Plague Ship

DIRK PITT® ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

Treasure of Khan(with Dirk Cussler)

Black Wind(with Dirk Cussler)

Trojan Odyssey

Valhalla Rising

Atlantis Found

Flood Tide

Shock Wave

Inca Gold

Sahara

Dragon

Treasure

Cyclops

Deep Six

Pacific Vortex

Night Probe

Vixen 03

Raise the Titanic!

Iceberg

The Mediterranean Caper

KURT AUSTIN ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER WITH PAUL KAMPRECOS

The Navigator

Polar Shift

Lost City

White Death

Fire Ice

Blue Gold

Serpent

OREGON FILES ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

WITHE JACK DU BRUL

Skeleton Coast

Dark Watch

WITH CRAIG DIRGO

Sacred Stone

Golden Buddha

OTHER FICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER

The Chase

NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND CRAIG DIRGO

The Sea Hunters

The Sea Hunters II

Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed

Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed

PLAGUE SHIP

A NOVEL OF THE OREGON FILES

CLIVE CUSSLER WITH JACK DU BRUL

Plague went through Europe and killed a third of its population. Lands were consolidated, allowing for a greater standard of living, not only for the owners but also for those who worked them. This event was the single greatest contributor to the Renaissance and gave rise to Europe’s eventual domination of the world.

We’re Breeding Ourselves to Death:

How Overpopulation Will Destroy Civilization, by Dr. Lydell Cooper, Raptor Press, 1977

PROLOGUE

BARENTS SEA

NORTH OF NORWAY

APRIL 29, 1943

A PALE HUNTER’S MOON HUNG ABOVE THE HORIZON so that its light threw dazzling reflections off the frigid ocean. With winter not yet given way to spring, the sun had yet to rise this year.

Instead, it remained hidden behind the earth’s curvature, a faint glowing promise that crept along the line where sky met sea as the planet spun on its tilted axis. It would be another month before it would fully show itself, and, once it did, it would not disappear again until fall. Such was the odd cycle of day and night above the Arctic Circle.

By rights of their extreme northern latitudes, the waters of the Barents Sea should be frozen over and impassable for most of the year. But the sea was blessed with warm waters cycling up from the tropics on the Gulf Stream. It was this powerful current that made Scotland and the northern reaches of Norway habitable, and kept the Barents free of ice and navigable even in the deepest winters. For this reason, it was the primary route for war material being convoyed from the tireless factories of America to the embattled Soviet Union. And like so many such sea routes—the English Channel or the Gibraltar Strait—it had become a choke point and, thus, a killing ground for the wolfpacks of the Kriegsmarine and shore-based Schnellboots, the fast-attack torpedo boats.

Far from random, the placement of U-boats was planned out with the forethought of a chess master advancing his pieces. Every scrap of intelligence was gathered about the strength, speed, and destination of ships plying the North Atlantic in order to have submarines positioned to strike.

From bases in Norway and Denmark, patrol aircraft scoured the seas, looking for the convoys of merchantmen, radioing positions back to fleet headquarters so the U-boats could lie in wait for their prey.

For the first years of the war, the submarines enjoyed near-total supremacy of the seas, and untold millions of tons of shipping had been sunk without mercy. Even under heavy escort by cruisers and destroyers, the Allies could do little more than play the odds of having one ship sunk for every ninety-nine that made it through. By being gambled so coldly, the men of the merchant marine paid as high a toll as frontline combat units.

That was about to change this night.

The four-engined Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Kondor was a massive plane—seventy-seven feet long, with a wingspan of nearly one hundred and ten feet. Designed before the war for Lufthansa as a passenger airliner, the aircraft had been quickly pressed into military duty as both a transport and a long-range reconnaissance platform. Her twenty-five-hundred-mile range allowed the Kondor to remain aloft for hours and hunt Allied shipping far from shore.

Used in an attack roll through 1941 by carrying four five-hundred-pound bombs under her wings, the Kondor had taken some heavy losses and was now strictly employed as a reconnaissance plane, and remained well above Allied antiaircraft fire during their patrols.

The aircraft’s pilot, Franz Lichtermann, chafed at the monotonous hours spent searching the trackless sea. He longed to be in a fighter squadron, fighting the real war, not loitering thousands of feet above frigid nothingness hoping to spot Allied shipping for someone else to sink. Back at base, Lichtermann maintained a high level of military decorum and expected the same from his men. However, when they were on patrol and the minutes stretched with the elasticity of India rubber, he allowed a certain amount of familiarity among the five-man crew.

“That should help,” he commented over the intercom and jerked his head in the direction of the dazzling moon.

“Or its reflection will hide a convoy’s wake,” his copilot, Max Ebelhardt, replied in his customary pessimistic tone.

“With the sea this calm we’ll spot them even if they’ve stopped to ask for directions.”

“Do we even know if anyone’s out here?” The question came from the crew’s youngest member, Ernst Kessler. Kessler was the Kondor ’s rear gunner and sat scrunched at the aft of the ventral gondola that ran the partial length of the aircraft’s fuselage. From behind his Plexiglas shield and over the barrel of a single MG-15 machine gun, he could see nothing other than what the Kondor had already flown over.

“The squadron commander assured me that a U-boat returning from patrol spotted at least a hundred ships two days ago above the Faeroe Islands,” Lichtermann told his crew. “The ships were heading north, so they’ve got to be out here somewhere.”

“More likely, the U-boat commander just wanted to report something after missing with all his torpedoes,” Ebelhardt groused, and made a face after a sip of tepid ersatz coffee.

“I’d rather just spot them, then sink them,” Ernst Kessler said. The gentle lad was barely eighteen, and had harbored ambitions of being a doctor before he had been drafted. Because he came from a poor rural family in Bavaria, his chances of an advanced education were nil, but that didn’t prevent him from spending his off-hours with his nose buried in medical journals and texts.

“That isn’t the proper attitude of a German warrior,” Lichtermann admonished gently. He was thankful that they had never come under enemy attack. He doubted Kessler would have the stomach to open fire with his machine gun, but the boy was the only member of his crew who could sit facing aft for hour after hour without becoming incapacitated by nausea.

He thought grimly about all the men dying on the Eastern Front, and about how the tanks and planes shipped to the Russians prolonged the inevitable fall of Moscow. Lichtermann would be more than happy to sink a few ships himself.

Another tedious hour dragged by, the men peering into the night in hopes of spotting the convoy.

Ebelhardt tapped Lichtermann on the shoulder and pointed to his log. Although the fore gunner kneeling at the front of the ventral gondola was the official navigator, Ebelhardt actually calculated their flight time and direction, and he was indicating that it was time for them to turn and search another swath of open sea.

Lichtermann applied rudder and eased over the yoke in an easy turn to port, never taking his eyes off the horizon, as the moon seemed to swing across the sky.

Ernst Kessler prided himself at having the sharpest eyes aboard the aircraft. When he was a boy, he would dissect dead animals he found around the family farm to learn their anatomy, comparing what he saw to books on the subject. He knew his keen vision and steady hands would make him an excellent doctor. His senses, however, were just as adept at finding an enemy convoy.

By rights of his aft-facing station, he shouldn’t have been the one to spot it, but he did. As the plane canted over, an unnatural glint caught his attention, a flash of white far from the moon’s reflection.

“Captain!” Kessler cried over the intercom. “Starboard side, bearing about three hundred.”

“What did you see?” The primeval thrill of the hunt edged Lichtermann’s voice.

“I’m not sure, sir. Something. A glimmer of some kind.” Lichtermann and Ebelhardt strained to see in the darkness where young Kessler had indicated, but there was nothing apparent.

“Are you sure?” the pilot asked.

“Yes, sir,” Kessler replied, forcing confidence into his reply. “It was when we turned. The angle changed, and I’m sure I saw something.”

“The convoy?” Ebelhardt asked gruffly.

“I can’t say,” Ernst admitted.

“Josef, get the radio powered up,” Lichtermann said, ordering the fore gunner to his ancillary position.

The pilot added more power to the BMW radial engines, and banked the aircraft once again. Their drone became a bit sharper, as the props tore through the air.

Ebelhardt had a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes as he searched the blackened sea. Rushing toward a possible contact at two hundred miles per hour, he should spot the convoy any moment, but, as seconds grew into a minute and nothing revealed itself, he lowered the binoculars again. “Must have been a wave,” he said without keying the intercom microphone, so only Lichtermann heard.

“Give it a chance,” Lichtermann replied. “Kessler can see in the dark like a damned cat.” The Allied powers had done a remarkable job of applying dizzying camouflage patterns to their freighters and tankers, to prevent observers from seeing the ships from the surface, but nothing could hide a convoy at night, since the wakes that formed behind the vessels burned white against the ocean.

I’ll be damned, Ebelhardt mouthed, and then pointed through the windscreen.

At first, it was just a large patch of gray on the otherwise-dark water, yet, as they flew closer, the gray sharpened to become dozens of parallel white lines, as distinct as chalk marks on a blackboard. They were the wakes of an armada of ships, driving eastward as fast as it could. From the Kondor’s altitude, the ships looked as plodding as elephants traveling in a herd.

The Kondor flew closer still, until the moon’s sharp glare allowed the crew to distinguish between the slower freighters and tankers and the slim wakes of destroyers set like pickets along each flank of the convoy. As they watched, one of the destroyers was making a fast run up the starboard side of the convoy, smoke pouring from her two stacks. When the destroyer reached the head of the convoy, it would slow again, and let the freighters pass it by, in what the Allies called an “Indian run.” At the tail of the mile-long convoy, the destroyer would accelerate once again, in a never-ending cycle. In this way, it took fewer combat vessels to provide cover for the convoys.

“There must be two hundred ships out there,” Ebelhardt estimated.

“Enough to keep the Reds fighting for months,” the pilot agreed. “Josef, how’s it coming with the radio?”

“I have nothing but static.”

Static was a common enough problem, working this far above the Arctic Circle. Charged particles striking the earth’s magnetic field were driven to ground at the poles and played havoc with the radios’

vacuum tubes.

“We’ll mark our position,” Lichtermann said, “and radio in our report when we get closer to base. Hey, Ernst, well done. We would have turned away and missed the convoy, if it weren’t for you.”

“Thank you, sir.” Pride was evident in the boy’s response.

“I want a better count of the convoy’s size, and a rough approximation of their speed.”

“Let’s not get so close that those destroyers open up,” Ebelhardt cautioned. He had seen combat firsthand and was flying second stick now because of a piece of shrapnel buried in his thigh, thanks to antiaircraft fire over London. He recognized the look in Lichtermann’s eye and the excitement in his voice. “And don’t forget the CAMs.”

“Trust me,” the pilot said with cocky bravado, and wheeled the big plane closer to the slow-moving fleet ten thousand feet below them. “I’m not going to get too close, and we’re too far from land for them to launch a plane at us.”

CAMs, or Catapult Aircraft Merchantmen, were the Allies’ answer to German aerial reconnaissance. A long rail was mounted over the bows of a freighter, and, with a rocket assist, they could launch a Hawker Sea Hurricane fighter aircraft to shoot down the lumbering Kondor s or even attack surfaced U-boats.

The drawback to the CAMs was that the planes couldn’t land back aboard their mother ship. The Hurricanes either had to be close enough to Great Britain or some other friendly area for the pilots to land normally. Otherwise, the plane had to be ditched in the sea and the pilot rescued from the water.

The convoy steaming below the Fw 200 was more than a thousand miles from any Allied territory, and even with the bright moon a downed pilot would be impossible to rescue in the dark. There would be no Hurricanes launched tonight. The Kondor had nothing to fear from the mass of Allied shipping unless it strayed within range of the destroyers and the curtain of antiaircraft fire they could throw into the sky.

Ernst Kessler was counting rows of ships when winking lights suddenly appeared on the decks of two of the destroyers. “Captain!” he cried. “Fire from the convoy!” Lichtermann could just make out the destroyers beneath his wing. “Easy, lad,” he said. “Those are signal lamps. The ships are sailing under strict radio silence, so that’s how they communicate.”

“Oh. Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just get as accurate a count as you can.” The Kondor had been flying a lazy circle around the flotilla and was passing along its northern flank when Dietz, who manned the upper gun platform, shouted, “Incoming!” Lichtermann had no idea what the man was talking about and was a beat slow in reacting. A perfectly aimed string of 7.7mm machine-gun rounds raked the Kondor’s upper surface, starting at the base of the vertical stabilizer and walking up the entire length of the plane. Dietz was killed before he could get a shot off. Bullets penetrated the cockpit, and, amid the harsh patter of them ricocheting off metallic surfaces and the whistle of wind through rents in the fuselage, Lichtermann heard his copilot grunt in pain. He looked over to see the front of Ebelhardt’s flight jacket covered in blood.

Lichtermann mashed the rudder and pressed hard on the yoke to dive away from the Allied aircraft that had come out of nowhere.

It was the wrong maneuver.

Launched just weeks earlier, the MV Empire MacAlpine was a late addition to the convoy. Originally built as a grain carrier, the eight-thousand-ton vessel had spent five months in the Burntisland Shipyard having her superstructure replaced by a small control island, four hundred and sixty feet of run-way, and a hangar for four Fairley Swordfish torpedo bombers. She could still haul nearly as much grain as she could before her conversion. The Admiralty had always considered the CAMs a stopgap measure until a safer alternative could be found. As it was, the Merchant Aircraft Carriers, or MACs, like the MacAlpine, were to be used only until England secured a number of Essex Class escort carriers from the United States.

While the Kondor loitered over the convoy, two of the Swordfish had been launched from the MacAlpine and flown far enough out from the fleet that, when they climbed into the inky sky to ambush the much larger and faster German aircraft, Lichtermann and his men never knew they were coming. The Fairleys were biplanes, with top speeds barely half that of the Kondor. They each carried a Vickers machine gun, mounted above the radial engine’s cowling, and a gimballed Lewis gun in a rear-facing cockpit.

The second Swordfish lay in wait three thousand feet below the Focke-Wulf and was nearly invisible in the darkness. As the Kondor dove away from the first attacker, the second torpedo bomber, stripped of anything that could slow it, was in position.

A stream of fire poured into the front of the Kondor from the Vickers, while the second gunner leaned far over the rear cockpit coaming to train his Lewis gun on the pair of BMW engines attached to the port wing.

Coin-sized holes appeared all around Ernst Kessler, the aluminum glowing cherry red for an instant before fading. There had been only a few seconds between Dietz’s scream and the barrage that swept the underside of the Kondor, not nearly long enough for fear to cripple the teen. He knew his duty.

Swallowing hard because his stomach had yet to catch up with the plummeting aircraft, he squeezed his MG-15’s trigger, as the Fw continued to dive past the slower Swordfish. Tracers began to fill the sky, and he aimed the 7.92mm weapon like a fireman directing a stream of water. He could see a circle of little jets of fire glowing in the darkness. It was the exhaust popping around the Fairley’s radial engine, and it was there that he targeted the withering fire, even as his own plane was continuously hammered by the British craft.

The arcing line of tracers converged on the glowing circle, and, suddenly, it appeared as if the Allied plane’s nose was engulfed in fireworks. Sparks and tongues of fire enveloped the Swordfish, metal and fabric shredded by the assault. The propeller was torn apart, and the radial engine exploded as if it was a fragmentary grenade. Burning fuel and hot oil rolled over the exposed pilot and gunner. The Swordfish’s controlled dive, which matched the Kondor’s, became an out-of-control plummet.

The Fairley winged over, spiraling ever faster, as it burned like a meteor. Lichtermann began to level the Kondor. Kessler could see the flaming wreckage continue to drop away. It suddenly changed shape. The wings had torn loose from the Swordfish’s fuselage. Any aerodynamics the mortally wounded aircraft had possessed were gone. The Swordfish dropped like a stone, the flames winking out when the wreckage plowed into the uncaring sea.

When Ernst looked up and across the fifty-foot trailing edge of the port wing, the fear he had been too distracted to acknowledge hit him full force. Smoke trailed from both nine-cylinder engines, and he could plainly hear the power plants were misfiring badly.

“Captain,” he shouted into the microphone.

“Shut up, Kessler,” Lichtermann snapped. “Radioman, get up here and give me a hand. Ebelhardt’s dead.”

“Captain, the port engines,” Kessler insisted.

“I know, damnit, I know. Shut up.”

The first Swordfish that had attacked was well astern, and most likely had already turned to rejoin the convoy, so there was nothing Kessler could do but stare in horror at the smoke rushing by in the slipstream. Lichtermann shut down the inboard engine in hopes of extinguishing the flames. He let the propeller windmill for a moment before reengaging the starter. The engine coughed and caught, and fire appeared around the cowling, flames quickly blackening the aluminum skin of the nacelle.

With the inboard engine producing a little thrust, Lichtermann chanced shutting off the outside motor.

When he kicked on the starter again, the engine fired immediately, producing only an occasional wisp of smoke. He immediately killed the still-burning inboard engine, fearing the fire could spread to the Kondor’s fuel lines, and throttled back the damaged outside motor to save it for as long as he could. With two engines functioning properly and a third running at half power, they could make it back to base.

Tense minutes trickled by. Young Kessler resisted the urge to ask the pilot about their situation. He knew Lichtermann would tell him something as soon as he could. Kessler jumped and hit his head on an internal strut when he heard a new sound, a whooshing gush that came from directly behind him. The Plexiglas canopy protecting his position was suddenly doused with droplets of some liquid. It took him a moment to realize Lichtermann must have calculated the Kondor’s fuel load and the distance back to their base at Narvik. He was dumping excess gasoline in order to lighten the aircraft as much as possible. The fuel-dump tube was located behind his ventral gun position.

“How are you doing down there, Kessler?” Lichtermann asked after cutting off the flow.

“Um, fine, sir,” Kessler stammered. “Where did those planes come from?”

“I didn’t even see them,” the pilot confessed.

“They were biplanes. Well, at least the one I shot down was.”

“Must be Swordfish,” Lichtermann said. “It appears the Allies have a new trick up their sleeve. Those didn’t come off a CAM. The rocket-assisted motors would tear the wings clean off. The British must have a new aircraft carrier.”

“But we didn’t see any planes taking off.”

“They could have seen us coming on radar and launched before we spotted the convoy.”

“Can we radio this information to base?”

“Josef ’s working on it now. The radio’s still picking up nothing but static. We’ll be over the coast in a half hour. Reception should clear by then.”

“What do you want me to do, sir?”

“Stay at your station, and keep an eye out for any more Swordfish. We’re making less than a hundred knots, and one could sneak up on us.”

“What about Lieutenant Ebelhardt and Corporal Dietz?”

“Didn’t I hear that your father’s a minister or something?”

“Grandfather, sir. At the Lutheran church in our village.”

“Next letter home to him, have him say a prayer. Ebelhardt and Dietz are both dead.” There was no more talk after that. Kessler continued to stare into the darkness, hoping to spot an enemy plane but praying he didn’t. He tried not to think about how he had just killed two men. It was war, and they had ambushed the Kondor without warning, so he shouldn’t feel the creeping sense of guilt tingling along his nerves. His hands shouldn’t be trembling and his stomach shouldn’t be so knotted. He wished Lichtermann hadn’t mentioned his grandfather. He could imagine what the stern minister would say. He hated the government and this foolish war they had started, and now it had turned his youngest grandchild into a killer.

Kessler knew he’d never be able to look his grandfather in the eye again.

“I can see the coast,” Lichtermann announced after forty minutes. “We’ll make Narvik yet.” The Kondor was down to three thousand feet when it flashed over Norway’s north coast. It was a barren, ugly land of foaming surf crashing against featureless cliffs and islands. Only a few fishing villages clung to the crags and inlets, where natives eked a meager living from the sea.

Ernst Kessler felt a small lift in his spirits. Somehow, being over land made him feel safer. Not that a crash into the rocky terrain below would be survivable, but dying on the ground, where the wreckage could be located and his body given a proper burial, seemed so much better than the anonymity of dying at sea, like the British pilots he’d shot down.

Fate chose that instant to deal her final card. The outboard port engine, which had been humming along at half power and keeping the big reconnaissance plane in trim, gave no warning. It simply seized so hard that the propeller went from a whirling disc providing stability to a stationary sculpture of burnished metal that added a tremendous amount of drag.

On the flight deck, Lichtermann slammed the rudder hard over in an attempt to keep the Kondor from spiraling. The thrust from the starboard wing and the drag from the port made the aircraft all but impossible to fly. It kept wanting to nose over to the left and dive.

Kessler was thrown violently against his gun mount, and a loop of ammunition whipped around him like a snake. It cracked against his face, so that his vision went dim and blood jetted from both nostrils. It came at him again and would have slammed the side of his head had he not ducked and pinned the shining brass belt against a bulkhead.

Lichtermann held the plane steady for a few seconds longer but knew it was a losing battle. The Kondor was too unbalanced. If he had any hope of landing it, he had to equalize thrust and drag. He reached out a gloved hand and hit the kill switches for the starboard engines. They wound down quickly. The stationary propeller continued to cause extra drag on the port side, but Lichtermann could compensate, as his aircraft became an oversized glider.

“Kessler, get up here and strap in,” Lichtermann shouted over the intercom. “We’re going to crash.” The plane shot over a mountain guarding a fjord with a small glacier at its head, the ice dazzlingly white against the jagged black rock.

Ernst had his shoulder straps off and was bending to crawl out of the gun position when something far below caught his eye. Deep in the cleft of the fjord was a building constructed partially on the glacier. Or perhaps something so ancient that the glacier had started to bury it. It was difficult to judge scale in his brief glimpse, but it looked large, like some kind of old Viking storehouse.

“Captain,” Kessler cried. “Behind us. In that fjord. There is a building. I think we can land on the ice.” Lichtermann hadn’t seen anything, but Kessler was facing backward and would have had an unobstructed view into the fjord. The terrain ahead of the Kondor was broken ground, with ice-carved hillocks as sharp as daggers. The plane’s undercarriage would collapse the instant they touched down, and the rock would shred the aircraft’s skin as easily as paper.

“Are you sure?” he shouted back.

“Yes, sir. It was on the edge of the glacier. I could see it in the moonlight. There is definitely a building there.”

Without power, Lichtermann had one shot at landing the plane. He was certain that if he tried it out in the open, he and his two remaining crew members would be killed in the crash. Landing on a glacier wouldn’t be a picnic either, but at least there was a chance they would walk away.

He muscled the yoke over, fighting the Kondor’s inertia. Turning the plane caused the wing surfaces to lose lift. The altimeter began to spin backward twice as fast as when he was maintaining level flight. There was nothing Lichtermann could do about it. It was simple physics.

The big aircraft carved through the sky, coming back on a northerly heading. The mountain that had hidden the glacier from Lichtermann’s view loomed ahead. He silently thanked the bright moonlight, because, at the mountain’s base, he could see a field of virgin white, a patch of glacial ice at least a mile long. He saw no indication of the building Kessler had spotted, but it didn’t matter. The ice was what he focused on.

It rose gently from the sea for most of its length before seeming to fall from a cleft in the side of the mountain, a near-vertical wall of ice that was so thick it appeared blue in the uncertain light. A few small icebergs dotted the long fjord.

The Kondor was sinking fast. Lichtermann barely had the altitude to turn the plane one last time to line up with the glacier. They dropped below the mountain’s peak. The glacially shaped rock appeared less than an arms’ span from the wingtip. The ice, which looked smooth from a thousand feet, appeared rougher the closer they fell toward it, like small waves that had been flash-frozen. Lichtermann didn’t extend the landing gear. If one strut was torn off when they hit, the plane would cartwheel and tear itself apart.

“Hang on,” he said. His throat was so dry the words came out in a tight croak.

Ernst had climbed from his position and had strapped himself in the radioman’s seat. Josef was on the flight deck with Lichtermann. The radio’s dials glowed milky white. There were no windows nearby, so the inside of the aircraft was pitch-black. At hearing the pilot’s terse warning, Kessler bent double, wrapping his hands around the back of his neck and clamping his knees with his elbows, as he’d been trained.

Prayers tumbled from his lips.

The Kondor struck the glacier with a glancing blow, rose a dozen feet, and then came down harder. The sound of metal against the ice was like a train racing through a tunnel. Kessler was thrown violently against his safety straps but didn’t dare uncurl himself from his seated fetal position. The plane crashed into something with a jarring bump that sent radio manuals fluttering from their shelves. The wing struck ice, and the aircraft began to spin, shedding parts in chunks.

He didn’t know what was better, being alone in the hull of the plane and not knowing what was happening outside or being in the cockpit and seeing the Kondor come apart.

There was a crash below where Kessler huddled, and a blast of frigid air shot through the fuselage. The Plexiglas protecting the forward gunner’s position had been blown inward. Chunks of ice that were being shaved off the glacier whirled through the plane, and, still, it felt like they were not slowing.

Then came the loudest sound yet, an echoing explosion of torn metal that was followed immediately by the rank smell of high-octane aviation fuel. Kessler knew what had happened. One of the wings had dug into the ice and had been sheared off. Though Lichtermann had dumped most of their gasoline, enough remained in the lines to make the threat of fire a very real one.

The plane continued to toboggan across the glacier, driven by her momentum and the slight downward slope of the ice. But she had finally started to slow. Having her port wing torn off had turned the aircraft perpendicular to her direction of travel. With more of her hull scraping against the ice, friction was overcoming gravity.

Kessler allowed himself a sigh. He knew in just moments the Kondor would come to a complete stop.

Captain Lichtermann had done it. He relaxed the death grip he’d maintained since the shouted warning and was about to straighten in his seat when the starboard wing tore into the ice and was ripped off at the root.

The fuselage rolled over the severed wing and flipped onto its back in a savage motion that nearly tossed Kessler out of his safety belts. His neck whiplashed brutally, the pain radiating all the way to his toes.

The young airman hung dazed from his straps for several long seconds until he realized he could no longer hear the rasping scrape of aluminum over ice. The Kondor had come to a halt. Fighting nausea, he carefully unhooked his belts and lowered himself to the aircraft’s ceiling. He felt something soft give under his feet. In the darkness, he shifted so he was standing on one of the fuselage support members. He felt down and immediately yanked his hand back. He had touched a corpse, and his fingers were covered in a warm, sticky fluid he knew to be blood.

“Captain Lichtermann?” he called. “Josef?”

The reply was a whistle of cold wind through the downed aircraft.

Kessler rummaged through a cabinet below the radio and found a flashlight. Its naked beam revealed the body of Max Ebelhardt, the copilot, who had died in the first instant of the attack. Calling out for Josef and Lichtermann, he trained the light on the inverted cockpit. He spotted the men still strapped to their seats, their arms dangling as limp as rag dolls’.

Neither man moved, not even when Kessler crawled over to them and laid a hand on the pilot’s shoulder. Lichtermann’s head was back, his blue eyes unblinking. His face was dark red, suffused with blood pooling in his skull. Kessler touched his cheek. The flesh was still warm, but the skin had lost its elasticity. It felt like putty. He flashed the light over to the radioman/gunner. Josef Vogel was also dead.

Vogel’s head had smashed against a bulkhead—Kessler could see the blood smeared against the metal—while Lichtermann’s neck must have been broken when the plane flipped over.

The rank smell of gasoline finally burned through the fog in Kessler’s head, and he staggered to the rear of the aircraft, where the main door was located. The crash had crushed the frame, and he had to slam his shoulder into the metal to pop it open. He fell out of the Kondor and sprawled on the ice. Chunks of the fuselage and wing were strewn along the glacier, and he could plainly see the deep furrows the aircraft had gouged into the ice.

He wasn’t sure how imminent the threat of fire was or how long it would be before he could safely return to the damaged Kondor . But with the wind chilled by the ice as it came down off the glacier, he knew he couldn’t remain out in the open for very long. His best bet lay in finding the mysterious building he’d spotted before the crash. He would wait there until he was certain the Kondor wouldn’t burn and then return. Hopefully, the radio survived the crash. If it hadn’t, there was a small inflatable boat stored in the tail section of the plane. It would take him days to reach a village, but if he hugged the coastline he could make it.

Having a plan helped keep the horror of the past hour at bay. He just had to focus on surviving. When he was safely back in Narvik, he would allow himself to dwell on his dead comrades. He hadn’t been particularly close to any of them, preferring his studies to their carousing, but they had been his crew.

Kessler’s head pounded, and his neck became so stiff he could barely turn it. He took bearings on the mountain that hid so much of the tight fjord and started trudging across the glacier. Distances on the ice were hard to determine, and what had looked like just a couple of kilometers turned into an hours-long walk that left his feet numb. A sudden rain squall had drenched him, the water freezing on his coat flaking off in icy bits that crackled with each step.

He was thinking about turning back and taking his chances with the plane when his eye caught the outline of the building thrust partially out of the ice. As he got closer and details emerged from the dark, he began to shiver with more than the cold. It wasn’t a building at all.

Kessler came to a stop under the bow of a huge ship, constructed of thick wood with copper sheathing and towering over his head, that had become trapped in the ice. Knowing how slowly glaciers moved, he estimated that for the vessel to be so deeply buried it had been here for thousands of years. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Even as that thought crossed his mind, he knew it wasn’t true. He’d seen pictures of this ship before. There were illustrations in the Bible his grandfather used to read to him when he was a boy. Kessler had much preferred the Old Testament stories to the preachings of the New, so he even recalled the ship’s dimensions—one hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits tall.

“. . . and onto this ark Noah loaded his animals two by two.” CHAPTER 1

BANDAR ABBAS, IRAN

PRESENT DAY

THE TIRED-LOOKING FREIGHTER HAD LAIN AT ANCHOR off the busy port of Bandar Abbas long enough to arouse the suspicion of the Iranian military. An armed patrol boat was dispatched from the nearby naval base and streaked across the shallow azure waters toward the five-hundred-plus-foot ship.

The vessel was named the Norego and carried a Panamanian registry, if the flag hanging from her jack staff was any indication. From the look of her, she had been converted to container duty after serving her life as a general cargo vessel. Growing up from her deck like branchless trees were five cargo booms, three forward and two aft. Around them were stacks of brightly colored containers piled to just below her bridge windows. Despite the large quantity of containers, she sat high in the water, with at least fifteen feet of red antifouling paint showing below her maximum-load line. Her hull was a uniform blue, but looked as though she hadn’t seen a new coat of paint in some time, while her upperworks were a mismatched shade of green. Her twin funnels were so darkened by soot that the original color was indeterminate. A trickle of smoke coiled from the stacks and hung over the ship in a pall.

Scaffolding of metal struts had been lowered over her fantail, and men in grease-smeared coveralls were working on the freighter’s rudder bearing.

As the patrol craft approached, the NCO acting as captain of the nimble boat raised a megaphone to his mouth. “Ahoy, Norego,” he said in Farsi. “Please be advised that we are going to board you.” Muhammad Ghami repeated his words in English, the international language of maritime trade.

A moment later, a grossly overweight man wearing a sweat-stained officer’s shirt appeared at the head of the gangway. He nodded to a subaltern, and the boarding stairs began to descend.

As they drew nearer, Ghami saw captain’s epaulets on the man’s shoulders and sourly wondered how a man of such rank could let himself go so badly. The Norego’s master carried a heavy gut that sagged ten inches over his belt. Under his white cap, his hair was greasy black with gray streaks, and his face was covered with stubble. He could only imagine where the owners of such a decrepit ship would find such a man to command her.

With one of his men standing behind the patrol boat’s .50 caliber machine gun, Ghami nodded for another sailor to tie the rigid-hulled inflatable to the gangway. Another sailor stood close by, an AK-47

slung across his shoulder. Ghami checked that the flap over his holster was secured and leapt onto the boarding stairs with his second-in-command at his heels. As he climbed, he observed the captain try to smooth his hair and straighten his filthy shirt. They were futile gestures.

Ghami reached the deck, noting that the plates were sprung in places and hadn’t seen paint in decades.

Rust caked nearly every surface except for the shipping containers, which probably hadn’t been on board long enough for the crew’s lack of diligence to affect them. There were gaps in the railing that had been repaired with lengths of chain, and corrosion had eaten into the superstructure so much that it looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Hiding his disgust, Ghami snapped a crisp salute at the captain. The man scratched his ample stomach and made a vague gesture at the bill of his cap.

“Captain, I am Ensign Muhammad Ghami of the Iranian Navy. This is Seaman Khatahani.”

“Welcome aboard the Norego, Ensign,” the freighter’s master replied. “I am Captain Ernesto Esteban.” His Spanish accent was so thick that Ghami had to go over each word in his head to make sure he understood. Esteban was a few inches taller than the Iranian sailor, but the extra weight he carried hunched his shoulders and curved his back so that he and Ghami appeared almost the same height. His eyes were dark and watery, and when he smiled to shake Ghami’s hand his teeth were yellowed and crooked. His breath smelled like curdled milk.

“What seems to be the trouble with your steering gear?” Esteban cursed in Spanish. “The bearing froze up. Fourth time in a month. The cheap owners”—he spat—“won’t let me have it fixed in a shipyard so my men have to do. We should be under way by tonight, maybe in the morning.”

“And what is your cargo and destination?”

The captain slapped one of the shipping containers. “Empty boxes. They’re all the Norego is good for.”

“I don’t understand,” Ghami said.

“We’re transporting empty containers from Dubai to Hong Kong. Full containers get shipped in, unloaded, and pile up on the dock. We take them back to Hong Kong, where they are reloaded.” That explained why the ship was riding so high in the water, Ghami thought. Empty containers weighed only a few tons each. “And what do you carry on your return trip here?”

“Barely enough to cover our costs,” Esteban said bitterly. “No one will insure us with anything more valuable than boxes of nothing.”

“I need to see your crew manifest, cargo manifest, and the ship’s registration.”

“Is there some kind of problem?” Esteban asked quickly.

“I will determine that after I have seen your papers,” Ghami said with enough menace to make certain the disgusting man complied. “Your vessel is deep in Iranian waters, and I am fully in my right to inspect every inch of this ship if I see fit.”

“No problema, señor,” Esteban said with oily smoothness. His grin was more grimace. “Why don’t we step out of this heat and into my office?”

Bandar Abbas sat tucked in the tightest curve of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow entrance to the Persian Gulf. Summertime temperatures rarely dipped below a hundred and twenty during the day, and there was little wind. The metal decking beneath the men’s feet was quite literally hot enough to fry eggs.

“Lead the way,” Ghami said, and swept his hand toward the superstructure.

The interior spaces aboard the Norego were as dilapidated as her outside. The floors were chipped linoleum, the walls bare metal with large swatches of peeled paint, and the fluorescent lights mounted to the ceilings buzzed loudly. Several of them flickered at erratic intervals, casting the narrow corridor in stark shadow.

Esteban led Ghami and Khatahani up a tight companionway with a loose railing and onto another short corridor. He opened the door to his office and gestured for the men to enter. The captain’s cabin could be seen through an open door on the opposite side of the office. The bed was unmade, and the sheets that spilled onto the floor were stained. A single dresser stood bolted to the wall, and the mirror above it had a jagged crack running from corner to corner.

The office was a rectangular room with a single porthole so rimed with salt that only murky light came through. The walls were adorned with paintings of sad-eyed clowns done in garish colors on black velvet. Another door led to a tiny bathroom that was filthier than a public washroom in a Tehran slum. So many cigarettes had been smoked in the office that the stale smell seemed to coat everything, including the back of Ghami’s mouth. A lifelong smoker himself, even the Iranian naval officer was disgusted.

Esteban jammed the bare wires of a desk lamp into an outlet next to his desk, cursed when they sparked but seemed pleased that the lamp came on. He eased himself into his chair with a groan. He indicated for the two inspectors to take the seats opposite. Ghami used a pen from his shirt pocket to flick the dried-out carcass of a cockroach from the chair before sitting.

The captain rummaged through his desk, coming out with a liquor bottle. He eyed the two Muslims and returned the bottle to its drawer, muttering in Spanish. “Okay, here’s the manifest.” He handed over a binder. “Like I said, we’re carrying nothing but empty containers bound for Hong Kong.” He set other binders onto the desk. “My crew’s manifest. A bunch of lazy ingrates, if you ask me. So if you want to detain any of ’em, be my guest. These are the Norego’s registration papers.” Ghami thumbed through the list of crew members, noting their nationalities and double-checking their identity papers. The ship’s complement was a mixed bag of Chinese, Mexicans, and Caribbean islanders, which jibed with the men he had seen working on the rudder. The captain himself was from Guadalajara, Mexico, had been with Trans-Ocean Shipping and Freight for eleven years and master of the Norego for six. Ghami was surprised to see that Esteban was only forty-two. The man looked closer to sixty.

There was nothing here to arouse suspicion, but Ghami wanted to be thorough.

“It says here you are carrying eight hundred and seventy containers.”

“Thereabout.”

“They are stacked in your holds?”

“Those that aren’t deck-loaded,” Esteban agreed.

“I do not wish to insult you, Captain, but a ship such as this was not designed to carry containers efficiently. I suspect there is room in your holds where contraband may be hidden. I wish to inspect all six.”

“Until my steering gear’s fixed, I’ve got nothing but time, Ensign,” Esteban breezed. “You want to go over the whole ship, you be my guest. I have nothing to hide.”

The office door was suddenly thrown open. A Chinese crewman wearing coveralls and wooden flip-flops jabbered excitedly at the captain in Cantonese. Esteban cursed and launched himself from his desk. His quick movements alerted the two Iranians. Ghami got to his feet, resting a hand on his holster.

Esteban ignored him entirely and raced across the room as fast as his extra hundred pounds of flab would allow. Just as he reached the bathroom door, the plumbing made a throaty, wet gurgle. He slammed the door shut, and, a moment later, they could all hear the sound of water erupting like a geyser and splashing against the ceiling. A new, more pungent smell overwhelmed the cramped office.

“Sorry about that,” Esteban said. “Seng here’s been working on our septic system. I don’t think he quite has it yet.”

“If they’re hiding anything,” Seaman Khatahani whispered to his superior in Farsi, “I don’t think I want to find it.”

“You’re right,” Ghami replied. “There isn’t a smuggler in the Gulf who would trust this fat lout or his broken-down scow.” Considering that smuggling along the Persian Gulf was a time-honored and noble tradition, Ghami wasn’t being facetious. He addressed Esteban, “Captain, I can see that your hands are full with simply maintaining your vessel. Your paperwork appears to be in order, so we won’t take up any more of your time.”

“You sure about that?” Esteban asked, cocking a bushy eyebrow. “I don’t mind giving you the nickel tour.”

Ghami got to his feet. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Suit yourself.” Esteban led them out of the office and back along the dim hallways. The glare of the afternoon sun was especially brutal after being in the dim confines of the ship. Backdropped against the hazy horizon behind the Norego, a twelve-hundred-foot supertanker was easing its way northward, where its holds would be filled with crude.

Ghami shook Esteban’s hand at the head of the gangplank. “If your steering problem isn’t corrected by morning, you must notify the Bandar Abbas port authorities. They may need to tow your vessel farther from the shipping lanes and into the harbor.”

“We’ll get this pig fixed soon enough,” Esteban said. “She’s tired, but there’s still life in the old Norego.” Ghami threw him a skeptical look. He descended to the patrol boat and nodded to his crewmen when he and Khatahani were aboard. The line was cast off, and the boat accelerated away from the tired freighter, its wake clean and white against the dark salty water.

Standing at the rail, Esteban made to wave at the Iranian vessel if any of her crew looked back, but it was as if they couldn’t distance themselves from the Norego fast enough. The captain scratched his ample belly and watched the patrol craft vanish into the distance. When it was no more than a speck, a second man emerged from the superstructure. He was older than Esteban, with a fringe of thinning auburn hair wreathing his otherwise-bald head. He had alert brown eyes and an easygoing demeanor, and while he’d done a good job keeping himself in shape, a slight paunch pressed at his beltline.

“The microphone in your office needs to be replaced,” he said without preamble. “You all sounded like cartoon characters sucking helium balloons.”

The captain took a moment to pluck wads of medical gauze from behind his molars. The fleshiness around his cheeks vanished instantly. He then peeled off the brown contact lenses to reveal startlingly blue eyes. The transformation from a down-on-his-luck sea dog into a ruggedly handsome man was completed when he removed his cap and dragged the greasy wig from his head. His hair was naturally blond, and he kept it trimmed to a long crew cut. The stubble was his own, and he couldn’t wait to shave it off, but that wouldn’t come until they had cleared out of Iranian waters just in case he had to play Ernesto Esteban, master of the MV Norego , again. “Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, that’s us,” Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo said with a grin.

“I heard you had to hit the panic button.”

There were hidden controls under the desk in the office that Cabrillo could use in a variety of situations.

One of them summoned Eddie Seng, who’d been standing by to play the role of an ill-fated engineer, and activated a pump in the plumbing below the nonworking toilet. The pump made the commode erupt like a volcano. Chemicals added to the water furthered the illusion by creating a noxious smell.

“Ensign Ghami wanted to play Sherlock Holmes and have a look around. I had to discourage him,” Cabrillo said to Max Hanley, vice president of the Corporation, of which Juan was the chairman.

“Think they’ll come back?”

“If we’re here in the morning you can bank on it.”

“Then I guess we should make sure we’re not,” Hanley replied with a devilish look in his eye.

The two men entered the superstructure. Juan led them to a utility closet packed with mops, broom, and cleaning supplies that apparently had never been used. He worked the handles of a slop sink as though he was dialing a safe. There was a distinct click, and the back wall popped open to reveal a richly carpeted hallway beyond. Gone were the utilitarian metal walls and cheap linoleum. The hallway was paneled with dark mahogany, and chandeliers along the ceiling provided warm light.

Like the disguise Cabrillo had donned to fool the Iranian Navy, the Norego wasn’t what she seemed. In fact, that wasn’t even her name. By transposing the metal letters held to her bow and stern by magnets, the crew had created the Norego from her real name, Oregon.

Built originally as a lumber carrier, the vessel had plied the Pacific for nearly two decades, hauling Canadian and American timber to Japan and the other Asian markets. The eleven-thousand-ton freighter had served her owners admirably, but the ravages of time were getting to her. As with any older ship, she was nearing the end of her useful life. Her hull was starting to corrode, and her engines no longer worked as efficiently as when they were new. The owners placed advertisements in maritime trade magazines that they were interested in selling her for scrap, knowing their once-proud flagship would fetch a few dollars per ton.

At the time, Juan Cabrillo was starting the Corporation, and he needed a ship of some kind. He’d visited ports all over the globe, looking for the right one. When he saw pictures of the lumber hauler, he knew he’d found his freighter. He’d been forced to bid against three breaker yards, but he still managed to buy the vessel for far less than had he purchaced a newer ship. He had no interest whatsoever with the vessel’s cargo-hauling abilities. He wanted her for her anonymity.

The Oregon then spent the better part of six months in a covered dry dock in Vladivostok, going through the most radical refit in history. Without changing her outward appearance, the vessel was completely gutted. Her old diesel engines were replaced with the latest cutting-edge power plants. Using a process called magnetohydrodynamics, the engines employed supercooled magnets to strip naturally occurring free electrons from seawater to produce a near-limitless amount of electricity. That power was then fed into four aqua pulse jets that pushed water through a pair of gleaming vectored-thrust drive tubes at tremendous force. The technology had been tried on only a few vessels, and since the fire on an MHD-driven cruise ship called the Emerald Dolphin it had been banished back to laboratories and scale models.

At the speeds the vessel was now capable of, her hull had to be stiffened and reinforced. Stabilizing fins were added, and her bow modified to give her modest icebreaking abilities. Several hundred miles of wiring were run throughout the ship for her sophisticated suite of electronics, everything from military-grade radar and sonar to dozens of closed-circuit television cameras. Keeping tabs on the system was a Sun Microsystems supercomputer

Then came the weapons. Two torpedo tubes, a 120mm cannon that used the targeting system from an M1A1 Abrams main battle tank. She sported three General Electric 20mm Gatling guns, vertical launchers for surface-to-surface antiship missiles, and a slew of .30 caliber machine guns for self-defense.

All the weapons were cleverly hidden behind retractable hull plates, like the German K boats used during World War I. The .30 cals were tucked inside rusted oil barrels permanently affixed to the deck. With a flick of a button in the operations center, the barrels’ lids would pop open and the weapons would emerge, fired remotely by gunners safely inside the ship.

Cabrillo added other surprises, too. Her aft-most hold was converted into a hangar for a four-passenger Robinson R44 helicopter that could be hydraulically raised to the deck. Concealed doors where she could unleash all manner of small craft, including Zodiacs and a SEAL assault boat, were at her waterline, while, along her keel, two massive panels opened into a cavernous space called a moon pool, where a pair of mini-subs could be launched covertly.

As for the crew’s accommodations, no expense was spared. The passageways and cabins were as luxurious as any five-star hotel. The Oregon boasted probably the finest kitchen afloat, with a staff of cordon bleu-trained chefs. One of the ballast tanks along her flanks, designed to make the vessel appear fully loaded should the need arise, was lined with Carrara marble tiles and doubled as an Olympic-length swimming pool.

The workers who’d done the refit had thought they had been doing the job on behalf of the Russian Navy as part of a new fleet of covert spy ships. Cabrillo had been assisted in this ruse by the commander of the base where the dry dock was located, an eminently corruptible admiral whom Juan had known for years.

The money to start the Corporation and pay for the conversion of the Oregon had come from a hidden Cayman Islands bank account that had once belonged to an assassin-for-hire Cabrillo had taken care of for his former employer, the Central Intelligence Agency. Technically, the money should have reverted to the CIA’s black budget, but Juan was given tacit approval to fund his enterprise by his immediate superior, Langston Overholt IV.

Cabrillo had been contemplating leaving the CIA for a short while when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and caught everyone at Langley completely unaware. Central Intelligence had fought the Cold War for so long that when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union imploded, they weren’t ready for the regional flare-ups that Juan had known would follow. The Agency’s corporate culture was too entrenched to see the looming danger. When Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb, the CIA learned about it from news broadcasts. Cabrillo felt the CIA’s inflexibility was blinding them to how the world was reshaping itself after so many years of being dominated by two superpowers.

Overholt never formally gave Juan permission to fund his own covert paramilitary company, the Corporation, but he, too, had understood that the rules were changing. Technically, Cabrillo and his crew were mercenaries, but while the money to fund their operation could never be traced back to the United States, Juan never forgot who allowed him to get his start. So it was on Overholt’s behalf that the Oregon was sitting a couple of miles off Iran’s coast, pretending to be something she was not.

Cabrillo and Hanley made their way to a conference room deep inside the ship. The meeting that Juan had been chairing when secondary radar had picked up the approaching patrol boat and prompted him to play Ernesto Esteban was still going on.

Eddie Seng was standing in front of a flat-panel television with a laser pointer in hand. Far from the hapless plumber he’d portrayed for the Iranians, Seng was a CIA veteran like Cabrillo. Because of his uncanny ability to meticulously plan and carry out missions, Eddie was the Corporation’s director of shore operations. No detail was too small not to demand his full attention. It was his intense concentration that allowed him to spend much of his career under deep cover in China, eluding perhaps the most ruthless secret police in the world.

Seated around the large conference table was the rest of the Corporation’s senior staff, with the exception of Dr. Julia Huxley. Julia was the Oregon’s chief medical officer, and she rarely attended mission briefings unless she was going ashore.

“So did you chase away the Iranian Navy with your breath?” Linda Ross asked Juan when he sat next to her.

“Oh, sorry.” Cabrillo fished in his pockets for a mint to mask the smell of the Limburger cheese he’d eaten just before the sailors came aboard. “I think it was my bad English,” he said in the horrible stereotyped accent he’d used.

Linda was the newly promoted vice president for operations. With her strawberry blond hair, long bangs that she was forever brushing away from her green eyes, and the dash of freckles across her cheeks and nose, Linda had a pixieish appearance. Her high-pitched, almost-girlish voice didn’t help. However, when she spoke, every member of the crew knew to listen. She’d been an intelligence officer on an Aegis Class cruiser and left the military after being a staffer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Across from them sat the Oregon’s best ship handler, Eric Stone, and his partner in crime, Mark Murphy, whose responsibility was the vast arsenal of weapons secreted throughout the vessel.

Farther down the table were Hali Kasim, the chief communications officer, and Franklin Lincoln, a massively built ex-SEAL who was in charge of the ship’s complement of former Special Forces operators, or, as Max called, them the “gundogs.”

“Are you back, Chairman?” a voice from a speakerphone called. It was Langston Overholt, on a secure channel from Langley.

As founder of the Corporation, Juan maintained the title of chairman, and only one member of the crew, the elderly chief steward, Maurice, called him captain.

“Just keeping the natives from getting too restless,” Cabrillo replied.

“There wasn’t any indication that they are suspicious, was there?”

“No, Lang. Despite the fact we’re only a couple of miles from the Bandar Abbas naval base, the Iranians are used to a lot of shipping coming in and out of here. They took one look at the ship, one at me, and knew we aren’t a threat.”

“There’s a very narrow window in which to pull this off,” Overholt cautioned. “But if you think we should delay, I’ll understand.”

“Lang, we are here, the rocket torpedoes are here, and the arms-export limitation talks with Russia are in two weeks. It’s now or never.”

While the proliferation of nuclear material remained the most critical problem facing global security, the exportation of weapons systems to less-than-stable governments was also a top concern for Washington.

Russia and China were racking up billions of dollars in sales for missile systems, combat aircraft, tanks, and even five Kilo Class subs that were recently bought by Tehran.

“If you want proof,” Juan continued, “that Russia is supplying the Iranians with their VA-111 Shkval torpedoes, we go in tonight.”

The Shkval was perhaps the most sophisticated torpedo ever built, capable of reaching speeds in excess of two hundred knots because it cut through the water in a cocoon of air in the form of supercavitating bubbles. It had a range of seventy-five hundred yards, and was reportedly very difficult to steer due to its incredible speed, so it was basically a last-resort weapon to be fired from a crippled submarine in order to destroy its attacker.

“The Iranians claim to have developed their own version of the Shkval without Russian help, or so they say,” Max Hanley said. “If we can prove the Russians gave them the technology, despite their protests to the contrary, it will go a long way in hammering them on reducing arms exports in the future.”

“Or this could blow up in our faces if you guys get caught,” Overholt said testily. “I’m not so sure this is still such a good idea.”

“Relax, Langston.” Cabrillo laced his fingers behind his head, detected a little of the glue used to hold on his wig and carefully plucked it off. “How many jobs have we pulled off for you without a hitch? The Iranians won’t know what hit them, and we’ll be five hundred miles from the Gulf by the time they figure out we were in their submarine pen. And after they realize what happened, the first place they are going to look is the American Navy ships pulling interdiction duty up and down these waters, not a broken-down, Panamanian-flagged derelict with a bad steering bearing.”

“Which reminds me, Mr. Overholt,” Eddie said from the head of the room. “You will have our naval forces pulled far enough back from Bandar Abbas that any charge of American intervention by Tehran will prove fruitless?”

“There isn’t an American ship within a hundred miles of the port,” Overholt assured. “It took some doing to keep the Fifth Fleet brass from getting suspicions of their own, but we’re set on that end of it.” Cabrillo cleared his throat. “Let’s just do it. In twelve hours, we’ll have the proof you need to take the Russians to task. We all understand the risks, but if they mean that the Kremlin’s going to be forced to rethink selling arms to every mullah with deep pockets we have to go.”

“I know. You’re right,” Overholt sighed. “Juan, just be careful, okay?”

“Count on it, my friend.”

“Do you need me to stay on the line?” the veteran CIA officer asked.

“You know where to deposit the money once we’re out,” Juan replied. “Unless you want to know specifics of our operation, I think you should hang up.”

“You got it.” The line clicked dead.

Juan addressed the assembled officers. “Okay, we’ve been at this long enough. Are there any last-minute details that need to be cleared up before we adjourn?”

“The containers on deck,” Max said. “Should we start breaking them down at nightfall or wait until you return from the navy base and we’re under way? And what about the paint and the other camouflage measures?”

The stacks of containers littering the Oregon’s deck were so much window dressing, just another way for the crew to hide the nature of their ship. They could be folded flat and stored in one of her holds, altering her silhouette. The blue paint coating her hull and the green covering her upperworks was an environmentally friendly pigment that could be washed off using the fire-suppression water cannons mounted on the superstructure. Beneath the paint her hull was a patchwork of mismatched colors that looked as though they had been applied over a couple of generations of owners. That coating, however, was a radar-absorbing compound similar to the skin of a stealth fighter.

Metal plates had also been installed around key features of the ship to further distort her shape. A fairing over her bows that gave her a racier look would be removed. The twin funnels she was currently carrying would be dismantled and a large, oval stack erected to replace them. This funnel also acted as armor to protect her main radar domes, which were currently retracted into the amidships accommodations block.

To further change her appearance, the ballast tanks would be flooded to make her look like her holds were loaded with goods.

In all, it would take four hours and the work of every crewman aboard, but, when they were done, the Norego would have vanished completely and the Oregon would be sailing innocently down the Persian Gulf, flying, ironically, the Iranian flag, because that was where the ship was actually registered.

Juan thought for a moment before answering, balancing risk versus reward. “Eric, what’s the moon tonight?”

“Only a quarter,” the ship’s navigator and de facto weather-man said. “And the meteorological report calls for cloud cover after midnight.”

“Let’s leave everything in place until midnight,” Cabrillo told his crew. “We should be back aboard by two A.M. We’ll have a two-hour head start on the conversion work, but if something goes wrong we can put everything back quickly enough. Anything else?” There were a few head shakes and a general rustling of papers as everyone got ready to leave.

“We’ll meet in the moon pool at eleven hundred hours for final equipment checks. We launch the mini no later than eleven forty-five. If we’re late, we’re going to run into trouble with the tides.” Cabrillo stood to get their attention. “I want it clear to all department heads, and especially to shore operations”—he looked pointedly at Eddie Seng and Franklin Lincoln—“that there can be no slipups. We’ve got a good plan. Stick to it and everything will go as smooth as silk. The situation in this part of the world is bad enough without mercenaries getting caught trying to steal a couple of rocket torpedoes.” Linc grumbled good-naturedly, “You all know I got out of Detroit to get away from my friends who were boosting stuff.”

“Out of the frying pan . . .” Eddie grinned.

“. . . and into an Iranian jail.”

CHAPTER 2

YEARS OF WORKING WITH THE CIA HAD TRAINED Juan to function on very little sleep over long periods of time. It wasn’t until he’d founded the Corporation and purchased the Oregon that he developed the mariner’s ability to fall asleep on command. After the boardroom conference, he’d returned to his cabin, an opulent suite more befitting a Manhattan apartment than a ship at sea, stripped out of his Captain Esteban costume, and fell into bed. Thoughts of the danger they’d be facing once the team was ashore kept him awake for less than a minute.

Without the need for an alarm clock, he awoke an hour before he was to report to the moon pool.

His sleep had been dreamless.

He strode into the bathroom, sat on a mahogany stool to remove his artificial leg, and hopped into the shower. With such a surplus of electricity, the Oregon’s water-heating system ensured that the lag time between turning the taps and a steaming shower was measured in seconds. Cabrillo stood under the near-scalding spray with his head bowed and water pounding his body. He’d accumulated a dozen lifetimes of scars over the years, and he vividly recalled the circumstances behind every one. It was the blunt pad of his stump that he thought the least about.

For most people, losing a limb would likely be a defining moment in their lives. And during the long months of rehab, it had been for Juan as well. But, after that, he barely gave it a moment’s consideration.

He had trained his body to accept the prosthesis and his mind to ignore it. As he’d told Dr. Huxley early on in his physical therapy, “I may be crippled, but I won’t allow myself to be handicapped.” The prosthetic leg he’d worn throughout the day was designed like a human limb, with a covering of flesh-toned rubber to match his own skin color and a foot with toes that even had nails and hair to match those of his left foot. After toweling off, and finally shaving off the itchy beard, he went to his closet to retrieve a very different limb.

There was a section on the Oregon dubbed the Magic Shop, and it was overseen by an award-winning Hollywood effects master named Kevin Nixon. It had been Nixon, working in secret, who had developed what Juan called his combat leg. Unlike the natural-looking prosthesis, this one looked like it had been left over from the Terminator movies. Constructed of titanium and carbon fiber, combat leg version 3.0 was a virtual arsenal in itself. A Kel-Tek .380 pistol was secreted in the calf, along with a perfectly balanced throwing knife. The leg also contained a wire garrote, a single-shot .50 caliber gun that fired through the heel, and storage compartments for all manner of equipment Cabrillo might need.

Just fitting it over his stump and attaching a set of reinforcing straps helped Juan prepare himself mentally for the mission.

There were two reasons he’d started the Corporation. One, of course, was as a moneymaking venture.

And, from that perspective, it had done better than his wildest dreams. Each member could retire with what they had earned in the years since joining, and Cabrillo himself could buy a small Caribbean island, if he so chose. But it was the second reason for forming his own security force that kept him at it long after a normal man would have hung up his guns. The need for such a group was so great that his conscience wouldn’t allow him to stop.

In just the past year, he and the crew of the Oregon had broken up a piracy ring that had been targeting ships carrying illegal Chinese immigrants and using them as slave labor at a remote gold mine, and they disrupted an ecoterrorist’s plan to steer a poison-laden hurricane into the United States.

It seemed that as soon as one job was complete there were two more equally deserving of the Corporation’s unique abilities. Evil was running rampant all over the globe, and the world powers were stymied to prevent its spread by the very morality that made them great. Though they worked under the guidance of Cabrillo’s own moral compass, he and his crew weren’t hampered by politicians, of any ilk, who were more concerned with reelections than results.

As Juan was dressing, the chief steward knocked on the cabin door and entered quietly.

“Breakfast, Captain,” Maurice said in his mournful English accent.

The steward was a veteran of the Royal Navy, having been forced into retirement because of his age. A rail-thin man with a shock of pure white hair, he carried himself ramrod straight, and remained unflappable no matter the circumstances. While Cabrillo himself could be a bit of a clotheshorse, nothing compared to the dark suits and crisp, white cotton shirts Maurice wore no matter the weather. In the years he’d been aboard the ship, no one had ever seen the steward sweat or shiver.

“Just set it on my desk,” Juan called as he strode from the bedroom adjoining his office. The room was done in rich woods, with coffered mahogany ceilings and matching display cabinets for some of the curiosities he had accumulated over the years. Framed as the centerpiece on one wall was a dramatic painting of the Oregon pounding through a raging storm.

Maurice set the silver service on the desk, frowning at the affront. There was a perfectly appropriate dining table in a nook in the chairman’s cabin. He removed the covers, and the smell of an omelet, kippers, and dark-roasted coffee filled the room. Maurice knew Cabrillo poured a small measure of cream in his first coffee of the day, so the steward had it ready by the time Juan plopped himself in his chair.

“So what’s the latest on young Mr. Stone’s Internet romance with the girl from Brazil?” Juan asked, and took a huge bite of egg.

Maurice was the shipboard clearinghouse for gossip, and Eric Stone’s numerous cyberaffairs was his favorite topic.

“Mr. Stone is beginning to suspect that he and the lady in question might have more in common than he was first led to believe,” Maurice said in a conspiratorial whisper.

Juan was opening the freestanding antique safe behind his desk as he listened. “That’s not usually a bad thing.”

“I am referring to gender, Captain. He thinks the lady may in fact be a man. Mr. Murphy showed me pictures he/she sent and proved they had been, how did he put it, ‘photoshopped’ to hide certain anatomical details.”

Cabrillo chuckled. “Poor Eric. The guy can’t even get lucky in a chat room.” He eased open the heavy door emblazoned with the name and logo of a long-defunct southwestern railroad. Nearly all the small arms kept aboard the Oregon were stored in the armory next to the soundproof shooting range, but Juan preferred to keep his guns in his office. In addition to the arsenal of machine pistols, assault rifles, and handguns, Juan also kept stacks of money from various countries, a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold coins struck from four national mints, and several small pouches of uncut diamonds. There was a particular forty-carat stone that he kept separate from the others that had been the gift of the newly elected president of Zimbabwe in appreciation for the Corporation’s efforts in releasing him from political prison.

“Dr. Huxley seems to have confirmed Mr. Murphy’s suspicions by checking the facial ratios of the individual’s face against norms for men and women.” As Maurice continued, Cabrillo checked over a semiautomatic pistol, the only weapon he was taking with him. Unlike the rest of his team, he wasn’t going in armed to the teeth.

He slurped the rest of his coffee and had another bite of omelet. Adrenaline was beginning to course through his veins and knot his stomach, so he gave the rich kippers a pass.

“So what’s Eric going to do?” Juan asked as he got to his feet.

“Obviously, he’s postponing his vacation to Rio de Janeiro until he can verify things one way or the other.

Mr. Murphy thinks he should hire a private investigator.” Cabrillo scoffed. “I think he should drop this whole Internet thing and meet women the regular way, face-to-face, in a bar over too many drinks.”

“Hear! Hear! One can’t overstate the social lubricating abilities of a few cocktails.” Maurice tidied Cabrillo’s desk and hoisted the serving dish to his shoulder, a fresh linen napkin over his other arm.

“We’ll see you when you return.”

That was as close as the steward would say to “Good luck.”

“Not if I don’t see you first,” was Juan’s customary reply.

They left the cabin together, Maurice turning right to return to the galley, Juan left. He took an elevator down three decks. The doors opened to a cavernous room lit with ranks of floodlights and smelling strongly of the sea. An overhead crane held the larger of the two submersibles the Oregon carried, a sixty-five-foot Nomad 1000. The blunt-nosed mini-sub could carry six people, including a pilot and copilot. Clustered near her three bow portholes were armored xenon lamps and an articulated manipulator arm with a grip that could rip steel. The Nomad was rated for a thousand-foot depth, almost ten times as much as her little sister, the Discovery 1000, hanging suspended in a cradle above it, and was outfitted with a diving chamber, so swimmers could exit the craft while she was submerged.

Beneath the submersible, crewmen had already pulled the deck grating away to reveal a gaping pit that went all the way to the Oregon’s keel. The outer doors were still closed, but pumps were filling the swimming pool-sized opening in preparation for the launch.

Linc, Eddie, and Max were already sliding black wet suits over their swim trunks. Scuba equipment for all of them had already been loaded into the sub. Linda Ross stood with her arms crossed over her chest, watching Max with amusement. Hanley had served two tours in Vietnam as a Swift Boat captain and no longer cut the dashing figure he once had. He was having a hard time stretching the suit over his paunch.

He didn’t normally accompany a team on a shore excursion; however, he was the best marine engineer in the Corporation, and everyone agreed his expertise could come in handy.

“Come on, old boy,” Juan said with a grin, and patted Max’s belly. “I don’t recall you having this much trouble a few years ago.”

“It’s not the years,” he moaned, “it’s the pastries.” Cabrillo sat on a bench and, unlike the others, started to put a dry suit on over his clothes. “Linda, have you done your prelaunch checks?”

“We’re good to go.”

“And the cradle?”

“It’s secure,” Max answered for her with possessive pride. He’d designed it, and had overseen its fabrication in the Oregon’s machine shop.

Juan took a communications headset from an attending engineer and called up the Op Center. “Hali, it’s the Chairman. How’s it look out there?”

“Radar shows the normal procession of tankers heading in and out of the Gulf. There’s a containership that pulled into Bandar Abbas’s main dock about two hours ago, plus a handful of feluccas and dhows.”

“Nothing from the naval base?”

“They’re quiet. I’ve scanned all frequencies, and, other than normal blather between ships at sea, there’s not much going on.”

“I hope you’re honing your language skills.” It was a joke between the two. Hali Kasim was the son of Lebanese parents but couldn’t speak a word of Lebanese or Arabic, one of four languages in which Cabrillo was fluent.

“Sorry, boss, I’m letting the translating algorithms of the computer do the work for me.”

“Eric, Murph, you guys set to go?”

When Cabrillo was sending a team ashore, there were no better officers to have manning the ship’s navigation and weapons systems than Stone and Murphy.

“Yes, sir,” the two said in unison. Murph added, “We are locked and loaded and ready to be goaded.” Juan groaned. Murph’s newest hobby was slam poetry, and, despite the crew’s repeated assertions to the contrary, he thought he was a master of the edgy street genre. “Stand by for a comm check once we’re secured in the Nomad.”

“Roger that,” Hali replied.

Linc and Eddie gathered up the waterproof bags containing their weapons and gear and climbed atop the mini-sub. They vanished into the hull through the small hatch. Max and Cabrillo followed them up, Juan giving the thick steel hull a superstitious slap before descending into the submersible. The ride to shore would take an hour, so they took their seats along the mini’s flanks rather than cram half the team into the two-man dive chamber. All four of them would don their scuba equipment during the trip in.

Linda Ross wiggled her way past Juan and Max and took her place in the pilot’s seat, a low-slung chair surrounded by banks of switches, dials, and computer monitors, their glow giving her face an eerie green cast.

“How do you read me, Oregon?” she asked after settling her own headset over her tousled hair.

“Five by five.” Their communications system used 132-bit encryption and cycled through frequencies every tenth of a second, so the chance of intercept and decryption was zero.

The men in the back of the submersible also checked in. The dive helmets they were to wear had integrated ultrasonic transceivers to allow easy communications among themselves, the Nomad, and the Oregon.

“Okay, you can open her up,” Linda ordered.

The lights in the moon pool were dimmed, so as not to show underwater, as the keel doors slowly hinged open. The mechanism that lowered the submersible was engaged. The mini-sub lurched suddenly and then began its stately descent. The warm Gulf water soon lapped against the portholes, before the vessel sank to its neutral buoyancy point. The clamps were disengaged, and the Nomad bobbed free.

Linda activated the ballast pumps, slowly drawing water into the tanks, and gently eased the sub out through the bottom of the Oregon ’s hull. Though she had done it dozens of times, her motions were careful and deliberate. She watched the depth gauge and the laser range finder mounted on the top of the submersible, to ensure they had cleared the keel.

“Nomad is free,” she said, when they were twenty feet below the hull.

“Closing the doors. Oregon over and out.”

Linda descended another forty feet, until the seafloor was just a yard or two below the mini, and set her course for the Bandar Abbas naval base. She kept her speed to just above a crawl so the sound of the propellers churning the water wouldn’t alert any attentive sonar operators in the area, although with the amount of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz it would be next to impossible to single out the whisper-quiet Nomad amid the acoustical clutter.

They were at risk of visual detection because the waters were so shallow, forcing her to leave off the external lights. She would have to rely on the LIDAR system, or Light Detection and Ranging system, which used a series of reflected lasers to map out the terrain immediately in front of the sub. She would get them to the base by following the three-dimensional computer representation of their surroundings.

The LIDAR could detect objects as small as a soda can.

“This is your pilot, up here in the cockpit,” she called over her shoulder. “We will be cruising at an altitude of negative forty-eight feet at a speed of three knots. Our estimated arrival time at our destination is approximately sixty-two minutes. At this time, you may use approved electronics, and don’t forget to ask an attendant about our frequent-flier program.”

“Hey, Pilot, my peanuts are stale,” Linc called up to her.

“Yeah, and I want a blanket and a pillow,” Eddie added.

Max chimed in, “While you’re at it, a double Scotch would hit the spot.” Listening to the banter over the next half hour, one would have never known they were about to infiltrate Iran’s most heavily secured naval facility. It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of the risks. It was just that they were too professional to let that wear on their nerves.

But all that dried up with thirty minutes to go. The shore team started putting on their scuba gear, checking and rechecking each other’s equipment as they went. When they were suited up, Juan and Linc slid their way into the phone booth-sized air lock. There was a hatch in the ceiling of the claustrophobic chamber that could be opened from the cockpit or from inside the air lock, but only when the pressure on each side of the armored door was equalized. To save time, Juan hit the controls that allowed seawater to slowly fill the chamber. The water was blood warm as it climbed up their bodies, pressing in on Juan’s dry suit. Juan had to smooth out the wrinkles so the suit wouldn’t chafe. Both men had to work their jaws to ease the pressure on their inner ears.

When the level was just below their necks, Cabrillo hit the button again. There was no need to put on their dive helmets until the last moment.

“How are you doing back there?” Linda’s voice was tinny and distant through the helmet.

“Why is it I always get stuck in this thing with the biggest member of the crew,” Juan cried theatrically.

“’Cause Max’s belly’s too big to fit in there with Linc, and Eddie would be squashed like a bug,” Ross said.

“Hey, man, just be thankful I don’t take a deep breath,” Linc joked in his deep baritone.

“Chairman, the LIDAR is picking up the submarine pen’s doors. We’re about fifty yards away.”

“Okay, Linda. Put us on the bottom to the right of the dry dock’s entrance.”

“Roger.”

A moment later, the Nomad shuddered slightly as Linda settled it onto the sandy seafloor. “Powering down all nonessential equipment. Whenever you’re ready.”

“What do you say, big man?” Cabrillo asked Lincoln.

“Let’s do it.”

Juan put on his helmet, making sure the locking rings to keep the suit watertight were secure and that he was getting sufficient air from the tanks. Cabrillo waited until Linc gave him the dive signal for “OK” before opening the flood valve again. The water quickly rose to the air lock’s ceiling. He doused the lights and hit another toggle to open the door.

The hatch swung upward, releasing a small amount of trapped air. The bubbles were silver-white in the gloom, but with waves lapping against the enclosed pier they wouldn’t be spotted.

Juan hoisted himself out of the dive chamber and paused on the submersible’s upper deck. Without lights, the water was as dark as ink. Cabrillo had grown up in southern California and had been drawn to the sea for as long as he could remember. He graduated from skin diving to scuba diving and from body boarding to surfing in his early teens. He was as comfortable in water as a seal and was almost as powerful a swimmer. The darkness only enhanced the calm he felt whenever he dove.

Lincoln emerged from the Nomad a moment later. Juan closed the hatch, and together they waited for Eddie and Max to cycle through. Once they were all out of the submarine, Cabrillo chanced turning on an underwater flashlight, shielding the beam from the surface with his hand.

The Iranian submarine pen had been built by first excavating a six-hundred-foot-long, hundred-foot-wide trench from the ocean eastward into the desert. Over this, they erected a reinforced-concrete shell, supposedly eight feet thick and capable of withstanding a direct bomb hit. It had been built before the U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Iraq, and the Iranians must be well aware that some of the bunker busters in the American arsenal now could level the entire structure with a single hit. To the south and north of the dry dock sat the main piers of the naval base, while administration buildings, machine shops, and barracks sprawled for two miles inland.

On the seaward side of the pen were two massive doors that swung outward hydraulically. Inflatable bladders sealed the gap between the bottom of the door and a cement pad to keep water from flooding into the building. Short of explosives or a couple of hours with an acetylene cutting torch, the doors were impenetrable.

Cabrillo finned away from the doors, leading his team through the stygian realm. Every few moments, he would flash his light along the barnacle-encrusted seawall protecting the base from the ravages of the ocean. After fifty feet, the beam settled on what he had been searching for. There was a four-foot-wide culvert in the wall, a dark hole that fed the pumps to drain the dry dock. Careful to protect the light, he inspected the metal grille embedded in the concrete that prevented anything from swimming up the conduit. The steel was only slightly corroded, while the concrete maintained its integrity. It took him over a minute of careful inspection to spot the wires at the top and bottom of the six metal rods.

One way to protect against tampering was to rig the grates with motion detectors, but with so many curious fish in the Persian Gulf the alarms would sound almost constantly. The easier way was to run an electric current through the metal, and if the connection was ever cut guards would be alerted that someone had removed part of the grille.

Juan pointed the wires out to Linc, the Corporation’s best infiltration specialist. Working mostly by feel, Lincoln rigged bypasses on three of the steel rods, using alligator clamps and lengths of wire to keep the current flowing. Next, he removed two squeeze tubes from his dive bag. He uncapped one tube and applied a bead of a gray puttylike substance around the ends of the bars. He then applied an equal amount of putty from the second tube over the first.

Inert when separated, the two compounds formed a caustic acid when combined. In less than a minute, the metal under the beads had been eaten away enough for Linc to snap them free, his loose wires still keeping the circuit closed and the alarms silent. He set the broken rods on the sand, making sure he didn’t touch the still-corrosive tips, and held the slack wires apart for Max, Eddie, and Juan to slip through before carefully sliding into the pipe himself.

Now that they were sheltered from prying eyes, Juan turned up the intensity of his dive light, its beam forming a white ring circling the curved sides of the conduit that seemed to retreat with the pace of his advance.

A fast shadow suddenly lunged at him. He struck out blindly as a darting shape passed him by. He caught sight of a dorsal fin and the rapier tail of a baby shark before it vanished behind him.

“Good thing we met him now and not in a couple of years,” Eddie quipped.

Cabrillo needed a second for his heart to slow before continuing down the constricting pipe. He was jumpier than he’d thought, and that didn’t bode well.

The conduit fed into a large valve that would be in the closed position if the dry dock was empty, but, in the two days the crew had been watching the facility, they had seen no indication the Iranians had pumped out the sub pen since their navy’s newest Kilo Class diesel-electric boat had been admitted.

The four men squeezed through the butterfly valve and into the monstrous pump that could drain the pen.

The impeller blades were made of bright ferrobronze that had been bolted to the hub.

Juan had come prepared for bolts, and, in case the blades had been welded, he carried a small torch. He pulled an adjustable wrench from a pouch on his thigh and attacked the bolts. The angles were awkward, and the nuts had been screwed in place by a pneumatic gun, so it took all his effort to get each of the twelve bolts started. One in particular had him straining so hard that pinwheels of colors exploded behind his tightly closed eyes. When the seal finally popped, the wrench kicked free, and Cabrillo sliced his hand on the scimitar-shaped blade. A small cloud of blood hung in the glow of his flashlight.

“Trying to get the shark to come back?” Max teased.

“So long as your big butt is between me and him, I’ll be fine.”

“It’s not big, just well padded.”

Juan finished with the bolts and set each of the eighteen-inch impeller blades aside. He had to unsling his scuba tank and wriggle beneath the pump’s hub to make it through. He waited on the other side for the men to join him and slide their tanks back in place.

The pipe continued for another dozen feet before turning ninety degrees. Cabrillo shut off his light, and, after waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust, could make out a pale, watery corona coming from around the bend. He cautiously swam closer, and when he reached the turn he ducked his head around for a quick peek.

They had reached the dry dock. The light was coming from fixtures mounted on the tall ceiling. The low level told him that there was just enough illumination for guards to patrol the pen but not enough for a slew of technicians to be working on the Kilo. As they had anticipated, there wouldn’t be more than a handful of men to subdue.

Cabrillo swam out of the pipe and dove down to stay along the concrete bottom, followed by Max, Linc, and Eddie. They made their way closer to the towering doors, where there was the least chance of there being guards. Juan checked their depth on his dive computer and held the men at ten feet for a minute, to allow the small amount of nitrogen bubbles that had accumulated in their bloodstream to dissolve.

With the patience of crocodiles emerging from a river in pursuit of prey, the four men approached the surface, hovering just below its silvery reflection in order to affix small periscopes to their helmets.

Capable of magnifying starlight so that it shone as light as day, the third-generation optics of the scopes had to be dialed back a bit as they slowly searched every corner of the dry dock from the security of the water.

The dry dock was wide enough for two ships to be serviced side by side, and each edge of the sub pen was flanked with raised cement jetties that ran almost the entire length of the building. They were littered with equipment, barrels of lubricant, piles of gear under tarps, small electric golf carts to make moving around easier, and a trio of forklifts. At the far end was a raised platform that stretched the width of the building. Part of it was glassed in to make an office or observation room, and under it, on each side, were enclosed spaces for secure storage. There was also an overhead crane on rails that could reach any part of the covered dock.

Tied to one side of the pier by thick Manila lines was the ominous black shape of a Kilo Class attack submarine. The twenty-two-hundred-ton vessel had once been the most feared sub in the Soviet arsenal.

When running on her batteries, the Kilo was among the quietest undersea hunters ever built and was capable of sneaking up on ships equipped with sophisticated passive sonar systems. She was fitted with six torpedo tubes, and could stay on patrol for a month and a half without replenishing.

The presence of the Kilos was seen as a provocation, given the fact that Iran had a history of sinking merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf. The United States and her allies had tried every conceivable diplomatic trick to prevent Russia from selling the Kilos to the Iranian Navy, but neither party could be deterred. Usually, the two-hundred-and-twenty-foot subs were stationed at Chah Bahar in the Arabian Sea and not bottled up in the Gulf, but Overholt’s intelligence indicated that this particular Kilo was being outfitted with the newly developed rocket torpedoes.

If the Corporation could prove the Russians illegally sold such a technology to Tehran, it would kill any deal Iran might be cooking up to acquire more subs, something they wanted desperately.

“So, what do you have?” Juan asked, after five quiet minutes of observation.

“I count six,” Linc replied.

“Confirmed,” Eddie said.

“Max?”

“Are you sure that isn’t a guard catching a few z’s on the left there in what looks like a bundle of linens waiting to be put aboard?”

The men silently rechecked the location Max had indicated, straining to make out the shape of a man.

The three breathed in sharply when what they had thought was just a shadow suddenly lurched up, peered around for a second, scratched under his arm, and lay back down.

“Good eyes, my friend,” Juan said. “I won’t tease you about wearing cheaters when you read a report ever again. So we’ve got four guards upstairs on the observation platform and the two over by the personnel exit door, plus sleeping beauty. Linc, Eddie, the second-floor gang’s all yours. Max, extend that guy’s nap for a while, and I’ll have a go at the pair at the door.” Cabrillo checked his watch. It was one o’clock in the morning. The chance the guards would be relieved before dawn was remote. “We’ve got one hour to be back aboard the Nomad if we are to make our three A.M. deadline, so let’s get a little hustle on, shall we?”

The men sank back under the water and swam the length of the dry dock, Max stopping approximately where the one guard was sleeping and hovered just below the edge of the concrete dock in the dark shadow cast by the Kilo’s hull. Eddie and Linc swam along the left side of the pier so they would emerge under a set of metal scissor stairs that rose to the second-floor balcony. For his part, Juan pulled himself from the water behind the cover of a stack of crates, a good hundred yards from the well-lit vestibule where a pair of bored guards watched a set of locked doors.

He silently stripped out of his scuba gear and dry suit. Beneath it, he wore the uniform of a captain in the Syrian Navy, right down to the tie and combat ribbons. The only thing out of place were the rubber dive booties he sported on his feet, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He buckled on his gun belt and set a cap on his head to cover his blond hair. He waited another minute for his men to get in position before boldly stepping around the containers and started marching toward the guards.

He closed to within twenty feet before one of them became aware of his presence. The man snapped to his feet, looking around in bewilderment for a moment before remembering he’d set his AK-47 on the floor next to the table he was sharing with his partner. Juan kept coming as the man groped for the weapon and came up with it pointed straight at Cabrillo’s chest. He growled a warning, as his teammate gained his feet, his hands clutching an assault rifle of his own, though the sling had tangled around his hands.

“What is the meaning of this challenge?” Juan asked arrogantly in pitch-perfect Arabic. “I am Captain Hanzi Hourani, of the Syrian Navy, and a guest of your base commander, Admiral Ramazani.” The two guards blinked at him before one said in halting Arabic, “You are who?”

“Captain Hourani,” Cabrillo snapped testily. “For the love of the Prophet, I have been in and out of this building a dozen times in the past week. Surely you know I am here to watch the demonstration of your new miracle weapon, the torpedoes that will drive the Crusaders out of our waters once and for all.” Juan knew the Farsi speaker was catching every three or four words of his rapid-fire delivery, but it was the attitude more than the words that were important. He had to get them to believe he belonged here, despite the late hour. There was a walkie-talkie on the table next to an overflowing ashtray, plates of congealed food, and a rumpled heap of newspapers. If they called base security, the jig was up.

“I lost track of time touring the submarine,” Juan went on, then gave a trace of an embarrassed smile.

“That is not true. I fell asleep in the captain’s cabin, dreaming that it would be me to strike the first blow against the American imperialists.”

There was still wary suspicion in the guard’s eye, but the admission that a superior officer, though from a different navy, could succumb to the same fantasies as they did put the guard slightly at ease. He translated to his partner what Cabrillo had said.

It didn’t seem to make much of an impression. He barked at the first guard, gesturing with the barrel of his AK. The Arabic speaker asked to see Juan’s identification.

Juan withdrew a billfold and presented it to the senior of the two. As the guard looked it over, Juan plucked a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit up. The smokes were Dunhills, a vastly superior brand to the cheap local tobacco the men choked down, and he saw that both had noticed the distinctive flat pack. The guard kept the billfold and was turning to grab the walkie-talkie when Juan offered him the cigarettes.

He hesitated for an instant, so Juan thrust the pack closer.

“We must call the main security station,” the younger guard told him.

“Of course,” Juan said, jetting smoke from his mouth. “I thought you might enjoy a decent cigarette while they yell at you for not knowing I am authorized to be here.” Sheepishly, both men took a cigarette. Juan held the lighter for them. They only had time to exchange a look, following their first drag, before the fast-acting, narcotic-laced tobacco hit their nervous systems like a freight train. Both men crumpled wordlessly to the ground.

Cabrillo ground his cigarette into the floor with his foot. “Usually, boys,” he said, crushing out the guards’

smoldering Dunhills and tucking all the evidence into his pant pocket, “these things’ll kill you. In your case, you’ll be out for a couple of hours. However, I don’t envy you when your superiors discover your dereliction.”

The Corporation tried to keep their operations as nonlethal as possible. From the earliest planning stages of the mission, Cabrillo made sure the guards wouldn’t die doing their job just because Russia was illegally selling advanced military equipment.

That isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of blood on Juan Cabrillo’s or the rest of his team’s hands, but they wouldn’t kill if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

Juan was just turning away when the metal door leading to the outside was thrown open and a lab-coated technician flanked by two soldiers strode in. They saw the two unconscious guards on the floor under the table and Juan’s unfamiliar uniform. One guard brought his assault rifle up and shouted a challenge. The second said something to the first that Cabrillo didn’t need to translate to “I’m going for help” before he turned on his heel and vanished into the night.

In a minute, all three thousand sailors and support personnel were going to be descending on the dry dock like a horde of berserkers.

CHAPTER 3

AS THE SECOND GUARD WAS RACING FOR THE DOOR, A speck of ruby light appeared on the first guard’s weapon, followed an instant later by a silenced bullet that ripped the AK-47 from his grip amid a shower of blood from his mangled hand.

Juan didn’t hesitate. Linc or Eddie had immobilized the man, from their position on the raised platform above, and Cabrillo knew they would have the stunned technician covered with their silenced Type 95

bullpup assault rifles. He wheeled and took off after the fleeing guard. He accelerated with each pace, driven by his most stubborn trait, his inability to let himself fail. The guard was disappearing into the darkened naval base, and, if not for his khaki uniform, Cabrillo would have lost him in the gloom. In eight steps, he’d cut the sentry’s two-second head start to almost nothing, and, in another three, he lunged at the fleeing Iranian, grabbing the man around the knees in a tackle that would do a professional football player proud.

The two went down on the unyielding asphalt road. Juan had been protected by the guard’s body, but the sentry hadn’t been so lucky. His head slammed into the macadam with a sickening crunch, and their slide ripped his face open down to the muscle.

Cabrillo looked around quickly. There were a couple of darkened warehouses nearby, and, in the distance, he could see a four-story office building with a few illuminated windows, but he didn’t think he’d been spotted. He whipped a pair of FlexiCuffs around the unconscious guard’s wrists and hefted the man over his shoulder to jog back to the submarine pen.

When Cabrillo closed the door behind him, he saw that Eddie had cuffed and gagged the technician. He was dragging him to the secluded corner of the entry vestibule where he’d already hidden the two drugged guards. Juan dumped his burden next to them.

“That shaved a few months off my life,” he panted.

“Any chance someone saw you?” Seng asked.

“If you hear an alarm start wailing, you’ll have your answer. Any problems upstairs with the others?”

“One went for his gun. Linc has stopped his bleeding, and if he gets to a hospital in the next couple of hours he’ll make it. We wore face masks, and I was shouting in Mandarin, like we planned, and if those guys know their weapons they’ll recognize the Chinese-made Type 95s.”

“Coupled with the Czech ammunition we’re using, that should keep them guessing.” Max Hanley sauntered over, a wry grin on his face. “You just had to make this harder than it already is, didn’t you?”

“Come on, Max, if we didn’t up the risk we wouldn’t get the exorbitant fees we’ve all grown so accustomed to.”

“I’ll give up part of my cut next time.”

“Any problem with your guy?”

“His nap will last well into tomorrow. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s go find those torpedoes.” In the first of the two large rooms under the elevated platform, they found a store of conventional Russian-made TEST-71 torpedoes, exactly like the ones the Oregon herself carried. It was in the second room, after Linc shot off the lock, that they found Iran’s newest and most lethal weapon. The room was taken up with workbenches, diagnostic computers, and all kinds of electronic gear. In the middle of the space were two shroud-draped shapes that looked a bit like cadavers in a morgue. Max strode over to one and whipped off the sheet. At first glance, the torpedo sitting on the mechanized trolley looked like the TEST-71s except it lacked a propeller. He eyed the twenty-five-foot underwater missile, especially its radically shaped nose. It was this feature that created a bubble of air around the torpedo and allowed it to cut through the water with virtually no friction.

“What do you think?” Juan asked, approaching his second-in-command.

“It’s exactly like the pictures I’ve seen of the Russian Shkval,” the engineer told him. “Form follows function on something like this, meaning there are only a couple of designs that would lead to the supercavitation effect, but this thing is identical to the Russkies’ fish.”

“So they’re helping the Iranians?”

“No doubt.” Max straightened. “The proof’s going to be in the design of the rocket motor, but, for my money, we’ve got them dead to rights.”

“Okay, good. You and Eddie gather everything you can.” Eddie was already at a computer terminal, jacking in a pirate drive that would siphon everything on the system. Linc was looking through log books and binders for anything relevant. Cabrillo turned to Franklin Lincoln, “You ready, big man?”

"Aye.”

Max stopped Juan from leaving the room with a hand to the elbow. “One or two?” Juan cast an eye at the two torpedoes. “In for a penny, in for a pound, let’s take ’em both.”

“You know they are most likely armed and fueled.”

Cabrillo grinned. “So we’ll take ’em carefully.”

While Linc searched the upper platform for the mechanism that would open the main outer doors, Juan climbed up a ladder welded to one wall and walked along a catwalk to the overhead crane’s control cabin. Familiar with all manner of cranes from his years at sea, he powered up the machine and started it trundling down the length of the building toward the head of the dock. As it slid back, a fiendish thought struck him, and he lowered the huge hook assembly. Weighing nearly a ton, and traveling fast enough that it had pendulumed back a couple of degrees, the hook was steered by Cabrillo toward the conning-tower dive plane of Iran’s newest Kilo Class submarine.

The hook didn’t have the momentum to rip the fin off, but the tear it left in the delicate steering control would mean the sub would remain in dry dock for the next couple of months.

When Juan finally had the crane in position, Eddie and Max had wheeled one of the three-ton torpedos from the laboratory and out into the open. He lowered the hook, and they attached sling cables that the Iranians had thoughtfully left in place. When it was secure, Max shot Cabrillo a wave while Eddie went to retrieve his scuba gear.

Cabrillo lifted the torpedo from the trolley and backed the crane out over the water again, making sure to keep it well away from the Kilo. Twenty feet short of the doors, he lowered the weapon into the water, watching for the thick steel cable to slacken, indicating the torpedo was resting on the bottom. He eased off the controls when the line started to bow. Eddie had walked along the jetty, lugging his tanks, helmet, and regulator. He slid into the gear and stepped off the dock. Juan watched where Eddie’s bubbles popped when they reached the surface, and, after a minute, Eddie’s raised thumb rose through the roiling water.

Juan lifted the hook free and set the crane to return to the head of the dock once again, where Max had the second rocket torpedo in position. As the crane crawled along its rails, Juan could see Linc in the upper observation area. He was bent over a computer, working the controls for the outer doors. He must have found the right combination because lights started popping off until only a single one remained illuminated above Hanley. Cabrillo looked over his shoulder. In the distance, he could just make out one of the massive doors swinging outward. That would be Linda’s signal to guide the submersible into the pen. The LIDAR system would pick up the torpedo resting on the bottom, and she knew to wait for word from Cabrillo if they were going to steal another.

Once the second torpedo was slung under the crane, Max joined Linc and together the two men carried the rest of their dive equipment, including Juan’s scuba rig and dry suit, to the edge of the dry dock. They got ready to leave, while Juan positioned the crane to lower the torpedo into the water.

Once the torpedo vanished below the surface and the line went slack, he powered down the crane, reached under the small control panel and ripped out a fistful of wires amid a shower of sparks.

There was no conceivable way the Iranians wouldn’t discover the theft, so the least he could do was make their job of putting the dry dock back in order as difficult as possible. Linc would have set a small explosive charge to disable the computer that controlled the doors and lights and rigged it to blow on a motion sensor. To further muddy the forensic waters, the explosives and trigger were of Chinese manufacture.

Remembering a detail he’d overlooked, Juan pulled the pistol from his holster and flicked it out into space, where it landed with a splash. It was a QSZ-92, the newest standard sidearm of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The Iranians would scour the dry dock for clues, trying to piece together who had infiltrated the base, and he was sure the pistol would be found. What they made of the evidence, he wasn’t sure, but it was fun to mess with their heads.

Rather than waste time laboriously climbing down off the crane, Juan scampered across the enormous I beam that spanned the width of the building. When he reached the cable spool, he gingerly wrapped his hands around the braided cable and lowered himself, hand over hand, until he was ten feet from the dim water, and simply let go.

Max was there with his equipment and helped Juan sling the tank over his shoulders and fit the helmet over his head.

“Linda, do you read?” Juan asked, treading water. Because his helmet was designed to work with the dive suit Linc had bundled in his arms, he wouldn’t be able to use it once he was under.

“Roger, Chairman. Nice dive, by the way. From the splash, I score it a 9.2.”

“Reverse double half twist with a full gainer,” he deadpanned. “We’ve got two fish so start recovery operations while we cycle through the air lock.”

“Affirmative.”

The men could feel water swirl below them as Linda crept forward in the Nomad.

Without an effective dive mask, Cabrillo was guided by Linc down to the air lock, and he let the Chairman enter first. He wedged his considerable bulk through the tight opening, reaching over his head to secure the hatch. When an indicator on the wall turned green, he opened the valves that drained the chamber.

Cabrillo yanked off his helmet as soon as the level dropped below his chin. The air was cold and crisp, refreshing after an hour of breathing the chemically tainted atmosphere trapped in the dry dock. Despite the tight quarters, he managed to wriggle out of his tank without giving Linc too many bruises, so when the air lock was empty he was ready to join Linda in the cockpit.

“Welcome aboard.” She threw him a saucy smile. “How’d it go?”

“Piece of cake,” he said absently, sliding into the reclined seat in his wet Syrian Navy uniform. The computer monitor between them displayed a closed-circuit television shot from below the mini-sub.

The low-light camera slung under the Nomad showed Linda that the sub was slightly off center of the first torpedo. She made an adjustment so that one set of the curved grappling arms Max had installed were directly above the three-ton weapon. She hit a control, and the tungsten-steel claws curled around the torpedo and clamped it tight to the Nomad’s belly.

Juan helped her by pumping out one of the ballast tanks to regain neutral trim. Linda eased the Nomad to the side, using its directional thrusters, a corner of her lip pinched between her teeth.

She cursed under her breath when the sub lurched past the torpedo. “Tide’s coming in,” she explained, and reversed power to back the submersible over her target.

A light on the air-lock control panel went from red to green. Eddie and Max were aboard.

For the second time, the Nomad drifted beyond the torpedo, forcing Linda to ramp up the power in order to fight the tidal waters swirling into the dry dock. The eddies and crosscurrents played havoc with the little sub. Juan was confident that if Linda didn’t think she could do it, she’d ask for his help. He let her do her job, and, on the third try, she vented air and set the submersible atop the second torpedo. She closed the claws around its tubular shape and dumped more ballast.

With a self-satisfied smile, Linda said, “Third time’s the charm.” Juan extended the manipulator arm and used its dexterous fingers to gather up the four slings they’d used to move the torpedoes and stow them in a bin under the Nomad’s chin. As soon as the arm was returned to its default position, Linda jammed the joystick hard over to rotate the Nomad in the dry dock. Signals from the LIDAR system allowed her to squeak through the partially open door and into the open water of the port.

Juan checked their battery status, their speed through the water, and speed over the bottom. He tapped the numbers into the computer to get an approximation of the Nomad’s range. Behind them, his team was getting out of their wet suits and dressing in fresh clothes they had packed earlier.

With the tide coming in harder than they’d estimated, the little submersible would have just an hour of reserve power by the time they reached the Oregon. It was an uncomfortably close margin, and one Juan was going to make worse. He had a bad feeling about the Iranian response and wanted to put distance between his ship and the Strait of Hormuz.

“Nomad to Oregon,” he radioed.

“Good to hear your voice, Chairman,” Hali Kasim replied. “I take it everything went well?”

“Like stealing candy from a baby,” Cabrillo said. “How’s the reconfiguration going?”

“Like clockwork. The fairing over the bow is gone, the funnel’s back to normal, and we’ve got a good jump on folding up the containers.”

“Good. Hali, in about thirty minutes I want you to get under way, but take her out at about three knots.” The Nomad was making four. “We’ll make our rendezvous a little farther down the coast.”

“That will put us pretty close to the shipping lanes,” Hali pointed out. “We can’t stop out there to pick you up.”

“I know. We’ll do the recovery on the fly.” Surfacing the Nomad in the moon pool was dangerous enough, but doing it with the Oregon under way was something Cabrillo would only risk if he felt it was absolutely necessary.

“Are you sure about that?” Max asked, leaning into the cockpit.

Juan turned to look his old friend in the eye. “My right ankle is acting up.” That was their code for the Chairman having a premonition. He’d had the feeling before accepting an assignment from NUMA that cost him his right leg below the knee, and in the intervening years both men had come to trust Juan’s instinct.

“You’re the boss,” Max said, and nodded.

It took an additional two hours to reach the Oregon, as she slowly steamed away from the Iranian coast.

The Nomad passed under the dark hull forty feet below the keel. The moon-pool doors were fully retracted and flattened against the hull, and red battle lamps within the ship cast the water in a scarlet glow. It was almost like they were approaching the gates of hell.

Linda slowed the submersible to match the Oregon’s sluggish pace, centering the craft beneath the opening. In a normal recovery, divers would enter the water to secure lifting lines to the Nomad, and it would be winched into the ship. Though making only three knots, it was too much of a current to dive safely in the moon pool’s confines.

When she was comfortable with the speed, she dialed off ballast, pumping the tanks so slowly that the Nomad rose in fractional increments.

“Not to add pressure or anything,” Hali called over the comm link, “but we have a turn coming up in less than four minutes.” The shipping lanes within the Strait of Hormuz were so tight that any deviation was simply not tolerated.

“Yeah, that’s not adding pressure,” Linda replied, never taking her eyes off her computer screens.

She released more ballast, her fingers featherlight on the joystick and throttle. She made tiny corrections as the opening loomed larger and larger.

“You’re doing great,” Juan said from the copilot’s seat.

Foot by foot, the gap narrowed until the Nomad was directly below the ship. They could hear the quiet hum of her revolutionary engines and the sluice of water through her drive tubes.

Linda slowed the Nomad a fraction, so that it drifted back to the aft part of the moon pool, the submersible’s rear fins and propellers less than a foot from the opening. “Here we go,” she said, and dumped the remaining hard ballast, a hopper loaded with a half ton of metal balls.

The Nomad popped up and broached the surface. Though roiled like a cauldron because the Oregon was making three knots, the water in the pool was motionless in relation to the submersible. The mini began to accelerate forward. Linda kicked on emergency reverse thrust as the little sub quickly crossed the pool, which was barely twice the sub’s length. An inflatable fender that spanned the width of the pool had been lowered to the water’s edge for just such a contingency. The sub hit it so softly that it barely compressed.

Pairs of feet slapped down on the top of the Nomad as technicians attached lifting lines to the submersible’s hardpoints. Below them, the doors were already closing. Linda let out a relieved sigh, flicking her wrists to ease the cramping.

Juan patted her shoulder. He could see the strain in her eyes. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Thanks,” she said tiredly. She cocked her head as if listening to a voice in the distance. “I think I hear my bathtub calling me.”

“Go ahead,” Juan said, sliding back off his seat and leaving a puddle on the dark vinyl. “You’ve more than earned it.”

The team was waiting under the hatch when the Nomad was set onto its cradle and the outer lid popped open. Despite the fact he was still dripping on the nonslip floor, Juan let his team precede him out of the mini. A tech handed him a headset without being asked. “Eric, you there?”

“Right here, Chairman,” Eric Stone said from his place in the Operations Center.

“As soon as the doors are closed, take us up to eighteen knots. How long before we clear the strait?”

“Two and a half hours, give or take, and it will be another fifteen hours to the rendezvous coordinates.” Cabrillo would have liked to have the torpedoes and all the technical information Eddie had pirated from the computer off the ship as quickly as possible, but the timing to meet up with the USS Tallahassee, a Los Angeles Class fast-attack submarine, had to be carefully coordinated to avoid spy satellites and the chance of a nearby ship spotting the transfer.

“Okay, thanks. Tell Hali to keep a sharp ear out for military chatter coming from Bandar Abbas. If he gets anything, wake me in my cabin.”

“Will do, boss man.”

Max was overseeing the removal of the rocket torpedoes from under the Nomad, working a chainfall himself to lower them onto motorized carts. Eddie had already placed the computer drive loaded with information into a waterproof hard case.

Juan slapped one of the weapons with his palm. “Five million apiece, plus another million for the information off the computer. Not bad for a day’s work.”

“You should call Overholt now so he knows we nabbed two of these babies and doesn’t have a heart attack when he gets our bill.”

“A shower first,” Juan said. “Then I’ll call him. You turning in?” Max glanced at his watch. “It’s near four-thirty. I think I’m going to stay up and help out with the rest of the work to put the ship back in order. Maybe enjoy a sunrise breakfast.”

“Suit yourself. Good night.”

THE TERM POSH originated during the time of the British Raj in India, when passengers booking ships to their imperial postings in Bombay or Delhi asked for portside cabins on the way to India and for starboard cabins on the return to England. This way, their rooms were always on the shaded side of the ship. Booking agents shortened “Port Out, Starboard Home” to POSH, and a new word entered the English language.

Cabrillo’s cabin was on the port side of the Oregon, but the angle the ship sailed relative to the sun allowed light to stream through his porthole and made his suite swelter despite the air-conditioning. He woke bathed in sweat, momentarily disoriented about what had roused him until he heard the phone ring a second time.

He glanced at the big wall clock opposite his bed, as he yanked his arms free of the twisted sheets. It wasn’t yet eight and already the sun was a torture.

He lifted the handset. “Cabrillo.”

“Chairman, it’s Hali. The jig is up.”

Juan did some mental calculations as the news sank in. The Oregon would be clear of the strait by now but wouldn’t have ventured very far into the Gulf of Oman. They were still very much within Iran’s military sphere of influence.

“What’s happening?” he asked, swinging his legs out of bed and running a hand across his crew cut.

“There was a burst of chatter out of Bandar Abbas about five minutes ago and then nothing.” Juan had expected this. It would take some time for the base commander to figure out what had happened and finally have the courage to report the theft to his superiors in Tehran. They in turn would have immediately told the naval base to stop using radios and nonsecure telephones and to switch to dedicated landlines.

During the first Gulf War, America tipped her hand to the world concerning her eavesdropping abilities.

Using its satellites and ground listening stations, the NSA could listen in on or read virtually every telephone call, radio broadcast, fax transmittal, and any other form of communication with impunity. It was how our military knew exactly where to target Saddam Hussein’s command and control facilities. In response to this overwhelming technological advantage, nations who saw the United States as a threat—namely, Iran, Syria, Libya, and North Korea—spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a network of landlines that couldn’t be hacked or listened in on without a direct tap.

After those first frantic calls that the Oregon intercepted, the Iranians had switched to this system and denied Cabrillo a valuable source of intelligence.

“What did you get?” Juan asked.

“They reported a break-in at the dry dock, a small explosion that damaged the control room, and the theft of two whales.”

“That’s their code name for the rocket torpedoes,” Juan said. “I think the Farsi word is hoot.”

“That’s what the computer said. After that, there was an order out of the defense ministry to switch to something they call ‘the voice of the Prophet.’”

“That’ll be their military communications lines.” Juan clamped the cordless phone between his head and shoulder to free up his hands so he could dress. “Anything else?”

“Sorry, Chairman. That was it.”

Cabrillo put himself in the Iranians’ shoes and thought through what would come next. “They’re going to close Bandar Abbas and reinspect every ship in the harbor. The Navy’s going to be put on high alert, and they may try to stop vessels within fifty or so miles of the coast all along the Gulf of Oman.”

“We’re still within that radius,” Hali told him.

“Tell the helmsman to get us the hell out. I’ll be in the Op Center in two minutes. Assemble the senior staff.” Although Juan’s top people had been on duty until just a couple of hours ago, he wanted them manning the ship until they were well beyond Iran’s ability to strike.

When Juan had designed the Oregon, a tremendous amount of effort went into the ship’s Operations Center. It was the brain of the vessel, the nerve center from which everything could be controlled, from her engines and weapons systems to the fire-suppression sprinklers and communications. The room was as high-tech as the exterior of the Oregon was decayed. Dominating the front wall was a massive flat-panel screen that could show dozens of images at a time, from the battery of ship’s cameras as well as feeds from her submersibles, the unmanned aerial ROV, and from cameras mounted on the Robinson R44 chopper. Sonar and radar images could also be flashed onto the screen.

The helm and weapons station was immediately below the flat panel, with Hali’s communications console, Max Hanley’s engineering station, and the principal sonar waterfall display ringing the darkened room. In the center of the Op Center was what Mark Murphy and Eric Stone had dubbed the “Kirk Chair.” From the command position, Cabrillo could monitor everything happening on and around his ship and take over any of the other stations if necessary.

With its low ceiling and the glow from dozens of computer displays, the Op Center had the palpable buzz of NASA’s mission control.

An exhausted Max Hanley was already in his chair when Juan strode in, as was Mark Murphy. Murph was the only member of the crew without a military or intelligence background, and it showed. Tall and gawky, he had nearly black hair that was long and unkempt, and he was trying to grow a beard, although, so far, his best efforts resembled an anemic billy goat’s. He possessed the highest IQ of anyone aboard ship, having gotten a Ph.D. from MIT while still in his early twenties. From there, he had gone into systems development for a major military contractor, where he had met Eric Stone. Eric was working procurement with the Navy but had already planned on resigning his commission and joining the Corporation. During the two months the pair of them had spent on a still-secret long-range cannon for the Arleigh Burke Class destroyers, Eric had convinced both Cabrillo and Murph to join up as well.

Juan couldn’t fault Murph’s proficiency with the Oregon’s weapons systems. He just hoped for the day young Mr. Murphy would stop dressing in all black and playing punk music loud enough to shake barnacles off the hull. This morning found him wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a pair of ruby lips. On the back it read THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. His workstation was littered with half a dozen empty energy drink cans, and Juan could see by the glassy look in Murph’s eye he was mainlining on caffeine.

Cabrillo took his seat and adjusted the computer display at his elbow. A steaming cup of coffee materialized at his side. Maurice had approached so silently Juan never heard him coming. “I’m going to have to put a bell on you.”

“To employ an overused cliché, Captain, over my departed corpse.”

“Or dead body, whatever.” Juan smiled. “Thanks.”

“You’re most welcome, sir.”

Over the rim of his coffee, Juan studied the displays in front of him, especially noting the radar picture of the surrounding waters. The coast of Iran still showed at the top of the screen, at the radar’s extreme limit, while around them countless ships were heading into and out of the Persian Gulf. From the size of the returns, he knew most of them were tankers, and the traffic seemed as thick as Atlanta at rush hour.

Far to the south was a cluster of ships around one large vessel he guessed was an American aircraft carrier task force.

He checked their speed and heading, as well as the depth of the water under the ship. The bottom had dropped to four hundred feet, plenty deep enough for a lurking Iranian sub. But with the Americans so close, he was more concerned with a helicopter or aircraft assault, if they were linked to the theft somehow. A quick glimpse at the camera displays showed him that the Oregon looked as she should, with her single funnel, and decks devoid of containers. Her name was back to normal, though he noted the Panamanian flag still flew from her jack staff. A prudent precaution, because the Iranians wouldn’t need permission to board a ship flying their ensign, as the Oregon normally did. The mast camera high atop one of the cargo derricks showed a tanker they must have passed recently less than a mile astern and a containership steaming along their track a half mile to the north.

“Hali, anything on sonar?”

“Except for the noise from eight ships within range that the computer’s already scrubbed, there’s nothing out here but us innocent merchantmen.” He paused, as if to add something.

Juan saw his frown and said, “Tell me. No matter how small.”

“About a minute after communications from Bandar Abbas went dead, there was a burst of transmission from the naval base at Chah Bahar.”

“Have you heard it since?”

Hali shook his head. “Just that one time.”

Juan wasn’t sure what to do with that piece of information, so he let it go for the moment. “What about aircraft or helos?”

“An ASW plane off the carrier to our south did a pass an hour ago, but nothing from our friends to the north.”

Cabrillo relaxed slightly, and was beginning to think they might get away with it after all.

It was just as that thought entered his mind that Hali shouted, “Sonar contact! Bearing ninety-five degrees, seven thousand yards. Torpedo in the water. Damnit, he was waiting to ambush us, with his bow doors open and his tubes flooded.”

There was more than five miles separating the ship from the incoming torpedo, so Juan knew he had more than enough time to get the Oregon out of danger. His voice remained calm. “Track it, Hali. Let’s make sure we know where it’s going before we react.”

“Sonar contact!” Kasim cried again. “Second torpedo in the water, same bearing and range. I’m getting target extrapolation off the computer. The first fish is heading for the containership. I have her identified as the Saga, and she left Bandar Abbas twenty minutes before we did.” The tactical picture went from bad to worse.

“We’re getting a warning from the carrier battle group,” Hali called out. “They heard the shots and are launching aircraft.”

“This is turning into a hell of a fur ball,” Max said sardonically.

“Tell me about it,” Juan muttered.

“Come on!” Hali shouted. “New contact. They launched a third torpedo. It’s looking like a spread pattern targeting us, the Saga , and the tanker behind us, a Petromax Oil ULCC named the Aggie Johnston.”

Had there been just the one torpedo tracking the Oregon, Cabrillo could have handled it. Maybe even two, if he could put his vessel between the second one and the ship it had targeted, but with three fish in the water his options had quickly run out. Either the Saga or the Aggie Johnston was going to take a direct hit. And with a full load of two hundred thousand tons of Gulf crude, there was no way he would let it be the supertanker.

“They just launched another,” Hali said with disbelief in his voice. “That’s four fish in the water. Range between the Saga and the first is down to six thousand yards. This last fish is going much slower than the others.”

“It’s lurking to see what the others miss,” Max said. “And will go in to finish it off.” If one of the first three torpedoes missed or failed to detonate, this reserve salvo would be in position to destroy its intended target. Cabrillo was familiar with the tactic. He also had no defense against it. He was now thinking they would be lucky to get out of the Sea of Oman alive.

CHAPTER 4

MV GOLDEN DAWN

INDIAN OCEAN

THE MUGGER’S HAND WAS LIKE A VISE AROUND Jannike Dahl’s mouth and nose. She couldn’t breathe, and any effort to fight him off only made it seem worse. Wriggling against the restraint, she managed to draw a sip of air, barely enough to stave off the blackness threatening to engulf her. She twisted one way and then the other, only to have the hand inexorably stay with her.

She had seconds before unconsciousness overcame her, but there was nothing she could do. It was like drowning, the most terror-filled death she could ever imagine, only it wasn’t a cold water’s embrace that would take her life but the hands of a stranger.

Jannike fought one last time, a desperate lunge to break free.

She came awake with a wet gasp, her head and shoulders lifting from the bed only to be dragged back by the sheets and blankets covering her. The clear plastic cannula feeding pure oxygen into her nose had wrapped itself around her throat, choking her as much as the asthma attack she was suffering.

Filled with the chilling aftereffects of the nightmare that always accompanied an attack when she was asleep, Janni groped for the inhaler on the bedside table, dimly aware that she was still in the ship’s hospital. She placed the mouthpiece between her lips and fired off several blasts of medicine, drawing in the Ventolin as deeply as her fluid-filled lungs would allow.

As the medicine relaxed her restricted airways, Janni was able to inhale more of the drug and eventually calm the most acute symptoms of the attack. It didn’t help that her heart was still racing from the nightmare or that she had dislodged part of her cannula so only one nostril was getting oxygen. She readjusted the plastic tube and felt the immediate effects. She glanced at the monitor over her bed and saw her oxygen stats start to rise immediately. She smoothed her sheets and settled deeper into the inclined bed.

This was her third day in the dispensary, the third day of being alone for hours on end, bored out of her mind and cursing her lungs’ weakness. Her friends had stopped by regularly, but she knew none of them wanted to stay. Not that she blamed them. Watching her gasp like a fish and suck on her inhaler wasn’t a pretty sight. She hadn’t even had the strength to let the lone nurse change her sheets and could imagine what her body smelled like.

The curtain around her bed was suddenly drawn back. Dr. Passman moved so softly that Janni never knew he had entered the recovery room. He was in his sixties, a retired heart surgeon from England who had given up his practice following his divorce and had signed on to be a shipboard doctor with the Golden Cruise Lines to enjoy a more peaceful life and to deny his ex-wife half of the salary he had once made.

“I heard you cry out,” he said, looking at the monitors rather than his patient. “Are you okay?”

“Just another attack.” Janni managed a smile. “Same as I’ve been having for three days now.” She then added in her lilting Scandinavian accent, “It wasn’t as bad as before. I think they’re passing.”

“I will be the one making that determination,” he said, finally looking at her. There was concern in his eyes. “You’re as blue as a berry. My daughter has chronic asthma, but not like you.”

“I’m used to it,” Jannike shrugged. “I had my first attack when I was five, so I’ve been dealing with it for three-quarters of my life.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, are there other members of your family who have it?”

“I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and neither of my parents had it, though my mother told me her mother had it when she was a little girl.”

Passman nodded. “It tends to run in families. I would have thought being at sea and away from pollution would have reduced your symptoms.”

“I had hoped so, too,” Janni said. “That’s one of the reasons I took a job waitressing on a cruise ship.

Well, that and to get out of a small town with nothing to do but watch fishing boats come in and out of the harbor.”

“You must miss your parents.”

“I lost them two years ago.” A shadow passed behind her dark eyes. “Car accident.”

“I am sorry. Your color’s coming back,” Passman said to change the subject. “And your breathing seems to be getting easier.”

“Does that mean I can leave?” Janni asked.

" ’Fraid not, my dear. Your oxygen saturation level is still below what I would like to see.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter to you that today is the crew’s social,” she said with a trace of disappointment. According to the clock on the far wall, the party was only a few hours away.

The dance was the first opportunity for the younger members of the ship’s hotel staff to cut loose a little since the Golden Dawn had left the Philippines two weeks earlier. It was to be the highlight of the cruise for the waiters, waitresses, maids, and off-duty crew, which happened to be comprised of some devilishly handsome Norwegians. Janni knew some of the younger passengers were going to attend as well. It was all anyone had been talking about for a week.

“No, it doesn’t,” the doctor said.

The door to the small hospital ward opened, and, a moment later, Elsa and Karin, Janni’s best friends on the Golden Dawn, swept into the room amid a cloud of perfume. They were from Munich, a couple of years older than Janni, and had spent the past three years working for the cruise line. Elsa was a pastry chef, and Karin worked the same dining-room shift as Jannike. They were dressed to kill. Karin wore a black dress with spaghetti straps that accented her ample chest, while Elsa wore a tank dress and, from the lack of lines under the clinging fabric, nothing else. Both were heavily made up and giggly.

“How are you feeling?” Elsa asked and sat on the edge of Janni’s bed, ignoring Passman.

“Jealous.”

“You aren’t well enough to come to the party?” Karin scowled at the doctor as if it was his fault Jannike’s asthma wasn’t in check.

Janni pushed her damp hair off her forehead. “Even if I was, I wouldn’t stand a chance the way you two are dressed.”

“Do you think Michael will like it?” Karin pirouetted.

“He’ll die for it,” Elsa told her friend.

“Are you sure he’s coming?” Janni asked, caught up in gossip despite the pain constricting her chest.

Michael was one of the passengers who sat at the table they served, a Californian with blond hair, blue eyes, and a body honed from a lifetime of exercise. It was generally agreed by the female staff that he was the best-looking guy on the boat. She also knew that Karin and Michael had made out on more than one occasion.

Karin smoothed her dress. “He made sure to tell me himself.” Passman cut into their conversation, “It doesn’t bother you he’s a Responsivist?” She shot the doctor a look. “I grew up with four brothers and three sisters. I don’t think not having children is such a bad idea.”

“Responsivism is more than not having children,” he pointed out.

Karin took it as an insult that she didn’t know what the group who had chartered the ship believed in.

“Yes, it is also about helping humanity by making family planning an option for millions of third world women and reducing the burden our population places on the earth. When Dr. Lydell Cooper founded the movement in the nineteen seventies, there were three billion people in the world. Today, there are twice that many—six billion— and the rates aren’t slowing. Ten percent of all humans who have ever lived, going back a hundred thousand years, are alive right now.”

“I saw the same informational placards they have placed around the ship,” Passman said archly. “But don’t you think Responsivism goes beyond social consciousness? For a woman to join, she has to agree to have her fallopian tubes tied. It sounds to me more like, well, a cult.”

“That’s what Michael said people tell him all the time.” With the stubbornness of youth, Karin felt she had to defend her crush’s convictions. “Just because you don’t know all the facts doesn’t mean you can dismiss what he believes.”

“Yes, but surely you see . . .” Passman let his voice trail off, knowing that whatever argument was put forth would stand little chance against a twenty-something girl with raging hormones. “Actually, you probably wouldn’t. I think you two should let Jannike rest. You can tell her all about the party later.” He left Janni’s bedside.

“Are you going to be okay, Schnuckiputzi?” Elsa asked, touching Janni’s thin shoulder.

“I’ll be fine. You two have fun and I want lurid details tomorrow.”

“Good girls don’t kiss and tell,” Karin said, and grinned.

“In that case, I don’t expect either of you to be good girls.” The two Germans left together, but Karin returned a second later. She eased up to the head of the bed.

“I want you to know that I think I’m going to do it.” Janni knew what she meant. She knew that Michael was more than a passing crush for her friend, and that apart from kissing a few times he had spent hours talking to her about his beliefs.

“Karin, that is way too big of a step. You don’t know him that well.”

“I’ve never really wanted kids anyway, so what’s the big deal if I have my tubes tied now or in a few years.”

“Don’t let him talk you into it,” Janni said as forcefully as her weakened body would let her. Karin was nice, but not the strongest person Jannike had ever met.

“He didn’t talk me into it,” she dismissed too quickly. “It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. I don’t want to be worn out at thirty like my mother was. She’s forty-five now and looks seventy. No thanks. Besides,” she said with a bright smile, “nothing will happen until we dock in Greece anyway.” Janni took Karin’s hand to emphasize her point. “This is a decision that will affect the rest of your life.

Give it some more thought, okay?”

“Okay,” Karin said, as if to a parent.

Janni gave her a quick hug. “Good. Now, go have some fun for me.”

“Count on it.”

Their perfumes lingered long after the girls were gone.

Janni’s face was scrunched in concentration. The ship wasn’t due to dock in Piraeus for another week, giving her hope that she and Elsa could talk Karin out of her decision. One of the prerequisites for becoming a Responsivist is being sterilized. A vasectomy for men and a tubal ligation for women. It was part of their code to agree to not add more children to an already-overpopulated planet, a dramatic first step that was difficult, expensive, and, in later years, impossible to reverse. Karin was too young for that just so she could bed a good-looking guy.

She drifted off to sleep, and when she awoke a few hours had passed. She could hear the muffled rumble of the ship’s engines but could hardly feel the calm rocking of the Indian Ocean swells. She wondered how Elsa and Karin were enjoying the party . . .

Jannike woke again an hour later. She hated being in the hospital. She was lonely and bored, and, for a moment, considered grabbing her old clothes from under the bed and sneaking up to the ballroom for a peek. But her body just wasn’t up to it and again she closed her eyes.

She heard a crash the instant before the mugger wrapped his hand around her throat again and started to squeeze.

Jannike flashed awake, reaching for her inhaler just as the door to her room opened in a blaze of light from the office beyond. Stricken by the asthma attack, she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Dr.

Passman staggered into the room. He wore a bathrobe and his feet were bare. It looked like the front of the robe and his face was covered in blood. Jannike sucked greedily on the inhaler, blinking to clear her eyes of sleep.

Passman made an obscene cawing sound, and more blood dribbled from his mouth. Janni gasped. He took two more faltering steps, and it seemed the bones of his knees dissolved. He fell back, and his body hit the linoleum floor with a wet smack. Janni saw that wavelike ripples traveled the length of his body, as though his insides had been liquefied, and in seconds he was surrounded by a viscous moat of his own blood.

She clutched her sheets tighter, drawing on the inhaler as she began to hyperventilate. Then another figure came into her room. It was Karin in her little black dress. She was coughing violently, wet, racking convulsions that spewed blood in a bright spray. Janni screamed through her own coughing fit, terrified at what she was seeing.

Karin tried to speak, but all that came out was a watery gargle. She stretched out with her arms in a supplicating gesture, her pale fingers reaching for Jannike. Janni hated herself for recoiling back to the far side of her bed, but she could not will herself forward. A crimson tear escaped the corner of Karin’s eye and left a thick red streak down to her jaw where it dripped, blooming like a rose when it pattered against her chest.

Like Passman seconds earlier, Karin could no longer support herself. She tipped backward, making no move to break her fall. When she hit the floor, it was as though her skin didn’t exist. Blood exploded everywhere as Karin’s body came apart, and in the instant before Jannike Dahl went into catatonic shock she was certain she was going insane.

CHAPTER 5

JUAN CABRILLO STUDIED THE TACTICAL DISPLAY ON the forward bulkhead of the Op Center for a few seconds, time he knew he didn’t have but needed to take anyway. Three of the four torpedoes fired from the Iranian Kilo Class sub were fanning out and tracking toward their targets, while the sonar showed the fourth had slowed so much that the computer gave only its approximate location.

There was less than two miles separating the containership Saga from the first torpedo, while the two-hundred-thousand-ton supertanker Aggie Johnston had another mile-and-a-half cushion. The third torpedo was coming straight for the Oregon at more than forty knots.

Cabrillo knew the Oregon could take a direct hit, thanks to the reactive armor along her hull that exploded outward when struck by an incoming torpedo and negated the detonative forces, though it would likely damage critical systems. He could also dodge the incoming fish, using the Oregon’s superior speed and maneuverability, but the overshooting torpedo then would home in on the Saga as a secondary target and seal her fate. There was simply no way for him to protect the two merchantmen and the Oregon , especially with the reserve torpedo lurking out there.

He was dimly aware of Hali Kasim sending a radio alert to the two ships about the inbound torpedoes, not that there was anything they could do. A ship the size of the Aggie Johnston had a pathetically large turning radius, and needed five miles to stop from her current cruising speed.

“I’m tracking two fast movers off the carrier,” Mark Murphy said from the weapons stations. “I suspect they’re S-3B Vikings, antisubmarine warfare planes armed with either Mark 46 or Mark 50 torpedoes.

That Kilo is going to have a real bad day starting in about ten minutes.”

“Which is five minutes too late for us,” Eric said.

“Hali, what’s the range to the fish tracking us?” Cabrillo asked

“Six thousand yards.”

And for the Saga?”

“Thirty-two hundred.”

Cabrillo straightened in his chair, his decision made. It was time to roll the dice and see what happened.

“Helm, increase speed to forty knots, put us between the Saga and the torpedo headed for her.”

“Aye.”

“Wepps, open the ports for the forward Gatling and target that fish, slave your computer to the master sonar plot, and you might need the targeting reticle from the crow’s nest camera.”

“Just a second,” Mark said.

“Mr. Murphy.” Juan’s tone was sharp. “We don’t have a second.” Murph wasn’t listening. He was engrossed with something taking place on a laptop computer he had jacked into his system. “Come on, baby, learn it, will you,” he said anxiously.

“What are you doing?” Cabrillo asked, leaning over to compensate for the Oregon’s sharp curve through the water.

“Teaching the Whopper a new trick.”

Whopper was what he and Eric Stone called the Oregon’s supercomputer, having stolen the name from an old Matthew Broderick movie about a young computer hacker who breaks in to SAC/NORAD and almost starts a nuclear war.

“We don’t need new tricks, Wepps. I need that Gatling online and spooled up.” Murph spun around in his seat to look across the room at Max Hanley, who was engrossed with his own computer. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Keep at it, lad,” was all Max said.

“You two mind telling me what’s going on?” Juan asked, looking at each man in turn.

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes,” Mark crowed, jumping up from his chair and pumping his fists over his head. He began typing furiously, not bothering to sit again, his fingers flying over the keyboard, as dexterous as a classical pianist’s. “Logarithm’s lining up, targeting’s coming online. The onboard computer’s in sync with ours. I have full control.”

“Of what?”

Mark glanced at him with a fiendish grin. “We’re about to have ourselves a whale of a time.” Cabrillo blanched and spun to glance at Max. Hanley looked as inscrutable as a Buddha statue. “You can’t be serious,” Juan said but knew his second-in-command was. “You do know the last time the Russians tried to fire one of those things it blew a hole in the side of the Kursk and killed all one hundred and eighteen aboard? And this one’s an Iranian knockoff, for the love of God.”

“There’s a thousand yards between the Saga and the torp,” Linda Ross said. With communications swirling among the freighters, the American battle group, and the fast-approaching ASW aircraft, she had taken over the sonar station so Hali Kasim could concentrate on the radios.

“Just giving you an option, Chairman,” Max said broadly.

“Don’t ‘Chairman’ me, you crafty old bastard.”

Juan studied the tactical display again, noting the Oregon was about to slip between the incoming torpedo and its intended target. Because of the water density they needed to be directly in front of the torpedo if they were to have any realistic chance of hitting it. By the time they got into position, there would be less than five hundred yards between them and the weapon barreling in just ten feet below the surface.

From the camera on the loading derrick, Cabrillo could see the wake line of the incoming torpedo, a faint disturbance in the otherwise tranquil water. It was approaching at better than forty knots.

“Wepps, we need to take it before it dives for the keel.”

“Tracking,” Murph said.

Eric Stone slid the Oregon into position, using her athwartship thrusters and a heavy blast from the magnetohydrodynamics on full reverse, to place them directly in the path of the torpedo.

“Permission to fire,” Juan said.

Mark tapped a few keys.

Outside, along the Oregon’s flank, the armored plate over the Gatling redoubt slammed open and the six-barrel gun shrieked, a string of foot-long empty shell casings arcing from the mechanism in a continuous blur. A plume of smoke and flame erupted from the ship as a second’s-long burst from the 20mm machine cannon arrowed across the water. Just ahead of the onrushing torpedo the sea came alive, shredded by hundreds of depleted uranium shells. Gouts of water flew in the air as the slugs bored a hole in the ocean amid a cloud of steam.

The Russian-made TEST-71 torpedo, packed with over four hundred pounds of explosives, roared into the path of the Gatling gun. With enough water forced out of the way by the continuous stream of fire, four of the kinetic rounds hit the weapon dead center. The warhead exploded, sending a series of concussion waves racing across the sea, while, at the epicenter of the blast, a column of water rose eighty feet into the sky before gravity overcame inertia and the entire plume crashed back into the chasm.

Though located in the heart of the ship and well insulated from the outside, the crew heard the detonation as though it was thunder crashing directly overhead.

Juan immediately turned to Max. “That bought us about thirty seconds. Convince me.”

“Their torpedoes are all wire guided. If we can cut them loose, they should go inert. Not even the Iranians would let fish run around in these waters without some sort of control.”

“What do you propose?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Sink the damned Kilo.”

Juan looked at the tactical display again. He saw the red flashing lights indicating the two inbound American S-3B Vikings, as well as the track lines for the three remaining torpedoes. The reserve fish was beginning to accelerate toward the Oregon, while the primary weapon targeting her had altered course for interception.

“You sure it’ll work?” he asked without looking back.

" ’Course not,” Max told him. “It’s an Iranian copy of an already-flawed Russian weapon. But my crew worked through the night adapting the number one tube so we can fire it, and Murph seems to have the software worked out, so I say go for it. If it works as advertised, it’ll take out the three torpedoes long before they reach their targets.”

"Murph?”

“Whopper has it pegged, Chairman. I can control it as best as it can be controlled, but it’s mostly an aim-and-hope kind of weapon. At two hundred knots, it’s pretty damned hard to steer anything.” Cabrillo would either kiss Max and Murph in a few seconds or curse them in hell. “Helm, turn us bow on to the Kilo. Wepps, open outer door for tube one. Match bearings and shoot.” Foam creamed off the Oregon’s bow as Eric Stone brought the ship around, digging her deep into the waves, to give Murph his shot.

“Stoney, another two points to starboard,” Mark asked, and Eric goosed the thrusters to maneuver the ship so she was pointed directly at where the Kilo had fired the spread of torpedoes. “Linda, she hasn’t moved, right?”

“No. She’s just sitting there paying out wires to guide her school of fish.” Ross replied and took off the passive sonar headphones she’d been wearing.

That was the last piece of information Mark needed. He keyed the launch control. With a blast of compressed air powerful enough to make the freighter shudder, the modified tube shot the rocket torpedo out through the hull door at nearly fifty knots, fast enough for its specially designed nose cone to create a high-pressure bubble of air around the whole weapon. Just as its onboard computer detected the torpedo was slowing, its rocket kicked on with a deafening roar and its stabilizer fins flicked open.

The Hoot, or Whale, rocket torpedo sliced through the ocean in an envelope of supercavitated bubbles that eliminated the deadly drag of having to bull its way through the water. In essence, it was flying, and quickly accelerated to two hundred and thirty knots. Its wake was a boiling cauldron of steam.

The image from the topside camera showed that the sea was being ripped apart by a perfectly straight fault line that began at the Oregon’s bow and grew at four hundred and twenty feet per second.

“Look at that mother go!” someone exclaimed.

“Range to target?” Juan called.

“Three thousand yards,” Linda said. “Make that twenty-six hundred. Twenty-two hundred. Two thousand yards.”

“Mr. Murphy, be ready with the autodestruct,” Juan ordered.

“You don’t want to sink the Kilo?”

“And cause a bigger international incident than we’re already looking at? No, thank you. I just want to ring their bell a little bit and cut the guide wires spooling out of the sub’s bow.”

“How close?”

Juan checked the tactical display, gauging distances between the torpedoes targeting the Aggie Johnston and the Oregon and the ships themselves. The Johnston was less than thirty seconds from having her hull split open by a direct hit. He watched the line of the rocket torpedo cutting across the flat panel, moving so fast that the computer needed to recycle the image every second. He had to make sure to damage the Kilo enough so she couldn’t fire another spread but not to so cripple her that she sank.

“One thousand yards, Chairman,” Linda called out, although Juan could see the numbers on the screen blurring backward for himself.

There was less than two hundred yards now separating the Johnston from the torpedo hunting her. The vectors and speeds involved were complex, but Juan had a handle on it all.

“Wait for it,” he said. If he detonated the rocket too early, there was a chance it wouldn’t cut all the wire.

Too late and the Kilo’s crew of fifty-three were going to die.

“Wait for it,” he repeated, watching the Hoot arrow through the sea and a faint line of disturbed water approaching the supertanker’s exposed flank.

One torpedo was fifty yards from its target, the other, three hundred, but their relative speeds were so vastly different that they would reach their objectives at precisely the same instant.

“Now!”

Mark hit the button that sent an autodestruct signal to the torpedo’s onboard computer. The warhead and remaining solid rocket fuel blew a fraction of a second later, sending an erupting geyser of water into the air and opening a hole in the sea that was fifty feet deep and equally as wide. A stunning concussion wave radiated from explosion. It hit the Oregon bow on, but hammered the side of the Aggie Johnston so that the massive ship heeled slightly to port.

With the explosion’s acoustical onslaught reverberating through the sea, it made passive sonar signals impossible to detect. Cabrillo focused his attention on the topside camera shot of the Petromax supertanker. She rolled ponderously back to an even keel. He continued to watch her for a moment before a smile crossed his lips. There was no explosion from a torpedo slamming into her hull. Max’s plan had worked. The wires coiling out from the Kilo to guide her fish had been cut, and the weapons immediately shut down.

“Linda, tell me the instant you hear anything,” he ordered.

“Computer is compensating now. Give me another few seconds.” Hali turned in his seat. “Chairman, the pilot of one of the S-3B Vikings wants to know what just happened.”

“Stall him,” Juan said, his focus still on Linda, who sat as still as a statue, her right hand clamping the sonar headphones tightly to her head while in front of her tendrils of light floated down the sonar system’s waterfall display.

She finally looked over at him. “No high-speed props sounds, so the three remaining torpedoes are dead and most likely on their way to the bottom. I hear machinery noises from the Kilo and alarms coming from inside the hull. Wait . . . Okay, it’s pumps and . . . they’re blowing ballast.” A bright smile bloomed on her impish face. “We did it! They’re on their way to the surface.” A round of cheers and applause reverberated through the Op Center, and even Max’s bulldog face cracked into a grin.

“Nice job, everybody. Especially you, Mr. Murphy, and you, too, Max. Tell the team who installed the rocket torpedo and modified the tube to expect a little something extra in their next paychecks.” Although each member of the crew shared in the Corporation’s profits on a sliding scale, Cabrillo delighted in handing out bonuses for work above and beyond. It was part of the reason he engendered so much loyalty, though mainly that came because he was the best natural leader any of the people under him had ever worked for.

“Look at that!” Eric Stone gasped.

On the main display, he had shifted the camera view to show the spot of ocean where the Kilo had launched its ambush. The water boiled like a maelstrom, and, in the center of the disturbance, a blunt object rose from the sea. As the bow of the Iranian sub emerged, they could see her hull plates were buckled, as if she had run full speed into a seamount. The normally convex nose was dimpled in the center, the result of the rocket torpedo exploding sixty yards in front of her.

The craft continued to surface, bobbing on waves of her own creation. As it steadied, Stone zoomed the camera in on the damaged hull plates, the Oregon’s computer automatically compensating for the ship’s motion so the image remained rock steady. Air bubbled up from around the torn metal—not much, but enough to indicate the Kilo was taking on water. Hatches on her conning tower and her fore and aft decks were thrown open and a stream of men poured out of the crippled sub.

“You getting anything from them, Hali?” Juan asked.

“General distress calls, sir. Their pumps are barely keeping pace with the flooding. They are requesting assistance from the naval base at Chah Bahar. Her captain hasn’t ordered them to abandon ship, but he wants all unnecessary personnel on deck in case they founder.”

“Are they asking for help from any ships in the area?”

“Negative, and I doubt they will.”

“Agreed. Firing at civilian freighters without warning violates about fifty international treaties.”

“And what do you call what we did back at Bandar Abbas?” Max asked, just to tease.

“Petty larceny,” Cabrillo dismissed, “punishable by a fine and a couple hours of community service.” Just then, the pair of S-3Bs off the American aircraft carrier streaked over the Oregon and flew less than a hundred feet off the surface of the ocean as they roared down the Kilo’s length. Sailors dove flat on the decks as the jet wash ripped across their uniforms.

“Chairman, the pilot of the lead Viking still wants to talk to you,” Hali said. “And I’m getting an official request from the carrier that we remain in position. It’s a Commander Charles Martin, aboard the George Washington.”

“Pipe it over,” Juan said, and settled earphones over his head and adjusted the integrated microphone.

“This is Juan Cabrillo, master of the MV Oregon. What can I do for you, Commander?”

“Captain Cabrillo, we would like to send over a contingent of men to debrief your crew about what just occurred. The captains of the Saga and Aggie Johnston have already agreed. A helicopter can reach you in twenty minutes. The guided missile cruiser Port Royal will be there in two hours if you don’t have facilities for landing a chopper.”

“With all due respect, Commander Martin, none of my crew saw anything. I myself was asleep, and the watch stander on duty is blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other.” Martin’s voice sharpened. “Captain, I needn’t remind you that coalition forces operating in these waters reserve the right to inspect all shipping entering or leaving the Persian Gulf. I call this a request out of courtesy, but it is an order. You will remain where you are and prepare to be boarded.” Juan understood the pressure the Navy was under to interdict potential terrorists from using the Gulf as a highway for weapons and fighters, but there was no way he was going to let them inspect the Oregon.

Corrupt officials in foreign ports could be easily dissuaded from searching the scabrous freighter, but this was not the case with the U.S. military.

“Could you please stand by?” Juan requested. He covered the mike with his hand and called over to Hali Kasim. “Get Overholt on the horn. Tell him what’s going on, and have him get these guys off our back.

Eric, set a course bearing one hundred and five degrees, and make our speed eighteen knots.” He took his hand away from the microphone. “Sorry about that, Commander. We can’t land a chopper on the Oregon, so you’ll have to send a boarding party from the Port Royal.”

“Very well, Captain. Plan on our arrival at about eleven hundred hours.”

“We’ll leave the light on for ya,” Juan drawled, and ended the call. He glanced around the Op Center.

“Anyone want to bet? Twenty bucks to the person who guesses the closest.” The crew knew immediately what he was referring to.

“They’ll call back in ten minutes,” Hali opined.

“Five,” Linda said.

“They’re going to have their hands full for a while.” This from Mark Murphy. “He won’t notice we’re under way for at least a half hour.”

“I’m with Linda,” Eric said. “Five minutes. We’ll split the twenty.” Juan looked over at Max Hanley. “Care to venture a guess?” Max studied the acoustic tile ceiling for a moment, then leveled his eyes on the Chairman. “Right about now.”

“Holy crap,” Hali cried. “He’s right. Martin’s hailing us again.”

“Put him through,” Cabrillo ordered.

“Captain Cabrillo, consider this your final warning,” Commander Martin said. Juan could hear through the clipped speech that the officer’s teeth were clenched. “If you do not stop immediately, I will order the circling Vikings to open fire on your ship.”

Cabrillo didn’t doubt Martin’s sincerity. But he was also tired of dealing with the man. “Commander, an Iranian submarine just took a potshot at a fully loaded supertanker. I’m not going to wait around for them to come after us. I will be clear of your interdiction sphere before you arrive and there isn’t much you can do about it.”

“You will—” Martin’s voice suddenly cut out. He came back on the line thirty seconds later. Juan couldn’t quite place the new tone in his voice. Awe? Fear? Respect? Some combination of all three?

“Captain, you are free to leave the area at your own discretion.” Cabrillo wondered who Langston had gotten to make the call. It had to be the commander in chief for Naval Operations for the Indian Ocean or one of the Joint Chiefs. Whoever it was, it was nice to have some pull in Washington.

“I thought you’d see it our way. Thank you and good luck. By the way, the Iranian Kilo’s taking on water, so if you want a look inside her I suggest you hurry. Oregon out.” A meaty hand appeared under Juan’s chin. He pulled his wallet from his pant pocket and slapped a twenty-dollar bill into Max’s palm.

Max sniffed the money as though it was a fine cigar. “Like taking candy from a baby.”

“Doesn’t surprise me you know what that feels like.” Cabrillo stood. “Nothing like a little naval battle before breakfast to make you hungry. Navigator, what’s our ETA at the rendezvous site?”

“Not until midnight,” Eric replied.

“Okay, I’ll want senior staff on watch, so shuffle your schedules as needed. I have to go call Langston, thank him for his help, and then explain why we’re only delivering one rocket torpedo.” As he made to leave the Op Center, he grabbed the twenty from Max’s hand. “For costing us that second torpedo, you still owe the Corporation four million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty bucks.” CHAPTER 6

THE SALT TANG OF SEAWATER STRUCK DR. JULIA Huxley as soon as she opened the door to the ballast tank that doubled as a swimming pool. Because of the way the Oregon was configured, it was more of an Olympic-length lap pool, measuring one hundred and sixty-four feet long, but it was only two lanes wide, and flanked by a narrow catwalk tiled in pale marble that was striped with nonskid adhesive tape. The lighting was a mix of fluorescent and incandescent bulbs that gave the illusion of sunshine. The walls were of matching tile, and were a constant source of concern for the cleaning crews, because when the tank was filled to ballast down the ship the glossy marble was inevitably smeared with algae.

Though not much of a swimmer herself, Hux knew the four basic strokes. Freestyle was the speed stroke, breast was for endurance, the backstroke was a quirk of the body’s buoyancy in motion, and the butterfly was the power stroke. It took an incredible amount of strength for a swimmer to haul his arms and upper torso completely out of the water, arch to launch himself forward, and pull himself through the water. She paused at the head of the pool to watch the lone swimmer flying down his lane doing the butterfly. He moved as if he were born to swim, with long, fluid movements, and not a bit of energy wasted, his body sawing up and down like a porpoise, as his arms broke free, with barely a splash with each stroke.

When she looked closer, she noticed waterproof weight bands clamped around his wrists, to make the workout even more difficult. To her way of thinking, this went beyond exercise and leaned toward masochism. Then again, she hadn’t used the ship’s fitness center for a while and tended toward yoga to keep most of the unwanted pounds off her curvy frame.

She had long gotten over how well Juan had adapted to losing his leg. He never let it stop or even slow him. Like everything else in his life, he took it as a challenge to be conquered.

Cabrillo made a crisp flip turn at the far end of the pool and powered his way toward her, his blue eyes obscured by a pair of goggles, his mouth opening wide for every breath. He must have seen her, and knew his time alone was coming to an end, because he suddenly accelerated, pouring on the power to finish the last part of his swim as though it was a sprint.

As the ship’s doctor, Hux knew everything about the crew’s medical status, and she would have sworn Juan was half his age by the way he swam.

He reached her in a froth of water that spilled onto the landing and forced her back to save the Gucci loafers she was wearing with a pair of khakis and a simple oxford shirt. Over that, Julia sported her ubiquitous lab coat. He slapped the edge of the pool and looked up at the big timer’s clock on the wall behind her.

“Damn, I’m getting old,” he said, and stripped off his goggles and the weights from around both wrists.

“Could have fooled me.” Julia tossed him a towel as he heaved himself from the water in one fluid motion.

“I’ve been down here for thirty minutes,” Juan said, running the thick towel over his body. If he felt self-conscious wearing a Speedo in front of her, it didn’t show, but with his physique there was nothing to be embarrassed about. “Five years ago, I could have done at least fifteen more laps.”

“And five years ago, I didn’t have crow’s-feet. Get over it,” she said with a smile that revealed the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes were laugh lines and not a sign of impending dotage.

“What do they say, ‘youth is wasted on the young’?”

“I have a feeling you didn’t waste much of yours, Juan Cabrillo.” He chuckled but didn’t deny it. “You aren’t dressed for a swim, so you didn’t come down here to work off that excellent beef Wellington we had for dinner. What gives?” A look of concern darkened Huxley’s face. “We have a little problem. Well, it’s actually Max’s problem, but I think it should affect all of us.”

Julia wasn’t a trained psychologist, but her medical background and calming demeanor made her the ship’s de facto counselor.

Cabrillo draped the damp towel over his shoulders and gave Hux his undivided attention. “Talk to me.”

“He got a call this evening from his ex-wife.”

Juan interrupted, “There are three to choose from. Which one was it?”

“Lisa. Number two. The one in Los Angeles he had the kids with. He didn’t give me all the details, but his ex thinks their son has been kidnapped.”

Juan didn’t react for a couple of seconds. None of Max’s wives knew what he did for a living. Like most of the crew, Hanley told his family that he was a sailor working for a small shipping company, so Cabrillo didn’t think the abduction could connect back to his work for the Corporation, but he couldn’t discount the idea. They had made a lot of powerful enemies over the years. He finally asked, “Have there been any ransom demands?”

“No, not yet. She thinks she knows who’s behind the kidnapping but has gotten nowhere with the LAPD

or FBI. She wants his help getting the kid back.”

Max’s son would be about twenty-two or twenty-three by now, Juan recalled. His daughter was a few years older, a newbie attorney doing environmental law. Kyle Hanley hadn’t lasted a year in college and had been drifting around L.A.’s counterculture scene ever since. He’d been busted a couple of times for minor drug possession, but Juan thought he’d done a stint in rehab two years ago and had remained clean. Though they’d been divorced for a few years before Juan had founded the Corporation, he remembered meeting Max’s second wife on a couple of occasions. Max had assured Cabrillo that she had once been a loving, wonderful woman, but something had changed her into a shrewish paranoid who accused him of infidelity while it was she who was having affairs.

Max had done the best he could with their children’s upbringing, paying far above what the divorce decree called for in terms of alimony and child support. Their daughter had turned out to be a bright, ambitious woman but their son, Kyle, was one of those people who believed life owed him, and no matter how he was approached he rebuffed any offers to help him find his way.

Juan knew that Max would do anything to help the kid, and he suspected why his second-in-command hadn’t come to him directly with his problem. Had he done so, Juan would have offered the full services of the Corporation to rescue Kyle, and Max would never ask for that kind of favor. “God, he can be stubborn.”

“He said the same about you,” Hux replied. “He wouldn’t even consider coming to you with this because he was sure you’d demand he take your help. He told me in no uncertain terms that this was his problem, not the Corporation’s, and that he’d handle it on his own.” Cabrillo expected no less, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t frustrated by Hanley’s pigheadedness. “What’s his plan?”

“As soon as we transfer the torpedo, he’s going to ask you to divert the Oregon to Karachi, the nearest city with an international airport where he can catch a flight to Los Angeles. After that, he wasn’t too sure.”

Juan checked his watch. They were due at the rendezvous coordinates in two hours. Once they finished up, they could reach Karachi in about twenty hours. The Corporation’s Gulfstream jet was in Monaco in preparation for their next mission. Although he could get the plane to Pakistan’s largest city in time, he believed flying commercial would be faster. It would mean leaving behind weapons and other contraband that wouldn’t make it through airport security, but he had enough contacts in L.A. to get what they might need so he wasn’t too concerned about that.

He had a mental list of questions, but he would wait to talk to Max directly.

The ship’s onboard computer flipped the lights in the pool area on and off a couple of times. Juan had programmed it to alert him the rendezvous was coming and to finish up his swim. He slipped on a terry robe and a pair of flip-flops. Hux walked with him as they exited the pool. He made certain to securely dog the waterproof hatch. “I’ll talk to him tonight and make sure he sees the error of his ways,” he said.

“That’s why I brought this to you. Max can’t go it alone.” It was clear Julia was relieved, though there wasn’t much doubt Juan would help his best friend.

“Thanks, Hux. One day, Max’s obstinacy is going to get him into trouble, but not this time.” AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER, a freshly showered Juan Cabrillo strode into the Operations Center. Stone and Murphy were in their chairs at the helm and weapons control. Hali sat at the communication’s station, while Linda Ross covered the sonar suite. Unlike during their escape from Bandar Abbas, there was a relaxed feeling in the room. Transferring the remaining rocket torpedo from the Oregon was going to be a relatively straightforward job. When Max entered a few minutes later, the atmosphere seemed to chill by a couple of degrees. He went straight to the engineering console without a word to anyone.

Juan slid out of his chair and approached him.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Hanley said, not looking up from his computer monitor.

“We’ll lay in a course for Pakistan as soon as we’re done, and I’ll get someone on buying us plane tickets. In the morning, you and I are going to sit down together and figure out our next move.” Max glanced up at Cabrillo and was about to protest. Juan held up his hand. “Our next gig is a straightforward eavesdropping job. Linda and Eddie can handle it without us.”

“This isn’t your fight,” Max said.

“Like hell, it isn’t. Someone kidnapped a member of your family. To me, it’s the same as if they’d taken one of my parents. I would expect nothing less than your help, so don’t expect me not to be here for you.”

Max paused a beat before saying, “Thanks, Juan.”

“Don’t mention it.” He returned to the command chair, the matter settled. “Linda, anything yet?”

“Negative, but there’s still twenty minutes to go.”

“Okay. Max, everything set on your end?”

“The torpedo’s up on deck in a sling and a technician is standing by the derrick controls.”

“Hali, anything on radar or over the comm channels?”

“No, sir. We’re in about the deadest spot you can find in the Indian Ocean. I haven’t seen or heard from another ship in about eight hours.”

The rendezvous was to take place far from conventional shipping lanes to avoid detection from freighters and tankers, and, in an area devoid of much sea life, that would attract commercial fishing vessels. The timing of their operation coincided with a gap in satellite coverage, just in case anyone was looking down from above.

Fifteen minutes trickled by before Linda called out, “Contact. I’ve got machinery noises almost directly below us, four hundred feet down. Ballast tanks are being purged.” She washed the noise picked up by the passive sonar through the computer to cross-check the sound with a loop of tape provided by Overholt. “Confirmed. It’s the USS Tallahassee, making for the surface.”

“Very good,” Juan said. “Helm, keep sharp. You dent that sub, you bought it.” Another few minutes passed as the Los Angeles Class fast-attack submarine climbed up from the depths, rising so slowly that she was dead silent from more than a couple miles away. Eric Stone had split his computer display so he could watch the sonar returns as well as the Oregon’s GPS coordinates, to make certain the sub wouldn’t crash into the underside of the hull. It was the responsibility of the crew aboard the Tallahassee to hold their position stable relative to the freighter. Any corrections would come from Eric’s controls.

“One hundred feet and fifty,” Linda said. “Her ascent is slowing. Slowing. Leveling off at one hundred.”

“She’s holding about two hundred yards off the port beam,” Eric said.

“Slide us over so she’ll surface within fifty yards, please, Mr. Stone.” Eric punched up the bow and stern thrusters to shove the eleven-thousand-ton ship laterally through the water, placing her exactly on her mark, and reactivated the dynamic positioning system so the computer would hold them steady.

“She’s coming up again. Ten feet per minute.”

“Very good, Sonar. You have the conn.”

“I have the conn,” Linda repeated. Juan got up and went to the elevator in the back of the Op Center, joined a second later by Max. Together, they rode up to the Oregon’s bridge. As soon as the floor hatch opened, they could feel the sultry night air.

The ramshackle bridge was pitch-black, but both men were so familiar with their ship they didn’t need light to make their way aft to a set of stairs that would take them to the main deck. Outside, the stars shone with particular brilliance because the sliver of moon had yet to rise.

Over the port rail, the inky water began to grow agitated as the three-hundred-and-fifty-foot submarine neared the surface. Her conning tower appeared first, and then the vessel seemed to grow as she shed water, fore deck and long aft deck emerging, as well as her stiletto rudder. She came up on an even keel so slowly that there were hardly any waves. She rode low in the water, menacing in her silence, like a sea monster basking on the surface.

Juan had a handheld walkie-talkie and brought it to his lips. “Mr. Stone, ballast us down about fifteen feet. I want our decks to be lined up a little closer.” Eric acknowledged, and a moment later the pumps that filled the tanks spooled up and the Oregon began to settle deeper in the water.

“Deck crew, get those fenders over the sides.” Juan’s order was met with a frenzy of activity, as men lowered thick rubber bumpers down to just above the waterline. Unlike the old truck tires they used in port partly as disguise, these were modern cushions, and could take a tremendous amount of pressure before failing.

Over on the Tallahassee, part of her deck just fore of her sail began to articulate upward, emitting the faint red glow of battle lights. This was the loading port for the twenty-four Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes the boat could carry. For this mission, she was carrying less than a full complement of the Advanced Capability weapons in order to accept the Iranian rocket torpedo, which was sitting on the Oregon’s deck on a wheeled trolley. The cases of captured computer information were secured to the torpedo.

Cabrillo keyed his walkie-talkie again. “Okay, Helm, shove us over using the thrusters, twenty-five percent power.”

“Twenty-five, aye.”

The Oregon began to move toward the waiting submarine, creeping slowly enough to let the water she was pushing dissipate rather than rock the Tallahassee. Several officers watched from the sub’s conning tower, using night vision binoculars.

“Ease off, Mr. Stone,” Juan ordered, judging distance and speed with an expert eye. The ships were less than twenty feet apart. “Very good, now, ten percent opposite side.” Water frothed at the thruster ports as Eric used them to stop the ship with only ten feet separating them from the submarine.

“Hold us here, if you please,” Juan said over the scrambled channel.

“Nice piece of ship handling,” a voice boomed from the Tallahassee’s conning tower.

“Thank you,” Juan called back. “Are you ready to receive the package?”

“I was led to believe there were two packages,” the sub’s captain shouted.

“Slight change of plans, following a dustup this morning in the Sea of Oman.”

“How’d it work?”

“Believe it or not, flawlessly.”

“Very well. We’re ready. Our satellite window closes in four minutes forty seconds.” Juan turned to the technician waiting next to the derrick controls. Though the crane looked like it was ready to topple at any moment, it was rated to lift seventy tons. Slack was taken up, and the sling cradling the rocket torpedo rose off the deck. Other men were standing by with guide ropes to prevent the weapon from spinning as it was lifted clear of the railing. The long boom rotated on its axis to swing out over the waiting submarine, where sailors stood by to receive the torpedo.

One of the sailors guided the lift using universal hand gestures, rotating his finger downward to call for more cable as the weapon came down into their waiting hands. They locked it into the boat’s autoloader and unstrapped it from the cradle. The lead sailor spun his hand over his head to indicate the torpedo was free and they could recover the crane. No sooner had it vanished into the hull than the large door began to close.

“Stow the derrick,” Juan ordered, before calling down to Eric Stone: “Helm, edge us away, twenty percent power, and pump us dry. Make ship ready for a high-speed run, and steer us best possible course for Karachi.”

“I thought we were going to Monaco.” This from Mark Murphy. It was clear in his voice he was looking forward to a few weeks at the opulent principality abutting the Riviera. Maurice had told Juan that Murph had even requisitioned a tuxedo from the Magic Shop so he could play James Bond in Monaco’s fabled casino.

“Don’t worry,” Juan assured him, “you are. Max and I have other plans.” Hali Kasim’s voice cut through the line. “Radar contact, Chairman. Just came on the scope at a hundred miles out, bearing due east.”

“Track it, and keep me posted.” Juan cupped his hands to his mouth to shout over to the Tallahassee’s captain, as the Oregon put more and more distance between the two vessels. “We just got a blip on radar. Its east of us, and the range is pretty extreme, but you guys might want to do your Houdini act and vanish.”

“Roger that, and thank you.” The captain waved. “We saw her on our approach. The read from the passive sonar sounds as if she’s derelict, and we caught nothing on any of our sensors, no radar emissions or radio. Not even an automatic distress signal. Obviously, we couldn’t investigate, but you all might want to. If she’s abandoned, it could mean a pretty hefty salvage fee.”

“We might just do that,” Juan said, intrigued. He could leave a prize crew on her to sail to Karachi while the Oregon went ahead. “Any idea how big she is?”

“By the sound of waves lapping against her hull, my chief sonar man estimates about the same size as your ship, five hundred and fifty feet or so.”

“Thanks for the tip, Captain. We might just check her out.”

“Good luck, Oregon.” With that, the last of the men disappeared down the conning tower hatchway.

Moments later, spray erupted around the sub’s ballast tank inlets as seawater rushed in and expelled the air trapped inside. A gout of froth boiled at her stern as her reactor directed power to her single, seven-bladed screw. The tail planes sank below the calm ocean surface and a wave began to stream over her bows. She sank swiftly, vanishing into her natural realm, and leaving behind a bare ripple that quickly dissolved as though the massive boat had never existed.

“Rotten way to make a living.” Max scowled. Though not exactly claustrophobic, Hanley wasn’t fond of confined spaces.

“Linc has done a couple of stints on fast-attack subs in his SEAL days. Says they’re nicer than a lot of the hotels he’s stayed in.”

“Linc’s cheap. I’ve seen the places he goes for. Hourly-rates-available, clean-sheets-extra kind of joints.”

Wind started to blow as the Oregon accelerated eastward. In a few minutes, the magnetohydrodynamics would have them going so fast that standing on the deck would be like facing into a hurricane. The deckhands had finished securing the crane boom, and the trolley had been returned to the torpedo room.

“What do you say, Max?”

“What do I say about what?”

“The derelict out there. Do we stop and take a quick look-see or hightail it to Karachi?” Max led Cabrillo into the protection of a stairwell, where he could light his pipe. “Kyle’s been missing since the day before yesterday. My ex thinks she knows who he’s with—some group of friends she doesn’t care for—which makes me think this isn’t as big a deal as she’s making it. It’ll take us at least twenty-four hours to get to L.A., once we reach Pakistan, so losing an hour investigating a ghostship isn’t going to matter much.”

“You sure?” Juan asked, blinking rapidly because hot ash from Max’s pipe whipped across his face.

“Sorry.” Max tapped the pipe over the side. “Yeah. It’ll be fine.”

“Eric, you read me?” Juan asked into the walkie-talkie.

“Right here.”

“New course. Get us over to that ship at best possible speed. Track down Gomez and have him prep the Robinson.” George “Gomez” Adams was a matinee-idol-handsome chopper pilot who’d gotten his nickname after using his charms on a South American drug lord’s wife, a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Carolyn Jones, the actress from the old Addams Family television show. “Tell him I want a UAV on the launch rail as soon as we’re in position. If need be, you can fly it.” Eric couldn’t fly a real plane to save his life but played enough flight simulator games to easily handle the Oregon’s remotely operated drones.

Cabrillo asked, “What’s our ETA?”

“Little over two hours.”

“Put yourself down for a bonus if you make it in two.”

CHAPTER 7

BY THE LIGHT OF THE STARS SMEARED ACROSS THE night sky, she looked like a wedding cake, multiple tiers rising higher and higher, a delicate balance of form and function. Yet to the men and women in the Op Center studying the feed beamed back by the flying drone, she also looked like a ghostship.

Not a porthole was lit, nothing stirred on her deck, even the bar of her radar transmitter was stationary.

Cresting waves slapped against her long white hull, hitting her as if she was as immutable as an iceberg.

Thermal imaging off the drone’s IR camera showed that her engines and funnel were cold, and while the ambient air temperature in this part of the Indian Ocean hovered near the high eighties the gear was sensitive enough to detect body heat. They saw none.

“What the hell happened here?” Linda asked, knowing there couldn’t possibly be an answer.

“Gomez, buzz the deck,” Juan ordered.

George Adams sat at a workstation at the rear of the Op Center, his slicked-back and brilliantined hair shimmering in the dim neon glow of his computer. He ran a finger across his pencil mustache and eased the joystick forward. The UAV, nothing more than a commercial radio-controlled airplane fitted with powerful cameras and an extended transceiver, complied with his command, diving down toward the cruise ship lying dead in the water thirty miles east of the hard-charging Oregon .

The crew watched expectantly as the tiny aircraft arced out of the sky and ran along the ship’s starboard rail, the camera tracking along her deck. For several long seconds, it was quiet in the room, each person absorbed with what they were seeing. It was Cabrillo who finally broke the silence.