Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt 14)

Twenty feet to the left of the door the passage ended in a tangled mass of old rusty machinery that filled it from floor to ceiling. Pitt went right and came to a stairway ascending to a corridor that opened onto a series of rooms with huge copper pots that had corroded over the decades until the once-bright metal had changed to a patinated green.

Pitt entered one of what had been the sugar cane cooking rooms and peered through a long row of dusty windows. Below him was a vast storage and shipping terminal. A pair of railroad tracks ran between two loading docks before stopping at a concrete barrier. Broad doors on one end of the floor were spread open to accommodate three freight cars that were being backed down a slope by a diesel-electric locomotive painted in the blue and orange colors of the Louisiana & Southern Railroad.

Next to the building near the railroad tracks, Pitt could see a parked pair of white stretch limousines, their drivers talking together while watching with interest as the train rolled past.

It became startlingly clear to Pitt that the immigrants he'd just left were about to be loaded on the freight cars. Accompanied by a growing knot in his stomach, he also observed that the loading docks were manned by nearly a dozen guards. After seeing all there was to see, he sat down below the window, back to the wall, and considered the situation.

Stopping the smugglers from boarding the immigrants onto the train looked grim. Stalling them was a tactic that lay open, but what good would delaying the inevitable do? He might take out four or five of the guards before they recovered from surprise and blasted him, but where were the percentages in that? There was almost no hope of terminating the departure, but there was a slim chance of bringing it to a standstill, at least for the next few hours.

Pitt removed his small arsenal and studied the two .357 magnum revolvers, the bowie knife and his steadfast old Colt. The six-shot revolvers gave him twelve rounds. Many years ago he had redesigned the grip on the Colt to hold a twelve-shot magazine. The revolvers were loaded with hollow-point cartridges, excellent for stopping power and producing extreme tissue damage in man and animal, but not efficient for what Pitt had in mind. His .45 packed Winchester 185-grain Silvertips, which were not as brutal on flesh but had better penetration. He had twenty-four chances to stop the train's departure. Only one lucky shot would do it. The problem was that although he had more than enough killing power, he was woefully short in the metal-piercing department. His intent was to strike a vital part of the diesel engines and electric generators, shutting down all power to the drive wheels.

Pitt sighed, rose to his knees, took the revolvers in both hands and commenced firing, aiming at the louvered sides of the locomotive.

37

JULIA HAD NO IDEA of how long she had been unconscious. The last thing she remembered was the soft face of a woman, a very beautiful woman, dressed in a red Oriental-silk sheath dress slit up the sides, tearing Julia's blouse from her shoulders. As the haze lifted she became aware of a fiery, burning sensation that coursed through her body. She also discovered that her hands and feet were in manacles with chains running around her waist and snaking through the bars of a gate, brutally pulling her arms out of their sockets, leaving her toes barely touching the floor. The chains were worked tight and looped over the door, making it impossible for her to move even fractionally.

Only the cool, damp air that touched and tingled her bare skin gave her relief from the searing fire flowing in her veins. She slowly came to realize that her clothes were gone and she was dressed in little else but her bra and panties.

The woman, who l

ooked Eurasian, stared at Julia from a nearby chair. She sat with her legs curled under her and smiled a catlike smile that sent a shiver running through Julia. Her hair was shiny black and fell in a long cascade down her back. Her shoulders were broad, her breasts nicely rounded, her slim waist neatly merging with trim hips. She wore makeup with skill and her nails were incredibly long. But it was her eyes that drew Julia's interest. The scientific term was hetero-chromia. One of her eyes was nearly black while the other was a light gray. The effect was hypnotic.

"Well?" she said sociably. "Welcome back to reality."

"Who are you?"

"My name is May Ching. I serve the Dragon Triad."

"Not Qin Shang?"

"No."

"Not very sporting of you to drug me," Julia whispered angrily, fighting off the internal torment raging inside her body.

"I suspect you did no less to Lin Wan Chu, the cook on board the Sung Lien Star, " said May Ching. "Where is she, by the way?""She's being treated better than I am."

May Ching casually lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward Julia. "We had quite a chat, you and I."

"I was interrogated?" Julia exclaimed. "I don't remember."

"You wouldn't. The very latest in truth serums. Not only does it reverse the mind to a child of five, but it makes the body feel as if your blood turned into molten lava. Between the madness and the agony, no man or woman, regardless of how strong-willed, can refuse honest answers to intimate questions. By the way, just so you won't feel unduly embarrassed, it was I who undressed and searched you. Clever hiding places for your little automatic and knife. Most men wouldn't have thought to look between your legs and inside your biceps. Being a woman, however, your radio was exactly where I thought it would be."

"You're not Chinese."

"Only on my mother's side," answered May Ching. "My father was British."

At that moment Ki Wong entered the room with another man whose facial features were also Eurasian. They both stood in front of Julia, staring at her lewdly. Wong's sallow skin stretched tautly and contrasted with his companion's suntanned face and neck. As he stared at her, he seemed to revel in a perverse satisfaction.

"Excellently done," he informed May Ching. "You obtained an incredible supply of information that will be most useful. Discovering that Miss Lee is working in cooperation with the Coast Guard, who has our facility under surveillance from across the bayou, has given us the necessary time to remove all immigrants and any evidence of their presence before local authorities and immigration agents can marshal their forces to conduct a raid."

"Fifteen more minutes and all they'll find are abandoned ruins," said the other man. His eyes were black and vapid, like those of a raccoon. A scavenger's eyes, bright without warmth. His hair was long, black and tied in a ponytail that came halfway down his back. His face portrayed someone who lived high, a party animal, a Las Vegas gambler, a womanizer. The skin was taut from more than one face-lift. Nothing done by a surgeon hid the fact that he would never see fifty again. He was dressed fashionably for a Hollywood lifestyle.

He stepped over to Julia, reached out, took a handful of hair and cruelly pulled her head back until she was staring up at the ceiling. "My name is Jack Loo," he said icily. "You belong to me."

"I belong to no one," Julia gasped through lips taut from the sudden pain.

"Not so," said Wong. "Qin Shang's orders were to kill you on sight. But Mr. Loo made an offer I cannot refuse. For a tidy sum, I sold you to him."