"One grate in hand," he announced. "Give me all the vertical thrust in the cupboard."

Pitt tilted the thrusters upward and poured on every ounce of their remaining battery power as the divers from Qin Shang's security force closed to within twenty feet. For a tormenting few-seconds nothing happened. Then the grate slowly began to slip from the silt, stirring up a great cloud of silt as the sub pulled it free.

"Twist the arm until the grate is in a horizontal position," ordered Pitt. "Then hold it over the front of the thruster intakes."

"They can still shoot an explosive up our tail."

"Only if they carry muck-penetrating radar," said Pitt, reversing the thrusters and tilting them down so their exhaust blasted into the bottom, raising great billows of swirling silt. "Now you see us, now you don't."

Giordino grinned approvingly. "An armored shield, a selfinduced smoke screen—what more could we ask? Now let's get the hell out of here."

Pitt needed no coaching. He sent the submersible careening across the bottom, stirring up silt as he went. Traveling every bit as visually blind as the divers through the agitated sediment but not nearly as confused, he had the advantage of an acoustics system that homed him in on the antenna buoy. He had traveled only a short distance when the submersible experienced a hard thump.

"They hit us?" Pitt asked.

Giordino shook his head. "No, I think you can scratch one of our attackers off as road kill. You almost tore his head off with the starboard wing."

"He won't be the only casualty if they blindly miss and shoot each other—"

Pitt was cut off as an explosive thud rocked the Sea Dog II. Two more followed in quick succession. The submersible's speed fell off by a third.

"There's that lucky shot I was talking about," said Giordino matter-of-factly. "They must have slipped one under the grate."

Pitt glanced at his instruments. "They caught the port thruster."

Giordino placed a hand on the transparent nose, which had a series of tiny cracks and stars on its outer surface. "They pitted the hell out of the windshield too."

"Where did the third missile strike?"

"Impossible to see through this stuff, but I suspect the vertical stabilizer on the starboard wing is gone."

"I figured as much," said Pitt. "She's pulling to the port."

Unknown to them, the team of ten divers was down to six. Besides the one Pitt crashed into, the others, shooting indiscriminately through the brownout, had struck and killed three of their own number. Firing and reloading their Mosby underwater rifles as fast as they could insert a new explosive charge, the divers overlooked the danger to themselves. One was brushed by the submersible as it surged past and he fired point-blank.

"Another hit," reported Giordino. He twisted his body in the confined space and gazed back along the submersible's starboard hull. "This time they caught the battery case."