Flood Tide Read online

  Two hours was all the time the crew of smugglers needed to transfer the illegal Chinese aliens onto trawlers belonging to a fishing fleet owned by Qin Shang Maritime. Manned by documented Chinese who had taken out their citizenship papers, the fleet carried out legitimate fishing operations when not transporting illegal immigrants from the mother ship to transit points in small harbors and coves along the Olympic Peninsula coast. There, buses and cargo trucks waited to carry them to destinations throughout the country.

  Julia, the last one to be taken from the cargo hold, was led roughly by an enforcer to the outer deck. She could barely walk, and he half dragged her. Ki Wong was standing by the disembarkation ramp. He held up a hand and stopped the enforcer before he could escort her down the ramp to a strange-looking black boat, bobbing in the waves beside the ship.

  "One final word, Ling T'ai," he said in a low, cold voice. "Now that you've had a chance to think over my offer, perhaps you've had a change of mind."

  "If I agree to become your slave," she murmured through her swollen lips. "What then?"

  He gave her his best jackal grin. "Why nothing. I don't expect you to become a slave. That opportunity has long since passed."

  "Then what do you want from me?"

  "Your cooperation. I'd like you to tell me who else was working with you on board the Indigo Star. "

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she muttered contemptuously.

  He stared at her and shrugged smugly. Then he reached in his coat pocket, drew out a piece of paper and pushed it at her. "Read this, and see that I was right about you."

  "You read it," she said with her last shred of defiance.

  He held the paper under a deck light and squinted his eyes. " 'The fingerprint and description you sent via satellite were analyzed and identified. The woman Ling T'ai is an INS agent by the name of Julia Marie Lee. Suggest you deal with her in an expeditious manner.' "

  If Julia had a tiny thread of hope, it was abruptly swept away. They must have taken her prints after she was battered unconscious. But how was it possible for a band of Chinese smugglers to make her ID within a few hours from any source but the FBI in Washington, D.C.? The organization had to be far more complex and sophisticated than she and the field investigators at the INS suspected. She was not about to give Wong the slightest degree of satisfaction.

  "I am Ling T'ai. I have nothing more to say."

  "Then neither do I." Wong made a gesture with his hand toward the waiting black boat. "Goodbye, Miss Lee."

  As the enforcer took her by the arm and pulled her off the counterfeit cruise ship, Julia looked back up the ramp at Wong, who still stood on the cruise ship's deck. The bastard was sneering at her. She stared up at him with pure hatred in her eyes.

  "You will die, Ki Wong," she said caustically. "You will die very soon."

  He returned her stare more out of amusement than annoyance. "No, Miss Lee. It is you who will die soon."

  7

  STILL SICKENED by what the AUV had discovered, Pitt spent the final hour of daylight staring across the lake at Qin Shang's retreat through his telescope. The maid on her rounds at the guesthouses, the same two golfers knocking balls all over the landscape-they were the only people he ever observed. Most curious, he thought. No cars or delivery trucks entered or left the grounds, nor did the security guards ever reveal themselves again. Pitt could not believe they stayed shut up in the little windowless huts day and night without relief.

  He called no one at NUMA to inform them of the grisly discovery, nor did he contact local law enforcement. He took it upon himself to attempt to uncover the mystery of how the bodies came to be carpeting the bottom of the lake. That Qin Shang was using the lake depths as a depository for his murder victims seemed obvious. But there was more to learn before he blew the whistle.

  Satisfied there was nothing more to see, he set the telescope aside and carried the second big carton sent by Yaeger into the boathouse. It was so heavy and bulky he had to use a small hand truck to roll the carton and its contents across the dock. Cutting open the lid, he removed a compact portable electric compressor and plugged its cord into an overhead light socket. Then he connected the compressor to the dual-manifold air valve on twin eighty-cubic-foot diver's air cylinders. It popped away with less noise than the exhaust of an idling car engine.

  He returned to the cabin and lazily watched the sun descend over the small range of mountains between Orion Lake and the sea. After darkness settled over the lake, Pitt ate a light dinner and then watched satellite television. At ten o'clock he made ready for bed and turned out the lights. Gambling the surveillance cameras in the cabin did not work on infrared, he stripped naked, crept outside, crawled into the water and, holding his breath, swam up inside the boathouse.

  The water was frigid, but his mind was too occupied to notice. He toweled his body dry and pulled on a one-piece Shellpro nylon-and-polyester undergarment. The compressor had automatically shut off when the cylinders were topped off with the required air pressure. He attached a U.S. Divers Micra air regulator to the manifold valve and checked the straps to the backpack. Then he climbed into a custom-made, dark gray Viking vulcanized-rubber dry suit with attached hood, gloves and traction-soled boots. He preferred the dry suit over a wet suit for better thermal protection in cold water.

  Next came a U.S. Divers military buoyancy compensator and a Sigma Systems console with depth gauge, air pressure gauge, compass and dive timer. For weights, he used an integrated system with part of the weight in the backpack and the balance on his weight belt. A dive knife was strapped to his calf and an underwater miner's-type light was slipped over his hood.

  Finally, he slung a belt that looked like an old western bandit's bandolier over one shoulder. Its holster contained a compressed air gun that fired wicked-looking barbs on short shafts. Slots in the belt held twenty barbs.

  He was in a hurry to be on his way. He had a long swim ahead of him and many things to do and see. He sat on the edge of the dock, pulled on his fins, twisted his body to prevent the air tanks on his back from snagging the boards and splashed into the water. Before diving, he vented the air out of the dry suit. He saw not the slightest reason in the world why he should physically extend himself and waste the precious air in his tanks, so he lifted a compact, battery-powered Stingray diver-propulsion vehicle from the dock, extended it out in front of him by the handgrips, pressed the FAST speed switch to its stop and was instantly propelled from under the floats of the boathouse.

  Getting his bearings on a moonless night did not present a problem. His destination across the lake was bathed in as much light as a football stadium. The brilliance lit up the surrounding forest. Why such a dazzling display of illumination? Pitt wondered. It seemed too excessive for average security purposes. Only the dock appeared devoid of lighting, but it was hardly needed, considering the radiance from shore. Pitt pushed the face mask to the top of his head and tilted the lens of the dive light backward to prevent any alert guards from spotting a reflection.

  If the surveillance cameras didn't pierce the dark with infrared, there would be a guard with night glasses pressed against his eyes, watching for night fishermen, hunters, lost Boy Scout masters or even Bigfoot. It was a sure bet he wasn't peering into the heavens at the rings of Saturn. Pitt was not overly concerned. He made too small a target to be spotted at this distance. A quarter of a mile nearer and it would be a different story.

  One of the fallacies of sneaking around in the dead of night is that black makes for the perfect concealment. Supposedly a person wearing black blends into the shadows. To some degree, yes. But because no night is totally black-there is often light from the stars-the perfect shade for near invisibility is dark gray. A black object can be distinguished against a shadowed background on a dark night, whereas gray blends in.

  Pitt knew his chances of being detected were remote indeed. Only the white of his wake, as he was pulled along at nearly three knots by the Stingray twin motors, broke the
sheer blackness of the water. After less than five minutes, he reached the midway point. He adjusted his face mask, ducked his head under the water and began breathing through the snorkel. Another four minutes put him a hundred yards from the retreat's boat dock. The work boat was still gone, but the yacht still tugged at her mooring lines.

  This was as far as he dared go on the surface. He spit out the snorkel and clamped his teeth on the mouthpiece to his breathing regulator. Accompanied by the hiss of his exhaust, he tilted the Stingray downward and dropped into the depths, leveling out about ten feet above the bottom, hovering motionless for a few moments while adding air to his dry suit to achieve neutral buoyancy, then snorting and clearing his ears from the increase of water pressure. The lights of the retreat cast a translucent glow beneath the water. Pitt felt as if the propulsion vehicle was pulling him through liquid glass coated in an eerie green. He averted his eyes from the graveyard below as visibility increased from practically nil to thirty feet the closer Pitt approached the dock. Fortunately, he could not be discerned from above because the reflection on the surface of the water caused a glare that prevented all but a very limited view of the depths.

  He decreased the Stingray's speed and moved slowly under the keel of the yacht. The hull was clean and free of any marine growth. Finding nothing of interest except a school of small fish, Pitt cautiously approached the floating log hut from which the guards on their Chinese-built personal watercraft had burst the previous afternoon. His heartbeat increased as he measured his opportunities of escape if he was discovered. They flat didn't exist. A swimmer stood little chance of outrunning a pair of personal watercraft with a top speed of thirty miles per hour. Unless they were prepared to come after him underwater, all they had to do was outwait him until he exhausted his air supply.

  He had to be very careful. There would be no light reflection on the surface inside the hut. To anyone sitting in a darkened room over calm water it would be like staring into the depths from a glass-bottomed boat. He yearned for a passing school of fish to hide among, but none appeared. This is madness, he thought. If he had an ounce of gray matter he'd make his getaway while he was yet unseen, swim back across the lake to the cabin and call the police. That's what any sane man would have done.

  Pitt felt no fear but a degree of trepidation at not knowing whether he would find himself looking up into the muzzle of an automatic rifle. But he was determined to find out why all those people had died, and he had to find out now or there would never be another chance. He drew the air gun from its holster and held it vertically, barrel and barb pointing upward. Slowly, so no sudden movement would be noticed, he released the speed switch to the Stingray's twin motors and gently kicked his fins until he eased under the floats of the hut. He peered upward through the water inside the boathouse, holding his breath so that his air bubbles would not advertise his arrival. The view looking up from less than two feet underwater was similar to gazing through six inches of gossamer.

  Except for the two watercraft, the interior appeared dark and empty. He reset the dive light on his head, surfaced and beamed it around the floating hut. The fiberglass hulls of the watercraft were set snugly between two docks that were open at the front. Once the door of the hut was thrown aside, their riders could speed directly onto the lake. He reached out, rapped the door with his fist and received a hollow sound. The logs were fake, painted on a thin sheet of plywood. With no small amount of effort, Pitt hoisted himself and his equipment onto one of the docks. He removed his air tanks, fins and weight belt, and parked them in a watercraft. The Stingray, because it was slightly buoyant, he allowed to drift beside the dock.

  Gripping the air gun, he moved quietly toward a closed door at the rear of the hut. He lightly laid his fingers on the latch, slowly turned it and eased the door open half an inch, just enough to see that it opened onto a passageway that led down a long ramp. Pitt moved like a wraith -at least he wanted to move like a wraith. His every footstep in the rubber dive boots sounded to him like the beat of a bass drum, when actually they touched the concrete floor without so much as a whisper. The ramp dropped into a narrow concrete passageway barely wide enough for Pitt's shoulders. Lit by overhead recessed lights, it appeared to lead under the water toward the shoreline. It was a reasonable assumption that the passageway extended from the boathouse to a basement below the main building. That was why it took so long for the guards who rode the watercraft to respond after the AUV was sighted. Unable to ride even a bicycle through the narrow passageway, they had to sprint nearly two hundred yards.

  A quick look to see if his movements were covered by surveillance cameras-he saw none-and Pitt cautiously began to advance along the tightly spaced walls, having to turn slightly sideways to pass through. He cursed the contractor who poured the concrete with the smaller Chinese physique in mind. The passage ended at another ramp that rose and widened through an archway. Beyond, a corridor stretched off into the distance with doors on either side.

  He moved to the first door that was slightly ajar. A glance from a wary eye through the crack revealed a low bed occupied by a sleeping man wearing a skullcap. There was a closet with hanging clothes, a dresser with several small drawers, a nightstand and lamp. One rack on a wall held a variety of weapons: a sniper's rifle with a scope, two different automatic rifles and four automatic pistols of different calibers. Pitt quickly realized that he had walked into the lions' den. This was the living quarters for the security guards.

  Voices came from another room farther down the corridor along with the pungent aroma of incense. He dropped prone and sneaked a peek across the threshold with half an eye and nose he hoped would not be as obvious low to the floor. Four Asians were seated around a table playing dominoes. Their conversation was unintelligible to Pitt. To his untrained ear the Mandarin dialect sounded like a fast pitch by a used-car dealer in a television commercial that was speeded up and played backward. Through the doors of other rooms he could hear the strange, twangy sounds that Orientals call music.

  It seemed like a good idea to move out of the area quickly. There was no way of telling when one of the unsuspecting guards might happen to step into the corridor and demand to know why a Caucasian was slinking around outside his bedroom. Pitt moved on until he found an iron spiral staircase. Still no shouts of discovery, no gunshots, no sirens or alarm bells. He was more than happy to find that Shang's security people were less concerned about trespassers on the inside than on the outside.

  The staircase rose past two levels that were empty, great open areas with no interior walls. They appeared to Pitt as if the contractor and his workers had walked off the job before it was completed. He finally reached the top landing and stopped at a massive steel door that looked like it came off a bank vault. There was no time or combination lock, only a thick horizontal handle. He stood there for a solid minute, listening intently but hearing nothing while pushing down on the handle with firm but gentle pressure. Sweat poured from his body beneath the dry suit. Swimming back to the cabin in the frigid water of the lake began to sound good to him. He decided that one quick look inside the main house and he was out of there.

  The shafts slid smoothly and silently out of their slots. Pitt hesitated for several moments before he began, ever so delicately at first, to pull open the massive door. Soon he had to exert most of his strength until it cracked enough to see beyond. What he saw was another door, but this one had bars. No cat burglar could have been half as surprised to find the house he came to rob of precious jewels and valuables was a maximum-security prison.

  This was no elegant estate built by a man with unusual taste in architecture. This had no correlation to an estate at all. The entire interior of Shang's huge house was a cell block straight out of Alcatraz. The revelation struck Pitt like a blow to the head by a meteor. The retreat built to entertain Shang's clients and business associates was a facade, he realized, a damned facade. The maid who played at making up rooms with no furniture, the two golfers who played for
all eternity -they were all frosted figures on a cake. The security that was carried to extremes was designed to keep captives in rather than intruders out. It now became obvious that the copper-tinted solar glass panes were backed by reinforced concrete walls.

  Three tiers of jail cells faced an open square with a cage mounted on columns in the center. Inside the cage, two guards in gray, unmarked uniforms monitored a bank of video screens. The upper walkways that passed by the cells were shielded from the open square by mesh screens. The cell doors were solid except for peepholes barely large enough to insert a small plate of food and a cup of water. The most hardened incarcerated criminal would have had a tough time figuring an escape route out of this place.

  There was no way for Pitt to tell how many poor souls were locked behind the doors. Nor could he guess who they were or what offense they had committed against Shang. Recalling the AUV's video of the sickening spectacle on the lake bed, he began to grasp that instead of staring at a penal colony he was staring at one huge death row.

  Pitt felt a cold chill, but sweat was trickling down his face in streams. He had overstayed his welcome. It was time to head home and blow the whistle. Very carefully, he pushed the steel door closed and locked it in place. Lucky, lucky, he thought. Only the inside door with the bars was wired to sound an alarm when opened without permission by the guards at the security monitors. He was on the fourth step going down when he heard footsteps coming up.