Flood Tide dp-14

by Clive Cussler

  Julia hesitated only long enough to see that she was in a concrete-walled passage. There was a faint glow of light at the other end a good fifty feet away, she guessed. The dank smell from the long-unused passage lay heavy. The floor was dripping-damp and puddled in places where rainwater had seeped in from the outer door. Debris and old furniture cast into the passageway when the sugar mill closed down made it difficult to pass through without undue sounds. She became extra cautious when she reached the dim light that shone through the dirty glass window of a heavy oak door blocking the way. She carefully turned a rusting door handle. Unexpectedly, the bolt slid whisper-silent from its slot. Then she painstakingly eased the door open a crack. It swung on its hinges as smoothly as if it had been oiled only the day before.

  She softly stepped inside with the expectation of a woman anticipating trouble. She found herself inside an office furnished in the heavy oak furniture so popular in the early part of the twentieth century. Julia froze. The room was immaculately clean. There wasn't a speck of dust or a cobweb to be seen. It was like entering a time capsule. She had also stepped into a trap.

  She felt as if she had been punched in the stomach when the oak door clunked shut behind her and three men stepped from behind a screen that shielded a sitting room at the other end of the office. All of the men were dressed in business suits, two carrying briefcases as though they had just come from a board-of-directors meeting.

  Before she could transmit over her hidden radio, her arms were pinned and her mouth taped shut.

  “You are a most obstinate young lady, Ling T'ai, or should I call you Julia Lee?” said Ki Wong, Qin Shang's chief enforcer, as he gave a curt bow and grinned satanically. “You don't know how happy I am to meet you again.”

  Stowe stared across the bayou as he pressed the receiver against his ear with one hand and held the microphone of the transmitter until it nearly touched his lips. “Ms. Lee. If you read me, please answer.”

  He heard what seemed to be stifled voices for a moment before all communications with Julia went dead. His first instinct was to rush across the bayou and charge the gate on the wharf. But he could not be certain Julia had encountered a life-threatening situation. Surely not certain enough to risk the lives of his men in a combat engagement. Another factor that preyed on his mind was the possibility of ambush on territory that was unknown. Stowe took the route used by astute officers since the first military force was formed: He laid the responsibility on his superior officer.

  “Weehawken, this is Lieutenant Stowe.”

  “We read you,” came the voice of Captain Lewis.

  “Sir, I believe we have a situation.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Contact has been lost with Ms. Lee.”

  There was a few moments' pause. Then Lewis replied slowly. “Remain in your position and keep the sugar mill under surveillance. Report any new information. I'll get back to you.”

  Stowe stood in the launch and gazed across the bayou at the silent and dark buildings. “God help you if you've run into trouble,” Stowe muttered softly, “because I can't.”

  THERE WAS NO FEVERISH HURRY AFTER PITT AND GIORDINO left the burning hovercraft and command post. It seemed reasonable to assume that all communications between the security force and Qin Shang's headquarters were cut off when the plantation burned to the ground. They continued their project of photographing the bed of the canal with the AUV as if no interruption ever occurred. Neither man was of a mind to do a rushed, botched job.

  They reached the Atchafalaya River and returned up Hooker's Bayou to the shantyboat just as the eastern sky was beginning to lighten from black to blue-gray. Romberg greeted their arrival by opening his eyes only long enough to recognize them before instantly dropping off into dog dreamland again.

  Without delay, they unloaded the dive equipment and the AUV. Once the skiff was stowed on the roof, Giordino started the big Ford 427 engine as Pitt pulled the mooring stakes from the mud under the boat. The sun had still to put in an appearance when the shantyboat swung onto the Atchafalaya and headed downriver.

  “Where to?” Giordino shouted down into the main cabin from the pilothouse.

  “Bartholomeaux,” Pitt yelled back over the roar of the engine.

  Giordino said no more. Boat traffic was not as light as he expected this early in the morning. The oyster and crawfish boats were already on the river heading toward their favored fishing grounds. Towboats with their trains of barges came south after passing through the Old River Canal Lock from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya north of Baton Rouge. He skirted the other vessels respectfully, but once past he took the big 427 up to half throttle, sending it barreling down the river at twenty-five miles an hour.

  Inside the little house, Pitt sat on a small sofa and played the videotape shot by the cameras of the AUV of the canal bed beginning at the highway bordering the Mississippi and ending at the entrance to the Atchafalaya. From start to finish the totally dull and boring show ran nearly six hours. Except for a few fish, a passing turtle and a runty baby gator no more than a foot in length, the bottom of the canal was nothing but barren muck. Pitt was relieved to find no bodies, nor was he surprised. Qin Shang's incredibly complicated plan had a small crack in it. The canal was the key, and Pitt was onto its purpose now. But he still found himself on the short side of tangibility. He had no proof. Only a vague theory that even he found almost impossible to accept.

  He turned off the TV monitor and sat back in the sofa. He didn't dare close his eyes. He could have easily slipped off to sleep, but it wouldn't be fair to Giordino. There was still much to do. He fixed breakfast and called Giordino down to a table laid with a plate of scrambled eggs and ham. He'd brewed coffee in an old-fashioned pot and set out a carton of orange juice. To save time, he spelled Giordino at the helm while his friend ate.

  He turned the shantyboat into Berwick Bay several miles above Morgan City and traveled south through the Wax Lake Canal, entering Bayou Teche just above Patterson, only two miles from the old sugar mill at Bartholomeaux. He gave the wheel back to Giordino and sat in his lawn chair on the veranda with Romberg curled up beside him.

  They had made good time, and it was still shy of twelve noon when Giordino slowed the shantyboat as the abandoned sugar mill came into view around a bend just under a mile ahead. Pitt stared through a pair of binoculars, scanning the

  buildings and the long wharf that trailed along a stone breakwater. A tight smile curled his lips at seeing the barge still loaded with trash. He stood, leaned over the veranda railing, called up to Giordino and pointed down the bayou. “That must be the place. The barge moored to the wharf looks like the same one we saw at Sungari.”

  Giordino picked up a brass telescope he'd found in a drawer next to the helm. His right eye squinted through the lenses, scanning the wharf and buildings. “The barge is still full. Looks like they haven't gotten around to dumping the trash.”

  “Unlike the ramshackle condition of the buildings, the wharf looks no more than a year or two old. Can you make out anyone inside the guard shack by the gate?”

  Giordino swung the telescope and refocused. “I have a single security guard sitting on his ass inside, watching a TV set.”

  “Any sign we might be sailing into an ambush?”

  “I've seen cemeteries with more life than this place,” Giordino said mildly. “Word must not have come down about our party on the canal.”

  “I'm going over the side and check out the bottom of the barge,” said Pitt. “I lost my dive gear at the plantation so I'll borrow yours. Take it slow, as if you're having engine problems. As soon as I'm in the water, tie up to the wharf and give the guard another of your sterling performances.”

  “After mastering the manipulation of unsympathetic audiences,” Giordino pontificated, “Romberg and I may form an act and go to Hollywood.”

  “Don't get your hopes up,” Pitt replied sourly.

  Giordino pulled back the throttle two notches above t
he idle position and flicked the ignition key on and off to simulate misfiring cylinders within the engine. As soon as he saw Pitt in his wet suit stepping over the catwalk on the side of the shantyboat out of sight of the guard, he turned the wheel toward the wharf. A few seconds later, when he glanced downward, Pitt was gone.

  He watched Pitt's bubbles approach the barge, and then steadily scatter as he passed under its bottom edge. It looked to Giordino as if Pitt was working deeper and deeper. Then the bubbles rising beside the barge disappeared altogether.

  Giordino slowly raised a hand to shield the sun from his eyes and expertly steered the shantyboat around the barge and along the pilings without scratching the paint on the hull. Then he dropped down a ladder to the catwalk, jumped onto the wharf and began looping mooring lines around a pair of rusty bollards.

  The guard came out of his shack, unlocked the gate and rushed up to the shantyboat. He cautiously eyed Romberg, who acted happy to see him. The guard looked Asian but he spoke with a West Coast accent. He was a good four inches taller than Giordino but much thinner. He wore a baseball cap and World War II pilot's sunglasses.

  “You must leave. This is a private dock. The owners do not allow boats to moor here.”

  “Ah cain't help it,” Giordino moaned. “Man engine died on me. Just give me twenty minutes, and Ah'll have it fixed.”

  The guard was not to be refused. He began untying the lines. “You must leave.”

  Giordino walked over and grasped the guard's wrist in an iron grip. “Qin Shang will not be happy when I report your offensive behavior to one of his inspectors.”

  The guard looked at Giordino queerly. “Qin Shang? Who the hell is Qin Shang? I was hired by the Butterfield Freight Corporation.”

  Now it was Giordino's turn to make a queer expression. He unconsciously glanced over the side into the water where he'd last seen Pitt's air bubbles and wondered if they'd made a big mistake. “You were hired to do what? Keep crows off the corn?”

  “No,” said the guard defensively, unable to shake Giordino's grip and contemplating whether he was dealing with a madman and should draw his bolstered revolver. “Butterfield uses the old buildings to store furniture and equipment from their offices around the country. My job, and the guards who work the other shifts, is to keep vandals off the property.”

  Giordino released the guard's arm. He was far too wise and cynical to fall for the lie. He was almost thrown off the track in the first moments of the conversation. But now he knew with solid conviction there was more to the abandoned sugar mill at Bartholomeaux than met the eye.

  “Tell me, friend. Would it be worth a bottle of Black Label Jack Daniel's whiskey to let me stay here just long enough to fix my engine?”

  “I don't think so,” the guard said testily as he rubbed his wrist.

  Giordino fell back into his back country accent. “Look, Ah'm in a bind. If Ah just drift out in the river while workin' down on the engine, Ah could be busted in two by a towboat.”

  “That's not my problem.”

  “Two bottles of Black Label Jack Daniel's whiskey?”

  A sly look gleamed in the guard's eyes. “Four bottles.”

  Giordino stuck out his hand. “Done.” Then he motioned through the door leading inside the shantyboat from the veranda. Come on board and Ah'll put 'em in a sack for ya."

  The guard looked apprehensively at Romberg. “Does he bite?”

  “Only if ya put your hand in his mouth and step on his jaws.”

  Unwittingly drawn into the web, the guard stepped around Romberg and entered the shantyboat's main cabin. It was the last thing he remembered until he woke up four hours later. Giordino hit him on the nape of the neck. Not a judo chop, but a huge fist swung like a club that sent the guard crashing heavily to the deck, out for the long count.

  Ten minutes later, Giordino, wearing the guard's uniform, pants and sleeves too long by inches but the shirt straining at its buttons as his chest and shoulders stretched the seams, stepped out on the shantyboat's veranda. With the guard's baseball cap pulled down over the old, wide-style sunglasses, Giordino leisurely walked to the gate, closed it behind him and pretended to lock it. Then he went inside the guard shack and sat in front of the television set while his eyes roamed the grounds of the sugar mill, picking out the security cameras placed about the property.

  Pitt sank to the bottom before swimming up and under the flat bottom of the barge. He was surprised to encounter the bed of the bayou at thirty feet beside the wharf—far deeper than was necessary for barge traffic. The depth must have been dredged to accept a deep-hulled ship.

  It was as if a cloud had passed over the sun. The shadow of the barge cut off nearly fifty percent of the light from the surface. The water was an opaque green and filled with plant particles. He swam fast and had hardly passed under the barge when a vague shape appeared in the gloom and stopped his progress.

  Hanging from the keel of the barge was an immense cylindrical tube with tapered ends. Pitt instantly recognized what it was, and his heart began to pump faster with excitement. The size and regular shape was similar to the hull of an early submarine. He swam along the hull slightly above it. There were no visible ports, and he could see that it was attached to the barge by a system of rails. These, Pitt immediately determined, were used to move the submerged container from the seagoing ship to the barge and back again.

  He estimated the size of the underwater container at ninety feet in length by nearly fifteen feet in diameter by ten feet high. Without being able to peer inside, Pitt quickly realized that it was capable of housing anywhere from two hundred to four hundred people, depending on how tightly they were packed inside.

  Quickly, he swam around the vessel to the other side, looking for a hatch connecting with an underwater passage from the vessel to inside the breakwater that anchored the wharf. He found it thirty feet aft of the bow, a small watertight tunnel just large enough for two people to pass through at the same time.

  Pitt could find no way to enter, certainly not from the water. He was about to give up and swim back to the shantyboat when he spotted a small round portal embedded in the stone breakwater. The portal was above the surface of the water but just below the planking on the wharf. It was covered by an iron door that was secured by three dog levers. Its purpose eluded him. A sewer outlet? A drainage pipe? A maintenance tunnel? A closer inspection of the lettering stamped by the manufacturer on the iron door cleared up the mystery.

  MANUFACTURED BY THE ACADIA CHUTE COMPANY NEW ORLEANS. LOUISIANA

  It was a chute that was used when the mill was in operation to load the raw sugar onto barges. The old wharf had been demolished and a new one constructed that was five feet higher to accommodate the passage of illegal immigrants under the water without being visible on the surface. The newer, raised wharf now sat a good foot over the early loading chute.

  The dog levers were badly rusted and probably hadn't been opened in eighty years. But the bayou water did not have the salt content of the sea. The corrosion was not deep. Pitt gripped a dog lever with both hands, positioned his feet against the upper planks of the wharf and pulled downward.

  To his delight, the lever gave and moved an inch on the first try. The next heave took it three inches; then it turned more easily. Finally, he twisted it out against its stop. The second dog lever came slightly easier, but the third fought him every inch of the way. Gasping and panting, Pitt rested for a minute before pulling the door open. It fought too. He had to put both feet against the breakwater and pull with every ounce of strength he had left.

  At last the iron door grudgingly squeaked open on its rusting hinges. Pitt peered inside, but all he could see was darkness. He turned and swam under the wharf, stopping just before he reached the shantyboat's hull. He called up softly. “Al, are you there?”

  His only response came from Romberg. Curious, the hound strolled onto the wharf and sniffed through the cracks in the planking just above Pitt's head. “Not you. I want Giordino
.”

  Romberg began wagging his tail. He stretched out his front paws, and lay down on the wharf and playfully tried to dig through the wooden planking.

  Inside the guard shack, Giordino turned every minute or two and stared at the shantyboat for an indication of Pitt's return. Seeing Romberg pawing and scratching on the wharf for something underneath made him curious. He slowly walked through the gate and stopped by the dog. “What are you sniffing at?” he asked.

  “Me!” Pitt whispered through the planking.

  “Jeez!” muttered Giordino. “For a second I thought Romberg could talk.”

  Pitt stared up between the cracks in the planks. “Where did you get the uniform?”

  “The guard decided to take a nap, and charitable, benevolent fellow that I am, I offered to stand his watch.”

  “Even with my limited view I can tell it's a lousy fit.”

  “You might be interested to learn,” said Giordino, facing away from the sugar mill and rubbing a two-day-whiskered chin to cover his lip movements, “this place is owned by the Butterfield Freight Corporation, not Qin Shang Maritime. Also, the guard may have Asian ancestry, but I figure he went to school in either L.A. or San Francisco.”

  “Butterfield has to be a corporate front used by Shang to move people in and out of here. There's a submerged vehicle connected to the bottom of the barge that has the capacity to transport close to four hundred bodies.”

  “Then we've found the mother lode.”

  “We'll know shortly, just as soon as I get inside.”