Текст книги "Flood Tide"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 35 страниц)

She nodded. “Ready as I'll ever be.”

“You've checked your radio.” It was a statement rather than a question.

Julia glanced down at where the miniature radio was taped inside the cleavage of her breasts under her bra. “Working perfectly.” Without being obvious, she pressed her legs together, feeling the little .25-caliber automatic that was strapped to the inside of her right thigh. A short Smith & Wesson First Response knife, whose blade could spring open in an eye blink and was strong enough to rip through sheet metal, was taped to her biceps under the sleeve of her uniform.

“Keep your transmitter on so we can monitor your every word,” said Lewis. “The Weehawken will remain within range of your radio until the Sung Lien Star docks at Sungari and you signal that you are ready to be picked up. Hopefully the substitution will go as planned, but should you encounter a problem after you take the cook's identity, call out and we'll come running. I'll also have our helicopter and crew in the air ready to drop on board.”

“I appreciate your concern, Captain.” Julia paused, turned slightly and motioned to a burly man with a walrus mustache whose deep-set gray eyes peered from under the brim of a baseball cap. “Chief Cochran has been a dream to work with during our rehearsals for the switch.”

“Chief Mickey Cochran has been called many names,” said Lewis, laughing, “but never a dream.”

“I'm sorry for putting everyone to so much trouble,” Julia said softly.

“All on board the Weehawken feel responsible for your safety. Admiral Ferguson gave me strict orders to protect you regardless of the consequences. I don't envy you your job, Ms. Lee. But I promise we will do everything in our power to keep you out of harm's way.”

She looked away, her face very controlled despite the tears forming in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said simply. “Thank them all for me.”

As Stowe gave the order to swing out the cutter's launch, Captain Lewis looked down at Julia and said, “It's time.” Then he firmly shook her hand. “God bless, and best of luck.”

Captain Li Hung-chang of the Sung Lien Star was not unduly annoyed at being stopped by the American Coast Guard and boarded. He had expected it long before now. He had been warned by Qin Shang Maritime directors that the United States's immigration agents were stepping up their efforts to halt the rise in illegal-alien smuggling. He felt impervious to any threat. The most diligent inspection would never discover the second hull attached beneath the bilges and keel of his ship that housed three hundred immigrants. Despite the cramped and insufferable conditions, he had not lost one. Hung-chang was assured that a generous Qin Shang would reward him with a fat bonus after his return to China, as in the past. This was his sixth voyage combining the legal transportation of cargo with smuggling, and already his compensation had built a fine house for his family in the upper-class section of Beijing.

He watched the bow wave fall off the Coast Guard cutter, his expression calm and outwardly relaxed. Hung-chang was still in his late forties, yet his hair was a gleaming salt-and-pepper under the sun, though his narrow mustache was still black. He stared through kindly-grandfather, dark-amber eyes, his lips tight with silence as the two ships drifted closer. Then a boat was lowered and began to motor toward the Sung Lien Star. He nodded to his first officer.

“Go to the boarding ladder and greet our guests. About ten by the look of it. Give them your fullest cooperation and allow them free access throughout the ship.”

Then, as calm and relaxed as if he was sitting in the garden of his home, Captain Li Hung-chang ordered a cup of tea from the galley and watched the Weehawken's boarding party climb onto the deck of his ship and begin their inspection.

Lieutenant Stowe paid his respects to Captain Hung-chang on the bridge and requested to see the ship's papers and manifest. The crew from the Coast Guard cutter began to split up, four searching the ship's compartments, three examining the cargo containers, and another three who headed for the crew's quarters. The Chinese acted indifferently to the intrusion and paid little attention to the three coast guardsmen who seemed more interested in the ship's mess, particularly the galley, instead of their individual cabins.

Only two of the Sung Lien Star's crew were present in the mess room. Both were dressed in the white uniform and hats of galley workers. They sat around a table, one reading a Chinese newspaper while the other spooned a bowl of soup. Neither protested when Chief Cochran, using sign language, asked them to step into the passageway while a search of the dining area was conducted.

Disguised as one of the Coast Guard boarding crew, Julia walked directly into the galley, where she found Lin Wan Chu dressed in white shirt and pants leaning over a stove, a long wooden spoon in one hand, stirring a large copper vat of boiling shrimp. Under her captain's orders to cooperate with the Coast Guard inspectors, she looked up from the steam rising from the vat and flashed a toothy, friendly smile. She went on working unconcerned as Julia walked behind her, eyes routinely darting into pantries and storerooms.

Lin Wan Chu did not sense the needle of the syringe enter the flesh of her back. After a few seconds her eyes took on a puzzled look as the steam over the vat suddenly seemed to thicken into a dense cloud. Then a solid blackness swept over her. Much later, when she awoke on board the Weehawken, her first thought was whether she had overboiled the shrimp.

In less than a minute and a half, and thanks to the results of well-practiced exercise, Julia was dressed in the cook's white kitchen clothes while Lin Wan Chu lay on the deck in the uniform of the U.S. Coast Guard. Another thirty seconds passed as Julia cut short the cook's hair before pulling a baseball cap with the Coast Guard insignia and the word Weehawken down over Lin Wan Chu's head. “Take her away,” Julia said to Cochran, who was patiently guarding the doorway to the passage outside.

Cochran and the other member of his boarding party quickly picked up the Chinese cook, one on each side, and hung her arms over their shoulders so her head would sag on her chest and make identification difficult. The baseball cap was pulled down over her face before he gave Julia a final nod and said softly, so only she could hear, “I wish you a great performance.” Then they half-dragged, half-carried, Lin Wan Chu back to the boarding launch.

Julia picked up the wooden spoon and continued stirring the boiling shrimp as if she'd been at it all afternoon.

“One of your men seems to have injured himself,” said Captain Hung-chang at seeing the boarding party lower a limp body into the launch.

“The fool didn't watch where he was going and cracked his head on an overhead pipe,” Stowe explained. “Probably has a concussion.”

“Have you found anything interesting aboard my ship?” asked Hung-chang.

“No sir, your ship is clean.”

“Always happy to oblige the American authorities,” said Hung-chang condescendingly.

“Your destination is Sungari?”

“According to my sailing orders and the documents provided by Qin Shang Maritime.”

“You may get under way as soon as we're clear,” said Stowe, giving the Chinese captain a courtesy salute. “I regret that we had to detain you.”

Twenty minutes after the Coast Guard launch had pulled away, the pilot boat arrived from Morgan City and swung alongside the Sung Lien Star. The pilot climbed aboard and made his way up to the bridge. Soon the container ship was moving through the deep-water channel of the lower Atchafalaya River and across Sweet Bay Lake toward the docks of Sungari.

Captain Hung-chang stood on the bridge wing beside the Cajun pilot as he took the automated helm and expertly guided the ship through the marshlands. Out of curiosity Hung-chang peered through a pair of binoculars at the turquoise ship anchored just out of the channel. Bold letters across the hull designated the vessel as a research ship belonging to the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Hung-chang had often seen them on scientific marine expeditions during his voyages around the world. He idly wondered what manner of experiments they were conducting here on the Atchafalaya River below Sungari.

As he panned the glasses along the deck of the research ship, he suddenly stopped and found himself peering at a tall man with thick, curly black hair who was staring back through his own binoculars. What struck Li Hung-chang odd was that the crewman on the research vessel wasn't focused on the container ship itself.

He seemed to be studying the wake directly behind the stern.

JULIA HAD TO STRUGGLE TO DECIPHER LlN WAN CHU'S MENUS and recipes. Although Han Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, there are several different dialects reflected by regional differences. Julia's mother taught her to read, write and speak Mandarin, the most important of these, when she was a young girl. She had learned the most widespread of the three Mandarin variants, known as the Peking dialect. Because Lin Wan Chu had grown up in Jiangsu Province, she wrote and spoke another variant of Mandarin, the Nanking dialect. Fortunately, there were enough similarities for Julia to fake it and get by. As she worked over the stove she kept her head down and face away from anyone nearby.

Her two helpers, an assistant cook and a dishwasher/galley cleanup man, showed no sign of suspicion. They went about their business, speaking only when it concerned the evening meal, offering no small talk or gossip from the crew. Julia thought she caught the baker studying her with a peculiar look on his face, but when she ordered him to quit staring and get back to deep-frying wontons, he laughed, made a ribald remark and went back to work.

The stoves and the boiling pots and woks that were vigorously stirred soon turned the galley into a steam bath. Julia could not remember when she had sweat rivers. She drank glass after glass of water to maintain her bodily liquids. She gave a little prayer of thanks at watching the assistant cook take the initiative and prepare the watercress soup and the shredded chicken with bean sprouts. Julia gave a worthy performance of making the roast pork and noodles and the shrimp fried rice.

Captain Hung-chang wandered into the galley briefly for a quick snack of sesame-seed puffs after the Sung Lien Star was safely moored to the dock at Sungari. Then he returned to the bridge to receive the American customs and immigration officials. Fie looked Julia square in the face, but his eyes betrayed no sign other than simple recognition of who he thought was Lin Wan Chu.

Julia joined the rest of the crew as they lined up and produced then– passports to the immigration official who came on board. Ordinarily, the captain would present the documents so the crew could go about their duties, but the INS was particularly strict with vessels entering the port owned by Qin Shang Maritime. The official examined Lin Wan Chu's passport, which Julia had uncovered in the cook's cabin, without looking up at her. All neat and very professional, she thought. By looking her in the face, the official might have made an expression of recognition no matter how inconsequential.

Once the crew cleared immigration, they came down for their evening meal. The galley was located between the officer's wardroom and the crew's mess. As chief cook, Julia served the ship's officers while her assistants ladled out food to the crew. She was anxious to roam about the ship, but until the crew was fed she had to play out her role to avoid suspicion.

Julia remained quiet throughout the meal, scurrying about the galley, occasionally flashing a smile at a crewman as they complimented her on the food and asked for seconds. She did not merely act like Lin Wan Chu; to everyone on board she was Lin Wan Chu. There was no scrutiny, no incredulity. No one took notice of the negligible differences in mannerisms, appearance or speech. To them, she was the same cook who prepared their meals on board the Sung Lien Star since the night they cast off in Qingdao.

Item by item, she went over her mission in her mind. So far things had gone smoothly, but there was a major hang-up. If three hundred illegal immigrants were on board the ship, how were they being fed? Certainly not out of her galley. According to Lin Wan Chu's menu and recipe entries, she only prepared food for thirty crewmen. It didn't make sense for mere to be another shipboard galley to feed passengers. She checked out the storage compartment and lockers, finding the correct amount of food supplies to feed the Sung Lien Star's crew for the voyage from China to Sungari. She began to wonder if Peter Harper's CIA source in Qingdao had been mistaken and somehow gotten the name of the ship confused with another.

Calmly, she sat in Lin Wan Chu's little office and acted as if she was working on the menu for the following day. Out of the corner of one eye she watched as her assistant put away the leftover food in the locker and the cleanup man wiped off the tables before attacking the dirty dishes, pots and pans.

Casually, she left the office and walked through the officer's wardroom and into the passageway, pleased that the two galley men took no notice of her leaving. She climbed a companion-way and stepped out onto the deck below the wheelhouse and bridge wings. Already the big cranes on the dock were swinging into position to unload the containers stacked on the cargo decks.

She looked over the side and watched as a towboat pushed a barge alongside the hull of the ship. The crew looked to be Chinese. Two of them began throwing plastic bags bloated with trash through a cargo hatch into the barge. The procedure was conducted under the scrutiny of a drug-enforcement agent who probed and examined each sack before it was dropped overboard.

The entire dockyard scene appeared completely innocent of any illegitimate activity. Julia could see nothing that raised questions. The ship had been searched by the Coast Guard, customs and immigration officials for illegal aliens and drugs, and nothing illicit had been found. The containers were filled with manufactured trade goods, including clothing, rubber and plastic shoes, children's toys and games, radios and television sets, all produced by cheap Red Chinese labor to the detriment of thousands of American workers who had lost their jobs.

She returned to the galley and filled a bucket with the sesame-seed puffs (scallions and sesame seeds in a dough wrapper) that she knew were a favorite of Captain Hung-chang.

Then she began moving through the bowels of the ship, checking out the compartments below the waterline. Most of the crew were working above, unloading the ship's cargo containers. The few who remained below appeared pleased when she wandered past and offered them a snack from her bucket. She skirted the engine room, reasonably assured no immigrants were hidden there. No chief engineer worth his salt would have permitted passengers near his precious engines.

The only sickening moment of panic occurred when she became lost in the long compartment that held the ship's fuel tanks. She was startled by a crewman who came up behind her and demanded to know what she was doing there. Julia smiled, offered him her sesame-seed puffs and told him that it was the captain's birthday and he wanted everyone to celebrate. The ordinary seaman, having no reason to suspect the ship's cook, gratefully accepted a handful of puffs and smiled happily.

After a fruitless search looking into any compartment of the Sung Lien Star capable of holding and feeding scores of passengers and finding nothing suspicious, she made her way back to the open starboard deck. Standing at the railing as if she was idly wishing she could go ashore, and making certain no one was within earshot, she inserted a small receiver in her ear and began talking into the transmitter between her breasts.

“I regret saying this, but the ship appears clean. I searched every deck and found no indication of illegal immigrants.”

Captain Lewis on board the Weehawken replied without hesitation. “Are you secure?”

“Yes, I was accepted without reservation.”

“Do you wish to disembark?”

“Not yet. I'd like to hang around a bit longer.”

“Please keep me advised,” said Lewis, “and be careful.”

Lewis's parting words came muffled, as the air trembled suddenly with a thumping sound followed by the exhaust roar of the Weehawken's helicopter sweeping over the dock. Julia suppressed an urge to wave. She remained leisurely hunched over the railing, gazing at the aircraft with detached curiosity. She felt a wave of pleasure just knowing that she was watched over by a pair of U.S. coast guardsmen who were acting as her angels.

She was relieved that her job was done and angered that she had failed to discover any criminal activity. From the looks of it, Qin Shang had outsmarted everyone once again. If her mind

ran in a practical vein, she could call Lewis to come get her or simply jump ship into the arms of the nearest immigration agent. But she could not bring herself to quit by default. There had to be an answer, and Julia was determined to find it.

She moved around the stern to the lower portside deck until she could look directly down into the barge that was now half filled with plastic trash bags. She stood at the railing for a long minute, studying the barge and the towboat as its captain engaged the powerful engines to pull away from the Sung Lien Star. The wash from the twin propellers began beating the calm brownish water into foam.

Julia was seized with frustration. There was no crowd of immigrants huddled in sordid conditions on board the Sung Lien Star. Of that she was positive. Nor did she truly doubt the CIA agent's veracity who reported from Qingdao. Qin Shang was a shrewd customer. He must have devised a method that had fooled the best government investigators in the business.

There were no hard and fast answers. If there was a solution, perhaps it was connected with the towboat and barge pulling away from the ship. She was left with no other options. Failure was staring her in the face again. She felt overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy and self-anger. She knew then, beyond all doubt, that she had to act.

One swift glance told her that the cargo door had been closed and there were no crewmen to be seen working the side of the ship's hull that faced the water opposite the dock. The captain of the towboat was standing at the helm while one crewman acted as lookout on the bridge wing and another stood forward on the bow of the barge, their eyes focused on the waters ahead. None were looking aft.

As the towboat passed her position she looked down on its stern deck. There was a long length of rope coiled aft of the funnel. She estimated the drop at ten feet, and climbed over the railing. There was no time to call Lewis and explain her action. Any hesitation was brushed aside, for Julia was a woman of quick decision. She took a deep breath and leaped.

Julia's dive into the barge was observed, not by any of the Sung Lien Star's crew, but by Pitt on board the Marine Denizen, which was anchored at the entrance to the port. For the past hour he had sat in the captain's chair on the bridge wing, tolerant of the sun and occasional passing rain shower, and scrutinized the activity swirling around the container ship through a pair of powerful binoculars. He was especially intrigued by the barge and towboat alongside. He watched intently as the trash accumulated on the long voyage from China was tied neatly in bags and dropped from a hatch in the ship's hull to the barge below. When the last trash bag was tossed overboard and the hatch closed, Pitt was about to turn his attention to the containers being hoisted onto the dock by the cranes when, unpredictably, he saw a figure climb the railing along the deck above and drop onto the roof of the towboat. “What the hell!” he burst.

Rudi Gunn, who was standing near Pitt, stiffened. “See something interesting?”

“Somebody just took a dive off the ship onto the towboat.”

“Probably a crewman jumping ship.”

“It looked like the ship's cook,” Pitt said, keeping the glasses fixed on the boat.

“I hope he didn't injure himself,” said Gunn.

“I think a coil of rope broke his fall. He appears to be uninjured.”

“Have you discovered anything that still makes you think there is a some sort of submerged craft that can be moved from beneath the ship and under the barge?”

“Nothing that would hold up in court,” Pitt admitted. Then the opaline-green eyes became intense and a faint glint radiated from them. “But all that could change in the next forty-eight hours.”

THE MARINE DENIZENS LITTLE JET BOAT SPED ACROSS THE Intracoastal Waterway and then slowed as it cruised past the Morgan City waterfront. The town was protected from a flooding river by a concrete levee eight feet high and a giant seawall that rose twenty feet and faced the Gulf. Two highway bridges and a railway bridge span the Atchafalaya River in Morgan City, the white headlights and red taillights of the traffic moving like beads slipped through a woman's fingers. The lights of the buildings played across the water, wavering in the wash from passing boats. With a population of 15,000, Morgan City was the largest community in St. Mary Parish (Louisiana's civil divisions are called parishes instead of counties, as with most states). The city faced west overlooking a wide stretch of the Atchafalaya River called Berwick Bay. To the south ran Bayou Boeuf, which circled the town like a vast moat and ran into Lake Palourde.

Morgan City is the only town on the banks of the Atchafalaya and sits low, making it susceptible to floods and extreme high tides, especially during hurricanes, but the residents never bother to look southward toward the Gulf for menacing black clouds. California has its earthquakes, Kansas has its tornadoes and Montana has its blizzards, “so why should we worry” is the prevailing sentiment.

The community is a bit more urbane than most other towns and small cities throughout the Louisiana bayou country. It functions as a seaport, catering to fishermen, oil companies and boat builders, and yet it has the flavor of a river town much like those along the Missouri and Ohio rivers, with the majority of the buildings facing water.

A procession of fishing boats passed. The sharp-prowed boats, with high freeboards and the cabins mounted well forward, masts and net booms aft on the stern, were heading into deep water in the Gulf. The boats that stayed in shallower water had flat bottoms for less draft, lower freeboards, rounded bows with the masts forward and little cabins at the stern. Both types trawled for shrimp. Oyster luggers were another breed. Since they mostly worked the inland waters they had no masts. One chugged by the NUMA jet boat, its decks barely above the surface and heaped with a small mountain of unshucked oyster shells piled six to seven feet high.

“Where do you want to be dropped off?” asked Gunn, who sat behind the wheel of the propless runabout.

“The nearest waterfront saloon would be a good place to meet the river men,” said Pitt.

Giordino pointed toward a rambling block of wooden structures stretching along a dock. A neon sign over one building read,

CHARLIE'S FISH DOCK, SEAFOOD AND BOOZE.

“Looks like our kind of place.”

“The packing house next door must be where fishermen bring their catch,” Pitt observed. “As good a spot as any to ask about unusual goings-on upriver.”

Gunn slowed the runabout and steered her between a small fleet of trawlers before coming to a stop at the bottom of a wooden ladder. “Good luck,” he said, smiling, as Pitt and Giordino began climbing onto the dock. “Don't forget to write.”

“We'll stay in touch,” Pitt assured him.

Gunn waved, pushed away from the dock and turned the little jet boat back downriver toward the Marine Denizen.

The dock reeked of fish, the authentic aroma made even more pungent by the nighttime humidity. Giordino nodded at a hill of shucked oyster shells that rose almost to the roof of the waterfront bar and cafe“. ”A Dixie beer and a dozen succulent

Gulf oysters would suit me just fine about now," he said in happy anticipation.

“I'll bet their gumbo is world-class too.”

Walking through the doors of Charlie's Fish Dock saloon was like walking back in time. The ancient air-conditioning had long ago lost the war against human sweat and tobacco smoke. The wooden floor was worn smooth from the tread of fisherman boots and was scarred by hundreds of cigarette burns. The tables that had been cut and varnished from the hatch covers of old boats showed their share of cigarette bums, too. The tired captain's chairs looked patched and glued after years of bar fights. Covering the walls were rusty metal signs advertising everything from Aunt Bea's Ginger Ale to Old South Whiskey to Goober's Bait Shack. All had been liberally peppered with bullet holes at one time or another. There were none of the modern promotional beer signs that proliferated in most watering holes around the country. The shelves behind  the bar, which held nearly a hundred different brands of liquor, some distilled locally, looked like they had been haphazardly nailed to the wall during the Civil War. The bar came from the deck of a long-abandoned fishing boat and could have used a good caulking job.

The clientele was a mixed bag of fishermen, local boatyard and construction workers, and oilmen who worked the offshore rigs. They were a rugged lot. This was the land of the Cajuns, and several conversed in French. Two big dogs snoozed peacefully under an empty table. At least thirty men filled the bar with no women to be seen, not even a barmaid. All drinks were served by the bartender. No glasses came with the beer. You either got a bottle or a can. Only the liquor rated a cracked and chipped glass. A waiter who looked as if he wrestled on Thursday nights at the local arena served the food.

“What do you think?” Pitt asked Giordino. “Now I know where old cockroaches go to die.”

“Just remember to smile and say 'sir' to any of these hulks who ask you the time.”

“This would be the last place I'd start a fight,” Giordino  agreed.

“Good thing we're not dressed like tourists off a cruise ship,” said Pitt, reexamining the soiled and patched work clothes the crew of the Marine Denizen had scrounged together for them. “Though I doubt it makes any difference. They know we don't belong by the clean smell.”

“I knew it was a mistake to bathe last month,” Giordino said wryly.

Pitt bowed and gestured toward an empty table. “Shall we dine?”

“Yes, let's,” Giordino countered with a bow as he pulled back a chair and sat down.

After twenty minutes with no service, Giordino yawned and said, “It would appear our waiter has refined the professional technique of pretending not to notice our table.”

“He must have heard you,” Pitt said, grinning. “Here he comes.”

The waiter approached them, dressed only in cutoff jeans and wearing a T-shirt with a longhorn steer skiing down a hill of brown that said, IF GOD MEANT TEXANS TO SKI, HE'D HAVE MADE COWSHIT WHITE.

“Can I get you something from the kitchen?” he asked in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

“How about a dozen oysters and a Dixie beer?” said Giordino.

“You got it,” answered the waiter. “And you?”

“A bowl of your famous gumbo.”

The waiter grunted. “I didn't know it was famous, but it is good-tastin'. Whatta you want to drink?”

“Got tequila behind the bar?”

“Sure, we get a lot of Central American fishermen in here.”

“Tequila on the rocks with a lime.”

The waiter turned and began walking toward the kitchen, but not before he looked at them and said, “I'll be back.”

“I hope he doesn't think he's Arnold Schwarzenegger and drives a car through the wall,” Giordino muttered.

“Relax,” said Pitt. “Enjoy the local color, the ambience, the smoke-filled environment.”

“I might as well take advantage of the stale atmosphere and add to it,” said Giordino, lighting up one of his exotic cigars.

Pitt surveyed the room, searching for an appropriate character to probe for information. He eliminated a group of oil riggers gathered round one end of the bar and who were playing pool. The dockyard workers were a good possibility, but they did not look like they took kindly to strangers. He began focusing on the fishermen. A number of them were sitting at community tables pulled together and playing poker. An older man, in what Pitt guessed was his mid-sixties, straddled a chair nearby but did not join in. He played the role of a loner, but  there was a humorous and friendly gleam in his blue-green eyes. His hair was gray and matched a mustache that fell and met a beard around the chin. He watched the others as they tossed their money on the poker table as though he was a psychologist studying behavioral patterns of laboratory mice.

The waiter brought the drinks, no tray, a glass in one hand      and a bottle in the other. Pitt looked up and asked, “What brand of tequila did the bartender have?”

“I think it's called Pancho Villa.”

“If I know my tequilas, Pancho Villa comes in a plastic bottle.”

The waiter twisted his lips as if trying to dredge up a vision seen many years previously. Then his face lit up. “Yeah, you're right. It does come in a plastic bottle. Great medicine for what ails you.”

“Nothing ails me at the moment,” said Pitt.

Giordino came as close to a smirk as he could get. “How much residue lies on the bottom of the bottle, and how much does it cost?”

“I bought a bottle in the Sonoran Desert during the Inca Gold project for a dollar sixty-seven,” said Pitt.

“Is it safe to drink?”

Pitt held his glass up to the light before taking a healthy swallow. Then he jokingly crossed his eyes and said, “Any port in a storm.”

The waiter returned from the kitchen with Giordino's oysters along with Pitt's gumbo. They decided on a main course of jambalaya and catfish. The Gulf oysters were so large that Giordino had to cut them apart as he would a steak. Pitt's bowl of gumbo would have satisfied a hungry lion. After stuffing their stomachs with a heaping platter of jambalaya, then ordering another Dixie beer and Pancho Villa tequila, they sat at the table and loosened their belts.