Lost City - Cussler Clive - Страница 42

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"Odd," he said. "A building this size must require a large support staff, but we haven't seen a single soul outside of the Fauchards and the servant who brought us the water."

"That is strange," Skye said. She tried the front door and smiled. "Look here, Mr. Worrywart. We can leave anytime we want to."

They stepped out onto the terrace and walked across the courtyard to the gate. The drawbridge was still down, but the portcullis, which had been up when they entered, had been lowered. Austin put his hands on the bars and gazed through the iron grating.

"We won't be leaving anytime soon," he said with a grim smile. The Rolls-Royce had vanished from the driveway.

THE ALVIN HAD RISEN like a seagull atop a rolling billow before it dropped in a free fall that ended with a bone-jarring clang of metal against metal. The impact threw the three people inside the Alvin from their seats. Trout tried to avoid a collision with Gamay and the small-framed pilot, but his six-foot-eight physique was ill suited for acrobatics and he slammed into the bulkhead. Galaxies whirled around inside his head and when the stars cleared he saw Gamay's face close to his. She looked worried. "Are you all right?" she said with concern in her voice. Trout nodded. Then he pulled himself back into his seat and gingerly explored his bruised scalp with his fingers. The skin was tender to the touch, but he was not bleeding. "What happened?" Sandy said. "I don't know," Trout said. "I'll take a look." Trout tried to ignore the sick feeling in his gut and crawled over to a view port. For an instant, he wondered if the bump on his head was making him see things. The scowling face of a man stared at him. The man saw Trout. He tapped on the acrylic view port with

the barrel of a gun and jerked his thumb upward. The message was clear. Open the hatch.

Gamay had her face pressed against another view port. "There's a real ugly guy out there," she whispered. "He's got a gun."

"Same here," Trout said. "They want us to climb out."

"What should we do?" Sandy said.

Someone started banging on the hull.

"Our welcoming party is becoming impatient," Gamay said.

"So I see," Trout said. "Unless we can figure out how to turn the Alvin into an attack sub, I suggest that we do whatever they want us to."

He reached up and opened the hatch. Warm, damp air rushed in and the same face he had seen in the view port was framed in the circular opening. The man gestured at Trout and pulled out of view. Trout stuck his head and shoulders through the hatch and saw that the Alvin was surrounded by six armed men.

Moving slowly, Trout climbed out onto the sub's hull. Sandy emerged and the color drained from her face when she saw the reception party. She froze in place until Gamay gave her a nudge from below and Trout helped her down to the metal deck.

The Alvin had come to rest in a brightly lit compartment as big as a three-car garage. The air was heavy with the smell of the sea. Water dripped from the Alvin's hull and gurgled down drains in the deck. The muted hum of engines could be heard in the distance. Trout surmised that they were in the air lock of an enormous submarine. At one end of the chamber, the walls curved to meet each other in a horizontal crease like the inside of a large mechanical mouth. The submarine must have gulped the Alvin down like a grouper eating a shrimp.

A guard punched a wall switch and a door opened in the bulkhead opposite the mechanical mouth. The same guard pointed the way with the barrel of his gun. The prisoners stepped through the door

way into a smaller room that looked like a robot factory. Hanging from wall racks were at least a dozen "moon suits," whose thick joined arms ended in grasping claws. From his work with NUMA, Trout knew that the suits were human-shaped submersibles used for diving for long periods at extreme depths.

The door hissed shut and the prisoners marched along a passageway between three guards in front and three taking up the rear. The navy-blue jumpsuits the guards wore had no identification markings of any sort. The men were muscular, hard-looking types with close-cropped hair, and they moved with the assurance of trained military men. They were in their thirties and forties too old to be raw recruits. It was impossible to guess their nationalities because they had kept silent, preferring to communicate their wishes with gun gestures. Trout guessed they were mercenaries, probably special warfare types. The parade made its way through a network of passageways. Eventually, the prisoners were shoved into a cabin and the door clicked shut behind them. The small stateroom had two bunks, a chair, an empty closet and a head.

"Cozy," Gamay said, taking in the tight accommodations. "This must be the third-class cabin," Trout said. He had a dizzy spell and put his hand against the bulkhead to steady himself. Seeing the concern in Gamay's face, he said, "I'm okay. But I need to sit down."

"You need some first aid," Gamay said.

While Trout sat on the edge of a bunk, Gamay went into the head and ran cold water over a towel. Trout placed the towel on his temple to keep the swelling down. Sandy and Gamay took turns going back to the sink to replenish the cold-water compress. Eventually, the swelling was reduced. With great care, Trout adjusted his bow tie, which was hanging half off his neck, and he combed his hair with his fingers.

"Better?" Gamay said.

Newly refreshed, Trout grinned and said, "You always told me that I'd get a big head someday."

Sandy laughed in spite of her fears. "How can you two be so calm?" she said in wonder.

Trout's unflappability was less bravado than pragmatism and faith in his own abilities. As a member of NUMA's Special Operations Team, Trout was not unused to danger. His laid-back academic demeanor disguised an innate toughness passed down by his hardy New England forebears. His great-grandfather had been a surf man in the Lifesaving Service, where the motto was "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back." His fishermen grandfather and father had taught him seamanship and respect for the sea, and Trout had learned to rely on his own ingenuity.

With her slim athletic body and graceful movements, her luxuriant dark red hair and flashing smile, Gamay was sometimes mistaken for a fashion model or an actress. Few would have believed that she had been a tomboy growing up in Wisconsin. Although she had grown into a woman who possessed every desirable feminine trait possible, she was no hothouse flower. Rudi Gunn, the assistant director at NUMA, had recognized her intelligence when he suggested she be brought into the agency with her husband. Admiral Sandecker readily accepted Gunn's suggestion. Since then, Gamay had displayed her intelligence and cool resourcefulness on many missions with the Special Assignments Team.

"Calmness has nothing to do with it," Gamay said. "We're simply being practical. Like it or not, we're stuck here for the time being. Let's use deductive reasoning to figure out what happened."

"Scientists are not supposed to draw any conclusions until we're ready to support them with facts," Sandy said. "We don't have all the facts."

"You learned the scientific method well," Trout said. "As Ben Jonson said, there's nothing like the prospect of a hanging to focus a person's mind. Since we don't have all the facts, we can use scientific dead reckoning to get us where we want to go. Besides, we don't have anything else to do. First, we know for sure that we've been kidnapped and we're being held prisoner in a large submarine of curious design."

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