Giordino listened to Pitt's plan of action and remained silent for a few moments after he finished. He sat with his Etruscan features twisted in a scowling expression, looking like a mask from a voodoo ceremony. Then he slowly moved his head from side to side, visualizing long, aching hours of paddling the skiff.
"Well," he said finally, "Mrs. Giordino's boy is going to have a pair of sore arms before this night is over."
Doug Wheeler's forecast of a waning quarter moon was correct. Leaving a sated and dormant Romberg to guard the shantyboat, they pushed off and began paddling up the bayou, easily finding their way along the twists and turns by the lunar light. A narrow boat with graceful lines, the skiff moved smoothly with little exertion on their part. Whenever a cloud passed over the slim crescent of the moon, Pitt relied on the night-vision goggles to guide their course as the bayou narrowed to little more than five feet in width.
The marshlands came alive at night. The squadrons of mosquitoes winged into the night air, searching for juicy targets. But Pitt and Giordino, shielded by their wet suits and an ample layer of bug repellent on their faces, necks and hands, ignored them. The frogs croaked in a chorus of thousands, rising in a crescendo, then breaking off suddenly into total silence before beginning again. It seemed as if their night song was orchestrated and led by an unseen maestro. The marsh grass became decorated with millions of lightning bugs, blinking their lights on and off like falling sparkles from dying fireworks. An hour and a half later, Pitt and Giordino paddled out of Hooker's Bayou into the canal.
The security force command post was lit up like a football stadium. Floodlights spaced around two acres of dry land illuminated an old plantation house sheltered by live oak trees on a weed-infested lawn that rolled down a slight incline to the bank of the canal. Three stories high with siding that was warped and barely hanging on to support beams by rusty nails, the structure looked similar in architecture to the house in the movie Psycho, but not in nearly as good a condition. Several of the shutters hung off kilter on rusting hinges, and the attic windows were broken. Wooden pillars stood in rigid formation across a sagging front porch, their cornices supporting a long, sloping roof.
The smell of Chinese cooking permeated the air. Men in uniform could be seen through the uncurtained windows moving around inside. Chinese music, a scourge to the ears of Westerners, and sung by a female who screeched as if she was giving birth, grated over the marshlands. The living room of the old manor was cluttered with a maze of communication and security-detection antennas. Like Orion Lake, there were no guards patrolling the command-center grounds. They had no fear of attack and placed their faith in the electronic systems. The hovercraft was tied to a little dock that floated on empty oil drums. No one was on board.
"Head toward the opposite bank and paddle very slowly," Pitt whispered. "Keep movement to a minimum."
Giordino nodded silently and dipped his paddle carefully into the water, stroking as if in slow motion. Like wraiths gliding through the night, they passed through the shadows of the canal bank, past the command post and up the canal for a hundred yards before Pitt called for a brief rest stop. Stealth was not an option but rather a necessity, since they had not packed their weapons in the overloaded skiff to save weight and space.
"From what I've experienced of their security," said Pitt, "this setup is more slipshod than Orion Lake. The detection network is in place, but they don't seem conscientious about monitoring it."
"They caught on to us damned quick this afternoon," Giordino reminded him.
"No trick to spot a ten-foot-high houseboat on a flat field of grass from five miles. If this was Orion Lake, they would have been observing our every movement five seconds after we stepped into the skiff. Yet here, we move right under their noses as if it was a piece of cake."
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas," Giordino observed. "No presents under the tree that contain deep dark secrets. But you've got to like them for giving us free passage."
"Let's move on," said Pitt. "Nothing promising here. We've got a lot of territory to cover. The security force may be lax at night, but they'd have to be blind not to discover us if we don't reach the shan-tyboat before the sun comes up."
With growing confidence, they cast off any thoughts of caution and began stroking vigorously up the canal. The moon's dim glow fell over the bayou and cast its reflection on the water like a roadnarrowing to a pinpoint as it traveled over the horizon. The end of the canal seemed impossibly remote, as unattainable as a mirage in the desert. Giordino worked his paddle, easily, powerfully, each stroke moving the skiff four feet to Pitt's three. The night air was balmy but damp. Beneath the wet suits they sweated like lobsters in a pot, but they dared not remove them. Their light skin, although tanned, was revealed under the dying moon like faces in a black velvet painting. Ahead, they could see clouds outlined and glowing from an unseen light source. The headlights from cars and trucks could also be seen, sweeping back and forth on a distant highway.
Buildings from the deserted ghost town of Calzas loomed up on both banks, the canal having split the community in two. The houses huddled eerily in ragged clusters on a large section of land that rose above the marshlands. It was a place haunted by former residents who could no longer return. The town's old hotel stood silent and gaunt across from a gas station whose pumps still stood on islands outside the office and mechanic's bays. A church rose forlorn and empty beside a cemetery, the tombs raised above the round, little shrines weathered and bleached white. The abandoned town was soon left in the wake of the skiff.
At long last they finally ran out of canal. All excavation ended at an embankment leading up to a major highway. At the base of the highway embankment, rising out of the water in the canal, they found a concrete structure that looked like the entrance to a huge underground bunker. It was sealed tight by a massive steel door that was welded closed.
"What do you suppose they keep in there?" queried Giordino.
"Nothing they need to get at fast," Pitt replied, studying the door through the night-vision goggles. "It would take an hour or more just to torch it open." He also spied an electrical conduit that ran from the door and vanished into the muck of the canal. He removed the goggles from his head and gestured toward the shore. "Come on, let's beach the skiff and climb to the highway."
Giordino looked upward speculatively and nodded. They paddled to the bank and pulled the skiff ashore. The embankment was not steep but more of a long, sloping grade. They reached the top and climbed over a traffic guardrail and were almost blown back down the slope by a giant truck and trailer that thundered past. Embellished by the crescent moon, the countryside was bathed in a panoramic sea of lights.
The view was not quite what they expected. The headlights from the traffic, strung out along the highway like fluorescent beads on a snake, twisted around a wide expanse of water. As they stood there, a huge towboat the size of a condominium building moved past, shoving twenty barges that stretched nearly a quarter of a mile. Above and below a large city on the opposite shore, they could see the brilliantly lit white tanks of oil refineries and petrochemical plants.
"Well," said Giordino without any particular expression in his voice, "is now a good time for a chorus of 'Old Man River'?"
"The Mississippi," Pitt muttered. "That's Baton Rouge to the north across the river. The end of the line. Why dig a canal to this particular spot?"
"Who knows what weird machinations lurk in the mind of Qin Shang?" Giordino said philosophically. "Maybe he has plans to access the highway."
"What for? There's no turnoff. The road shoulder is barely wide enough to hold one car. There has to be another reason." Pitt sat on the guardrail and gazed thoughtfully at the river. Then he said slowly, "The highway runs straight as an arrow along here."
Giordino looked at Pitt, his eyebrows raised. "What's so novel about a linear road?"
"Was it a coincidence or a well-conceived plan to end the canal at the exact point where the riv
er curls westward and nearly touches the highway?"
"What difference does it make? Shang's engineers could have ended the canal anywhere."
"A big difference, as I'm beginning to see it, a very big difference indeed."
Giordino's mind was not running on the same channel as Pitt's. Giordino checked the dial on his dive watch under the lights of an approaching car. "If we want to finish the job while it's still dark, I suggest we row our boat gently down the stream, and be quick about it."
They still had the entire eighteen miles of the canal to search using the autonomous underwater vehicle. After dropping back down the slope to the skiff, they removed the AUV from its case and slipped it over the side of the skiff and watched it slip out of sight beneath the dark surface. Then, while Giordino paddled, Pitt worked the remote control, engaging the AUV's motors, switching on its lights and leveling it off five feet from the bottom mud of the canal. Because of the high algae content of the brackish water, which limited visibility to no more than six feet, there was the danger of the AUV striking a submerged object before he could divert it.
Giordino paddled with long even strokes that never slowed as the precious hours passed, making it easy for Pitt to pace the AUV's progress with that of the skiff. Only when they reached the outer fringe of light around the old plantation headquarters of Qin Shang's security force did they move furtively along the opposite bank at a snail's speed.
This time of night most of the security force should have been sleeping, but the plantation house had suddenly come alive with activity as guards began rushing across the lawn to the little dock where the hovercraft was moored. Pitt and Giordino pressed into the shadows and watched as the hovercraft was loaded with automatic weapons. Two men lifted a long, heavy, tubelike object into the boat.
"They're going for bear," said Giordino softly. "Unless I'm mistaken that's a rocket launcher."
"You're not mistaken," Pitt murmured. "I do believe Shang's chief of security in Hong Kong has identified us and sent word that we're evildoers out to spy on another one of his nasty ventures."
"The shantyboat. It's evident they plan to blow it and anyone in it to smithereens."
"Not polite of us to allow them to destroy the Bayou Kid's property. And then we've got Romberg to consider. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would put us on their blacklist for life if we let poor old Romberg go to dog heaven in a blaze of rocket fire."
"Two unarmed bon vivants against a horde of barbarians armed to the teeth," muttered Giordino. "Not very healthy odds, wouldn't you say?"
Pitt slipped a dive mask over his head and picked up an air tank. "I've got to get across the canal before they cast off. You take the skiff and wait for me a hundred yards beyond the plantation."
"Let me guess. You're going to take your little dive knife and slash the hell out of the hovercraft's inflatable skirt."
Pitt grinned. "If it leaks, it won't lift."
"What about the AUV?"
"Keep it submerged. It might be worth seeing what kind of trash they throw in the canal in front of their quarters."
In ten seconds Pitt was gone. He eased into the water without making a sound or a splash, while at the same time strapping on the air tank and its backpack. He had already kicked twenty feet from the boat before he inserted the regulator in his mouth and began breathing underwater. After leveling out, he quickly got his bearings and swam across the canal toward the lights flickering on the water in front of the plantation. The mud on the bottom below looked dark and forbidding, and the water itself was tepid as a bathtub's. Pitt swam aggressively, his arms out in front forming a V to reduce water resistance, kicking his feet and fins as hard and fast as his leg muscles would allow.
A good diver can sense the water as an animal senses a change in weather or the presence of a predator. The brackish water of the canal had a warm and friendly feel to it, nothing like the sinister and malignant force he experienced in the deep cold of Orion Lake. His only fear now was that one of the security guards might glance out into the canal and see his air bubbles, a possibility he didn't think likely because they were wrapped up in preparing to attack the shantyboat and had no time to stare at the water surface above Pitt for even half a second.
The light became brighter underwater as he neared the source. Soon the shadow of the hovercraft loomed ahead. He was certain it was loaded and the crew was aboard to launch the search and attack. Only the lack of sound told him the engines had yet to start. He swam harder, determined to stop the hovercraft before it hurtled from the dock.
From his vantage point across the canal, Giordino began to have grave doubts that Pitt would reach the hovercraft in time. He cursed himself for not working harder on the return trip so they might have arrived earlier. But then, how could he have known the guards were preparing to assault the shantyboat before daylight? He kept in the shadows and paddled the skiff slowly, so no sudden movement would be caught by the men on the other side of the canal. "Do it!" he muttered under his breath as if Pitt was in earshot. "Do it!"
Pitt felt a growing numbness from overexertion in his arms and legs, his lungs gasping from fatigue. He gathered his waning strength for a final surge, a last effort before his exhausted body refused his demands. He couldn't believe he was killing himself to save a dog that he swore was bitten by a tsetse fly when a pup and suffered from chronic sleeping sickness.
Abruptly, the light from above faded and he swam into a dark hole. His head broke the surface just inside the flexible sleeve, called a skirt, that contains the cushion of air and suspends the hovercraft. He floated for several moments, his chest heaving, his arms too numb to move, while he regained his strength and studied the interior of the skirt. Of the three types fitted to hovercraft, this one was called a bag skirt, consisting of a rubber tube that encircled the hull and when inflated served to contain the air cushion while providing lift. He also recognized that this hovercraft used an aluminum propeller as a lift fan to inflate the bag tube and feed air into the cushion.
As Pitt reached down to pull his dive knife out of its sheath strapped to his leg to begin slicing holes in the rubberized fabric, his moment of victory was snatched away by the sound of the starter motors as they began to turn over the engines. Then the propeller's blades started to spin, their speed increasing with every revolution. The skirt began to flare, and the water inside was whipped into a maelstrom. Too late to slash the rubber cushion and prevent the craft from moving.
Out of irreversible despair, he unsnapped the buckle to his air tank's backpack, spit out the breathing regulator and pulled the tank up and over his head. Then, in one movement, he thrust it upward into the spinning lift propeller and ducked under the skirt as it was starting to inflate. The propeller blades struck the tank and shattered. It was an act born of desperation. Pitt knew he had gambled recklessly and pushed his luck too far.
The disintegration of the propeller as its blades struck a solid, ungiving object was followed by a hurricane of metal shards that ripped through the walls of the rubber skirt like shrapnel from a bomb. Then came a second, more massive explosion as the tank's walls were penetrated and it burst from the sudden release of eighty cubic feet of air pressurized at three thousand pounds. Not content to be left out, the fuel tanks added to the cataclysm by erupting in a blazing conflagration that sent a firestorm into the air and fiery particles of the hovercraft flying onto the roof of the plantation house and quickly setting the wooden structure ablaze.
Giordino was stunned in horror as he watched the hovercraft lift out of the water and then violently shred itself into a thousand flaming fragments. Bodies spun through the air like drunken circus acrobats and splashed into the water with the inert stiffness of mannequins dropped from a helicopter. The windows of the plantation house were blown into jagged shards. The explosion rumbled over the surface of the canal and struck Giordino's exposed face like a punch thrown by the gloved fist of a boxer. A waterspout of fiery fuel enveloped the hovercraf
t, and when it fell away and the spray had scattered into the night, the burning remains of the craft were sinking into the waters of the canal amid a great hiss of steam and dark smoke that swirled and quickly became lost in the black sky.
In growing fear, Giordino frantically paddled the skiff toward the shattered wreckage. Reaching the outer perimeter of the burning debris, he strapped on his air tank and rolled into the canal. Lit by a field of flames on the surface, the water beneath took on a look of eerie candescence, ghostly and threatening. In a strange kind of restrained frenzy, he searched through the mangled remains of the hovercraft, tearing aside the shreds of the skirt and probing underneath. He was still dazed with shock as he desperately tried to find the body of his friend. He groped about the shambles created by Pitt, and his hands touched what remained of a man, stripped of his clothing, a sliced and gutted thing with no legs. One black eye, wide open and unseeing, was all he required to know it wasn't Pitt.
He fought off a sickening fear that it seemed impossible anyone could have survived that holocaust. He searched unavailingly, hopelessly, for some sight of a living body. God, where is he? Giordino cried in his mind. He began to feel beyond weary in his bones and was almost ready to give up in despair when something reached out of the darkness of the muck below him and grabbed his ankle. Giordino experienced an icy chill of panic that gave way to disbelief when he felt the hard grip of a living human. He spun around and saw a face leering at him, green eyes squinting to see through the liquid gloom, blood flowing from the nose and dissolving in the water.