By Stealth

27

Latitude 39.55S. Longitude 18.22E. Several hundred miles south of the Cape of Good Hope, the ferocious gale had died as swiftly as it had blown up. The sea was now an oily calm and a dense fog was forming.

It was the strangest vessel ever built. The Mao III was proceeding on a north-westerly course, well clear of all traditional shipping lanes. A 20,000-ton ship, it resembled a huge submarine travelling on the surface – but minus the give-away conning tower.

It moved with a sinister silence, the low-noise-level propellers at the stern emitting little more than a whisper. The entire hull had a rounded profile which reduced its radar and infra-red signature almost to zero. No satellite would detect its steady forward movement.

The Mao's cooled exhaust funnel was nearly level with the rounded superstructure. The command and weapons control quarters were not located inside a normal bridge – which would have destroyed its non-image. Instead, they were buried below decks.

Captain Welensky stood in front of a battery of highly sophisticated Stealth laser-radar screens. A six-foot-two giant, the ex-hardline East European Communist dwarfed the neatly uniformed slim man beside him. Welensky, unable to pronounce his Oriental name, called him Kim. The common language they conversed in was English.

The neat little man of forty had a European-type face. The high cheekbones and narrow eyes of his original face had been 'attended to' by one of America's foremost plastic surgeons in Shanghai. The same surgeon had `attended to' a large number of Oriental patients.

When he had completed his work the American had suffered a fatal 'accident'. After drinking a cup of poisoned tea his body had been buried in an unmarked grave. The large fortune in dollars paid to him had been `confiscated' and transferred to the Treasury of the People's Republic of China.

`There is a vessel sailing straight towards us in the fog,' Welensky reported. 'If I alter course I should be able to avoid it. But I need a decision now.'

`Sink it. Put it below the waves,' Kim ordered in his smooth voice.

`I promise you I could evade it,' Welensky persisted.

`Is there something wrong with your hearing?' Kim asked. 'We have a smaller vessel travelling in convoy with us at our stern. Sink the intruder. Put it below the waves.'

Welensky shivered inwardly. He had made a bad mistake questioning Kim's first order. He knew it was a mistake he must not repeat.

The Stealth vessel, Mao III, its missile launchers housed for'ard, aft of the knife-like prow, maintained its course. The fog was growing denser.

`Do not forget to use the laser gun to wipe out their radio room,' Kim reminded the captain.

The Dutch freighter, Texel, 8,000 tons, had been forced badly off course rounding the southern tip of Africa by a ferocious gale. She was now well south of the course planned by her skipper, Captain Schenk. He was worried.

First, bound for Indonesia with his cargo, he was well behind schedule. Second, there was something wrong with his engines and he could only move at half normal speed. Third, when the storm had abated, it had been replaced by freezing fog. Ice was forming on the superstructure.

`Jan,' he ordered the first mate, 'keep your eyes glued to the radar screen.'

`I'm watching it non-stop,' Jan protested. 'Nothing to report. And there won't be any other ships as far south as this.'

`So why,' Schenk rejoined, staring through the window as he held the wheel, 'why am I certain I saw something in the fog – sailing towards us?'

Jan, as short and stocky as the ship's master, began to worry. Schenk's eyesight was legendary back in Amsterdam. Throughout Dutch shipping circles he was nicknamed Mr Radar. Jan stared fixedly at his radar screen and blinked to clear his vision.

Technically there couldn't be another ship within miles. The empty radar screen told him that. The trouble was Jan couldn't forget one famous occasion when Schenk had saved another ship from collision with an iceberg – despite the fact that the radar hadn't even shown a blip.

`I am sure there's something close to us,' Schenk repeated.

`Nothing on the-'

Jan never completed his sentence.

A huge shape loomed through the freezing fog on the port side. The Texel shuddered horribly under the impact of a frightful collision. The murderous tragedy happened in seconds.

The sharp, immensely powerful bow of the Mao sliced the Texel amidships. It cut clean through like a monster shark's teeth severing the body of a man at the waist. In his wireless room the Dutch radio op. sat in front of his high-powered transmitter. His fingers started to repeat Mayday…! At the same moment the beam from the Mao's laser gun – adjusted to target radio equipment – struck.

The radio op. reacted like a man in the electric chair when the switch is pulled. His body jerked rigid, his hair stood on end. A stench of burnt hair filled the cabin, his transmitter burst into flames, the radio op. sagged to the floor. Dead.

The freighter split in two, was sinking rapidly. Jan was outside on deck. He stared in stunned horror for a second as the stern floated away, amazed at the clean-cut break. He saw crewmen, wearing lifebelts, jumping overboard. Poor bloody fools – the sea was ice cold. They wouldn't last five minutes.

Captain Schenk was shouting: 'Lower lifeboats…'

Jan knew there was no time for that. He manoeuvred a large inflated dinghy with an outboard motor over the side, looped a rope over the handrail, shinned down it into the dinghy. He might be able to pick up some of his comrades. He started the engine, steered the dinghy away from the bow section, now submerging rapidly.

Jan lit the signal light so any survivors could find him. The hull of something enormous loomed over him. A rope ladder was thrown over the side of the mysterious vessel. Jan attached the end to his large dinghy, began to climb the ladder to safety, his body and hands frozen by the penetrating fog.

He reached the top, grabbed the rail with one hand. Above him a heavily swathed figure held in his gloved hands a large block of ice brought from the freezer. The fatal act was timed well. As Jan's head appeared over the rail the huge figure brought down the block of ice, cracking Jan's skull open. He let the block leave his hands, following Jan's corpse into the icy sea.

As Kim, clad in a sheepskin, watched, the large seaman descended the ladder, holding a boat-hook. Three swift thrusts with the business end of the boat-hook punctured the dinghy. A slash with a knife cut the rope, releasing the dinghy as it swiftly filled with water. The sea closed over it.

As the Mao prepared to get under way a desperate cry was heard. Kim peered over the rail as the large seaman dropped back on the deck. A life raft was floating close to the hull with three survivors from the Texel, wearing lifebelts, aboard. One called out, a pathetic cry in English.

`Save us! Save us…'

`I'll fetch a rifle,' the seaman said.

`No!' Kim grabbed his arm. 'Stay where you are.' Kim spoke to Captain Welensky on the bridge through the walkie-talkie he always carried. 'Life raft close to port side. Turn your wheel a few degrees to port. Sink it. Now!'

He watched as the Mao turned slowly. Its hull smashed into the side of the raft, overturning it, breaking up the raft into separate pieces. Kim continued to watch as the three men in the sea drifted away, two waving their hands futilely. He turned away.

`A few minutes more in that ice-cold water and they'll be meat for the fishes.'

Kim knew it was a million-to-one chance that the corpses would be picked up in these latitudes. But he never took even such chances: corpses found with bullets embedded in them could cause serious questions to be asked.

Both sections of the Texel had now sunk countless fathoms deep. Thirty seamen and ten passengers – four of them women – died when the Texel sank to its watery grave. Kim then went below to a section furnished as spacious and comfortable living quarters.

Twenty Scandinavians, all between the ages of twenty- five and thirty, smartly dressed and looking like executives, had been playing cards or reading books. They had spent time at the special training camp in the interior of China. There they had been mentally and physically instructed intensively. All had been selected for their Communist leanings – and more especially for their liking for large sums of money. They looked up as Kim entered.

`Nothing to worry about, gentlemen,' Kim assured them. 'A minor collision with floating wreckage. The Mao is in perfect shape…'

Purring no louder than a cat, the Mao's engines carried the Stealth vessel on its north-westerly course, which would take it well clear of the west coast of Africa. It was now heading for its rendezvous at sea with a refuelling tanker.

A short distance behind its stern the smaller Stealth ship maintained the same course. Even in the fog its skipper had no trouble following the Mao – which at frequent intervals emitted a brief signal only capable of being registered by the sonar equipment aboard the second ship.

From the refuelling rendezvous the Mao would continue on its northward course to its ultimate destination. Denmark.