The President came down to the Situation Room to personally congratulate Ray Jordan and Don Kern. He was in a jubilant mood, and fairly beamed like an airport beacon.
“Your people did one hell of a job,” said the President, pumping Jordan’s hand. “The nation is in your debt.”
“The MAIT team deserves the honors,” said Kern. “They truly pulled off the impossible.”
“But not without sacrifice,” Jordan murmured softly. “Jim Hanamura, Marv Showalter, and Dirk Pitt—it was a costly operation.”
“No word on Pitt?” asked the President.
Kern shook his head. “There seems to be little doubt that he and his Deep Sea Mining Vehicle were swept away by the seismic landslide and buried.”
“Any sign of him from the Pyramider?”
“During the satellite’s first pass after the explosion and upheaval, there was so much turbulence the cameras couldn’t detect any image of the vehicle.”
“Maybe you can spot him on the next pass,” the President said hopefully. “If there is even the slightest chance he may still be alive, I want a full-scale rescue mission mounted to save him. We owe Pitt our butts, and I’m not about to walk away from him.”
“We’ll see to it,” Jordan promised. But already his mind was turning to other projects.
“What news of Admiral Sandecker?”
“His surveillance aircraft was struck by missiles launched from the Dragon Center. The pilot managed to make a safe wheels-up landing at Naha Air Field on Okinawa. From initial reports, the plane was shot up pretty badly and lost all communications.”
“Casualties?”
“None,” answered Kern. “It was a wonder they survived with little more to show than a few cuts and bruises.”
The President nodded thoughtfully. “At least we know now why they broke off contact.”
Secretary of State Douglas Oates stepped forward. “More good news, Mr. President,” he said, smiling. “The combined Soviet and European search teams have uncovered almost all of the bomb cars hidden in their territories.”
“We have MAIT team to thank for stealing the locations,” explained Kern.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t help much on our end,” said Jordan.
Kern nodded. “The United States was the main threat to the Kaiten Project, not the European alliance or the Eastern Bloc countries.”
The President looked at Jordan. “Have any more been found within our borders?”
“Six.” The Central Intelligence Director grinned slightly. “Now that we have some breathing space, we should track down the rest without further risk to national security.”
“Tsuboi and Yoshishu?”
“Believed drowned.”
The President looked pleased, and he felt it. He turned and faced everyone in the room. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “on behalf of a grateful American people, who will never know how narrowly you saved them from disaster, I thank you.”
The crisis was over, but already another had erupted. Later that afternoon, fighting broke out along the border of Iran and Turkey, and the first reports came in of a Cuban military Mig-25 shooting down a United States commercial airliner filled with tourists returning from Jamaica.
The search for one man quickly became lost in the shuffle. The imaging technology on board the Pyramider satellite was shifted toward world events of more importance. Nearly four weeks would pass before the satellite’s eyes were turned back to the sea off Japan.
But no trace of Big Ben was found.
Part 5
Obituary
74
November 19, 1993
The Washington Post
I
T WAS ANNOUNCED
today that Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, is missing and presumed dead after an accident in the sea off Japan.
Acclaimed for his exploits on land and under the sea that include his discoveries of the pre-Columbian Byzantine shipwreck Serapis off Greenland, the incredible cache from the Library of Alexandria, and the La Dorada treasure in Cuba, among others, Pitt also directed the raising of the Titanic.
The son of Senator George Pitt of California and his wife, Susan, Pitt was born and raised in Newport Beach, California. He attended the Air Force Academy, where he played quarterback on the Falcon football team, and graduated twelfth in his class. Becoming a pilot, Pitt remained in active service for ten years, rising to the rank of major. He then became permanently attached to NUMA at the request of Admiral James Sandecker.
The admiral said briefly yesterday that Dirk Pitt was an extremely resourceful and audacious man. During the course of his career, he had saved many lives, including those of Sandecker himself and the President during an incident in the Gulf of Mexico. Pitt never lacked for ingenuity or creativity. No project was too difficult for him to accomplish.
He was not a man you can forget.
Sandecker sat on the running board of the Stutz in Pitt’s hangar and stared sadly at the obituary in the newspaper. “He did so much, it seems an injustice to condense his life to so few words.”
Giordino, his face expressionless, walked around the Messerschmitt Me-262A-la Luftwaffe jet fighter. True to his word, Gert Halder had looked the other way when Pitt and Giordino had smuggled the aircraft out of the bunker, hauled it on a truck under canvas, and arranged for it to be hoisted on board a Danish cargo ship bound for the States. Only two days earlier the ship had arrived in Baltimore, where Giordino had waited to transport the aircraft to Pitt’s hangar in Washington. Now it sat on its tricycle landing gear amid the other classic machinery of Pitt’s collection.
“Dirk should have been here to see this,” Giordino said heavily. He ran his hand across the nose of the mottled green fuselage with its light gray underbelly and stared at the muzzles of the four thirty-millimeter cannon that poked from the forward cowl. “He’d have loved to get his hands on it.”
It was a moment neither of them had foreseen, could never imagine. Sandecker felt as though he’d lost a son, Giordino a brother.
Giordino stopped and stared up at the apartment above the classic autos and aircraft. “I should have been in the DSMV with him.”
Sandecker looked up. “Then you would be missing and maybe dead too.”
“I’ll always regret not being with him,” Giordino said vaguely.
“Dirk died in the sea. It’s the way he’d have wanted it.”
“He might be standing here now if one of Big Ben’s manipulators had been fitted with a scoop instead of cutting tools,” Giordino persisted.
Sandecker gave a weary shake of his head. “Allowing your imagination to run riot won’t bring him back.”
Giordino’s eyes lifted to Pitt’s living quarters. “I keep thinking all I have to do is yell for him, and he’ll come down.”
“The same thought has crossed my mind,” Sandecker admitted.
Suddenly the door of the apartment opened, and they momentarily stiffened, then relaxed as Toshie emerged carrying a tray with cups and a teapot. With incredible supple grace, she delicately wound down the iron circular stairway and glided toward Sandecker and Giordino.
Sandecker wrinkled his brows in puzzlement. “A mystery to me how you sweet-talked Jordan into having her committed into your custody.”
“No mystery.” Giordino grinned. “A trade-off. He made her a present to me in return for keeping my mouth shut about the Kaiten Project.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t encase your feet in cement and throw you in the Potomac.”
“I was bluffing.”