About a hundred feet. See anything yet?
Murk. Lots and lots of murk.
At one hundred and forty feet, Juan saw the reflection of his dive light off the surface of the water below him. The water was perfectly still. As he got lower, he finally saw evidence that the pit was still connected to the sea. The rock was damp from high tide, and mussels clumped like black grapes clung to the stone, awaiting the tide's return. He could also tell that the ocean's access to the pit had to be limited. The tidal mark was only a few feet tall.
Hold on a sec, Juan ordered.
Looks like you've reached the water, Max said, watching the scene on the laptop.
Okay, lower slowly. Juan didn't know what lay under the surface and didn't want to be impaled. Hold again.
When his foot made contact with the water, he kicked around, feeling for any submerged obstruction. It was clear.
Okay, down another foot.
They repeated this until the Chairman was completely submerged and he could see for himself that the pit was clear. He dumped a little air from his buoyancy compensator so that he sank to the full stretch of the cable.
Visibility is about twenty feet, he reported. Even through the dry suit, he could feel the cold Pacific's embrace. Without the dive light, he was in a stygian world. There wasn't enough sun from the surface to penetrate this deep into the pit. Give me some slack.
Cabrillo finned deeper into the pit. When he approached bottom at eighty feet, he realized that Dewayne Sullivan had pulled a fast one. He had used the excuse of the two accidents to call a halt to his exploration when in fact it looked like they had hit bottom only to discover the pit was empty. They had removed all the debris and found nothing. He swept his hand over the thin layer of silt covering the rock floor. The coating was only knuckle-deep. Below it, the rock was smooth against his fingertips, as though it had been ground flat. The only interesting feature was a man-sized niche just above the pit's terminus.
I think this is a bust, he told Max. There's nothing down here.
I can see that. Hanley adjusted the control on the laptop to sharpen the picture because of the cloud of silt Juan had kicked up. A squirrel paused as it scampered by, gave him an angry tail twitch, and ran off.
A noise suddenly caught Max's attention. It wasn't the motion alarm but something far worse. A low-flying helicopter was approaching. It had been coming on at wave-top height, so the island masked the beat of its rotors until it was almost atop him.
Juan! Chopper!
Pull me up, Cabrillo shouted.
I will, but this'll be over by the time you get up here.
This was a move by the Argentines that they had discussed but had no real defense against. Hanley had only seconds to react.
The helicopter sounded like it was headed for the beach where he and Juan had come ashore. It was the only logical landing site. Max mashed the control button to winch Cabrillo back to the surface, grabbed Juan's pistol from the seat next to him, and jumped from the SUV. He started running as fast as he could, drawing his own pistol from its holster.
He calculated the odds that the Argentines had brought their own pilot to the United States to be pretty slim, meaning the guy at the controls had been hired to fly them out to Pine Island. If Max could get there quickly enough, there was a chance he could stop them from landing.
His legs were burning after only a few hundred yards, and it felt like his heart was going to explode out of his chest. His lungs convulsed as they fought to draw air. The extra pounds he carried around his middle weighed him down like an anchor. But he pushed through the pain, running with his head down and his arms pumping.
The rotor beat changed. He knew the pilot was flaring the helo to land. Max actually growled as he charged down the overgrown track. His sixty-plus years seemed to melt away. His feet suddenly felt like they were dancing over the ground, barely making contact with the earth.
Hanley exploded from the forest. Ahead of him was the beach, and just above it was a civilian JetRanger helicopter. The water was being whipped mercilessly by the rotor downwash as it slowly sank earthward. Max saw the outline of a couple of men in the rear seats.
The range was extreme for the Glocks, and when he skidded to a halt his body trembled, but he raised the pistols anyway. He aimed away from the JetRanger's cockpit and started pulling the triggers, firing right and left so the report from each weapon turned into one continuous roar. In just a few seconds he put up a thirty-round curtain of lead.
He had no idea how many rounds hit the chopper, but he knew some had. The rear door was thrown open, and one of the Argentines prepared to jump for the ground, ten feet below the skids. The pilot reacted by increasing power and starting to veer away.
Max dropped the pistol in his left hand and thumbed the magazine out of the other. The man in the door slid forward, trying to compensate for the tilting aircraft. In the fastest change out he'd performed since Vietnam, Hanley had a fresh magazine in the Glock and the slide closed before the Argentine could jump.
He fired as quickly as before, his ears ringing with the concussive blasts. The guy in the open door suddenly jerked and fell free. He made no attempt to right himself as he plummeted into the surf.
Hanley could imagine what was happening on the JetRanger. The Argentine Major would be screaming at the pilot to turn back to the island, most likely threatening him with a weapon, while the pilot would want to put as much distance between him and the madman shooting at him as possible.
Max slid home another magazine, waiting and watching to see who would win the test of wills. After a few seconds, it was clear the chopper wasn't coming back. It flew due west, presenting as small a target as possible. In moments it was just a white dot against the gray sky.
The only question in Hanley's mind now was whether the Argentines would let the pilot live. He didn't like the man's chances. They'd already proven themselves ruthless, and he doubted they would leave an eyewitness alive.
His chest was still pumping when he finally started walking toward the beach. The Argentine who'd fallen from the JetRanger lay facedown about fifteen feet from shore. Max kept his pistol trained on the man and waded into the frigid waters, sucking air through his teeth when it reached his waist. He grabbed the man's hair and lifted his head free. The eyes were open and fixed. Max turned the body. His shot had hit the guy square in the heart, and, had he actually been aiming there, it would have been a remarkable shot. As it turned out, though, it was just dumb luck.
There was no ID in the man's pockets, only a little cash plus a sodden pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter. Max unburdened the man of his money and towed the body toward the beach. When it was shallow enough, Hanley started stuffing rocks into the man's clothes. It took him a few minutes, but eventually the body began to sink. Max dragged him back into deeper water again and let go. With the body weighted and the tide ebbing, the corpse would never be seen again. He grabbed up the pistol he'd dropped and started back.
While he wanted to run, his body simply wasn't up to it. He had to settle for a loping trot that still made his knees scream in protest. It had taken him less than seven minutes to reach the coastline, but it took more than fifteen for the return journey.
Max expected to see Juan, but there was no sigh of the Chairman. To his dismay, the winch hadn't reeled up the cable. He looked at the control box and realized he had hit the down button by mistake. A glance at the front bumper revealed that the cable drum had completely paid out the line.
He lowered himself onto the SUV's rear seat and settled the headphones over his mouth. He frowned when he saw the feed from Juan's camera showed nothing but electronic snow.