Anger at being toyed with flashed in her eyes. She took two steps, reached out, grasped Pitt’s upper arms and squeezed as she leaned forward, crushing him against one wall of the salon. There was no expression in the giantess’ black eyes as they stared unblinkingly into Pitt’s, almost nose-to-nose. She said nothing, only stood there increasing the pressure and pushing upward until his feet were barely touching the carpet.
Pitt resisted by tensing his body and flexing his biceps, which felt as if they were clamped in ever-tightening vises. He could not believe any man, much less a woman, could be so strong. His muscles began to feel as if they were mashed to pulp. He clenched his teeth and bleeding lips together to fight the rising pain. The restricted blood flow was numbing and turning his hands white when Boudicca finally released her grip and stepped back.
“Now then, before I encircle your throat, tell me who you are and why you’re prying into my family’s mining operation.”
Pitt stalled for a minute while the pain subsided and feeling returned to his lower arms and hands. He was stunned by the woman’s inhuman strength. Finally, he gasped out, “Is that any way to treat the man who rescued your sisters from certain death?”
Her eyes widened questioningly, and she stiffened. “What are you talking about? How do you know my sisters?”
“My name is Dirk Pitt,” he said slowly. “My friends and I saved Maeve from freezing to death and Deirdre from drowning in the Antarctic.”
“You?” The words seemed to boil from her lips. “You’re the one from the National Underwater & Marine Agency?”
“The same.” Pitt walked over to a lavish bar with a copper surface and picked up a cocktail napkin to dab away the blood that dripped from a cut lip. Merchant and Crutcher looked as stunned as if a horse they had bet their life savings on had run out of the money.
Merchant gazed blankly at Boudicca. “He must be lying.”
“Would you like me to describe them in detail?” asked Pitt carelessly. “Maeve is tall, blond, with incredibly blue eyes. Strictly a camp-on-the-beach type.” He paused to point at a portrait of a young blond woman, wearing an old-fashioned dress with a diamond the size of a quail’s egg set in a pendant around her neck. “That’s her in the painting.”
“Not even close.” Boudicca smirked. “That happens to be a portrait of my great-great-great- grandmother.”
“Neither here nor there,” Pitt said with feigned indifference, unwilling to tear his eyes away from the incredible likeness of Maeve. “Deirdre, on the other hand, has brown eyes and red hair and walks like a runway model.”
After a long pause, Boudicca said, “He must be who he says he is.”
“That doesn’t explain his presence here,” Merchant persisted.
“I told you during our last meeting,” said Pitt. “I came here to study the effects of the chemicals and pollution flowing into the sea from the mine.”
Merchant smiled thinly. “An inventive story, but far from the truth.”
Pitt could not relax for a moment. He was in the company of dangerous people, cunning and shrewd. He had felt his way, assessing the reaction to his line of approach, but he realized it was only a matter of a minute or two before Boudicca figured out his game. It was inevitable. She had enough pieces to fill in the borders of the puzzle. He decided he could better control the situation by telling the truth.
“The gospel you want, the gospel you’ll get. I’m here because the pulsed ultrasound you use to excavate far diamonds causes an intense resonance that channels great distances underwater. When undersea conditions are optimal these pulses converge with those from your other mining operations around the Pacific and kill any living organism in the area. But of course I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
He’d caught Boudicca off balance. She stared at Pitt as if he had stepped off an alien spaceship. “You’re quite good at creating a scene.” she said hesitantly. “You should have gone into the movies.”
“I’ve considered it,” said Pitt. “But I don’t have James Woods’ talent or Mel Gibson’s looks.” He discovered a bottle of Herradura silver tequila behind the bar on a glass shelf backed by a gold-tinted mirror and poured himself a shot glass. He also found a lime and a salt shaker. He let Boudicca and the others stand there and watch as he dabbed his tongue on the flap of skin between his thumb and forefinger before sprinkling salt on it. Then he downed the tequila, licked the salt and sucked on the lime. “There, now I feel ready to face the rest of the day. As I was saying, you know more about the horrors of the acoustic plague, as it’s come to be called, than I do, Ms. Dorsett. The same killer that came frighteningly close to killing your sisters. So it would be foolish of me to waste my time attempting to enlighten you.”
“I don’t have the vaguest idea of what you’re talking about.” She turned to Merchant and Crutcher. “This man is dangerous. He is a menace to Dorsett Consolidated Mining. Get him off my boat and do with him whatever you think is necessary to ensure he doesn’t bother us again.”
Pitt made one last toss of the dice. “Garret Converse, the actor, and his Chinese junk, the Tz’u-hsi. David Copperfield would be proud of the way you made Converse, his entire crew and boat disappear.” The expected reaction was all there. The strength and the arrogance evaporated.
Boudicca suddenly looked lost. Then Pitt threw in the clincher. “Surely you haven’t forgotten the Mentawai. Now there was a sloppy job. You mistimed your explosives and blew up the boarding party from the Rio Grande who were investigating what appeared to be an abandoned ship. Unfortunately for you, your yacht was seen fleeing the scene and later identified.”
“A most intriguing tale.” There was scorn in Boudicca’s voice, but a scorn disputed by a deep foreboding in her face. “You might almost say spellbinding. Are you quite finished, Mr. Pitt, or do you have an ending?”
“An ending?” Pitt sighed. “It hasn’t been written yet. But I think it’s safe to say that very soon Dorsett Consolidated Mining Limited will be only a memory.”
He had gone one step too far. Boudicca began to lose control. Her anger swelled, and she came close to Pitt, her face tight and cold. “My father can’t be stopped. Not by any legal authority or any government. Not in the next twenty-seven days. By then, we’ll have closed down the mines of our own accord.”
“Why not do it now and save God only knows how many lives?”
“Not one minute before we’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“A pity you can’t ask Maeve.”
“Why Maeve?”
“Deirdre tells me that she became quite friendly with the man who saved her.”
“She’s in Australia,” said Pitt.
Boudicca shook her head and showed her teeth. “Maeve is in Washington, working as an agent for our father, feeding him whatever information NUMA has collected on the deathly sound waves. Nothing like having a trusted relative in the enemy camp to keep one out of trouble.”
“I misjudged her,” Pitt said brusquely. “She led me to believe that protecting sea life was her life’s work.”
“Any moral indignation flew out the window when she learned my father was holding her twin sons as insurance.”
“Don’t you mean hostages?” The mist began to lift. Pitt began to see that Arthur Dorsett’s machinations went far beyond mere greed. The man was a bloodthirsty cutthroat, a predator who thought nothing of using his own family as pawns.
Boudicca disregarded Pitt’s remark and nodded at John Merchant. “He’s yours to dispose of as you will.”
“Before we bury him with the others,” said Crutcher with seeming anticipation, “we’ll persuade him to fill in any details he might have purposely left out.”
“So I’m to be tortured and then executed,” Pitt said nonchalantly, helping himself to another shot of tequila while his mind desperately created and discarded a dozen useless plans for escape.
“You’ve condemned yourself by coming here,” said Boudicca. “If, as you say, officials of NUMA suspected our excavation operations were responsible for sending deadly sound waves throughout the ocean, there would have been no need for you to clandestinely spy on Dorsett property. The truth is, you have learned the answers within the past hour and have yet to pass them on to your superiors in Washington. I compliment you, Mr. Pitt. Slipping through our, security and entering the mine was a masterstroke. You could not have done it alone. Explanations will
