Clive Cussler - Flood Tide

“I am Ling T'ai. I have nothing more to say.”

“Then neither do I.” Wong made a gesture with his hand toward the waiting black boat. “Goodbye, Miss Lee.”

As the enforcer took her by the arm and pulled her off the counterfeit cruise ship, Julia looked back up the ramp at Wong, who still stood on the cruise ship's deck. The bastard was sneering at her. She stared up at him with pure hatred in her eyes.

“You will die, Ki Wong,” she said caustically. “You will die very soon.”

He returned her stare more out of amusement than annoyance. “No, Miss Lee. It is you who will die soon.”

STILL SICKENED BY WHAT THE AUV HAD DISCOVERED, PITT spent the final hour of daylight staring across the lake at Qin Shang's retreat through his telescope. The maid on her rounds at the guesthouses, the same two golfers knocking balls all over the landscape—they were the only people he ever observed. Most curious, he thought. No cars or delivery trucks entered or left the grounds, nor did the security guards ever reveal themselves again. Pitt could not believe they stayed shut up in the little windowless huts day and night without relief.

He called no one at NUMA to inform them of the grisly discovery, nor did he contact local law enforcement. He took it upon himself to attempt to uncover the mystery of how the bodies came to be carpeting the bottom of the lake. That Qin Shang was using the lake depths as a depository for his murder victims seemed obvious. But there was more to learn before he blew the whistle.

Satisfied there was nothing more to see, he set the telescope aside and carried the second big carton sent by Yaeger into the boathouse. It was so heavy and bulky he had to use a small hand truck to roll the carton and its contents across the dock. Cutting open the lid, he removed a compact portable electric compressor and plugged its cord into an overhead light socket. Then he connected the compressor to the dual-manifold air valve on twin eighty-cubic-foot diver's air cylinders. It popped away with less noise than the exhaust of an idling car engine.

He returned to the cabin and lazily watched the sun descend over the small range of mountains between Orion Lake and the sea. After darkness settled over the lake, Pitt ate a light dinner and then watched satellite television. At ten o'clock he made ready for bed and turned out the lights. Gambling the surveillance cameras in the cabin did not work on infrared, he stripped naked, crept outside, crawled into the water and, holding his breath, swam up inside the boathouse.

The water was frigid, but his mind was too occupied to notice. He toweled his body dry and pulled on a one-piece Shellpro nylon-and-polyester undergarment. The compressor had automatically shut off when the cylinders were topped off with the required air pressure. He attached a U.S. Divers Micra air regulator to the manifold valve and checked the straps to the backpack. Then he climbed into a custom-made, dark gray Viking vulcanized-rubber dry suit with attached hood, gloves and traction-soled boots. He preferred the dry suit over a wet suit for better thermal protection in cold water.

Next came a U.S. Divers military buoyancy compensator and a Sigma Systems console with depth gauge, air pressure gauge, compass and dive timer. For weights, he used an integrated system with part of the weight in the backpack and the balance on his weight belt. A dive knife was strapped to his calf and an underwater miner's-type light was slipped over his hood.

Finally, he slung a belt that looked like an old western bandit's bandolier over one shoulder. Its holster contained a compressed air gun that fired wicked-looking barbs on short shafts. Slots in the belt held twenty barbs.

He was in a hurry to be on his way. He had a long swim ahead of him and many things to do and see. He sat on the edge of the dock, pulled on his fins, twisted his body to prevent the air tanks on his back from snagging the boards and splashed into the water. Before diving, he vented the air out of the dry suit. He saw not the slightest reason in the world why he should physically extend himself and waste the precious air in his tanks, so he lifted a compact, battery-powered Stingray diver-propulsion vehicle from the dock, extended it out in front of him by the handgrips, pressed the FAST speed switch to its stop and was instantly propelled from under the floats of the boathouse.

Getting his bearings on a moonless night did not present a problem. His destination across the lake was bathed in as much light as a football stadium. The brilliance lit up the surrounding forest. Why such a dazzling display of illumination? Pitt wondered. It seemed too excessive for average security purposes. Only the dock appeared devoid of lighting, but it was hardly needed, considering the radiance from shore. Pitt pushed the face mask to the top of his head and tilted the lens of the dive light backward to prevent any alert guards from spotting a reflection.

If the surveillance cameras didn't pierce the dark with infrared, there would be a guard with night glasses pressed against his eyes, watching for night fishermen, hunters, lost Boy Scout masters or even Bigfoot. It was a sure bet he wasn't peering into the heavens at the rings of Saturn. Pitt was not overly concerned. He made too small a target to be spotted at this distance. A quarter of a mile nearer and it would be a different story.

One of the fallacies of sneaking around in the dead of night is that black makes for the perfect concealment. Supposedly a person wearing black blends into the shadows. To some degree, yes. But because no night is totally black-there is often light from the stars—the perfect shade for near invisibility is dark gray. A black object can be distinguished against a shadowed background on a dark night, whereas gray blends in.

Pitt knew his chances of being detected were remote indeed. Only the white of his wake, as he was pulled along at nearly three knots by the Stingray twin motors, broke the sheer blackness of the water. After less than five minutes, he reached the midway point. He adjusted his face mask, ducked his head under the water and began breathing through the snorkel. Another four minutes put him a hundred yards from the retreat's boat dock. The work boat was still gone, but the yacht still tugged at her mooring lines.

This was as far as he dared go on the surface. He spit out the snorkel and clamped his teeth on the mouthpiece to his breathing regulator. Accompanied by the hiss of his exhaust, he tilted the Stingray downward and dropped into the depths, leveling out about ten feet above the bottom, hovering motionless for a few moments while adding air to his dry suit to achieve neutral buoyancy, then snorting and clearing his ears from the increase of water pressure. The lights of the retreat cast a translucent glow beneath the water. Pitt felt as if the propulsion vehicle was pulling him through liquid glass coated in an eerie green. He averted his eyes from the graveyard below as visibility increased from practically nil to thirty feet the closer Pitt approached the dock. Fortunately, he could not be discerned from above because the reflection on the surface of the water caused a glare that prevented all but a very limited view of the depths.

He decreased the Stingray's speed and moved slowly under the keel of the yacht. The hull was clean and free of any marine growth. Finding nothing of interest except a school of small fish, Pitt cautiously approached the floating log hut from which the guards on their Chinese-built personal watercraft had burst the previous afternoon. His heartbeat increased as he measured his opportunities of escape if he was discovered. They flat didn't exist. A swimmer stood little chance of outrunning a pair of personal watercraft with a top speed of thirty miles per hour. Unless they were prepared to come after him underwater, all they had to do was outwait him until he exhausted his air supply.