And the team of Howell, Cross, and Ethridge was proceeding at mach two from Ogden direct to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. Their vehicle was an Air Force jet under Executive Verbal Order, It made a straight-in approach as if low on fuel, and a fast Navy chopper waited for them near the end of the runway. Before the USAF jet was in chocks, the trio of rovers was en route to the docks in the Navy chopper.
S & R cosmetologists had done their best on short notice. Seth Howell was bald as an egg, fat-cheeked, padded to pudginess beneath his longshoreman's outfit. Cross was blond, dapper in his business suit, and remembered to limp as he leaned on a cane that would fire shotgun cartridges. Ethridge wore the gray hair, wrinkles, and dress whites of an aging naval officer, his gymnast's body carried with military correctness. They exited from the chopper at a dead run with five minutes to spare as Quantrill's barge was warped slowly to its pier.
In S & R training, paranoia was a matter of policy. Quantrill did not see the helicopter drop behind the warehouses because he was too intent on the uniformed customs officials who strolled to their posts, each with a sidearm and shoulder-slung video terminal. Quantrill had the unsettling notion that they did not walk like customs men.
Corpus Christi was a port of entry into Streamlined America and here he might be retina- and thumb-printed on the spot regardless of the papers he carried. It was high noon under a cloudless sky with no hope whatever that he might step ashore without a confrontation, and a small patrol launch idled slowly past the barge on the bay side. Quantrill wrenched his heavy shoes off and, with a flash of foresight, placed them with his wallet and sidearm in a polymer garbage bag, trapping a considerable volume of air in the bag as he clamped it shut. The only other garbage bag was full. He emptied it onto the floor of the kiosk, thrust the partly inflated shoe bag inside it, opened the window on the bay side, dropped his bag onto the bed of the flatcar.
Through the dockside window he saw a tall portly workman in earnest conversation with a customs man.
Something in the way the workman's hands moved set a small alarm chittering in Quantrill's head. He felt a shudder as the barge nudged its pier and knew that the great flat craft would grind and groan as it sought perfect alignment with track adaptors. He flowed over the windowsill on the bay side, snatched the drab garbage sack; squatted perfectly still as he squinted in hard sunlight at the patrol boat. It was starting its turn for a return pass.
Another massive shudder, then a series of metal-to-metal screeches. Quantrill made two squatting leaps, flatcar to barge and barge to salt water. He had no way of knowing whether his splash was lost in the clatter of moorage.
Gripping the neck of the bag, he did not plunge far under the surface; if anything, he had trapped too much air inside.' He kept the bag between himself and the patrol craft; felt a feeble current bumping him against the flank of the barge. He opened the bag, reached inside, then saw that his head and shoulders would fit inside the filthy thing. He eased into it, tugging the neck of the bag; realized he could not haul it down farther without tearing an air hole.
Above the slap of wavelets against the barge hull he could hear the burbling approach of the patrol boat.
Too late to hyperventilate now. He scissored with his legs, feeling the barge hull at his heels; let the current abrade him against it. The surface current tended to move the bag faster than his submerged body, and he treaded water to keep himself vertical. His flotation bag might pass unnoticed among other floating junk in the bay.
The silt stirred by the barge was Quantrill's ally, darkening the water to gray-green opacity. He heard the patrol craft pass fifty meters away, held his breath, felt the current quickening as he was dragged faster along the hull. The thrumm of the barge's starboard engine grew until he could feel it through his ribcage and Quantrill realized he was being drawn toward the whirling propeller. He slid the bag aside to risk a glance and saw that he was barely fifteen meters from the aft curve of the hull. The barge was twenty meters wide but ranks of steel- sheathed pilings stood, a welcoming forest, supporting the pier. He had time for four hard breaths before pushing away, abandoning his flotation, feeling the swirl of current. An instant later, a meter beneath the surface, he felt himself flung aft of the barge. He let the current take him where it would.
The silt stung his eyes as he fought to keep his orientation. He exhaled at the first lightheaded tingles that signaled oxygen starvation, emerged for a breath, and saw through stinging eyes that he'd been swept a full seventy meters behind the barge. His flotation bag bobbed lazily, angling toward distant pilings. He submerged again, kicking hard. A long half-minute later he felt his way between pilings, saw that he was in shadow; surfaced noiselessly. Mouth open wide, he made his breathing as silent as possible and kept his arms below the surface to prevent splashing. He was half-blind from silt, breathless, weaponless.
No, never entirely weaponless. Sean Lasser had taught him long before: when you don't have a weapon, make one — preferably a surprise. He had his denims, shorts, and belt. Careful silent lungfuls of air gave him his second wind and, blinking furiously, he stripped his belt loose.
Just above the waterline ran an ancient rickety scaffold of boards, a chancy footpath for structural inspectors. Quantrill was feeling with his feet for purchase against the submerged metal sheathing when he heard, muffled by echoes, a voice that chilled him: 'Negative, Marty; if he's not on that flatcar he's probably holed up somewhere on the barge.' Ten meters away, the indistinct outline of a big man showed against a piling. The voice was unquestionably that of Seth Howell.
Quantrill's heart stuttered, then steadied. No hope now of climbing onto the catwalk, and no telling how long Howell had been standing on it. Well, if he couldn't climb up, Seth Howell would just have to come down. Quantrill had done some of his best work underwater. When the massive Howell advanced along the catwalk, Quantrill could trip him with a noose made from the belt.
But Howell was disposed to wait. The hulking shoulders lifted, and now Quantrill's vision was good enough to reveal Howell's left hand against the throat mike of a headset. Of course the sonofa-bitch wouldn't have a critic! 'Told you before, Ethridge,' he growled softly; 'we don't want him alive and whining to these people. Bag him the instant you get a positive I.D.' Pause. 'No, maintain your cover and make sure he doesn't go over the side while Cross goes aboard. I'm staying put; he's got to flush sooner or later. If I know Quantrill he'll head for the shadows down here.'
Quantrill smiled grimly and headed for Howell; slid directly under the catwalk, grateful for the buoyancy of salt water, not daring to grip the boards lest Howell feel them sway underfoot. The slap of waves masked the tiny swirls that marked Quantrill's approach. Then, almost below Howell's big feet, Quantrill paused to assess his position.
Angrily then, from Howell: 'You've got a goddam Presidential directive, Marty; use it! Get those customs assholes in gear and remember he's carrying plague so they're to shoot on sight.'
Howell faced outward, toward the barge, one hand caressing the throat mike while the other held his chiller. Without warning, a snakelike object flew up before his face, the belt uncoiling in midair, and Howell instinctively drew back with knees flexed, groping with his left hand for a piling. He heard a suck of water below, felt the catwalk sag, then felt a vicious forearm chop behind his knees and vented a single
'Whup!' before he struck the water.
For a man of modest size, Quantrill enjoyed a great deal of upper-body strength but knew that Howell's massive upper torso overmatched him. And if Howell got half a chance with that chiller he could fire it underwater. Quantrill's advantages lay in surprise, a lungful of air, and the quickness to grapple for that gun-hand before Howell could kill him with it. Maybe.
Of course that left Howell's left hand free. Quantrill caught the big man's right sleeve, slid beneath him, managed to get both hands on Howell's right wrist while clamping his legs around Howell's long upper thighs.
Howell's head snapped back in a head-butt, catching the smaller man squarely in the middle of the forehead. It was a score; another like that could knock his assailant unconscious.
Quantrill slid down, pressing his face between Howell's shoulders, and felt the long left arm snaking back, its hand scrabbling for Quantrill's groin. Instead the powerful fingers found the fleshy part of Quantrill's inner thigh through his trousers and wrenched with sickening force. It was like a bite from a horse, and it kept on biting.
Quantrill grunted, a few bubbles bursting from his nostrils, and with both arms surrounding Howell, heaved as hard and as abruptly as he could. The impact of his own chiller's butt into his solar plexus caused Howell numbing pain and, worse, the loss of a great gout of air. At that point he did what he should have done first: released Quantrill's thigh and snatched at his hands. With a few broken fingers Quantrill would be candy.
