Pitt studied Sandecker. "Why are you doing this, Admiral? Why are you jeopardizing your job as head of NUMA to stop Qin Shang?"
The admiral stared back at Pitt astutely. "You and Al were going to go behind my back and keep dogging Qin Shang anyway. Am I right?"
Giordino shrugged. "Yes, I guess you are."
"The instant Dirk played the cowardly lion and timidly submitted to Monroe's demand that you go to a safe house, I knew damned well you were going to jump ship. I'm only bowing to the inevitable."
Pitt had long ago become a shrewd judge of Sandecker's character. "Not you, Admiral. You never bow to anything or anybody."
The fire in Sandecker's eyes blazed for a moment, then smoldered. "If you must know, those spooks around the table pissed me off so bad that I'm counting on both of you and Rudi Gunn and every resource at NUMA to take out Qin Shang before they do."
"We're up against some pretty heavy competition," said Pitt.
"Maybe," said Sandecker, his eyes becoming urgent, commanding. "But Qin Shang Maritime operates on water, and that's where we have the advantage."
After the meeting broke up, Harper escorted Julia to his office and closed the door. When she was seated he came around and sat down behind his desk. "Julia, I have a tough assignment for you. Strictly on a volunteer basis. I'm not sure you're quite up to it just yet."
Julia's interest was piqued. "It won't hurt to give me a rundown."
Harper handed her a file folder. She opened it and examined a photograph of a woman her own age who was facing the camera with a blank expression on her face. Except for a scar on her chin, she and Julia could have passed for sisters. "Her name is Lin Wan Chu. She grew up on a farm in Jiangsu Province and ran away when her father wanted her to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather. After finding work in the kitchen of a restaurant in the port Qingdao, she eventually became a chef. Two years ago she signed on as a cook with Qin Shang Maritime and has since crewed on a container ship called the Sung Lien Star."
Julia turned to a dossier on the woman and noted that it came from the CIA. She began reading as Harper sat back silently until she finished. "There is a definite resemblance," said Julia. "We're the same height and weight. I'm only four months older than Lin Wan Chu." She kept the file open in her lap and stared across the desk at Harper. "You want me to take her place? Is that the assignment?"
He nodded. "It is."
"My ID was made on the Indigo Star. Thanks to a double agent on Qin Shang's payroll, his security people have a file on me a mile long."
"The FBI thinks they have a prime suspect and are maintaining surveillance on him."
"I don't see how I could take Lin Wan Chu's identity and not be caught," Julia said solemnly. "Especially during a long voyage."
"You only have to be Lin Wan Chu for four, maybe five, hours at the most. Just enough time to slip into the ship's routine and hopefully discover how Qin Shang is smuggling his illegal cargo of immigrants onto land."
"You know for a fact the Sung Lien Star has aliens hidden on board?"
"A CIA undercover agent in Qingdao reported that he observed over a hundred men, women and children with luggage being unloaded from buses in the dead of night who were herded into a warehouse on the dock beside the ship. Two hours later, the Sung Lien Star sailed. At daylight, the agent found the warehouse empty. A hundred-some-odd people had mysteriously disappeared."
"And he thinks they were smuggled on board the ship?"
"The Star is a large container ship with the capacity to hide a hundred warm bodies, and its destination is the port of Sungari in Louisiana. There seems little doubt that she's another one of Qin Shang's illegal-immigrant smuggling vessels."
"They make me this time," said Julia seriously, "and I'll be shark bait in less time than it takes to tell about it."
"The risk is not as high as you think," Harper assured her. "You won't be working alone like you did on the Indigo Star. You'll carry a concealed radio and be monitored every minute. Backup will be no less than a mile away."
When it came to daring the unknown, Julia was as fearless as any man, more so than most. Her adrenaline was already rising at the thought of walking a tightrope.
"There is one problem," she said quietly.
"What is that?"
A little grimace twisted the shapely red mouth. "My mother and father taught me gourmet cooking. I've never prepared basic slop in quantity before."
29
THE MORNING WAS BRIGHT with a high clear sky flecked by small cloud puffs scattered about like popcorn spilled on a blue carpet as Pitt leveled out the little Skyfox flying boat and flew over the terminal buildings and docks of Sungari. He circled and made several passes, skimming less than a hundred feet above the tops of the big cranes that were lifting wooden cargo crates from the holds of the only freighter moored along an otherwise deserted dock. The merchant ship was sandwiched between the dock and a barge with a towboat.
"Must be a slow business day," observed Giordino from the copilot's seat.
"One ship offloading cargo at a port facility built to handle an entire fleet," said Pitt.
"Qin Shang Maritime Limited's profit-and-loss ledger must be awash in red ink."
"What do you make of the barge?" asked Pitt.
"Looks like trash day. The crew appears to be throwing plastic sacks over the side into the barge."
"See any signs of security?"
"The place sits in the middle of a swamp," said Giordino staring down into the surrounding marshlands. "The only duty for security guards would be to shoo off itinerant alligators, which I hear are hunted around these parts."
"A big business," Pitt said. "Their skins are used for shoes, boots and purses. Hopefully, laws will be passed to restrict the alligator killing long before they become an endangered species."
"That tugboat and garbage barge are beginning to pull away from the hull of the freighter. Make a swing over them when they get into open water."
"Not tugboat, you mean towboat."
"A misnomer. Why call them towboats when they push instead of pull barges through inland waterways?"
"A collection of connecting barges is called a tow, hence, towboat."
"They should be called pushboats," Giordino grumbled.
"I'll take your suggestion up at the next river pilot's annual high-water ball. Maybe they'll give you a free pass on a ferryboat."
"I already get one of those every time I buy ten gallons of gas."
"Coming around." Pitt tilted the control column slightly, banking the Lockheed Skyfox two-seater jet aircraft and leveling out for a few hundred yards before flying over the five-story-high towboat with its square bow burrowed against the stern of a single barge. A man stepped from the towboat's wheelhouse and furiously motioned the aircraft away. As the Skyfox skimmed over the towboat, Giordino caught a quick glimpse of a dirty, unfriendly look on a face that harbored suspicions.
"The captain acts paranoid about prying eyes."
"Maybe we should drop him a note asking directions to Ireland," Pitt said facetiously as he banked the Skyfox for another pass. Formerly a military jet trainer, the aircraft was purchased by NUMA and modified for water landings with a waterproof hull and retractable floats. With twin jet engines mounted on the fuselage behind the wings and cockpit, the Skyfox was often used by NUMA personnel when one of their larger executive jets was not required, and because it could land and take off from water, it was especially useful for offshore transportation.
This time Pitt came in no more than thirty feet over the towboat's funnel and electronic gear, which sprouted-from the roof of the wheel-house. As they flashed past the boat and over the barge, Giordino spotted a pair of men throwing themselves prone amid the trash bags in an effort to make themselves indiscernible.
"I've got two men carrying automatic rifles who made a bad job of trying to look invisible," Giordino announced as calmly as if he was calling guests to dinner. "Methinks there is skulduggery afoot."
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"We've seen all we're going to see," said Pitt. "Time to meet up with Rudi and the Marine Denizen."
He made a sweeping turn and set the Skyfox on a course down the Atchafalaya River toward Sweet Bay Lake. The research ship soon came into view, and he lowered the flaps and dropped the floats in preparation for landing. He flared the aircraft, allowing it gently to kiss the calm water and throw up a light sheet of spray from the floats. Then Pitt taxied alongside the research ship and killed the engines.
Giordino raised the canopy and waved up to Rudi Gunn and Captain Frank Stewart, who were standing at the railing. Stewart turned and shouted an order. The boom from the ship's crane swung around until it was hovering over the Skyfox. The cable was lowered and Giordino attached the hook and lines to the lifting rings on the top of the aircraft's wings and fuselage before catching guy ropes from the crew. A signal was given and the crane's engine shifted into gear and hoisted up the Skyfox. Water fell in cascades from the hull and floats as the Coast Guard crew manning the guy ropes pulled the aircraft into the proper attitude. Once clearance was achieved, the crane swung the aircraft over the side and lowered it onto a landing pad on the stern deck next to the ship's helicopter. Pitt and Giordino climbed from the cockpit and shook hands with Gunn and Stewart.
"We watched through binoculars," said Stewart. "If you had circled Sungari any lower you could have rented a headset and cassette and taken a self-guided tour of the place."
"See anything interesting from the air?" asked Gunn.
"Odd that you should mention that," said Giordino. "I do believe we just might have viewed something we weren't supposed to."
"Then you've seen more than we have," muttered Stewart.
Pitt gazed at a pelican that folded its wings and dove cleanly into the water, emerging with a small fish in its scooplike beak. "The admiral told us that you failed to find any openings in the landfill casings under the docks before their security snatched your AUV."
"Not so much as a crack," admitted Gunn. "If Qin Shang is planning on smuggling illegal aliens through Sungari, it isn't from a ship through underground tunnels to the warehouse terminals."
"You warned us they could be cagey," said Stewart. "And, we found out the hard way. Now NUMA is out an expensive piece of equipment and we don't dare ask for it back."
Gunn said bleakly, "We've accomplished nothing. All we've done for the last forty-eight hours is stare at empty docks and vacant buildings."
Pitt placed a hand on Gunn's shoulder. "Cheer up, Rudi. While we stand here feeling sorry for ourselves for acting deaf, dumb and blind, a boatload of illegal immigrants from China was offloaded at Sungari and are now on their way inland to a staging center."
Gunn stared into Pitt's eyes, startled, and saw them twinkle. "So tell us what you saw."
"The towboat and barges that left Sungari a short time ago," replied Pitt. "Al observed a couple of men on board the barges who were carrying weapons. When we passed over them they tried to hide."
"Nothing shady about a towboat crew carrying arms," said Stewart. "It's a fairly common practice if they're transporting valuable cargo."
"Valuable?" Pitt said, laughing. "The cargo was trash and garbage thrown off the ship that had accumulated after a long voyage across the sea. Armed men weren't on the barge to protect trash, they were there to keep their human cargo from escaping."
"How could you know that?" asked Gunn.
"A process of elimination." Pitt began to feel good. He was on a roll. "At the present time, the only way in and out of Sungari is by ocean ships and riverboats. The ships smuggle in the immigrants, but there is no way to secretly transport them to a staging area for dispersion around the country. And you've proven they're not herded from the ships through hidden passages under the docks and warehouses. So they must be carried inland by barges."
"Not possible," stated Stewart flat out. "Customs and immigration agents come on board the minute the ship docks and search it from bow to stern. All cargo must be offloaded and stored in the warehouses for inspection. Every bag of trash is examined. So how do Qin Shang's people deceive the inspectors?"
"I believe the illegal immigrants are secretly housed in an underwater craft beneath the hull of the merchant ship that transported them from China. After the ship comes into port, the submerged craft is somehow transferred under the barge tied alongside to receive the trash and garbage. While this is going on, the customs and immigration agents do their job but find no evidence of illegal immigrants. Then, moving to a landfill up the Atchafalaya River to dispose of the trash, they make a stop at some out-of-the-way place to disembark the aliens."
Gunn looked like a blind man whose sight had suddenly been restored by a faith healer in a revivalist tent. "You figured that out by simply flying over a garbage barge?"
"A theory at best," Pitt said modestly.
"But a theory that can easily be verified," pointed out Stewart.
"Then we're wasting time talking," said Gunn excitedly. "We put a launch over the side and follow the towboat. You and Al can keep an eye on them from the air."
"Worst thing we could do," cut in Giordino. "We've already put them on guard by buzzing the barge. The towboat captain will know if he's being tailed. I vote we lay low temporarily and play inconspicuous."
"Al's right," said Pitt. "The smugglers are not dumb. They have calculated every option. Their uncanny intelligence sources in Washington may have already given the Sungari security force photographs of everyone on board the Marine Denizen. It's best we take our time and keep any scouting expedition as discreet as possible."
"Shouldn't we at least notify the INS?" inquired Steward seriously.
Pitt shook his head. "Not until we can show them hard evidence."
"There's another problem," Giordino added. "Dirk and I are prohibited from working your side of the street."
Gunn grinned perceptively. "Admiral Sandecker told me. You're AWOL from a government safe house in Maine."
"They've probably got an all-points bulletin out on me for fleeing across state lines," Giordino said, laughing.
"So what do we do to keep busy?" asked Stewart. "And for how long?"
"Keep the Marine Denizen anchored right where she is for now," Pitt ordered. "After Qin Shang's security people stole your AUV, any cover you had as an innocent NUMA research project was blown. Maintain observation of Sungari as close as you can anchor."
"If they're onto us, wouldn't it be better to move the ship further downriver toward the Gulf?"
Pitt gave a negative shake of his head. "I don't think so. Stay in close. I'm betting they're overconfident and think their smuggling tactics and strategy are undetectable and foolproof. Qin Shang believes he is untouchable. Let him go right on thinking Chinese are artful and crafty devils while Americans all attend village-idiot school. Meanwhile, Al and I mount a little clandestine operation of our own upriver and pinpoint the staging center. Immigration agents will want to know where the smuggled aliens are unloaded and held before boarding buses or trucks for circulation around the country." Pitt paused. "Any questions, any comments?"
"If you've pegged Qin Shang's modus operandi," Stewart said happily, "we're halfway home."
"Sounds like a good plan to me," said Gunn. "How should we proceed?"
"Subterfuge will be the order of the day," explained Pitt. "Al and I will move into Morgan City, merge in with the locals and charter a fishing boat. Then head up the Atchafalaya and search out the staging center."
"You'll probably need a guide," Stewart suggested. "There are a thousand inlets, sloughs and bayous between here and the canal locks above Baton Rouge. Not being familiar with the river could cost you much time and wasted effort."
"Good thinking," agreed Giordino. "I do not wish to go off and perish in a quagmire and become a mystery like Amelia Earhart."
"Little danger of that," Stewart said, smiling.
"Detailed topographical maps should be the only guide we'll need." Pitt nodded at the Ma
rine Denizen's captain. "We'll keep you apprised of location and any progress over my satellite phone. You alert us to the next departure of the barge and towboat from the next ship to hit port."
"Won't hurt for you to pass on the information regarding the United States too," added Giordino. "I'd like to be around when she docks at Sungari."
Gunn and Stewart exchanged confused looks. "The United States isn't bound for Sungari," said Gunn.
Pitt's green eyes narrowed and his shoulders stiffened slightly. "I've heard nothing from Admiral Sandecker. Where did you get that bit of information?"
"The local newspaper," answered Stewart. "We send a launch up to Morgan City once a day for any needed supplies. Whoever volunteers for the trip always brings back a newspaper. The story has been big news around Louisiana."