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Pacific Vortex!: A Novel (Dirk Pitt Adventure, Band 6) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 28: A Dirk Pitt Adventure

Cussler, Clive

 
9780553593457: Pacific Vortex!: A Novel (Dirk Pitt Adventure, Band 6)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553593455 ISBN 13: 9780553593457
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

DIRK PITT’S FIRST, MOST TERRIFYING ADVENTURE!
 
Dirk Pitt, death-defying adventurer and deep-sea expert, is put to the ultimate test as he plunges into the perilous waters of the Pacific Vortex—a fog-shrouded area where dozens of ships have vanished without a trace. The latest victim is the awesome supersub Starbuck, bearing America’s deep-diving nuclear arsenal. Its loss poses an unthinkable threat to national defense. Pitt’s job is to find it and salvage it before international forces beat him to the prize or the sea explodes in a nuclear blast—whichever comes first. Pitt’s mission also leads him into the arms of Summer Moran, the most stunningly exotic and dangerous woman ever to enter his life. As the countdown heads toward disaster, Pitt has no choice but to descend through the shark-infested depths to an ancient sunken island, from which he may never again emerge to see the light of day.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

 
Clive Cussler is an accomplished marine archaeologist and the author of more than sixty action-adventure novels, many featuring deep-sea expert Dirk Pitt. He has been a #1 New York Times bestseller countless times over and continues to thrill his legions of fans worldwide.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One


 Among the crowded beaches in the state of Hawaii, it is still possible to discover a stretch of sand that offers a degree of solitude. Kaena Point, jutting out into the Kauai Channel like a boxer's left jab, is one of the few unadvertised spots where onecan relax and enjoy an empty shore. It is a beautiful beach, but it is also deceptive. Too often its shores are whipped by rip currents extremely dangerous to all but the most wary swimmers. Each year, as if predestined by a morbid schedule, an unidentifiedbather, intrigued by the lonely sandy strand and the gentle surf, enters the water and within minutes is swept out to sea.  

On this beach a six-foot-three-inch deeply suntanned man, clad in brief white bathing trunks, lay stretched on a bamboo beach mat. The hairy, barrel chest that rose slightly with each intake of air, bore specks of sweat that rolled downward in snailliketrails and mingled with the sand. The arm that passed over the eyes shielding them from the strong rays of the tropical sun, was muscular but without the exaggerated bulges generally associated with iron pumpers. The hair was black and thick and shaggy, andit fell halfway down a forehead that merged into a hard-featured but friendly face.  

Dirk Pitt stirred from a semisleep and, raising himself up on his elbows, stared from deep green glistening eyes at the sea. Pitt was not a casual sun worshipper; to him, the beach was a living, moving thing, changing shape and personality under the constantonslaught of the wind and waves. He studied the swells as they rolled in from their storm-rocked birthplace thousands of miles at sea, rising and increasing their velocity when their troughs felt the shallow bottom. Changing from swell to breaker, they rosehigher and higher--eight feet, Pitt judged--from trough to crest before they toppled and broke, pounding themselves into a thundering mass of foam and spray. Then they died in small, swirling eddies at the tideline.   Suddenly Pitt's eyes were attracted by a flash of color beyond the breakers, about three hundred feet from the shoreline. It was gone in an instant, lost behind a wave crest. Pitt kept gazing with intent curiosity at the spot where the color was last visible.After the next wave rose and crested, he could see it again gleaming in the sun. The shape was undistinguishable at that distance, but there was no mistaking the bright fluorescent yellow glint.  

The smart move, Pitt deduced, would be to simply lay there and let the force of the surf bring the unknown object to him; but he pushed sound judgment from his mind, rolled to his feet, and walked slowly into the surf. When the water rose above his knees,he arched his body and dove under an approaching breaker, timing it so that he only felt the surge crash over his kicking feet. The water felt as heated as a tepid hotel room bath; the temperature was somewhere between seventy-five and seventy-eight degrees.As soon as his head cleared the surface, he began to stroke through the swirling foam, swimming easily, allowing the force of the current to carry him into deeper water.  

After several minutes, he stopped and treaded water, searching for a hint of yellow. He spotted it twenty yards to his left. He kept his eyes keyed on the strange piece of flotsam as he narrowed the gap, only losing sight of it momentarily when it droppedin the advancing troughs. Sensing that the current was pulling him too far to his right, he compensated his angle and slowly increased his strokes to avoid the dangerous threat of exhaustion.  

Then he reached out and his fingers touched a slick, cylindrical surface about two feet long, and eight inches wide, and weighing less than six pounds. Encasing the object was a yellow waterproof plastic material with U.S. Navy printed in block letterson both ends. Pitt locked his arms around it, relaxed his body, and surveyed his now precarious position some distance beyond the surf.  

He scanned the beach, searching for someone who might have seen him enter the water, but the sand was empty for miles in either direction. Pitt didn't bother to examine the steep cliffs behind the shore; it was hopeless to expect anyone to be scaling therocky slopes in the middle of the week.  

He wondered why he took such a stupid and fool-hardy risk. The mysterious yellow flotsam had given him an excuse to dare the odds, and once started, it never occurred to him to turn back. Now the merciless sea held him securely.  

For a brief moment he considered trying to swim in a straight line back to shore. But only for a brief moment. Mark Spitz might have made it, but Pitt felt certain he'd never have won all those gold medals at the Olympics while smoking a pack of cigarettesa day and consuming several shots of Cutty Sark Scotch every evening. Pitt decided to concentrate instead on beating Mother Nature at her own game.   Pitt was an old hand at rip currents and undertows; he had bodysurfed for years and knew their every trick. A man could be swept out to sea from one section of the shore, while a hundred yards away children cavorted in the diminishing waves without noticingthe slightest tug from the current. The unrelenting force of a rip current occurs when the longshore flow returns to the sea through narrow, storm-grooved valleys in offshore sandbars. Here the incoming surf changes direction and heads away from land, oftenas rapidly as four miles an hour. Now the current had nearly expended itself, and Pitt was certain he had but to swim parallel to the shoreline until he was out of the sandbars, and then head in at a different point along the beach. 

  The menace of sharks was his only worry. The sea's murder machines didn't always signal their presence with a water-slicing fin. They could easily attack from beneath with no warning, and without a face mask Pitt would never know when the slashing bitewas coming, or from what direction. He could only hope to reach the safety of the surf before he was placed on the menu for lunch. Sharks, he knew, seldom ventured close to shore because the swirling turbulence of heavy wave action forced sand through theirgills; this discouraged all but the hungriest from a handy meal.  

There was no thought of conserving his energy now; he struggled through the water as if every man-eater in the Pacific Ocean was on his tail. It took nearly fifteen minutes of vigorous swimming before the first wave nudged him toward the beach. Nine morebreakers marched by; the tenth caught the buoyancy of the cylinder and held it, carrying Pitt to within twelve feet of the tideline. The instant his knees touched sand again, he rose drunkenly like an exhausted shipwrecked sailor and staggered out of the water,dragging his prize behind him. Then he dropped thankfully onto the sun-warmed sand.  

Wearily, Pitt turned his attention to the cylinder. Underneath the plastic covering was an unusual aluminum canister. The sides were ribbed with several small rods that resembled miniature railroad tracks. One end held a screw cap, so Pitt began twisting,intrigued by the great number of revolutions, before it finally dropped off in his hand. Inside was a tight roll of several papers, nothing else. He gently eased them into the daylight and began studying the hand-written manuscript exactingly penned among titledcolumns and lines.  

As he read over the pages, an ice-chill hand touched his skin, and in spite of the ninety-degree heat, goose-flesh broke out over his body. More than once he tried to draw his eyes away from the pages, but was stunned by the enormity of what he held inhis hands.  

Pitt sat and gazed vacantly out over the ocean for a full ten minutes after he read the last sentence in the...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553593455
ISBN 13 
9780553593457
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Europaallee 1
Bad Hersfeld
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