"I'm not blind," Hunnewell snapped. "How long before they get here?"
"By the time they set a dinghy in the water, row in from the sub and step ashore-four hundred yards if it's an inch-it'll take-them between fifteen and twenty minutes."
"We've no damned time to lose," Hunnewell said impatiently.
"Any luck yet?"
"Nothing!" Hunnewell boomed back. "The derelict must be deeper than I thought." He rami-ned the probe feverishly into the ice. "It's here; it's got to be here. A hundred-and-twenty-five-foot vessel couldn't have disappeared."
"Maybe the Coast Guard saw a phantom ship.
Hunnewell paused to adjust his sunglasses. "The ice patrol crew might have been fooled by their eyes, but not by their radar equipment."
Pitt moved closer to the open door of the helicopter. His gaze swung to Hunnewell, then back to the sub, and a second later he was peering through the binoculars. He studied the tiny figures that were erupting from the hatches of the low-silhouetted submarine and scrambling hurriedly across the sea-splashed deck. In less than three minutes, a large six-man dinghy was inrated, dropped beside the hull and boarded by a group of men carrying an assortment of automatic weapons.
Then an indistinct popping sound came over the rolling blue water.
The sound was enough-enough for Pitt to drastically cut his original time estimate.
"They're coming. Five, maybe six of them; can't tell for sure."
"Are they armed?" Hunnewell's query sounded urgent. "To the teeth."
"My God, man!" Hunnewell shouted irritably.
"Don't just stand there and gawk. Help me search for the derelict."
"Forget it." Pitts tone was unhurried. "They'll be here in another five minutes."
"Five minutes? You said-"
"I didn't count on their dinghy having an outboard motor."
Hunnewell stared stricken at the submarine. "How did the Russians find out about the derelict? How could they have possibly known the location?"
"No great feat," Pitt answered. "One of their KGB agents in Washington undoubtedly got hold of the Coast Guard's sighting report-it's hardly a classified secret-and then dispatched every fishing trawler and submarine they had in this part of the Atlantic to search the ice field. It's an unfortunate coincidence for us, but a lucky one for them that we both discovered the iceberg at the same moment."
"It looks as if we've thrown the ball game," Hunnewell said bleakly. "They've won, and we've lost.
Dammit, if we could only locate the derelict's hull, we could at least destroy it with thermite bombs and keep it out of the Russians' hands."
"To the victor goes the spoils," Pitt murmured. "All one million tons of the finest, purest, genuine Greenland ice in the Atlantic Ocean."
Hunnewell was puzzled, but said nothing. Pitts apparent indifference made no sense.
"Tell me, Dog" Pitt continued. "What's today's date?"
"The date?" Hunnewell said dazedly. "It's Wednesday, March twenty-eighth."
"We're early," Pitt said. "Three days early for April Fools'Day."
Hunnewell's voice was flat and hard. "This is hardly the, time or place for levity."
"Why not? Somebody's played a tremendous joke on us and on those clowns out there." Pitt gestured toward the rapidly approaching landing party. "You, 1, the Russians, we're all starring in the greatest laugh riot ever to hit the North Atlantic. The climax of the final act comes when we all learn that there is no derelict in this iceberg." He paused to exhale a cloud of smoke.
"As a matter of fact, there never was one."
Total incomprehension and the meager beginnings of hope touched Hunnewell. "Go on," he prompted.
"Besides radar contact, the Crew of the patrol plane reported that they sighed the outline of a ship in the ice, yet we saw nothing before we touched down.
That alone doesn't figure. They were in an aircraft flying at a probable patrol speed of two hundred miles an hour. if anything, our chances of spotting something from a hovering helicopter were far higher."
Hunnewell looked thoughtful. He seemed to be weighing what Pitt had said. "I'm not sure what you're hinting at." Then he smiled, suddenly his old cheerful self again. "But I'm getting wise to your siv mind. You must have something up your sleeve-"
"No magic. You said it yourself. by every known law of current and drift, this berg should be floating ninety miles to the southwest."
"True." Hunnewell looked at Pitt with a new respect. "And the conclusion, exactly what do you have in mind?"
"Not what, but who, Doc. Someone who is leading all of us on the proverbial wild-coose chase. Someone who removed the red dye from the iceberg containing the lost ship and spread more of the same over a decoy ninety miles off the track."
"Of course, the iceberg we flew over hours ago.
The same size, configuration and weight, but no red stain."
"That's where we'll find our mystery ship," said Pitt. "Right where you calculated it was supposed to be."
"But who's playing games?" Hunnewell asked, his face set in a contemplative twist. "Obviously it isn't the Russians: they're as confused as we were."
"At the moment it doesn't matter," Pitt said. "The important thing is to bid fond farewell to this floating ice palace and fly off into the blue. Our uninvited guests have arrived." He nodded down the slope of the berg.
"Or perhaps you hadn't noticed?"
And Hunnewell hadn't. But he noticed it now. The first of the landing party from the submarine came piling on the berg, walking cautiously onto the edge of the ice. Within a few seconds, five Pitt and Hunnewell's direction. They were dressed in black-Russian marines-and heavily armed. Even at a hundred yards, Pitt could discern the unmistakable look of men who knew exactly what they were out to do.
Pitt casually climbed aboard the helicopter, turned the ignition switch and pushed the starter. Even before the rotor blades swung into their first revolution, Hunnewell was ensconced in the passenger's seat with his safety belt tightly secured.
Before he closed the door to the cockpit, Pitt leined out, cupped both hands to his mouth and shouted to the advancing Russians, "Enjoy your stay, but don't forget to Pick up your litter."
The officer leading the men from the submarine cocked an ear, then shrugged uncomprehendingly. He was certain that Pitt was hardly likely to shout in Russian for his benefit. As if to signal the occupants of the helicopter of his peaceful intentions, the officer lowered his automatic weapon and waved a salute as Pitt and Hunnewell relinquished possession of the iceberg and rose into the radiant blue sky.
Pitt took his time, keeping the helicopter at a Minimum cruising speed and holding on a northward course for fifteen minutes. Then, after they were out of sight and radar range of the submarine, he swung around in a long circle to the southwest and by eleven fifteen they had found the derelict.
As they bore down on the great ice giant, Pitt and Hunnewell shared a strange sense of emptiness. It wasn't just the end of the long hours of uncertaintythey were already past the time limit set by Commander Koski-it was the eerie appearance of the mystery ship itself.
Neither man had ever seen anything quite like it.
The atmosphere around the berg had a terrifying desolation that belonged not to earth but to some dead and distant planet. Only the rays of the sun broke the inertness, penetrating the ice and distorting the lines of the ship's hull and superstructure into a constantly changing series of abstract shadows. The sight seemed so unreal that it was difficult for Pitt to accept the visible fact of its existence. As he adjusted the controls and lowered the helicopter to the ice, he half expected the entombed vessel to vanish.