“Congratulations, Major,” Giordino said. “You just made the playoffs.”

A big grin spread across Laroche’s bloodied face. “By God, we whipped ‘em good, didn’t we?”

Lee Tong emptied his weapon at the figure on the bow of the towboat, observing it fall into the water. Then he slumped against the edge of the hatch and watched the Confederate battle flag flutter in the gulf breeze.

With a kind of detachment, he accepted the unexpected disaster which had overtaken his carefully conceived operation. His crew was either dead or prisoner, and his escape ship was destroyed. Yet he was not ready to oblige his unknown opponents by surrendering. He was determined to carry out his grandmother’s bargain with Moran and take his chances on escaping later.

He dropped down the side ladder of the elevator shaft into the laboratory quarters and ran along the main corridor until he came to the door of the chamber that held the isolation cocoons. He entered and peered through the insulated plastic lid at the body within the first one. Vince Margolin stared back, his body too numb to respond, his mind too drugged to comprehend.

Lee Tong moved to the next cocoon and looked down at the serene, sleeping face of Loren Smith. She was heavily sedated and in a deep state of unconsciousness. Her death would be a waste, he thought. But she could not be allowed to live and testify. He leaned over and opened the cover and stroked her hair, staring at her through half-open eyes.

He had killed countless men, their features forgotten less than seconds after their death. But the faces of the women lingered. He remembered the first, so many years ago on a tramp steamer in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: her haunting expression of bewilderment as her chained nude body was dropped over the side.

“Nice place you have here,” came a voice from the doorway, “but your elevator is out of order.”

Lee Tong spun around and gaped at the man who stood wet and dripping, pointing a strange antique revolver at his chest.

“You!” he gasped.

Pitt’s face — tired, haggard and dark with beard stubble — lit up in a smile. “Lee Tong Bougainville. What a coincidence.”

“You’re alive!”

“A trite observation.”

“And responsible for all this: those mad men in the old uniforms, the riverboat…”

“The best I could arrange on the spur of the moment,” Pitt said apologetically.

Lee Tong’s moment of utter confusion passed and he slowly curled his finger around the trigger of the Steyr-Mannlicher that hung loosely in one hand, muzzle aimed at the carpeted deck.

“Why have you pursued my grandmother and me, Mr. Pitt?” he demanded, stalling. “Why have you set out to wreck Bougainville Maritime?”

“That’s like Hitler asking why the Allies invaded Europe. In my case, you were responsible for the death of a friend.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Pitt indifferently. “You never met her.”

Lee Tong swung up the barrel of his carbine and pulled the trigger.

Pitt was faster, but Giordino had used up the last cartridge and the revolver’s hammer fell on an empty cylinder. He stiffened, expecting the impact of a bullet.

It never came.

Lee Tong had forgotten to insert a new clip after firing his final round at Pitt on the towboat. He lowered the carbine, his lips stretched into an inscrutable smile. “It seems we have a standoff, Mr. Pitt.”

“Only temporary,” said Pitt, recocking the hammer and keeping the revolver raised and aimed. “My people will be coming aboard any minute now.”

Lee Tong sighed and relaxed. “Then I can do little else but surrender and wait for arrest.”

“You’ll never stand trial.”

The smile turned into a sneer. “That’s not for you to decide. Besides, you’re hardly in a position to—”

Suddenly he flipped the carbine around, gripping the barrel and raising it as a club. The rifle butt was on a vicious downswing when Pitt squeezed the trigger and blasted Lee Tong in the throat with the barrel loaded with buckshot. The carbine poised in midair and then fell from his hand as he stumbled backward until striking the wall and dropping heavily to the deck.

Pitt left him where he lay and threw off the cover over Loren’s cocoon. He gently lifted her out and carried her to the open elevator. He checked the circuit breakers and found them on, but there was still no response from the lift motors when he pressed the “up” button.

He had no way of knowing the generators that provided electricity to the barge had run out of fuel and shut down, leaving only the emergency battery power to illuminate the overhead lighting. Scrounging through a supply locker, he found a rope, which he tied under Loren’s arms. Then he pulled himself through the elevator roof’s trapdoor and scaled the shaft ladder to the top deck of the barge.

Slowly, gently, he eased Loren’s body upward until she lay on the rusting deck. Winded, he took a minute to catch his breath and look around. The Stonewall Jackson was still burning fiercely, but the flames were being fought with fire hoses from the towboat. About two miles to the west a white Coast Guard cutter was driving through the light swells toward their position, while to the south he could just make out the sail tower of a nuclear submarine.

Taking a short length of the rope, Pitt tied Loren loosely to a cleat so she wouldn’t roll into the sea, then he returned below. When he entered the isolation chamber again, Lee Tong was gone. A trail of blood led up the corridor and ended at an open hatch to a storage deck below. He saw no reason to waste time on a dying murderer and turned to rescue the Vice President.

Before he took two steps, a tremendous blast lifted him off his feet and hurled him face downward twenty feet away. The impact from the concussion drove the breath from his lungs and the ringing in his ears prevented him from hearing the sea rush in through a gaping hole torn in the hull of the barge.

Pitt awkwardly raised himself to his hands and knees and tried to orient himself. Then slowly, as the haze before his eyes melted away, he realized what had happened and what was coming. Lee Tong had detonated an explosive charge before he died and already the water was flowing across a corridor deck.

Pitt pushed himself to his feet and reeled drunkenly into the isolation chamber again. The Vice President looked up at him and tried to say something, but before he could utter a sound, Pitt had hoisted him over a shoulder and was lurching toward the elevator.

The water was surging around Pitt’s knees now, splashing up the walls. He knew only seconds were left before the barge began its dive to the seabed. By the time he reached the open elevator, the sea was up to his chest and he half walked, half swam inside. It was too late to repeat the rope lift procedure. Furiously he manhandled Margolin through the ceiling trapdoor, clasped him under the chest and began climbing the iron ladder to the tiny square patch of blue sky that seemed miles away.

He remembered then that he had tied Loren to the upper deck to keep her from rolling into the sea. The sickening thought coursed through him that she would be pulled to her death when the barge sank.

Beyond fear lies desperation, and beyond that a raging drive to survive that cuts across the boundaries of suffering and exhaustion. Some men yield to hopelessness, some try to sidestep its existence, while a very few accept and face it head-on.

Watching the froth tenaciously dog his rise up the elevator shaft, Pitt fought with every shred of his will to save the lives of Margolin and Loren. His arms felt as if they were tearing from their sockets. White spots burst before his eyes and the strain on his cracked ribs passed from mere pain to grinding agony.

His grip loosened on flakes of rust and he almost fell backward into the water boiling at his heels. It would have been so easy to surrender, to let go and drop into oblivion and release the torture that racked his body. But he hung on. Rung by rung, he struggled upward, Margolin’s dead weight becoming heavier with each step.