Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

Realizing what was happening, the pilot tried to free the line, but fell forward before she could succeed. As the boat tipped forward, the pilot staggered into Audrey and the gunman. All three clung to the flooded interior as the boat nearly stood on end.

As the bow became more heavily weighted by the fluid, the boat twisted slowly toward the dock. The open cockpit collided with the dangling security net, entangling the bow and the windscreen.

Seeing the boat caught like a fly in a web, Pitt reversed the controls, sending the dock to SUBMERGE. The contracting hydraulics moved quickly, dropping the platform beneath the surface. Even from inside the control house, Pitt could hear the cries of the speedboat’s occupants as the entangled boat plunged vertically into the frigid water. Pitt caught a fleeting glimpse of Audrey on the monitor, struggling to break free of the netting, before the boat disappeared into the murk below.

The video suddenly faded to black, along with the lights on the control panel. Beneath Pitt’s feet, the electrical motors ceased their whirring. Somewhere inside the main facility, the power had been cut. Pitt abandoned the control room and ran down to the dock.

“You boys okay?”

Giordino was standing with Perkins at his side, watching a rising froth of bubbles on the water offshore. He turned at Pitt’s approach.

“Was that your handiwork?”

Pitt nodded. “I guess their security system works after all.” He scanned the nearby waters. There was no trace of the boat or its occupants.

Giordino looked at Perkins, and both men smiled.

“That it does.”

54

The laboratory’s alarms punctured the still morning air as Pitt and Giordino attended to Perkins’s wounds. He’d caught a grazing bullet to his shin and a clean perforation through his thigh. Pitt retrieved the lab coat and used its sleeves to bind the wounds.

Despite his injuries, Perkins remained alert, splashing across the flooded dock with an arm around Giordino’s shoulder. They spied the groggy guard dog, awakened after falling into the loch, paddling to shore nearby. Pitt retrieved the submersible’s painter, which had snapped during the dock’s gyrations, and they all crammed into the vessel. With seating for only two, Giordino gave Perkins the copilot seat while he perched on the hatch ladder just behind.

Pitt’s face was tense as he navigated the sub away from the dock. Giordino knew the reason why.

Loren.

Pitt kept the craft on the surface at maximized speed as he made a beeline for McKee Manor. The boathouse door was open, and he guided the sub through its narrow entrance and against the dock. Giordino opened the hatch and hopped to the deck with the painter as Pitt climbed out.

“Nice digs,” Giordino said. “Where to from here?”

“You best get Perkins to a doctor with the Nymph. Follow the shoreline to the east. There’s a town called Drumnadrochit about five miles from here. Look for a marina in the cove.”

“You’ll be okay?”

Pitt nodded.

“I’ll come back with help as soon as I can.”

A minute later, Giordino motored the Nymph out of the boathouse with Perkins. Pitt made his way to the boathouse door. He entered the manor’s basement and climbed the corner steps to the main floor. The corridor was empty as he went to his room. With growing unease, he opened the door. The room was empty.

He crossed the front rotunda and checked the dining hall. It, too, was empty. Pitt followed the hallway back toward the loch, returning to the corner stairwell, where he descended to the basement. He stepped past the wine racks, entered the small den, and stopped in the rear doorway. The hallway it opened on was lit, and faint voices came from beyond the double doors at the end.

Pitt hesitated, glancing at the weapons on display in the armory case. Among the bladed weapons, one caught his eye. It was a British flintlock boarding pistol with a spring-loaded bayonet that extended beyond its octagonal barrel. The gun was displayed in a presentation case with a black powder flask, pads of cotton wadding, and a tray of lead balls.

Pitt opened the case and checked the powder flask. It was full. He poured a load down the barrel, wrapped a lead ball in a patch of wadding, and tamped it down the barrel with an attached ramrod. Then he held the gun up, checked the flint, poured some priming powder into the flash pan, and closed the frizzen. He tucked the loaded weapon into his back waistband, then stepped down the hallway.

The side offices were dark as he passed on his way to the doors at the end of the hall. He placed his palm on one of the knobs and turned it in tiny increments. McKee’s voice was clearly audible on the other side. Taking a breath, he shoved open the door and stepped inside.

He was surprised to find a tastefully decorated lounge outfitted like a spa. Potted plants and an indoor waterfall surrounded a large sofa and reclining chairs. A row of raised-back massage tables stood in the center, perched under a bank of violet mood lights. Loren reclined on one of the tables next to the Australian woman, Abigail Brown.

Any sense of casual relaxation was undermined by the arm and leg straps that secured the women to their tables. Each wore a set of earphones and had large virtual reality goggles strapped to their heads. Beside each woman stood a small surgical table with an array of vials and syringes.

Pitt’s sense of revulsion was completed by the sight of the truck-driving receptionist named Irene. She looked up from a computer workstation wired to the bound women and glared.

Standing beside her, Evanna McKee bared her teeth and smiled at Pitt with the warmth of an Arctic wolf. “Hello, Mr. Pitt. I was expecting you. But not alive.”