"Put it all in a place where it's safe from scum like you who want it all to themselves."
"How?" he asked simply.
"With much luck and many good people," Pitt said impassively. "After my researcher discovered a survivor who pointed the way, I put together a salvage project combining NUMA, the U.S. Navy and the Canadians. Together, they completed the salvage in ten days before leaking the Princess Dou Wan's posit
ion to your researcher. I believe his name is Zhu Kwan. Then it was merely a matter of sitting back and waiting for you to show up. I knew you were obsessed by the treasure, Qin Shang. I read you like a book. Now it's payoff time. By coming back into the U.S. you've forfeited any chance you had of a long life. Unfortunately, because there is a great lack of ethics and morality in the world these days, your money and political influence has undoubtedly kept you out of prison. But the final entry in your ledger, Qin Shang, is that you are going to die. You are going to die as retribution for all those innocent people you murdered."
"You create amusing plots, Pitt." There was a sneer in Qin Shang's voice, but it was contradicted by a deep uneasiness in his eyes. "And who is going to see that I die?"
"I've been waiting for you," Pitt said, hate mirrored in his green eyes. "There was never a doubt that you would come and come alone."
"Are you quite finished? Or do you wish to bore me to death?"
Qin Shang knew his life was hanging by a thread, but he had yet to figure by what means he was supposed to die. Although Pitt's casualness made him uncomfortable, all fear was slowly replaced by an inner self-defense mechanism. His conspiring mind began to concentrate on a plan to save himself. His hopes rose when he comprehended that Pitt had no support from a surface ship. A diver inside a Newtsuit did not make descents and ascents without an umbilical cable. He had to be lowered and raised by winch from a mother ship on the surface. The cable also served as a communications link. Pitt was breathing self-contained air that could not last much longer than an hour. Without life support on the surface, Pitt was on borrowed time and totally defenseless.
"You're not as clever as you think," Qin Shang said, a faint pallor on his face. "From my side of the viewing port, it looks like you are the one who is going to die, Mr. Pitt. Your ingenious diving apparatus against my submersible? You stand about as much chance as a sloth against a bear."
"I'm willing to give it a try."
"Where is your support ship?"
"I don't need one," Pitt said with unnerving nonchalance. "I walked from shore."
"You are very humorous for a man who will never see the sun again." As Qin Shang spoke, his hands moved furtively toward the controls of the submersible's manipulator arms and their claws. "I can either drop my weights and float to the surface, leaving you alone to your fate. Or, I can call my crew and order them to send down my backup submersible."
"Not fair. That would make it two bears against one sloth."
The man's imperturbable composure is inhuman, thought Qin Shang. Something is not as it seems. "You act sure of yourself," he said, as he measured his options.
Pitt raised one of the Newtsuit's manipulator arms and displayed a small, watertight box with an antenna. "In case you're wondering why you haven't heard from your friends topside, this little device scrambles all communications within five hundred feet."
That explained why he had received no calls from the Jade Adventurer. But that piece of news did nothing to deter Qin Shang's determination to wreak punishment on Pitt.
"You have meddled in my affairs for the last time." Qin Shang's fingers slowly curled around the throttle of the thrusters and the manipulator controls. "I can not waste another minute with you. I must seek out where you've hidden the treasure. Farewell, Mr. Pitt. I'm dropping my ballast weights and returning to the surface."
Pitt knew full well what was coming. Even through the murky water that separated them, he detected the sudden shift in Qin Shang's eyes. He threw up his manipulator arms to protect his vulnerable bubble mask and reversed the two small motors mounted on each side of the Newtsuit's waist. His reaction came at almost the same instant as the submersible lurched forward.
It was a battle Pitt could not win. One second the Sea Lotus was hovering level, the next it was relentlessly coming toward him. His much smaller manipulator pincers were no match for the larger claws on the arms of the submersible. Qin Shang's vehicle could also move at twice the speed of the Newtsuit. If the submersible's mechanical claws cut through the Newtsuit, it would be all over.
Pitt could do nothing but helplessly watch as the big ugly manipulator arms spread in preparation of encircling him in a death grip, squeezing until the integrity of the Newtsuit was gashed open to the water waiting to rush inside. When that happened, Pitt would die an agonizing death.
He had no wish to wait for the water to gush down his open throat into his lungs. The burst of sudden pressure alone would make his final moments unbearable. He had come close to drowning on at least two occasions, and he had no desire to repeat the events. Tormented, struggling and dying with no one near him to see except his most vicious enemy was not what Pitt had in mind.Pitt longed to drive the Newtsuit forward, using his own manipulator pincers to smash Qin Shang's viewing window of the submersible, but they were too short and would have easily been knocked away by the arms on the submersible. Also, an aggressive attack was not part of his plan. He looked into the twin jaws of death, saw the evil leer on Qin Shang's face and maneuvered his cumbersome pressure suit backward in a losing effort to stall for time.
Directing the articulated joints of the Newtsuit, he leaned over and used the manipulator pincers to pick up a short length of pipe that was lying on the deck. Then he swung the pipe to ward off the deadly arms of the submersible. It was almost a laughable gesture. Qin Shang guided his claws toward Pitt from two sides. Almost as if he was snatching candy from a baby, he seized the pipe and tore it from the Newtsuit's pincers. If spectators could have seen the fight through the murk, it would have looked like a ballet between two huge animals in slow motion. All movement at that depth was hindered by the surrounding water pressure.
Then Pitt felt the Newtsuit come to an abrupt halt as he backed it against the forward bulkhead of the Princess Dou Wan's superstructure. Now there was no room to escape the onslaught. The uneven fight had only lasted eight or nine minutes. Pitt could see the satanic grin on Qin Shang's face as his sadistic opponent closed in for the kill.
Then, unexpectedly, without warning, a vague shape came gliding silently out of the gloom like a great incarnate vulture.
Stretched prone inside a submersible with the configuration of a small airplane with stubby wings and a tail assembly, Giordino angled the Sappho IV from above and dropped behind the Sea Lotus. With grim concentration he operated the controls to a viselike talon that protruded from beneath the craft. Clutched in the talon was a small round ball less than three inches in diameter that was attached to a small suction device. Completely oblivious, Qin Shang's attention was focused on murdering Pitt. Then Giordino pressed the ball and suction device against the pressure hull of the Sea Lotus until it adhered. After that he tilted the Sappho TVs bow sharply upward and banked away, quickly disappearing into the watery void.
Twenty seconds later a sharp thump sounded through the water. At first Qin Shang was mystified as he felt the Sea Lotus shudder. Too late he realized that Pitt's brave defiance against overwhelming odds was a diversion for an attack from another source. And then he watched in growing horror as a spiderweb of tiny fractures spread across the upper wall of the pressure chamber. Suddenly water burst inside as if shot from a small cannon. The pressure chamber maintained its integrity and did not implode, but the incoming flood spelled its doom.
Qin Shang froze in cold fright as the water rose higher and higher, rapidly filling the small interior of the submersible. He frantically switched on the pumps to drain the ballast tanks and hit the lever to drop the heavy weights beneath the keel. The Sea Lotus sluggishly ascended for several feet and then hung there as the flooding water neutralized its buoyancy. Then it slowly began to fall, settling into the bottom and throwing up a thin cloud of silt.
Now in mindless panic, Qin Shang desperately tried to open the outer hatch in an insane attempt to reach the surface 430 feet above, an impossible gesture because of the immense water pressure outside.
Pitt moved the Newtsuit through the cloud of silt and gazed thr