Deep Six

68

Pitt dozed most of the flight while Giordino manned the controls. The afternoon sun blazed from a clear sky as they dropped down over the blue-green waters of Lake Pontchartrain and lined up on the small airport that poked out from the New Orleans shore. The aquamarine-colored NUMA jet touched down on the asphalt landing strip and rolled to a stop near a helicopter with DELTA OIL LTD. painted on the side.

Nearby, a man in a seersucker suit stepped from a parked car and walked over. He removed his sunglasses and held out his hand as Pitt climbed from the Lear jet’s cabin.

“Mr. Pitt?” he inquired, white teeth gleaming in a tanned face.

“I’m Pitt.”

“Clyde Griffin, FBI, special agent in charge of the Louisiana field office.”

Giordino stepped to the ground and Pitt made the introductions.

“What can we do for you, Mr. Griffin?”

“Director Emmett asked me to state officially that the Bureau cannot provide official assistance on your hunt.”

“I don’t recall asking for any,” said Pitt.

“I said no ‘official assistance,’ Mr. Pitt.” The white teeth locked in a broad smile. “Unofficially, this is Sunday. The Director suggested that what field agents do on their day off is their business. I have eight men at my disposal who feel what you’re doing is more important than their golf game.”

“Emmett gave his blessing?”

“Strictly off the record, he strongly insinuated that if we don’t find the Vice President pretty damned quick, he’ll put a boot up my ass so far I’ll never sit down at the piano again.”

“My kind of guy,” said Giordino.

“Were you briefed on what we’re looking for?” Pitt asked.

Griffin nodded. “A river barge. We’ve already checked out about two hundred between here and Baton Rouge.”

“You searched north. I figure it to be south.”

Griffin stared down at the ground doubtfully. “Most all the incoming freighters and tankers unload at the city docks. Then the cargo is transferred north by tow-boat. Few barges ply the delta waters south except those carrying trash and garbage to be dumped in the ocean.”

“All the more reason to look in that direction.”

Griffin made an inviting gesture toward the helicopter. “My men are waiting in cars along the river front. We can direct them from the air.”

“Delta Oil make a good cover?” Pitt asked.

“Oil company whirlybirds are a common sight around these parts,” answered Griffin. “They’re heavily used to carry men and supplies to offshore rigs in the gulf and pipe construction throughout the bayous. Nobody gives them a second glance.”

Pitt excused himself and returned inside the NUMA plane, reappearing a minute later with the violin case. Then he entered the helicopter and was introduced to the pilot, a thin blond, dreamy-eyed woman who spoke in a slow, deep drawl. Pitt wouldn’t have taken her for an FBI agent, which she was, nor did she fit her name, “Slats” Hogan.

“Y’all play the violin when ya fly?” Hogan asked curiously.

“Soothes my fear of height,” Pitt replied, smiling.

“We get all kinds,” Hogan muttered.

They fastened their seat belts and Hogan lifted the craft into the air and made a pass over the heart of the city before turning south.

A tiny green streetcar crept along St. Charles Avenue, the tracks glinting as they reflected the sun through the trees. Pitt could easily make out the massive white roof of the Superdome, the largest sports structure of its kind in the world. The tightly packed houses and narrow streets of the French Quarter, the green grass of Jackson Square and the spires of the St. Louis Cathedral slipped past off to their right. And then they broke over the muddy brown-green waters of the Mississippi River.

“There it is,” announced Hogan. “Old Man River, too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”

“Spend any time on it?” Griffin asked Pitt.

“I conducted a historical survey a few years ago on a pair of Confederate Civil War wrecks about sixty miles further down river in Plaquemines Parish.”

“I know this great little restaurant in the parish—”

“So do I. The name is Tom’s. Excellent gulf oysters on the half-shell. Be sure and ask for Tom’s mama’s special chili pepper juice. Fantastic on the oysters.”

“You get around.”

“I try.”

“Got any idea where the barge might be hidden?”

“Keep an eye open for a dock and warehouse that appear run-down and little used, but well protected with heavy security — excessive number of guards, high fencing, perhaps dogs. The barge, rusted and in disrepair, will be stashed nearby. My guess is somewhere between Chalmette and Pilottown.”

“You can only reach Pilottown by boat,” said Griffin. “The delta highway ends ten miles above at a town called Venice.”

“I stand corrected.”

They went silent for a minute while the river below flowed along at almost four knots between the great levees that shielded the land from flood. Small farms with cows grazing in pastures and orange groves spread across the narrow strips of solid ground bordering the levees, before sliding away into marshland. They flew over Port Sulphur, with its great piers entrenched along the west bank. Small mountains of yellow sulphur rose fifty feet over the flat, poisoned ground.

The next half-hour produced the first of three false alarms. A few miles below Port Sulphur they spotted an abandoned cannery with two barges tied up beside it. Griffin radioed his team of agents, who were chasing the helicopter from the road on the west bank. A quick search proved the building to be empty, and the barges contained only bilge water and silt.

They continued south, flying over the vast marshes and meandering bayous toward the gulf, spotting several grazing deer, a number of alligators sunning themselves in the mud and a small herd of goats that looked up at their passing with indifferent curiosity.

A huge freighter churned upriver, thrusting its blunt bow against the current. The flag of registry on its stern flapped red with a gold star and hammer and sickle.

“Russian,” Pitt observed.

“The Soviets own a fair percentage of the five thousand ships that steam into New Orleans every year,” said Griffin.

“Want to see what’s on that barge?” Hogan asked, pointing. “There, tied up behind that dredge on the east bank.”

Griffin nodded. “We’ll check this one out ourselves.”

Hogan nodded her blond mane. “I’ll set you down on the levee.”

She expertly dropped the tires of the helicopter onto the crushed-shell road that ran along the top of the levee. Three minutes later Griffin ran across a creaking ramp to the barge. Another three minutes and he was back strapping himself in his seat.

“No luck?” asked Pitt.

“A bummer. The old tub is half filled with oil. Must be used as a refilling station for the dredge.”

Pitt looked at his watch. Two-thirty. Time was sifting away. A few more hours and Moran would be sworn in as President. He said, “Let’s keep the show moving.”

“Ah hear y’all talkin’,” Hogan said as she brought the craft up and over the river in one quick bank that had Giordino feeling his stomach to see if it was still in place.

Eight more miles and they drew another blank after spying a barge moored suspiciously under a marine maintenance repair shed. A quick search by the ground team showed it was a derelict.

They pushed on past the fishing towns of Empire and Buras. Then suddenly, after dipping around a bend, they saw a sight straight out of the golden years of the river, a spectacular and picturesque vision almost forgotten. Long white hull, wide beam, with a plume of steam drifting over her decks, a sidewheel paddle steamer sat with her flat nose nudged into the west embankment.

“Shades of Mark Twain,” said Giordino.

“She’s a beauty,” Pitt said as he admired the gingerbread carvings on the many-storied superstructure.

“The Stonewall Jackson,” Griffin explained. “She’s been an attraction on the river for seventy years.”

The steamer’s landing stages were lowered on the bank in front of an old brick fortress constructed in the shape of a pentagon. A sea of parked cars and a crowd of people wandered the parade ground and brick ramparts. In the center of a nearby field a cloud of blue smoke billowed above two opposing lines of men who seemingly stood shooting at each other.

“What’s the celebration?” asked Giordino.

“A War Between the States re-enactment,” Hogan replied.

“Run that by me again.”

“A staging of a historic battle,” Pitt explained. “As a hobby, men form brigades and regiments based on actual fighting units from the Civil War. They dress in authentic woven uniforms and shoot blanks out of exact-replica or original guns. I witnessed a re-enactment at Gettysburg. They’re quite spectacular, almost like the real thing.”

“Too bad we can’t stop and watch the action,” Griffin said.

“Plaquemines Parish is a storehouse of history,” said Hogan. “The star-shaped structure where they’re staging the mock battle is called Fort Jackson. Fort St. Philip, what little is left of it, is directly across the river. This is the area where Admiral Farragut ran the forts and captured New Orleans for the Yankees in 1862.”

It required no imagination at all to see and hear in their minds the thundering clashes of cannon fire between Union gunboats and Confederate batteries. But the curve in the river where Admiral Farragut and his fleet forced their passage over a century past was now quiet. The water rolled silently between the scrub-lined shores, having long ago covered the bones of the ships that sank during the battle.

Hogan suddenly stiffened in her seat and peered over the instrument panel through the cockpit window. Not more than two miles away, a ship with her bow aimed downriver was tied alongside an old wooden dock whose pilings ran under a large metal warehouse. Behind the stern of the ship lay a barge and a towboat.

“This could be it,” she said.

“Can you read the name on the ship?” Pitt asked from the rear passenger’s seat.

Hogan momentarily took her left hand off the collective pitch control lever to shield her eyes. “Looks like… no, that’s a town we just passed.”

“Which town?”

“Buras.”

“Could be it. Hell,” Pitt said with triumph in his voice, “this is it.”

“No crew members about on the ship,” Griffin observed. “You’ve got your high fence about the place, but I don’t see any sign of guards or dogs. Looks pretty quiet to me.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Pitt said. “Keep flying downriver, Slats, until we’re out of sight. Then swing back below the west levee and rendezvous with your people in the chase cars.”

Hogan continued her course for five minutes and then came around in a great half-circle to the north and landed on a high school football field. Two cars crammed with FBI agents were waiting when the helicopter touched down.

Griffin twisted in his seat to face Pitt. “I’ll take my team and enter through the front gate that opens onto the loading dock. You and Giordino remain with Hogan and act as aerial observers. Should be a routine operation.”

“Routine operation,” Pitt replied acidly. “Walk up to the gate, flash your shiny FBI badge and watch everybody cringe. Never happen. These people kill like you and I swat mosquitoes. Driving up in the open is an invitation to get your head blown off. You’d be smart to wait and call up reinforcements.”

Griffin’s face showed he was not one to be told how to run his business. He ignored Pitt and gave instructions to Hogan.

“Give us two minutes to reach the gate before you take off and circle the warehouse. Open a frequency with our field communications office and inform them of the situation. And tell them to relay our reports to Bureau headquarters in Washington.”

He stepped to the ground and got in the lead car. They drove around the high school gymnasium onto the almost invisible road that led to the Bougainville docking facility and disappeared over the levee.

Hogan raised the helicopter into the air and went on the radio. Pitt moved to the co-pilot’s seat and watched as Griffin and his men approached a high chain-link fence enclosing the pier and warehouse. With a mounting uneasiness he observed Griffin leave the car and stand at the gate, but no one appeared to confront him.

“Something’s happening,” said Hogan. “The tow-boat and barge are moving.”

She was right. The towboat began to slip away from the pier, pushing the barge with its blunt snout. The helmsman expertly maneuvered the two craft into the main stream and turned toward the gulf.

Pitt grabbed a spare microphone/headset. “Griffin!” he snapped, “the barge is being moved from the area. Forget the ship and warehouse. Return to the road and take up the chase.”

“I read you,” Griffin’s voice acknowledged.

Abruptly, doors flew open on the ship and the crew scrambled across the decks, tearing canvas covers off two hidden gun emplacements on the foredeck and stern. The trap was sprung.

“Griffin!” Pitt shouted into the microphone. “Get out. For God’s sake, get out.”

The warning came too late. Griffin leaped into the lead car, which roared off toward the safety of the levee as 20-millimeter Oerlikon machine guns began rapping out a deadly hail. Bullets tore into the wildly careening car, shattering windows, shredding the thin metal like cardboard and ripping through the flesh and bones of those inside. The rear car coasted to a stop, bodies spilling out onto the ground, some lying still, some trying to crawl for cover. Griffin and his men made it over the top of the levee, but all of them were badly wounded.

Pitt had whipped open the violin case, stuck the barrel of the Thompson out the side window and sprayed the bow gun of the Burns. Hogan instantly realized what he was up to and banked the helicopter to give him a better angle of fire. Men fell around the deck, never knowing where the deadly barrage came from. The gunners on the stern were more alert. They swung their Oerlikon from Griffin and his agents and began spewing its shells into the sky. Hogan made a game effort to dodge the fire that missed not by feet but inches. She kicked the helicopter around the ship as though it had a charmed life as the one-sided gun duel clattered over the river.

Then the trajectory from the Burns swayed through the air and hammered into the helicopter. Pitt threw up an arm to protect his eyes as the windshield disintegrated and blew into the cockpit. Steel-nosed bullets punctured the thin aluminum fuselage and wreaked havoc with the engine.

“Ah can’t see,” Hogan announced in a surprisingly calm voice. Her face ran crimson from several cuts, most of the blood streaming from a scalp wound into her eyes, blinding her.

Except for a few deep scratches on his arm, Pitt was untouched. He passed the machine gun to Giordino, who was wrapping a sleeve torn from his shirt around a shell gash on his right calf. The helicopter was losing power and dipping sharply toward the middle of the river. Pitt reached out and took the controls from Hogan and banked away from a sudden murderous fire that erupted from the towboat. A dozen men appeared from the pilothouse and a hatch on top of the barge and wildly threw automatic weapons fire at the battered helicopter.

Oil was streaming out of the engine, and the rotor blades were madly vibrating. Pitt reduced the collective pitch to keep the rotor speed from falling too quickly. He saw the instrument panel break into fragments from a storm of bullets. He was fighting a hopeless battle; he couldn’t hold on to the sky much longer. The forward motion dropped off and he was losing lateral control.

On the ground behind the levee, Griffin sat on his knees in helpless rage, holding a shattered wrist, watching the helicopter struggle like a great mortally wounded bird. The fuselage was so riddled by holes he couldn’t believe anybody on board was still alive. He watched the craft slowly die, dragging a long trail of smoke as it faltered and limped upriver, barely clearing a grove of trees along the bank and disappearing from sight.

69

Sandecker sat in Emmett’s private office at FBI headquarters and chewed idly on a cigar stub, his thoughts depleted. Brogan nervously juggled a half-empty cup of coffee that had long since turned cold.

General Metcalf walked in and sat down. “You all look like pallbearers,” he said with forced cheerfulness.

“Isn’t that what we are?” said Brogan. “As soon as the Senate convicts, all that’s left to do is hold the wake.”

“I’ve just come from the Senate reception room,” Metcalf said. “Secretary Oates is buttonholing members of the President’s party, trying to persuade them to hold off.”

“What are his chances?” asked Sandecker.

“Nil. The Senate is only going through the formality of a trial. Four hours from now, it will all be over.”

Brogan shook his head disgustedly. “I hear Moran has Chief Justice O’Brien standing by to administer the oath.”

“The oily bastard won’t waste a second,” Emmett muttered.

“Any word from Louisiana?” Metcalf asked.

Emmett gave the general a negative look. “Not for an hour. The last report from my agent in charge of the field office said he was making a sweep of a promising dock site.”

“Any concrete reason to believe Margolin is hidden in the delta?”

“Only a stab in the dark by my special projects director,” replied Sandecker.

Metcalf looked at Emmett. “What are you doing about the Bougainvilles?”

“I’ve assigned nearly fifty agents to the case.”

“Can you make an arrest?”

“A waste of time. Min Koryo and Lee Tong would be back on the streets in an hour.”

“Surely there must be enough evidence.”

“Nothing the Attorney General can sink his teeth into. Most of their illegal operations are managed outside our borders in Third World nations that aren’t overly friendly toward the United States—”

The phone buzzed.

“Emmett.”

“Agent Goodman in communications, sir.”

“What is it, Goodman?”

“I have contact with agent Griffin in Louisiana.”

“About time,” Emmett snapped impatiently. “Put me through.”

“Hold on.” There was a pause broken by an audible click, and then Emmett heard the sound of labored breathing. He switched on the speaker amplifer so the others could hear.

“Griffin, this is Sam Emmett, can you hear me?”

“Yes, sir, very clearly.” The words seemed uttered in pain. “We ran… ran into trouble.”

“What happened?”

“We spotted a Bougainville cargo ship tied to a pier beside a barge and towboat about seventy miles below New Orleans. Before my team and I could gain entry for a search, we were fired upon by heavy weapons mounted on the ship. Everyone was hit… I have two killed and seven wounded, including myself. It was a massacre.” The voice choked and went quiet for a few moments. When it came back on the line the tone was noticeably weaker. “Sorry for not making contact sooner, but our communications gear was shot out and I had to walk two miles before I could find a telephone.”

Emmett’s face took on a compassionate look. The thought of a badly wounded man trailing blood for two miles in the scorching heat of summer stirred his normally rock-hard emotions.

Sandecker moved closer to the speaker. “What of Pitt and Giordino?”

“The NUMA people and one of my agents were flying surveillance in our helicopter,” Griffin answered. “They got the hell shot out of them and crashed somewhere upriver. I doubt there were any survivors.”

Sandecker stepped back, his expression gone lifeless.

Emmett leaned over the speaker. “Griffin?”

His only reply was a vague muttering.

“Griffin, listen to me. Can you go on?”

“Yes, sir… I’ll try.”

“The barge, what is the situation with the barge?”

“Tug… tug pushed it away.”

“Pushed it where?”

“Downriver… last seen going toward Head of Passes.”

“Head of Passes?”

“The bottom end of the Mississippi where the river splits into three main channels to the sea,” answered Sandecker. “South Pass, Southwest Pass, and Pass a Loutre. Most major shipping uses the first two.”

“Griffin, how long since the barge left your area?”

There was no answer, no buzzing of a broken connection, no sound at all.

“I think he’s passed out,” said Metcalf.

“Help is on the way. Do you understand, Griffin?”

Still no reply.

“Why move the barge out to sea?” Brogan wondered aloud.

“No reason I can think of,” said Sandecker.

Emmett’s phone buzzed on his interoffice line.

“There’s an urgent call for Admiral Sandecker,” said Don Miller, his deputy director.

Emmett looked up. “A call for you, Admiral. If you wish, you can take it in the outer office.”

Sandecker thanked him and stepped into the anteroom, where Emmett’s private secretary showed him to a telephone at an empty desk.

He punched the blinking white button. “This is Admiral Sandecker.”

“One moment, sir,” came the familiar voice of the NUMA headquarters’ chief operator.

“Hello?”

“Sandecker here. Who’s this?”

“You’re a tough nut to crack, Admiral. If I hadn’t said my call concerned Dirk Pitt, your secretary would never have arranged our connection.”

“Who is this?” Sandecker demanded again.

“My name is Sal Casio. I’m working on the Bougainville case with Dirk.”

Ten minutes later, when Sandecker walked back into Emmett’s office, he appeared stunned and shaken. Brogan instantly sensed something was wrong.

“What is it?” he asked. “You look like you’ve rubbed shoulders with a banshee.”

“The barge,” Sandecker murmured quietly. “The Bougainvilles have struck a deal with Moran. They’re taking it out into the open sea to be scuttled.”

“What are you saying?”

“Loren Smith and Vince Margolin are sentenced to die so Alan Moran can be President. The barge is to be their tomb in a hundred fathoms of water.”

70

“Any sign of pursuit?” the river pilot asked, synchronizing the control levers of the helm console with the finesse of a conductor leading an orchestra.

Lee Tong stepped back from the large open window at the rear of the pilothouse and lowered the binoculars. “Nothing except a strange cloud of black smoke about two or three miles astern.”

“Probably an oil fire.”

“Seems to be following.”

“An illusion. The river has a habit of doing weird things to the eyes. What looks to be a mile away is four. Lights where no lights are supposed to be. Ships approaching in a channel that fade away as you get closer. Yes, the river can fool you when she gets playful.”

Lee Tong gazed up the channel again. He had learned to tune out the pilot’s never-ending commentary on the Mississippi, but he admired his skill and experience.

Captain Kim Pujon was a longtime professional river pilot for Bougainville Maritime Lines, but he still retained his Asian superstitious nature. He seldom took his eyes off the channel and the barge ahead as he expertly balanced the speeds of the four engines generating 12,000 horsepower and delicately guided the towboat’s four forward rudders and six backing rudders. Under his feet the huge diesels pounded over at full power, driving the barge through the water at nearly sixteen miles an hour, straining the cables that held the two vessels together.

They hurtled past an inbound Swedish oil tanker, and Lee Tong braced himself as the barge and towboat swept up and over the wash. “How much further to deep water?”

“Our hull passed from fresh to salt about ten miles back. We should cross the coastal shallows in another fifty minutes.”

“Keep your eyes open for a research ship with a red hull and flying the British blue ensign.”

“We’re boarding a Royal Navy ship after we scuttle?” Pujon asked in surprise.

“A former Norwegian merchantman,” explained Lee Tong. “I purchased her seven years ago and refitted her out as a research and survey vessel — a handy disguise to fool customs authorities and the Coast Guard.”

“Let us hope it fools whoever chases after us.”

Lee Tong grunted. “Why not? Any American search force will be told we were picked up and are under lock and key by the finest English accent money can buy. Before the research ship docks in New Orleans, you, I and our crew will be long gone.”

Pujon pointed. “The Port Eads light coming up. We’ll be in open water soon.”

Lee Tong nodded in grim satisfaction. “If they couldn’t stop us by now, they’re too late, far too late.”

General Metcalf, laying his long and distinguished career on the line, ignored Moran’s threats and ordered a military alert throughout the Gulf Coast states. At Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field in Florida, tactical fighter wings and special operations gunships scrambled and thundered west while attack squadrons rose from Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas and swept toward the east.

He and Sandecker raced by car to the Pentagon to direct the rescue operation from the war room. Once the vast machine was set into motion, they could do little but listen to reports and stare at an enormous satellite photomap thrown on the screen by a rear projector.

Metcalf failed to conceal his apprehension. He stood uneasily rubbing his palms together, peering at the lights on the map indicating the progress of the air strike as the planes converged on a circle lit in red.

“How soon before the first planes arrive?” asked Sandecker.

“Ten, no more than twelve minutes.”

“Surface craft?”

“Not less than an hour,” replied Metcalf bitterly. “We were caught short. No naval craft are in the immediate area except a nuclear sub sixty miles out in the gulf.”

“Coast Guard?”

“There’s an armed rescue-response cutter off Grand Island. It might make it in time.”

Sandecker studied the photomap. “Doubtful. It’s thirty miles away.”

Metcalf wiped his hands with a handkerchief. “The situation looks grim,” he said. “Except for scare tactics the air mission is useless. We can’t send in planes to strike the towboat without endangering the barge. One is practically on top of the other.”

“Bougainville would quickly scuttle the barge in any case.”

“If only we had a surface craft in the area. At least we might attempt a boarding.”

“And rescue Smith and Margolin alive.”

Metcalf sank into a chair. “We might pull it off yet. A Navy special warfare SEAL attachment is due to arrive by helicopter in a few minutes.”

“After what happened to those FBI agents, they could be going to a slaughter.”

“Our last hope,” Metcalf said helplessly. “If they can’t save them, nobody can.”

The first aircraft to arrive on the scene was not a screaming jet fighter but a Navy four-engined reconnaissance plane that had been diverted from weather patrol. The pilot, a boyish-faced man in his middle twenties, tapped his co-pilot on the arm and pointed down to his left.

“A towboat pushing one barge. She must be what all the fuss is about.”

“What do we do now?” asked the co-pilot, a narrow-jawed slightly older man with bushy red hair.

“Notify base with the cheery news. Unless, of course, you want to keep it a secret.”

Less than a minute after the sighting report was given, a gruff voice came over the radio. “Who is the aircraft commander?”

“I am.”

“I am, who?”

“You go first.”

“This is General Clayton Metcalf of the Joint Chiefs.”

The pilot smiled and made a circular motion around the side of his head with an index finger. “Are you crazy or is this a gag?”

“My sanity is not an issue here, and no, this is not a gag. Your name and rank, please.”

“You won’t believe it?”

“I’ll be the judge.”

“Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant.”

“Why should I doubt you?” Metcalf laughed. “There was a great third baseman by that name.”

“My father,” Grant said in awe. “You remember him?”

“They don’t hand out four stars for bad memories,” said Metcalf. “Do you have television equipment on board, Lieutenant?”

“Yes… yes, sir,” Grant stammered as he realized who he was really talking to. “We tape storms close-on for the meteorologists.”

“I’ll have my communications officer give your video operator the frequency for satellite transmission to the Pentagon. Keep your camera trained on the tow-boat.”

Grant turned to his co-pilot. “My God, what do you make of that?”

71

The towboat surged past the lookout at the South Pass pilot station, the last outpost of the muddy Mississippi, and swept into the open sea.

Captain Pujon said, “Thirty miles to deep water.”

Lee Tong nodded as his eyes studied the circling weather plane. Then he picked up his binoculars and scanned the sea. The only ship in sight was his counterfeit research vessel approaching from the east about eight miles off the port bow.

“We’ve beaten them,” he said confidently.

“They can still blow us out of the water from the air.”

“And risk sinking the barge? I don’t think so. They want the Vice President alive.”

“How can they know he’s on board?”

“They don’t, at least not for certain. One more reason they won’t attack what might be an innocent tow-boat unloading a trash barge at sea.”

A crewman scrambled up the steps to the pilothouse and stepped through the door. “Sir,” he said, pointing, “an aircraft coming up astern.”

Lee Tong swung the binoculars in the direction of the crewman’s outstretched arm. A U.S. Navy helicopter was beating its way toward the towboat only fifteen feet above the waves.

He frowned and said, “Alert the men.”

The crewman threw a salute and hurried off.

“A gunship?” Pujon asked uneasily. “It could hover and blast us to bits without scratching the barge.”

“Fortunately no. She’s an assault transport. Probably carrying a team of Navy SEALS. They mean to assault the towboat.”

Lieutenant Homer Dodds stuck his head out the side jump door of the chopper and peered down. The two vessels looked peaceful enough, he thought as a crewman stepped from the pilothouse and waved a greeting. Nothing unusual or suspicious. The armament he had been warned about was not visible.

He spoke into a microphone. “Have you established radio contact?”

“We’ve hailed on every marine frequency in the book and they don’t answer,” replied the pilot from the cockpit.

“Okay, drop us over the barge.”

“Roger.”

Dodds picked up a bullhorn and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Ahoy, the towboat. This is the U.S. Navy. Reduce speed and slow to a stop. We are coming aboard.”

Below, the crewman cupped hands to his ears and shook his head, signaling he couldn’t hear above the exhaust whine of the helicopter’s turbines. Dodds repeated the message and the crewman made an inviting wave of his arm. By now Dodds was close enough to see he was an Oriental.

The speed of the towboat and barge dropped off, and they began to roll in the swells. The pilot of the helicopter played the wind and hovered over the flat deck of the barge in preparation for Dodds’s assault team to jump the final three or four feet.

Dodds turned and took a final look at his men. They were lean and hard, and probably the toughest, raunchiest, meanest bunch of multipurpose killers in the Navy. They were the only group of men Dodds ever commanded who genuinely liked combat. They were eager, their weapons at the ready and prepared for anything. Except, perhaps, for total surprise.

The copter was only ten feet above the barge when trapdoors were sprung on the towboat, hatch covers thrown back and twenty crewmen opened up with Steyr-Mannlicher AUG assault carbines.

The.223-caliber shells flew into the SEALS from all directions; smoke and the grunts of men being hit erupted simultaneously. Dodds and his men reacted savagely, cutting down any towboat crewman who exposed himself, but bullets sprayed into their cramped compartment as if concentrated out of a firehose and turned it into a slaughter den. There was no escape. They were as helpless as if their backs were against the wall of a dead-end alley.

The noise of the concentrated firepower drowned out the sound of the helicopter’s exhaust. The pilot was hit in the first burst, which exploded the canopy, hurling bits of metal and Plexiglas throughout the cockpit. The chopper shuddered and veered sharply around on its axis. The co-pilot wrestled with the controls but they had lost all response.

The Air Force fighters arrived and instantly appraised the situation. Their squadron leader gave hurried instructions and dived, skimming low over the stern of the towboat in an attempt to draw fire away from the battered and smoking helicopter. But the ploy didn’t work. They were ignored by Lee Tong’s gunners. With growing frustration at the orders not to attack, their passes became ever lower until one pilot clipped off the towboat’s radar antenna.

Too badly mauled to remain in the air any longer, the crippled chopper and its pitiful cargo of dead and wounded finally gave up the struggle to remain airborne and fell into the sea beside the barge.

Sandecker and Metcalf sat in shock as the video camera on board the weather plane recorded the drama. The war room became deadly quiet and nobody spoke as they watched and waited for the camera to reveal signs of survivors. Six heads were all they could count in the blue of the sea.

“The end of the game,” Metcalf said with chilly finality.

Sandecker didn’t answer. He turned away from the screen and sat heavily in a chair beside the long conference table, the pepper-and-vinegar spirit gone out of him.

Metcalf listened without reaction to the voices of the pilots over the speakers. Their anger at not being able to pound the towboat turned vehement. Not told of the people held captive inside the barge, they voiced their anger at the high command, unaware their heated words were heard and recorded at the Pentagon a thousand miles away.

A shadow of a smile touched Sandecker’s face. He could not help but sympathize with them.

Then a friendly voice cut in. “Lieutenant Grant calling. Is it okay to call you direct, General?”

“It’s all right, son,” said Metcalf quietly. “Go ahead.”

“I have two ships approaching the area, sir. Stand by for a picture of the first one.”

With a new shred of hope, their eyes locked on the screen. At first the image was small and indistinct. Then the weather plane’s cameraman zoomed in on a red-hulled vessel.

“From up here I’d judge her to be a survey ship,” reported Grant.

A gust of wind caught the flag on the ensign staff and stretched out its blue colors.

“British,” announced Metcalf dejectedly. “We don’t dare ask foreign nationals to die for our sake.”

“You’re right, of course. I’ve never known an oceanographic scientist to carry an automatic rifle.”

Metcalf turned and said, “Grant?”

“Sir?”

“Contact the British research vessel and request they pick up survivors from the helicopter.”

Before Grant could acknowledge, the video image distorted and the screen went black.

“We’ve lost your picture, Grant.”

“One moment, General. My crewman manning the camera informs me the battery pack on the recorder went dead. He’ll have it replaced in a minute.”

“What’s the situation with the towboat?”

“She and the barge are under way again, only more slowly than before.”

Metcalf turned to Sandecker. “Luck just isn’t on our side, is it, Jim?”

“No, Clayton. We’ve had none at all.” He hesitated. “Unless, of course, the second ship is an armed Coast Guard cutter.”

“Grant?” Metcalf boomed.

“Won’t be long, sir.”

“Never mind that. What type vessel is the second ship you reported? Coast Guard or Navy?”

“Neither. Strictly civilian.”

Metcalf dissolved in defeat, but a spark stirred within Sandecker. He leaned over the microphone.

“Grant, this is Admiral James Sandecker. Can you describe her?”

“She’s nothing like you’d expect to see on the ocean.”

“What’s her nationality?”

“Nationality?”

“Her flag, man. What flag is she flying?”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Spit it out.”

“Well, Admiral, I was born and raised in Montana, but I’ve read enough history books to recognize a Confederate States flag when I see one.”

72

Out of a world all but vanished, her brass steam whistle splitting the air, the seawater frothing white beneath her churning paddle wheels, and spewing black smoke from her towering twin stacks, the Stonewall Jackson pitched toward the towboat with the awkward grace of a pregnant Southern belle hoisting her hooped skirts while crossing a mud puddle.

Shrieking gulls rode the wind above a giant stern flag displaying the crossed bars and stars of the Confederacy, while on the roof of the texas deck, a man furiously pounded out the old South’s national hymn, “Dixie,” on the keyboard of an old-fashioned steam calliope. The sight of the old riverboat charging across the sea stirred the souls of the men flying above. They knew they were witnessing an adventure none would see again.

In the ornate pilothouse, Pitt and Giordino stared at the barge and towboat that loomed closer with every revolution of the thirty-foot paddle wheels.

“The man was right,” Giordino shouted above the steam whistle and calliope.

“What man?” Pitt asked loudly.

“The one who said, ‘Save your Confederate money; the South will rise again.’ “

“Lucky for us it has,” Pitt said, smiling.

“We’re gaining.” This from a wiry little man who twisted the six-foot helm with both hands.

“They’ve lost speed,” Pitt concurred.

“If the boilers don’t blow, and the sweet old darlin’ holds together in these damned waves…” The man at the wheel paused in midsentence, made an imperceptible turn of his big white-bearded head and let fly a spurt of tobacco juice with deadly accuracy into a brass cuspidor before continuing. “We ought to overtake ‘em in the next two miles.”

Captain Melvin Belcheron had skippered the Stonewall Jackson for thirty of his sixty-two years. He knew every buoy, bend, sandbar and riverbank light from St. Louis to New Orleans by heart. But this was the first time he’d ever taken his boat into the open sea.

The “sweet old darlin’“ was built in 1915 at Columbus, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. Her like was the last to stoke the fires of imagination during the golden years of steamboating, and her like would never be seen again. The smell of burning coal, the swish of the steam engine, and the rhythmic splash of the paddle wheels would soon belong only in the history books.

Her shallow wooden hull was long and beamy, measuring 270 feet by 44. Her horizontal noncondensing engines ran at about forty revolutions per minute. She was rated at slightly over one thousand tons, yet despite her bulk, she walked the water with a draft of just thirty-two inches.

Down below on the main deck, four men, sweat-streaked and blackened with soot, furiously shoveled coal into the furnaces under four high-pressure boilers. When the pressure began to creep into the red, the chief engineer, a crusty old Scot by the name of McGeen, hung his hat over the steam gauge.

McGeen was the first man to vote for pursuit after Pitt crash-landed the helicopter in shallow water near Fort Jackson, waded ashore with Giordino and Hogan, and described the situation. At first there was undisguised disbelief, but after seeing their wounds, the bullet-riddled aircraft, and then hearing a deputy sheriff describe the dead and injured FBI agents a few miles downriver, McGeen stoked up his boilers, Belcheron rounded up his deck crew and forty men from the Sixth Louisiana Regiment tramped on board hooting and hollering and dragging along two ancient field cannon.

“Pour on the coal, boys,” McGeen pressed his black gang. He looked like the devil with his trimmed goatee and brushed-up eyebrows in the flickering glare of the open furnace doors. “If we mean to save the Vice President, we’ve got to have more steam.”

The Stonewall Jackson thrashed after the towboat and barge, almost as if sensing the urgency of her mission. When new, her top speed was rated at fifteen miles an hour, but in the past forty years she was never called on to provide more than twelve.[2]

She thrust downriver with the current at fourteen, then fifteen… sixteen… eighteen miles an hour. When she burst from the South Pass Channel, she was driving through the water at twenty, smoke and sparks exploding through the flared capitals atop her stacks.

The men of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment — the dentists, plumbers, accountants who marched and refought battles of the Civil War as a hobby — grunted and sweated in the nondescript woolen gray and butternut uniforms that once clothed the Army of the Confederate States of America. Under the command of a major, they heaved huge cotton bales into place as breastworks. The two Napoleon twelve-pounder cannon from Fort Jackson were wheeled into position on the bow, their smoothbore barrels loaded with ball bearings scrounged from McGeen’s engine-room supply locker.

Pitt stared down at the growing fortress of wired bales. Cotton against steel, he mused, single-shot muskets against automatic rifles.

It was going to be an interesting fight.

Lieutenant Grant tore his eyes from the incredible sight under his wings and radioed the ship flying the British flag.

“This is Air Force Weather Recon zero-four-zero calling oceanographic research vessel. Do you read?”

“Righto, Yank. Hear you clearly,” came back a cheery voice fresh off a cricket field. “This is Her Majesty’s Ship Pathfinder. What can we do for you, zero-four-zero?”

“A chopper went into the drink about three miles west of you. Can you effect a rescue of survivors, Pathfinder?”

“We bloody well better. Can’t allow the poor chaps to drown, can we?”

“I’ll circle the crash sector, Pathfinder. Home in on me.”

“Jolly good. We’re on our way. Out.”

Grant took up a position over the struggling men in the water. The gulf current was warm, so there was no fear of their succumbing to exposure, but any bleeding wounds were certain to attract sharks.

“You don’t carry much influence,” said his co-pilot.

“What do you mean?” asked Grant.

“The Limey ship isn’t responding. She’s turned away.”

Grant leaned forward and banked the plane to see out the opposite cockpit window. His co-pilot was right. The Pathfinder’s bow had come around on a course away from the helicopter’s survivors and was aimed toward the Stonewall Jackson.

“Pathfinder, this is zero-four-zero,” Grant called. “What is your problem? Repeat. What is your problem?”

There was no reply.

“Unless I’m suffering one hell of a hallucination,” Metcalf said, staring in wonder at the video transmission, “that old relic from Tom Sawyer intends to attack the towboat.”

“She’s giving every indication,” Sandecker agreed.

“Where do you suppose she came from?”

Sandecker stood with his arms crossed in front of him, his face radiating an elated expression. “Pitt,” he muttered under his breath, “you wily, irrepressible son of a bitch.”

“You say something?”

“Just speculating to myself.”

“What can they possibly hope to accomplish?”

“I think they mean to ram and board.”

“Insanity, sheer insanity,” snorted Metcalf gloomily. “The gunners on the towboat will cut them to pieces.”

Suddenly Sandecker tensed, seeing something in the background on the screen. Metcalf didn’t catch it; no one else watching caught it either.

The admiral grasped Metcalf by the arm. “The British vessel!”

Metcalf looked up, startled. “What about it?”

“Good God, man, see for yourself. She’s going to run down the steamboat.”

Metcalf saw the distance between the two ships rapidly narrowing, saw the wake of the Pathfinder turn to foam as she surged ahead at full speed.

“Grant!” he bellowed.

“Here, sir.”

“The Limey ship, why isn’t she headed toward the men in the water?”

“I can’t say, General. Her skipper acknowledged my request for rescue, but chased after the old paddleboat instead. I haven’t been able to raise him again. He appears to be ignoring my transmissions.”

“Take them out!” Sandecker demanded. “Call in an air strike and take the bastards out!”

Metcalf hesitated, torn by indecision. “But she’s flying the British flag, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’ll stake my rank she’s a Bougainville ship, and the flag is a decoy.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Maybe. But I do know that if she crushes the steamboat into firewood, our last chance to save Vince Margolin is gone.”

73

In the pilothouse of the towboat a burst of fire from the SEALS had shattered the inner workings of the command console, fouling the rudder controls. Captain Pujon had no option but to reduce speed and steer by jockeying the throttle levers.

Lee Tong did not spare him a glance. He was busy issuing orders over the radio to the commander of the Pathfinder, while keeping a wary eye on the wallowing steamboat.

Finally he turned to Pujon. “Can’t you regain our top speed?”

“Eight miles is the best I can do if we want to maintain a straight course.”

“How far?” he asked for the tenth time that hour.

“According to the depth sounder, the bottom’s beginning to drop off. Another two miles should do it.”

“Two miles,” Lee Tong repeated thoughtfully. “Time to set the detonators.”

“I’ll alert you by blowing the airhorn when we come over a hundred fathoms,” said Pujon.

Lee Tong stared across the dark sea, stained by the runoff from the Mississippi River. The masquerading research ship was only a few hundred yards away from slicing through the brittle side of the Stonewall Jackson. He could hear the haunting wail of the calliope drifting with the wind. He shook his head in disbelief, wondering who was responsible for the old riverboat’s sudden appearance.

He was about to leave the pilothouse and cross over to the barge when he noticed one of the milling aircraft overhead abruptly slide out of formation and dive toward the sea.

A ghost-white F/A 21 Navy strike aircraft leveled off two hundred feet above the wave tops and unleashed two anti-ship missiles. Lee Tong watched in numbed horror as the laser-controlled warheads skimmed across the water and slammed into the red-hulled decoy ship, stopping her dead in her tracks with a blast that turned the entire upper works into a grotesque tangle of shattered steel. Then came a second, even stronger explosion that enveloped the ship in a ball of flame. For an instant she seemed to hang suspended as if locked in time.

Lee Tong stood tensed in despair as the broken vessel slowly rolled over and died, falling to the floor of the gulf and sealing all hope of his escape.

Fiery fragments of the Pathfinder rained down around the Stonewall Jackson, igniting several small fires that were quickly extinguished by the crew. The sea surface over the sunken ship turned black with oily bubbles as a hissing cloud of steam and smoke spiraled into the sky.

“Christ in heaven!” Captain Belcheron gasped in astonishment. “Will you look at that. Those Navy boys mean business.”

“Somebody is watching over us,” Pitt commented thankfully. His eyes returned to the barge. His face was expressionless; but for the swaying of his body to compensate for the roll of the boat, he might have been sculpted from solid teak. The gap had closed to three quarters of a mile, and he could make out the tiny figure of a man scrambling across the bow of the towboat onto the barge before disappearing down a deck hatch.

An enormous man with the stout build of an Oliver Hardy barreled up the ladder from the texas deck and came through the door. He wore the gray uniform and gold braid of a Confederate major. The shirt under the unbuttoned coat was damp with perspiration, and he was panting from exertion. He stood there a moment, wiping his forehead with a sleeve, catching his breath.

At last he said, “Doggone, I don’t know if I’d rather die by a bullet in the head, by drowning or a heart attack.”

Leroy Laroche operated a travel agency by day, functioned as a loving husband and father by night, and acted as commander of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment of the Confederate States Army on weekends. He was popular among his men and was re-elected every year to lead the regiment in battlefield re-enactments around the country. The fact that he was about to engage in the real thing didn’t seem to faze him.

“Lucky for us you had those cotton bales on board,” he said to the captain.

Belcheron smiled. “We keep them on deck as historic examples of the sweet old darlin’s maritime heritage.”

Pitt looked at Laroche. “Your men in position, Major?”

“Loaded, primed full of Dixie beer and rarin’ to fight,” Laroche replied.

“What sort of weapons do they own?”

“Fifty-eight-caliber Springfield muskets, which most rebels carried late in the war. Shoots a minie ball five hundred yards.”

“How fast can they fire?”

“Most of my boys can get off three rounds a minute, a few can do four. But I’m putting the best shots on the barricade while the others load.”

“And the cannon? Do they actually fire?”

“You bet. They can hit a tree with a can of cement at half a mile.”

“Can of cement?”

“Cheaper to make than real cannon shot.”

Pitt considered that and grinned. “Good luck, Major. Tell your men to keep their heads down. Muzzle loaders take more time to aim than machine guns.”

“I reckon they know how to duck,” said Laroche. “When do you want us to open fire?”

“I leave that to you.”

“Excuse me, Major,” Giordino cut in. “Did any of your men happen to carry a spare weapon?”

Laroche unsnapped the leather holster on his belt and passed Giordino a large pistol. “A Le Mat revolver,” he said. “Shoots nine forty-two-caliber shells through a rifled barrel. But if you’ll notice, there’s a big smoothbore barrel underneath that holds a charge of buckshot. Take good care of it. My great-granddaddy carried it from Bull Run to Appomattox.”

Giordino was genuinely impressed. “I don’t want to leave you unarmed.”

Laroche pulled his saber from its scabbard. “This will do me just fine. Well, I best get back to my men.”

After the big jovial major left the pilothouse, Pitt bent down and opened the violin case, lifted out the Thompson and inserted a full drum. He held his side with one hand and cautiously straightened, his lips pressed tight from the pain that speared his chest.

“You be all right up here?” he asked Belcheron.

“Don’t pay no mind to me,” the captain answered. He nodded at a cast-iron potbellied stove. “I’ll have my own armor when the fireworks start.”

“Thank God for that,” exclaimed Metcalf.

“What is it?” Sandecker asked.

Metcalf held up a paper. “A reply from the British Admiralty in London. The only Pathfinder on duty with the Royal Navy is a missile destroyer. They have no research ship by that name, nor is there any in the gulf area.” He gave Sandecker a thankful look.

“You called a good play, Jim.”

“We had a bit of luck after all.”

“The poor bastards on that steamboat are the ones who need it now.”

“Any more we can do? Anything we’ve overlooked?”

Metcalf shook his head. “Not from this end. The Coast Guard cutter is only fifteen minutes away and the nuclear sub is not far behind.”

“Neither will arrive in time.”

“Perhaps the people on the steamboat can somehow stall the tugboat until…” Metcalf didn’t finish.

“You don’t really believe in miracles, do you, Clayton?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

74

A Maelstrom of automatic weapons fire lashed into the Stonewall Jackson as Lee Tong’s crew opened up at three hundred yards. Bullets hummed and whistled, splintering the gleaming white wood and gingerbread carvings on the rails and deck cabins, clanging and ricocheting off the ship’s bronze bell. The huge unglazed window in the pilothouse disintegrated into silvery fragments. Inside, Captain Belcheron was stunned by a shell that grazed the top of his head and turned his white hair red. His vision blurred and went double, but he hung on to the spokes of the great wheel with savage determination while hawking tobacco juice out the broken window.

The calliope player, protected by a forest of brass plumbing, began playing “Yellow Rose of Texas,” which fell on several flat tones as holes suddenly appeared in his steam whistles.

On the main deck, Major Laroche and his regiment, along with Pitt and Giordino, crouched out of sight. The cotton bales made strong defensive works, and no bullets penetrated. The open boiler area behind the main staircase caught the worst of it. Two of McGeen’s stokers were hit and the overhead tubing was penetrated, allowing steam to escape in scalding streams. McGeen took his hat off the pressure gauge. It was pegged in the red. He expelled a long sigh. A miracle nothing had burst, he thought. The rivets were straining on the boilers. He quickly began spinning relief valves to let off the immense pressure in preparation for the coming collision.

The Stonewall Jackson’s paddle wheels were still driving her at twenty miles an hour. If she had to die, she was not going to end up like her former sisters, rotting away in some forgotten bayou or broken up for wharf wood. She was going out a legend and ending her life on the water in style.

Brushing aside the waves that pounded her bow, shrugging off the frightful torrent of lead that shredded her flimsy superstructure, she forged ahead.

Lee Tong watched in bitter fascination as the steamboat came on steadily. He stood in an open hatch on the barge and poured a stream of bullets at her, hoping to hit a vital part and slow her down. But he might as well have been shooting air pellets at a rampaging elephant.

He set aside his Steyr-Mannlicher carbine and raised the binoculars. None of the crew was visible behind the barricade of cotton bales. Even the sieved pilothouse looked deserted. The gold letters of the smashed nameplate were visible, but all he could make out was the name JACKSON.

The flat bow was pointed square for the towboat’s port side. It was a stupid, futile gesture, he reasoned, a stalling technique, nothing more. In spite of its superior size, the wooden paddle steamer could not expect to damage the towboat’s steel hull.

He retrieved the Steyr-Mannlicher, inserted another ammo clip and concentrated his fire into the pilothouse in an attempt to damage the helm.

Sandecker and Metcalf watched too.

They sat captivated by the hopeless, irresistible magnificence of it all. Radio contact was attempted with the steamboat, but there was no response. Captain Belcheron had been too busy to answer, and the old river rat didn’t think he had anything worth saying anyway.

Metcalf called Lieutenant Grant. “Spiral in closer,” he ordered.

Grant acknowledged and made a series of tight banks over the vessels below. The detail of the towboat was quite sharp. They could pick out nearly thirty men blasting away across the water. The steamboat, however, was obscured by the smoke shooting from her stacks and great clouds of exhaust steam spurting out of the “scape pipes” aft of the pilothouse.

“She’ll bash herself to bits when she strikes,” said Sandecker.

“It’s glorious but meaningless,” Metcalf muttered.

“Give them credit. They’re doing more than we can.”

Metcalf nodded slowly. “Yes, we can’t take that away from them.”

Sandecker came out of his chair and pointed. “Look there, on the steamboat where the wind has blown the smoke off to the side.”

“What is it?”

“Isn’t that a pair of cannon?”

Metcalf came alert. “By God, you’re right. They look like old monuments from a town park.”

At two hundred yards Laroche raised his sword and yelled, “Batteries one and two, train and prime your guns.”

“Battery one primed and aimed,” shouted back a man in antique wire spectacles.

“Battery two ready, Major.”

“Then fire!”

The lanyards were jerked and the two antique cannon belched their loads of ballbearing grapeshot from their muzzles in earsplitting claps. The first shot actually penetrated the side of the tow-boat, crashing into the galley and mangling the ovens. The second soared into the pilothouse, taking off Captain Pujon’s head and carrying away the wheel. Dazed by the unexpected barrage, Lee Tong’s men slackened their fire for several seconds, recovered and opened up with renewed ferocity, concentrating on the narrow slits between the cotton bales where the cannon barrels protruded.

Now the smoothbores were run back while the artillery men quickly rammed home the sponges and began reloading. Bullets whined over their heads and shoulders, and one man was struck in the neck. But in less than a minute the old Napoleons were ready to blast again.

“Aim for the cables!” Pitt shouted. “Cut the barge away!”

Laroche nodded and relayed Pitt’s orders. The guns were run out and the next broadside swept the tow-boat’s bow, causing an explosion of coiled rope and cable, but die tenacious grip on the barge remained unbroken.

Coldly, almost contemptuous of the deadly blitz that swept the Stonewall Jackson, the make-believe soldiers lined up the sights on their single-shot muskets and waited for the command to tire.

Only two hundred yards separated the vessels when Laroche raised his sword again. “Firing rank, take aim. Okay, boys, give ‘em hell. Fire!”

The front of the steamboat exploded in a tremendous torrent of fire and smoke. The towboat was raked with a seemingly solid wall of minie bullets. The effect was devastating. Glass dissolved in every port and window, paint chips flew off the bulkheads and bodies began falling, deluging the decks with blood.

Before Lee Tong’s gunners could recover, Pitt stitched the towboat from bow to stern with a steady stream of fire from the Thompson. Giordino hunched against the cotton barricade, waiting for the range to close to fire the revolver, watching in rapt interest as the second and third ranks ran through the dozen cumbersome procedures of rearming a muzzle-loading musket.

The Confederates laid down a killing fire. Volley after volley followed in succession, almost every other shot striking flesh and bone. The smoke and shattering sounds were punctuated by the cries of the wounded. Laroche, swept away by the carnage and commotion, thundered and swore at the top of his lungs, prodding his sharpshooters to aim true, exhorting the loaders to move more rapidly.

One minute passed, two, then three, as the fighting reached a savage pitch. Fire broke out on the Jackson and flames soared up her wooden sides. In the pilothouse, Captain Belcheron yanked on the whistle cord and shouted into the voice tube leading to McGeen in the engine area. The riflemen ceased their fire and everyone braced themselves for the approaching collision.

A strange, unearthly silence fell over the steamboat as the crack of the guns faded and the haunting wail of the calliope died away. She was like a boxer who had taken a fearful beating from a far stronger adversary and could take no more, but had somehow reached deep into her exhausted reserves for one last knockout punch.

She struck the towboat square amidships with a rumbling crunch that knocked over the cotton-bale barricade, crushing back her bow by six feet as planks and beams gave way like laths. Both stacks fell forward, throwing sparks and smoke over the battle that rapidly resumed its intensity. Guns fired at point-blank range. The support ropes burned through and the landing stages dropped onto the towboat’s decks like great claws gripping the two vessels fast together.

“Fix bayonets!” Laroche boomed.

Someone broke out the regiment’s battle flag and began waving it wildly in the air. Muskets were reloaded and bayonets attached. The calliope player had returned to his post and was pounding out “Dixie” once again. Pitt was amazed that no one showed any sign of fear. Instead, there was a general feeling of uncontrolled delirium. He couldn’t help thinking he’d somehow crossed a time barrier into the past.

Laroche whipped off his officer’s hat, hung it on the tip of his sword and raised it into the air. “Sixth Louisiana!” he cried. “Go git ‘em!”

Screaming the rebel yell like demons emerging from the center of the earth, the men in gray stormed on board the towboat. Laroche was struck in the chin and one knee, but hobbled and pressed on. Pitt laid down a covering fire until the last cartridge poured from the Thompson. Then he laid the gun on a cotton bale and charged after Giordino, who hopped across a landing stage, favoring his injured leg and firing the revolver like a wild man. McGeen and his boiler crew followed, wielding their shovels like clubs.

Bougainville’s men bore no resemblance to their attackers. They were hired killers, ruthless men who offered no mercy nor expected it, but they were not prepared for the incredible onslaught of the Southerners and made the mistake of leaping from the protected steel bulkheads and meeting the surge head-on.

The Stonewall Jackson was wreathed in fire. The artillery men fired one last volley at the towboat, aiming forward of the men fighting amidships, their shot sweeping away the cables attached to the barge. Shoved sideways by the continued momentum of the steamboat, the two steel vessels jackknifed around her crushed bow.

The Sixth Louisiana overran the decks, lunging with their bayonets, but keeping up a deadly rate of fire. There were a score of individual hand-to-hand struggles, the five-foot Springfield musket and two-foot bayonet making a nasty close-in weapon. None of the weekend soldiers paused; they fought with a strange kind of recklessness, too caught up in the unimaginable din and excitement to be afraid.

Giordino didn’t feel the blow. He was steadily advancing into the crew’s quarters, firing at any Oriental face that showed itself when suddenly he was flat on his face, a bullet breaking the calf bone of his good leg.

Pitt lifted Giordino under the arms and dragged him into an empty passageway. “You’re not armor-plated, you know.”

“Where in hell have you been?” Giordino’s voice tensed as the pain increased.

“Staying out of the way,” Pitt replied. “I’m not armed.”

Giordino handed him the Le Mat revolver. “Take this. I’m through for the day anyway.”

Pitt gave his friend a half-smile. “Sorry to leave you, but I’ve got to get inside the barge.”

Giordino opened his mouth to make an offhand reply, but Pitt was already gone. Ten seconds and he was snaking through the debris on the towboat’s bow. He was almost too late. A head and pair of shoulders raised from a hatch and fired off a burst. Pitt felt the passing bullets fan his hair and cheek. He dropped to the railing and rolled over the side into the sea.

Further aft, the Bougainville crew grimly hung on, obstinately giving way until they were finally overwhelmed by gray uniforms. The shouting and the gunfire slackened and went silent. The Confederate battle flag was run up the towboat’s radio mast and the fight was over.

The amateur soldiers of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment had handled themselves well. Surprisingly, none had been killed in the melee. Eighteen were wounded, only two seriously. Laroche staggered from the midst of his cheering men and sagged to the deck beside Giordino. He reached over and the two bleeding men solemnly shook hands.

“Congratulations, Major,” Giordino said. “You just made the playoffs.”

A big grin spread across Laroche’s bloodied face. “By God, we whipped ‘em good, didn’t we?”

Lee Tong emptied his weapon at the figure on the bow of the towboat, observing it fall into the water. Then he slumped against the edge of the hatch and watched the Confederate battle flag flutter in the gulf breeze.

With a kind of detachment, he accepted the unexpected disaster which had overtaken his carefully conceived operation. His crew was either dead or prisoner, and his escape ship was destroyed. Yet he was not ready to oblige his unknown opponents by surrendering. He was determined to carry out his grandmother’s bargain with Moran and take his chances on escaping later.

He dropped down the side ladder of the elevator shaft into the laboratory quarters and ran along the main corridor until he came to the door of the chamber that held the isolation cocoons. He entered and peered through the insulated plastic lid at the body within the first one. Vince Margolin stared back, his body too numb to respond, his mind too drugged to comprehend.

Lee Tong moved to the next cocoon and looked down at the serene, sleeping face of Loren Smith. She was heavily sedated and in a deep state of unconsciousness. Her death would be a waste, he thought. But she could not be allowed to live and testify. He leaned over and opened the cover and stroked her hair, staring at her through half-open eyes.

He had killed countless men, their features forgotten less than seconds after their death. But the faces of the women lingered. He remembered the first, so many years ago on a tramp steamer in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: her haunting expression of bewilderment as her chained nude body was dropped over the side.

“Nice place you have here,” came a voice from the doorway, “but your elevator is out of order.”

Lee Tong spun around and gaped at the man who stood wet and dripping, pointing a strange antique revolver at his chest.

“You!” he gasped.

Pitt’s face — tired, haggard and dark with beard stubble — lit up in a smile. “Lee Tong Bougainville. What a coincidence.”

“You’re alive!”

“A trite observation.”

“And responsible for all this: those mad men in the old uniforms, the riverboat…”

“The best I could arrange on the spur of the moment,” Pitt said apologetically.

Lee Tong’s moment of utter confusion passed and he slowly curled his finger around the trigger of the Steyr-Mannlicher that hung loosely in one hand, muzzle aimed at the carpeted deck.

“Why have you pursued my grandmother and me, Mr. Pitt?” he demanded, stalling. “Why have you set out to wreck Bougainville Maritime?”

“That’s like Hitler asking why the Allies invaded Europe. In my case, you were responsible for the death of a friend.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Pitt indifferently. “You never met her.”

Lee Tong swung up the barrel of his carbine and pulled the trigger.

Pitt was faster, but Giordino had used up the last cartridge and the revolver’s hammer fell on an empty cylinder. He stiffened, expecting the impact of a bullet.

It never came.

Lee Tong had forgotten to insert a new clip after firing his final round at Pitt on the towboat. He lowered the carbine, his lips stretched into an inscrutable smile. “It seems we have a standoff, Mr. Pitt.”

“Only temporary,” said Pitt, recocking the hammer and keeping the revolver raised and aimed. “My people will be coming aboard any minute now.”

Lee Tong sighed and relaxed. “Then I can do little else but surrender and wait for arrest.”

“You’ll never stand trial.”

The smile turned into a sneer. “That’s not for you to decide. Besides, you’re hardly in a position to—”

Suddenly he flipped the carbine around, gripping the barrel and raising it as a club. The rifle butt was on a vicious downswing when Pitt squeezed the trigger and blasted Lee Tong in the throat with the barrel loaded with buckshot. The carbine poised in midair and then fell from his hand as he stumbled backward until striking the wall and dropping heavily to the deck.

Pitt left him where he lay and threw off the cover over Loren’s cocoon. He gently lifted her out and carried her to the open elevator. He checked the circuit breakers and found them on, but there was still no response from the lift motors when he pressed the “up” button.

He had no way of knowing the generators that provided electricity to the barge had run out of fuel and shut down, leaving only the emergency battery power to illuminate the overhead lighting. Scrounging through a supply locker, he found a rope, which he tied under Loren’s arms. Then he pulled himself through the elevator roof’s trapdoor and scaled the shaft ladder to the top deck of the barge.

Slowly, gently, he eased Loren’s body upward until she lay on the rusting deck. Winded, he took a minute to catch his breath and look around. The Stonewall Jackson was still burning fiercely, but the flames were being fought with fire hoses from the towboat. About two miles to the west a white Coast Guard cutter was driving through the light swells toward their position, while to the south he could just make out the sail tower of a nuclear submarine.

Taking a short length of the rope, Pitt tied Loren loosely to a cleat so she wouldn’t roll into the sea, then he returned below. When he entered the isolation chamber again, Lee Tong was gone. A trail of blood led up the corridor and ended at an open hatch to a storage deck below. He saw no reason to waste time on a dying murderer and turned to rescue the Vice President.

Before he took two steps, a tremendous blast lifted him off his feet and hurled him face downward twenty feet away. The impact from the concussion drove the breath from his lungs and the ringing in his ears prevented him from hearing the sea rush in through a gaping hole torn in the hull of the barge.

Pitt awkwardly raised himself to his hands and knees and tried to orient himself. Then slowly, as the haze before his eyes melted away, he realized what had happened and what was coming. Lee Tong had detonated an explosive charge before he died and already the water was flowing across a corridor deck.

Pitt pushed himself to his feet and reeled drunkenly into the isolation chamber again. The Vice President looked up at him and tried to say something, but before he could utter a sound, Pitt had hoisted him over a shoulder and was lurching toward the elevator.

The water was surging around Pitt’s knees now, splashing up the walls. He knew only seconds were left before the barge began its dive to the seabed. By the time he reached the open elevator, the sea was up to his chest and he half walked, half swam inside. It was too late to repeat the rope lift procedure. Furiously he manhandled Margolin through the ceiling trapdoor, clasped him under the chest and began climbing the iron ladder to the tiny square patch of blue sky that seemed miles away.

He remembered then that he had tied Loren to the upper deck to keep her from rolling into the sea. The sickening thought coursed through him that she would be pulled to her death when the barge sank.

Beyond fear lies desperation, and beyond that a raging drive to survive that cuts across the boundaries of suffering and exhaustion. Some men yield to hopelessness, some try to sidestep its existence, while a very few accept and face it head-on.

Watching the froth tenaciously dog his rise up the elevator shaft, Pitt fought with every shred of his will to save the lives of Margolin and Loren. His arms felt as if they were tearing from their sockets. White spots burst before his eyes and the strain on his cracked ribs passed from mere pain to grinding agony.

His grip loosened on flakes of rust and he almost fell backward into the water boiling at his heels. It would have been so easy to surrender, to let go and drop into oblivion and release the torture that racked his body. But he hung on. Rung by rung, he struggled upward, Margolin’s dead weight becoming heavier with each step.

His ears regained a partial sense of hearing and picked up a strange thumping sound, which Pitt wrote off as blood pounding in his head. The sea rose above his feet now, and the barge shuddered; it was about to go under.

A nightmare world closed in on him. A black shape loomed above, and then his hand reached out and clasped another hand.