"So near, yet so far," Giordino mumbled, staring upward at the keel of the launch as he waited helpless but unperturbed for the inevitable final assault.

Then suddenly a series of concussions swamped and reverberated all around the submersible. Pitt and Giordino were thrown about the interior like rats inside a rolling pipe. The water around them erupted in a mass of froth and bubbles that raged crazily in all directions before heading for the surface. The divers, who were about to close in on the Sea Dog II, died instantly, their bodies crushed to gelatin by the sledgehammer blows. The men inside the sub were both stunned and deafened by underwater detonations. They were saved from serious injury by the pressure hull.

It took several moments for Pitt to realize that Cabrillo, forewarned of the chase in progress, waited until the submersible and its attackers were close enough to the Oregon's launch to throw concussion grenades into the water. Through the ringing in his ears, Pitt heard someone calling over the radio.

"You guys all right down there?” came Cabrifto's welcome voice.

"My kidneys will never be the same," Pitt answered back, "but we're behaving ourselves."

"How about the vigilantes?"

"They look like they came out of a Jell-o mold," replied Giordino.

"If we were attacked underwater," Pitt warned Cabrillo, "it stands to reason they'll come after you on the surface."

"Funny you should mention mat," said Cabrillo airily. "There just happens to be a small cruiser coming this way as we speak. Nothing we can't handle, of course. Sit tight. I'll have my diver hook you up to the towline after we greet our callers."

"Sit tight," Giordino repeated acidly. "We have no power. We're dead in the water. He must think we're in an underwater amusement park."

"He means well," Pitt sighed as the tension inside the sub eased. He lay there idly, his hands loosely holding the handgrips of his now nonfunctioning controls, staring through the transparent canopy at the bottom of the launch, wondering what cards Cabrillo was about to deal.

"They mean business," Cabrillo said to Eddie Seng, the Oregon's former CIA agent who was their man in Beijing for nearly twenty years before he was forced to make a sudden departure back to the States and retirement. Cabrillo peered through a small, single-lens telescope at the rapidly approaching cabin cruiser. Its configuration reminded him of a U.S. Coast Guard rescue boat, except that this one was not in the business of saving lives. "They figured the game when they detected the submersible, but they can't be sure we're tied in until they board and investigate."

"How many do you make out?" asked Seng.

"About five, all carrying arms except the helmsman."

"Any good-sized weapons mounted on the boat?" asked Seng.