Plague Ship

by Clive Cussler

  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 wa
s 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 cha
ir 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.