"Hold it right there, fisherman." The calm voice spoke from directly behind him. "Missed your boat, did you?"
Pitt slowly turned around and froze as he felt his heart double its beat. The sadistic Crutcher was leaning against a crate containing a large pump as he casually puffed on the stub of a cigar. Next to him stood a guard with the muzzle of his M-1 assault rifle wavering up and down Pitt's body. It was the same guard Pitt had struck in Merchant's office. Pitt's heart went on triple time as Dapper John Merchant himself stepped from behind the guard, staring at Pitt with the cold authority of one who holds men's lives in the palms of his hands.
"Well, well, Mr. Pitt, you are a stubborn man."
"I knew he was the same one who punched me the minute I saw him board the shuttle van." The guard grinned wolfishly as he stepped forward and thrust the gun barrel into Pitt's gut. "A little payback for hitting me when I wasn't ready.
Pitt doubled over in sharp pain as the narrow, round muzzle jabbed deeply into his side, badly bruising but not quite penetrating the flesh. He looked up at the grinning guard and spoke through clenched teeth.
"A social misfit if I've ever seen one."
The guard lifted his rifle to strike Pitt again, but Merchant stopped him. "Enough, Elmo. You can play games with him after he's explained his persistent intrusion." He looked at Pitt apologetically. "You must excuse Elmo. He has an instinctive drive to hurt people he doesn't trust."
Pitt desperately tried to think of some way to escape. But except for jumping in the icy water and expiring from hypothermia or-- and this was the more likely option of the two-being blasted into fish meal by Elmo's automatic rifle, there was no avenue open.
"You must have an active imagination if you consider me a threat," Pitt muttered to Merchant as he stalled for time.
Merchant leisurely removed a cigarette from a gold case and lit it with a matching lighter. "Since we last met, I've run an in-depth check on you, Mr. Pitt. To say you are a threat to those you oppose is a mild understatement. You are not trespassing on Dorsett property to study fish and kelp. You are here for another, more ominous purpose. I rather hope you'll explain your presence in vivid detail without prolonged theatrical resistance."
"A pity to disappoint you," said Pitt, between deep breaths. "I'm afraid you won't have time for one of your sordid interrogations."
Merchant was not easily fooled. But he knew that Pitt was no garden-variety diamond smuggler. A tiny alarm went off in the back of his mind when he saw the utter lack of fear in Pitt's eyes. He felt curious yet a trifle uneasy. "I freely admit I thought more highly of you than to expect a cheap bluff."
Pitt stared upward and scanned the skies. "A squadron of fighters from the aircraft carrier Nimitz, bristling with air-to-surface missiles, should be whistling over at any moment."
A bureaucrat with an obscure governmental agency with the power to order an attack on Canadian soil? I don't believe so."
"You're right about me," said Pitt. "But my boss, Admiral James Sandecker, has the leverage to order an air strike."
For an instant, a brief eye blink in time, Pitt thought Merchant was going to buy it. Hesitation clouded the security chief's face. Then he grinned, stepped forward and wickedly backhanded Pitt across the mouth with a gloved hand. Pitt staggered backward, feeling the blood springing from his lips.
"I'll take my chances," Merchant said dryly. He wiped a speck of blood from his leather glove with a bored expression of distaste. "No more stories. You will speak only when I ask for answers to my questions." He turned to Crutcher and Elmo. "Escort him to my office. We'll continue our discussion there."
Crutcher pushed a flat-handed palm into Pitt's face and sent him staggering across the dock. "I think we'll walk instead of ride to your office, sir. Our nosy friend could use a little exercise to soften him up . .
."
"Hold on there!" came a sharp voice from the deck of the yacht. Boudicca Dorsett was leaning against the rail, watching the drama below on the dock. She was wearing a wool cardigan over a white turtleneck and a short pleated skirt. Her white-stockinged legs were encased in a pair of high calfskin riding boots. She tossed her long hair over her shoulders and gestured to the gangway leading from the dock to the yacht's promenade deck. "Bring your intruder on board."
Merchant and Crutcher exchanged indulgent glances before hustling Pitt on board the yacht. Elmo prodded him viciously in the lower back with the assault rifle, forcing him through a teak doorway into the main salon.
Boudicca sat on one edge of a desk carved from driftwood with an Italian-marble top. Her skirt, taut under her legs, rose to mid-thigh. She was a robust woman, almost masculine in her movements, yet exuding sensuality and an unmistakable aura of wealth and polish. She was used to intimidating men, and she frowned when she saw Pitt clinically appraising her.
A first-class performance, Pitt observed. Most men would have been awed and cowed. Merchant, Crutcher and Elmo couldn't keep their eyes off her. But Pitt refused to play on her turf. He ignored Boudicca's obvious charms and forced his eyes to travel over the luxurious furnishings and decor of the yacht's salon.
"Nice place you have here," he said impassively.
"Shut your mouth in front of Ms. Dorsett," Elmo snapped, raising the butt of his weapon to strike Pitt again.
Pitt whirled on his feet, knocked away the approaching rifle with one hand and rammed his other fist into Elmo's gut just above the groin. The guard groaned in pain and anger and doubled over, dropping the rifle, both hands clutched at the point of impact.
Pitt scooped up the rifle from the salon's thick carpet before anyone could react and calmly handed the weapon to a stunned Merchant. "I'm tired of being on the receiving end of this cretin's sadistic habits.
Please keep him under control." Then he turned to Boudicca. "I realize it's early, but I could use a drink.
Do you stock tequila on board this floating villa?"
Boudicca remained calm and aloof, staring at Pitt with renewed curiosity. She looked at Merchant.
"Where did he come from?" she demanded. "Who is this man?"
"He penetrated our security by posing as a local fisherman. In reality he's an American agent."
"Why is he snooping around the mine?"
"I was taking him back to my office for the answers when you called us to come aboard," replied Merchant.
She rose to her full height and stood taller than any man in the salon. Her voice became incredibly deep and sensuous, and her eyes were cool as they flicked over Pitt. "Your name, please, and your business here."
Merchant began to answer. "His name is--"
"I want him to tell me," she cut Merchant off.
"So you're Boudicca Dorsett," Pitt said, brushing off her question and returning her gaze. "Now I can say I know all three."
She searched his face for a moment. "All three?"
"Arthur Dorsett's lovely daughters," answered Pitt.
Anger at being toyed with flashed in her eyes. She took two steps, reached out, grasped Pitt's upper arms and squeezed as she leaned forward, crushing him against one wall of the salon. There was no expression in the giantess' black eyes as they stared unblinkingly into Pitt's, almost nose-to-nose. She said nothing, only stood there increasing the pressure and pushing upward until his feet were barely touching the carpet.
Pitt resisted by tensing his body and flexing his biceps, which felt as if they were clamped in ever-tightening vises. He could not believe any man, much less a woman, could be so strong. His muscles began to feel as if they were mashed to pulp. He clenched his teeth and bleeding lips together to fight the rising pain. The restricted blood flow was numbing and turning his hands white when Boudicca finally released her grip and stepped back.
"Now then, before I encircle your throat, tell me who you are and why you're prying into my family's mining operation."
Pitt stalled for a minute while the pain subsided and feeling returned to his lower arms and hands. He was stunned by the woman
's inhuman strength. Finally, he gasped out, "Is that any way to treat the man who rescued your sisters from certain death?"
Her eyes widened questioningly, and she stiffened. "What are you talking about? How do you know my sisters?"
"My name is Dirk Pitt," he said slowly. "My friends and I saved Maeve from freezing to death and Deirdre from drowning in the Antarctic."
"You?" The words seemed to boil from her lips. "You're the one from the National Underwater & Marine Agency?"
"The same." Pitt walked over to a lavish bar with a copper surface and picked up a cocktail napkin to dab away the blood that dripped from a cut lip. Merchant and Crutcher looked as stunned as if a horse they had bet their life savings on had run out of the money.
Merchant gazed blankly at Boudicca. "He must be lying."
"Would you like me to describe them in detail?" asked Pitt carelessly. "Maeve is tall, blond, with incredibly blue eyes. Strictly a camp-on-the-beach type." He paused to point at a portrait of a young blond woman, wearing an old-fashioned dress with a diamond the size of a quail's egg set in a pendant around her neck. "That's her in the painting."
"Not even close." Boudicca smirked. "That happens to be a portrait of my great-great-great-grandmother."
"Neither here nor there," Pitt said with feigned indifference, unwilling to tear his eyes away from the incredible likeness of Maeve. "Deirdre, on the other hand, has brown eyes and red hair and walks like a runway model."
After a long pause, Boudicca said, "He must be who he says he is."
"That doesn't explain his presence here," Merchant persisted.
"I told you during our last meeting," said Pitt. "I came here to study the effects of the chemicals and pollution flowing into the sea from the mine."
Merchant smiled thinly. "An inventive story, but far from the truth."
Pitt could not relax for a moment. He was in the company of dangerous people, cunning and shrewd.
He had felt his way, assessing the reaction to his line of approach, but he realized it was only a matter of a minute or two before Boudicca figured out his game. It was inevitable. She had enough pieces to fill in the borders of the puzzle. He decided he could better control the situation by telling the truth.
"The gospel you want, the gospel you'll get. I'm here because the pulsed ultrasound you use to excavate far diamonds causes an intense resonance that channels great distances underwater. When undersea conditions are optimal these pulses converge with those from your other mining operations around the Pacific and kill any living organism in the area. But of course I'm not telling you anything you don't already know."
He'd caught Boudicca off balance. She stared at Pitt as if he had stepped off an alien spaceship.
"You're quite good at creating a scene." she said hesitantly. "You should have gone into the movies."
"I've considered it," said Pitt. "But I don't have James Woods' talent or Mel Gibson's looks." He discovered a bottle of Herradura silver tequila behind the bar on a glass shelf backed by a gold-tinted mirror and poured himself a shot glass. He also found a lime and a salt shaker. He let Boudicca and the others stand there and watch as he dabbed his tongue on the flap of skin between his thumb and forefinger before sprinkling salt on it. Then he downed the tequila, licked the salt and sucked on the lime.
"There, now I feel ready to face the rest of the day. As I was saying, you know more about the horrors of the acoustic plague, as it's come to be called, than I do, Ms. Dorsett. The same killer that came frighteningly close to killing your sisters. So it would be foolish of me to waste my time attempting to enlighten you."
"I don't have the vaguest idea of what you're talking about." She turned to Merchant and Crutcher.
"This man is dangerous. He is a menace to Dorsett Consolidated Mining. Get him off my boat and do with him whatever you think is necessary to ensure he doesn't bother us again."
Pitt made one last toss of the dice. "Garret Converse, the actor, and his Chinese junk, the Tz'u-hsi.
David Copperfield would be proud of the way you made Converse, his entire crew and boat disappear."
The expected reaction was all there. The strength and the arrogance evaporated.
Boudicca suddenly looked lost. Then Pitt threw in the clincher. "Surely you haven't forgotten the Mentawai. Now there was a sloppy job. You mistimed your explosives and blew up the boarding party from the Rio Grande who were investigating what appeared to be an abandoned ship. Unfortunately for you, your yacht was seen fleeing the scene and later identified."
"A most intriguing tale." There was scorn in Boudicca's voice, but a scorn disputed by a deep foreboding in her face. "You might almost say spellbinding. Are you quite finished, Mr. Pitt, or do you have an ending?"
"An ending?" Pitt sighed. "It hasn't been written yet. But I think it's safe to say that very soon Dorsett Consolidated Mining Limited will be only a memory."
He had gone one step too far. Boudicca began to lose control. Her anger swelled, and she came close to Pitt, her face tight and cold. "My father can't be stopped. Not by any legal authority or any government. Not in the next twenty-seven days. By then, we'll have closed down the mines of our own accord."
"Why not do it now and save God only knows how many lives?"
"Not one minute before we're ready."
"Ready for what?"
"A pity you can't ask Maeve."
"Why Maeve?"
'Deirdre tells me that she became quite friendly with the man who saved her."
"She's in Australia," said Pitt.
Boudicca shook her head and showed her teeth. "Maeve is in Washington, working as an agent for our father, feeding him whatever information NUMA has collected on the deathly sound waves. Nothing like having a trusted relative in the enemy camp to keep one out of trouble."
"I misjudged her," Pitt said brusquely. "She led me to believe that protecting sea life was her life's work."
"Any moral indignation flew out the window when she learned my father was holding her twin sons as insurance."
"Don't you mean hostages?" The mist began to lift. Pitt began to see that Arthur Dorsett's machinations went far beyond mere greed. The man was a bloodthirsty cutthroat, a predator who thought nothing of using his own family as pawns.
Boudicca disregarded Pitt's remark and nodded at John Merchant. "He's yours to dispose of as you will."
"Before we bury him with the others," said Crutcher with seeming anticipation, "we'll persuade him to fill in any details he might have purposely left out."
"So I'm to be tortured and then executed," Pitt said nonchalantly, helping himself to another shot of tequila while his mind desperately created and discarded a dozen useless plans for escape.
"You've condemned yourself by coming here," said Boudicca. "If, as you say, officials of NUMA suspected our excavation operations were responsible for sending deadly sound waves throughout the ocean, there would have been no need for you to clandestinely spy on Dorsett property. The truth is, you have learned the answers within the past hour and have yet to pass them on to your superiors in Washington. I compliment you, Mr. Pitt. Slipping through our, security and entering the mine was a masterstroke. You could not have done it alone. Explanations will be forthcoming after Mr. Merchant motivates you to share your secrets."
She nailed me good, Pitt thought in defeat. "You will give Maeve and Deirdre my best wishes."
"Knowing my sisters, they've probably already forgotten you."
"Deirdre maybe, not Maeve. Now that I've met all of you, it's evident that she's the most virtuous of the three."
Pitt was surprised at the look of hatred that flashed in Boudicca's eyes. "Maeve is the outcast. She has never been close to the family."
Pitt grinned, a natural grin, mischievous and challenging. "It's easy to see why."
Boudicca stood up, looking even taller due to the heels of her boots, and stared down at Pitt, enraged at the laughter she read in his opaline green eyes. "By the time we close the mine, Maeve and
her bastard sons will be gone." She spun around and glared at Merchant. "Get this scum off my boat," she said. "I don't want to see him again."
"You won't, Ms. Dorsett," said Merchant, motioning for Crutcher to push Pitt from the salon. "I promise, this will be your last look at him."
With Pitt between them and Elmo bringing up the rear, Merchant and Crutcher escorted their captive down the gangway and walked across the dock toward a waiting van. As they passed by the large containers of supplies and equipment that had been off loaded from the cargo ship, the loud exhaust from the diesel engines operating the cranes drowned out a dull thud. Only when Crutcher suddenly crumpled to the planking of the dock did Pitt spin around in a defensive crouch, just in time to see Merchant's eyes roll up into his head before he dropped like a sack of sand. Several steps behind them, Elmo lay stretched out like a dead man, which he was.
The whole operation hadn't taken ten seconds from the killing blow to the back of Elmo's neck to the concussion of John Merchant's skull.
Mason Broadmoor grabbed Pitt's arm with his left hand, his right still gripping a massive steel wrench.
"Quick, jump!"
Confused, Pitt hesitated. "Jump where?"
"Off the dock, you idiot."
Pitt needed no further urging. Five running steps and they both flew through the air and landed in the water a few meters in front of the bow of the cargo ship. The ice-cold water shocked every nerve ending in Pitt's body before his adrenaline took over and he found himself swimming beside Broadmoor.
"Now what?" he gasped, breathing steam over the icy water while shaking the water from his face and hair.
"The watercraft," answered Broadmoor after snorting water from his nose. "We sneaked them off the fishing boat and hid them under the pier."
"They were on the boat? I didn't see them."
"A hidden compartment I built myself," Broadmoor said, grinning. "You never know when you'll need to skip town ahead of the sheriff." He reached one of the Duo 300 WetJets that were floating beside a concrete piling and climbed aboard. "You know how to ride a watercraft?"