"Please don't let him be a mirage or a delusion," she begged the heavens.
And then he was kneeling in the snow beside her, cradling her shoulders in arms that felt like the biggest and strongest she had ever known. "Oh, thank God. I never gave up hoping you'd come."
He was a tall man, wearing a turquoise parka with the letters NUMA stitched over the left breast, and a ski mask with goggles. He removed the goggles and stared at her through a pair of incredible opaline green eyes that betrayed a mixture of surprise and puzzlement. His deeply tanned face seemed oddly out of place in the Antarctic.
"What in the world are you doing here?" he asked in a husky voice tinged with concern.
"I have twenty people back there in a cavern. We were on a shore excursion. Our cruise ship sailed off and never returned."
He looked at her in disbelief. "You were abandoned?"
She nodded and stared fearfully into the storm. "Did a worldwide catastrophe occur?"
His eyes narrowed at the question. "Not that I'm aware of. Why do you ask?"
"Three people in my party died under mysterious circumstances. And an entire rookery of penguins just north of the bay has been exterminated down to the last bird."
If the stranger was surprised at the tragic news, he hid it well. He helped Maeve to her feet. "I'd better get you out of this blowing snow."
"You're American," she said, shivering from the cold.
"And you're Australian."
"It's that obvious?"
"You pronounce a like i."
She held out a gloved hand. "You don't know how glad I am to see you, Mr. . .?"
"My name is Dirk Pitt."
"Maeve Fletcher."
He ignored her objections, picked her up and began carrying her, following her footprints in the snow toward the tunnel. "I suggest we carry on our conversation out of the cold. You say there are twenty others?"
"That are still alive."
Pitt gave her a solemn look. "It would appear the sales brochures oversold the voyage."
Once inside the tunnel he set her on her feet and pulled off his ski mask. His head was covered by a thick mass of unruly black hair. His green eyes peered from beneath heavy dark eyebrows, and his face was craggy and weathered from long hours in the open but handsome in a rugged sort of way. His mouth seemed set in a casual grin. This was a man a woman could feel secure with, Maeve thought.
A minute later, Pitt was greeted by the tourists like a hometown football hero who had led the team to a big victory. Seeing a stranger suddenly appear in their midst had the same impact as winning a lottery.
He marveled that they were all in reasonably fit shape, considering their terrible ordeal. The old women all embraced and kissed him like a son while the men slapped his back until it was sore. Everybody was talking and shouting questions at once. Maeve introduced him and related how they met up in the storm.
"Where did you drop from, mate?" they all wanted to know.
"A research vessel from the National' Underwater & Marine Agency. We're on an expedition trying to discover why seals and dolphins have been disappearing in these waters at an astonishing rate. We were flying over Seymour Island in a helicopter when the snow closed in on us, so we thought it best to land until it blew over."
"There're more of you?"
"A pilot and a biologist who remained on board. I spotted what looked like a piece of a Zodiac protruding from the snow. I wondered why such a craft would be resting on an uninhabited part of the island and walked over to investigate. That's when I heard Miss Fletcher shouting at me."
"Good thing you decided to take a walk when you did," said the eighty-three-year-old great-grandmother to Maeve.
"I thought I heard a strange noise outside in the storm. I know now that it was the sound of his helicopter coming in to land."
"An incredible piece of luck we stumbled into each other in the middle of a blizzard," said Pitt. "I didn't believe I was hearing a woman's scream. I was sure it was a quirk of the wind until I saw you waving through a blanket of snow."
"Where is your research ship?" Maeve asked.
"About forty kilometers northeast of here."
"Did you by chance pass our ship, Polar Queen?"
Pitt shook his head. "We haven't seen another ship for over a week."
"Any radio contact?" asked Maeve. "A distress call, perhaps?"
"We talked to a ship supplying the British station at Halley Bay, but have heard nothing from a cruise ship."
"She couldn't have vanished into thin air," said one of the men in bewilderment. "Not along with the entire crew and our fellow passengers."
"We'll solve the mystery as soon as we can transport all you people to our research vessel. It's not as plush as Polar Queen, but we have comfortable quarters, a fine doctor and a cook who stands guard over a supply of very good wines."