Shock Wave(169)

Giordino grinned. "Not half as inviting as a second go-around with the Dorsett clan."

Pitt circled an arm around Maeve's shoulder. "I'm with him."

"Two days," Maeve murmured thankfully. "I can't believe I'll actually see my boys again."

Pitt said nothing for a moment, thinking of the unknown that lay ahead of them. Then he said gently,

"You'll see them, and you'll hold them in your arms. I promise you."

There was never any real inclination to turn from their established goal. Pitt and Giordino's minds ran as one. They had entered a zone where they were indifferent and uncaring of their own lives. They were so wrapped up in their determination to reach Gladiator Island that neither man bothered to watch as the lights of the passing ship grew smaller and gradually disappeared in the distance.



When the interisland cargo ship carrying the dismantled antenna steamed into Halawa Bay on Molokai, all hands lined the railings and stared in rapt fascination at the peculiar vessel moored in the harbor. The 228-meter-long ship, with its forest of cranes and twenty-three-story derrick rising in the middle of its hull, looked like it had been designed and constructed by an army of drunken engineers, spastic welders and Oklahoma oil riggers.

An expansive helicopter pad hung over the stern by girders as if it was an add-on accessory. The high bridge superstructure rose on the aft end of the hull, giving the ship the general look of an oil tanker, but that's where any similarity ended. The center section of hull was taken up by an enormous conglomeration of machinery with the appearance of a huge pile of scrap. A veritable maze of steel stairways, scaffolding, ladders and pipes clustered around the derrick, which reached up and touched the sky like a gantry used to launch heavy rockets into space. The raised house on the forecastle showed no sign of ports, only a row of skylight-like windows across the front. The paint was faded and chipped with streaks of rust showing through. The hull was a marine blue, while the superstructure was white. The machinery had once been painted myriad colors of gray, yellow and orange.

"Now I can die happy after having seen it all," Gunn exclaimed at the sight.

Molly stood beside him on the bridge wing and stared in awe. "How on earth did the admiral ever conjure up the Glomar Explorer?"

"I won't even venture to guess," Gunn muttered, gazing with the wonder of a child seeing his first airplane.

The captain of the Lanikai leaned from the door of the wheelhouse. "Admiral Sandecker is on the ship-to-ship phone, Commander Gunn."

Gunn raised a hand in acknowledgment, stepped from the bridge wing and picked up the phone.

"You're an hour late," were the first words Gunn heard.

"Sorry, Admiral. The antenna was not in pristine shape. I ordered the crew to perform routine repair and maintenance during disassembly so that it will go back together with less hassle."

"A smart move," Sandecker agreed. "Ask your captain to moor his ship alongside. We'll begin transferring the antenna sections as soon as his anchors are out."

"Is that the famous Hughes Glomar Explorer I'm seeing?" asked Gunn.

"One and the same with a few alterations," answered Sandecker. "Lower a launch and come aboard.

I'll be waiting in the captain's office. Bring Ms. Faraday."

"We'll be aboard shortly."



Originally proposed by Deputy Director of Defense David Packard, formerly of Hewlett-Packard, a major electronics corporation, and based on an earlier deep ocean research ship designed by Willard Bascom and called the Alcoa Seaprobe, the Glomar Explorer became a joint venture of the CIA, Global Marine Inc. and Howard Hughes, through his tool company that eventually became the Summa Corporation.

Construction was commenced by the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company at their shipyard facilities in Chester, Pennsylvania, and the huge vessel was immediately wrapped in secrecy, with the aid of misleading information. She was launched forty-one months later in the late fall of 1972, a remarkable achievement in technology for a vessel completely innovative in concept.

She then became famous for her raising of a Russian Golf-class submarine from a depth of five kilometers in the middle of the Pacific. Despite news stories to the contrary, the entire sub was raised in pieces and examined, a colossal feat of intelligence that paid great dividends in knowledge about Soviet submarine technology and operation.

After her brief moment of fame, no one quite knew what to do with the Explorer, so she eventually wound up in the hands of the United States government and was included in the Navy's mothball program. Until recently, she had languished for over two decades in the backwash of Suisun Bay, northeast of San Francisco.