Tom Swift and His Jetmarine (14 page)

"Maybe we can force them to surface!" Bud cried excitedly. "Bet they think there’s a whale caught under—"

His voice broke off with a startled gasp as the jetmarine seemed to slide forward along the hull above them, hurtling into open water and leaving the sub behind.

"They cut their forwards," said Tom. "Smart. But we’re not done yet."

Tom throttled-up and put some distance between the sub and the jetmarine, lest they be rammed. Then he cut the engine and used the supergyros to turn them about until they were coasting along tail-first. The other sub was continuing along its course at moderate speed. Tom couldn’t tell whether they had restarted the propellers or were traveling on momentum.

"They still can’t see us on sonar," he murmured.

Now he used short, mild bursts of the forward-pointing tail jets to reduce the speed of the jetmarine. The distance to the other sub decreased second by second. By a maneuver made complicated by the
Nemo
’s reversed orientation, Tom brought the jetmarine toward the surface. Then, when he was opposite the sub’s conning tower, he leveled off and closed the gap.

"Tom," said Bud with sudden concern, "you
do
remember, don’t you, that that big sub out there can fire torpedoes?"

Tom’s only answer was a grim smile. He brought the nose of the
Nemo
into contact with the front plating of the conning tower, and slowly fed power into the jets.

With aching gradualness the
Nemo
’s opposing thrust slowed the enemy sub. Like a fish on a line, the sub tried to twist free, flailing with its rudders. But the agile jetmarine was easily able to compensate.

"Tom," said Bud, amazed, "we’ve both come to a stop! It’s an underwater tug-of-war!"

"I think they’re at maximum," Tom declared, "but we’ve got power we haven’t used yet!"

He continued to build up the thrust, and suddenly Bud burst out delightedly, "They’re going backwards! We can push ’em all the way back to Puerto Rico!"

At that moment the multifrequency sonophone indicator showed an incoming signal. Tom matched frequencies and flipped on the loudspeaker.
"Tom Swift!"
said a familiar and deadly voice.

"Sid Dansitt!" exclaimed Bud to Tom. "That jet of his got him to Puerto Rico before we did."

Tom plucked a hand mike off the instrument panel. "Well hey there, Sidney!" he said smoothly. "Still having fun?"

"Listen carefully. If you ever—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know the B-movie dialogue by heart," Tom interrupted. "If I want to see Hank Sterling alive, blah blah. Now: put Hank on the line—and he’d better sound nice and healthy, like a guy taking an ocean cruise ought to sound—or in, mmm, thirty seconds we’re flipping your sub over and shaking it like a pair of marimbas!"

"Maracas," Bud corrected.

The bold threat had its effect. Within the time prescribed a new voice came over the sonophone.
"Tom!"

"Hank!" Tom cried.

"You have some pretty peeved pirates over here,"
said Hank.
"As you might imagine."

"Are they
smart
pirates—smart enough to know they’ve been boarded and, er, scuttled?"

There was a lengthy pause.
"The man in charge—I don’t know his name—says he’s willing to return to the dock in Puerto Rico, at the house where I was held. He’ll set me down on the pier and let me get out of sight. But you and your sub have to stand off a ways down the coast. And if he sees any ‘white hat’ types anywhere—oh, the usual ranting, but the gist is that in that case the deal’s off."

"Okay, Hank," Tom responded. "In that case we both have to surface before we start, so I can radio the authorities to pull back."

This detail accomplished, the
Nemo
followed the sub back along its route. Within the hour Tom and Bud were watching, through powerful binoculars, the enemy sub as it rose beneath the pontoon pier, the rising conning tower lifting a trap door beneath the canvas tent.

"See any white hat types anywhere, Mr. Barclay?" asked Tom.

"Not a one, Mr. Swift," replied Bud.

"Then we’ve kept our part of the deal. Let’s see if Dansitt—ah!" Even as Tom spoke, the boys saw a figure emerge from beneath the canvas and make his way unsteadily down the pier. Tom zoomed in closer. "It’s Hank all right—with a beard."

Sterling jumped off the end of the pier and scrambled out of sight. At the same time a burst of bubbles announced that the sub was submerging again prior to making a dash to freedom.

But things didn’t go as planned for the Sea Snipers and their leader.

THE PIRATE SUB had descended just a few feet when something peculiar began to happen. First, the canvas pavilion that had disguised the trap door started to rip and collapse inward, as if it were being pulled apart from beneath. Then the top of the floating pier seemed to develop a sort of bend or crease right in its midsection where the trap door was, a depression that lowered the deck down to the level of the water. And then, alarmingly, the whole pier began to crunch together, twisting its pontoon supports up into the air as the center of the pier was pulled downward into the sea. The pier was submerging along with the submarine!

"Nice," said Bud smugly.

"And nicest of all," added Tom, "they don’t realize it yet."

The pier was now going to pieces entirely, its support structure shedding twisted beams and split planks in all directions. A sudden, explosive bloom of water, erupting from the hind end of the submarine, showed that some of the fragments had become entangled in the propellers.

The enemy sub was dead.

"All right, Commander," Tom radioed. "The pirates have struck their colors. Mop ’em up."

"Wilco," came the reply. "And we have Sterling here safe and sound."

It took a good five minutes for the sub to finally blow ballast and give up the fight, another five minutes for its occupants to begin emerging, leaping into the shallow waters and swimming to shore, where they stood upright with raised hands. But the Coast Guard and the local police did not move in until Tom radioed that Dansitt was on the shore.

"I’d love to be there with Sidney," Bud remarked. "Just to welcome him ashore, like an official greeter."

But instead the boys sped by jetmarine to San Juan, where Dansitt and the others were to be booked and jailed. The bedraggled Sea Snipers were conveyed by a police transport bus equipped with barred windows, and their ride to San Juan was long enough for George Dansitt to arrive in his private jet.

At the booking facility Hank Sterling, unshaven and unshowered, greeted Tom and Bud with warm hugs.

"Got a lot to tell you," he said. "But first, tell me how you got the submarine tangled up in the pier."

"It wasn’t rocket science," replied Tom. "While I was speaking by radio to Commander Adland explaining my agreement with Dansitt, as Dansitt expected me to do, Bud was on another channel talking to the local ONDAR people about coating the underside of the trap door in the pier with
merplastamine-94,
an ultra-powerful water-resistant glue used commercially in boat construction. It’s widely sold under various trademarks. Bonds to metal as strongly as to wood or plastic."

Hank whistled. "Man! So when the conning tower pushed open the trap door as they surfaced—"

"Like a fly in flypaper!" laughed Bud.

George Dansitt arrived by taxi. Puffing his cigar volcanically, he leaned against the wall of the police facility, nodding at Tom and Bud but not speaking.

Poor guy,
thought Tom.

The bus pulled up and the dozen or so gang suspects, handcuffed, were led off the bus slowly, single file and chained together. To his surprise Tom noticed that they all had Asiatic features. Their shrugging reactions to direction from the police officers suggested that they spoke neither English nor Spanish.

Sidney Dansitt filed off the bus about halfway through. Tom watched in fascination, wondering how father and son would react to one another. To his surprise, they gave each other barely a glance as Sidney shuffled by.

Guess reconciliation won’t come easy in the Dansitt family,
he thought.

Then Tom’s muscles tightened. George Dansitt was continuing to look down the line of men exiting the bus.

Which meant he was still expecting his son to appear.

Which meant the young man Tom had been calling Sidney Dansitt wasn’t Sidney Dansitt at all!

Acting on sudden inspiration Tom took a few steps forward and yelled out sharply,
"Rosello!"

The handcuffed prisoner, the man Tom and Bud had chased in Kingston only hours before, jerked his head around in response. Then he barked out a laugh.

"Not bad, Tommy! Man oh man." He was led away with the others.

Now George Dansitt approached. "Is there another bus? Where’s my son?"

Tom was at a loss for words. "Mr. Dansitt...one of those men impersonated your son. I don’t think we’ve ever actually met Sidney. I didn’t know until just now that—"

"Then tell me, Swift,
where is my son?"
Dansitt demanded.

"I don’t know," said Tom simply.

After a frozen moment, Dansitt said, "All right, I know what you’re trying to tell me. This won’t affect the agreement between us." Without another word he marched off to his waiting taxi.

Bud was stunned, Hank Sterling perplexed.

"What just happened?" asked Hank.

"You mean that guy isn’t Dansitt?" Bud exclaimed.

"No," said Tom quietly. "We leapt to a conclusion. We thought he was Sidney Dansitt because he was flying Sidney Dansitt’s jet, and because he answered to that name—or at least, didn’t correct us."

Bud paused and then said soberly, "Tom, the real Sid Dansitt is dead, isn’t he."

"Probably."

"Guys, I don’t know what you’re talking about," said Hank. "And now that I think about it, I need a shower, a meal, some sleep—"

"And a shave," Bud added.

Tom put a hand on Hank’s shoulder. "The
Sky Queen
is on its way right now to take us, and the jetmarine, back to Shopton. You can clean up and rest on board. Maybe we can talk somewhere over the Carolinas."

It was well after midnight, high in the stratosphere, when Tom and Bud sat down with Hank in the upper deck lounge of the Flying Lab. Hank now looked once again like his old self, and was outfitted with a spare
Sky Queen
flight suit. They lowered the lounge lamps, and were illuminated mainly by the sea of icily brilliant stars beaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

"I remember I had just left my stateroom on the
Nantic
," began the young engineer, "when I heard a sort of high-pitched whine and started losing my balance. I think I managed to cushion my fall, but then it was lights-out.

"I awoke locked in a small cabin on what I later found was the submarine, the
Devilfish
. I was looked in on now and then, and brought food at intervals, but no one spoke to me. Turns out the whole crew was Laotian and spoke only their native dialect.

"After what seemed like a couple days, I was marched out of the sub into—you won’t believe this, guys—"

"We’ve been there," said Tom. "It’s beneath Spaniel Island, near Cuba."

"As an engineer, I had to appreciate how well the facility had been set up. Anyway, they locked me into a little shed, which was my next prison. Say, did you happen to find my message?"

"Sure did," Bud answered.

"I scratched it out with the end of a loose screw I had found in my cabin on the sub. Gave me something to do besides lose my mind."

"What did they want with you, Hank?" Tom interrupted.

"I was never told outright," he replied, "but I had the impression the man in charge thought he could force me to provide some kind of technical assistance. I’m very much afraid it was my presence on the
Nantic
that led to its being attacked."

"The man in charge—do you mean Rosello?" asked Tom.

"That punk kid? No!" retorted Hank. "He just turned up when the sub came back to the base. No, I became friendly with one of the Laotians who brought my food. He spoke a little French, and so do I. He had no idea anything illegal was going on; the Laotians had been told I was some kind of international crook. Of course, they wouldn’t believe me when I denied it."

"You do have that kind of face, Hank," Bud cracked.

"Still, Nung Thu was as bored as I was, so we talked a little. He said the Laotian in charge, who also ran the sub, got his orders from someone they called ‘the English’ who lived at ‘the Home,’ days away by submarine. Nung Thu had never seen this man, and didn’t know his name."

"Dr. Herman Chilcote!" Tom declared flatly. "And ‘the Home’ is probably his home base in Trinidad."

"I don’t know," Hank Sterling responded, sipping a hot chocolate. "After the sub left me off, it was gone for about a week. Then, a few days ago I guess, it came back with this Rosello guy on board. They trundled me into my old cabin and we traveled for a day, I’d say, ending up at that house by the pier. As far as I know Rosello never came inside the house—he went off somewhere."

"To Jamaica," Tom observed.

"So how did you send that signal?" asked Bud.

"It wasn’t hard. Even
you
could’ve managed it, Buddo! I told Nung Thu, who was sort of my special ‘keeper,’ that I was getting cold at night, and asked if he could find an electric heater."

Tom laughed. "Got it! You shorted the heating coils and used them to send bursts of static, like a telegraph."

"More or less," Hank confirmed. "A few more days and I could have gone F.M.! At any rate, this morning—I guess it’s yesterday morning now—Nung Thu told me he had overheard the Laotian captain saying over the phone that they were to leave for Trinidad in the afternoon, as soon as Rosello arrived. I had only a few hours to send my messages before they came to bring me on board the sub again."

Tom and Bud now let Hank relax while they outlined all that had happened since the sinking of the
Nantic
. "A lot of pieces still don’t fit together," Tom concluded. "For example, the missing uranium slugs from the
Vostok
. But capturing Rosello counts as ‘one down.’ That just leaves Dr. Chilcote."