No more wasted words came from Chief Engineer Garcia. He instantly gave the order for the engines to shut down. Soon afterward, his crew abandoned the engine room and made their way through the cargo and baggage compartments to the bow.

Garcia was the last to leave. He made certain that the generators were operating smoothly before he ducked into the nearest passageway.

"Have any ships responded to our Mayday call?" McFerrin asked Sheffield.

Sheffield stared blankly. "Mayday?"

"Didn't you give our position and request immediate assistance?"

"Yes, we must send out a call for help. . . ." Sheffield muttered vaguely.

McFerrin immediately read the incoherence in Sheffield's tone and eyes and was horrified. "Oh God, it's probably too late. The flames must have reached the radio room."

He snatched up a phone and called the radio room, but heard only static. Exhausted and in pain from his burns, McFerrin sagged despairingly against the ship's control counter. "More than two thousand people are about to burn to death or die in the water with no hope of a rescue," he murmured in solemn frustration. "And we can do nothing but join them."

Twelve miles to the south, a pair of opaline green eyes gazed into the brightening sky to the east before turning and examining the red glow on the northern horizon. Absorbed, the man stepped from the bridge wing into the pilothouse of the NUMA oceanographic survey vessel, Deep Encounter, picked up a pair of strong binoculars that were sitting on the bridge counter and returned. Slowly, deliberately, he focused the glasses and stared into the distance.

He was a tall man, three inches more than six feet, and a lean 185 pounds. His every movement seemed consciously planned. The black hair was wavy, almost shaggy, with a touch of gray beginning to show at the temples. The face was a face that knew the sea above and below. The tanned skin and the craggy features revealed a love of the outdoors. He was obviously someone who spent far more time under sun and sky than under the fluorescent lights of an office.

The early-morning tropical air was warm and humid. He wore blue denim shorts under a colorfully flowered Hawaiian aloha shirt. His narrow feet that stepped straight as a spear were strapped into sandals. It was the uniform of the day for Dirk Pitt when he was on a deep-water research project, especially when he was working within a thousand miles of the equator. As special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, he spent nine months out of each year at sea. On this expedition, the NUMA scientists were conducting a deep-water geological survey in the Tonga Trench.

After studying the glow for three minutes, he retraced his path into the pilothouse and leaned into the radio room. The radio operator on the graveyard shift looked up sleepily and said automatically, "Latest satellite weather forecast reports heavy squalls headed our way with thirty-mile-an-hour winds and ten-foot seas."