'Crowding your luck, aren't you, Sarason? Murdering Congresswoman Smith will bring half the United States law enforcement officers down around your neck.'
'Nobody will know she was murdered,' he said impassively. 'Your ferryboat will simply go to the bottom with all hands. An unfortunate accident that is never fully solved.'
'There is still Kelsey, Giordino, and Rodgers. They're safe and sound in California, ready to spill the story to Customs and FBI agents.'
'We're not in the United States. We're in the sovereign nation of Mexico. The local authorities will conduct an extensive investigation but will turn up no evidence of foul play despite unfounded accusations from your friends.'
'With close to a billion dollars at stake, I should have known you'd be generous in buying the cooperation of local officials.'
'They couldn't wait to sign on board after we promised them a share of the treasure,' Sarason boasted.
'Considering how much there is to go around,' said Pitt, 'you could afford to play Santa Claus.'
Sarason looked at the setting sun. 'It's getting late in the day. I think we've chatted long enough.' He turned and spoke a name that sent a shiver through Pitt. 'Tupac, come and say hello to the man who made you impotent.'
Tupac Amaru stepped from behind one of the guards and stood in front of Pitt, his teeth set and grinning like a skull on a pirate's Jolly Roger flag. He had the joyful but clinical look of a butcher sizing up a slab of prime, specially aged beef.
'I told you I would make you suffer as you made me,' Amaru said ominously.
Pitt studied the evil face with a strangely paralyzed intensity. He didn't need a football coach to diagram what was in store for him. He braced his body to begin the scheme he had formed in the back of his mind right after he had stepped out of the helicopter. He moved toward Loren, but stepped slightly sideways and inconspicuously began to hyperventilate.
'If you are the one who harmed Congresswoman Smith, you will die as surely as you stand there with that stupid look on your face.'
Sarason laughed. 'No, no. You, Mr. Pitt, are not going to kill anybody.'
'Neither are you. Even in Mexico you'd hang if there was a witness to your executions.'
'I'd be the first to admit it.' Sarason surveyed Pitt inquiringly. 'But what witness are you talking about?' He paused to sweep an arm around the empty sea. 'As you can see, the nearest land is empty desert almost twenty kilometers away, and the only vessel in sight is our fishing boat standing off the starboard bow.'
Pitt tilted his head up and stared at the wheelhouse. 'What about the ferryboat's pilot?'
All the heads turned as one, all that is except Gunn's. He nodded unobserved at Pitt and then raised a hand, pointing at the empty pilothouse. 'Hide, Pedro!' he cried loudly. 'Run and hide.'
Three seconds were all Pitt needed. Three seconds to run four steps and leap over the railing into the sea.
Two of the guards caught the sudden movement from the edge of their vision, whirled and fired one quick burst from their automatic rifles on reflex. But they fired high, and they fired late. Pitt had struck the water and vanished into the murky depths.
Pitt hit the water stroking and kicking with the fervor of a possessed demon. An Olympic committee of judges would have been impressed, he must have set a new world record for the underwater dash. The water was warm but the visibility below the surface was less than a meter due to the murk caused by silt flowing in from the Colorado River. The blast of the gunfire was magnified by the density of the water and sounded like an artillery barrage to Pitt's ears.
The bullets struck and penetrated the sea with the unlikely sound of a zipper being closed. Pitt leveled out when his hands scoured the bottom, causing an eruption of fine silt. He recalled learning during his U.S. Air Force days that a bullet's velocity was spent after traveling a meter and a half (5 feet) through water. Beyond that depth, it sank harmlessly to the seafloor.
When the light above the surface went dark, he knew he had passed under the port side of the Alhambra's hull. His timing was lucky. It was approaching high tide and the ferryboat was now riding two meters off the bottom. He swam slowly and steadily, exhaling a small amount of air from his lungs, angling on a course astern that he hoped would bring him up on the starboard side near the big paddlewheels. His oxygen intake was nearly exhausted, and he began to see a darkening fuzziness creeping around the borders of his vision, when the shadow of the ferry abruptly ended and he could see a bright surface again.
He broke into air 2 meters (6.5 feet) abaft of the sheltered interior of the starboard paddlewheel. There was no question of his risking exposure. It was that or drown. The question was whether Sarason's goons had predicted what his game plan would be and run over from the opposite side of the vessel. He could still hear sporadic gunfire striking the water on the port side, and his hopes rose. They weren't on to him, at least not yet.
Pitt sucked in hurried breaths of pure air while getting his bearings. And then he was diving under the temporary safety of the ferry's huge paddlewheels. After gauging the distance, he raised a hand above his head and slowly kicked upward. His hand made contact with an unyielding wood beam. He clutched it and lifted his head above the water. He felt as if he had entered a vast barn with support beams running every which way.
He looked up at the great circular power train that drove the big ferry through the water. It was a radial type similar in construction and action to the old picturesque waterwheels used to power flour and sawmills. Strong cast-iron hubs mounted on the drive shaft had sockets attached to wooden arms that extended outward to a diameter of 10 meters (33 feet). The ends of the arms were then bolted into long horizontal planks called floats that swung around and around, dipping into the water, pushing backward while driving the ferry forward. The entire unit and its mate on the opposite side were housed in giant hoods set inside the ferry's hull.
Pitt hung on to one of the floats and waited as a small school of nosy spotted sand bass circled around his legs. He was not completely out of the woods yet. There was an access door for crewmen to perform maintenance on the paddlewheel. He decided to remain in the water. A sane mind dictated that it would be a big mistake to be caught in the act of climbing up the wooden arms by some tough customer who burst through the access door with an itchy trigger finger. Better to be in a position to duck under the water at the first sound of entry.
He could hear footsteps running on the auto deck above, accented by an occasional burst of gunfire. Pitt couldn't see anything, but he didn't need a lecture to know what Sarason's men were doing. They were roving around the open decks above, shooting at anything that vaguely resembled a body under the water. He could hear voices shouting, but the words came muffled. No large fish within a radius of 50 meters (164 feet) survived the bombardment.
The click of the lock on the access door came as he had expected. He slipped deeper into the water until only half his head was exposed but he was still hidden to anyone above by one of the huge floats.
He could not see the unshaven face that peered downward through the paddlewheel at the water, but this time he heard a voice loud and clear from behind the intruder at the door, a voice he had come to know too well. He could feel the hairs stiffen on the nape of his neck at hearing the words spoken by Amaru.
'See any sign of him?'
'Nothing down here but fish,' grunted the searcher in the access door, catching sight of the spotted sand bass.
'He didn't surface away from the ship. If he's not dead, he must be hiding somewhere underneath the ship.'
'Nobody hiding down here. A waste of energy to bother looking. We put enough lead into him to use his corpse for an anchor.'
'I won't feel satisfied until I see the body,' said Amaru in a businesslike tone.
'You want a body,' said the gunman, pulling back through the access door, 'then drag a grappling hook h rough the silt. That's the only way you'll ever see him again.'
'Back to the forward boarding ramp,' Amaru ordered. 'The fishing boat is returning.'
Pitt could hear the diesel throb and feel the beat of the fishing boat's propellers through the water as it pulled alongside to take off Samson and his mercenary scum. Pitt wondered vaguely what his friends would say to him for running out on them even though it was a desperate measure to save their lives.
