Treasure of Khan

Gripped with fear but helpless to act, Summer studied her assailants with deliberation. To a man, they were short in stature yet bullish in build. They were of Asian descent, but had high cheekbones and more-rounded eyes than the classic Chinese profile. Each was dressed in black T-shirt and work pants, and all looked like they were accustomed to hard work. Summer guessed they were Indonesian pirates, but what they wanted with a sparse work barge was beyond her guess.

Gazing at the opposite end of the barge, Summer felt her stomach suddenly tightened into a knot. Two of the boarders had carried axes with them and were now swinging them through the air, cutting into the stern mooring lines. With a few quick swings, they severed the lines, then walked toward the bow to repeat the act. A third man stood overseeing the work with his back to Summer. His profile looked familiar, but it wasn't until he turned around and exposed the long scar on his left cheek that she recognized him as Dr. Tong. He walked slowly toward Summer, surveying the equipment on the deck as the two hatchet men went to work on the forward anchor lines. When he came near, she shouted to him.

"There are no artifacts here, Tong," she said, figuring he was no doctor but simply an artifact thief.

Tong ignored her, staring at the ru

"No!" Summer shouted in protest.

Finding the STOP button, the injured man turned to Summer and gave her a twisted smile, then pressed his thumb against the switch. The compressor immediately wheezed to a stop.

"There are men below on those air lines," Summer pleaded.

Tong ignored her, instead nodding to his minion. The man hobbled over to the second compressor and, with another smile directed at Summer, punched stop. As the roar of the dying compressor fell away, Tong walked over and stuck his face close to Summer's.

"I hope your brother is a good swimmer," he hissed.

A well of fury burned within Summer, replacing her fear. But she said nothing. The man holding the knife at her throat pulled tighter, then spoke to Tong in a foreign tongue.

"Shall I kill her?"

Tong glared at Summer's fit tan body lasciviously. "No," he replied, "take her aboard."

The two axmen finished cutting the bow anchor lines and walked toward Tong with their hatchets over their shoulders. The barge was now drifting freely, the current pushing it out to sea. On board the drill ship, the helmsman manually engaged the positioning thrusters and backed the ship in reverse to stay alongside the moving barge. Absent a fixed target, the drill ship had to bob and weave to keep from colliding with the free-floating barge. Several times they nudged sides, the barge slapping against the bigger drill ship with a clang.

"You—incapacitate the rubber boat," Tong barked to one of the men holding an axe. "Everybody else, back on the ship."

A small Zodiac had been secured to the bow of the barge, in case the NUMA team needed to go ashore. The ax bearer walked over and with a few quick swings cut loose the securing lines. He then pulled a knife from his belt and wedged it into the inflated pontoon in several spots, producing a loud rush of escaping air. For good measure, he stood the boat on end, then flipped it over the side rail. The deflated rubber boat bobbed on the surface for several minutes until a wave swamped its sides and sent it to the bottom.

Summer witnessed little of the sabotage as the thug at her side shoved her roughly to the rail. A thousand thoughts were surging through her mind. Should she risk trying to fight back with a knife to her throat?

How could she help Dirk and Jack? Would anything good come from stepping aboard the drill ship?

Every query led down a short path to something bad. There might be one chance, she decided, and that was if she could get into the water. Even with her hands tied, outswimming these roughnecks would likely be no problem, she figured. If she could jump into the water, she could easily swim under the barge to the other side. Maybe it would be enough of an a

Summer feigned a lack of resistance and followed the other men as they climbed on top of the rail and pulled themselves onto the deck of the drill ship. The knife wielder gave her a boost, holding her elbows as she stepped onto the rail. One of the men on the ship knelt down and reached over to help pull her up.

Summer reached up but pretended to slip before she could reach the man's hands. She then flung her right foot backward, striking the knife holder flush in the nose with her heel. By the sound of the muffled crunch, she knew she had broken his nose but didn't turn to see the blood rushing out of his nostrils.

Instead, she ducked her head forward and dove for the thin patch of water between the two vessels.

She floated weightless for a fraction of a second, awaiting the splash of the cool water. But it never came.

Seeming to materialize out of thin air, a pair of hands sprung over the rail and clasped the back of her shirt and the cuff of her shorts. Instead of falling vertically, she felt herself flung sideways, bouncing harshly over the side rail before falling hard to the deck of the barge. She had hardly hit the ground when the same pair of hands jerked her to her feet. The hands belonged to Tong, who showed remarkable strength for a man who stood nearly a foot shorter than Summer.

"You will be going aboard," he spat.

The blow came from her left side and Summer was a hair late warding it off. Tong's fist struck her on the side of the jaw and she immediately buckled to her knees. A flurry of stars danced before her eyes but she didn't pass out. In a dazed stupor, she was yanked aboard the drill ship and dragged up to the bridge, where she was locked in a small storage room at the back of the wheelhouse.

Resting on a large coil of rope, it seemed to Summer that the whole world was spi

The barge. She craned her neck, finally spotting the brown barge drifting out to sea, already more than a mile away. Squinting to try to improve her blurry vision, she fought to make out signs of Dirk and Jack aboard. But they were nowhere to be seen.

The empty barge was drifting out to sea without them.

-44-

Dirk's arms had begun to feel like spaghetti. The airlift had to be constantly wrestled into place against the invisible push of the surrounding waters. Though Dahlgren had relieved him a few times, he had been toting the pressurized tube for over an hour. The work had been made more strenuous by the building currents of an outgoing tide, which pushed the surface water seaward at nearly two knots.

The current was much lighter on the bottom, but manhandling the wavering airlift over the dredge site was like balancing a flagpole on the head of a pin.