Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt 14)

Ling T'ai leaped to her feet and cried out. "But I have no more money!"

Wong shrugged indifferently. "Then you will have to be transported back to China."

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nbsp; "No, please, I can't go back, not now!" She wrung her hands until the knuckles went white.

The chief enforcer glanced smugly at the three other men, who sat like stone sculptures. Then his voice changed subtly. "There may be another way for you to enter the States."

"I will do anything," Ling T'ai pleaded.

"If we put you ashore, you will have to work off the rest of your passage fee. Since you can hardly speak English it will be impossible for you to find employment as a schoolteacher. Without friends or family you'll have no means of support. Therefore, we will take it upon ourselves to generously provide you with food, a place to live and an opportunity for work until such time as you can subsist on your own."

"What kind of work do you mean?" asked Ling T'ai hesitantly.

Wong paused, then grinned evilly. "You will engage in the art of satisfying men."

This then was what it was all about. Ling T'ai and most of the other smuggled aliens were never intended to be allowed to roam free in the United States. Once they landed on foreign soil, they were to become indentured slaves subject to torture and extortion.

"Prostitution?" Horrified, Ling T'ai shouted angrily, "I will never degrade myself!"

"A pity," said Wong impassively. "You are an attractive woman and could demand a good price."

He rose to his feet, stepped around the table and stood in front of her. The smirk on his face suddenly vanished and was replaced with a look of malice. Then he pulled what looked like a stiff rubber hose from his coat pocket and began lashing at her face and body. He stopped only when he began to break out in sweat, pausing to grip her chin with one hand, staring into her battered face. She moaned and pleaded with him to stop.

"Perhaps you've had a change of mind."

"Never," she muttered through a split and bleeding lip. "I will die first."

Then Wong's narrow lips curled into a cold smile. His arm was raised and then came down in a vicious swing as the hose caught her on the base of the skull. Ling T'ai was enveloped in blackness.

Her tormentor returned to the table and seated himself. He picked up a phone and spoke into the mouthpiece. "You may remove the woman and place her with those going to Orion Lake."

"You do not think she can be converted into a profitable piece of property?" said a heavy-bodied man at the end of the table.

Wong shook his head as he looked down on Ling T'ai, lying bleeding on the floor. "There is something about this woman I do not trust. It is best to play safe. None of us dare to incur the wrath of our esteemed superior by jeopardizing the enterprise. Ling T'ai will get her wish to die."

An elderly woman, who said she was a nurse, tenderly dabbed a wet cloth on Ling T'ai's face, cleaning away the caked blood and applying disinfectant from a small first-aid kit. After the old nurse finished tending the injuries, she moved off to console a young boy who was whimpering in his mother's arms. Ling T'ai half opened the eye that was only mildly swollen and fought off a sudden wave of nausea. Though suffering agonizing pain that erupted from every nerve ending, her mind was unmistakenly clear on every aspect of how she came to be in this predicament.

Her name was not Ling T'ai. The name on her American birth certificate read Julia Marie Lee, born in San Francisco, California. Her father had been an American financial analyst based in Hong Kong when he met and married the daughter of a wealthy Chinese banker. Except for dove-gray eyes under the brown contact lenses, she had favored her mother, who passed on beautiful blue-black hair and Asian facial features. Nor was she a schoolteacher from Jiangsu Province in China.

Julia Marie Lee was a special undercover agent for the International Affairs Investigations Division of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. By posing as Ling T'ai, she had paid a representative of an alien-smuggling syndicate in Beijing the equivalent of $30,000 in Chinese currency. Becoming part of the human cargo with its built-in misery, she compiled a wealth of information on the syndicate's activities and methods of operation.

Once she was smuggled on shore, her plan was to contact the field office of the assistant district director of investigations in Seattle, who was prepared and waiting for information to arrest the smugglers within territorial limits and break up the syndicate's pipeline into North America. Now her fate was uncertain, and she saw no avenue of escape.

Through some untapped reservoir of fortitude she did not know she possessed, Julia had somehow survived the torture. Months of hard training had never prepared her for a brutal beating. She cursed herself for choosing the wrong course. If she had meekly accepted her fate, her plan to escape would have most likely been achieved. But she thought that by playing the role of a frightened but proud Chinese woman she could have deceived the smugglers. As it turned out, it was a mistake. She realized now that any sign of resistance was shown no mercy. Many of the men and women, she began to see in the dim light, were also badly beaten.

The more Julia thought about her situation, the more she became certain she and everyone in the cargo hold around her were going to be murdered.

2

THE OWNER of the small general store at Orion Lake, ninety miles due west of Seattle, turned slightly and peered at the man who opened the door and stood momentarily on the threshold. Orion Lake was off the beaten track to most traffic, and Dick Colburn knew everyone in this rugged area of the Olympic Peninsula mountains. The stranger was either a tourist passing through or a fisherman from the city trying his luck with either the salmon or trout stocked in the nearby lake by the Forest Service. He wore a short leather jacket over an Irish knit sweater and corduroy pants. No hat covered a mass of wavy black hair that was streaked gray at the temples. Colburn watched as the stranger stared unblinkingly at the shelves and display cases before stepping inside.

Out of habit Colburn studied the man for a few moments. The stranger was tall; his head cleared the top of the door by less than three fingers. Not the face of an office worker, Colburn decided. The skin was too tan and craggy for a life spent indoors. The cheeks and chin were in need of a shave. The body seemed thin for the frame. There was the unmistakable look about him of a man who had seen too much, who had suffered hardship and grief. He appeared tired, not physically tired, but emotionally used up, someone who cared little about life anymore. It was almost as if he had been tapped on the shoulder by death but had somehow shrugged him off. Yet there was a quiet cheerfulness in the opaline-green eyes that broke through the haggard features, and an obscure sense of pride.

Colburn concealed his interest well and went about his business of stocking the shelves. "Can I help you with anything?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Just dropped by to pick up a few groceries," replied the stranger. Colburn's store was too small for shopping carts, so he picked up a basket, slinging the carrying handles over one arm.