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sheer blackness of the water After less than five minutes, he reached the midway point He adjusted his facethrough the snorkel Another four minutes put him a hundred yards froone, but the yacht still tugged at herlines

This was as far as he dared go on the surface He spit out the snorkel and claulator Accoray doard and dropped into the depths, leveling out about ten feet above the botto air to his dry suit to achieve neutral buoyancy, then snorting and clearing his ears frohts of the retreat cast a translucent glow beneath the water Pitt felt as if the propulsion vehicle was pulling hireen He averted his eyes froraveyard below as visibility increased from practically nil to thirty feet the closer Pitt approached the dock Fortunately, he could not be discerned from above because the reflection on the surface of the water caused a glare that prevented all but a very limited view of the depths

He decreased the Stingray's speed and moved slowly under the keel of the yacht The hull was clean and free of anyof interest except a school of s hut frouards on their Chinese-built personal watercraft had burst the previous afternoon His heartbeat increased as he measured his opportunities of escape if he was discovered They flat didn't exist A swi a pair of personal watercraft with a top speed of thirty miles per hour Unless they were prepared to come after him underwater, all they had to do was outwait him until he exhausted his air supply

He had to be very careful There would be no light reflection on the surface inside the hut To anyone sitting in a darkened roo into the depths fro school of fish to hide aht If he had an ounce of gray etahile he was yet unseen, swim back across the lake to the cabin and call the police That's what any sane man would have done

Pitt felt no fear but a degree of trepidation at not knohether he would find hi up into the muzzle of an automatic rifle But he was determined to find out why all those people had died, and he had to find out now or there would never be another chance He drew the air gun fro upward Slowly, so no sudden movement would be noticed, he released the speed switch to the Stingray's twin ently kicked his fins until he eased under the floats of the hut He peered upward through the water inside the boathouse, holding his breath so that his air bubbles would not advertise his arrival The view looking up froh six inches of gossamer

Except for the tatercraft, the interior appeared dark and eht on his head, surfaced and bealass hulls of the watercraft were set snugly between two docks that were open at the front Once the door of the hut was thrown aside, their riders could speed directly onto the lake He reached out, rapped the door with his fist and received a hollow sound The logs were fake, painted on a thin sheet of plywood With no small amount of effort, Pitt hoisted himself and his equipment onto one of the docks He reht belt, and parked thehtly buoyant, he allowed to drift beside the dock

Gripping the air gun, he moved quietly toward a closed door at the rear of the hut He lightly laid his fingers on the latch, slowly turned it and eased the door open half an inch, just enough to see that it opened onto a passageway that led down a long ramp Pitt moved like a wraith -at least he wanted to move like a wraith His every footstep in the rubber dive boots sounded to him like the beat of a bass drum, when actually they touched the concrete floor without so much as a whisper The rah for Pitt's shoulders Lit by overhead recessed lights, it appeared to lead under the water toward the shoreline It was a reasonable assueway extended fro That hy it took so long for the guards who rode the watercraft to respond after the AUV was sighted Unable to ride even a bicycle through the narrow passageway, they had to sprint nearly two hundred yards

A quick look to see if his movements were covered by surveillance ca the tightly spaced walls, having to turn slightly sideways to pass through He cursed the contractor who poured the concrete with the se ended at another rah an archway Beyond, a corridor stretched off into the distance with doors on either side

He lance froh the crack revealed a low bed occupied by a sleepingclothes, a dresser with several shtstand and lamp One rack on a wall held a variety of weapons: a sniper's rifle with a scope, two different automatic rifles and four automatic pistols of different calibers Pitt quickly realized that he had walked into the lions' den This was the living quarters for the security guards

Voices ca with the pungent aroma of incense He dropped prone and sneaked a peek across the threshold with half an eye and nose he hoped would not be as obvious low to the floor Four Asians were seated around a table playing doible to Pitt To his untrained ear the Mandarin dialect sounded like a fast pitch by a used-car dealer in a television coh the doors of other rooy sounds that Orientals call music

It seeood idea towhen one of the unsuspecting guards ht happen to step into the corridor and de around outside his bedroom Pitt moved on until he found an iron spiral staircase Still no shouts of discovery, no gunshots, no sirens or alar's security people were less concerned about trespassers on the inside than on the outside

The staircase rose past two levels that were ereat open areas with no interior walls They appeared to Pitt as if the contractor and his workers had walked off the job before it was co and stopped at a massive steel door that looked like it came off a bank vault There was no time or combination lock, only a thick horizontal handle He stood there for a soliddown on the handle with firentle pressure Sweat poured fro back to the cabin in the frigid water of the lake began to sound good to him He decided that one quick look inside the main house and he was out of there

The shafts slid smoothly and silently out of their slots Pitt hesitated for several an, ever so delicately at first, to pull open the th until it cracked enough to see beyond What he saas another door, but this one had bars No cat burglar could have been half as surprised to find the house he came to rob of precious jewels and valuables was a maximum-security prison

This was no elegant estate built by a man with unusual taste in architecture This had no correlation to an estate at all The entire interior of Shang's huge house was a cell block straight out of Alcatraz The revelation struck Pitt like a blow to the head by a 's clients and business associates was a facade, he realized, a da up rooolfers who played for

all eternity -they were all frosted figures on a cake The security that was carried to extrened to keep captives in rather than intruders out It now becalass panes were backed by reinforced concrete walls