As the parasail brought Austin around in a wide arc he concentrated his attention on a particular stretch of shoreline and the dark forest rising behind it, imprinting the image on his mind. He would have preferred to use a video or still camera in stead of his imperfect memory, but traffic this close to Gogstad's lair was sure to come under close scrutiny. Any undue interest on his part, such as pointing a camera lens in the wrong direction, would set off alarms.

He drifted past a long pier that jutted from the rocky shore. A powerboat was tied up at the pier. Behind a boathouse or storage shed, the black rocks rose at a sharp angle, then leveled off into a heavily wooded natural tableland. Several hundred yards back from shore the land rose again in thick forest. The towers, roofs, and turrets peeking above the tall trees reminded Austin of the castle ramparts in a Grimm fairy tale.

Austin's eye was drawn by sudden movement. Several men in dark clothes had run out to the end of the pier. He was too far away to see details, but he wouldn't be surprised if pictures of him parasailing wound up in a Gogstad family album.

The pier disappeared in his wake as the winch boat towed him another mile south. When they were safely out of view he gave Zavala the okay to haul him in. The winch pulled the Skyrider in like a boy reeling in a kite. The reclining chair splashed down and floated in the water. Austin was grateful he wasn't using the old harness-style rig which would have dunked him in the lake. Even in summer the water temperature was in the sixties.

“See anything interesting?” Zavala asked as he helped Austin back into the winch boat.

“There's no welcome mat on the doorstep, if that's what you mean.”

“I think I saw a welcoming committee on the dock.”

“They came charging out the minute we did our second fly by. We were right about the tight security.”

They had assumed the compound would be well guarded and that there would be no point sneaking around. Reasoning that the obvious was often the most innocuous, they had flashed a wad of bills and their NUMA IDs and persuaded the owner of the parasail and the winch boat to spare his equipment for a few hours. They implied that they were investigating the Mafia, which was not implausible given the nearness to the gambling casinos. Since business was off and he stood to make more in the deal than he earned in a week, he went along with the deal.

Austin helped Zavala stow the Skyrider and parasail, then he opened a waterproof bag and dug out a sketch pad and pen. Apologizing for his draftsmanship, which was really quite good, he drew several sketches of what he had seen from the air. He had brought along the satellite photos Yaeger provided and compared the sketches to them. At the top of the bluff the staircase from the dock connected with a walkway. This in turn widened into a road that led to the main complex. A spur from the road shot off to a helicopter pad.