"We took casualties during the quake," he said grimly.

"How bad?" asked Pitt.

"Four injured, mostly broken bones, and one dead."

Giordino hesitated and Pitt knew.

"Mendoza?"

"One of the drums crushed her legs," Giordino explained, his voice more solemn than Pitt had ever known it. "She suffered a compound fracture. A bone splinter pierced her suit." His words died.

"The nerve agent leaked onto her skin," Pitt finished, a sense of helplessness and shock flooding through him.

Giordino nodded. "We carried her outside."

Pitt found Julie Mendoza lying on the Pilottown's stern deck.

Overhead a great cloud of volcanic ash rose into a blue sky and fortuitously drifted to the northward and away from the ship.

She lay alone and off to one side. The uninjured people were attending to the living. Only the young officer from the Catawba stood beside her, and his entire body was arching convulsively as he was being violently sick into his air filter.

Someone had removed her helmet. Her hair flared out on the rusty deck and glinted orange under the setting sun. Her eyes were open and staring into nothingness, the jaw jutting and rigin in what must have been indescribable agony. The blood was hardening as it dried in sun-tinted copper rivers that had gushed from her gaping mouth, nose and ears. It had even seeped from around the edges of her eyes. What little facial skin still showed was already turning a bluish black.

Pitts only emotion was cold rage. It swelled up inside him as he knelt down beside her and struck the deck repeatedly with his fist.

"It won't end here," He snarled bitterly. "I won't let it end here."

OSCAR LUCAS STARED MOODILY at his desktop. Everything depressed him: the acin-tasting coffee in a cold cup, his cheaply furnished government office, the long hours on his job. For the first time since he became special agent in charge of the presidential detail, he found himself longing for retirement, cross-country skiing in Colorado, building a mountain retreat with his own hands.

He shook his head to clear the fantasies, sipped at a diet soft drink and studied the plans of the presidential yacht for perhaps the tenth time.

Built in 1919 for a wealthy Philadelphia businessman, the Eagle was purchased by the Department of Commerce in 1921 for presidential use. Since that time, thirteen Presidents had paced her decks.

Herbert Hoover tossed medicine balls while onboard. Roosevelt mixed martinis and discussed war strategy with Winston Churchill.

Harry Truman played poker and the piano. John Kennedy celebrated his birthdays. Lyndon Johnson entertained the British Royal Family, and Richard Nixon hosted Leonin Brezhnev.

Designed with an old straight-up-and-down bow, the maboganytrimmed yacht displaced a hundred tons and measured 110 feet in length with a beam of twenty feet. Her draft was five feet and she could slice the water at fourteen knots.