Julia had contacted Captain Lewis aboard the Weehawken soon after her leap onto the towboat and informed him of her reckless enterprise. Lewis was not a happy camper when he realized that die woman whose safety was in his hands had taken a terrible risk. Professional that he was, he brushed aside his frustration and ordered a launch full of armed men under Lieutenant Stowe to follow the towboat and barge as a backup to the helicopter. His only order to Stowe was to keep a respectful distance behind the towboat and not arouse suspicion. Julia could hear the whine of the helicopter's engines and see its navigation lights in the night sky.
She well knew the fate that awaited her if Qin Shang's smuggling enforcers apprehended her, and it gave her a warm feeling to know she was being watched over by men who were willing to lay their lives on the line to save her if worst came to worst.
She had long before removed Lin Wan Chu's cook clothes and crammed them into a plastic trash bag, not so much because they were now incongruous but because the white cloth would have made her visible to anyone on the towboat when she stood up to stare over the side of the barge during the journey from Sungari. Underneath, she wore simple shorts and a blouse.
For the first time in nearly an hour, she spoke into her miniature radio and hailed Lieutenant Stowe. “The towboat has dropped off the barge and moored it alongside a dock near what looks like a large warehouse.”
Lieutenant Jefferson Stowe, in command of the launch, answered quickly over the transmitter and receiver set around his head. “We confirm. The towboat is about to pass us going in the opposite direction. What is your situation?”
“About as exciting as watching a tree become petrified. Except for a security guard on the other side of a tall fence, who's busy watching a TV program in his shack, there isn't another soul in sight.”
“Are you saying your objective is a washout?” asked Stowe.
“I need more time for an investigation,” answered Julia.
“Not too long, I hope. Captain Lewis is hardly a patient man, and the helicopter only has another hour of fuel left. And that's only the half of it.”
“What's the other half?”
“Your decision to jump on the towboat came so fast none of my crew or I got dinner.”
“You're joking.”
“Not about growing coast guardsmen missing a meal,” Stowe said humorously.
“You will stand by, and not desert me.”
“Of course,” replied Stowe, the humor in his voice quickly fading. “I only hope the towboat didn't simply park the barge overnight in expectation of moving it to a trash fill in the morning.”
“I don't think that's the case,” said Julia. “One of the buildings has a railroad siding leading in and out of it. This place would make an ideal layout to transport smuggled immigrants to destinations around the country.”
“I'll request Captain Lewis to check the railroad company for freight-train schedules that call for stops at the mill,” Stowe offered reasonably. “Meanwhile, I'll run the launch into a small inlet across the bayou about a hundred yards south of you. We'll stand by here until I hear otherwise.” There was a slight pause. “Ms. Lee.”
“Yes.”
“Don't get your hopes up,” said Stowe evenly. “I've just spotted a shabby, run-down sign that's sitting at a crazy angle on the bank of the bayou. Would you like to know what it says?”
“Yes, do tell me,” Julia answered, deliberately robbing her words of irritation.
“Felix Bartholomeaux Sugar Processing Plant Number One. Established 1883. You're apparently moored at a long-abandoned sugar mill. From my vantage point, the complex looks deader than a fossilized dinosaur egg.”
“Then why would it be protected by a security guard?”
“I don't know,” Stowe replied honestly.
“Hold on!” Julia snapped unexpectedly. “I heard something.”
She went quietly, listening, and Stowe cooperated by asking no questions. As if far away, she heard the muted clank of metal against metal. At first, she thought it came from somewhere within the deserted sugar mill, but then she realized the sound was muffled by the water beneath the barge. Furiously, she threw the plastic trash bags aside until she could squirm a passage down to the bottom of the barge's hull. Then she pressed her ear against the damp, rusting metal of the bilge keel.
This time she heard muffled voices whose vibrations telegraphed through the steel. She could not distinguish words, but what she heard came through as men shouting harshly. Julia fought her way back to the top of the trash-bag pile, checked to see the guard was still occupied and then leaned over the side of the barge, peering down into the water. There were no telltale lights in the depths, and it was too dark to see more than a few inches past the surface.
“Lieutenant Stowe,” she said softly.
“I'm here.”
“Can you see anything in the water between the dock and the barge?”
“Not from here. But I have you in view.”
Julia instinctively turned and stared across the bayou, but all she saw was darkness. “You can follow my actions?”
“Through a night-vision scope. I didn't want anybody sneaking up on you without you knowing about it.”
Good old faithful Lieutenant Stowe. Another time, another place, she might have felt a growing affection for him. But any thought of love, no matter how fleeting, created an image of Dirk Pitt in her mind. For the first time in her life she was infatuated with a man, and her independent spirit was not sure how to accept the situation. Almost reluctantly, she refocused her concentration on discovering the covert methods of Qin Shang's smuggling operation.
“I believe there must be another vessel or compartment connected to the bottom of the barge,” she reported.
“What are the indications?” asked Stowe.
“I heard voices through the keel. That would explain how the Chinese were able to smuggle the illegal immigrants through Sungari and past immigration, customs and the Coast Guard.”
“I'd like to buy your theory, Ms. Lee, but an underwater compartment that is carried across two oceans from China and then shifted under a barge for a voyage up a Louisiana bayou to a railroad terminal in an abandoned sugar mill may get you an award for literary fiction, but it won't score you any points with pragmatic minds.”
“I'll stake my career on it,” Julia said positively.
“May I ask your intent?” Stowe's tone went from friendly to official.
“I intend to gain entry into the mill and make a search.”
“Not a smart move. Better to wait until morning.”
“That may be too late. The immigrants could be herded into freight cars and transported away by then.”
“Ms. Lee,” said Stowe coldly. “I strongly urge you to think this thing out and back off. I'll swing the launch across the bayou and pick you up off the barge.”
Julia did not feel that she had come this far suddenly to walk away. “No thank you, Lieutenant Stowe. I'm going in. If I find what I hope to find, you and your men can come running.”
“Ms. Lee, I must remind you that although you're under the protection of the Coast Guard, we are not a Justice Department SWAT team. My advice, if you wish to take it, is to wait until daylight, obtain a search warrant from a parish judge and then send in the local sheriff to investigate. You'll score more points with your superiors that way.”
It was as though Julia had not heard Stowe. “Please ask Captain Lewis to notify Peter Harper in Washington and alert the INS office in New Orleans. Good night, Lieutenant Stowe. Let's do lunch tomorrow.”
Stowe tried several times to raise Julia, but she had turned off her little radio. He looked across the bayou through his night-vision scope and saw her jump from the barge and run the length of the dock, disappearing around a moss-covered oak tree outside the chain-link fence.