Flood Tide

“Sam Greenberg.”

“Sam, do you carry a satellite phone?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Greenberg replied.

“Contact Admiral Sandecker and tell him I have uninvited visitors and to please send a security force as quickly as possible.”

Greenberg was young, no more than twenty, a student studying oceanography at a local university while earning extra money under a marine educational program with NUMA created by Admiral Sandecker. “Shouldn't I call the police?”

The kid is sharp, Pitt thought; he'd quickly grasped the situation. “Not a matter for local law enforcement. Please make the call as soon as you're away from the hangar. The admiral will know the drill.”

“Are you going in alone?” the student asked as Pitt exited the car and retrieved his well-traveled duffel bag from the trunk.

Pitt looked at the young man and smiled. “A good host always entertains his guests.” He stood and waited until the NUMA car's taillights faded into the dust cloud trailing the rear bumper. He paused to unzip his duffel bag to retrieve his old Colt .45 before remembering that he'd failed to obtain any cartridges after Julia Lee had emptied the gun at the ultralight aircraft on the Orion River.

“Empty!” he said through his teeth. As he stood alone in the night he began to wonder if he had a permanently dislocated brain. There was nothing left but to act dumb and enter the hangar as if he suspected nothing, then attempt to reach one of his collector cars where he kept a shotgun secreted inside a walnut cabinet originally crafted to contain an umbrella.

He pulled a small remote transmitter from his pocket and whistled the first few bars of “Yankee Doodle.” The sound-recognition signal electronically shut down the security systems and unlocked a shabby side door that looked as if it was last open in 1945. A green light on the remote flashed three times in series. It should have flashed four, he observed. Someone who was very clever at neutralizing security systems had broken his code. He closed his eyes, paused for a few moments and took a deep breath. As the door cracked open, he dropped to the ground on his hands and knees and reached around the frame and flicked on the interior lights.

The inside walls, floor and curved roof were painted a glossy white that accented a spectrum of vivid colors gleaming off the thirty beautifully painted cars spaced throughout the hangar. The visual effect was dazzling, which was what Pitt counted on to blind whoever was waiting in the blackened interior to ambush him. He reminded himself that the orange-bodied and brown-fendered 1929 Duesenberg convertible sedan containing the shotgun was the third car from the door.

The intruders were not on a social visit. His suspicions were abruptly confirmed when he heard what sounded like a series of muted pops and sensed rather than felt a torrent of bullets spraying the doorway. The suppressors on the killers' guns changed the character of the gunfire in such a way that it was not identifiable as gunshots. They were using silencers even though there wasn't another soul within a mile. His arm whipped around the door again, and he flicked the lights. Then he slithered like a snake under the hail of fire around the doorway and then crept beneath the first two collector cars, a 1932 Stutz and a 1931 L-29 Cord, blessing the old vehicles for sitting high off the ground. Reaching the Duesenberg unscathed, he leaped over the side door onto the floor of the rear seat. In almost the same motion he turned the knob on the door of the cabinet behind the front seat and pulled it open. Then he removed an Aserma 12-gauge Bulldog self-ejecting shotgun that held eleven rounds. The deadly, compact firearm lacked a buttstock but was mounted with a flash hider/muzzle brake. It was one of four guns Pitt secreted throughout the hangar for just such an occasion.

The interior of the hangar was as dark as the deepest reaches of a cave. If these guys are pros, Pitt considered, and there was almost no uncertainty about their being highly trained, they'll be using night-vision scopes and infrared laser sights. Assessing the trajectory of the bullets as they whistled through the doorway, Pitt guessed that there were two assassins probably armed with fully automatic machine pistols. One was somewhere on the ground floor, the other on the balcony to his living quarters thirty feet above one corner of the hangar. Whoever wanted him dead made certain there was a backup in case one assassin failed.

There was no attempt to rush the door. The killers knew that Pitt had entered and was somewhere on the floor of the hangar. Realizing their intended quarry had knowingly entered the trap would make them apprehensive and wary.

With no place to go, Pitt quietly cracked both rear doors on the Duesenberg, peered into the darkness and waited for his assailants to make the next move.

He tried to slow his breathing to hear any sounds of stealth, but all his ears could detect was the beat of his own heart. There was no overpowering sense of fright, no feeling of hopelessness, only a slight mist of fear to be sure. He wouldn't be human if he didn't experience a degree of dread at being a target for two professional killers. But he was on home ground, while the assassins were in a strange environment. If they were

to fulfill their mission and kill him, they had to find their target in the dark amid thirty antique automobiles and airplanes. Whatever advantage they had before Pitt walked in the hangar was lost. And what they didn't know was that he was armed and deadly. All Pitt had to do was sit it out in the back of the  Duesenberg and wait for them to make a mistake.

He began to wonder who they were and who sent them. The only enemy that came to mind whom he had antagonized in the past few weeks, and who was still among the living, had to be Qin Shang. He could think of no one else who wanted him dead. It was evident to him the Chinese billionaire nurtured a f vindictive streak.

He laid the shotgun across his chest, cupped his ears and listened. The hangar was as quiet as a crypt at midnight in the middle of a churchyard. These guys were good. There was no soft patter of stockinged or bare feet, but then stockinged or   bare feet did not make noise on concrete if stepped on carefully. They were probably biding their time, also listening. He decided against the old movie trick of throwing something against a wall to draw their fire. Master assassins were too savvy to give their position away with random gunfire.

One minute dragged by, two, then three—it seemed far longer than that. Time seemed to flow like a stream of molasses. He looked up and saw the beam of a red laser sweep across the windshield of the Duesenberg and move on. He was betting his assailants were begi

A plan began to form in his mind. He normally made a habit   of removing the batteries from all his collector cars because of f the danger of creating a fire from an electrical short. But since he pla