Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler Page B

dire report. He sensed something terribly wrong with the aerodynamics. The plane was not responding to his physical commands. All response was extremely sluggish. It was as if a giant rope with a weight was pulling the starboard wing from behind.
    At last he brought Gertie into level flight. Only then did Boozer’s words come home to him. It was the loss of the engine, torn from its mountings by the violent assault of the storm that threw the Orion out of control and was causing the starboard drag. He leaned forward and stared past Boozer.
    Where the Allison turboprop engine had been attached to the wing was now an empty gap with twisted and torn mountings, severed hydraulic, oil and fuel lines, mangled pumps and electrical wiring. It shouldn’t have happened, thought Barrett, incredulous. Engines simply did not drop off aircraft, not even under the worst turbulence. Then he counted nearly thirty empty, tiny holes in the wing where the rivets had popped out. His foreboding grew as he saw several cracks in the stressed aluminum skin.
    A voice from the main compartment came over his headphones. “We have injuries back here and most of the equipment is damaged and malfunctioning.”
    â€œThose who are able, tend to the injured. We’re heading for home.”
    â€œIf we can make it,” Boozer said pessimistically. He pointed out Barrett’s side window. “We have a fire in number three.”
    â€œShut it down!”
    â€œIn the process,” Boozer answered calmly.
    Barrett was tempted to call his wife and say goodbye, but he was far from giving up. Getting sorely wounded Gertie and her scientists out of the storm and safely back to land would take a miracle. He began to mutter a prayer under his breath as he used every fraction of his experience to fly the Orion through the vortex into calm air. If they escaped the worst of the chaos the rest would take care of itself.
    After twenty minutes the wind and rain began to diminish and the clouds lightened. Then, just as he thought they were through the clouds, Lizzie threw one more punch and sent a wind blast that struck the Orion’s rudder a punishing blow and crippled what little control Barrett and Boozer had.
    All bets on a successful attempt to reach home were now off.

8
    M OST OF THE time, the oceans appear to be at rest. Unending waves no higher than the head of a German shepherd give the image of a sleeping giant, the surface of his chest slowly rising and falling with each breath. It is an illusion that beguiles the unwary. Sailors could fall asleep in their berths with clear skies and calm seas and wake up to a frenzied sea that quickly swept over thousands of square miles, engulfing every vessel in its path.
    Hurricane Lizzie had all the ingredients for unmitigated disaster. If she looked nasty by morning, she was downright rotten by noon, and a shrieking hellion by evening. Two-hundred-and-twenty-mile-an-hour winds soon passed two hundred and fifty. They hurled and whipped the once-flat water into a giant turmoil that rose and fell a hundred feet between crest and trough as it advanced relentlessly toward Navidad Bank and the Dominican Republic, its first landfall.
    The anchor was barely up and the Sea Sprite under way when Paul Barnum turned for perhaps the twentieth time and stared over the sea to the east. Earlier he noted no change. But this time the horizon where the tanzanite blue water met a sapphire blue sky was smudged by a dark gray streak like a distant chinook dust storm rolling over the prairie.
    Barnum gazed at the advancing nightmare, stunned by how rapidly it grew and began filling the sky. He had never experienced nor had he conceived that a storm could move with what seemed the speed of an express train. Even before he could program the computerized automated controls for course and speed, the storm was covering the sun in a death shroud while painting the sky the lead gray on the bottom of a well-used