only the throw wasn’t weak. The lantern struck the deck exactly where Pitt had aimed it, a few inches shy of the black powder cask they were using to reload the muskets. Awash with powder spilt from their rapid reloadings, the deck beneath the ladderway was an inferno-in-waiting. The shattered lantern immediately ignited the loose powder in a flash of smoke and sparks that flared at Zak’s feet. The assassin instinctively recoiled, backing away from the flare-up while unknowingly moving closer to the black powder cask. An instant later, a trail of black powder burned up to the cask and it detonated in a deafening explosion.

The blast rocked the ship, shooting smoke and flames up and out the ladder well. Pitt was knocked to the deck and showered with flying debris, most of which was absorbed by his heavy wool jacket. With his ears ringing, he waited several minutes for the smoke to clear before limping over to the ladderway, coughing from the acrid residue in the air. The side bulkheads were blown out and a large hole in the deck now opened through to the orlop deck, but the remaining damage was relatively limited.

Pitt saw a boot lying near the hole and realized grimly that a detached foot was still inside. Looking up, he saw the boot’s owner a few feet away.

Clay Zak had been blown partially up the ladder well, and his mangled body was now embedded in the steps. He hung upside down, his open eyes staring vacantly off into space. Pitt stepped closer and stared at the dead assassin without pity.

“I think you were due for a blast,” he said to the corpse, then turned and peered up the smoky ladder well.

87

The force of the black powder explosion had launched Giordino up and off the top steps of the ladderway, throwing him onto the deck eight feet away. His clothes singed, his lungs burning, and his body nicked by a bounty of splinters and bruises, he had nonetheless survived the blast in one piece. As the explosion’s thick cloud of black smoke drifted away from the ship, he struggled to shake off the daze. He fought a pounding in his head and a symphony of bells ringing in his ears as he painfully rolled to his side. Wiping some grit from his eyes, he stiffened as one of the black-clad gunmen poked his head over the rail.

Giordino had lost his weapons in the explosion and the gunman quickly realized it. Rising without fear, he stood at the rail and calmly swung his machine gun to bear on Giordino.

The burst was short, just four or five shots. Giordino could barely hear it through his ringing ears. Yet he saw the results. Not a ripping seam through his own flesh or the deck about him. Instead, it was the gunman himself who was ruptured by the shots. A mouthful of blood spilled from his lips, and then he slowly sunk beneath the rail, dropping to the ice-covered ground below.

Giordino stared blankly, hearing additional bursts of gunfire. Then another body appeared at the rail, armed like the last and pointing a gun in his direction. Only this gunman was dressed in white, with an ivory ski mask and protective goggles covering his entire face. A second armed man in white joined him, and the two scaled the rail and stepped toward Giordino, their guns trained on him.

Giordino was too focused on the approaching men to notice a third man appear at the rail. The newcomer looked across the deck at Giordino, then shouted something at the other two men. It took a second or two for Giordino’s ringing ears to decipher the words.

“Hold your horses, Lieutenant,” the third man yelled in a familiar Texas accent. “That man is one of ours.”

The two Navy SEALs from the Santa Fe stopped in their tracks but held their weapons fixed until Jack Dahlgren rushed to Giordino’s side. Grabbing the sleeve of Giordino’s antique wool jacket and helping him to his feet, Dahlgren couldn’t help but ask, “You go and join the Royal Navy?”

“We got a little chilly when you weren’t around to pick us out of the drink,” Giordino managed to reply, stu

“Where’s Dirk?”

“He was below. That’s where the explosion originated,” he replied with a concerned look.

Wincing in pain, Giordino staggered past Dahlgren to the edge of the ladderway and peered down. A few feet below, he saw the singed and smoking body of a dark-haired man sprawled on the steps, and he shut his eyes. It was nearly a minute before he could open them again, by which time Dahlgren and the SEALs had crowded around him. When he looked down, he suddenly saw a light wavering from the deck below. A bloody and battered Pitt slowly staggered into view at the base of the steps and peered up at his friend. In his arms, he clutched a large and slightly singed leather book.

“Somebody got a light?” he asked with a pained grin.

Pitt was immediately carried back to the Santa Fe and ushered into the submarine’s sick bay with Giordino in tow. Despite a severe loss of blood, Pitt’s injuries were not life-threatening, and his wounds were quickly cleaned and bandaged. Though the ship’s surgeon ordered him to remain in bed, Pitt found a cane and was hobbling around the sub an hour later, reuniting with the crew of the Narwhal. Limping into the officers’ mess with Giordino, they found the three captains, Campbell, Murdock, and Stenseth, seated at a table discussing the icebreaker.

“Shouldn’t you two be bedridden?” Stenseth asked.

“There will be plenty of time to sleep on the voyage home,” Pitt replied. Stenseth helped him to a chair while Campbell grabbed coffees, and the men swapped tales of their ordeals and discoveries.

“You boys flipping a coin to see who drives the icebreaker?” Giordino asked a short while later.

“We boarded her strictly to search for you two,” Campbell replied. “I had no intention of confiscating her, but these gentlemen were just telling me the details of her full role in the Polar Dawn crew’s abduction and the sinking of the Narwhal.”