“I said no ‘official assistance,’ Mr. Pitt.” The white teeth locked in a broad smile. “Unofficially, this is Sunday. The Director suggested that what field agents do on their day off is their business. I have eight men at my disposal who feel what you’re doing is more important than their golf game.”
“Emmett gave his blessing?”
“Strictly off the record, he strongly insinuated that if we don’t find the Vice President pretty damned quick, he’ll put a boot up my ass so far I’ll never sit down at the piano again.”
“My kind of guy,” said Giordino.
“Were you briefed on what we’re looking for?” Pitt asked.
Griffin nodded. “A river barge. We’ve already checked out about two hundred between here and Baton Rouge.”
“You searched north. I figure it to be south.”
Griffin stared down at the ground doubtfully. “Most all the incoming freighters and tankers unload at the city docks. Then the cargo is transferred north by tow-boat. Few barges ply the delta waters south except those carrying trash and garbage to be dumped in the ocean.”
“All the more reason to look in that direction.”
Griffin made an inviting gesture toward the helicopter. “My men are waiting in cars along the river front. We can direct them from the air.”
“Delta Oil make a good cover?” Pitt asked.
“Oil company whirlybirds are a common sight around these parts,” answered Griffin. “They’re heavily used to carry men and supplies to offshore rigs in the gulf and pipe construction throughout the bayous. Nobody gives them a second glance.”
Pitt excused himself and returned inside the NUMA plane, reappearing a minute later with the violin case. Then he entered the helicopter and was introduced to the pilot, a thin blond, dreamy-eyed woman who spoke in a slow, deep drawl. Pitt wouldn’t have taken her for an FBI agent, which she was, nor did she fit her name, “Slats” Hogan.
“Y’all play the violin when ya fly?” Hogan asked curiously.
“Soothes my fear of height,” Pitt replied, smiling.
“We get all kinds,” Hogan muttered.
They fastened their seat belts and Hogan lifted the craft into the air and made a pass over the heart of the city before turning south.
A tiny green streetcar crept along St. Charles Avenue, the tracks glinting as they reflected the sun through the trees. Pitt could easily make out the massive white roof of the Superdome, the largest sports structure of its kind in the world. The tightly packed houses and narrow streets of the French Quarter, the green grass of Jackson Square and the spires of the St. Louis Cathedral slipped past off to their right. And then they broke over the muddy brown-green waters of the Mississippi River.
“There it is,” announced Hogan. “Old Man River, too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”
“Spend any time on it?” Griffin asked Pitt.
“I conducted a historical survey a few years ago on a pair of Confederate Civil War wrecks about sixty miles further down river in Plaquemines Parish.”
“I know this great little restaurant in the parish—”
“So do I. The name is Tom’s. Excellent gulf oysters on the half-shell. Be sure and ask for Tom’s mama’s special chili pepper juice. Fantastic on the oysters.”
“You get around.”
“I try.”
“Got any idea where the barge might be hidden?”
“Keep an eye open for a dock and warehouse that appear run-down and little used, but well protected with heavy security — excessive number of guards, high fencing, perhaps dogs. The barge, rusted and in disrepair, will be stashed nearby. My guess is somewhere between Chalmette and Pilottown.”
“You can only reach Pilottown by boat,” said Griffin. “The delta highway ends ten miles above at a town called Venice.”
“I stand corrected.”
They went silent for a minute while the river below flowed along at almost four knots between the great levees that shielded the land from flood. Small farms with cows grazing in pastures and orange groves spread across the narrow strips of solid ground bordering the levees, before sliding away into marshland. They flew over Port Sulphur, with its great piers entrenched along the west bank. Small mountains of yellow sulphur rose fifty feet over the flat, poisoned ground.
The next half-hour produced the first of three false alarms. A few miles below Port Sulphur they spotted an abandoned cannery with two barges tied up beside it. Griffin radioed his team of agents, who were chasing the helicopter from the road on the west bank. A quick search proved the building to be empty, and the barges contained only bilge water and silt.
They continued south, flying over the vast marshes and meandering bayous toward the gulf, spotting several grazing deer, a number of alligators sunning themselves in the mud and a small herd of goats that looked up at their passing with indifferent curiosity.
A huge freighter churned upriver, thrusting its blunt bow against the current. The flag of registry on its stern flapped red with a gold star and hammer and sickle.
“Russian,” Pitt observed.
“The Soviets own a fair percentage of the five thousand ships that steam into New Orleans every year,” said Griffin.
“Want to see what’s on that barge?” Hogan asked, pointing. “There, tied up behind that dredge on the east bank.”
Griffin nodded. “We’ll check this one out ourselves.”
Hogan nodded her blond mane. “I’ll set you down on the levee.”
She expertly dropped the tires of the helicopter onto the crushed-shell road that ran along the top of the levee. Three minutes later Griffin ran across a creaking ramp to the barge. Another three minutes and he was back strapping himself in his seat.
“No luck?” asked Pitt.
“A bummer. The old tub is half filled with oil. Must be used as a refilling station for the dredge.”
Pitt looked at his watch. Two-thirty. Time was sifting away. A few more hours and Moran would be sworn in as President. He said, “Let’s keep the show moving.”
“Ah hear y’all talkin’,” Hogan said as she brought the craft up and over the river in one quick bank that had Giordino feeling his stomach to see if it was still in place.
Eight more miles and they drew another blank after spying a barge moored suspiciously under a marine maintenance repair shed. A quick search by the ground team showed it was a derelict.
They pushed on past the fishing towns of Empire and Buras. Then suddenly, after dipping around a bend, they saw a sight straight out of the golden years of the river, a spectacular and picturesque vision almost forgotten. Long white hull, wide beam, with a plume of steam drifting over her decks, a sidewheel paddle steamer sat with her flat nose nudged into the west embankment.
“Shades of Mark Twain,” said Giordino.
“She’s a beauty,” Pitt said as he admired the gingerbread carvings on the many-storied superstructure.
“The Stonewall Jackson,” Griffin explained. “She’s been an attraction on the river for seventy years.”
The steamer’s landing stages were lowered on the bank in front of an old brick fortress constructed in the shape of a pentagon. A sea of parked cars and a crowd of people wandered the parade ground and brick ramparts. In the center of a nearby field a cloud of blue smoke billowed above two opposing lines of men who seemingly stood shooting at each other.
“What’s the celebration?” asked Giordino.
“A War Between the States re-enactment,” Hogan replied.
“Run that by me again.”
“A staging of a historic battle,” Pitt explained. “As a hobby, men form brigades and regiments based on actual fighting units from the Civil War. They dress in authentic woven uniforms and shoot blanks out of exact-replica or original guns. I witnessed a re-enactment at Gettysburg. They’re quite spectacular, almost like the real thing.”