Inca Gold dp-12 Page 38

  Please, Mr. Pitt, you would do well not to toy with me," Sarason warned him.

  "They were hungry, so I dropped them off at a seafood restaurant in San Felipe."

  "You're lying."

  Pitt didn't take his gaze off Sarason to scan the decks of the ferry. Guns were trained on him. That was a certainty he knew without question. He stood his ground and faced Miller's killer as if he didn't have a care in the world.

  "So sue me," Pitt retorted, and laughed.

  "You're hardly in a position to be contemptuous," Sarason said coldly. "Perhaps you don't realize the seriousness of your situation."

  "I think I do," said Pitt, still smiling. "You want Huascar's treasure, and you'd murder half the good citizens of Mexico to get it."

  "Fortunately, that won't be necessary. I do admit, however, two-thirds of a billion dollars makes an enticing incentive."

  "Aren't you interested in knowing how and why we were conducting our search at the same time as yours?" asked Pitt.

  It was Sarason's turn to laugh. "After a little persuasion, Mr. Gunn and Congresswoman Smith were most cooperative in telling me about Drake's quipu."

  "Not very smart, torturing a United States legislator and the deputy director of a national science agency."

  "But effective, nonetheless."

  "Where are my friends and the ferry's crew?"

  "I wondered when you'd get around to that question."

  "Do you want to work out a deal?" Pitt didn't miss the predator's eyes staring unblinkingly in an attempt to intimidate. He stared back piercingly. "Or do you want to strike up the music and dance?"

  Sarason shook his head. "I see no reason why I should bargain. You have nothing to trade. You're obviously not a man I can trust. And I have all the chips. In short, Mr. Pitt, you have lost the game before you draw your cards."

  "Then you can afford to be a magnanimous winner and produce my friends."

  Sarason made a thoughtful shrug, raised his hand, and made a beckoning gesture. "The least I can do before I hang some heavy weights on you and drop you over the side."

  Four burly dark-skinned men, who looked like bouncers hired from local cantinas, prodded the captives from the passageway with automatic rifles, and lined them up on the deck behind Sarason.

  Gordo Padilla came first, followed by Jesus, Gato, and the assistant engineer whose name Pitt could not recall ever hearing. The bruises and dried blood on their faces showed that they had been knocked around but were not hurt seriously. Gunn had not gotten off so lightly. He had to be half dragged from the passageway. He had been badly beaten, and Pitt could see the blotches of blood on his shirt and the crude rags wrapped around his hands. Then Loren was standing there, her face drawn and her lips and cheeks swollen and puffed up as though stung by bees. Her hair was disheveled and purplish bruises showed on her arms and legs. Yet she still held her head proudly and shook off the guards' hands as they roughly pushed her forward. Her expression was one of defiance until she saw Pitt standing there. Then it turned to cruel disappointment, and she moaned in despair.

  "Oh, no, Dirk!" she exclaimed. "They've got you too."

  Gunn painfully raised his head and muttered through lips that were split and bleeding. "I tried to warn you, but. . ." His voice went too soft to be understood.

  Sarason smiled, unfeeling. "I think what Mr. Gunn means to say is that he and your crew were overpowered by my men after they kindly allowed us to board your ferry from a chartered fishing boat after begging to borrow your radio."

  Pitt's anger came within a millimeter of driving him to inflict pain on those who had brutalized his friends. He took a deep breath to regain control. He swore under his breath that the man standing in front of him would pay. Not now. But the time would surely come if he didn't try anything foolish.

  He glanced casually toward the nearest railing, gauging its distance and height. Then he turned back to Sarason.

  "I don't like big, tough men who beat up defenseless women," he said conversationally. "And for what purpose? The location of the treasure is no secret to you."

  "Then it's true," Sarason said with a pleased expression. "You found the beast that guards the gold on the top of Cerro el Capirote."

  "If you had dropped for a closer look instead of playing peekaboo in the clouds, you'd have seen the beast for yourself."

  Pitt's last words brought a flicker of curiosity to the beady eyes.

  "You were aware you were being followed?" asked Sarason.

  ` It goes without saying that you would have searched for our helicopter after our chance meeting in the air yesterday. My guess is you checked out landing fields on both sides of the Gulf last night and asked questions until someone it San Felipe innocently pointed the way to our ferry.'

  "You're very astute."

  "Not really. I made the mistake of overestimating you. I didn't think you'd act like a reckless amateur and begin mutilating the competition. An act that was completely unwarranted."

  Puzzlement filled Sarason's eyes. "What goes on here, Pitt?"

  "All part of the plan," answered Pitt almost jovially. "I purposely led you to the jackpot."

  "A barefaced lie."

  "You've been set up, pal. Get wise. Why do you think I let off Dr. Kelsey, Rodgers, and Giordino before I returned to the ferry? To keep them out of your dirty hands, that's why."

  Sarason said slowly. "You couldn't have known we were going to capture your boat before you came back."

  "Not with any certainty. Let's say my intuition was working overtime. That and the fact my radio calls to the ferry went unanswered."

  A shrewd hyenalike look slowly spread across Sarason's face. "Nice try, Pitt. You'd make an excellent writer of children's stories."

  "You don't believe me?" Pitt asked, as if surprised.

  "Not a word."

  "What are you going to do with us?"

  Sarason looked disgustingly cheerful. "You're more naive than I gave you credit for. You know full well what's going to happen to you."

  "Crowding your luck, aren't you, Sarason? Murdering Congresswoman Smith will bring half the United States law enforcement officers down around your neck."

  "Nobody will know she was murdered," he said impassively. "Your ferryboat will simply go to the bottom with all hands. An unfortunate accident that is never fully solved."

  "There is still Kelsey, Giordino, and Rodgers. They're safe and sound in California, ready to spill the story to Customs and FBI agents."

  "We're not in the United States. We're in the sovereign nation of Mexico. The local authorities will conduct an extensive investigation but will turn up no evidence of foul play despite unfounded accusations from your friends."

  "With close to a billion dollars at stake, I should have known you'd be generous in buying the cooperation of local officials."

  "They couldn't wait to sign on board after we promised them a share of the treasure," Sarason boasted.

  "Considering how much there is to go around," said Pitt, "you could afford to play Santa Claus."

  Sarason looked at the setting sun. "It's getting late in the day. I think we've chatted long enough." He turned and spoke a name that sent a shiver through Pitt. "Tupac, come and say hello to the man who made you impotent."

  Tupac Amaru stepped from behind one of the guards and stood in front of Pitt, his teeth set and grinning like a skull on a pirate's Jolly Roger flag. He had the joyful but clinical look of a butcher sizing up a slab of prime, specially aged beef.

  "I told you I would make you suffer as you made me," Amaru said ominously.

  Pitt studied the evil face with a strangely paralyzed intensity. He didn't need a football coach to diagram what was in store for him. He braced his body to begin the scheme he had formed in the back of his mind right after he had stepped out of the helicopter. He moved toward Loren, but stepped slightly sideways and inconspicuously began to hyperventilate.

  "If you are the one who harmed Congresswoman Smith, you will die as su
rely as you stand there with that stupid look on your face."

  Sarason laughed. "No, no. You, Mr. Pitt, are not going to kill anybody."

  "Neither are you. Even in Mexico you'd hang if there was a witness to your executions."

  "I'd be the first to admit it." Sarason surveyed Pitt inquiringly. "But what witness are you talking about?" He paused to sweep an arm around the empty sea. "As you can see, the nearest land is empty desert almost twenty kilometers away, and the only vessel in sight is our fishing boat standing off the starboard bow."

  Pitt tilted his head up and stared at the wheelhouse. "What about the ferryboat's pilot?"

  All the heads turned as one, all that is except Gunn's. He nodded unobserved at Pitt and then raised a hand, pointing at the empty pilothouse. "Hide, Pedro!" he cried loudly. "Run and hide."

  Three seconds were all Pitt needed. Three seconds to run four steps and leap over the railing into the sea.

  Two of the guards caught the sudden movement from the edge of their vision, whirled and fired one quick burst from their automatic rifles on reflex. But they fired high, and they fired late. Pitt had struck the water and vanished into the murky depths.

  Pitt hit the water stroking and kicking with the fervor of a possessed demon. An Olympic committee of judges would have been impressed, he must have set a new world record for the underwater dash. The water was warm but the visibility below the surface was less than a meter due to the murk caused by silt flowing in from the Colorado River. The blast of the gunfire was magnified by the density of the water and sounded like an artillery barrage to Pitt's ears.

  The bullets struck and penetrated the sea with the unlikely sound of a zipper being closed. Pitt leveled out when his hands scoured the bottom, causing an eruption of fine silt. He recalled learning during his U.S. Air Force days that a bullet's velocity was spent after traveling a meter and a half (5 feet) through water. Beyond that depth, it sank harmlessly to the seafloor.

  When the light above the surface went dark, he knew he had passed under the port side of the Alhambra's hull. His timing was lucky. It was approaching high tide and the ferryboat was now riding two meters off the bottom. He swam slowly and steadily, exhaling a small amount of air from his lungs, angling on a course astern that he hoped would bring him up on the starboard side near the big paddlewheels. His oxygen intake was nearly exhausted, and he began to see a darkening fuzziness creeping around the borders of his vision, when the shadow of the ferry abruptly ended and he could see a bright surface again.

  He broke into air 2 meters (6.5 feet) abaft of the sheltered interior of the starboard paddlewheel. There was no question of his risking exposure. It was that or drown. The question was whether Sarason's goons had predicted what his game plan would be and run over from the opposite side of the vessel. He could still hear sporadic gunfire striking the water on the port side, and his hopes rose. They weren't on to him, at least not yet.

  Pitt sucked in hurried breaths of pure air while getting his bearings. And then he was diving under the temporary safety of the ferry's huge paddlewheels. After gauging the distance, he raised a hand above his head and slowly kicked upward. His hand made contact with an unyielding wood beam. He clutched it and lifted his head above the water. He felt as if he had entered a vast barn with support beams running every which way.

  He looked up at the great circular power train that drove the big ferry through the water. It was a radial type similar in construction and action to the old picturesque waterwheels used to power flour and sawmills. Strong cast-iron hubs mounted on the drive shaft had sockets attached to wooden arms that extended outward to a diameter of 10 meters (33 feet). The ends of the arms were then bolted into long horizontal planks called floats that swung around and around, dipping into the water, pushing backward while driving the ferry forward. The entire unit and its mate on the opposite side were housed in giant hoods set inside the ferry's hull.

  Pitt hung on to one of the floats and waited as a small school of nosy spotted sand bass circled around his legs. He was not completely out of the woods yet. There was an access door for crewmen to perform maintenance on the paddlewheel. He decided to remain in the water. A sane mind dictated that it would be a big mistake to be caught in the act of climbing up the wooden arms by some tough customer who burst through the access door with an itchy trigger finger. Better to be in a position to duck under the water at the first sound of entry.

  He could hear footsteps running on the auto deck above, accented by an occasional burst of gunfire. Pitt couldn't see anything, but he didn't need a lecture to know what Sarason's men were doing. They were roving around the open decks above, shooting at anything that vaguely resembled a body under the water. He could hear voices shouting, but the words came muffled. No large fish within a radius of 50 meters (164 feet) survived the bombardment.

  The click of the lock on the access door came as he had expected. He slipped deeper into the water until only half his head was exposed but he was still hidden to anyone above by one of the huge floats.

  He could not see the unshaven face that peered downward through the paddlewheel at the water, but this time he heard a voice loud and clear from behind the intruder at the door, a voice he had come to know too well. He could feel the hairs stiffen on the nape of his neck at hearing the words spoken by Amaru.

  "See any sign of him?"

  "Nothing down here but fish," grunted the searcher in the access door, catching sight of the spotted sand bass.

  "He didn't surface away from the ship. If he's not dead, he must be hiding somewhere underneath the ship."

  "Nobody hiding down here. A waste of energy to bother looking. We put enough lead into him to use his corpse for an anchor."

  "I won't feel satisfied until I see the body," said Amaru in a businesslike tone.

  "You want a body," said the gunman, pulling back through the access door, "then drag a grappling hook h rough the silt. That's the only way you'll ever see him again."

  "Back to the forward boarding ramp," Amaru ordered. "The fishing boat is returning."

  Pitt could hear the diesel throb and feel the beat of the fishing boat's propellers through the water as it pulled alongside to take off Samson and his mercenary scum. Pitt wondered vaguely what his friends would say to him for running out on them even though it was a desperate measure to save their lives.

  Nothing was going according to plan. Sarason was two steps ahead of Pitt.

  Already Pitt had allowed Loren and Gunn to suffer at the hands of the art thieves. Already he'd stupidly done nothing while the crew and ferryboat were captured. Already he'd given away the secret to Huascar's treasure. The way he was handling events, Pitt wouldn't have been surprised if Sarason and his cronies elected him chairman of the board of Solpemachaco.

  Nearly an hour passed before he sensed the sounds of the fishing boat die in the distance. This was followed by the beating rotor of a helicopter lifting off the ferry, indisputably the NUMA helicopter. Pitt cursed. Another gift to the criminals.

  Darkness had fallen and no lights reflected on the water. Pitt wondered why the men on the upper decks had taken so long to evacuate the vessel. His absolute conviction was that one or more would be left behind to take care of him in the event the dead came back to life. Amaru and Samson could not kill the others unless they knew with cold certainty that Pitt was dead and could tell no tales to the authorities, especially the news media.

  Pitt could feel apprehension in his chest like a stone tied to his heart. He was at a distinct disadvantage. If Loren and Rudi had been removed from the Alhambra, he had to get ashore somehow and inform Giordino and the Customs officials in the U.S. border town of Calexico of the situation. And what of the crew? Caution dictated that he must be certain Amaru and his friends were no longer on board. If one of them stayed behind to see if he was only playing dead, they could wait him out. They had all the time in the world. He had practically none.

  He pushed away from the float, curled over and div
ed under the hull. The bottom silt seemed closer to the keel than he remembered from his earlier dive. It didn't seem logical until he passed under a bilge exhaust pipe and felt a strong pull of suction. Pitt didn't have to be told that the seacocks in the bilge had been opened. Amaru was scuttling the Alhambra.

  He turned and swam slowly toward the end of the ferryboat where he had left the helicopter. He took the risk of being seen by surfacing briefly alongside the hull beneath the deck overhang to take another breath. After nearly an hour and a half's immersion, he felt waterlogged. His skin looked like that of a shriveled old man of ninety-five. He did not feel overly fatigued, but he sensed his strength was reduced by a good 20 percent. He slipped under the hull again and made for the shallow rudders fitted on the end. They soon loomed out of the murky water. He reached out and gripped one and slowly raised his face out of the water.

  No leering face stared back, no guns aimed between his eyes. He hung on to the rudder and floated, relaxing and building back his strength. He listened, but no sound came from the auto deck above.

  Finally, he pulled himself up far enough to lift his eyes over the raised edge of the entry/exit ramp. The Alhambra was in complete darkness with neither interior nor exterior lights showing. Her decks appeared still and lifeless. As he suspected, the NUMA helicopter was gone. The tingling fear of the unknown traveled up his spine. Like an old fort on the western frontier before a surprise attack by the Apaches, it was far too quiet.

  This wasn't one of his better days, Pitt thought. His friends were captured and held hostage. They might be dead. A thought he refused to dwell on. He'd lost another NUMA aircraft. Stolen by the very criminals he was supposed to entice into a trap. The ferryboat was sinking beneath him and he was dead certain one or more killers were lurking somewhere on board to exact a terrible revenge. All in all he'd rather have been in East St. Louis.

  How long he hung on the rudder he couldn't be sure. Maybe five minutes, maybe fifteen. His eyes were accustomed to the dark, but all he could see inside the big auto deck was the dim reflection of the chrome bumpers and radiator grill of the Pierce Arrow. He hung there waiting to see a movement or hear the faint sound of stealth. The deck that stretched into the gaping cavern looked frightening. But he had to enter it if he wanted a weapon, he thought nervously, any weapon to protect himself from men who intended to turn him into sushi.