“I don't think so,” the guard said testily as he rubbed his wrist.
Giordino fell back into his back country accent. “Look, Ah'm in a bind. If Ah just drift out in the river while workin' down on the engine, Ah could be busted in two by a towboat.”
“That's not my problem.”
“Two bottles of Black Label Jack Daniel's whiskey?”
A sly look gleamed in the guard's eyes. “Four bottles.”
Giordino stuck out his hand. “Done.” Then he motioned through the door leading inside the shantyboat from the veranda. Come on board and Ah'll put 'em in a sack for ya."
The guard looked apprehensively at Romberg. “Does he bite?”
“Only if ya put your hand in his mouth and step on his jaws.”
Unwittingly drawn into the web, the guard stepped around Romberg and entered the shantyboat's main cabin. It was the last thing he remembered until he woke up four hours later. Giordino hit him on the nape of the neck. Not a judo chop, but a huge fist swung like a club that sent the guard crashing heavily to the deck, out for the long count.
Ten minutes later, Giordino, wearing the guard's uniform, pants and sleeves too long by inches but the shirt straining at its buttons as his chest and shoulders stretched the seams, stepped out on the shantyboat's veranda. With the guard's baseball cap pulled down over the old, wide-style sunglasses, Giordino leisurely walked to the gate, closed it behind him and pretended to lock it. Then he went inside the guard shack and sat in front of the television set while his eyes roamed the grounds of the sugar mill, picking out the security cameras placed about the property.
Pitt sank to the bottom before swimming up and under the flat bottom of the barge. He was surprised to encounter the bed of the bayou at thirty feet beside the wharf—far deeper than was necessary for barge traffic. The depth must have been dredged to accept a deep-hulled ship.
It was as if a cloud had passed over the sun. The shadow of the barge cut off nearly fifty percent of the light from the surface. The water was an opaque green and filled with plant particles. He swam fast and had hardly passed under the barge when a vague shape appeared in the gloom and stopped his progress.
Hanging from the keel of the barge was an immense cylindrical tube with tapered ends. Pitt instantly recognized what it was, and his heart began to pump faster with excitement. The size and regular shape was similar to the hull of an early submarine. He swam along the hull slightly above it. There were no visible ports, and he could see that it was attached to the barge by a system of rails. These, Pitt immediately determined, were used to move the submerged container from the seagoing ship to the barge and back again.
He estimated the size of the underwater container at ninety feet in length by nearly fifteen feet in diameter by ten feet high. Without being able to peer inside, Pitt quickly realized that it was capable of housing anywhere from two hundred to four hundred people, depending on how tightly they were packed inside.
Quickly, he swam around the vessel to the other side, looking for a hatch connecting with an underwater passage from the vessel to inside the breakwater that anchored the wharf. He found it thirty feet aft of the bow, a small watertight tunnel just large enough for two people to pass through at the same time.
Pitt could find no way to enter, certainly not from the water. He was about to give up and swim back to the shantyboat when he spotted a small round portal embedded in the stone breakwater. The portal was above the surface of the water but just below the planking on the wharf. It was covered by an iron door that was secured by three dog levers. Its purpose eluded him. A sewer outlet? A drainage pipe? A maintenance tunnel? A closer inspection of the lettering stamped by the manufacturer on the iron door cleared up the mystery.
MANUFACTURED BY THE ACADIA CHUTE COMPANY NEW ORLEANS. LOUISIANA
It was a chute that was used when the mill was in operation to load the raw sugar onto barges. The old wharf had been demolished and a new one constructed that was five feet higher to accommodate the passage of illegal immigrants under the water without being visible on the surface. The newer, raised wharf now sat a good foot over the early loading chute.
The dog levers were badly rusted and probably hadn't been opened in eighty years. But the bayou water did not have the salt content of the sea. The corrosion was not deep. Pitt gripped a dog lever with both hands, positioned his feet against the upper planks of the wharf and pulled downward.
To his delight, the lever gave and moved an inch on the first try. The next heave took it three inches; then it turned more easily. Finally, he twisted it out against its stop. The second dog lever came slightly easier, but the third fought him every inch of the way. Gasping and panting, Pitt rested for a minute before pulling the door open. It fought too. He had to put both feet against the breakwater and pull with every ounce of strength he had left.
At last the iron door grudgingly squeaked open on its rusting hinges. Pitt peered inside, but all he could see was darkness. He turned and swam under the wharf, stopping just before he reached the shantyboat's hull. He called up softly. “Al, are you there?”
His only response came from Romberg. Curious, the hound strolled onto the wharf and sniffed through the cracks in the planking just above Pitt's head. “Not you. I want Giordino.”
Romberg began wagging his tail. He stretched out his front paws, and lay down on the wharf and playfully tried to dig through the wooden planking.
Inside the guard shack, Giordino turned every minute or two and stared at the shantyboat for an indication of Pitt's return. Seeing Romberg pawing and scratching on the wharf for something underneath made him curious. He slowly walked through the gate and stopped by the dog. “What are you sniffing at?” he asked.
“Me!” Pitt whispered through the planking.
“Jeez!” muttered Giordino. “For a second I thought Romberg could talk.”
Pitt stared up between the cracks in the planks. “Where did you get the uniform?”
“The guard decided to take a nap, and charitable, benevolent fellow that I am, I offered to stand his watch.”
“Even with my limited view I can tell it's a lousy fit.”
“You might be interested to learn,” said Giordino, facing away from the sugar mill and rubbing a two-day-whiskered chin to cover his lip movements, “this place is owned by the Butterfield Freight Corporation, not Qin Shang Maritime. Also, the guard may have Asian ancestry, but I figure he went to school in either L.A. or San Francisco.”
“Butterfield has to be a corporate front used by Shang to move people in and out of here. There's a submerged vehicle connected to the bottom of the barge that has the capacity to transport close to four hundred bodies.”
“Then we've found the mother lode.”
“We'll know shortly, just as soon as I get inside.”
“How?” asked Giordino simply.
“I found a chute that was used to load sugar onto barges. It appears to lead toward the main building.”
“Watch your step and make it fast. I don't know how much longer I can fool whoever is monitoring me.”
“They have a camera on you?” asked Pitt.
“I've counted three and suspect there may be a few more around the perimeter I haven't spotted yet,” Giordino answered.
“Can you drop my forty-five over the side? I don't want to go in naked.”
“I'll lower it over the side.”
“You're okay, Al. I don't care what they say about you,” said Pitt.
“If I hear a gunshot,” said Giordino as he walked toward the shantyboat, “Romberg and I will come running.”
“That should be a sight to behold.”
Giordino entered the shantyboat, took Pitt's Colt automatic and shiftily lowered it on a string through a window until it hung just above the water surface opposite the wharf. He felt a sharp tug on the line and the gun was gone. Then he slowly made his way back to the guard shack, where he unholstered the impressive Wesson Firearms .357 Magnum revolver that he'd taken off the unconscious guard, and waited for something to happen.