There was no time to celebrate Julia's phenomenal shot. Their situation went from bad to worse as she fired her last shell. The pilot on the last ultralight, seeing the return fire slacken and finally die, and the Chris-Craft slow considerably with smoke beginning to curl from the engine compartment, threw caution to the winds and came at them no more than five feet above the water.
The Chris-Craft was limping along at less than ten miles an hour. The race for survival was almost over. Pitt looked up and saw the Chinese gunner in the inner ultralight. The eyes were covered by stylish sunglasses, and his lips stretched in a tight grin. He waved a salute and lifted his weapon, finger tightening on the trigger.
In a final act of defiance, Pitt shook his fist in the air and raised the third digit. Then he threw his body over Julia and the two children in what he knew was a futile effort to use his body as a shield. He tensed, waiting for the bullets to tear into his back.
11
THE OLD MAN with the scythe, to Pitt's great relief, either decided he had urgent business at a catastrophe elsewhere, or Pitt wasn't worth taking and threw him back. The bullets Pitt expected to feel plowing through his flesh never came because they were never fired.
He firmly believed the last sound he was about to hear in this life was the soft report of a suppressed machine pistol. Instead, the rapid beat of rotor blades reverberated in the air, rotor blades whirling at top speed, drowning out the exhaust and unpleasant noises from inside the big Chrysler. With a thundering roar accompanied by a great gust of wind that flattened every hair on every head, a huge shadow flashed over the Chris-Craft. Before anyone comprehended what was happening, a big turquoise helicopter with the letters NUMA painted on its tail boom, swept down the river straight at the yellow ultralight like an avenging hawk swooping on a canary.
"Oh God no!" Julia moaned.
"Never fear!" Pitt shouted jubilantly. "This one's on our side."
He recognized the McDonnell Douglas Explorer, a fast, no-tail rotor helicopter with twin engines and a top speed in excess of 170 miles an hour, as a craft he'd often flown. The forward fuselage looked like those on most rotorcraft, but the tail boom, with its dual vertical stabilizers, extended to the rear like a thin corona cigar.
"Where did it come from?"
"My ride showed up early," Pitt said, swearing to put the pilot in his will.
Every pair of eyes in the runabout and on the remaining ultralight were trained on the intruder as it charged through the air. Two figures could be seen through the transparent bow of the helicopter. The copilot was wearing a baseball cap turned backward and peered through horn-rim glasses. The pilot wore a reed hat like those woven on tropical beaches and a brightly flowered Hawaiian aloha shirt. A gargantuan cigar was clenched between his teeth.
Kung Chong was no longer grinning. His expression was one of abject shock and fear. It flashed through his mind that the new bully on the playground wasn't about to back off. He took stock and saw that the runabout, though barely making headway, would soon reach the mouth of the river leading into Grapevine Bay. From his height he could already see a small fleet of fishing boats heading out to sea around the final bend in the river. Houses on the outskirts of a town perched along the shoreline. People walked along the beaches. His chance for terminating the escaped immigrants and the devil responsible for the chaos at Orion Lake had evaporated. Kung Chong had no choice but to order his pilot to break off the attack. In an attempt to dodge its attacker, the ultralight pulled up sharply and curled a turn so tight its wing tipped on a vertical angle.
The pilot of the NUMA helicopter had been there before. He easily second-guessed his opponent. There was never a flicker of pity or indecision. The face was expressionless as he easily matched the ultralight's steep turn and closed the distance between them. Then came a crunching sound as the landing skids of the helicopter ripped through the ultralight's flimsy wing.
The men in the open seats froze as their craft twisted in maddened torment, seeking desperately, hopelessly to cling to the sky. Then the shredded wing folded in the middle, and the little craft dove and crashed into a shoreline filled with large rocks. There was no explosion, as only a small cloud of dust and debris sprayed the air. All that remained was a distorted mass of wreckage with two bodies fused amid the shattered struts and tubing.
The helicopter hovered over the crippled Chris-Craft as the pilot and the man sitting in the copilot's seat both leaned out the cockpit windows and waved.
Julia waved back and threw them kisses. "Whoever those wonderful men are, they saved our lives."
"Their names are Al Giordino and Rudi Gunn."
"Friends of yours?"
"For many, many years," Pitt said, beaming like a lighthouse.
The struggling old Chrysler marine engine almost carried them to the end of their harrowing voyage, but not quite. Its bearings and pistons finally froze from lack of oil, and it gave up the ghost only two hundred yards from the dock that extended from the main street of the seaside village of Grapevine. A young teenager with an outboard boat towed the battered Chris-Craft and its weary passengers to the dock, where two men and one woman waited. None of the tourists strolling the wooden pier nor any of the local residents fishing over the railings would have guessed by the casual clothing that the three people standing at the end of the dock were INS agents about to collect a group of illegal immigrants.
"Your people?" Pitt asked Julia.
She nodded. "I've never met him but I assume one of them is the district director of investigations."
Pitt held up the little boy, made a funny face and was rewarded with a smile and a laugh. "What will happen to these people now?"
"They're illegal aliens. Under the law they must be sent back to China."
He looked at her and scowled. "After what they've endured, it would be a crime to send them back."
"I agree," said Julia. "But my hands are tied. I can fill out the required paperwork and recommend they be allowed to stay. But their final disposition is beyond my control."
"Paperwork!" Pitt nearly spat the word. "You can do better than that. The minute they step foot in their homeland, Shang's people will have them killed, and you damned well know it. They wouldn't be ali
ve if you hadn't shot down the ultralights. You know the rule, save someone's life and you're forever responsible for them. You can't wash your hands of them and not care about their fate."
"I do care," Julia said firmly. She looked at Pitt the way women usually look at men when they feel as if they're talking to the village idiot. "And I'm not about to wash my hands of them. And because it is entirely possible, as you suggest, that they might be murdered if they returned to the Chinese mainland, it goes without saying that they'll be given every opportunity to apply for political asylum. There are laws, Mr. Pitt, whether you or I like them or not. But they're for a purpose and must be followed. I promise you that if it is humanly possible for these people to become United States citizens, it shall be."