the white water rise in a towering splash and felt a surge of pressure that squeezed the air out of him.
Underwater explosives! They were trying to kill him with the concussion from underwater explosives. Four more detonations followed in quick succession. Fortunately, they came from the area amidships, near the paddlewheels. By swimming away from one end of the boat, Pitt had distanced himself from the main force of the detonations.
He doubled over with his knees in front of his chest to absorb the worst of the impact. Thirty meters closer and he would have been pounded into unconsciousness. Sixty meters (200 feet) and he would have been crushed to putty. Pitt increased the gap between himself and the ferry until the eruptions came with the same sensual squeeze as from a strong woman.
He looked up at a clear sky and checked the north star for his approximate bearings. At 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) away, the desolate west coast of the Gulf was the closest land. He tore off the ski mask and rolled over. Face toward the carpet of stars across the sky, he began a comfortable backstroke toward the west.
Pitt was in no condition to try out for the swimming team either. After two hours, his arms felt as if they were lifting twenty-pound weights with each stroke. After six hours, his muscles protested with aches he didn't believe possible. And then finally, and most thankfully, fatigue began to dull the pain. He used the old Boy Scout trick of removing his pants, tying the ankles into knots and swinging them over his head to catch the air, making a reasonably efficient float for rest stops that became more numerous as the night wore on.
There was never any question of stopping and letting himself drift in the hope of being spotted by a fishing boat in daylight. The vision of Loren and Rudi in the hands of Sarason was more than an ample stimulus to drive him on.
The stars in the eastern sky were beginning to fade and blink out when his feet hit bottom, and he staggered out of the water onto a sandy beach where he collapsed and immediately fell asleep.
Ragsdale, wearing an armored body suit beneath a pair of workman's coveralls, casually walked up to the side door of a small warehouse with a For Lease sign in the front window. He laid the empty toolbox he carried on the ground, took a key from his pocket, and opened the door.
Inside, a combined team of twenty FBI and eight Customs agents had assembled and were making last- minute preparations for the raid on the Zolar International building directly across the street. Advance teams had alerted local law enforcement to the operation and scouted the entire industrial complex for unusual activity.
Most of the men and the four women wore assault suits and carried automatic weapons, while several professional experts in the art and antiquities field wore street clothes. The latter were burdened with suitcases crammed with catalogues and photographs of known missing art objects targeted for seizure.
The plan called for the agents to split off into specific assignments once they entered the building. The first team was to secure the building and round up the employees, the second was to search out any stolen cache, while the third was to investigate the administration offices for any paper trail that led to theft operations or illegal purchases. Working separately, a commercial business team specializing in art handling was standing by to crate, remove and store the seized goods. The U.S. Attorney's Office, working on the case for both the FBI and Customs, had insisted the raid be carried out in a faultless manner and that confiscated objects be treated with a velvet touch.
Agent Gaskill was standing at an operations board in the center of the command post. He turned at Ragsdale's approach and smiled. 'Still quiet?'
The FBI agent sat down in a canvas chair. 'All clear except for the gardener trimming the hedge around the building. The rest of the grounds are as quiet as a churchyard.'
Damned clever of the Zolars to use a gardener as a security guard,' said Gaskill. 'If he hadn't mowed the lawn four times this week, we might have ignored him.'
'That and the fact our surveillance identified his Walkman headset as a radio transmitter,' added Ragsdale.
'A good sign. If they have nothing to hide, why the wily tactics?'
'Don't get your hopes up. The Zolar warehouse operations may look suspicious, but when the FBI walked in with a search warrant two years ago, we didn't find so much as a stolen ballpoint pen.'
'Same with Customs when we talked agents at Internal Revenue into conducting a series of tax audits. Zolar and his family surfaced as pure as the driven snow.'
Ragsdale nodded a 'thank you' as one of his agents handed him a cup of coffee. 'All we've got going for us this time around is the element of surprise. Our last raid failed after a local cop, who was on Zolar's payroll, tipped him off.'
'We should be thankful we're not walking into a high security armed fortress.'
'Anything from your undercover informant?' asked Gaskill.
Ragsdale shook his head. 'He's beginning to think we've put him in the wrong operation. He hasn't turned up the slightest hint of unlawful activities.'
'No one in or out of the building except bona fide employees. No illegal goods received or shipped in the past four days. Do you get the feeling we're waiting for it to snow in Galveston?'
'It seems that way.'
Gaskill stared at him. 'Do you want to rethink this thing and call off the raid?'
Ragsdale stared back. 'The Zolars aren't perfect. There has to be a flaw in their system somewhere, and I'm staking my career that it's across the street in that building.'
Gaskill laughed. 'I'm with you, buddy, right on down to forced early retirement.'
Ragsdale held up a thumb. 'Then the show goes on in eight minutes as planned.'
'I don't see any reason to call a halt, do you?'
'With Zolar and two of his brothers running around Baja looking for treasure, and the rest of his family in Europe, we'll never have a better opportunity to explore the premises before their army of attorneys gets wind of the operation and swoops in to cut us off at the pass.'
Two agents driving a pickup truck borrowed from the Galveston Sanitation Department pulled up at the curb opposite the gardener who was cultivating a flower bed beside the Zolar building. The man in the passenger seat rolled down the window and called out, 'Excuse me.'
The gardener turned and stared questioningly at the truck.
The agent made a friendly smile. 'Can you tell me if your driveway gutters backed up during the last rain?'
Curious, the gardener stepped out of the flower bed and approached the truck. 'I don't recall seeing any backup,' he replied.
The agent held a city street map out the window. 'Do you know if any of the surrounding streets had drainage problems?'
As the gardener leaned down to study the map, the agent's arm suddenly lashed out and tore the transmitter from the gardener's head and jerked the cable leading from the microphone and headphones from its socket in the battery pack. 'Federal agents,' snapped the agent. 'Stand still and don't wink an eye.'
The agent behind the wheel then spoke into a portable radio. 'Go ahead, it's all clear.'
The federal agents did not smash into the Zolar International building with the lightning speed of a drug bust, nor did they launch a massive assault like the disaster that occurred years before in the compound in Waco, Texas. This was no high-security, armed fortress. One team quietly surrounded the building's exits while the main group calmly entered through the main entrance.
The office help and corporate administrators showed no sign of fear or anxiety. They appeared confused and puzzled. The agents politely but firmly herded them out onto the main floor of the warehouse where they were joined by the workers in the storage and shipping section and the artisans from the artifact preservation department. Two buses were driven through the shipping doors and loaded with the Zolar International personnel, who were then taken to FBI headquarters in nearby Houston for questioning. The entire roundup operation took less than four minutes.
The paperwork team, made up mostly of FBI agents trained in accounting methods and led by Ragsdale, went to work immediately, searching through desks, examining files, and scrutinizing every recorded transaction. Gaskill, along with his Customs people and professional art experts, began cataloguing and photographing the thousands of art and antique objects stored throughout the building. The work was tedious and time-consuming and produced no concrete evidence of stolen goods.
