Flood Tide - Cussler Clive - Страница 22

At first, he kept slightly ahead of the flow of victims, but he soon struggled furiously to keep pace. Desperation was replaced with sheer anger as he saved a little boy no more than four years old. He mentally cursed the monsters who were capable of such inhumanity. Not taking any chances, he kicked his fins upward, quickly found the floating Stingray and placed the boy's arms around it. He switched off the dive light and took a quick glance at the boat to see if the crew had observed their victims popping to the surface. All on board appeared quiet. There was no hint of alarm. He dove under again, turning on the dive light. Its beam picked out what seemed to be the last body dumped from the boat. It was already falling past twenty feet when he caught up with it. This one was a young woman.

Before her turn came, Julia had breathed deeply in and out, hyperventilating her lungs, then holding her breath as the enforcers kicked her through the hatch into the water. She fought desperately to free herself from the ropes. Deeper and deeper she fell in the black void, furiously snorting through her nose to relieve the pressure building in the eustachian tubes of her ears. One minute, maybe two, and her oxygen would be gone and she'd die an agonizing death.

Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist, and she could feel the iron weight dropping away from her feet. Then her hands came free and a hand snatched her arm in a grip and began towing her upward. As her head broke the surface she inced as the tape was ripped from her mouth. The first thing she saw was an apparition hi a hood with a face mask and light protruding from its head.

“Can you understand me?” a voice asked in English.

“I can understand you,” she gasped.

“Are you a good swimmer?”

She only nodded her reply.

“Good. Help save as many people as you can, try and gather them into a group. Tell them to follow my light. I'll lead you all into shallow water along the shore.”

Pitt left her and swam off toward the boy clutching the Stingray in a death grip. He swung the boy behind him, clasping the small hands around his neck. Then he engaged the speed switch and searched for the little girl, rinding her and circling his arm around her only seconds before she was about to slip out of sight.

On board the boat two of the enforcers climbed to the wheel-house and stepped inside. “All are drowned,” one said to the helmsman. “Our job is done.”

The captain at the helm nodded and gently pushed the twin throttles forward. The propellers bit the water, and the black catamaran began to move back toward the dock. Before it had traveled a hundred feet, a call came over the boat's phone. “Chu Deng?”

“This is Chu Deng,” the captain responded. “Lo Han, chief of compound security. Why are you ignoring your instructions?”

“I have followed the plan. All immigrants are disposed of. What is your problem?” “You are showing a light.”

Chu Deng stepped from the wheel and glanced over the boat. “You ate too much spicy Szechuan chicken for dinner, Lo Han. Your stomach is telling lies to your eyes. There are no lights showing on this boat.”

“Then what am I seeing toward the eastern shoreline?” As supervisor for transporting the illegal immigrants from the mother ships, Chu Deng was also responsible for the execution of those unfit for slave labor. He did not work under the chief of security for the imprisoned immigrants. Both merciless men, both on equal footing, neither got along with the other. Lo Han was a big bull of a man built like a beer keg with a massive, square-jawed head and eyes that were always bloodshot. Deng considered him little better than an untrained dog. He turned and stared to the east. Only then did he spot a dim light low in the water. “I see it, about two hundred yards off the starboard beam. Must be a local fisherman,” he said to LoHan.

“Take no chances. You must investigate.”

“I shall make a search.”

“If you see anything suspicious,” said Lo Han, “contact me immediately and I will switch the lights on again.”

Chu Deng acknowledged and hung up the phone. Then he twisted the wheel, swinging the catamaran to starboard. As he set the twin bows on a course toward the dim light bobbing on the surface of the lake, he called to the pair of enforcers still below on the main deck. “Go forward and closely observe that light on the water dead ahead.”

“What do you think it is?” asked a small man with expressionless eyes as he unslung his machine pistol.

Chu Deng shrugged. “Probably fishermen. It's not the first time we've seen them troll for salmon at night.”

“And if they aren't fishermen?”

Chu Deng turned from the wheel and grinned with every tooth.

“In that case, see that they join the others.”

Pitt saw the boat coming toward the small group of people struggling through the water and was certain they'd been seen. He could hear voices on the bow, actually more of a platform extending across the forward section between the hulls, shouting in Chinese, no doubt telling their skipper there were people swimming in the lake. He didn't mentally have to do an equation to know they had been attracted by his dive light. He was guilty of being damned if it was on and damned if it was off. With no light the people he'd rescued from a watery death would have floundered off in all directions, become lost and eventually drowned.

Keeping the frightened boy on his shoulders, he stopped the Stingray and passed off the little girl to the young woman, who'd been helping an elderly man and woman paddle through the water. Now both his hands were free and he flicked off his dive light, twisted around to face the boat that was looming above him and blocking off the stars. He noted that it was passing less than three feet from him, and he could see two shadowy figures move down a ladder from the cabin to the bow platform deck. One of them leaned over, spotted Pitt in the water and gestured at him.

Before the other enforcer could fix Pitt in his flashlight's beam, a barb from Pitt's air gun hissed through the darkness and buried itself in the man's temple above the ear. Before his partner knew what happened, he fell dead with a barb protruding from his throat. There was no hesitation or grain of misgiving in Pitt's mind. These men had murdered countless innocent people. They did not deserve a warning or a chance to defend themselves. They deserved no more chance than those they killed.

Both had fallen silently backward, crumpled on the catamaran's forward deck. Pitt reloaded another barb and slowly swam on his back, waving his dive fins behind. The young boy buried his head in Pitt's shoulder and held on to his savior's neck with every ounce of strength in his little arms.

Pitt watched in amazement as the boat passed on, circled and continued on toward the dock as if nothing had occurred, seemingly unaware of the dead bodies on the forward deck. He barely discerned the shadow of a man at the helm through the wheelhouse windows. Strangely, the helmsman didn't act as if he knew his men were terminated. Pitt could only speculate that the helmsman's attention was focused elsewhere when he'd killed his partners in crime.

Pitt didn't have the slightest doubt that the boat would return, and return quickly once the two bodies were found. He had bought four, maybe five, minutes, certainly no more. He kept his eyes on the catamaran as its phantom outline glided away in the darkness. The craft was halfway back to the dock when her shape gradually began to alter, and he reckoned that she was turning broadside and circling back.

He thought it odd that no light blinked on and swept the lake. He thought it odd for all of about ten seconds, when the lights at the prison retreat burst on again and danced on the waves created by the wake of the catamaran.

Caught like floating decoy ducks in the water was as bad as it could get. Caught after reaching the shore but before finding cover was only slightly less bad. Then suddenly the Stingray pulled him into the shallows, and he found he could stand up in water to his lower hips. He waded ashore and set the boy on the lake's bank, which rose about eighteen inches out of the water. Then he returned for the others, towing them in until they could wade onto dry land. These people were either too old or too young and too played out to do more than crawl into the trees.