roundabout route to confuse them. A ploy that worked all too well. He had no idea which way to turn for the entrance to the highway leading into the city.
A long truck and trailer pulled in front of him, blocking off his exit. He frantically cramped the steering wheel in a crazy zigzag to avoid smashing into the huge truck There was a loud metallic crunch, followed by the smashing of glass and the screech of tortured metal as the bus sideswiped the front end of the truck. The bus, its entire right side gouged and smashed, bounced wildly out of control. Pitt corrected and fishtailed the shattered vehicle until it straightened. He pounded the steering wheel angrily at seeing fluid spraying back over the newly cracked windshield. The impact had sprung the radiator from its mounts and loosened the hoses to the engine. That wasn’t the only problem. The right tire was blown and the front suspension knocked out of alignment.
“Do you have to hit everything that comes across your path?” Giordino asked irritably. He sat on the floor on the undamaged side of the bus, his huge arms circled around Maeve.
“Thoughtless of me,” said Pitt. “Anyone hurt?”
“Enough bruises to win an abuse lawsuit,” said Maeve bravely.
Giordino rubbed a swelling knot on one side of his head and gazed at Maeve woefully. “Your old man is a sneaky devil. He knew we were coming and threw a surprise ply.”
“Someone at NUMA must be on his payroll.” Pitt spared Maeve a brief glance. “Not you, I hope.”
“Not me,” Maeve said firmly.
Giordino made his way to the rear of the bus and stared out the window for signs of pursuit. Two black vans careened around the damaged truck and took up the chase “We have hounds running up our exhaust pipe.”
“Good guys or bad?” asked Pitt.
“I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but they ain’t wearing white hats.”
“You call that a positive identification?”
“How about, they have Dorsett Consolidated Mining logos painted on their doors.”
“You sold me.”
“If they come any closer, I could ask for their driver’s license.”
“Thank you, I have a rearview mirror.”
“You’d think we’d have left enough wreckage to have a dozen cop cars on our tails by now,” grumbled Giordino. “Why aren’t they doing their duty and patrolling the docks? I think it only fitting they arrest you for reckless driving.”
“If I know Daddy,” said Maeve, “he paid them to take a holiday.”
With no coolant, the engine rapidly heated up and threw clouds of steam from under the hood. Pitt had almost no control over the demolished vehicle. The front wheels, both splayed outward, fought to travel in opposite directions. A narrow alleyway between two warehouses suddenly yawned in front of the bus. Down to the final toss of the dice, Pitt hurled the bus into the opening. His luck was against him. Too late he realized the alleyway led onto a deserted pier with no exit except the one he passed through.
“The end of the trail,” Pitt sighed.
Giordino turned and looked to the rear again. “The posse knows it. They’ve stopped to gloat over their triumph.”
“Maeve?”
Maeve walked to the front of the bus. “Yes?” she said quietly.
“How long can you hold your breath?”
“I don’t know; maybe a minute.”
“Al? What are they doing?”
“Walking toward the bus, holding nasty-looking clubs.”
“They want us alive,” said Pitt. “Okay, gang, take a seat and hold on tight.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Maeve.
“We, love of my life, are going for a swim. Al, open all the windows. I want this thing to sink like a brick.”
“I hope the water’s warm,” said Giordino as he unlatched the windows. “I hate cold water.”
To Maeve, Pitt said, “Take several deep breaths and get as much oxygen as you can into your bloodstream. Exhale and then inhale as we go over the side.”
“I bet I can swim underwater farther than you,” she said with gutsy resolve.
“Here’s your chance to prove it,” he said admiringly.
“Don’t waste time waiting for an air pocket. Go out the windows on your right and swim under the pier as soon as the water stops surging inside the bus.”
Pitt reached behind the driver’s seat, unzipped his overnight bag, retrieved a nylon packet and stuffed it down the front of his pants, leaving a larger-than-life bulge.
“What in the world are you doing?” asked Maeve.
“My emergency goody bag,” explained Pitt. “I never leave home without it.”
“They’re almost on us,” Giordino announced calmly.
Pitt slipped on a leather coat, zipped it to his collar, turned and gripped the wheel. “Okay, let’s see if we can get high marks from the judges.”
He revved up the engine and shifted the automatic transmission into sow. The battered bus jerked forward, right front tire flapping, steam billowing so thick he could hardly see ahead, gathering speed for the plunge. There was no railing along the pier, only a low, wooden horizontal beam that acted as a curb for vehicles. The front wheels took the brunt of the impact. The already weakened front suspension tore away as the wheelless chassis ground over it, the rear tires tearing rubber as they spun, pushing what was left of the Toyota bus over the side of the pier.
The bus seemed to fall in slow motion before the heavier front end dropped and struck the water with a great splash. The last thing Pitt remembered before the windshield fell inward and the seawater surged through the open passenger door was the loud hiss of the overheated engine as it was inundated.
The bus bobbed once, hung for an instant and they sank into the green water of the bay. All Dorsett’s security people saw when they ran to the edge of the dock and looked down, was a cloud of steam, a mass of gurgling bubbles and a spreading oil slick. The waves created by the impact spread and rippled into the pilings beneath the pier. They waited expectantly for heads to appear, but no indication of life emerged from the green depths.
Pitt guessed that if the docks could accommodate large cargo ships the water depth had to be at least fifteen meters. The bus sank, wheels down, into the muck on the bottom of the harbor, disturbing the silt, which burst into a rolling cloud. Pushing away from the wheel, he stroked toward the rear of the bus to make sure Maeve and Giordino were not injured and had exited through a window. Satisfied they had escaped, he snaked through the opening and kicked into the blinding silt. When he burst into the clear, visibility was better than he had expected, the water temperature a degree or two colder. The incoming tide brought in fairly clean water, and he could easily distinguish the individual pilings under the pier. He estimated visibility at twenty meters.
He recognized the indistinct shapes of Maeve and Giordino about four meters in front, swimming strongly into the void ahead. He looked up, but the surface was only a vague pattern of broken light from a cloudy sky. And then suddenly the water darkened considerably as he swam under the pier and between the pilings. He temporarily lost the others in the shadowy murk, and his lungs began to tighten in complaint from the growing lack of air. He swam on an angle toward the surface, allowing the buoyancy of his body to carry him upward, one hand raised above his head to ward off imbedding something hard and sharp in his scalp. He finally surfaced in the midst of a small sea of floating litter. He sucked in several breaths of salty air and swung around to find Maeve and Giordino bobbing in the water a short distance behind him.
They swam over, and his regard for Maeve heightened when he saw her smiling. “Show-off,” she whispered, aware that voices could be heard by the Dorsett men above. “I bet you almost drowned trying to outdistance me.”
“There’s life in the old man yet,” Pitt murmured.
“I don’t think anyone saw us,” muttered Giordino. “I was almost under the dock before I broke free of the silt cloud.”
Pitt motioned in the general direction of the main dock area. “Our best hope is to swim under the pier until we can find a safe place to climb clear.”
