The Silent Sea

by Clive Cussler

  Juan approached an oil drum placed next to the ship’s rail. He fished an ear microphone from his pocket and called the op center. The Oregon was wired with encrypted cellular service.

  “Hello,” answered the high-pitched voice of Linda Ross, who had the conn.

  “Hello yourself,” Cabrillo said. “Do me a favor and activate the number five deck gun.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No. Just giving the old girl a once-over.” Juan was well aware his crew knew he inspected the ship whenever he was troubled.

  “You got it, Juan. Coming up now.”

  The oil drum’s lid lifted silently on an armature until it was completely folded over the side. An M-60 medium machine gun rose barrel first and rotated down so it was pointed out to sea. He examined the ammunition belt. The brass showed no trace of corrosion, while the weapon itself was well coated in gun oil.

  “Looks good to me,” Cabrillo said, and asked Linda to stow it once again.

  Next, he ambled down to the engine room, the heart of his creation. It was as clean as an operating theater. The ship’s revolutionary power plant used supercooled magnets to strip free electrons from seawater in a system called magnetohydrodynamics. Currently, the technology was still so experimental that no other ship in the world utilized it. The room was dominated by the cryopumps used to keep the magnets cooled to three hundred degrees below zero. The main drive tubes ran the Oregon’s length and were as big around as railroad tanker cars. Inside were variable-geometry impellers that, had they not been locked away in the guts of an old tramp freighter, would have served as the focal point of any modern-art museum. When water was being run through them, the whole space thrummed with unimaginable power.

  The Oregon could reach speeds unheard of in a ship her size and stop as quickly as a sports car. With her powerful athwartship thrusters and directional drive outlets, she could also turn on a dime.

  He continued on, ambling about the vessel with no direction in mind.

  The hallways and work spaces were usually filled with lively conversation and banter. Not today. Downcast eyes had replaced ready laughter. The men and women of the Corporation performed their duties with the knowledge that one of their own was no longer with them. Juan could sense no blame from the crew, and that was what started easing the burden he carried. There was no blame because they all felt a measure of responsibility. They were a team, and, as such, they shared the victories and defeats in equal measure.

  Cabrillo spent five minutes staring at a small Degas hanging in a corridor near where most of the crew’s cabins were located. The discreetly lit painting showed a ballerina lacing a slipper up her ankle. In his opinion, the artist captured light, innocence, and beauty better than any painter before or since. That he could appreciate one of Degas’s masterworks and the ugly functionality of a machine gun in the same tour was an irony lost on the Chairman. Aesthetics came in all forms.

  In the forward hold he watched crewmen preparing to pull their spare RHIB from storage. When they were at sea and away from prying eyes, a deck crane would lift the RHIB from the hold, set it in the water off the starboard side, and it would be winched into the boat garage located at the waterline.

  He checked in on the ship’s swimming pool. It was usually his favorite form of exercise, and the reason he maintained his broad shoulders and lean waist, but after so much time in the water over the past two days he would probably use the nearby weight room for a while.

  At the very bottom of the ship was one of her best-kept secrets. It was a cavernous room directly above the keel from which they could launch a pair of submersibles. Massive doors split open along the bottom of a moon pool, and the minis could be launched and recovered even when the ship was under way, though it was preferable that the Oregon remain stationary. The engineering needed to create such a space and maintain the hull’s integrity had been Juan’s single greatest challenge when he’d converted her from an old lumber carrier.

  The hangar under the aftmost of the ship’s five holds was deserted. The black MD-520N sat on her struts with her main blades folded back. Unlike a traditional chopper, this model didn’t have a tail rotor. Instead, the jet engine exhaust was ducted through the tail to counter the torque of the overhead rotor. It made her quieter than most helicopters, and Gomez Adams said it made him look cooler.

  The space had a cramped feel because of modifications they’d been forced to make when upgrading from the small Robinson R44 helicopter they’d once used.

  In the infirmary he found Julia Huxley, their Navy-trained doctor, bandaging one of the engineer’s hands. The man had sliced it while working in the machine shop and had needed a couple of stitches. Julia wore her trademark lab coat and ponytail fashioned with a rubber band.

  “Lay off the rum rations until after your shift, Sam,” Hux joked after finishing taping down gauze pads.

  “I promise. No more drilling under the influence.”

  “You okay?” Juan asked him.

  “Yeah. Stupid, though. My father taught me the first day in our garage never to take your eyes off your tools. So what do I do? I look away while I’m milling a piece of steel and the damned thing slips and, wham, it looks like I was slaughtering a pig down there.”

  Juan’s headset chirped. “Yes, Linda.”

  “It’s Max. Sorry to bother you, but Langston Overholt’s on the line, and he says he’ll only discuss something with you.”

  Cabrillo thought for a second and nodded to himself as if he’d made a decision. “I was done anyway. Thanks. Tell him to give me a second while I head back to my cabin.”

  “HELLO?”

  “Juan, sorry to call so soon after a mission but I’m afraid something rather peculiar has come up,” Lang said in his usual understatement.

  “Have you heard?” Cabrillo asked.

  “I had to talk with Max before he relented and put the call through. He told me about your man. I’m sorry. I know what you’re feeling. For what it’s worth,” Overholt continued, “you did a magnificent job. The Argentines will complain to the UN and accuse us of everything under the sun, but, bottom line, we have the power cell back and they’ve got nothing.”

  “I have a hard time believing it was worth a man’s life,” Juan muttered.

  “In the great scheme of things it probably wasn’t, but your guy knew the price going in. You all do.”

  Juan wasn’t in the mood for a philosophical discussion with his former case officer, so he asked, “What’s this delicate situation you mentioned?”

  Overholt told the Chairman everything he knew about the situation at the Wilson/George Station, including what he’d learned from Tom Parker.

  When he finished, Juan said, “So it could be this guy Dangle—”

  “Gangle,” Lang corrected.

  “Gangle could have gone off the deep end and killed the others?”

  “It’s entirely possible, although Dr. Parker’s assessment from what he’d learned from the astronaut is this Gangle kid was just a loner with a chip on his shoulder.”

  “Lang, those are always the ones who take axes to their families or shoot sniper rifles from bell towers.”

  “Well, yes. But still we need to keep in mind that there’s an Argentine base less than thirty miles away. As you know, they’ve been making noise about how all of the Antarctic Peninsula is their sovereign territory. What if this is the first play in a larger operation? There are other bases down there. The Norwegians, Chileans, the Brits. They could be next.”

  “Or it could be a deranged kid who’s spent too much time on the ice,” Juan said.

  “The problem is, we won’t have a definite answer for the better part of a week, maybe longer if the weather doesn’t clear. If this is an Argentine play, then by the time we figure it out it will be too late.”

  “So you want us to head south and investigate what happened at Wilson/George.”

  “Exactly. It should be a milk run. A quick dash down, a little look-see,
and then tell old Uncle Langston that he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “We’ll do it, of course, but you have to know that Max and I aren’t going.”

  “You have something planned?”

  Cabrillo explained about discovering the Flying Dutchman and his desire to tell the families of the blimp’s crew what had happened to their loved ones a half century ago.

  “I think that’s a tremendous idea,” Lang boomed. “Just the thing you need to gain a little perspective. The crew won’t need you two on this mission anyway. Max frets too much, and you should get out of your head for a while.”

  “Oh, before I forget, my weapons guy said there’s a chance that satellite was shot down.”

  “Come again?”

  “You heard me. There are a couple of dings on the power cell’s outer casing. Two correspond to a pair of bullet strikes, but the third is a mystery. You need to have that thing gone over with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “We were planning on it, but thanks for the heads-up. And I doubt your guy’s right. Argentina doesn’t have the technology to shoot down a rocket that late into its flight, and why would they bother? It wasn’t a military launch.”

  “I’m just telling you what he thinks. If he’s wrong, fine. If not, well, that’s something else altogether. Don’t forget who has demonstrated they have the capability to shoot down a satellite and who, by the way, continually blocks more intense sanctions against Argentina at the UN.”

  That forced a long pause from Overholt. “I don’t like what you’re implying.”

  “Neither do I,” Juan agreed. “But it’s food for thought. Still want us in Antarctica?”

  “More than ever, my boy, more than ever.”

  ELEVEN

  The summons had been a single word, “Come.” Despite its terseness, Major Jorge Espinoza read a great deal into the message and none of it was good. It took nearly twelve hours to arrange transport from the northern border to his father’s estate in the grassy pampas a hundred miles west of Buenos Aires. He had flown the last leg himself in his Turbine Legend, a prop plane that looked like the legendary Spitfire and had nearly the same performance. Lieutenant Jimenez, his burns heavily bandaged, had ridden in the rear seat.

  When his father was given command of the Ninth Brigade, he had used family money to build them a new command center and barracks at the estate. The old runway a mile from the main house had been expanded and paved to accommodate a fully loaded C-130. The apron was also expanded for helicopter landing pads, and a huge metal hangar was erected.

  The camp itself was so far from the big house that even mortar practice didn’t disturb the General, his new, young wife, and their two children. It had housing for the thousand men who belonged to the elite unit, with support facilities for all their needs. Next to the parade ground was an obstacle course and a state-of-the-art fitness center.

  With its wide-open grassy planes, dense forests, and two separate river systems, the huge cattle estate was perfect for keeping the men in top operational preparedness.

  The nearby village of Salto was growing from a sleepy little farming community to a bustling town of people more than willing to take care of the soldiers’ off-duty needs.

  Espinoza typically buzzed the main house when he made his approach to the airfield. His half brothers loved his aircraft and begged him for rides incessantly. But not today. He wanted to attract as little attention to himself as possible as he soared over the estate, where the spring rains were turning the grassland green and lustrous.

  The debacle in the rain forest would be a career ender for any other soldier, and it still might be for him. As both son and subordinate, he had let the General down. Nine men had died under his command, and then Raul had finally stumbled into the border crossing he had reported that the four men with him in the chopper were gone and six more border guards were dead and their boats destroyed. They had also lost two expensive helicopters, with a third damaged.

  But the worst of all for son and soldier was the fact that he had failed. That was the truly unpardonable sin. They had let the Americans steal back the satellite fragment from right under their noses. He recalled the bloody face of the American driving the pickup loaded with his “wounded” comrades. Despite the mask of gore, Espinoza knew every feature—the shape of the eyes, the strength of the jaw, the almost arrogant nose. He would recognize this man no matter where they met again or how many years would elapse.

  He lined up the nimble plane on the runway and dropped the gear. A four-engine C-130 was parked next to the big hangar. Its rear cargo ramp was down, and he could just make out a small forklift trundling up through the rear door. Espinoza wasn’t aware of any future Ninth Brigade deployments, and he was almost certain that after his meeting with the General he would no longer be part of the elite force’s future.

  The plane bumped once when it hit the asphalt and then settled lightly. It was such a delight to fly that every landing was a disappointment the trip was over. He taxied to the apron where his father kept his plane, a Learjet capable of getting him anywhere in South America in just a couple of hours.

  While the General came from a military family, Espinoza’s late mother had been born into a clan whose wealth stretched back to the very founding of the country. There were office towers in BA and vineyards out west, five different cattle farms, an iron mine, and a virtual stranglehold on the country’s cell-phone system. All this was run by his uncles and cousins.

  Jorge had enjoyed the benefits of such wealth, the best schools and expensive toys like the Turbine, but he’d never been attracted to its creation. He had wanted to serve in the military as soon as he understood that the uniform his father wore to work every day was a symbol of his nation’s greatness.

  He had worked with single-minded determination to make his childhood dream of being a soldier a reality, and now, at thirty-seven years, he was at what he considered the peak of his career. With the next promotion would come a desk job, something he looked upon with dread. He had operational control over Argentina’s most lethal commandos. At least for another few minutes. The humiliation was like an ember burning in the pit of his stomach.

  A Mercedes ML500 SUV painted in a matte jungle camouflage was waiting for him and Jimenez. Inside was plush leather and burnished wood. It was his stepmother’s idea of roughing it.

  “How is he?” Espinoza asked Jesús, his father’s longtime majordomo, who had driven down to the runway to pick up the young master.

  “Calm.” Jesús said, and tapped the vehicle into gear.

  Not a good sign.

  The track up to the manor house was a dirt road but one so meticulously maintained that the ride was as smooth as the autobahn, and the heavy SUV kicked up just a trace of dust. Overhead a hawk spotted some prey on the ground, tucked its wings, and plummeted earthward.

  Maxine Espinoza greeted Jorge at the top of the steps leading to the front door. His stepmother was from Paris, and had once been an employee of their embassy in the Cerrito section of Buenos Aires. His real mother had died three weeks after being violently tossed from a horse when Espinoza was eleven. His father had waited until he was out of military college before considering remarrying, though there had been a string of beautiful women over the years.

  She was only a couple of years older than Jorge, and had the old man not met her first he would have dated her in a heartbeat. He didn’t begrudge his father a young wife. He had honored Jorge’s mother by waiting so long, and by the time Maxine came into their lives it was good to have a woman to blunt some of the General’s rough edges, which had grown sharper over the years.

  She wore riding clothes that showed bearing two more sons for the General had done no permanent damage to her figure.

  “You are not hurt?” she asked, her Spanish laced with a French accent. He suspected the French women made their second language sexy no matter what it was. Maxine could make Urdu sound like poetry.

  “No, Maxie, I’m fine.�
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  Raul approached, and she noticed his bandages. She blanched. “Mon Dieu, what did those pigs do to you?”

  “They blew up a helicopter I was in, señora.” Jimenez spoke to his shoes as if he wasn’t comfortable around such wealth or the attention of his commander’s wife.

  “The General is very upset,” Maxine said, linking her arms though those of the young officers. The inside of the house was airy and cool, with a painting of Philippe Espinoza wearing the colonel uniform he had sported two decades earlier dominating one wall. “He is like a stallion denied the mare. You will find him in the gun room.”

  Jorge saw three men conversing in one corner of the entry hall. One turned when they entered. He was Asian. In his fifties. He was a man Espinoza didn’t recognize. Lieutenant Jimenez made to follow his Major, but Maxine would not relinquish his arm. “The General wishes to see him alone.”

  The gun room was at the back of the house, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the yard, with its stream and waterfall. Hunting trophies hung from the walls. The head of a giant boar had the place of honor above the fieldstone fireplace. There were three separate glass-fronted gun cabinets and one locked safe where the General kept his automatic weapons. The floor was Mexican tile covered with Andean rugs.

  This was the room where punishment had been meted out when Jorge was growing up, and over the smell of leather furniture and gun oil he detected the scent of his own fear that had lingered over the decades.

  General Philippe Espinoza stood just under six feet, with a shaved head and shoulders as broad as a hangman’s gallows. His nose had been broken when he was a cadet and never fixed, giving his face a masculine asymmetry that made it difficult to focus on his eyes. Being able to stare down others was just one of the tools he had used to thrive during the dictatorships of the 1970s and ’80s.