"Gettysburg, you are three hundred feet under minimum," said Foley.
"If I pull up another inch, she'll stall."
The runway seemed to take forever to grow larger. The shuttle was only four miles out, but it looked like a hundred. Jurgens believed he could make it. He had to make it. Every brain cell in his skull willed the Gettysburg to hang in the air.
"Speed 320, altitude 1,600, three miles to runway," reported Burkhart. His voice had a trace of hoarseness.
Jurgens could see the flashing lights from the fire and rescue equipment now. The fighters were hovering above him, shining their landing lights on the concrete ribbon 1.5 miles long by 200 feet wide.
The shuttle was eating up her glide slope. Jurgens flared her out as much as he dared. The landing lights glinted on the shoreline no more than ninety feet below. He held on to the last possible second before he pushed the switch and deployed the landing gear. Normal landing procedure required the wheels to touch 2,760 feet down the runway, but Jurgens held his breath, hoping against hope that they would even reach the concrete.
The salt flat flashed past under the blinding beams and was lost in the darkness behind. Burkhart gripped his seat rests and droned off the diminishing numbers.
"Speed 205. Main gear at ten feet. . . five feet. . . three feet. . . two feet. . . one, contact."
The four huge tires of the main landing gear thumped on the hard surface and protested at the sudden friction with a puff of smoke. A later measurement would show that Jurgens touched the shuttle down only forty-seven feet from the end of the runway. Jurgens gently pitched the bow down until the nose wheel made contact and then pushed both brake pedals. He rolled the spacecraft to a stop with a thousand feet to spare.
"They made it!" Hollyman whooped over his radio.
"Gettysburg to Houston Control," said Jurgens with an audible sigh. "The wheels have stopped."
"Magnificent! Magnificent!" shouted Foley.
"Congratulations, Dave," added Mitchell. "Nobody could have done it better."
Burkhart looked over at Jurgens and said nothing, simply gave a thumbs-up sign.
Jurgens sat there, his adrenaline still flowing, basking in his triumph over the odds. His weary mind began to wander and he found himself wondering who Dirk Pitt was. Then he pressed the intercom switch.
"Mr. Steinmetz."
"Yes, Commander?"
"Welcome back to earth. We're home."
<<59>>
Pitt tool one quick comprehensive look as he stepped back into Velikov's study. Everyone was kneeling, clustered around Raymond LeBaron, who was stretched out on the floor. Jessie was holding his hand and murmuring to him. Gunn looked up at Pitt's approach and shook his head.
"What happened?" Pitt asked blankly.
"He jumped to his feet to help you and caught the bullet that cut your ear," Giordino replied.
Before kneeling, Pitt stared down a moment at the mortally wounded millionaire. The clothing that covered the upper abdomen bloomed in a spreading stain of crimson. The eyes still had life and were focused on Jessie's face. His breath came in rapid and shallow pants. He tried to raise his head and say something to her, but the effort was too great and he fell back.
Slowly Pitt sank on one knee beside Jessie. She turned and looked at him with tears trickling down her discolored cheeks. He stared back at her briefly without speaking. He could think of nothing to say to her, his mind was played out.
"Raymond tried to save you," she said huskily. "I knew they could never completely turn him inside out. In the end he came back."
LeBaron coughed, a strange rasping kind of cough. He gazed up at Jessie, his eyes dulled, face white and drained of blood. "Take care of Hilda," he whispered. "I leave everything in your hands."
Before he could say more, the room trembled as the rumble of explosives came from deep below. Quintana's team had begun destroying the electronic equipment inside the compound. They would have to leave soon, and there would be no taking Raymond LeBaron with them.
Pitt thought of all the newspaper stories and magazine articles glorifying the dying man on the carpet as a steel-blooded power merchant who could make or break executive officers of giant corporations or high-level politicians in government, a wizard at manipulating the financial markets of the world, a vindictive and cold man whose trail was littered with the bones of competing businesses he had crushed and their thousands of employees who were cast out on the streets. Pitt had read all that, but all he saw was a dying old man, a paradox of human frailty, who had stolen his best friend's wife and then killed him for a fortune in treasure. Pitt could feel no pity for such a man, no flicker of emotion.
Now the slender thread holding LeBaron on to life was about to break. He leaned over and placed his lips close to the old power broker's ear.
"La Dorada," Pitt whispered. "What did you do with her?"
LeBaron looked up, and his eyes glistened for an instant as his clouding mind took a final look at the past. His voice was faint as he summoned up the strength to answer. The words came almost as he died.
"What did he say?" asked Giordino.
"I'm not sure," replied Pitt, his expression bewildered. "It sounded like `Look on the main sight.' "
To the Cubans across the bay on the main island the detonations sounded like distant thunder and they paid no attention. No spouting volcano of red and orange lit the horizon, no fiery column of flame reaching hundreds of feet through the black sky attracted their curiosity. The sounds came strangely muffled as the compound was destroyed from within. Even the belated destruction of the great antenna went without notice.
Pitt helped Jessie to the staging area on the beach, followed by Giordino and Gunn, who was carried on a stretcher by the Cubans. Quintana joined them and dropped all caution as he shined a pencil thin flashlight in Pitt's face.
"You'd better get a patch on that ear."
"I'll survive until we reach the SPUT."
"I had to leave two men behind, buried where they'll never be found. But there are still more going out than came in. Some of you will have to double up on the water Dashers. Dirk, you carry Mrs. LeBaron. Mr. Gunn can ride with me. Sergeant Lopez can--"
"The sergeant can ride alone," Pitt interrupted.
"Alone?"
"We left a man behind too," said Pitt.
Quintana quickly swept the narrow beam at the others. "Raymond LaBaron?"
"He won't be coming."
Quintana gave a slight shrug, bowed his head at Jessie, and said simply, "I'm sorry" Then he turned away and began assembling his men for the trip back to the mother ship.
Pitt held Jessie close to him and spoke gently. "He asked you to take care of his first wife, Hilda, who still lives."
He couldn't see the surprise on her face, but he could feel her body tense.
"How did you know?" she asked incredulously.
"I met and talked with her a few days ago."
She seemed to accept that and did not ask him how he came to be at the rest home. "Raymond and I went through the ceremony and played out our roles as man and wife, but he could never completely give up or divorce Hilda."
"A man who loved two women."
"In different, special ways. A tiger in business, a lamb on the home front, Raymond was lost when Hilda's mind and body began to deteriorate. He desperately needed a woman to lean on. He used his influence to fake her death and place her in a rest home under a former married name."