Flood Tide

  His eyes did not blink, his face was still. There was no sensation of coldness, no pitiless thoughts running through his mind, but more a perception of detachment. These men did not belong here. They came to kill and cause destruction. To Giordino's way of thinking, allowing them to escape unpunished was a crime in itself. He stared at the men inside the helicopter, who began to laugh with satisfaction in the belief they had won out over the stupid Americans. Giordino became mad, madder than he had ever been.

  "How do I hate you," he muttered angrily. "Let me count the ways."

  With the last man aboard, the pilot lifted the craft vertically into the air. Buffeted by its own downdraft, it hung for a few moments before slipping sideways and aiming its bow toward the east. At that instant, Giordino opened up, pumping round after round into the turbine engines mounted below the rotor. He could see the twelve-gauge magnum-charged pellets tearing holes in the cowlings but without seeming effect.

  He pumped out his last casing, dropped the Aserma and snatched up the AKM. There was a thin wisp of smoke coming from the port turbine now, but the helicopter showed no other signs of vital damage. There was no infrared laser pointer on the rifle, and Giordino disregarded the night scope mounted on the barrel. A large target at this distance was hard to miss. He peered over the iron sights at the great bird about to disappear and pulled the trigger evenly on semiautomatic. After pounding the final shot home, Giordino could do no more that hope that he had at least wounded the bird to a condition where it could not reach its destination. The helicopter seemed to hang before falling backward in a tail-low attitude. It was clearly out of control now as flames shot out of both turbines. Then it was falling like a rock, crashing onto the stern deck before exploding in a solid wall of flame that shot straight up in the air. Within seconds, the stem became a raging inferno, radiating heat and fire with the energy of a blast furnace.

  Giordino threw the gun aside as the shooting pain in his broken leg returned with a vengeance. He gazed approvingly at the blazing, twisted tongue of fire shooting into the sky. "Damn," he murmured softly. "I forgot the marshmallows."

  45

  THE EXPLOSION THUNDERED in the ears of the soldiers and sheriff's deputies who had stopped just half a mile from the two semitrucks and trailers. The sky tore apart in a violent, demented convulsion of compressed air as the horrendous detonation tore the heart out of the levee. Seconds later, the eruption of the pressure wave stunned them, followed by a blast of dirt from the levee and concrete from the highway. Then flaming metal from the shattered trucks rained down from a world in chaos. As if given a universal order, everyone ducked behind or under his vehicle to shield himself from the storm of debris.

  Sandecker threw up an arm to protect his eyes from the blinding flash and flying fragments. The air felt thick and charged with electricity as a great roar pounded his ears. A huge ball of fire rose and mushroomed, spreading into the sky, transforming into a swirling black cloud that blotted out the stars.

  And then all eyes turned back to where a hundred yards of highway, the levee and the two big trucks once stood. All had disintegrated. None of those standing there in shock were prepared for the horrific spectacle that avalanched through the vanished remains of the levee. To a man they stood numbed by the rumbling reverberation in their ears that slowly faded, only to be replaced with a far more ominous sound, an unbelievably loud hissing and sucking sound as a seething wall of water gushed catastrophically into the waiting arms of the Mystic Canal, dredged by Qin Shang for this very event.

  For one long, terrible minute they stared bleakly through disbelieving eyes, hypnotically drawn to a cataract so violent that it could not be conceived unless witnessed. They watched impotently as millions of gallons of water poured through the breach in the highway and levee, dragged by the natural laws of gravity and impelled by the force of the river's mass and current. It exploded into a wall of boiling water with nothing to stop its great momentum as it began draining off the main flow of the Mississippi.

  The great destroying flood tide was on its way, oblivion in the making.

  Unlike ocean tidal waves, there was no trough. Behind the crest, the fluid mass moved without the slightest suggestion of distortion, its texture smooth and rolling, surging with immeasurable energy.

  What was left of the abandoned town of Calzas was inundated and swept away. Nearly thirty feet high, the irresistible, seething mass engulfed the marshlands as it hurled toward the waiting arms of the Atchafalaya River. A small cabin cruiser, with its four occupants in the wrong part of the river, at the wrong time, was sucked into the breach, where it plunged dizzily through the wild maelstrom and vanished. No act of man could halt the raging wall of uncontrollable water as it rushed across the valley before advancing toward the Gulf, where its muddy flow would be absorbed by the sea.

  Sandecker, Olson and the other men on the highway could do nothing but watch the nightmarish disaster like eyewitnesses at a train derailment, unable to fathom the unrelenting cataclysm that could penetrate and crush concrete, wood, steel and flesh. They watched silently in the face of what appeared to promise inevitable calamity, their faces tightened in expressionless masks. Gunn shivered and looked away toward the Mississippi.

  "The ship!" he shouted above the rush of the flood. He pointed excitedly. "The ship!"

  In almost the same terror-bred moment in time, the United States came rushing past. Mesmerized by the awesome spectacle of the unleashed flood tide, they had forgotten about her. Their eyes followed Gunn's outstretched hand and finger, seeing an unending black silhouette emerge from the night, a tangible monster from the darkness. Her superstructure, fore and aft, was blasted into a shell-torn, jagged mass of indescribable shambles. Her foremast was gone, her funnels raked and holed, great gaps of twisted steel ripped into the sides of her hull.

  But still she came, propelled by her great engines, bent on adding her weight to the devastation. There was no stopping her. She passed them by at a tremendous rate of speed, her bows throwing up a great sheet of water as she drove against the current under full power. Despite the fact she had been used to cause death and destruction, she looked magnificent. No man who saw her that night would ever forget that they were seeing a legend die. No drama was ever played to a more climactic ending.

  They stared enthralled, expecting to see her hull turn and slant across the river in preparation of her role of becoming a dam to cast the Mississippi away from her established channel forever. Their convictions seemed verified as waterspouts burst alongside her hull.

  "Mother of God!" muttered Olson in shock. "They've blown the charges! She's going down!"

  Any shred of misplaced hope any of them had of the Corps stemming the flow was gone now as the glorious superliner began to settle in the water.

  But the United States was not headed on a course to bury her bows in the east bank with her stern slanted across the river toward the west. She was running straight up the center of the main channel, ever so slowly curving toward the Niagara-like falls roaring through the breach.

  Pitt stood and clutched the wheel, now jammed against its stop. He had turned the rudder as far as it could go. His calculated determination could do no more. He felt the ship shudder as the explosive charges blew great holes in her bottom, and he cursed himself for not being able to control the speed or somehow reverse the port propellers and twist the ship in a tighter turn. But the automated control system had been shut down by damage from the Army's gunfire, making it impossible without a crew down in the engine room to carry out his course change. Then, with torturous slowness, almost miraculously, he watched as the bow began easing toward port.

  Pitt felt his heart jump. Imperceptibly at first, but as the angle slowly increased, the river's current began nudging her starboard bow sideways. It was as though the United States refused to give up and was not about to pass from the ages with a black mark against her remarkable history. She had survived forty-eight long years of sailing the seas and being laid
up, and unlike many of her sister ships who went quietly to the scrap yard, she was not going willingly to her death, but with her heart and soul resisting to the end.

  Unerringly, as if Pitt had ordained it, the ship's bow stem cut into the steep slope on the edge of the channel and forged through the bottom mud on an oblique angle to the levee two hundred feet beyond the breach. On a sharper angle she might have driven straight through.

  The power of the river's flow through the gash blown out by the explosion came into play and helped slew her massive hull laterally against the breach. And then as suddenly as the vast surge had burst into the marshlands, it was dying, falling off to a small torrent that curled around the liner's still-flailing propellers at the stern.

  At last she came to a complete stop, her four great bronze screws beating against the riverbed, embedding their blades in the mud until they could turn no more. The United States, the once-grand superliner of America's shipping fleet, had finished her final voyage.

  Pitt stood like a man who had run a triathlon, his head dropped over the wheel, his hands still locked on the rim. He was dead-tired, his body, never fully recovered from the injuries received on an island off the coast of Australia only a few weeks before, shrieking for a rest. He was so brain-weary he could not distinguish any separation of the bruises and abrasions suffered from the explosions or the fight with the Chinese defenders of the ship. They all blended into a growing sea of torment.

  It took nearly a full minute before he became dimly aware that the ship was no longer moving. His legs could hardly keep him upright as he released the helm and turned to go search for Giordino. But his friend was already standing in the shattered doorway, leaning on the Kalashnikov AKM that he used to shoot down the helicopter, using it as a cane.

  "I have to tell you," Giordino said with a slight grin, "your docking technique leaves much to be desired."

  "Give me another hour of practice and I'll get the hang of it," Pitt replied in a tone barely above a whisper.

  On shore, the sickening moment of panic had passed. They no longer looked out across a broken levee and saw a roaring, unstoppable flood. The flow had fallen off to that of a rushing stream. Every man on the highway cheered and shouted exultantly, all except Sandecker. He gazed at the United States through saddened eyes. His face was weary and haggard. "No seaman likes to see a ship die," he said somberly.

  "But what a noble death," said Gunn.

  "I suppose there is nothing left for her but to be scrapped."

  "It would cost too many millions to restore her."

  "Dirk and Al, bless their hides, prevented a major disaster."

  "A lot of people will never know how much they owe those two characters," Gunn agreed.

  Already, a long convoy of trucks and equipment was descending on both ends of the break. Towboats pushing barges loaded with huge stones were arriving from up and down the river. Directed by General Montaigne, the Army Corps of Engineers, seasoned veterans at making emergency repairs along the river, rapidly deployed. Every available man and piece of equipment from New Orleans to Vicksburg had been marshaled to restore the levee and put the highway back in serviceable order for auto and truck traffic.

  Thanks to the massive hull of the United States acting as a barrier, the flood tide that hurtled toward the Atchafalaya was robbed of the immense power of the Mississippi. After spreading across the marshlands, the wild waters diminished to a wave less than three feet high when it reached Morgan City.

  Not for the first time had the mighty Mississippi been prevented from forging her way into a new channel. The battle between men and nature would go on, and eventually there could be but one outcome.

  PART VTHE PEKING MAN

  46

  April 30, 2000 Washington, D.C.

  CHINA'S AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES, Qian Miang, was a portly man. Short, hair styled in a crewcut, face fixed in a constant little grin that almost never revealed teeth, he reminded those who first met him of a sculpture of a contented Buddha with its hands supporting a round stomach. Never behaving like a dogmatic Communist, Qian Miang was a very gracious man. Supremely confident, he cultivated many powerful friends in Washington and moved through the halls of the Capitol and White House with the ease of a Cheshire cat.

  Preferring to do business capitalist-style, he met with Qin Shang in the private dining room of Washington's finest Chinese restaurant, where he often entertained the city's power elite. He greeted the shipping magnate with a warm two handed shake. "Qin Shang, my dear friend." The voice was jolly and congenial. Instead of Mandarin, he spoke perfect English with a trace of a British accent absorbed during three years of schooling at Cambridge. "You have neglected me during your stay in town."

  "My humble apologies, Qian Miang," said Qin Shang. "I have experienced pressing problems. I was informed earlier this morning that my project to divert the Mississippi River past my port of Sungari has failed."

  "I am quite aware of your problems," replied Qian Miang without loosening his smile.. "I cannot suggest otherwise, but President Lin Loyang is not happy. Your smuggling ventures, it seems, have become a substantial embarrassment to our government. Our long-standing strategy to infiltrate high level government offices and influence American policy toward China is threatened."

  Qin Shang was shown to a high-backed chair carved out of ebony before a large circular table and offered a choice of Chinese wines the ambassador kept stocked in the basement of the restaurant. Only after a waiter pulled the cord to a chime to announce his entrance, poured the wine and exited the room, did Qin Shang speak. "My carefully laid plans were somehow thwarted by the INS and NUMA."

  "NUMA is not an investigative agency," Qian Miang reminded him.

  "No, but their people were a direct cause of the raid on Orion Lake and the disaster at the Mystic Canal. Two men in particular."

  Qian Miang nodded. "I have studied the reports. Your attempt to kill NUMA's special projects director and the female INS agent was not a wise judgment, certainly one not condoned by me. This is not our homeland, where such things can be carried out in secret. You cannot run-what do they call it in the West-roughshod over citizens within their own borders. I am instructed to tell you that any attempt to murder NUMA officials is strictly forbidden."

  "Whatever I have done, old friend," said Qin Shang bluntly, "I have done for the People's Republic of China."

  "And Qin Shang Maritime," added Qian Miang quietly. "We go back too far to delude each other. Until now, as you have profited, so has our country. But you have gone, not one but several steps too far. Like a bear that has knocked a nest of bees from a tree, you have maddened a swarm of Americans."

  Qin Shang stared at the ambassador. "Am I to assume you have instructions from President Lin Loyang?"

  "He wished me to convey his regrets, but I am to tell you that from this moment, all operations by Qin Shang Maritime will cease within North America, and all your personal ties to the American government are to be terminated."

  Qin Shang's normally controlled demeanor cracked. "That would spell the end of our smuggling operations."

  "I think not. The government's own shipping company, China Marine, will substitute for Qin Shang Maritime in all smuggling as well as the legal transportation of Chinese goods and materials into the United States and Canada."

  "China Marine is not half as efficiently run as Qin Shang Maritime."

  "Perhaps so, but since Congress is demanding public investigations into Orion Lake and the debacle on the Mississippi, and the United States Justice Department is in the process of building a case for your indictment, you should consider yourself fortunate that Lin Loyang hasn't given orders to surrender yourself to the FBI. Already, the news media is calling the destruction of the levee and the ocean liner the United States an act of terrorism. Unfortunately, lives were lost and the coming scandal is certain to expose many of our agents around the country."

  The chime announced the arrival of the waiter, who entered th
e private room with a tray of steaming dishes. He artfully arranged the dishes around the table and retreated.

  "I took the liberty of preordering to save time," said Qian Miang. "I hope you don't mind?"

  "An excellent selection. I am especially fond of tomato-and-eggdrop soup and squab soong."

  "So I've been told."

  Qin Shang smiled as he tasted his soup with the traditional porcelain spoon. "The soup is every bit as good as your intelligence."

  "Your gourmet preferences are well known."

  "I shall never be indicted," Qin Shang said abruptly and indignantly. "I have too many powerful friends in Washington. Thirty senators and congressmen are in my debt. I contributed heavily to President Wallace's campaign. He considers me a loyal friend."