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  On the ground behind the levee, Griffin sat on his knees in helpless rage, holding a shattered wrist, watching the helicopter struggle like a great mortally wounded bird. The fuselage was so riddled by holes he couldn't believe anybody onboard was still alive.

  He watched the craft slowly die, dragging a long trail of smoke as it faltered and limped upriver, barely clearing a grove of trees along the bank and disappearing from sight.

  SANDECKER SAT IN EmmErr's PRIVATE OFFICE at FBI headquarters and chewed on a cigar stub, his thoughts depleted. Brogan nervously juggled a half-empty cup of coffee that had long since turned cold.

  General Metcalf walked in and sat down. "You all look like pallbearers," he said with forced cheerfulness.

  "Isn't that what we are?" said Brogan. "As soon as the Senate convicts, all that's left to do is hold the wake."

  "I've just come from the Senate reception room," Metcalf said.

  "Secretary Oates is buttonholing members of the President's party, trying to persuade them to hold off."

  "What are his chances?" asked Sandecker.

  "Nil. The Senate is only going through the formality of a trial.

  Four hours from now, it will all be over."

  Brogan shook his head disgustedly. "I hear Moran has Chief justice O'Brien standing by to administer the oath."

  "The oily bastard won't waste a second," Emmett muttered.

  "Any word from Louisiana?" Metcalf asked.

  Emmett gave the general a negative look. "Not for an hour. The last report from my agent in charge of the field office said he was making a sweep of a promising dock site."

  "Any concrete reason to believe Margolin is hidden in the delta?"

  "Only a stab in the dark by my special projects director," replied Sandecker.

  Metcalf looked at Emmett. "What are you doing about the Bougainvilles?"

  "I've assigned nearly fifty agents to the case."

  "Can you make an arrest?"

  "A waste of time. Min Koryo and Lee Tong would be back on the streets in an hour."

  "Surely there must be enough evidence."

  "Nothing the Attorney General can sink his teeth into. Most of their illegal operations are managed outside our borders in Third World nations that aren't overly friendly toward the United States-"

  The phone buzzed.

  "Emmett."

  "Agent Goodman in communications, sir."

  "What is it, Goodman?"

  "I have contact with agent Griffin in Louisiana."

  "About time," Emmett snapped impatiently. "Put me through."

  "Hold on." There was a pause broken by an audible click, and then Emmett heard the sound of labored breathing. He switched on the speaker amplifier so the others could hear.

  "Griffin, this is Sam Emmett, can you hear me?"

  "Yes, sir, very clearly." The words seemed uttered in pain. "We ran . . . ran into trouble."

  "What happened?"

  "We spotted a Bougainville cargo ship tied to a pier beside a barge and towboat about seventy miles below New Orleans.

  Before my team and I could gain entry for a search, we were fired upon by heavy weapons mounted on the ship. Everyone was hit. . . . I have two killed and seven wounded, including myself.

  It was a massacre." The voice choked and went quiet for a few moments. When it came back on the line the tone was noticeably weaker.

  "Sorry for not making contact sooner, but our communications gear was shot out and I had to walk two miles before I could find a telephone."

  Emmett's face took on a compassionate look. The thought of a badly wounded man trailing blood for two miles in the scorching heat of summer stirred his normally rock-hard emotions.

  Sandecker moved closer to the speaker. "What of Pitt and Giordino?"

  "The NUMA people and one of my agents were flying surveillance in our helicopter," Griffin answered. "They got the hell shot out of them and crashed somewhere upriver. I doubt there were any survivors."

  Sandecker stepped back, his expression gone lifeless.

  Emmett leaned over the speaker. "Griffin?"

  His only reply was a vague muttering.

  "Griffin, listen to me. Can you go on?"

  "Yes, sir. . . . I'll try."

  "The barge, what is the situation with the barge?"

  "Tug . . . tug pushed it away."

  "Pushed it where?"

  "Downriver . . . last seen going toward Head of Passes."

  "Head of Passes?"

  "The bottom end of the Mississippi where the river splits into three main channels to the sea," answered Sandecker. "South Pass, Southwest Pass, and Pass a Loutre. Most major shipping uses the first two."

  "Griffin, how long since the barge left your area?"

  There was no answer, no buzzing of a broken connection, no sound at all.

  "I think he's passed out," said Metcalf.

  "Help is on the way. Do you understand, Griffin?"

  Still no reply.

  "Why move the barge out to sea?" Brogan wondered aloud.

  "No reason I can think of," said Sandecker.

  Emmett's phone buzzed on his interoffice line.

  "There's an urgent call for Admiral Sandecker," said Don Miller, his deputy director.

  Emmett looked up. "A call for you, Admiral, if you wish, you can take it in the outer office."

  Sandecker thanked him and stepped into the anteroom, where Emmett's private secretary showed him to a telephone at an empty desk.

  He punched the blinking white button. "This is Admiral Sandecker."

  "One moment, sir," came the familiar voice of the NUMA headquarters' chief operator.

  "Hello?"

  "Sandecker here. Who's this?"

  "You're a tough nut to crack, Admiral. If I hadn't said my call concerned Dirk Pitt, your secretary would never have arranged our connection.

  "who is this?" Sandecker demanded again.

  "My name is Sal Casio. I'm working on the Bougainville case with Dirk."

  Ten minutes later, when Sandecker walked back into Emmett's office, he appeared stunned and shaken. Brogan instantly sensed something was wrong.

  "What is it?" he asked. "You look like you've rubbed shoulders with a banshee."

  "The barge," Sandecker murmured quietly. "The Bougainvilles have struck a deal with Moran. They're taking it out into the open sea to be scuttled."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Loren Smith and Vince Margolin are sentenced to die so Alan Moran can be President. The barge is to be their tomb in 70 fathoms of water."

  "ANY SIGN OF PURSUIT?" the river pilot asked, synchronizing the control levers of the helm console with the finesse of a conductor leading an orchestra.

  Lee Tong stepped back from the large open window at the rear of the pilothouse and lowered the binoculars. "Nothing except a strange cloud of black smoke about two or three miles astern."

  "Probably an oil fire."

  "Seems to be following."

  "An illusion. The river has a habit of doing weird things to the eyes. What looks to be a mile away is four. Lights where no lights are supposed to be. Ships approaching in a channel that fade away as you get closer. Yes, the river can fool you when she gets playful."

  Lee Tong gazed up the channel again. He had learned to tune out the pilot's never-ending commentary on the Mississippi, but he admired his skill and experience.

  Captain Kim Puion was a longtime professional river pilot for Bougainville Maritime Lines, but he still retained his Asian superstitious nature. He seldom took his eyes off the channel and the barge ahead as he expertly balanced the speeds of the four engines generating 12,000 horsepower and delicately guided the towboat's four forward rudders and six backing rudders. Under his feet the huge diesels pounded over at full power, driving the barge through the water at nearly sixteen miles an hour, straining the cables that held the two vessels together.

  They hurtled past an inbound Swedish oil tanker, and Lee Tong braced himself as the barge an
d towboat swept up and over the wash.

  "How much further to deep water?"

  "Our hull passed from fresh to salt about ten miles back. We should cross the coastal shallows in another fifty minutes."

  "Keep your eyes open for a research ship with a red hull and flying the British blue ensign."

  "We're boarding a Royal Navy ship after we scuttle?" Pujon asked in surprise.

  "A former Norwegian merchantman," explained Lee Tong. "i purchased her seven years ago and refitted her out as a research and survey vessel-a handy disguise to fool customs authorities and the Coast Guard."

  "Let us hope it fools whoever chases after us."

  Lee Tong grunted. "Why not? Any American search force will be told we were picked up and are under lock and key by the finest English accent money can buy. Before the research ship docks in New Orleans, you, I and our crew will be long gone."

  Pujon pointed. "The Port Eads light coming up. We'll be in open water soon."

  Lee Tong nodded in grim satisfaction. "If they couldn't stop us by now, they're too late, far too late."

  General Metcalf, laying his long and distinguished career on the line, ignored Moran's threats and ordered a military alert throughout the Gulf Coast states. At Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field in Florida, tactical fighter wings and special operations gunships scrambled and thundered west while attack squadrons rose from Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas and swept toward the east.

  He and Sandecker raced by car to the Pentagon to direct the rescue operation from the war room. Once the vast machine was set into motion, they could do little but listen to reports and stare at an enormous satellite photomap thrown on the screen by a rear projector.

  Metcalf failed to conceal his apprehension. He stood uneasily rubbing his palms together, peering at the lights on the map indicating the progress of the air strike as the planes converged on a circle lit in red.

  "How soon before the first planes arrive?" asked Sandecker.

  "Ten, no more than twelve minutes."

  "Surface craft?"

  "Not less than an hour," replied Metcalf bitterly. "We were caught short. No naval craft are in the immediate area except a nuclear sub sixty miles out in the gulf."

  "Coast Guard?"

  "There's an armed rescue-response cutter off Grand Island. it might make it in time."

  Sandecker studied the photomap. "Doubtful. it's thirty miles away."

  Metcalf wiped his hands with a handkerchief. "The situation looks grim," he said. "Except for scare tactics the air mission is useless.

  We can't send in planes to strike the towboat without endangering the barge. One is practically on top of the other."

  "Bougainville would quickly scuttle the barge in any case."

  "If only we had a surface craft in the area. At least we might attempt a boarding."

  "And rescue Smith and Margolin alive."

  Metcalf sank into a chair. "We might pull it off yet. A Navy special warfare SEAL attachment is due to arrive by helicopter in a few minutes."

  "After what happened to those FBI agents, they could be going to a slaughter."

  "Our last hope," Metcalf said helplessly. "If they can't save them, nobody can."

  The first aircraft to arrive on the scene was not a screaming jet fighter but a Navy four-engined reconnaissance plane that had been diverted from weather patrol. The pilot, a boyish-faced man in his middle twenties, tapped his co-pilot on the arm and pointed down to his left.

  "A towboat pushing one barge. She must be what all the fuss is about."

  "What do we do now?" asked the co-pilot, a narrow-jawed slightly older man with bushy red hair.

  "Notify base with the cheery news. Unless, of course, you want to keep it a secret."

  Less than a minute after the sighting report was given, a gruff voice came over the radio. "Who is the aircraft commander?"

  "I am."

  "I am, who?"

  "You go first."

  "This is General Clayton Metcalf of the Joint Chiefs."

  The pilot smiled and made a circular motion around the side of his head with an index finger. "Are you crazy or is this a gag?"

  "My sanity is not an issue here, and no, this is not a gag. Your name and rank, please."

  "You won't believe it?"

  "I'll be the judge."

  "Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant."

  "Why should I doubt you?" Metcalf laughed. "There was a great third baseman by that name."

  "My father," Grant said in awe. "You remember him?"

  "They don't hand out four stars for bad memories," said Metcalf.

  "Do you have television equipment onboard, Lieutenant?"

  "Yes . . . yes, sir,' Grant stammered as he realized who he was really talking to. "We tape storms close-on for the meteorologists."

  "I'll have my communications officer give your vineo operator the frequency for satellite transmission to the Pentagon. Keep your camera trained on the towboat."

  Grant turned to his co-pilot. "My God, what do you make of that?"

  THE TOWBOAT SUIRGED PAST THE LOOKOUT at the South Pass pilot station, the last outpost of the muddy Mississippi, and swept into the open sea.

  Captain Pujon said, "Thirty miles to deep water."

  Lee Tong nodded as his eyes studied the circling weather plane.

  Then he picked up his binoculars and scanned the sea. The only ship in sight was his counterfeit research vessel approaching from the east about eight miles off the port bow.

  "We've beaten them," he said confidently.

  "They can still blow us out of the water from the air."

  "And risk sinking the barge? I don't think so. They want the Vice President alive."

  "How can they know he's onboard?"

  "They don't, at least not for certain. One more reason they won't attack what might be an innocent towboat unloading a trash barge at sea."

  A crewman scrambled up the steps to the pilothouse and stepped through the door. "Sir," he said, pointing, "an aircraft coming up astern."

  Lee Tong swung the binoculars in the direction of the crewman's outstretched arm. A U.S. Navy helicopter was beating its way toward the towboat only fifteen feet above the waves.

  He frowned and said, "Alert the men."

  The crewman threw a salute and hurried off.

  "A gunship?" Pujon asked uneasily. "It could hover and blast us to bits without scratchinl, the barLe."

  "Fortunately no. She's an assault transport. Probably carrying a team of Navy SEALS. They mean to assault the towboat."

  Lieutenant Homer Dodds stuck his head out the side jump door of the chopper and peered down. The two vessels looked peaceful enough, he thought as a crewman stepped from the pilothouse and waved a greeting. Nothing unusual or suspicious. The armament he had been warned about was not visible.

  He spoke into a microphone. "Have you established radio contact?"

  " We've hailed on every marine frequency in the book and they don't answer," replied the pilot from the cockpit.

  "Okay, drop us over the barge.

  Roger.

  Dodds picked up a bullhorn and spoke into the mouthpiece.

  "Ahoy, the towboat. This is the U.S. Navy. Reduce speed and slow to a stop. We are coming aboard."

  Below, the crewman cupped hands to his ears and shook his head, signaling he couldn't hear above the exhaust whine of the helicopter's turbines. Dodds repeated the message and the crewman made an inviting wave of his arm. By now Dodds was close enough to see he was an Oriental.

  The speed of the towboat and barge dropped off, and they began to roll in the swells. The pilot of the helicopter played the wind and hovered over the flat deck of the barge in preparation for Dodds's assault team to jump the final three or four feet.

  Dodds turned and took a final look at his men. They were lean and hard, and probably the toughest, raunchiest, meanest bunch of multipurpose killers in the Navy. They were the only group of men Dobbs ever commanded who genuine
ly liked combat. They were eager, their weapons at the ready and prepared for anything.