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exactly do we pull off this marvel of Royal Mounted Police planning?"
Stokes pointed down to the island again. "I should begin my descent in about five minutes."
Pitt could do little but sit back and enjoy the view. Below he could see the great volcanic cone with its central pipe of blue ground that contained the rough diamonds. What looked like a giant bridge of steel girders stretched over the open core, with a myriad of steel cables that raised and lowered the excavated debris. Once they reached the top, the buckets then moved horizontally like ski gondolas across the open pit to buildings where the diamonds were extracted from the tailings, which were then dumped onto a huge mound that enclosed the diggings. The mound also acted as an artificial barrier to discourage anyone from entering or leaving, a reality Pitt found obvious from the total absence of any entrances except one, a tunnel that opened to a road that led to a dock on a small bay. He knew from his map that the bay was called Rose Harbour. As he watched, a tug with an empty barge in tow was pulling away from the dock and heading toward the mainland.
A series of prefabricated buildings grouped between the mound and the pit were apparently used for offices and living quarters for the miners. The enclosure, easily two kilometers in diameter, also accommodated the narrow airstrip with a hangar. The entire mining operation looked like a gigantic scar on the landscape from the air.
"That's one big pockmark," said Pitt.
Without looking down, Stokes said, "That pockmark, as you call it, is where dreams come from."
Stokes leaned out his fuel mixture and starved his big 450-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp engine until it began to miss and backfire. Already, a voice was coming over the radio warning him away from the property, but he ignored it. "I have a fuel blockage and must borrow your airstrip for an emergency landing. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it can't be helped." Then he switched off the radio.
"Don't you just hate dropping in unannounced?" said Pitt.
Stokes was concentrating on landing the plane, with the engine coughing and barely turning over, and did not reply. He lowered a pair of small wheels through the forward center of the two large pontoons and lined up with the runway. A crosswind caught the plane, and Stokes overcompensated. Pitt tensed slightly as he observed that Stokes lacked full control. The Mountie was reasonably competent but hardly an expert pilot. The landing was rough, and he almost ground-looped.
Before the plane rolled to a stop in front of the airstrip's hangar, it was surrounded by nearly ten men in blue combat fatigues, holding Bushmaster customized M-16 assault rifles with suppressors. A tall, gaunt man in his early thirties and wearing a combat helmet stepped up on one of the floats and opened the door. He entered the aircraft and made his way to the cockpit. Pitt noticed the guard rested his hand on a holstered nine-millimeter automatic.
"This is private property, and you are trespassing," he said in a perfectly friendly voice.
"Sorry," said Stokes. "But the fuel filter clogged. The second time this month. It's this damned stuff they're passing off as gas nowadays."
"How soon can you make repairs and be on your way?"
"Twenty minutes, no more."
"Please hurry," said the security official. "You'll have to remain by your plane."
"May I borrow a bathroom?" Pitt asked politely.
The security guard studied him for a moment, then nodded. "There's one in the hangar. One of my men will escort you."
"You don't know how grateful I am," Pitt said as if in minor agony. He jumped out of the plane and set off toward the hangar with a security guard close at his heels. Once inside the metal structure, he turned as if waiting expectantly for the guard to direct him to the door leading to the bathroom. It was a ploy; he'd already guessed the correct door, but it gave him a brief instant to glance at the aircraft resting on the hangar floor.
A Gulfstream V, the latest development in business jets, was an imposing aircraft. Unlike the earlier Learjet -so eagerly purchased and flown by the rich and famous -whose interior barely had enough room to turn around in, the G V was spacious, giving passengers plenty of elbowroom and enough height for most tall men to stand up straight. Capable of cruising 924 kilometers per hour at an altitude of just under 11,000 meters, with a range of 6,300 nautical miles, the aircraft was powered by a pair of turbofan jets built by BMW and Rolls-Royce.
Dorsett spared no expense for his transportation fleet, thought Pitt. An aircraft like this cost upward of $33 million.
Parked just in front of the main hangar door, menacing and sinister in dark blue-black paint, were a pair of squat looking helicopters. Pitt recognized them as McDonnell Douglas 530 MD Defenders, a military aircraft designed for silent flying and high stability during abnormal maneuvers. A pair of 7.62-millimeter guns were mounted in pods under the fuselage. An array of tracking gear sprouted from the underside of the cockpit. These were scout models specially modified for tracking diamond smugglers or other unwelcome intruders on the ground.
After he came out of the bathroom, he was motioned by the guard into an office. The man who sat at a desk was small, thin, fastidiously attired in a business suit, suave, cool and completely satanic. He turned from a computer monitor and studied Pitt, his deep-set eyes gray and unreadable. Pitt found the man slimy and repellant.
"I am John Merchant, chief of security for this mine," he said with a distinctive Australian accent. "May I see some identification, please?"
Silently, Pitt handed over his NUMA ID and waited.
"Dirk Pitt." Merchant rolled the name on his tongue and repeated it. "Dirk Pitt. Aren't you the chap who found an immense cache of Inca treasure in the Sonoran Desert a few years ago?"
"I was only one member of the team."
"Why have you come to Kunghit?"
"Better you ask the pilot. He's the one who landed the plane on your precious mining property. I'm only a passenger along for the ride."
"Malcolm Stokes is an inspector with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He's also a member of the Criminal Investigation Directorate." Merchant gestured toward his computer. "I have an entire data file on him. It's you who are in question."
"You're very thorough," said Pitt. "Taking into account your close contacts in the Canadian government, you probably already know I'm here to study the effects of chemical pollution on the local kelp and fish populations. Would you care to see my documents?"
