Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

"Let's try for the village there," he said, pointing an oar in the direction of the lights, which were about two miles downstream. "If we swim directly across the river, the current should carry us pretty close." "Whatever entails the least swimming."

Unbeknownst to both was the fact that the Korean demarcation line ran through this section of the Han River delta. The twinkling lights downriver were not a village at all but a heavily garrisoned North Korean military patrol boat base.

Any further contingency planning was suddenly dashed by the abrupt roar of the high-speed catamaran as it burst out of the inlet. A pair of bright spotlights flared from beside the wheelhouse, sweeping back and forth rapidly across the water. It would be only seconds before one of the beams fell on the small white skiff heading across the river.

"Time to exit stage right," Dirk said, swinging the boat around so that the bow pointed downstream. Summer quickly slipped over the

side followed by Dirk, who hesitated a moment, flinging a pair of life jackets out away from the boat before he rolled into the water.

"Let's angle across and slightly upriver to put as much distance as possible between us and the drifting boat," he said.

"Right. We'll surface for air at the count of thirty."

The clatter of machine-gun fire suddenly tore through the night air while a seam like spray of bullets slapped into the water a few yards in front of them. One of the spotlights had found the skiff and a guard opened fire as the catamaran raced toward it.

In unison, Dirk and Summer ducked under the water, kicking down to a depth of four feet before angling into the current. The powerful flow of the river made them feel like they were swimming in place as they inched their way toward mid-river Gaining ground upriver was hopeless as the current overpowered them, but it pushed them downstream at a much slower pace than the drifting skiff.

The deep pulsations of the catamaran's diesel engines resonated through the water and they could feel the boat as it approached the skiff. Counting time with each breaststroke, Dirk hoped that Summer would not get separated from him in the darkness. Swimming at night in the black water, their only indication of direction was the tug of the river's current. As he approached the count of thirty, he eased slowly to the surface, breaking the water with barely a ripple.

Just ten feet away, Summer's face emerged from the water and Dirk could hear her breathing deeply. Glancing briefly at each other, then back toward the skiff, they quickly gulped a deep swallow of fresh air and resubmerged, kicking back into the river current for another count of thirty.

The quick glimpse Dirk made toward the skiff was a reassuring one. Kang's catamaran had barreled in on the skiff from upriver with guns blazing and was now creeping up close to assess the damage. No one on board had bothered to look across the river, assuming that Dirk and Summer were still in the boat. In their brief time in the water, they

had already established a separation of nearly a hundred meters from the skiff.

As the catamaran approached the drifting boat, Tongju ordered his gunmen to cease firing. There was no sign of the two escapees, whom Tongju expected to find sprawled dead in the bottom of the bullet-ridden boat. Looking down from the upper deck of the catamaran, Tongju cursed to himself as they pulled alongside and shined a light into the skiff. The small boat was completely empty.

"Search the surrounding water and shoreline," he ordered crisply. The catamaran circled around the skiff while the spotlights were splayed across the water, all eyes peering intently into the darkness. Suddenly, a gunman on the bow of the catamaran yelled out.

"There, in the water ... two objects!" he cried, pointing an arm off the port bow.

Tongju nodded at the words. This time they are finished, he thought with ruthless satisfaction.

After their fourth submerged interval, Dirk and Summer reunited on the surface and took a moment to rest. Fighting their way across the current, they had distanced themselves from the skiff by almost four hundred meters.

"We can swim on the surface for the time being," Dirk said between deep breaths. "Give us a chance to see what our friends are up to."

Summer followed her brother's lead and rolled onto her back, kicking into a backstroke that allowed them to watch the distant catamaran as they moved farther across the river. Kang's boat was idling near the skiff, its spotlights circling the immediate area around them. Shouting erupted from the catamaran and the boat suddenly raced downriver a short distance. Gunfire exploded again for a moment, then ceased as the boat stopped in the water.

Tongju had raced the catamaran toward the two objects spotted floating on the water and watched with disdain as his gunmen blasted away at the empty life vests that Dirk had tossed into the water. The

boat idled around the life jackets for several minutes, waiting for the two escapees to surface in case they were hiding submerged nearby, before resuming the search. Dirk and Summer struggled toward midriver as they watched the catamaran begin making a wide-circle search around the skiff and life jackets. With each loop around the still-drifting skiff, the catamaran's pilot enlarged the circle in an ever-expanding spiral.

"Won't be too many more minutes before they work their way up and out our direction," Summer lamented.

Dirk scanned the watery horizon. They had worked their way about a mile into the river but were still barely a quarter of the way across the vast waterway. They could turn back and try for the nearest shoreline, but that would entail crossing the path of the advancing catamaran. Or they could continue with their original plan of traversing the river toward the lights on the opposite shore. But fatigue was beginning to creep up on them, hastened by their long immersion in the cool water. Another three-mile swim would be a tall order, made more difficult by the repeated submergings they would have to perform to avoid Kang's boat. Whether they could in fact survive the game of cat and mouse with Tongju and his gunmen would be uncertain at best.

But there was a third option. The small vessel with the colored lights that they had earlier noticed upriver was approaching on a nearby path about a half mile away. In the darkness, Dirk had trouble identifying the boat, but it appeared to be a wooden sailing vessel of some kind. A small red sail, revealed under the white mast light to be square shaped in dimension, was raised near the bow, but the boat didn't appear to be moving much faster than the current.

Dirk gauged the path of the boat and swam another hundred yards toward the center of the river, then stopped. Summer swam past before realizing her brother had halted.

"What gives? We need to keep going," she whispered after swimming back to him.

Dirk nodded downriver toward the catamaran. The sleek vessel had

arced well out into the river as it circled downstream. He mentally calculated the trajectory of the yacht if it held its current circular course.

"They'll be within sight of us on the next upriver pass," he said quietly.