Deep Six

  He had killed countless men, their features forgotten less than seconds after their death. But the faces of the women lingered.

  He remembered the first, so many years ago on a tramp steamer in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: her haunting expression of bewilderment as her chained nude body was dropped over the side.

  "Nice place you have here," came a voice from the doorway, "but your elevator is out of order."

  Lee Tong spun around and gaped at the man who stood wet and dripping, pointing a strange antique revolver at his chest.

  "You!" he gasped.

  Pitts face-tired, haggard and dark with heard stubble-lit up in a smile. "Lee Tong Bougainville. What a coincinence."

  "You're alive!"

  "A trite observation."

  "And responsible for all this: those mad men in the old uniforms, the riverboat . . ."

  "The best I could arrange on the spur of the moment," Pitt said apologetically.

  Lee Tong's moment of utter confusion passed and he slowly curled his finger around the trigger of the Steyr-Mannlicher that hung loosely in one hand, muzzle aimed at the carpeted deck.

  "Why have you pursued my grandmother and me, Mr. Pitt?" he demanded, stalling. "Why have you set out to wreck Bougainville Maritime?"

  "That's like Hitler asking why the Allies invaded Europe. In my case, you were responsible for the death of a friend."

  "Who?"

  "It doesn't matter," said Pitt indifferently. "You never met her."

  Lee Tong swung up the barrel of his carbine and pulled the trigger.

  Pitt was faster, but Giordino had used up the last cartridge and the revolver's hammer fell on an empty cylinder. He stiffened, expecting the impact of a bullet.

  It never came.

  Lee Tong had forgotten to insert a new clip after firing his final round at Pitt on the towboat. He lowered the carbine, his lips stretched into an inscrutable smile. "It seems we have a standoff, Mr. Pitt."

  "Only temporary," said Pitt, recocking the hammer and keeping the revolver raised and aimed. "My people will be coming aboard any minute now."

  Lee Tong sighed and relaxed. "Then I can do little else but surrender and wait for arrest."

  "You'll never stand trial."

  The smile turned into a sneer. "That's not for you to decide.

  Besides, you're hardly in a position to-" Suddenly he flipped the carbine around, gripping the barrel and raising it as a club. The rifle butt was on a vicious downswing when Pitt squeezed the trigger and blasted Lee Tong in the throat with the barrel loaded with buckshot. The carbine poised in minair and then fell from his hand as he stumbled backward until striking the wall and dropping heavily to the deck.

  Pitt left him where he lay and threw off the cover over Loren's cocoon. He gently lifted her out and carried her to the open elevator.

  He checked the circuit breakers and found them on, but there was still no response from the lift motors when he pressed the "up" button.

  He had no way of knowing the generators that provided electricity to the barge had run out of fuel and shut down, leaving only the emergency battery power to illuminate the overhead lighting.

  Scrounging through a supply locker, he found a rope, which he tied under Loren's arms. Then he pulled himself through the elevator roof's trapdoor and scaled the shaft lander to the top deck of the barge.

  Slowly, gently, he eased Loren's body upward until she lay on the rusting deck. Winded, he took a minute to catch his breath and look around. The Stonewall Jackson was still burning fiercely, but the flames were being fought with firehoses from the towboat.

  About two miles to the west a white Coast Guard cutter was driving through the light swells toward their position, while to the south he could just make out the sail tower of a nuclear submarine.

  Taking a short length of the rope, Pitt tied Loren loosely to a cleat so she wouldn't roll into the sea, then he returned below.

  When he entered the isolation chamber again, Lee Tong was gone.

  A trail of blood led up the corridor and ended at an open hatch to a storage deck below. He saw no reason to waste time on a dying murderer and turned to rescue the Vice President. , Before he took two steps, a tremendous blast lifted him off his feet and hurled him face downward twenty feet away. The impact from the concussion drove the breath from his lungs and the ringing in his ears prevented him from hearing the sea rush in through a gaping hole torn in the hull of the barge.

  Pitt awkwardly raised himself to his hands and knees and tried to orient himself. Then slowly, as the haze before his eyes melted away, he realized what had happened and what was coming. Lee Tong had detonated an explosive charge before he died and already the water was flowing across a corridor deck.

  Pitt pushed himself to his feet and reeled drunkenly into the isolation chamber again. The Vice President looked up at him and tried to say something, but before he could utter a sound, Pitt had hoisted him over a shoulder and was lurching toward the elevator.

  The water was surging around Pitts knees now, splashing up the walls. He knew only seconds were left before the barge began its dive to the seabed. By the time he reached the open elevator, the sea was up to his chest and he half walked, half swam inside.

  It was too late to repeat the rope lift procedure. Furiously he manhandled Margolin through the ceiling trapdoor, clasped him under the chest and began climbing the iron lander to the tiny square patch of blue sky that seemed miles away.

  He remembered then that he had tied Loren to the upper deck to keep her from rolling into the sea. The sickening thought coursed through him that she would be pulled to her death when the barge sank.

  Beyond fear lies desperation, and beyond that a raging drive to survive that cuts across the boundaries of suffering and exhaustion.

  Some men yield to hopelessness, some try to sidestep its existence, while a very few accept and face it head-on.

  Watching the froth tedaciously dog his rise up the elevator shaft, Pitt fought with every shred of his will to save the lives of Margolin and Loren. His arms felt as if they were tearing from their sockets.

  White spots burst before his eyes and the strain on his cracked ribs passed from mere pain to grinding agony.

  His grip loosened on flakes of rust and he almost fell backward into the water boiling at his heels. It would have been so easy to surrender, to let go and drop into oblivion and release the torture that racked his body. But he hung on. Rung by rung, he struggled upward, Margolin's dead weight becoming heavier with each step.

  His ears regained a partial sense of hearing and picked up a strange thumping sound, which Pitt wrote off as blood pounding in his head. The sea rose above his feet now, and the barge shuddered; it was about to go under.

  A nightmare world closed in on him. A black shape loomed above, and then his hand reached out and clasped another hand.

  SPEAKER ALAN MORAN, his face wreathed in a confinent smile, circulated around the East Room of the White House conversing with his aides and inner circle of advisers while awaiting final word of the trial taking place on the floor of the Senate.

  He greeted a small group of party leaders and then turned and excused himself as Secretary of State Douglas Oates and Defense Secretary Jesse Simmons entered the room. Moran came over and held out his hand, which Oates ignored.

  Moran shrugged off the snub. He could well afford to. "Well, it seems you're not of a mind to praise Caesar, but you haven't a prayer of burying him either."

  "You've just reminded me of an old gangster movie I saw when I was a boy," Oates said icily. "The title fits you perfectly."

  "Oh, really? What movie was that?"

  "Little Caesar."

  Moran's smile turned into a sinister glare. "Have you come with your resignation?"

  Oates pulled an envelope partway out of his inside breast pocket.

  "I have it right here."

  "Keep it!" Moran snarled. "I won't give you the satisfaction of bowing out gracefully. Ten minutes af
ter I take the oath I'm holding a press conference. Besides assuring the nation of a smooth succession. I intend to announce that you and the rest of the President's Cabinet planned a conspiracy to set up a dictatorship, and my first order as chief executive is to fire the whole rotten lot of you.

  "We expected no less. Integrity was never one of your character traits."

  "There was no conspiracy and you know it," Simmons said angrily.

  "The President was the victim of a Soviet plot to control the White House."

  "No matter," Moran replied nastily. "By the time the truth comes out, the damage to your precious reputations will have been done.

  You'll never work in Washington again."

  Before Oates and Simmons could retort, an aid rushed up and spoke softly in Moran's ear. He dismissed his enemies with a snide look and turned away. Then he stepped to the center of the room and raised his hands for silence.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced. "I've just been informed that the Senate has voted for conviction by the required twothirds.

  Our beleaguered President is no longer in office and the Vice Presidency is vacant. The time has come for us to put our house in order and begin anew."

  As if on cue, Chief justice Nelson O'Brien rose from a chair, smoothed his black robes and cleared his throat. Everyone crowded around Moran as his secretary held what was dubiously touted as his family Bible.

  just then Sam Emmett and Dan Fawcett came through the doorway and paused. Then they spied Oates and Simmons and approached.

  "Any word?" Oates asked anxiously.

  Emett shook his head. "None. General Metcalf ordered a communications blackout. I haven't been able to reach him at the Pentagon to find out why."

  "Then it's all over."

  No one replied as they all turned in unison and stood in powerless frustration as Moran raised his right hand to take the oath of office as President, his left hand on the Bible. ' "Repeat after me," Chief justice O'Brien intoned like a drum roll. "I, Alan Robert Morando solemnly swear "I, Alan Robert Morando solemnly swear "' ' ' that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States," O'Brien droned on.

  Suddenly the room behind Oates went quiet. The prompting of the oath by the Chief justice went unanswered by Moran. Curious, Oates turned around and looked at the crowd. They were all staring in frozen wonder at Vice President Vincent Margolin, who walked through the doorway preceded by Oscar Lucas and flanked by General Metcalf and Admiral Sandecker.

  Moran's upraised arm slowly fell and his face turned ashen. The silence smothered the room like an insulating cloud as Margolin stepped up to the Chief justice, the stunned audience parting for him. He gave Moran a frigin look and then smiled at the rest.

  "Thank you for the rehearsal," he said warmly. "But I think I can take over from here."

  August 13, 1989

  New York City SAL CASIO WAS waiting in the vast lobby of the World Trade Center when Pitt came slowly through the entrance. Casio looked at him in stark appraisal. He couldn't remember when he'd seen any man so near the edge of physical collapse.

  Pitt moved with the tired shuffle of a man who had endured too much. He wore a borrowed foul-weather jacket two sizes too small. His right arm hung slack while his left was pressed against his chest, as if holding it together, and his face was etched in a strange blending of suffering and triumph. The eyes burned with a sinister glow that Casio recognized as the fires of revenge.

  "I'm glad you could make it," Casio said without referring to Pitts haggard appearance.

  "It's your show," said Pitt. "I'm only along for the ride."

  "Only fitting and proper we be together at the finish."

  "I appreciate the courtesy. Thank you."

  Casio turned and guided Pitt over to a private elevator. Pulling a small push-button transmitter from his pocket, he punched the correct code and the doors opened. Inside was an unconscious guard who was bound with laundry cord. Casio stepped over him and opened a polished brass door to a circuit panel with the words LIFTONIC ELEVATOR Qw-607

  engraved on it. He made an adjustment in the settings and then pushed the button that read "100."

  The elevator rose like a rocket and Pitts ears popped three times before it slowed and the doors finally opened onto the richly furnished anteroom of Bougainville Maritime Lines inc.

  Before he stepped out, Casio paused and reprogrammed the elevator circuitry with his transmitter. Then he turned and stepped out onto the thick carpet.

  "We're here to speak with Min Koryo," Casio announced mundanely.

  The woman eyed them suspiciously, particularly Pitt, and opened a leather-bound journal. "I see nothing in Madame Bougainville's schedule that shows any appointments this evening."

  Casio's face furrowed into his best hurt look. "Are you sure?"

  he asked, leaning over the desk and peering at the appointment book.

  She pointed at the blank page. "Nothing is written in-" Casio chopped her across the nape of the neck with the edge of his palm, and she fell forward, head and shoulders striking the desktop. Then he reached inside her blouse and extracted a vestpocket .25-caliber automatic pistol.

  "Never know it to look at her," he explained, "but she's a security guard."

  Casio tossed the gun to Pitt and took off down a corridor hung with paintings of the Bougainville Maritime fleet. Pitt recognized the Pilottown, and his weary expression hardened. He followed the brawny private investigator up an intricately carved rosewood circular staircase to the living quarters above. At the top of the landing Casio met another ravishing Asian woman who was leaving a bathroom.

  She was wearing silk lounging pajamas with a kimono top.

  Her eyes winened and in a lightning reflex she lashed out with one foot at Casio's groin. He anticipated the thrust and shifted his weight ever so slightly, catching the blow on the side of his thigh.

  Then she flashed into the classic judo position and hurled several rapid cuts at his head.

  She would have done more damage to an oak tree. Casio shook off her attack, crouched and sprung like an offensive back coming off the line. She spun to her left in an impressive display of feline grace but was knocked off balance by his shoulder. Then Casio straightened and smashed through her defense with a vicious left hook that nearly tore off her head. Her feet left the floor and she flew into a five-foot-high Sung Dynasty vase, breaking it into dust.

  "You certainly have a way with women," Pitt remarked casually.

  "Lucky for us there's still a few things we can do better than they can."

  Casio motioned toward a large double door carved with dragons and quietly opened it. Min Koryo was propped up in her spacious bed, browsing through a pile of audit reports. For a moment the two men stood mute and unmoving, waiting for her to look up and acknowledge their intrusion. She looked so pathetic, so fragile, that any other trespassers might have wavered. But not Pitt and Casio.

  Finally she lifted her reading glasses and gazed at them, showing no apprehension or fright. Her eyes were fixed in frank curiosity.

  "Who are you?" she asked simply.

  "My name is Sal Casio. I'm a private investigator."

  "And the other man?"

  Pitt stepped from the shadows and stood under the glow from the spotlights above the bed. "I believe you know me."

  There was a faint flicker of surprise in her voice, but nothing else. "Mr. Dirk Pitt."

  "Yes."

  "Why have you come?"

  "You are a slimy parasite who sucked the life out of untold innocent people to build your filthy empire. You're responsible for the death of a personal friend of mine and also for that of Sal's daughter. You tried to kill me, and you ask why I'm here?"

  " You are mistaken, Mr. Pitt. I am guilty of nothing so criminal.

  My hands are unstained."

  " A play on words. You live in your museum of Oriental artifacts, shielded from the outside world, while your grandson did your dirty work for you."

/>   :'You say I am the cause of your friend's death?"

  "She was killed by the nerve agent you stole from the government and left on the Pilottown."

  "I'm sorry for your loss," she said gently. The politeness and sympathy were without a trace of irony. "And you, Mr. Casio.

  How am I to blame for your daughter?"

  " She was murdered along with the crew of the same ship, only then it was called the San Marino."