Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt 14)

"I'm flattered." Harper shook Julia's outstretched hand and was surprised at the firmness of her grip. "You've had a tough time of it," he said. "Commissioner Monroe sends his congratulations and thanks, and wishes me to say that the Service is proud of your performance."

He makes it sound as if I was taking a curtain call after a play, Julia thought. "But for one man, I wouldn't be here to receive the compliment."

"Yes, we'll come to him later. Right now, I'd like a verbal accounting of your mission to infiltrate the smugglers' operation."

"We didn't mean to put you back in harness so soon," interrupted Russell in a quiet voice. "A full written report of your activities can wait until you're up and about. But for now, we'd like you to tell us everything you've learned about the smugglers and their procedures."

"From the time I became Ling T'ai and paid the smugglers for passage in Beijing?" Julia asked.

"From the beginning," said Harper, taking a tape recorder from his briefcase and setting it on the bed. "Starting with your entry into China. We'd like to hear it all."

Julia looked at Harper as she began. "As Arthur can tell you, I traveled to Beijing, China, with a group of Canadian tourists. After we arrived in the city I deserted the group during a walking tour of the city. Being of Chinese descent and speaking the language, I had no problem with melting into the people crowding the streets. After changing into more suitable clothes, I began making discreet inquiries about emigrating to a foreign country. As it turned out the newspapers ran stories and advertisements promoting emigration outside China's borders. I answered an ad by an outfit calling themselves Jingzi International Passages. Their offices, coincidentally, were on the third floor of a modern building owned by Qin Shang Maritime Limited. The price to be smuggled into the United States was the equivalent of thirty thousand American dollars. When I attempted to haggle, I was told in no uncertain terms to pay up or leave. I paid."

Then Julia related the story of her terrible ordeal after boarding the outwardly luxurious cruise ship that became a hell ship. She told of the inhuman cruelty; the lack of food and sanitation facilities; the brutality of the enforcers; her interrogation and beating; the transfer of the able-bodied to boats that took them unknowingly to a life of slavery ashore while those of some wealth were diverted to the prison at Orion Lake and placed in cages until they could be squeezed for more money. The very young, the elderly and those who could not physically endure a life of servitude were quietly murdered by drowning in the lake.

She narrated in exacting detail the entire smuggling operation calmly and unemotionally, covering every foot of the mother ship and drawing illustrations of the

smaller craft used to ferry the aliens into the U.S. Using her trained skills in identification, she described the facial features and approximate body measurements of every smuggler she came in contact with, supplying whatever names she was able to obtain.

She told how she, the elderly aliens and the family with two children were forced into the confining cabin of the black catamaran; how they were eventually bound and their feet tied with iron weights before being dropped through an open hatch into the lake. She told how a man in diving gear had miraculously appeared and cut them all loose before they drowned. Then she described how he herded everyone to the temporary safety of the shore; how he comforted and fed them at his cabin and provided a means of escape minutes before the arrival of the smugglers' security force. She told how that enduring man of iron killed five of the enforcers who were set on murdering the escaped immigrants, how he took a bullet in the hip and acted as if it never happened. She gave an account of his blowing up the dock and yacht at the retreat, the harrowing battle down the river to Grapevine Bay, her shooting the two ultralights out of the sky, and the indomitable courage of the man at the wheel of the runabout who threw his body over the children when it was thought they were about to be blasted out of the water.

Julia told them everything she had witnessed since leaving China. But she couldn't explain how or why the man from NUMA came to be under the catamaran at the exact moment she and the others were dropped into the cold waters of the lake, nor could she explain why he made a reconnaissance of the prison building on his own initiative. She did not know his incentive. It was as though Pitt's involvement was a dream sequence. How else could she explain his presence and actions on Orion Lake? Finally, she ended her account by saying his name, her voice trailing off into silence.

"Dirk Pitt, the special projects director for NUMA?" Harper blurted.

Russell turned to Harper, who was staring at Julia in disbelief. "It's true. Pitt was the one who helped reveal the retreat as a prison and provided the people in our district office in Seattle with vital information to conduct the raid. Without his timely appearance and exceptional courage, Agent Lee would have died and the mass killing at Orion Lake would have gone on indefinitely. Thanks to him, the macabre operation was exposed, enabling our Seattle district office to shut it down."

Harper looked at Julia steadily. "A man materializes in the dead of night underwater who is not a trained undercover agent nor a member of the Special Forces but a marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency and singlehandedly kills the crew of a murder boat and destroys a yacht and an entire dock. Then he leads you through a gauntlet of smugglers who strafe a boatload of illegal immigrants from light aircraft while they're speeding down a river in a seventy-year-old boat. An incredible story, to say the least, Ms. Lee."

"And every word of it true," said Julia firmly.

"Commissioner Monroe and I met with Admiral Sandecker of NUMA only a few nights ago, asking for their help in combating Qin Shang's smuggling operation. It seems unimaginable that they could have acted so quickly."

"Although we never had time to compare notes, I'm certain Dirk acted on his own without orders from his superior."

By the time Harper and Russell had asked her a barrage of questions and changed the cassette in the recorder four times, Julia was fighting a losing battle with fatigue. She had journeyed far beyond the call of duty, and now all she wanted was sleep. After her face returned to an assemblage of normality, she hoped to see her family, but not before.

Almost in a trancelike state, she wondered how Dirk Pitt would have described the events had he been there. She smiled, knowing that he would have probably reacted by making a joke out of the whole exploit, making light of his actions and participation. How odd, she thought, that I can predict his reactions and thoughts when I knew him for less than a few hours.

"You've been through more than any of us had any right to expect," said Russell, seeing that Julia was having a hard time keeping her eyes open.

"You're a credit to the service," Harper said sincerely as he switched off the recorder. "A fine report. Because of you an important link in the smuggling of illegal immigrants is history."

"They'll just pop up somewhere else," said Julia, stifling a yawn.

Russell shrugged. "Too bad we don't have enough evidence to convict Qin Shang in an international court of law."

Julia suddenly became alert. "What are you saying? Not enough evidence? I have proof the phony cruise ship, filled with illegal aliens, was registered to Qin Shang Maritime Limited. That alone, plus the bodies lying in Orion Lake, should be enough to indict and convict Qin Shang."

Harper shook his head. "We checked. The ship was legally registered to an obscure shipping company in Korea. And though Shang's representatives handled all real-estate transactions, the Orion Lake property is in the name of a holding company in Vancouver, Canada, by the name of Nanchang Investments. Offshore corporations with one dummy corporation leading to another in different countries is quite common, and makes it tough to trace the thread to the mother company and its owner, directors and stockholders. As rotten as it sounds, no international court of law would convict Qin Shang."

Julia looked vacantly through the window of her room. Between two buildings she could just make out the gray, ominous buildings of Alca-traz, the famous and now abandoned prison. "Then everything," she said disgustedly, "the sacrifice of innocent people in the lake, my ordeal, Pitt's heroic efforts, the raid on the retreat-all for nothing. Qin Shang will laugh up his sleeve and go on operating as if it was all a minor inconvenience."

"On the contrary," Harper assured her. "Your information is invaluable. Nothing comes easy, and it will take time, but sooner or later we're going to put Qin Shang and his kind out of business."

"Peter is right," added Russell. "We've only won a minor skirmish in the war, but we've cut off an important tentacle of the octopus. We also have a new insight into China's smuggling-operations policy. Our jobs have become a bit easier now that we know which back alleys to investigate."

Harper gathered up his briefcase and headed for the door. "We'll be on our way and let you rest."