The NUMA submersible piloted by Dave Lowden surfaced half a kilometer off the junk’s beam. Thanks to the skilled ship handling of Murphy’s helmsman, Shanghai Shelly came to a smart stop less than two meters from the sub’s hatch tower. This time, all the submersible’s crew, except Lowden, stepped aboard dry.
Giordino rushed back on deck after alerting Admiral Sandecker of the situation and advising the pilot of the flying boat to land alongside the junk. He stared straight down at Lowden, who was standing half in and half out of the sub.
“Stand by,” hailed Giordino. “I want to take her back down.”
Lowden waved negatively. “No can do. We developed a leak in the battery casing. Four of them shorted. Not nearly enough power left for another dive.”
Lowden’s voice trailed away in icy silence. In the blank numbness of total failure, Giordino struck his fist against the railing. The NUMA scientists and engineers, Stacy and Salazar, even the crew of the junk, stared mutely into the beaten expression that lined his face.
“Not fair,” he muttered in a sudden seething anger. “Not fair.”
He stood there a long time, staring down into the unsympathetic sea as if penetrating its depths. He was still standing there when Admiral Sandecker’s aircraft appeared from the clouded sky and circled the drifting junk.
Stacy and Salazar were shown to the cabin where Jimmy Knox lay barely conscious. A man with balding gray hair and a warm twinkle in his eyes rose from a chair by the bed and nodded.
“Hello, I’m Harry Deerfield.”
“Is it all right to come in?” Stacy asked.
“Do you know Mr. Knox?”
“We’re friends from the same British survey ship,” answered Salazar. “How is he?”
“Resting comfortably,” said Deerfield, but the expression in his face suggested anything but a fast recovery.
“Are you a doctor?”
“Pediatrics actually. I took a six-week hiatus to help Owen Murphy sail his boat from the builder to San Diego.” He turned to Knox. “You up to some visitors, Jimmy?”
Knox, pale and still, lifted the fingers of one hand in the affirmative. His face was swollen and blistered, but his eyes looked strong, and they brightened noticeably when he recognized Stacy and Salazar. “Bless the Lord you made it safely,” he rasped. “I never thought I’d see the two of you again. Where’s that mad Plunkett?”
“He’ll be along soon,” said Stacy, giving Salazar a keep-quiet look. “What happened, Jimmy? What happened to the Invincible?”
Knox weakly shook his head. “I don’t know. I think there was some kind of explosion. One minute I was talking to you over the underwater phone, the next the whole ship was ripped apart and burning. I remember trying to raise you, but there was no response. And then I was climbing over debris and dead bodies as the ship sank under me.”
“Gone?” Salazar muttered, refusing to accept what he heard. “The ship sunk and our crew gone?”
Knox gave an imperceptible nod. “I watched her go to the bottom. I shouted and kept a constant lookout for the others who might have survived. The sea was empty. I don’t know how long I floated or how far before Mr. Murphy and his crew spotted me and picked me up. They searched the immediate area but found nothing. They said I must be the only survivor.”
“But what of the two ships that were nearby when we began our dive?” asked Stacy.
“I saw no sign of them. They had vanished too.
Knox’s voice died to a whisper, and it was obvious he was losing a battle to keep from slipping into unconsciousness. The will was there but the body was exhausted. His eyes closed and his head rolled slightly to one side.
Dr. Deerfield motioned Stacy and Salazar toward the door. “You can talk again later, after he’s rested.”
“He will recover?” asked Stacy softly.
“I can’t say,” Deerfield hedged in good medical tradition.
“What exactly is wrong with him?”
“Two or more cracked ribs as far as I can tell without an X ray. Swollen ankle, either a sprain or a fracture. Contusions, first-degree burns. Those are injuries I can cope with. The rest of his symptoms are not what I’d expect from a man who survived a shipwreck.”
“What are you talking about?” Salazar asked.
“Fever, arterial hypotension, a fancy name for low blood pressure, severe erythema, stomach cramps, strange blistering.”
“And the cause?”
“Not exactly my field,” Deerfield said heavily. “I’ve only read a couple of articles in medical journals. But I believe I’m safe in saying Jimmy’s most serious condition was caused by exposure to a supralethal dose of radiation.”
Stacy was silent a moment, then, “Nuclear radiation?”
Deerfield nodded. “I wish I was wrong, but the facts bear me out.”
“Surely you can do something to save him?”
Deerfield gestured around the cabin. “Look around you,” he said sourly. “Does this look like a hospital? I came on this cruise as a deckhand. My medical kit contains only pills and bandages for emergency treatment. He can’t be airlifted by helicopter until we’re closer to land. And even then I doubt whether he can be saved with the therapeutic treatments currently available.”
“Hang them!” Knox cried, startling everyone. His eyes blinked open suddenly, gazing through the people in the cabin at some unknown image beyond the bulkhead. “Hang the murdering bastards!”
They stared at him in astonishment. Salazar stood shaken. Stacy and Deerfield rushed toward the bed to calm Knox as he feebly tried to lift himself to an upright position.
“Hang the bastards!” Knox repeated with a vengeance. It was as though he was uttering a curse. “They’ll murder again. Hang them!”
But before Deerfield could inject him with a sedative, Knox stiffened, his eyes glistened for an instant, and then a misty film coated them and he fell back, gave a great heaving sigh, and went limp.
Deerfield swiftly applied cardiopulmonary resuscitation, fearful that Knox was too devastated by acute radiation sickness to bring back. He continued until he was panting from fatigue and sweating streams in the humid atmosphere. Finally he acknowledged sadly that he had done everything within his limited power. No man or miracle could bring Jimmy Knox back.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured between breaths.
As if under a hypnotic spell, Stacy and Salazar slowly walked from the cabin. Salazar remained quiet while Stacy began to softly cry. After a few moments, she wiped away the tears with her hand and straightened.
“He saw something,” she murmured.
Salazar looked at her. “Saw what?”
“He knew, in some incredible way he knew.” She turned and looked through the open doorway to the silent figure on the bunk. “Just before the end, Jimmy could see who was responsible for the horrible mass death and destruction.
11
YOU COULD TELL from his body, slim almost to the state of emaciation, that he was a fitness and nutrition fanatic. He was short, chin and chest thrust out like a banty rooster, and nattily dressed in a light blue golf shirt with matching pants and a Panama straw hat pulled tight over closely cropped red hair to keep it from blowing away. He had an exactingly trimmed red Vandyke beard that came to a point so sharp you’d swear he could stab flesh with it if he lunged suddenly.
He stormed up the gangway of the junk, a huge cigar poked in his mouth throwing sparks from the breeze, as regally as if he was holding court. If style awards were handed out for dramatic entrances, Admiral James Sandecker, Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, would have won hands down.
His face looked strained from the grievous news he’d received from Giordino while in flight. As soon as his feet hit Shanghai Shelly’s deck, he raised his hand at the pilot of the flying boat, who gave an acknowledging wave. The aircraft turned into the wind and bounced forward over the crests of the waves until it was airborne and soaring in a graceful bank southeast toward the Hawaiian Islands.