Pitt strapped himself into the copilot’s seat as Stokes started and warmed up the big single radial engine and checked his gauges. Already the receding tide had carried the aircraft three meters from the dock. After a visual check of the channel for other boats or planes, Stokes eased the throttle forward and took off, banking the Beaver over Campbell Island and heading west. As they climbed, Pitt recalled the report Hiram Yaeger had given him before leaving Washington.
The Queen Charlotte Islands are made up of about 150 islands running parallel to the Canadian mainland 160 kilometers to the east. The total area of the islands comes to 9,584 square kilometers. The population of 5,890 is made up mostly of Haida Indians, who invaded the islands in the eighteenth century. The Haida used the abundant red cedars to build huge dugout canoes and. multifamily plank houses supported by massive portal poles, and to carve splendid totem poles as well as masks, boxes and dishes.
The economy is based on lumber and fishing as well as the mining of copper, coal and iron ore. In 1997, prospectors working for Dorsett Consolidated Mining Ltd., found a kimberlite pipe on Kunghit Island, the southernmost island in the Queen Charlotte chain. After drilling a test hole, 98 diamonds were found in one 52-kilogram sample. Although Kunghit Island was part of the South Moresby National Park Reserve, the government allowed Dorsett Consolidated to file a claim and lease the island. Dorsett then launched an extensive excavation operation and closed off the island to all visitors and campers. It was estimated by New York brokers C. Dirgo & Co. that the mine could bring out as much as $2 billion in diamonds.
Pitt’s thoughts were interrupted by Stokes. “Now that we’re away from prying eyes, how do I know you’re Dirk Pitt with the National Underwater & Marine Agency?”
“Do you have the authority to ask?”
Stokes took a leather case from his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Criminal Intelligence Directorate.”
“So I’m addressing Inspector Stokes.”
“Yes, sir, that is correct.”
“What would you like to see, credit cards, driver’s license, NUMA ID, a blood donor card?”
“Just answer one question,” said Stokes, “dealing with a shipwreck.”
“I have my reasons for wanting to land. Reason one. To allow the cameras encased in the floats to take close-up pictures during landing and takeoff.”
“Somehow I have the impression they hate uninvited visitors. What makes you think we won’t be stood against a privy and shot?”
“Reason two,” said Stokes, brushing off Pitt’s objections. “My superiors are hoping for just such an event. Then they can come swooping in here and close the bastards down.”
“Naturally.”
“Reason three. We have an undercover agent working in the mines. We’re hoping he can pass me information while we’re on the ground.”
“We’re just full of devious little plots, aren’t we?” said Pitt.
“In a more serious vein, if worse comes to worst, I’ll let Dorsett’s security people know I’m a Mountie before they offer us a cigarette and a blindfold. They’re not so stupid as to risk invasion by a small army of law officers running about the place searching for the body of one of their finest.”
“You did notify your team and superiors we’d be dropping in?”
Stokes looked hurt. “Any disappearance is timed to make the evening newspapers. Not to worry, Dorsett’s mine executives abhor bad publicity.”
“When exactly do we pull off this marvel of Royal Mounted Police planning?”
Stokes pointed down to the island again. “I should begin my descent in about five minutes.”
Pitt could do little but sit back and enjoy the view. Below he could see the great volcanic cone with its central pipe of blue ground that contained the rough diamonds. What looked like a giant bridge of steel girders stretched over the open core, with a myriad of steel cables that raised and lowered the excavated debris. Once they reached the top, the buckets then moved horizontally like ski gondolas across the open pit to buildings where the diamonds were extracted from the tailings, which were then dumped onto a huge mound that enclosed the diggings. The mound also acted as an artificial barrier to discourage anyone from entering or leaving, a reality Pitt found obvious from the total absence of any entrances except one, a tunnel that opened to a road that led to a dock on a small bay. He knew from his map that the bay was called Rose Harbour. As he watched, a tug with an empty barge in tow was pulling away from the dock and heading toward the mainland.
A series of prefabricated buildings grouped between the mound and the pit were apparently used for offices and living quarters for the miners. The enclosure, easily two kilometers in diameter, also accommodated the narrow airstrip with a hangar. The entire mining operation looked like a gigantic scar on the landscape from the air.
“That’s one big pockmark,” said Pitt.
Without looking down, Stokes said, “That pockmark, as you call it, is where dreams come from.”
Stokes leaned out his fuel mixture and starved his big 450-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp engine until it began to miss and backfire. Already, a voice was coming over the radio warning him away from the property, but he ignored it. “I have a fuel blockage and must borrow your airstrip for an emergency landing. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it can’t be helped.” Then he switched off the radio.
“Don’t you just hate dropping in unannounced?” said Pitt.
Stokes was concentrating on landing the plane, with the engine coughing and barely turning over, and did not reply. He lowered a pair of small wheels through the forward center of the two large pontoons and lined up with the runway. A crosswind caught the plane, and Stokes overcompensated. Pitt tensed slightly as he observed that Stokes lacked full control. The Mountie was reasonably competent but hardly an expert pilot. The landing was rough, and he almost ground-looped.
Before the plane rolled to a stop in front of the airstrip’s hangar, it was surrounded by nearly ten men in blue combat fatigues, holding Bushmaster customized M-16 assault rifles with suppressors. A tall, gaunt man in his early thirties and wearing a combat helmet stepped up on one of the floats and opened the door. He entered the aircraft and made his way to the cockpit. Pitt noticed the guard rested his hand on a holstered nine-millimeter automatic.
“This is private property, and you are trespassing,” he said in a perfectly friendly voice.
“Sorry,” said Stokes. “But the fuel filter clogged. The second time this month. It’s this damned stuff they’re passing off as gas nowadays.”
“How soon can you make repairs and be on your way?”
“Twenty minutes, no more.”
“Please hurry,” said the security official. “You’ll have to remain by your plane.”
“May I borrow a bathroom?” Pitt asked politely.
The security guard studied him for a moment, then nodded. “There’s one in the hangar. One of my men will escort you.”
“You don’t know how grateful I am,” Pitt said as if in minor agony. He jumped out of the plane and set off toward the hangar with a security guard close at his heels. Once inside the metal structure, he turned as if waiting expectantly for the guard to direct him to the door leading to the bathroom. It was a ploy; he’d already guessed the correct door, but it gave him a brief instant to glance at the aircraft resting on the hangar floor.
A Gulfstream V, the latest development in business jets, was an imposing aircraft. Unlike the earlier Learjet—so eagerly purchased and flown by the rich and famous—whose interior barely had enough room to turn around in, the G V was spacious, giving passengers plenty of elbowroom and enough height for most tall men to stand up straight. Capable of cruising 924 kilometers per hour at an altitude of just under 11,000 meters, with a range of 6,300 nautical miles, the aircraft was powered by a pair of turbofan jets built by BMW and Rolls-Royce.
Dorsett spared no expense for his transportation fleet, thought Pitt. An a
ircraft like this cost upward of $33 million.
Parked just in front of the main hangar door, menacing and sinister in dark blue-black paint, were a pair of squat looking helicopters. Pitt recognized them as McDonnell Douglas 530 MD Defenders, a military aircraft designed for silent flying and high stability during abnormal maneuvers. A pair of 7.62-millimeter guns were mounted in pods under the fuselage. An array of tracking gear sprouted from the underside of the cockpit. These were scout models specially modified for tracking diamond smugglers or other unwelcome intruders on the ground.
After he came out of the bathroom, he was motioned by the guard into an office. The man who sat at a desk was small, thin, fastidiously attired in a business suit, suave, cool and completely satanic. He turned from a computer monitor and studied Pitt, his deep-set eyes gray and unreadable. Pitt found the man slimy and repellant.
“I am John Merchant, chief of security for this mine,” he said with a distinctive Australian accent. “May I see some identification, please?”
Silently, Pitt handed over his NUMA ID and waited.
“Dirk Pitt.” Merchant rolled the name on his tongue and repeated it. “Dirk Pitt. Aren’t you the chap who found an immense cache of Inca treasure in the Sonoran Desert a few years ago?”
“I was only one member of the team.”
“Why have you come to Kunghit?”
“Better you ask the pilot. He’s the one who landed the plane on your precious mining property. I’m only a passenger along for the ride.”
“Malcolm Stokes is an inspector with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He’s also a member of the Criminal Investigation Directorate.” Merchant gestured toward his computer. “I have an entire data file on him. It’s you who are in question.”
“You’re very thorough,” said Pitt. “Taking into account your close contacts in the Canadian government, you probably already know I’m here to study the effects of chemical pollution on the local kelp and fish populations. Would you care to see my documents?”
“I already have copies.”
Pitt was tempted to believe Merchant, but he knew Posey well enough to trust his confidence. He decided Merchant was lying. It was an old Gestapo ploy, to make the victim think the accuser knew all there was to know. “Then why bother to inquire?”
“To find if you are in the habit of inaccurate statements.”
“Am I under suspicion for some hideous crime?” asked Pitt.
“My job is to apprehend smugglers of illicit diamonds before they traffic their stones to European and Middle Eastern clearinghouses. Because you came here uninvited, I have to consider your motives.”
Pitt observed the reflection of the guard in the windows of a glass cabinet. He was standing slightly behind Pitt, to his right, automatic weapon held across his chest. “Since you know who I am and claim to have bona fide documentation for my purpose for coming to the Queen Charlotte Islands, you cannot seriously believe that I’m a diamond smuggler.” Pitt rose to his feet. “I’ve enjoyed the conversation, but I see no reason to hang around.”
“I regret that you must be detained temporarily,” Merchant said, brisk and businesslike.
“You have no authority.”
“Because you are a trespasser on private property under false pretenses, I have every right to make a citizen’s arrest.”
Not good, Pitt thought. If Merchant dug deeper and connected him to the Dorsett sisters and the Polar Queen, then no lies, no matter how creative, could explain his presence here. “What about Stokes? Since you claim you know he’s a Mountie, why not turn me over to him?”
“I prefer turning you over to his superiors,” Merchant said almost cheerfully, “but not before I can investigate this matter more thoroughly.”
Pitt didn’t doubt now that he would not be allowed off the mining property alive. “Is Stokes free to leave?”
“The minute he finishes his unnecessary repairs to the aircraft. I enjoy observing his primitive attempts at surveillance.”
“It goes without saying that he’ll report my seizure.”
“A foregone conclusion,” said Merchant dryly.
Outside the hangar came the popping sound of an aircraft engine firing up. Stokes was being forced to take off without his passenger. If he was going to act, Pitt figured that he had less than thirty seconds. He noted an ashtray on the desk with several cigarette butts and assumed Merchant smoked. He threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat.
“If I’m to be detained against my wishes, do you mind if I have a cigarette?”
“Not at all,” said Merchant, pushing the ashtray across the desk. “I may even join you.”
Pitt had stopped smoking years before, but he made a slow movement as if to reach in the open breast pocket of his shirt. He doubled up his right hand into a fist and clasped it with his left. Then in a lightning move, pulling with one arm and pushing with the other for extra strength, he jammed his right elbow into the security guard’s stomach. There came an explosive gasp of agony as the guard doubled over.
Merchant’s reaction time was admirable. He pulled a small nine-millimeter automatic from a belt holster and unsnapped the safety in one well-practiced motion. But before the muzzle of the gun could clear the desktop, he found himself staring down the barrel of the guard’s automatic rifle, now cradled in Pitt’s steady hands, lined up on Merchant’s nose. The security chief felt as though he were staring through a tunnel with no light at the other end.
Slowly, he placed his pistol on the desk. “This will do you no good,” he said acidly.
Pitt grabbed the automatic and dropped it in his coat pocket. “Sorry I can’t stay for dinner, but I don’t want to lose my ride.”
Then he was through the door and sprinting across the hangar floor. He threw the rifle in a trash receptacle, cleared the door and slowed to a jog as he passed through the ring of guards. They stared at him suspiciously, but assumed their boss had allowed Pitt to leave. They made no move to stop him as Stokes opened the throttle and the floatplane began moving down the runway. Pitt leaped onto a float, yanked open the door against the wash from the propeller and threw himself inside the cargo bay.
Stokes looked dumbfounded as Pitt slipped into the copilot’s seat. “Good Lord! Where did you come from?”
“The traffic was heavy on the way to the airport,” Pitt said, catching his breath.
“They forced me to take off without you.”
“What happened to your undercover agent?”
“He didn’t show. Security around the plane was too tight.”
“You won’t be happy to learn that Dorsett’s security chief, a nasty little jerk called John Merchant, has you pegged as a snooping Mountie from the CID.”
“So much for my cover as a bush pilot,” Stokes muttered as he pulled back on the control column.
Pitt slid open the side window, stuck his head into the prop blast and looked back. The security guards appeared to be wildly scurrying about like ants. Then he saw something else that caused a small knot in his stomach. “I think I made them mad.”
“Could it be something you said?”
Pitt pulled the side window closed. “Actually, I beat up a guard and stole the chief of security’s side arm.”
“That would do it.”
“They’re coming after us in one of those armed helicopters.”
“I know the type,” Stokes said uneasily. “They’re a good forty knots faster than this old bus. They’ll overhaul us long before we can make it back to Shearwater.”
“They can’t shoot us down in front of witnesses,” said Pitt. “How far to the nearest inhabited community on Moresby Island?”
“Mason Broadmoor’s village. It sits on Black Water Inlet, about sixty kilometers north of here. If we get there first, I can make a water landing in the middle of the village fishing fleet.”
His adrenaline pumping, Pitt gazed at Stokes through eyes flashing with fire. “Then go for it.”
Pitt and Stokes quickly bec
ame aware they were in a no win situation from the very start. They had little choice but to take off toward the south before banking on a 180-degree turn for Moresby Island to the north. The McDonnell Douglas Defender helicopter, manned by Dorsett’s security men, had merely to lift vertically off the ground in front of the hangar, turn northward and cut in behind the slower floatplane even before the chase shifted into first gear. The de Havilland Beaver’s airspeed indicator read 160 knots, but Stokes felt as if he were flying a glider as they crossed the narrow channel separating the two islands.
“Where are they?” he asked without taking his eyes from a low range of cedar- and pine-covered hills directly ahead and the water only a hundred meters below.
“Half a kilometer back of our tail and closing fast,” Pitt answered.
“Just one?”
“They probably decided knocking us down was a piece of cake and left the other chopper home.”
“But for the extra weight and air drag of our floats, we might be on equal footing.”
“Do you carry any weapons in this antique?” asked Pitt.
“Against regulations.”
“A pity you didn’t hide a shotgun in the floats.”
“Unlike your American peace officers, who think nothing of packing an arsenal, we’re not keen to wave guns around unless there is a life-threatening situation.”
Pitt glanced at him incredulously. “What do you call this mess?”
“An unforeseen difficulty,” Stokes answered stoically.
“Then all we have is the nine-millimeter automatic I stole, against two heavy machine guns,” said Pitt resignedly. “You know, I downed a chopper by throwing a life raft into its rotor blades a couple of years ago.”
Stokes turned and stared at Pitt, unable to believe the incredible calm. “Sorry. Except for a pair of life vests, the cargo bay is bare.”
“They’re swinging around on our starboard side for a clear shot. When I give the word, drop the flaps and pull back the throttle.”
“I’ll never pull out if I stall her at this altitude.”
“Coming down in treetops beats a bullet in the brain and crashing in flames.”
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