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The smile turned into a sneer "That's not for you to decide

Besides, you're hardly in a position to-" Suddenly he flipped the carbine around, gripping the barrel and raising it as a club The rifle butt was on a vicious dohen Pitt squeezed the trigger and blasted Lee Tong in the throat with the barrel loaded with buckshot The carbine poised in minair and then fell fro the wall and dropping heavily to the deck

Pitt left him where he lay and threw off the cover over Loren's cocoon He gently lifted her out and carried her to the open elevator

He checked the circuit breakers and found them on, but there was still no response from the lift motors when he pressed the "up" button

He had no way of knowing the generators that provided electricity to the barge had run out of fuel and shut down, leaving only the e

Scrounging through a supply locker, he found a rope, which he tied under Loren's arh the elevator roof's trapdoor and scaled the shaft lander to the top deck of the barge

Slowly, gently, he eased Loren's body upward until she lay on the rusting deck Winded, he took a minute to catch his breath and look around The Stonewall Jackson was still burning fiercely, but the flaht with firehoses from the towboat

About twothrough the light swells toward their position, while to the south he could just make out the sail tower of a nuclear submarine

Taking a short length of the rope, Pitt tied Loren loosely to a cleat so she wouldn't roll into the sea, then he returned below

When he entered the isolation chaone

A trail of blood led up the corridor and ended at an open hatch to a storage deck below He saw no reason to waste ti murderer and turned to rescue the Vice President , Before he took two steps, a tremendous blast lifted him off his feet and hurled him face doard twenty feet away The is and the ringing in his ears prevented hi hole torn in the hull of the barge

Pitt aardly raised himself to his hands and knees and tried to orient himself Then slowly, as the haze before his eyesLee Tong had detonated an explosive charge before he died and already the water was flowing across a corridor deck

Pitt pushed himself to his feet and reeled drunkenly into the isolation chaain The Vice President looked up at hi, but before he could utter a sound, Pitt had hoisted hi toward the elevator

The water was surging around Pitts knees now, splashing up the walls He knew only seconds were left before the barge began its dive to the seabed By the time he reached the open elevator, the sea was up to his chest and he half walked, half swam inside

It was too late to repeat the rope lift procedure Furiously hetrapdoor, clasped hi the iron lander to the tiny square patch of blue sky that seemed miles away