Trojan Odyssey (32 page)

Pitt tilted his head down at the floor of the tunnel. “So much for a rapid transit cargo system. They removed the railroad tracks.”

Giordino nodded discreetly at a security camera mounted on a post that was aimed directly at them. “We'd better beat a hasty retreat back to the main tunnel and find another means of transportation. This cart is too conspicuous.”

“Good thinking,” said Pitt. “If they haven't figured out that they have unwelcome intruders by now, they must be brain-dead.”

They retraced their journey through the three empty tunnels, stopping just short of the fourth, where they had started. They parked the golf cart in the crosscut tunnel beyond a security camera and nonchalantly walked down the roadway until they reached a stop where eight other miners were standing around waiting for the bus. Close up and through their sunglasses, Pitt could see their eyes. They were all Asian.

Pitt nudged Giordino, who got the message.

“Ten will get you twenty, they're Red Chinese,” whispered Pitt.

“I won't take the bet.”

No sooner had the double-decker bus arrived than a fleet of carts with red and yellow lights flashing sped past and into the crosscut tunnel they'd just deserted.

“Once they find the cart, it will take them all of ten seconds to know we're on this bus,” said Giordino.

Pitt's eyes were on a train that was approaching from the east sector of the tunnel. “My thoughts exactly.” He held up a hand and motioned for the bus driver to continue after the waiting miners had boarded. The door closed with a hiss and the bus moved on.

“When was the last time you chased a freight train?” Pitt asked Giordino, as they hurried across the road and stood talking in detachment as the locomotive passed by, the engineer inside the cab reading a magazine.

“Several years ago in the Sahara Desert, the train carrying toxic chemicals to Fort Foureau.”

“As I remember, you almost fell off.”

“I hate it when you make sport of me,” said Giordino, with a downward twist of his lips.

The instant the locomotive passed by, they sprinted along the track. Pitt had already clocked the train's speed at twenty miles an hour, and they judged their running speed accordingly. Giordino was fast for his size. He put his head down and charged after a flatbed car as if he was carrying a football toward the end zone. He grabbed the hand ladder as it passed, held on and was literally swept onto the car. Pitt also used the momentum of the train to swing himself aboard.

The flatbed car was loaded with two pickup trucks of unknown origin powered by an electrical motor. Shiny new, they looked to be fresh off the boat. Without a word between them, Pitt and Giordino threw open a door and slipped into one of the truck's cabs, crouching down below the windows and the dashboard. Their timing couldn't have been more perfect, as two security patrol cars came screaming past the train, lights flashing as they raced after the bus.

Pitt looked pleased. “Our little maneuver was missed by the cameras or they'd have come after us instead of the bus.”

“About time we had some luck.”

“Stay put,” instructed Pitt. “I'll be right back.”

He opened the door on the side of the train away from the road and lowered himself to his hands and knees. Crawling from front to back, he removed the chocks and tie-down chains that held the pickup truck to the rail car. Then he scrambled back inside.

Giordino looked at him strangely. “I can read your mind, and I can't see how we're going to drive off a moving train into a tunnel that's blocked on both ends.”

“We'll worry about it when the time comes,” Pitt tossed off placidly.

 

T
HERE IS NOTHING
on earth that remotely resembles a big tunnel-boring machine.

The TBM that dug the tunnels under Nicaragua from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific shore stretched over one hundred and twenty yards in length, followed by another hundred yards of its equipment train.

An incredibly complicated monster that looked like the first stage of a Saturn rocket, it was driven by an electric variable-speed drive that eliminated any hydraulic oil leakage and pollution. The Specter TBM fractured flakes of bedrock by the continuous rotation of a series of carbide cutters mounted on a massive steel cutter head that could cut a circular tube through hard rock fifty-two feet in diameter at the rate of one hundred and fifty feet a day. The body that enclosed the cutter head also contained the drive motors that provided the enormous power it took to thrust the cutter's teeth into the rock, and the hydraulic presses that exerted the immense pressure it took to force the TBM into solid wall and grind away the rock.

The giant machine was articulated, and its operator, who was positioned at the front of the machine, could automatically steer it with the use of a laser while he monitored the operation. The excavated muck was transported to the rear section of the TBM and passed through a rock crusher that mashed the rock into fine sand. From there, the conveyor belt carried it back toward the opposite end of the tunnel, where it was pumped out into the sea.

 

T
HE TRAIN STOPPED
two hundred yards behind the TBM and beneath the overhead conveyor to unload at a supply depot and terminal. A series of large freight elevators ran out of sight through the roof of the tunnel. A group of women in white jumpsuits exited one of the elevators and climbed into a bus. Pitt angled close to them and overheard one woman say the inspection had to be finished in eight hours so a report could be sent to company headquarters above.

It made no sense to Pitt. Headquarters? Where above?

No one seemed to mind as he casually drove the truck from the flatbed onto the loading dock and down a ramp to the concrete road. Then he pulled over and stopped behind a row of three other electric trucks.

Giordino looked around the busy area, where at least thirty miners were engaged in operating the mass of machinery. “That was too easy.”

“We're not home yet,” said Pitt. “We've got to find a way out of here.”

“We could always climb out through another ventilator.”

“Not if we're under Lake Nicaragua.”

“How about the one we came from?”

“I think we can safely forget that plan.”

Giordino was absorbed, watching the operation of the big TBM. “Okay, mastermind, what's your next scenario?”

“We can't escape from this tunnel, because it isn't completed yet. Our only hope is to sneak out the Pacific side from one of the other three tunnels' ventilators.”

“And if it proves impossible?”

“Then I'll have to come up with another plan.”

Giordino pointed down the loading dock, where security guards were checking the ID passes of the miners. “Time to shove off. We don't exactly fit our descriptions.”

Pitt held up the ID clamped to the breast pocket of his jumpsuit and stared at it with amusement. “I'm in trouble. This guy is five foot two. I'm six-three.”

“What about me?” Giordino said with a sly smile. “How will I ever produce a head of long hair and a set of boobs?”

Pitt cracked the door and looked up and down the far side of the loading dock and found it deserted. “Out this way.”

Giordino followed Pitt and slid across the front seat of the pickup. They hit the loading dock crouched and running before cutting into an open door of a warehouse. Sneaking around unopened crates containing replacement parts for the various equipment and TBM, they found a rear passage that took them out of the warehouse and back along the railroad track. They paused behind a row of Porta Pottis and took stock.

“It'd help if we had transportation,” said Giordino, wrinkling his nose distastefully.

“Wishing will make it so,” Pitt said with a big grin.

Without waiting for Giordino, he stood up, walked from behind the Porta Pottis and casually approached one of the security guards' vehicles that was parked unattended. He settled behind the wheel, turned the ignition to the electric motor and pressed his foot on the accelerator, as Giordino leaped through the opposite door. The electrical power from the batteries flowed through the front-wheel-drive, direct-coupled differential and the car silently moved away.

The Pitt luck still held. The security guards were so busy examining the miners' IDs that they did not notice their patrol car being stolen. Not only was the electric car whisper quiet, but the noise and clatter of the TBM made it impossible for them to hear the workers trying to call their attention to the car theft.

To make it look official, Giordino reached toward the dash-board and flicked the switch to the revolving lights on the forward edge of the roof. As soon as they came to the first crosscut tunnel, Pitt hung a hard left and repeated the maneuver, swinging into the main tunnel and heading toward its western portal.

Pitt assumed that the four tunnels had been excavated under Lake Nicaragua to come up beyond the narrow stretch of land separating the lake from the ocean at the old port of San Juan del Sur. Here the ventilators had to be placed before the tunnels continued out from shore.

But Pitt was wrong.

After driving several miles, they came to a massive set of pumps like the ones they had encountered on the eastern end of the tunnel network. Then the tunnel abruptly ended at another pair of gigantic doors. The trickles of water that seeped around their edges and down the tunnel gave proof that they were not surfacing near San Juan del Sur but had come to a dead end far out under the Pacific Ocean.

A
FTER
A
DMIRAL
S
ANDECKER
'
S
morning run from his Watergate condominium to NUMA headquarters, he went directly to his office without stopping off at the agency gym to shower and change into a business suit. Rudi Gunn was waiting for him, a grim expression on his hawklike face. He stared over his horn-rim glasses as Sandecker sat down at his desk, wiping the sweat from his face and neck with a towel.

“What's the latest word from Pitt and Giordino?”

“Nothing in the last eight hours.” Gunn was uneasy. “Not since they entered what they described as a ventilator shaft leading to a deep underground tunnel that Pitt reckoned ran through the jungle of Nicaragua from the Pacific to the Caribbean.”

“No contact at all?”

“Only silence,” answered Gunn. “Impossible to communicate by phone when they're deep underground.”

“A tunnel running from sea to sea,” murmured Sandecker, his voice dubious.

Gunn nodded slightly. “Pitt was certain of it. He also reported that the builder was the Odyssey conglomeration.”

“Odyssey?” Sandecker looked at Gunn in confusion. “Again?”

Gunn nodded again.

“They seem to crop up everywhere.” Sandecker rose from his desk and gazed out the window overlooking the Potomac River. He could just see the furled red sails of his little schooner docked at a marina downriver. “I'm not aware of any tunnel being dug through Nicaragua. There was talk about building an underground railroad to transport cargo on high-speed trains. But that was several years ago, and as far as I know nothing ever came of it.”

Gunn opened a file, pulled out several photos and spread them on the admiral's desk. “Here are satellite photos taken over a period of several years of a sleepy little port called San Juan del Norte.”

“Where did these come from?” asked Sandecker with interest.

Gunn smiled. “Hiram Yaeger tapped his library of satellite photos from the various intelligence services and programmed them into NUMA's data files.”

Sandecker adjusted his glasses and began examining the photos, his eyes touching on the dates they were taken, printed on the bottom borders. After a few minutes, he looked up. “Five years ago, the port looked deserted. Then it looks like heavy equipment was barged in and dock facilities built for cargo containerships.”

“You'll notice that any and all supply and equipment containers were immediately moved into prefabricated warehouses, and never came out.”

“Incredible that such a vast undertaking has gone unnoticed for so long.”

Gunn laid a file on the desk beside the photos. “Yaeger also obtained a report on the Odyssey's programs and operations. Their financial dealings are sketchy. Because they're headquartered in Brazil, they are not required to release profit-and-loss statements.”

“What about their stockholders? Surely they must receive annual reports.”

“They're not listed on any of the international stock markets because the company's wholly owned by Specter.”

“Could they have funded such a project on their own?” asked Sandecker.

“As far as we can tell, they have the resources. But Yaeger believes that on a project of this magnitude, they were likely funded by the People's Republic of China, which has bankrolled Specter's Central American developments in the past.”

“Sounds logical. The Chinese are investing heavily in the area and are building a sphere of influence.”

“Another factor in the secrecy,” explained Gunn, “is the opportunity to sidestep all environmental, social and economic impacts. Opposition by Nicaraguan activists and any problems dealing with right-of-way would simply be ignored by their government while the work progressed covertly.”

“What other projects are Specter and the Red Chinese working on together?”

“Port facilities on both sides of the Panama Canal and a bridge that will cross it, scheduled to open early next year.”

“But why all the secrecy?” muttered Sandecker, as he returned to his chair. “What is to be gained from it?”

Gunn threw up his hands helplessly. “Without more intelligence, we're in the dark on that score.”

“We can't just sit on this thing.”

“Shall we contact Central Intelligence and the Pentagon about our suspicions?” asked Gunn.

Sandecker looked pensive for a moment. Then he said, “No, we'll go direct to the president's national security advisor.”

“I agree,” said Gunn. “This could prove to be a very serious situation.”

“Damn!” Sandecker blurted in frustration. “If only we'd hear from Pitt and Giordino. Then we might have a clue as to what's going on down there.”

 

H
AVING REACHED THE
dead end, Pitt and Giordino had no option but to turn around and speed back in the direction they'd come. The fourth of the four tunnels appeared deserted and devoid of all equipment. It was as empty as though men had never created it. Only the pumps on both ends, standing eerily silent, revealed a veiled purpose that Pitt was at a loss to explain.

What was also strange was that no fleet of security guard cars, lights flashing, came hurtling though the empty and darkened tunnel after them. Nor were there any security cameras. They had all been removed when the tunnel was completed.

The answer quickly became obvious.

“I can see now,” said Giordino calmly, “why the security guards are in no hurry to grab us.”

“We have no place to go,” Pitt finished answering the puzzle. “Our little venture into the bizarre is over. All Specter's security people have to do is wait until we get hungry and thirsty, then welcome us back into the main tunnel when we give ourselves up in hope of a last meal before we're hung.”

“They would probably prefer to let us rot in here.”

“There is that.”

Pitt wiped a sleeve across his forehead to blot the sweat that suddenly began streaming into his eyes. “Have you noticed the temperature in this tunnel is much higher than the others?”

“It's beginning to feel like a steam bath in here,” said Giordino, his face glistening.

“The air like sulfur.”

“Speaking of hunger. How's your supply of granola bars?”

“Fresh out.”

Abruptly, the thought crossed their minds at the same time, and they turned to each other and uttered two words in unison.

“Ventilator shaft.”

Giordino suddenly became sober. “Maybe not. I didn't see any raised control booths in the outer tunnels.”

“They would have been removed along with the railroad tracks and the overhead lighting and sealed, since they were no longer essential to remove pollution from the excavation.”

“Yes, but the ladder rungs were embedded in the tunnel walls. I'll bet next month's pay, if I live to spend it, that they didn't bother to remove them.”

“We'll know soon enough,” said Pitt, as Giordino hit the accelerator and the cart leaped forward, its headlights probing the darkness ahead.

After covering nearly twenty miles, Giordino spotted the rungs of a ladder crawling up one wall. He parked about thirty feet away so the headlights would illuminate a wider area of the tunnel wall. “The rungs go up to where a ventilator shaft control booth once hung,” he said, rubbing the stubble that had sprouted on his cheeks and chin.

Pitt stepped from the cart and began climbing the rungs. It had been a year or more since the tunnel was completed and stripped down. The rungs were slimy with dampness and flaked with rust. He reached the top and found a round manholelike iron cover sealing the entrance to the ventilator shaft above. There was a sliding bolt holding it against bottom stops.

Wrapping one hand through a rung for balance, he used both hands to grip the bolt and pull. It slid out of its clamp with little resistance. Then Pitt leaned to the side until his shoulder was pressed against the cover, and heaved.

It moved a millimeter at most.

“It's going to take the two of us,” he called down.

Giordino came up the ladder until he was standing one rung up from Pitt to compensate for the difference in their heights. It was the wolf matching strength with the bear. With two shoulders against the heavy iron cover, they both put their strength into the effort.

The cover fought back, budged less than an inch and froze in place.

“Stubborn devil,” grunted Giordino.

“At least it moved and isn't welded,” Pitt replied.

Giordino grinned. “Once more with feeling.”

“On three.”

They stared at each other briefly and nodded.

“One,” said Pitt, “two and threeeee.”

They both thrust upward with every ounce of strength they possessed. For an instant, the cover resisted. Then it slowly gave, and with a loud screech it abruptly swung open and clanged against one wall of the ventilator shaft. They stared upward into the ominous black cavity as if it was a stairway to paradise.

“I wonder where it comes out,” murmured Giordino between breaths.

“I have no idea, but we're going to find out.”

Giordino gave Pitt's arm a light squeeze. “Hold on. In case the Specter goons come looking for us, let's give them something to chase.”

He dropped down the ladder and climbed in the electric security guard car. He removed the belt off his shorts and tied the steering wheel so the front tires were positioned straight ahead. Then he pulled the front seat out of the car and stood it on end, using it to press the accelerator against the floorboard. Finally, he turned on the ignition and stepped back.

The car shot down the tunnel, its headlights carving weird patterns through the darkness. Within a hundred yards, it yawed against one wall of the tunnel, then careened against the other side in its wild ride, bouncing back and forth with a rending screech of tortured metal far into the distance.

“I wonder how Specter will explain that to his insurance adjuster,” said Giordino. He turned, but Pitt was already scaling the ladder.

In the tension and stress of the past several hours, Pitt was surprised at how stiff and cramped his muscles had become. He climbed slowly, conserving his strength. With no lights, he felt a touch of claustrophobia as he ascended in the pitch-blackness. He began counting the rungs and paused whenever he reached the fiftieth to catch his breath. They were spaced twelve inches apart, so it was a matter of simple arithmetic to calculate the distance they had climbed. Climbing down the ventilator shaft into the control booth from El Castillo, assisted by gravity, seemed like a swim in the bathtub in comparison. At rung three hundred and fifty, Pitt stopped and waited for Giordino to catch up. “Does this never end?” Giordino gasped.

“Pardon the pun,” Pitt muttered between heavy breaths, “but there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Giordino looked upward and saw a tiny glow in the distance. It looked ten miles away to him. “Is there any way it could come to us?”

“Just hope it doesn't move farther away.”

They continued on, increasingly conscious of the eeriness of the shaft. The glow above grew larger and magnified with agonizing slowness. Water dripped down the walls and onto the rungs. Their hands pulling and scraping against the rust on the rungs as they struggled upward soon became red and raw, the skin scoured as if by sandpaper.

At long last, the glow became a bright light and the nearness renewed their strength. Pitt began climbing two rungs at a time, using up his failing strength at an increased rate. But the end was only a few short feet away now.

With a final effort that cast him over the edge of exhaustion, he came to the wire mesh that covered the top of the shaft, hanging there with breaths coming in great heaves, blood trickling from his palms and fingers. “Made it,” he gasped.

Giordino soon joined him. “I'm not up to cutting through that stuff again,” he panted.

As soon as the numbness and aches subsided, Pitt reached into the knapsack, retrieved the wire cutters and wearily began snipping at the wire mesh. “We'll take turns and spell each other as we tire.”

Pitt cut only a few inches in as many minutes before he could no longer squeeze the handles of the wire cutters. He moved aside and handed the cutters to Giordino. Because of the blood on his hands, they nearly slipped from his fingers. Pitt held his breath, but Giordino barely caught them before they fell out of sight into the darkness below.

“Keep a tight grip,” Pitt said, with a grim smile. “You wouldn't want to make the climb all over again.”

“I'd die first,” Giordino muttered bravely. He cut almost ten minutes before he let Pitt relieve him.

It took the two of them almost an hour before they cut an opening large enough to crawl through. Once past the mesh that had shaded the exterior light, Pitt's eyes were blinded by the sunlight that streamed all around him. Putting on his sunglasses to relieve the glare from eyes accustomed to darkness, he found himself in a round room whose walls were glass from floor to ceiling.