Pitt circled around, approached the vehicle a block ahead of its oncoming path, then turned down an alley. He parked the Mini behind a dumpster, grabbed the tracking device, and walked to the street.
He spotted a bike rack near the curb and stood next to it as if fumbling for a lock. As the street sweeper churned alongside, he slapped the magnetized tracking device to its back. Then Pitt returned up the alley and crouched behind the trash container as the sweeper moved to the end of the block. He had to wait only a minute before the black BMW crept by, a man and a woman visible inside.
Once the car had passed, Pitt got into the Mini and drove back down the alley. He turned left and wound his way out of town. Once he found Dores Road, he traveled south, leaving his pursuers behind.
Pitt drove the shoreline road to the small village of Foyers, where he turned at the old church. He wheeled around the building and again parked behind its high stone walls. Near the water he spotted an empty flatbed truck with a built-in crane. Pitt made his way down the hill, passed the truck, and stepped onto the small darkened dock. The glow of a lit cigar at the far end signaled he wasn’t alone.
Pitt stepped along the creaking dock and found Al Giordino lying on a large coil of rope, puffing a cigar, and gazing at a clear patch of night sky.
“Nice heavens here,” he said. “I’ve spotted Venus, Mars, and a shooting star.”
“Did you make a wish?”
“I wished I was viewing the Southern Cross from a Tahitian beach.” He ground out the cigar and rose to his feet. Like Pitt, he wore dark clothes.
“Any problem with the Nymph?”
“Not a one,” Giordino said. “Rudi tested her. I grabbed her in Liverpool and transported her to the dock, here.” He waved an arm around. “Finding this place in the dark was the hardest challenge.”
Pitt had to search the dockside waters to spot the turquoise submersible tied up a few yards away. Lying low in the water, the tiny two-man craft was barely visible.
“Her batteries are fully charged,” Giordino said. “I take it we don’t have an official invite?”
“Not exactly.” Pitt relayed his suspicions about the lab.
“Rudi mentioned a potential global plague. He sounded pretty panicked. You think this is the source?”
“Could be.” Pitt climbed onto the submersible. “The place is heavily secured by land. I figured the best way to take a closer look was by water.”
Giordino nodded. “With the Sea Nymph we’ve got both stealth and the ability to see through black water.” He cast off the mooring lines, followed Pitt inside, and sealed the hatch.
Pitt took the pilot’s seat, ran through a quick safety check, then engaged the thrusters and propelled the submersible to the center of the lake. He submerged the vessel just beneath the surface, allowing only a thin masthead near the stern to rise above the water.
It contained both a rotating video camera and a GPS receiver. Linked to a pair of screens on the center console, it allowed Pitt and Giordino to view the lake’s surface alongside a digital map that relayed their exact position. As Pitt adjusted the light level on the image, Giordino activated a set of multibeam sonar units at each corner of the submersible’s base frame.
The Sea Nymph was designed for deepwater survey projects in restricted environments, so it was compact with high maneuverability. The combined sonars allowed for a three-hundred-sixty-degree acoustic view, which complemented mineral, sediment, and water sensing devices.
Giordino adjusted the sonar to a range of one hundred meters, but with the Sea Nymph far above the lakebed, his monitor showed only a circle of green snow. He glanced at a digital fathometer and whistled. “Seven-hundred-foot depth here. Not a good place to drop the car keys over the side.”
“The loch is narrow, yet quite deep.” Pitt dialed up the thruster speed. With a thin prow for improved hydrodynamics, the Nymph could easily cruise at better than five knots. Pitt navigated by the digital map, keeping one eye on the video feed for potential lake traffic.
They hadn’t traveled far when he spotted McKee Manor along the northern shore, and he reduced power. Farther ahead, he saw the lights of another vessel sailing away on the same heading as the tanker he’d seen when he was fishing.
“The site is ahead on the south shore,” Pitt said. “I’d like to see how they are loading