Read Online Dirk Pitt 1 - Pacific Vortex by Clive Cussler - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Clive Cussler
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walking to the edge of the road.
The dust far below was settling very slowly upon the tropical underbrush. At the bottom of the drop, just beyond the base of the steep-sided cliff, the remains of the gray truck lay with its engine torn from the frame. The driver was nowhere to be seen. Pitt had almost given up searching when he spotted an inert form high on a telephone pole about a hundred feet to the left of the wreckage.
It was a grisly sight It looked as though the driver had tried to leap clear before the old Dodge began its flight over the precipice. He'd missed the edge and had fallen, tumbling through the air for nearly two hundred feet before he struck a telephone pole perched in a concrete base. The body was impaled on a metal foot spike used by telephone repairmen for line maintenance. As Pitt stood entranced, the bottom section of the pole slowly turned from brown to red as if painted by some unseen hand; like a flank of beef hanging on a meathook.
Pitt drove down Mount Tantalus past the Manoa Valley lookout until he reached the nearest house. He went up onto the vine-covered porch and asked an elderly Japanese woman if he might use her telephone to report the accident. The woman bowed endlessly and motioned Pitt to a phone in the kitchen. He dialed Admiral Hunter first, quickly relating the story and giving the location.
The admiral's voice came over the receiver like an amplified bullhorn, forcing Pitt to hold the blast a few inches from his ear. “Don't call the Honolulu police,” Hunter bellowed. “Give me ten minutes to get our security men on the wreckage before the local traffic investigators foul up the area. You got that?”
“I think I can manage it.”
“Good!” Hunter went on without touching on Pitt's saicasm. “Ten minutes. Then move your tail out to Pearl Harbor. We've got work to do.”
Pitt acknowledged and hung up.
Pitt waited ten minutes, answering a multitude of questions about the crash shot in rapid fire by the little Oriental woman. Then he picked up the phone again and asked the operator for the Honolulu police. When the gravel-throated voice requested his name after he volunteered the location, he said nothing and quietly replaced the receiver in its cradle.
He thanked the owner of the house and backed away into the safety of his car. He sat there behind the wheel for a good five minutes, sweating from the humidity of the tropical heat and the unyielding leather of the bucket seat.
Something didn't Jell; something he'd missed came back to tug at his mind, some line of thought that couldn't be translated.
Then suddenly he had it. He started the car quickly and left twin streaks of Goodyear rubber on the worn asphalt as he sped back toward the wreck site. Five minutes to the telephone, twenty minutes spent dawdling as though time meant nothing, three minutes back, twenty-eight minutes in all, wasted.
He should have guessed there'd be more than one of them on his trail. The AC skidded to an abrupt stop and Pitt ran once more to the edge of the drop.
The wreckage was just as he'd left it, all twisted and torn like a child's smashed toy. The telephone pole was as he left it too, standing forlornly in the center of the palisade, its crossbars clutching wires that stretched off into infinity. The footspikes were still there too. But the driver's body had disappeared. Only the red stain remained, clotting and crystalizing under the onslaught of the morning sun.
A Quonset hut—it looked more like the dilapidated office of a salvage yard—was the saddest excuse for an operations building since the Civil War. The rusting corrugated roof and cracked, dust-coated windows were encompassed by an unkempt sea of weeds. But at the paint-chipped and weathered door, Pitt was barred by a marine sergeant armed with a bolstered automatic Colt .45.
“Your identification, please.” It was more a demand than a request
Pitt held up his ID card. “Dirk Pitt. I'm reporting to Admiral
The dust far below was settling very slowly upon the tropical underbrush. At the bottom of the drop, just beyond the base of the steep-sided cliff, the remains of the gray truck lay with its engine torn from the frame. The driver was nowhere to be seen. Pitt had almost given up searching when he spotted an inert form high on a telephone pole about a hundred feet to the left of the wreckage.
It was a grisly sight It looked as though the driver had tried to leap clear before the old Dodge began its flight over the precipice. He'd missed the edge and had fallen, tumbling through the air for nearly two hundred feet before he struck a telephone pole perched in a concrete base. The body was impaled on a metal foot spike used by telephone repairmen for line maintenance. As Pitt stood entranced, the bottom section of the pole slowly turned from brown to red as if painted by some unseen hand; like a flank of beef hanging on a meathook.
Pitt drove down Mount Tantalus past the Manoa Valley lookout until he reached the nearest house. He went up onto the vine-covered porch and asked an elderly Japanese woman if he might use her telephone to report the accident. The woman bowed endlessly and motioned Pitt to a phone in the kitchen. He dialed Admiral Hunter first, quickly relating the story and giving the location.
The admiral's voice came over the receiver like an amplified bullhorn, forcing Pitt to hold the blast a few inches from his ear. “Don't call the Honolulu police,” Hunter bellowed. “Give me ten minutes to get our security men on the wreckage before the local traffic investigators foul up the area. You got that?”
“I think I can manage it.”
“Good!” Hunter went on without touching on Pitt's saicasm. “Ten minutes. Then move your tail out to Pearl Harbor. We've got work to do.”
Pitt acknowledged and hung up.
Pitt waited ten minutes, answering a multitude of questions about the crash shot in rapid fire by the little Oriental woman. Then he picked up the phone again and asked the operator for the Honolulu police. When the gravel-throated voice requested his name after he volunteered the location, he said nothing and quietly replaced the receiver in its cradle.
He thanked the owner of the house and backed away into the safety of his car. He sat there behind the wheel for a good five minutes, sweating from the humidity of the tropical heat and the unyielding leather of the bucket seat.
Something didn't Jell; something he'd missed came back to tug at his mind, some line of thought that couldn't be translated.
Then suddenly he had it. He started the car quickly and left twin streaks of Goodyear rubber on the worn asphalt as he sped back toward the wreck site. Five minutes to the telephone, twenty minutes spent dawdling as though time meant nothing, three minutes back, twenty-eight minutes in all, wasted.
He should have guessed there'd be more than one of them on his trail. The AC skidded to an abrupt stop and Pitt ran once more to the edge of the drop.
The wreckage was just as he'd left it, all twisted and torn like a child's smashed toy. The telephone pole was as he left it too, standing forlornly in the center of the palisade, its crossbars clutching wires that stretched off into infinity. The footspikes were still there too. But the driver's body had disappeared. Only the red stain remained, clotting and crystalizing under the onslaught of the morning sun.
A Quonset hut—it looked more like the dilapidated office of a salvage yard—was the saddest excuse for an operations building since the Civil War. The rusting corrugated roof and cracked, dust-coated windows were encompassed by an unkempt sea of weeds. But at the paint-chipped and weathered door, Pitt was barred by a marine sergeant armed with a bolstered automatic Colt .45.
“Your identification, please.” It was more a demand than a request
Pitt held up his ID card. “Dirk Pitt. I'm reporting to Admiral
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