“Mr. Chairman,” he said, smiling a blindingly white smile, “what can I do for you?”
Cabrillo pointed to one of the computer screens. “George, we have a situation. We have the two Zodiacs along with seven of our people trying to get out of Macau waters. We can’t turn to pick them up because we’re being pursued ourselves.” Cabrillo pointed to another screen. “You can see they also have a tail. You need to provide support.”
“I’ll mount the experimental weapons pods Mr. Hanley designed for the Robinson. That gives me mini-rockets and a small chain gun, so I can cover their exit.”
“What about the extraction system?” Cabrillo asked.
“I can’t pull seven people aboard,” Adams said, “I don’t have the payload.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” Cabrillo said. “Let me explain.”
CAPTAIN Ching stared at the radar screen. He had been told the ship he was supposed to intercept was an aging cargo ship named the Oregon. From the description given by the pilot, the vessel was little more than a bucket of rust. Somehow, Ching was beginning to doubt that—Gale Force was steaming at fifty knots, and if the radar on the computer screen was correct, the cargo ship was doing forty-five. At the current speeds, the Oregon would be safely in international waters in less than five minutes. Then there would be the risk of a major incident if the sailors on Gale Force attempted a boarding.
“Give me full speed,” Ching ordered the engine room.
“THE hydrofoil is accelerating,” Hanley noted. “At the increased speed, they will intercept us a minute or two before we reach the demarcation line.”
Cabrillo glanced at the screen showing the water in front of the Oregon. The clouds were finally clearing and soon they would be free of the fog bank.
“Let’s raise them on the radio,” Cabrillo said, “and explain the situation.”
Stone started tuning the radio while Cabrillo reached for a different microphone.
“Engine room,” he said.
“Sir,” a voice said, “this is Reinholt.”
Cabrillo didn’t bother to ask why the ailing engineer was not in sick bay as he had been ordered. The man had obviously felt well enough to help.
“Reinholt,” Cabrillo said quickly, “is there any way to coax out a few more knots?”
“We’re on it, sir,” Reinholt answered.
DOWN belowdecks, the weapons pods had already been attached to both sides of the R-44. While the elevator lifted the helicopter up to launch height, Adams slid a pair of Nomex flight gloves over his hands, then slid a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses over his eyes. He stepped from foot to foot in anticipation, and as soon as the elevator stopped and locked in place, he raced over, did a quick preflight and checked the underneath harness, then stepped to the pilot’s door of the Robinson and cracked it open. He was sliding into the seat as a deckhand raced over.
“Do you want me to pull the pins?” the deckhand asked.
“Arm me,” Adams said quickly, “then clear the deck. I’m out of here as soon as I have operating temps.”
The man bent down, removed the pins from the missiles and checked the power to the mini-gun. Once he was finished, he popped his head inside the door again.
“Check your weapons console.”
Adams stared at the small screen attached to the side of the dashboard. “I’m green.”
The deckhand shut the door and raced away. Adams waited until he was clear, then engaged the starter. Four minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, using the surface wind from the accelerating Oregon as a crutch, Adams lifted from the deck, then pivoted the R-44 in midair, turned and headed back toward Macau.
THE Zodiacs were skimming across the water at thirty knots. According to their crude radars, they were keeping ahead of the pursuing boats, but just barely. Seng’s boat, with the added weight of the Golden Buddha, was straining to maintain speed. He had the throttle all the way to the stops, but there was no more speed to be coaxed from his engine. The fog and rain were still thick and they shielded the inflatable boats from the pursuers, but Seng could sense they were just out of visual and auditory range. If one thing went wrong—an engine miss or overheating, a leak in the inflatable pontoons that slowed them down—they would be toast.
At the same instant Seng was having his dark thoughts, Huxley heard the Oregon calling over the radio. She cupped her hand over her ear so she could hear. Because of the potential for interception, the message was brief and to the point.
“Help is on the way,” Stone said.
“Understand,” Huxley answered.
She turned to Seng and Hornsby. “The Oregon’s sending the cavalry,” she said.
“Not a moment too soon,” Seng said as he stared at the temperature gauge for his engine, now beginning to creep into the red.
Not too far distant, the Zodiac carrying Kasim, Murphy Meadows, and Jones heard the message as well. Kasim was steering, Meadows standing alongside, with Jones lying prone on the deck to the stern. Once Meadows heard the news, he turned, crouched down, then yelled the news over the sound of the wind and waves to Jones.
“I wish I’d have known,” Jones quipped. “I would have asked them to bring some aspirin.”
“You want another bottle of water?” Meadows asked.
“Not unless there’s a bathroom on board,” Jones said, grimacing.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Meadows said. “We’ll be home soon.”
LIKE the distant view of a shoplifter across a crowded store, the outline of the Oregon started to form through Ching’s binoculars as the fog began to clear. Concentrating on the hull, Ching could see the large white-capped wake being created by the racing cargo ship. The wake and the cargo ship’s track were like nothing he had ever witnessed before. Most cargo ships, and Ching had tracked and intercepted more than a few, moved through the water like lumbering manatees—this Iranian-flagged vessel he was chasing moved like a thoroughbred in heat.
The water out the stern was not churning, as with most ships; instead, it seemed to be forming into concentric whirlpools that flattened the sea to the rear, as if a large container of glycerin had been poured overboard. Ching stared at the decks, but no crew was visible. There was only rusty metal and junk piled high.
Though the decks were deserted, the Oregon did not give the appearance of a ghost ship. No, Ching thought, beneath her metal skin, much was happening. At just that instant, a medium-sized helicopter flew over the Gale Force about a hundred yards to the port side, just above wave-top level.
“Where did that come from?” Ching asked his electronics officer.
“What, sir?” the officer said, staring up from a screen.
“A helicopter,” Ching said, “heading from sea toward land.”
“It didn’t show up on the sensors,” the officer said. “Are you sure you saw it through the fog?”
“Yes,” Ching said loudly, “I saw it.”
He walked over to the screen and stared at the radar returns.
“What’s happening?” he asked a few seconds later.
The electronics officer was short and slim. He looked like a jockey in a fancy uniform. His hair was jet black and straight and his eyes brown-edged with bloodshot red from staring at the radar.
“Sir,” he said finally, “I’m not sure. What you see has been happening intermittently since we began the chase. One second we seem to get a clear return, then it jumps to the other side of the screen like it’s a video game playing hide-and-seek.”
“The image is not even the correct size,” Captain Ching noted.
“It grows, then diminishes to a pinprick,” the officer said. “Then jumps across the screen.”
Ching stared out the window again; they were drawing closer to the Oregon. “They’re jamming us.”
“I can detect that,” the officer said.
“Then what is it?” Ching asked.
The officer thought for a minute. “I read in a translated science journal about an exper
imental system an American engineer was building. Instead of making objects disappear, as with stealth, or using extra signals, as on most jamming equipment, this system has a computer that takes in all the signals from our hull and reforms them into different shapes and strengths.”
“So this system can make them appear or disappear as they decide?” Ching said incredulously.
“That’s about it, sir,” the officer said.
“Well,” Ching said finally, “there’s no way an old rust bucket has anything like that on board.”
“Well, let’s hope not, sir,” the electronics officer said.
“Why’s that?” Ching asked.
“Because the article also stated that by changing the object dimensions, they can increase the targeting potential.”
“Which means?”
“That if the frigate to the rear or the fast-attack corvette coming up quick on our stern fires anything other than bullets, and they have a system like this, they could redirect the fire to us.”
“Chinese missiles used to sink Chinese ships?”
“Exactly.”
“RAMMING and jamming,” Eric Stone shouted. Lincoln was on the far side of the control room at the primary fire control station. He was running a quick diagnostic check on the missile battery. He stared intently at the bar graphs as they filled the computer screen.
“Mr. Chairman, I’m good to go,” he shouted toward Cabrillo a few seconds later.
Cabrillo turned to Hanley. “Here’s the deal as I see it. The entire thrust of this operation was the retrieval of the Golden Buddha. We have it, but it’s still inside the circle of Chinese influence. Our first priority must be to get our teams and the Golden Buddha safely back on the Oregon, while at the same time making our escape.”
“I hate to say it, Juan,” Hanley said, “but I wish the weather wasn’t clearing.”
“A wasted wish, but I agree,” Cabrillo said.
“We don’t know what the navy is sending,” Hanley noted, “but we can safely assume there won’t be surface ships involved—our sensors don’t detect any other vessels for a hundred miles.”
“They launched cruise missiles from the Persian Gulf into downtown Baghdad,” Cabrillo said, “so we can assume either missile or aircraft support.”
“The enemy has rockets on the fast-attack corvette, and some long guns that can fire high-explosive rounds, plus the frigate should have some Chinese-made cruise-type missiles.”
“They any good?” Cabrillo asked.
“Not as accurate as ours,” Hanley admitted, “but they can sink a ship.”
“The hydrofoil?”
“Deck-mounted machine guns only,” Hanley said.
“And the Zodiacs are being pursued by harbor patrol boats?”
“Correct,” Hanley said. “A pair of forty-six-foot aluminum cruisers with diesel power. They each have a single bow-mounted machine gun.”
“Radios?”
“Nothing special,” Hanley said.
“So even if we took out the harbor boats,” Cabrillo said, “the Zodiacs would still need to pass the trio of vessels on our tail.”
“I’m afraid so,” Hanley agreed.
Cabrillo started sketching on a yellow pad with a black Magic Marker. When he finished, he handed the pad to Hanley. “Make sense to you?”
“Yep,” Hanley said.
“Okay then,” Cabrillo said forcefully, “hard a’ starboard. We’re going back toward land.”
33
ADAMS eased the cyclic to the left and banked the R-44. A few seconds earlier he had passed to port of the Chinese corvette and had just picked up a glimpse of the vessel through the fog. It was a wonder the Chinese vessel had not fired on him—surely they had detected the helicopter as it flew toward land. The frigate was fast approaching and Adams planned to give it a wide berth.
He was keeping the Robinson five to ten feet above the tops of the waves—maybe that was shielding him from detection, but Adams doubted it. To avoid radar detection, he needed to be closer to the wave tops—two, three feet maximum. With the weapons pods hanging from each side of his skids and seawater detrimental to their correct operation, Adams was taking no chances. If he had to trade avoiding fire from the Chinese ships to arriving too high to help his team members, he’d do it.
Adams eased forward on the cyclic and watched as the governor adjusted his rotor speed. He was doing 130 miles an hour, and according to his calculations he should be seeing the first Zodiac one minute forty-five seconds after he passed the frigate. He strained his eyes to catch sight of the Chinese vessel, while at the same time watching the dash-mounted storm scope, which was sending a radar signal into the weather.
HUXLEY pointed to the dash of the Zodiac but said nothing.
Seng nodded, then bent down and shouted into her ear. “If I was to guess,” he screamed, “I’d say we have something partially blocking the raw water intake holes on the drive. Might be something as simple as a piece of soaked paper or part of a plastic bag—the problem is, we need to stop and raise the outboard out of the water to check.”
“It doesn’t seem to be getting any worse,” Julia Huxley said.
“No, it doesn’t,” Seng said. “We are in the low red and staying there. If the engine can run at those temperatures for a little longer, we might just make it out of here alive.”
Huxley scanned the water through the fog as they raced along. She turned and caught a quick glimpse of the Zodiac being piloted by Kasim off the starboard stern. The pair of diesel cruisers had yet to get close enough to catch sight of either vessel, and if they maintained their speed they never would.
“Too bad we can’t ask for a time out,” Huxley said, “so I can clean the water intake.”
Eddie Seng strained to hear Huxley’s voice over the noise of his racing outboard motor. Something else was causing his ears to perk up—a slight thumping coming from the bow. Then, through the fog, he caught a glimpse of the R-44. And a voice came over the radio.
THE command bridge on the Gale Force was a buzz of shouted instructions. Messages were repeated more than once as the news that the Oregon was starting a turn back to land was relayed from radar operator to captain, captain to helmsman, then around to the other officers. The event was relayed to the captains of the corvette and the frigate, who immediately began to slow.
Captain Ching figured it would take the Oregon close to a nautical mile to complete the turn.
Once again, Ching would underestimate.
WITH magnetohydrodynamics engines powering the Oregon, there was no need to slow down to change directions on the drives. There were no shafts to twist, no props to bend, no gears to strip. The water jets from the stern came out of a rectangular shaft with a scoop on the end that could be diverted like the thrust of a Harrier jet engine to the fore or to the rear. With the push of a few buttons, one of the propulsion engineers could divert the flow of one engine forward and one back and the Oregon would almost pivot on her keel, so long as the speeds were kept below thirty knots. Such an abrupt maneuver made for a rough ride—the ship would kneel over and the gunwales would dip almost into the water—but the Corporation had done it more than once. Other than a few broken dishes and other objects being tossed around, the Oregon had been none the worse for the wear.
The engineer plotted in a turn-radius profile on the computer that resembled a U-turn. Then he alerted the control room that they were ready. Once the ship commander gave the order, the engineer simply pushed a button and held on to a nearby table as the Oregon threaded herself across the surface of the water as if she were on rails. Down in the engine room, Sam Pryor glanced over at Gunther Reinholt, who had just disconnected his IV and was sipping from a cup of strong coffee after inputting the command for the turn.
“Elementary, Mr. Reinholt,” Pryor said, smiling.
“Indubitably, Mr. Pryor,” Reinholt said.
Both men stared at the lying-down U-shaped track on the computer screen for a second.
“WE’RE going to do a fast turn and bunch up the three ships chasing us,” Cabrillo said over a scrambled radio link. “You will need to take out the pair of cruisers fast so the Zodiacs can slow before they run up on the stern of the frigate.”
“Understand,” Adams said.
“We’ll alert Seng and Kasim to slow as soon as the cruisers are disabled.”
“I’ll blow all the ordnance of the port pod on the lead cruiser,” Adams said, “and the starboard on the following craft. That should stop them cold.”
“Do your best to hit them in the sterns,” Cabrillo said. “If possible, we want to keep casualties to a minimum.”
AT almost the same instant that the lead harbor police patrol boat caught sight of Kasim’s Zodiac in the lessening fog, the lookout also reported a helicopter approaching from out to sea. Adams had turned and looped the R-44 around to intercept the lead boat straight on her rear quarter. Placing the crosshairs on the firing screen on the rear third of the forty-six-foot aluminum ship, Adams flipped a switch so all the missiles were targeted to the same spot just above the waterline.
Then he took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.
The lookout caught a quick glimpse of the bubble canopy of the helicopter a second before the port weapons pod erupted with a volley of four missiles. The missiles were small—only slightly thicker than a man’s arm—but their noses were packed with high explosives. With a six-foot plume of fire belching from the rear, the missiles raced across the gap and slammed into the side of the lead cruiser and severed the bow from the stern as easily as a machete through a pineapple.
The captain just had time to sound the alarm to abandon ship before the bow started sinking.
“NOW, Mr. Reinholt,” Cabrillo said as an alarm sounded throughout the ship.
Reinholt reached up to the console and pushed a red button, then took hold of the table next to him in a death grip. The Oregon keeled over and started to turn. It was as if the ship were on the track of a roller coaster. The g forces were severe. Everyone in the ship clutched the nearest immovable object and bent their knees like mogul skiers on a gnarly slope. A few moments later, the Oregon came out of the fallen U and rolled upright again.
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