Morton realized they had merely gleaned a temporary reprieve as long they remained in the eye, but it was vital to keep up morale and assure everyone they had a fighting chance of survival, even though he didn't believe it himself.

He returned to his office and began studying charts of the Dominican Republic shoreline, attempting to predict where the Ocean Wanderer might be driven ashore. With luck they could be forced onto one of the many beaches, but most were too small, some even blasted out of the rock to build hotel resorts. His best estimate was that they had a ninety percent chance of striking rocks created out of volcanic lava many millions of years ago.

In his worst nightmare Morton could not conceive how he could remove a thousand human beings from the battered hotel and transport them safely to land while it was being bashed by giant waves against unyielding rocks.

There seemed no way of avoiding a terrible fate.

He had never felt so vulnerable, so impotent. He was rubbing his tired and reddened eyes when his communications operator burst through the door.

"Mr. Morton, help has come!" he shouted. Morton looked at him blankly.

"A rescue ship?"

The operator shook his head. "No, sir, a helicopter."

Morton's brief optimism sank. "What good is a single helicopter?"

"They radioed that they were going to lower two men onto the roof."

"Impossible." Then he realized that it was possible as long as they were in the hurricane's eye. He rushed past the operator and stepped into his private elevator, taking it to the roof of the hotel. As the doors opened and he walked out onto the roof, he was dismayed to find the entire sporting complex had been swept away, leaving nothing but the swimming pool. He was especially horrified to see that the life rafts had all vanished.

Now that he had a clear three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the inner hurricane, he stood awestruck at the sheer malevolent beauty of it all. Then he looked straight up and saw a turquoise-colored helicopter descending down on the hotel. He could see the word numa in bold letters painted on the fuselage. The aircraft paused and hovered twenty feet above the deck, as two men in turquoise jumpsuits and crash helmets were lowered by cables to the roof of the hotel. Once they disengaged, two large bundles wrapped in orange plastic came down on another cable. They quickly disconnected the hook and signaled an all clear.

A man inside the helicopter pulled up the cables on a winch and gave a thumbs-up sign as the pilot banked away from the hotel and ascended up through the hurricane's eye. Seeing Morton, the two visitors approached, easily carrying the bulky bundles.

The taller of the two removed his helmet, revealing a thick head of black hair, graying on the temples. His face was craggy from a life in the elements and his opaline green eyes, edged in mirth lines, seemed to bore into Morton's brain.

"Please take us to Mr. Hobson Morton," he said in a voice strangely calm under the circumstances.

"I'm Morton. Who are you and why are you here?"

A glove was removed and a hand extended. "My name is Dirk Pitt. I'm special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency." He turned to a short man with dark curly hair and heavy eyebrows who looked to be descended from a Roman gladiator. "This is my assistant director, Al Giordino. We came to effect a tow for the hotel."

"I was told the company tugs could not leave port."

"Not Odyssey tugs, but a NUMA research ship capable of towing a vessel the size of your hotel."

Willing to snatch at any straw, Morton motioned Pitt and Giordino into his private elevator and escorted them down to his office.

"Forgive the cold reception," he said, offering them a chair. "I was given no warning of your arrival."

"We haven't had much time to prepare," Pitt answered indifferently. "What is your current status?"

Morton shook his head bleakly. "Not good. Our pumps are barely staying ahead of the flooding, the structure is in danger of collapsing, and once we run onto the rocks surrounding the Dominican Republic" — he paused and shrugged—"then a thousand people, including yourselves, are going to die."

Pitt's face became as hard as granite. "We're not running on any rocks."

"We'll need the services of your maintenance personnel to assist us in hooking up with our ship," said Giordino.

"Where is this ship?" Morton questioned, his voice suggesting doubt.

"Our helicopter's radar put her less than thirty miles away."

Morton looked out the window at the ominous walls surrounding the hurricane's eye. "Your ship will never get here before the storm closes in again."

"Our NUMA Hurricane Center measured the eye at sixty miles in diameter and her speed at twenty miles an hour. With a little luck, she'll get here in time."

"Two hours to reach us and one to make the hookup," said Giordino, glancing at his watch.

"There is, I believe," said Morton in an official tone, "a matter of marine salvage to discuss."

"There is nothing to discuss," said Pitt, annoyed at being delayed. "NUMA is a United States government agency dedicated to ocean research. We are not a salvage company. This is not a no-cure, no-pay arrangement. If successful, our boss, Admiral James Sandecker, won't charge your boss, Mr. Specter, one thin dime."

Giordino grinned. "I might mention, the admiral has a love of expensive cigars."

Morton simply stared at Giordino. He was at a loss over how to deal with these men who had dropped from the sky unannounced and calmly informed him that they were going to save the hotel and everyone in it. They hardly looked like his salvation.

Finally, he acquiesced. "Please tell me what you gentlemen need."

The Sea Sprite refused to die. She went deeper than anyone could have believed a ship would dive and live. Totally immersed, her bow and stern buried deeply in the water, no one thought she could come back. For agonizing seconds, she seemed to hang suspended in the gray-green void. Then slowly, laboriously, her bow began to rise fractionally as she struggled defiantly back toward the surface. Then her thrashing screws dug in and propelled her forward. At last she burst into the fury of the storm again, her bow thrusting above the water like a porpoise. Her keel crashed down, jolting every plate in her hull that was weighted down with tons of water that flowed across her decks and cascaded back into the sea. The demonic gale had thrown her worst punch at the tough little ship and she had survived the boiling cauldron. Time and again she had suffered the great swirling mass of wind and water. It was almost as if Sea Sprite had a human determination about her, knowing without reservation that there was nothing left the sea could throw at her that she couldn't brush aside.

Marverick stared through the pilothouse windshield that had miraculously failed to shatter, his face white as a lily. "That was macabre," he said in a classic understatement. "I had no idea I'd signed aboard a submarine."

No other ship could have withstood such a freak occurrence and survived without sinking to the seabed. But Sea Sprite was no ordinary ship. She had been built tough to tolerate massive polar seas. The steel on her hull was far thicker than average to fight the solid mass of ice floes. But she did not escape unscathed. All but one boat had been swept away.

Gazing astern, Barnum was amazed that his communications gear had somehow survived. Those who suffered belowdecks had no inkling how close they came to ending up forever on the bottom of the sea.