“Standing by and out.”
Pitt leaned his head toward Giordino without looking at him. “How's our oxygen supply?” he asked.
“Tolerable,” Giordino replied briefly. “Battery power still reads steady, but it's creeping slowly toward the red line.”
They finished the final run working out from the keel. Pitt guided the little craft along the section of the hull that curved upward toward the waterline. The next hour passed with agonizing slowness, and nothing out of the ordinary was revealed. The tide turned and began flowing in from the sea, bringing cleaner water and increasing visibility to nearly thirty feet. Swinging around the bow they began working the starboard side, which was moored next to the dock, not rising to within ten feet of the surface.
“Time remaining?” Pitt asked tersely without lifting a hand to glance at his Doxa dive watch.
“Fifty-seven minutes to rendezvous with the Oregon's launch,” replied Giordino.
“This trip definitely wasn't worth the effort. If Qin Shang is sneaking aliens on and off the United States, it isn't by means of an underwater passage or submarine-type vessel.”
“Doesn't figure he'd do it topside in the open,” said Giordino. “Not in enough numbers to make it pay. Immigration agents would tag the operation ten minutes after the boat hit port.”
“Nothing more we can do here. Let's wrap up and head home.”
“That may present a problem.”
Pitt glanced sideways at Giordino. “How so?”
Giordino nodded through the canopy. “We have visitors.”
Ahead of the submersible, three divers materialized out of the green void, swimming toward them like evil demons in their black wet suits.
“What do you think the fine is for trespassing in these parts?”
“I don't know, but I'll bet it's more than a slap on the wrist.”
Giordino studied the divers who were approaching, one in the center, the other two circling from the flank. “Most odd they didn't spot us earlier, long before we made our last run just under the waterline.”
“Somebody must have looked over the side and reported a funny green monster,” Pitt said facetiously.
“I'm serious. It's almost as if they sat back observing us until the last minute.”
“Do they look mad?”
“They ain't bringing flowers and candy.”
“Weapons?”
“Looks like Mosby underwater rifles.”
The Mosby was a nasty weapon that fired a missile with a small explosive head through water. Though devastating against human body tissue, Pitt didn't believe it could cause serious damage to a submersible able to withstand the pressures of the deep. “The worst we can expect is scratched paint and a few dents.”
“Don't get cocky just yet,” said Giordino, staring at the approaching divers as a doctor might study an X ray. “These guys are making a coordinated assault. Their helmets must contain miniature radios. Our pressure hull may take a few good knocks, but one lucky shot into the impellers of our thrusters and we'll end up desecrated.”
“We can outrun them,” said Pitt confidently. He banked the Sea Dog II in a tight turn, set the thrusters on HIGH, and steered for the stern of the liner. “This boat can travel a good six knots faster than any diver encumbered with air tanks.”
“Life isn't fair,” Giordino muttered, more annoyed than fearful as they unexpectedly found themselves confronting another seven divers hovering in a semicircle beneath the ship's mammoth propellers, blocking off their avenue of escape. “It seems the goddess of serendipity has turned her back on us.”
Pitt switched on his microphone and hailed Cabrillo over the radio. “This is Sea Dog II. We have a total of ten villains in hot pursuit.”
“I read you, Sea Dog, and will take appropriate steps. No need to contact me further, out.”
“Not good,” said Pitt grimly. “We might dodge past two or three but the rest can get close enough to do us real damage.” Then a notion struck him. “Unless ...”
“Unless what?”
Pitt didn't answer. Orchestrating the handgrip controls, he threw the Sea Dog II into a dive, then levelled out less than a foot off the bottom and began a search pattern. Within ten short seconds, he found what he was looking for. The deck grate he'd seen earlier loomed up out of the silt.
“Can you lift that thing out of the muck with the manipulator arm?” he asked Giordino.
“The arm can handle the weight, but the suction is an unknown. It depends on how deep the grate is buried.”
“Try.”
Giordino nodded silently and quickly slipped his hands over the ball-shaped controls to the mechanical arm and tightened his fingers. Exercising a delicate touch, he rotated the balls in a manner similar to moving the mouse on a computer. He extended the arm, which was articulated at the elbow and wrist like human joints. Next, he placed the mechanical handgrip over the top of the grate and tightened the three hinged fingers.
“One grate in hand,” he announced. “Give me all the vertical thrust in the cupboard.”
Pitt tilted the thrusters upward and poured on every ounce of their remaining battery power as the divers from Qin Shang's security force closed to within twenty feet. For a tormenting few-seconds nothing happened. Then the grate slowly began to slip from the silt, stirring up a great cloud of silt as the sub pulled it free.
“Twist the arm until the grate is in a horizontal position,” ordered Pitt. “Then hold it over the front of the thruster intakes.”
“They can still shoot an explosive up our tail.”
“Only if they carry muck-penetrating radar,” said Pitt, reversing the thrusters and tilting them down so their exhaust blasted into the bottom, raising great billows of swirling silt. “Now you see us, now you don't.”
Giordino grinned approvingly. “An armored shield, a selfinduced smoke screen—what more could we ask? Now let's get the hell out of here.”
Pitt needed no coaching. He sent the submersible careening across the bottom, stirring up silt as he went. Traveling every bit as visually blind as the divers through the agitated sediment but not nearly as confused, he had the advantage of an acoustics system that homed him in on the antenna buoy. He had traveled only a short distance when the submersible experienced a hard thump.
“They hit us?” Pitt asked.
Giordino shook his head. “No, I think you can scratch one of our attackers off as road kill. You almost tore his head off with the starboard wing.”
“He won't be the only casualty if they blindly miss and shoot each other—”
Pitt was cut off as an explosive thud rocked the Sea Dog II. Two more followed in quick succession. The submersible's speed fell off by a third.
“There's that lucky shot I was talking about,” said Giordino matter-of-factly. “They must have slipped one under the grate.”
Pitt glanced at his instruments. “They caught the port thruster.”
Giordino placed a hand on the transparent nose, which had a series of tiny cracks and stars on its outer surface. “They pitted the hell out of the windshield too.”
“Where did the third missile strike?”
“Impossible to see through this stuff, but I suspect the vertical stabilizer on the starboard wing is gone.”
“I figured as much,” said Pitt. “She's pulling to the port.”
Unknown to them, the team of ten divers was down to six. Besides the one Pitt crashed into, the others, shooting indiscriminately through the brownout, had struck and killed three of their own number. Firing and reloading their Mosby underwater rifles as fast as they could insert a new explosive charge, the divers overlooked the danger to themselves. One was brushed by the submersible as it surged past and he fired point-blank.
“Another hit,” reported Giordino. He twisted his body in the confined space and gazed back along the submersible's starboard hull. “This time they caught the battery case.”