Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt 14)

THE FORTY-EIGHT MEN, women and children were crammed so tightly inside the square cabin of the black boat that there was no room for anyone to sit. They all stood pressed together, breathing the stale air. The night outside the cabin was cool, but inside the body heat made it hot and stifling. The only ventilation came from a small grate in the cabin roof. A few were already unconscious, having collapsed from the terror induced by claustrophobia, but their bodies were unable to fall. Instead their heads sagged and rolled with the rocking of the boat. Everyone was strangely silent. Perhaps defeated and powerless to dictate their fate, the prisoners lapsed into a strange lethargy like those sent by the Nazis to the concentration camps in World War II.

Julia stood listening to the sound of the waves lapping against the hull of the boat and the soft beat of the twin diesel engines, wondering where she was being taken. The water was smooth now. The swells of the ocean had been left behind twenty minutes ago. She assumed they were inside a quiet bay or traveling on a river. She knew with reasonable clarity that she was back somewhere in the United States. This was her home ground. She refused to let herself become pliant, and though she was still weak and dizzy, she was determined to fight her way out of this insane predicament and survive. Too much depended on her survival. By escaping and reporting the information she had gathered on the smuggling syndicate to her superiors at INS, she could stop the ghastly suffering and killing of thousands of illegal immigrants.

In the wheelhouse above the cabinlike prison, two of the smuggling crew's four enforcers began cutting rope into short lengths while the captain, who stood at the helm, threaded his way up the Orion River in the dark. The only light came from the stars, and his eyes never strayed from the radar screen. After another ten minutes, he alerted the others to the fact that they were passing from the river into the lake. Just as the black boat was about to come under the bright lights positioned at Qin Shang's retreat, the helmsman picked up the boat's phone and spoke a few words in Chinese. Almost before he set the phone back in its cradle, the lights inside the main building and those placed around the shore blinked out, throwing the entire lake into a cloak of blackness. Guided by a small red light on a buoy, the helmsman expertly slipped the catamaran around the broad transom of Shang's magnificent yacht and came alongside the pilings on the opposite side of the dock. Two enforcers jumped clear and slipped the mooring lines over their cleats as the helmsman set the twin diesel engines on idle.

For the next three or four minutes there was no sound outside the crowded cabin. A flurry of questions, a swarm of anxieties, framed themselves in the thoughts of Julia and the illegal immigrants. But they didn't know in what order to assess them, and the continuing nightmare of their voyage still overshadowed any attempt at clear thinking. And then the door wa

s opened on the rear wall of the cabin. The fresh air that came from a breeze drifting down from the mountains seemed like a miracle. At first, all they could see outside was darkness; then an enforcer moved into the doorway.

"When you hear your name, step out onto the dock," he instructed them.

At first it was difficult for those in the middle or the back to squeeze through the overcrowded cabin, but as each body exited through the door those who remained gave a collective sigh of relief. Most of those who left the boat were poorer immigrants, the ones who could not pay the exorbitant fare to reach land, any land, so long as it didn't belong to the People's Republic of China. Unknowingly, they had signed away their souls to a life of servitude to the smugglers, who in turn sold them to criminal syndicates already established in the U.S.

Soon, only Julia, a mother and father weak from lack of food, along with their two small children, who looked like they might be suffering from rickets, and eight elderly men and women were left standing in the cabin. These were the castoffs, thought Julia, those who had been bled dry of their possessions, who had no more money to give and were too helpless and frail for any type of heavy work. These were the ones, including herself, who were not going ashore.

As if to confirm her worst fears, the door was slammed shut, the lines were cast off and the diesels were shifted into reverse, increasing their throb. It seemed as though the boat had only traveled a short distance when the engines slowed and idled again. The door was thrown open and four enforcers entered. Without a word they began binding everyone's hands and feet. Mouths were sealed with duct tape and heavy iron weights tied to their ankles. The mother and father made a feeble defense of their children but were easily subdued.

This was it then, death by drowning. Julia's whole mind, her every nerve became instantly concentrated on escaping. She sprinted toward the door, intent on reaching the outside deck and throwing herself into the water, making a swim for the nearest shore. The attempt was doomed before she hit the door. Debilitated from her beating the day before, she stumbled rather than ran, and was easily swept off her feet by one of the enforcers and knocked to the deck. She tried to fight them, pounding, scratching, biting as they bound her feet and ankles. Then the tape was adhered across her lips and the weight tied to her ankles.

She watched in icy horror as a hatch in the middle of the deck was lifted open and the first body dropped through into the water.

Pitt removed his thumb from the speed switch on the Stingray and hovered in the water ten feet below the center cabin of the catamaran. He had planned to surface between the two hulls and inspect the bottom of the boat when suddenly a light showed above him and a heavy splash broke the water followed in succession by several more.

What in God's name is happening? Pitt wondered as bodies came raining down around him. Though disbelieving at what he saw and shocked at the abhorrent sight, his reaction time was nothing short of incredible. In a series of lightning movements he released his grip on the Stingray, switched on the dive light and snatched his dive knife out of its sheath. In movements blurred in time, he began grabbing bodies, slicing the ropes binding the hands and ankles and slashing away the iron weights. Once the ropes were cut free, he pushed the body toward the surface and swam to the next one. He worked frantically, hoping against hope that none slipped past him into the black depths of the lake, never knowing at first whether the victims were already dead, but fighting to save them all regardless of his fears. Then he found they were alive when he gripped a young girl no more than ten, who stared back at him through terror-stricken eyes. She looked like she was Chinese. He prayed she could swim as he thrust her toward the night air.

At first, he kept slightly ahead of the flow of victims, but he soon struggled furiously to keep pace. Desperation was replaced with sheer anger as he saved a little boy no more than four years old. He mentally cursed the monsters who were capable of such inhumanity. Not taking any chances, he kicked his fins upward, quickly found the floating Stingray and placed the boy's arms around it. He switched off the dive light and took a quick glance at the boat to see if the crew had observed their victims popping to the surface. All on board appeared quiet. There was no hint of alarm. He dove under again, turning on the dive light. Its beam picked out what seemed to be the last body dumped from the boat. It was already falling past twenty feet when he caught up with it. This one was a young woman.

Before her turn came, Julia had breathed deeply in and out, hyperventilating her lungs, then holding her breath as the enforcers kicked her through the hatch into the water. She fought desperately to free herself from the ropes. Deeper and deeper she fell in the black void, furiously snorting through her nose to relieve the pressure building in the eustachian tubes of her ears. One minute, maybe two, and her oxygen would be gone and she'd die an agonizing death.

Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist, and she could feel the iron weight dropping away from her feet. Then her hands came free and a hand snatched her arm in a grip and began towing her upward. As her head broke the surface she winced as the tape was ripped from her mouth. The first thing she saw was an apparition in a hood with a face mask and light protruding from its head.

"Can you understand me?" a voice asked in English.

"I can understand you," she gasped.

"Are you a good swimmer?"

She only nodded her reply.

"Good. Help save as many people as you can, try and gather them into a group. Tell them to follow my light. I'll lead you all into shallow water along the shore."

Pitt left her and swam off toward the boy clutching the Stingray in a death grip. He swung the boy behind him, clasping the small hands around his neck. Then he engaged the speed switch and searched for the little girl, finding her and circling his arm around her only seconds before she was about to slip out of sight.

On board the boat two of the enforcers climbed to the wheelhouse and stepped inside. "All are drowned," one said to the helmsman. "Our job is done."

The captain at the helm nodded and gently pushed the twin throttles forward. The propellers bit the water, and the black catamaran began to move back toward the dock. Before it had traveled a hundred feet, a call came over the boat's phone.

"Chu Deng?"

"This is Chu Deng," the captain responded.

"Lo Han, chief of compound security. Why are you ignoring your instructions?"

"I have followed the plan. All immigrants are disposed of. What is your problem?"

"You are showing a light."

Chu Deng stepped from the wheel and glanced over the boat. "You ate too much spicy Szechuan chicken for dinner, Lo Han. Your stomach is telling lies to your eyes. There are no lights showing on this boat."