Flood Tide - Cussler Clive - Страница 29

Pitt had read Kung Chong's mind correctly. The Chinaman ordered his pilots to attack from a higher altitude. “I have lost one aircraft and two good men,” he dutifully reported to LoHan.

“How?” asked Lo Han simply.

“By gunfire from the boat.”

“Not inconceivable that professionals would carry automatic weapons.”

“I am ashamed to say, Lo Han, the defensive fire comes from a woman with one automatic pistol.”

“A woman!” Lo Han's voice came through Kung Chong's earpiece as angry as he ever heard it. “We have lost face, you and I. Conclude this unfortunate occasion and do it now.”

“Yes, Lo Han. I will faithfully carry out your orders.”

“I anxiously await your announcement of victory.”

“Soon, very soon,” Kung Chong said confidently. “Success or death. I promise you one or the other.”

During the next three miles, the tactics worked. The two remaining ultralights pressed home their attack, weaving violently from side to side to escape the few pathetic shells sent in their direction, but making it next to impossible for the gunners to train their machine pistols. Two hundred yards away from the Chris-Craft they split apart and closed in on the runabout from two sides. It was a shrewd maneuver that enabled them to converge their fire.

Julia took her time and fired a round whenever she saw an opportunity for a remote hit while Pitt madly twisted the wheel and sent the speeding runabout zigzagging from one bank to the other in an effort to escape the sporadic spray of bullets that splattered the water around them. He stiffened when he heard the thud of strikes behind him as one burst of gunfire cut across the mahogany hatch over the engine compartment between the dual cockpits. But the big Chrysler marine engine's throaty roar never slackened. On instinct his eyes swept the instrument panel, and he noted ominously that the needle on the oil-pressure gauge was suddenly falling into the red zone.

Sam Foley will be madder than hell when he gets his boat back, Pitt thought.

Two miles to go. The stench of scorched oil began to waft from the engine compartment. The engine revolutions were slowly dropping off, and Pitt mentally pictured metal grinding against metal from lack of oil. It was only a matter of minutes before the bearings burned out and the engine froze. All the ultralight pilots have to do now, Pitt savvied, is circle over the boat and blast everyone to bloody bits. He pounded the steering wheel in maddened frustration as they came at him together, wingtip to wingtip.

They came head-on with no deviation, and much lower this time, knowing time was running out, keenly aware that once the boat and its occupants broke into the open bay, there would be spectators to report the murders.

Then, magically, the pilot of the ultralight that rolled off to the left of the Chris-Craft suddenly slumped in his seat and his arms fell to his sides. One of Julia's bullets had taken the pilot in the chest and torn through his heart. The aircraft sheered off violently, its wingtip brushed the water and then it cartwheeled crazily across the wake of the boat before disappearing into the uncaring river.

There was no time to celebrate Julia's phenomenal shot. Their situation went from bad to worse as she fired her last shell. The pilot on the last ultralight, seeing the return fire slacken and finally die, and the Chris-Craft slow considerably with smoke beginning to curl from the engine compartment, threw caution to the winds and came at them no more than five feet above the water.

The Chris-Craft was limping along at less than ten miles an hour. The race for survival was almost over. Pitt looked up and saw the Chinese gunner in the inner ultralight. The eyes were covered by stylish sunglasses, and his lips stretched in a tight grin. He waved a salute and lifted his weapon, finger tightening on the trigger.

In a final act of defiance, Pitt shook his fist in the air and raised the third digit. Then he threw his body over Julia and the two children in what he knew was a futile effort to use his body as a shield. He tensed, waiting for the bullets to tear into his back.

THE OLD MAN WITH THE SCYTHE, TO PlTT'S GREAT RELIEF, either decided he had urgent business at a catastrophe elsewhere, or Pitt wasn't worth taking and threw him back. The bullets Pitt expected to feel plowing through his flesh never came because they were never fired.

He firmly believed the last sound he was about to hear in this life was the soft report of a suppressed machine pistol. Instead, the rapid beat of rotor blades reverberated in the air, rotor blades whirling at top speed, drowning out the exhaust and unpleasant noises from inside the big Chrysler. With a thundering roar accompanied by a great gust of wind that flattened every hair on every head, a huge shadow flashed over the Chris-Craft. Before anyone comprehended what was happening, a big t irquoise helicopter with the letters NUMA painted on its tail boom, swept down the river straight at the yellow ultralight like an avenging hawk swooping on a canary.

“Oh God no!” Julia moaned.

“Never fear!” Pitt shouted jubilantly. “This one's on our side.”

He recognized the McDonnell Douglas Explorer, a fast, no-tail rotor helicopter with twin engines and a top speed in excess of 170 miles an hour, as a craft he'd often flown. The forward fuselage looked like those on most rotorcraft, but the tail boom, with its dual vertical stabilizers, extended to the rear like a thin corona cigar.

“Where did it come from?”

“My ride showed up early,” Pitt said, swearing to put the pilot in his will.

Every pair of eyes in the runabout and on the remaining ultralight were trained on the intruder as it charged through the air. Two figures could be seen through the transparent bow of the helicopter. The copilot was wearing a baseball cap turned backward and peered through horn-rim glasses. The pilot wore a reed hat like those woven on tropical beaches and a brightly flowered Hawaiian aloha shirt. A gargantuan cigar was clenched between his teeth.

Kung Chong was no longer grinning. His expression was one of abject shock and fear. It flashed through his mind that the new bully on the playground wasn't about to back off. He took stock and saw that the runabout, though barely making headway, would soon reach the mouth of the river leading into Grapevine Bay. From his height he could already see a small fleet of fishing boats heading out to sea around the final bend in the river. Houses on the outskirts of a town perched along the shoreline. People walked along the beaches. His chance for terminating the escaped immigrants and the devil responsible for the chaos at Orion Lake had evaporated. Kung Chong had no choice but to order his pilot to break off the attack. In an attempt to dodge its attacker, the ultralight pulled up sharply and curled a turn so tight its wing tipped on a vertical angle.

The pilot of the NUMA helicopter had been there before. He easily second-guessed his opponent. There was never a flicker of pity or indecision. The face was expressionless as he easily matched the ultralight's steep turn and closed the distance between them. Then came a crunching sound as the landing skids of the helicopter ripped through the ultralight's flimsy wing.

The men in the open seats froze as their craft twisted in maddened torment, seeking desperately, hopelessly to cling to the sky. Then the shredded wing folded in the middle, and the little craft dove and crashed into a shoreline filled with large rocks. There was no explosion, as only a small cloud of dust and debris sprayed the air. All that remained was a distorted mass of wreckage with two bodies fused amid the shattered struts and tubing.

The helicopter hovered over the crippled Chris-Craft as the pilot and the man sitting in the copilot's seat both leaned out the cockpit windows and waved.