Dirk Pitt 1 - Pacific Vortex by Clive Cussler Read Free Book Online Page A

the nation's most prestigious governmental agencies didn't fly six thousand miles just to chat with his Special Projects Director about birds. He handed Sandecker a glass and asked, “What brings you from Washington? I thought you were buried in plans for the new deep-sea current expedition?”
    “You don't know why I'm here?” He was using his quiet cynical tone, the one that always made Pitt involuntarily cringe. 'Thanks to your meddling in affairs that don't concern you, I had to make a special trip to bail you out of one mess and throw you into another."
    “I don't follow.”
    “A talent I know only too well.” There was the slight hint of a derisive smile. “It seems you aggravated a hornet's nest when you showed up with the Star-buck's message capsule. You unknowingly set off an earthquake in the Pentagon that was picked up on a seismograph in California. It also made you a big-man-on-campus with the Navy Department. I'm only a retired castoff to those boys, so I wasn't offered a peek behind the curtain. I was simply asked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, courteously, I might add, to fly to Hawaii posthaste, explain your new assignment, and arrange for your loan to the Navy.”
    Pitt's eyes narrowed. “Who's behind this?”
    “Admiral Leigh Hunter of the 101st Salvage Fleet.”
    “You can't be serious?”
    “He personally requested you.”
    Pitt shook his head angrily. “This is asinine. What's to stop me from refusing?”
    “You force me to remind you,” Sandecker said calmly, “that in spite of your status with NUMA, you're still carried on the active rolls as a major in the Air Force. And, as you well know, the Joint Chiefs frown upon insubordination.”
    Pitt's eyes looked resentfully into Sandecker's. “It won't work.”
    “Yes it will,” Sandecker said. “You're a damn good marine engineer, the best I've got. I've already met with Hunter and I minced no words in telling him so.”
    “There are other complications,” Pitt didn't sound very confident, “that haven't been considered.”
    “You mean the fact that you've been laying Hunter's daughter?”
    Pitt stiffened. “Do you know what that makes you, Admiral?”
    “A sly, old devious son of a bitch?” Sandecker asked. “Actually, there's much more to this business than you've taken the trouble to notice.”
    “You sound ominous as hell,” Pitt said, unimpressed.
    “I mean to,” Sandecker replied seriously. “You're not joining the Navy to learn a new trade. You're to act as liaison between Hunter and myself. Before this thing's over with, NUMA will be involved up to its ears. NUMA has been ordered to help the Navy with whatever oceanographical data they demand.”
    “Equipment?”
    “If they ask for it.”
    “Finding a submarine that disappeared six months ago won't be a picnic.”
    “The Starbuck is only half the act,” Sandecker said. “The Navy Department has compiled thirty-eight documented cases of ships over the past thirty years that have sailed into a circular-shaped area north of the Hawaiian Islands and vanished. They want to know why.”
    “Ships disappear in the Atlantic and Indian oceans too. It's not an unheard-of occurrence.”
    “True, but under normal circumstances, marine disasters leave traces behind; bits of flotsam, oil slicks, even bodies. Wreckage will also float ashore to give a hint of a missing ship's fate, but no such remains have turned up from the ships that vanished in the Pacific Vortex.”
    “The Pacific Vortex? ”
    “That's the name the seamen in the maritime unions coined for it. They won't sign on a ship whose course takes them through the area.”
    “Thirty-eight ships,” Pitt repeated slowly. “What about radio contact? A ship would have to go down in seconds not to transmit a Mayday signal.”
    “No distress signals were ever received.”
    Pitt didn't say anything. Sandecker simply sipped his Scotch, offering no further comment. As if on cue, the myna birds began their noisy antics