Therri was unable to contain herself any longer. "Josh wasn't the only one. You killed the television reporter aboard the Sentinel. Your thugs shot one of your own men in Copenhagen. You murdered Ben Nighthawk's cousin and tried to kill Senator Graham. You're keep- ing people as slaves."

"The company lawyer has a tongue!" Barker's jaw hardened and the civilized tone he had been using turned into a snarl. "It's a pity you weren't around to argue the case for the Kiolya when they starved to death because the white men decimated the walrus. Or when the tribe was forced to leave its traditional hunting grounds, spreading throughout Canada, moving into the cities far from their homeland."

"None of that gives you the right to kill people or to mess up the

oceans for your own good," she said, with unrestrained fury. "You can terrorize a bunch of poor Indians and push us around, but you're going to have to contend with NUMA."

"I'm not going to lose any sleep over Admiral Sandecker's collec- tion of oddballs and geeks."

"Would you lose sleep over Kurt Austin?" Ryan said.

"I know all about Austin. He's a dangerous man-but NUMA re- gards SOS as an outlaw organization. No, you and your friends here are all alone. More alone than you have ever been in your life." Barker's tattooed henchman said something in the Kiolya language. "Umealiq reminds me that you wanted to see my pets."

With the guards taking up the rear, Barker led the way to a side door that opened to the outside. Moments later, they were back at the building where SOS had planted the explosive charges. Only this time, the interior was brightly lit up.

Barker paused in front of one of the tanks. The fish inside was nearly ten feet long. Barker cocked his head like an artist studying his canvas.

"I did most of my early work with salmon," Barker said. "It was comparatively easy to create giants like this. Although I actually came up with a fifty-pound sardine that lived a few months."

He moved on to the next tank. Therri sucked in her breath at the sight of the creature inside. It was a salmon, half the size of the fish in the first tank, but it had two identical heads on the same body. 'This one didn't turn out the way I planned. You must admit it's in- teresting, though."

The fish in the next tank was even more deformed, its body cov- ered with round lumps that gave it a repulsive, pebbled appearance. In another tank was a fish with bulbous, protruding eyes. The same deformities were repeated with other species, haddock and cod and herring.

"These are hideous," Ryan said.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Barker stopped before a tank that held a silvery-white fish about five feet long. "This is an early prototype I developed before I found that aggression and size were getting out of control in my experiments. I let some into the wild to see what happened. Unfortunately, they started to devour each other after they wiped out the local species."

"These aren't experiments, they're monsters," Ryan said. "Why do you let them live?"

"Feeling sorry for a fish? That's stretching it, even for SOS. Let me tell you about this fellow. He's very handy. We threw the body of the Indian into the tank along with your friend, and he stripped them down to the bone in no time. We let the other Indians watch, and they haven't given us an ounce of trouble since."

Ryan lost his cool and launched himself at Barker. He had his hands around the man's throat, when Barker's henchman grabbed the rifle from one of the guards and slammed the butt into Ryan's head. Therri was showered with blood as Ryan slumped to the floor.

Therri felt the coldness in the pit of her stomach as she recog- nized the source of the fear she had seen in Jesse Nighthawk's eyes. She heard Barker say, "If Mr. Ryan and his friends are so concerned about their finny friends, maybe we can arrange dinner together later."

Then the guards closed in.

34

THE EUROCOPTER CARRYING Austin, Zavala, Ben Nighthawk and the two Basques lifted off the Navarras heli- copter pad and wheeled above the yacht in a big circle. Minutes later, the SeaCobra joined the circling chopper. Flying side by side, the choppers headed west toward the afternoon sun.

From his seat next to the pilot, Austin had a clear view of the Sea- Cobra's lethal silhouette pacing the Eurocopter a few hundred feet away. The combat helicopter carried enough weaponry to level a small city. Austin was under no illusions. Oceanus would be no pushover.

Cruising at a speed of one hundred twenty-five knots, the heli- copters soon passed over a rocky shoreline and left the sea behind them. They were traveling over a dense forest of fir trees, keeping a tight formation, hugging the treetops in the hope of avoiding detec- tion. Austin checked the load in his Bowen revolver, then he sat back in his seat, closed his eyes and worked through their plan in his head.

Zavala sometimes jokingly accused Austin of making things up as he went along. There was some truth to the charge. Austin knew planning could only go so far. Having grown up on and around the water, his views were colored by his nautical experiences. He knew that a mission was like sailing a boat into foul weather; when things went wrong, they really went wrong. A good sailor kept his lines clear and his bailing can handy.

He was a strong believer in the KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid. Since his primary goal was to get Ben's family and friends out safely, the SeaCobra couldn't just swoop down and blast away at everything in sight. Austin knew there was no such thing as a surgi- cal strike. The chopper's armament would have to be used sparingly, a fact which neutered its fearsome capability. He furrowed his brow at the wild card that fanatical idiot Marcus Ryan had dealt him.

Austin didn't need his fondness for Therri Weld to cloud his judg- ment.

The Eurocopter's engine changed pitch as the aircraft cut speed and came to a hover over the forest. Ben, who was sitting behind Austin with Zavala and the Aguirrez brothers, was signaling the pilot to descend. The pilot shook his head and insisted that there was no place to land.

Pablo glanced out the window. "Do you trust the Indian?" Austin checked the landing zone. Visibility was restricted, and he could see nothing but dark greenery in the lowering sun. They were now in Ben Nighthawk's backyard. "This is his country, not mine.

Pablo nodded, then barked in Spanish at the pilot, who muttered to himself and radioed the other helicopter of his plans to land. The SeaCobra peeled off and flew a back-and-forth pattern over the woods, using its infrared detectors to see if there were any warm bodies lurking in the vicinity. Detecting no sign of human life, the SeaCobra gave the okay to land.

The Eurocopter sank into the forest. No one except Ben would have been surprised to hear the rotors shred themselves in an unequal match with the sturdy tree trunks. But the only sound was a crackle and snap of thin branches and the soft thump of the skids hitting the around. Ben's sharp eyes had seen what the others had not, that what appeared to be thick forest was in reality a cleared area overgrown with heavy underbrush. The SeaCobra dropped down a short dis- tance away.

Austin let out the breath he had been holding and jumped from the chopper with Zavala and the Aguirrez brothers right behind him. They ducked into a combat crouch with guns at the ready, de- spite the infrared sweep. As the rotors spun to a stop, a silence so com- plete that it seemed to have substance settled on them. Ben climbed out of the chopper and glanced at the upheld machine rifles.