The interior of the control car was as hushed as the crypt of a cathedral. Gunn unreeled the line from the gradiometer's sensing unit until it dangled four hundred feet below the belly of the blimp and skimmed the rolling swells. Then he turned his attention back to the recorder and waited for the stylus to make a horizontal swing across the graph paper. Soon it began to waver and scratch back and forth.
"Coming up on target," Gunn announced.
Giordino and Pitt ignored the wind stream and leaned farther out the windows. The sea was building and foam was spraying from the wave crests, making it difficult to see into the transparent depths. Jessie was having a tougher time of it now, struggling with the controls, trying to reduce the violent shaking and swaying of the blimp, which behaved like a whale fighting its way up the Colorado River rapids.
"I've got her!" Pitt suddenly shouted. "She's lying north and south, about a hundred yards to starboard."
Giordino moved to the opposite side of the control car and gazed down. "Okay, I have her in sight too."
"Can you detect any sign of derricks?" Gunn asked.
"Her outline is distinct, but I can't make out any detail. I'd say she's about eighty feet under the surface."
"More like ninety," said Pitt.
"Is it the Cyclops?" Jessie asked anxiously.
"Too early to tell." He turned to Gunn. "Mark the position from the VIKOR."
"Position marked," Gunn acknowledged.
Pitt nodded at Jessie. "All right, pilot, let's make another pass. And this time, as we come about into the wind, try to hover over the target."
"Why don't you ask me to turn lead into gold," she snapped back.
Pitt came over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "You're doing great. Stick in a little longer and I'll spell you at the controls."
"Don't patronize me," she said testily, but her eyes took on a warm glow and the tension lines around her lips softened. "Just tell me when to stop the bus."
Very self-willed she was, thought Pitt. For the first time he felt himself envying Raymond LeBaron. He returned aft and put a hand on Gunn's shoulder.
"Use the clinometer and see if you can get a rough measurement of her dimensions."
Gunn nodded. "Will do."
"If that's the Cyclops," said Giordino happily, "you made a damned good guess."
"A lot of luck mixed with a small amount of hindsight," Pitt admitted. "That, and the fact Raymond LeBaron and Buck Caesar aimed us toward the ballpark. The puzzle is why the Cyclops lies outside the main shipping lane."
Giordino gave a helpless tilt to his head. "We'll probably never know."
"Coming back on target," Jessie reported.
Gunn set the distance on the clinometer and then sighted through the eyepiece, measuring the length of the shadowy object under the water. He managed to hold the instrument steady as Jessie fought a masterful battle against the wind.
"No way of accurately measuring her beam because it's impossible to see if she lies straight up or on her side," he said, studying the calibrations.
"And the overall length?" asked Pitt.
"Between five hundred thirty and five hundred fifty feet."
"Looking good," Pitt said, visibly relieved. "The Cyclops was five hundred and forty-two feet."
"If we drop down closer, I might be able to get a more precise reading," said Gunn.
"One more time, Jessie," Pitt called out.
"I don't think so." She lifted a hand from the controls and pointed out the forward window. "A welcoming committee."
Her expression appeared calm, almost too calm, while the men watched in mild fascination as a helicopter materialized out of the clouds a thousand feet above the blimp. For several seconds it seemed to hang there, fastened in the sky like a hawk eyeing a pigeon. Then it swelled in size as it approached and banked around on a parallel course with the Prosperteer. Through the binoculars they could clearly see the grim faces of the pilots and the two pairs of hands grasping the automatic guns that poked through the open side door.
"They brought friends," Gunn said succinctly. He was aiming his binoculars at a Cuban gunboat about four miles away that was planing through the swells, throwing up great wings of sea spray.
Giordino said nothing. He tore the holding straps from the boxes and began throwing the contents on the deck as fast as his hands could move. Gunn joined him as Pitt began assembling a strange looking screen.
"They're holding up a sign in English," Jessie announced.
"What does it say?" Pitt asked without looking up.
" `Follow us and do not use your radio,' " she read aloud. "What should I do?"
"Obviously we can't use the radio, so smile and wave to them. Let's hope they won't shoot if they see you're a woman."
"I wouldn't count on it," grunted Giordino.
"And keep hovering over the shipwreck," Pitt added.
Jessie didn't like what was going on inside the control car. Her face noticeably paled. She said, "We'd better do what they want."
"Screw them," Pitt said coldly. He unbuckled her seat belt and lifted her away from the controls. Giordino held up a pair of air tanks and Pitt quickly adjusted the straps over her shoulders. Gunn handed her a face mask, swim fins, and a buoyancy compensator vest.
"Quickly," he ordered. "Put these on."
She stood there baffled. "What are you doing?"
"I thought you knew," said Pitt. "We're going for a swim."
"We're what?" The dark gypsy eyes were wide, not so much from alarm as astonishment.
"No time for the defense to make a closing argument," Pitt said calmly. "Call it a wild plan for staying alive and let it go at that. Now do as you're told and lie down on the deck behind the screen."
Giordino stared dubiously at the inch-thick screen. "Let's hope it does the job. I'd hate to be around if a bullet finds an air tank."
"Fear not," Pitt replied, as the three men hurriedly strapped on their diving gear. "High-tensile plastic. Guaranteed to stop anything up to a twenty-millimeter shell."
With no hands at the controls, the blimp lurched sideways under the onslaught of a fresh gust and pitched downward. Everyone instinctively dropped to the deck and snatched at the nearest handgrip. The boxes that held the equipment skidded madly across the deck and crashed into the pilots' seats.
There was no hesitation, no further attempt at communication. The Cuban commander of the helicopter, thinking the sudden erratic movement of the blimp meant it was trying to escape, ordered his crew to open fire. A storm of bullets struck the starboard side of the Prosperteer from no more than thirty yards away. The control car was immediately turned into a shambles. The old yellowed windows melted away in a shower of fragments that splashed cross the deck. The controls and the instrument panel were blasted into twisted junk, filling the shattered cabin with smoke from shorted circuitry.
Pitt lay prone on top of Jessie, Gunn and Giordino blanketing him, listening to the steel-nosed shells thump against the bulletproof screen. Then the gunmen in the helicopter altered their aim and concentrated on the engines. The aluminum cowlings were torn and mangled by the devastating fire until they shredded and blew away in the air stream. The engines coughed and sputtered into silence, their cylinder heads shot away, oil spewing out amid torrents of black smoke.
"The fuel tanks!" Jessie heard herself shouting above the mad din. "They'll explode!"