Barker paused in front of one of the tanks. The fish inside was nearly ten feet long. Barker cocked his head like an artist studying his canvas.

“I did most of my early work with salmon,” Barker said. “It was comparatively easy to create giants like this. Although I actually came up with a fifty-pound sardine that lived a few months.”

He moved on to the next tank. Therri sucked in her breath at the sight of the creature inside. It was a salmon, half the size of the fish in the first tank, but it had two identical heads on the same body. 'This one didn't turn out the way I planned. You must admit it's in- teresting, though."

The fish in the next tank was even more deformed, its body cov- ered with round lumps that gave it a repulsive, pebbled appearance. In another tank was a fish with bulbous, protruding eyes. The same deformities were repeated with other species, haddock and cod and herring.

“These are hideous,” Ryan said.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Barker stopped before a tank that held a silvery-white fish about five feet long. “This is an early prototype I developed before I found that aggression and size were getting out of control in my experiments. I let some into the wild to see what happened. Unfortunately, they started to devour each other after they wiped out the local species.”

“These aren't experiments, they're monsters,” Ryan said. “Why do you let them live?”

“Feeling sorry for a fish? That's stretching it, even for SOS. Let me tell you about this fellow. He's very handy. We threw the body of the Indian into the tank along with your friend, and he stripped them down to the bone in no time. We let the other Indians watch, and they haven't given us an ounce of trouble since.”

Ryan lost his cool and launched himself at Barker. He had his hands around the man's throat, when Barker's henchman grabbed the rifle from one of the guards and slammed the butt into Ryan's head. Therri was showered with blood as Ryan slumped to the floor.

Therri felt the coldness in the pit of her stomach as she recog- nized the source of the fear she had seen in Jesse Nighthawk's eyes. She heard Barker say, “If Mr. Ryan and his friends are so concerned about their finny friends, maybe we can arrange dinner together later.”

Then the guards closed in.

NUMA 4 - White Death

34

THE EUROCOPTER CARRYING Austin, Zavala, Ben Nighthawk and the two Basques lifted off the Navarras heli- copter pad and wheeled above the yacht in a big circle. Minutes later, the SeaCobra joined the circling chopper. Flying side by side, the choppers headed west toward the afternoon sun.