He turned a blind eye to the dangerous part of the journey. Twenty-four hours, that was all the time Qin Shang had requested of his services. His evacuation, when the moment came, was well timed and organized. Helicopters were standing by to swoop in and pick up the fighting men and crew once the charges were detonated and the ship was scuttled in precisely the right spot. Qin Shang had given his assurances that Hung-chang would be a rich man when he returned home, providing, of course, the operation went as conceived.
He sighed. All that troubled him now was navigating the sharp bends in the river, avoiding other ships and passing under the six bridges that faced him after New Orleans. The distance from the Head of Passes to the city was ninety-five miles. Although the navigation channel for oceangoing traffic in the lower reaches of the river averaged more than forty feet deep by one thousand feet wide, no ship the size of the United States had ever traveled on the Mississippi before. The narrow inland waterway channel was not dredged for a vessel of her huge bulk and restricted maneuverability.
After passing Venice, the last town on the west bank that was accessible by highway, the levees were lined with thousands of people who had turned out to see the grand spectacle of the great liner's passage up the river. Students had been temporarily let out of schools to witness an event that had never before taken place and would not again. Hundreds of small private boats trailed after the ship, tooting and honking their horns, and were kept a safe distance away from her churning wake by two escorting Coast Guard boats that had appeared after the United States had emerged from the Head of Passes.
They all stood, many in awed silence, others waving and cheering, as the United States negotiated the sharp bends of the river, her bow brushing the edge of the channel on the west bank, her stern and slowly turning propellers thrashing past the east bank that protruded around the bend. This was late April going on May, and the spring runoff far to the north that came flowing down from the Mississippi's tributaries had raised the water level above the base of the levees. Hung-chang was thankful for extra water between the keel and river bottom. It gave him an extra margin for success.
He readjusted the buckle on the strap of his binoculars, squared the cap on his head, then stepped out onto the bridge wing. He ignored the compass mounted on a stand that responded to the ship's every change of direction as it moved over the curling river. He was glad the waterway had been emptied of traffic in anticipation of the big ship's passage. It would be a different story after New Orleans, but he would deal with that problem when the time came.
He looked up at the sky and was relieved to see the weather had cooperated. The day was warm with only a whisper of a breeze. A twenry-mile-an-hour wind against the gigantic hull of the ship could have caused disaster by pushing her broadside into the bank during navigation of a sharp river bend. The azure-blue cloudless sky and the sunlight reflected off the water surface, giving it a green, almost clean, look. Because he was ascending the river the green channel buoys swayed aimlessly on his left while the red navigation buoys rolled to his right.
He waved back at the people standing on the levee amid a sea of parked cars and pickup trucks. From his height nine stories above the water he looked down on the horde and saw the flat marsh and farmlands beyond. Li Hung-chang felt like a spectator watching someone else play his role in a drama.
He began to speculate on the reception waiting along the waterfront in New Orleans, and he smiled to himself. Millions of Americans would remember this day, he mused, but not for the reasons they had expected.
40
RUDI GUNN WAS WAITING for Pitt and Giordino when they returned the shantyboat to Doug Wheeler's dock late the same afternoon. His eyes were red from lack of sleep caused by sitting up most of the night waiting for Pitt's sporadic reports. He wore khaki shorts and a white T-shirt with the words ST. MARY PARISH, GOOD OL' FASHION SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY printed across the back.
After replacing the fuel they had used and loading their equipment in the Marine Denizen's launch, Pitt and Giordino bade a fond farewell to Romberg, who raised his head from the deck and gave them a lethargic goodbye "Woof," before promptly falling back to sleep.
As they cleared the dock, Giordino stood beside Gunn at the helm. "I'd say we could all use some dinner and a good night's sleep."
"I'll second the motion," Pitt yawned.
"All you get is a thermos of coffee with chicory," said Gunn. "The admiral flew into town along with Peter Harper of the Immigration Service. Your presence has been requested on board the Coast Guard cutter Weehawken."
"Last I saw of her," said Pitt, "she was anchored just above Sun-gari."
"She's now tied up at the Coast Guard dock near Morgan City," Gunn enlightened him.
"No dinner?" asked Giordino sadly.
"No time," Gunn replied. "Maybe if you act like good little boys, you can get a fast bite from the Weehawken's galley."
"I promise to be good," Giordino said with a wily shift to his eyes. Pitt and Gunn exchanged disbelieving looks. "Never happen," Gunn sighed.
"Not in our lifetime," Pitt agreed.
Peter Harper, Admiral Sandecker, Captain Lewis and Julia Lee were waiting for them in the wardroom of the Weehawken when they climbed on board. Also present were Major General Frank Montaigne of the Army Corps of Engineers and Frank Stewart, captain of the Marine Denizen. Lewis cordially asked if there was anything he could get them. Before Giordino could open his mouth, Gunn said, "We had coffee on the run from Wheeler's dock, thank you."
Pitt shook hands with Sandecker and Harper before giving Julia a light kiss on the cheek. "How long has it been since we've seen each other?"
"All of two hours."
"Seems like an eternity," he said with his devilish grin.
"Stop," she said, pushing him away. "Not here."
"I suggest we get on with it," said Sandecker restlessly. "We have a lot of ground to cover."
"Not the least of which is Duncan Monroe's humble apology that he asked me to convey," Harper said, making a show of penitence by pumping Pitt's and Giordino's hands. "I also wish to express my personal debt of gratitude to NUMA and to you gentlemen for ignoring our demands to disassociate yourselves from the investigation. Without your timely intervention at Bartholomeaux, our assault team would have found nothing but a dead INS agent and an empty sugar mill. The only unfortunate aspect was the killing of Ki Wong."
"I suppose in hindsight I should have kneecapped him," Giordino said without remorse. "But he was not a nice man."
"I fully realize your act was justified," admitted Harper, "but with Ki Wong dead, we lost a direct link to Qin Shang."
"Was he that essential to your case?" Captain Lewis queried Harper. "It seems to me you have more than enough proof to hang Qin Shang from the nearest tree. He was caught red-handed smuggling nearly four hundred illegal immigrants into Sungari and then up Bayou Teche to Bartholomeaux. All on vessels owned by his shipping company and by men on his payroll. What more could you want?"
"Proving the orders came directly from Qin Shang."
Sandecker seemed as puzzled as Lewis. "Surely you have all the evidence you need to indict him now."
"We can indict," acknowledged Harper, "but whether we can convict is another story. We're looking at a long, drawn-out legal fight that federal prosecutors are not certain they can win. Qin Shang will counterattack with a task force of highly paid and respected Washington attorneys. He has the Chinese government and certain ranking members of Congress on his side, and also, I'm sorry to say, possibly the White House. When we look at all the political IOUs that he will undoubtedly call due, you can see that we are not getting in the ring with a lightweight, but rather a very powerful and highly connected man."
"Wouldn't Chinese government leaders turn their backs on him if it meant a huge scandal?" inquired Frank Stewart.
Harper shook his head. "His services and influence in Washington cancel out any political liabilities that might result."
"Surel
y, you have enough on Qin Shang to close down Sungari and cut off all shipping by Qin Shang Maritime into the United States," probed General Montaigne, speaking for the first time.
"Yes, it's within our power," answered Harper. "But the billions of dollars' worth of Chinese goods that are pouring into the United States are carried on Qin Shang Maritime ships, subsidized by their government. They'd be cutting their own throat if they sat by and remained silent while we slammed the door on Qin Shang's shipping line." He paused to massage his temples. Harper was clearly a man who did not relish losing a battle to forces beyond his control. "At the moment all we can do is prevent his smuggling operations from succeeding and hope that he makes a colossal mistake."
A knock came at the door, and Lieutenant Stowe entered. He silently handed Captain Lewis a message and just as quietly departed. Lewis scanned the wording and looked over the table at Frank Stewart. "A communication from your first officer, Captain. He said you wished to be kept informed on any new developments concerning the old luxury liner the United States."
Stewart nodded at Pitt. "Dirk is the one who is monitoring the ship's passage up the Mississippi."
Lewis handed the message to Pitt. "
ardon me for reading it, but it simply says the United States has passed under the Crescent City Connection and greater New Orleans bridges and is approaching the city's commercial waterfront, where it will be docked as a permanently floating hotel and casino."
"Thank you, Captain. Another puzzling project with Qin Shang's tentacles wrapped around it.""Quite a feat just sailing it up the river from the Gulf," said Montaigne. "You might compare it with dropping a pin through a straw without it touching the sides."
"I'm glad you're here, General," said Pitt. "I have nagging questions that only you, as an expert on the river, can answer."
"I'll be glad to try."
"I have a crazy theory that Qin Shang built Sungari where he did because he intends to destroy a section of the levee and divert the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya, making it the most important port on the Gulf of Mexico."
It would be an overstatement to say that the men and one woman seated in the wardroom all accepted Pitt's fanciful scenario-all, that is, except General Montaigne. He nodded his head like a professor who threw a trick question at a student and received the correct answer. "It may surprise you to learn, Mr. Pitt, that I've had the same notion bouncing around inside my own head for the past six months."
"Divert the Mississippi," Captain Lewis said in a careful sort of voice. "There are many, myself included, who would say that's unthinkable."
"Unthinkable, perhaps, but not unimaginable to a man with Qin Shang's diabolic mind," Giordino said evenly.
Sandecker looked thoughtfully into the distance. "You've hit upon a rationale that should have been obvious from the first day of Sungari's construction."
Every eye was drawn to General Montaigne when Harper asked the obvious question. "Is it possible, General?"
"The Army Corps has been fighting Nature for over a hundred and fifty years to keep her from accomplishing the same cataclysm," answered Montaigne. "We all live with the nightmare of a great flood, greater than ever recorded since the first explorers saw the river. When that happens, the Atchafalaya River will become the main stream of the Mississippi. And that section of 'Old Man River' that presently runs from the northern border of Louisiana to the Gulf will become a silted-in tidal estuary. It's happened in the ancient past and it will happen again. If the Mississippi wants to head west, we can't stop her. The event is only a matter of time."
"Are you telling us that the Mississippi changes course on a set schedule?" asked Stewart.
Montaigne rested his chin on the head of his cane. "Not predictable by the hour or year, but it has wandered back and forth across Louisiana seven times in the past six thousand years. Had it not been for man, and especially the Army Corps of Engineers, the Mississippi would probably be flowing down the Atchafalaya Valley, over the sunken ruins of Morgan City and into the Gulf as we speak."
"Let us suppose Qin Shang destroys the levee and opens a vast spillway from the Mississippi into the canal he's had dredged into the Atchafalaya," Pitt speculated. "What would be the result?"
"In one word, catastrophic," answered Montaigne. "
ushed by a spring runoff current of seven miles an hour, a turbulent flood tide twenty, maybe thirty feet high would explode down the Mystic Canal and rage across the valley. The lives of two hundred thousand residents living on three million acres will be endangered. Most of the marshlands will become permanently inundated. The wall of water will sweep away whole towns, causing a tremendous death toll. Hundreds of thousands of animals, cows, horses, deer, rabbits, family dogs and cats swept away as though they'd never been born. Oyster beds, shrimp nurseries and catfish farms will be destroyed by the sudden decrease in salinity due to the overpowering flow of fresh water. Most of the alligator population and water life will vanish."
"You paint a grim picture, General," said Sandecker.
"That's only the pitiful part of the forecast," said Montaigne. "On the economic side, the surge would collapse the highway and railroad bridges that cross the valley, closing down all transportation from east to west. Generating plants and high-voltage lines will likely be undermined and destroyed, disrupting electrical service for thousands of square miles. The fate of Morgan City would be sealed. It will cease to exist. Interstate gas pipelines will rupture, cutting off major portions of natural gas to every state from Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Carolinas and Florida.
"And then we have the unrepairable damage to what's left of the Mississippi," he continued. "Baton Rouge would become a ghost town. All barge and water traffic would cease. The Great American Ruhr Valley, with its industrial magnitude of oil refineries, petrochemical plants and grain elevators, could no longer operate efficiently beside a polluted creek. Without fresh water, without the river's ability to scour a channel, it would soon build a wasteland of silt. Isolated from interstate commerce, New Orleans would go the way of Babylon, Angkor Wat and Pueblo Bonito. And like it or not, all oceangoing shipping would be diverted from New Orleans to Sungari. The terrible loss to the economy alone would be measured in the tens of billions of dollars."
"There's a thought that brings on a migraine," muttered Giordino.
"Speaking of relief." Montaigne looked at Captain Lewis. "I don't suppose you have a bottle of whiskey on board?"
"Sorry, sir," replied Lewis with a slight shake of the head. "No alcohol allowed on a Coast Guard ship."
"It never hurts to ask."
"How would the new river compare to the old?" Pitt asked the general.
"At the present time we control the flow of the Mississippi at the Old River Control Structure located about forty-five miles upriver from Baton Rouge. Our purpose is to maintain a distribution of thirty percent into the Atchafalaya and seventy percent into the Mississippi. When the two rivers merge with their full potential of a hundred-percent flow along a straighter path at half the distance to the Gulf compared to the channel through New Orleans, you're going to have one hell of a big river with current flowing at a great rate of speed."
"Is there no way to plug the gap should it occur?" asked Stewart.
Montaigne thought for a moment. "With the right preparation, there are any number of responses the Corps can make, but the longer it takes to get our equipment in place, the more time the flood widens the hole in the levee. Our only salvation is that the dominant current of the Mississippi would continue in the channel until the levee erodes far enough to accept the entire flow."
"How long do you think that would take?"
"Difficult to project. Perhaps two hours, perhaps two days."
"Would the process be speeded up if Qin Shang sank barges diagonally across the Mississippi to divert the main flow?" queried Giordino.
Montaigne thought a moment, then said, "Even if a tow unit consisting of enough barges to block the entire width of
the river could be pushed into the correct position and sunk-not an easy maneuver even by the best towboat pilots-the river's main current would still flow over the barges due to their low profile. Sitting on the riverbed, their upper cargo roofs would still have a good thirty to thirty-five feet of water flowing over them. As a diversionary dam, the concept would not prove practical."
"Is it possible for you to begin preparations for an all-out effort?" asked Captain Lewis. "And have your men and equipment in position ready to go if and when Qin Shang destroys the levee?"
"Yes, it's possible," answered Montaigne. "It won't come cheap to the taxpayers. The problem I face in issuing the order is that it's based simply on conjecture. We may suspect Qin Shang's motives, but without absolute proof of his intentions, my hands are tied."
Pitt said, "I do believe, ladies and gentlemen, we've fallen into the 'close the barn door after the horse has escaped' syndrome."
"Dirk is right," Sandecker said solidly. "We'd be far better off to stop Qin Shang's operation before it takes place."