The Silent Sea

by Clive Cussler

  Max and Juan shared a glance, as if to say this wasn’t going as they’d planned.

  “Well, sir—”

  “If you’re here about Pine Island you can just forget it.”

  “You don’t understand. We were just in South America. We work for”—Juan had planned to use the United Nations as a cover, but he suspected that would make a guy like Ronish all the more suspicious—“a mining company doing survey work, and we discovered the crash site. It took a little research to realize what we’d found.”

  Just then, the rain started. Icy needles that pounded through the pine canopy and impacted the ground almost like hail. Ronish’s porch didn’t have a roof, so he reluctantly opened the door for the two men to enter his house.

  It smelled of old newspapers and food on the verge of spoiling. The appliances in the kitchen next to the entry were at least forty years old, and the floor had the matte finish of ancient linoleum. The living-room furniture was a mousy brown that matched the threadbare carpet. Magazines were stacked atop tables and along the yellowed walls. There were fifteen or twenty portable oxygen bottles stacked near the front door. The exposed fluorescent bulb in the kitchen gave off an electric whine that to Cabrillo was as obnoxious as nails on a chalkboard.

  The only other illumination was from a floor lamp next to the chair where Ronish watched television. Juan would have sworn it had a five-watt bulb.

  “So you found ’em, eh?” Ronish didn’t sound as though he much cared.

  “Yes. They came down in northern Argentina.”

  “That’s strange. When they left, they said they were gonna search along the coast.”

  “Do you know exactly what they were looking for?” Max spoke for the first time.

  “I do. And it’s none of your business.”

  An uncomfortable silence stretched for several seconds. This was not the feel-good moment Juan had been hoping for. There was nothing about James Ronish’s reaction that was going to cosmically balance what had happened to Jerry Pulaski.

  “Well, Mr. Ronish”—Juan held out the bundle they’d taken from the downed blimp—“we found this in the wreckage and thought it may be important. We just wanted to give it to you and maybe bring you a little closure over your brothers’ fate.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Ronish said, anger tightened the wrinkles around his eyes. “If it weren’t for those three, Don would still be alive, and I wouldn’t have had damned-fool ideas about romance and adventure when I volunteered for Korea. Do you know what it’s like to have the Chinese blow your leg off?”

  “Actually—”

  “Get out!” he snapped.

  “No. Seriously.” Juan stooped to raise his jeans’ cuff and lower his sock. This prosthetic leg was covered with flesh-colored plastic that still looked artificial under the uncertain light.

  James Ronish lost some of his anger. “Well, I’ll be. A fellow peg leg. What happened?”

  “Blown off by a Chinese gunboat during the reckless days of my youth.”

  “You don’t say. Well, there’s irony for you. Can I get you boys a beer?”

  Before they could reply, the screen door outside squeaked open and someone knocked.

  Cabrillo looked over to Max, concern etched on his face. He hadn’t heard anyone drive up, but with the rain thundering against the house it was possible he missed it. And what were the odds an old curmudgeon like Jim Ronish getting two visitors on the same evening?

  Then he told himself to relax. This wasn’t a mission. They were just giving some information to a harmless old man living out in the middle of nowhere. Max had been right. Juan did need a little time off.

  “Damn. Now what?” Ronish grumbled. He reached for the doorknob.

  Juan’s instincts went into overdrive. Something was very wrong. Before he could stop him, Ronish had the door open. A man stood out in the rain, his wet face shining in the light over the front door.

  Both the man and Cabrillo recognized each other instantly, and while one spent a critical microsecond considering the implications, the other reacted.

  Juan was grateful he was carrying a Glock. They didn’t have safeties to slow him down. He whipped the pistol from the holster under his windbreaker and fired around Jim Ronish’s shoulder. The bullet hit the frame, gouging out a sizable chunk of wood.

  The Argentine Major who Cabrillo had talked his way past at the logging camp jumped from view. The automatic’s report had been concussive in the foyer, but Juan could hear voices outside. The Major wasn’t alone.

  Cabrillo ignored his mind’s desire to understand what had just happened. He leapt forward and slammed the door closed. The lock was about the cheapest made and yet he threw it anyway. Every second could count.

  Max tackled a stunned James Ronish so that they hit the floor together, Hanley’s arm over the older man’s back. Cabrillo ducked through into the kitchen, found the light switch, and flicked it off. He then padded into the living room and simply knocked the floor lamp onto its side. The dim bulb went out with a pop. Next, he snapped off the television, plunging the old house into complete darkness.

  “What’s going on?” Ronish wailed.

  “More of my reckless youth coming back to haunt me,” Cabrillo muttered, and flipped over a moth-eaten couch for additional cover.

  Seconds ticked by. Max helped Ronish over to Juan’s makeshift redoubt.

  “How many?”

  “At least two,” Juan said. “The one at the door is an officer of the Ninth Brigade.”

  “I figured since you shot at him that he wasn’t selling Avon.” The front picture window exploded under a murderous onslaught of gunfire. Glass rained on the men as they cowered behind the sofa. The house’s thin walls didn’t slow the high-powered rounds, so smoking holes appeared in the wallboard. The bullets passed through the living room, and probably didn’t stop until they hit trees in Ronish’s backyard.

  “Those are rifles,” Max said. He had his pistol out now but looked at it dubiously. Judging by the rate of fire screaming overhead, they weren’t just outgunned, they were outmanned as well.

  “Do you have any weapons?” Juan asked.

  To his credit, the old man answered quickly, “Yeah. I got a .357 in my bedside table and a 30.06 in the closet. The rifle’s empty, but the ammo’s on the top shelf under a bunch of baseball caps. Last door on the left.”

  Before Cabrillo could retrieve the guns, an Argentine round slammed into one of the oxygen tanks Ronish kept for when he ran errands. The bullet blew through the tough steel skin and fortunately the oxygen didn’t explode, but the twenty-pound bottle took off like a rocket. It crashed into the dining-room table, snapping a leg and sending it crashing under the weight of old magazines.

  Next, it hit the couch hard enough to shove it into the men hiding behind it and then punched a hole in the Sheetrock wall, before dropping to the floor. It spun like a top until the last of the gas escaped.

  Juan knew how lucky they had been. Depending on the type of ammunition they were facing, the tank could easily have exploded and started a chain reaction with the dozen or more bottles next to them. They were sitting in what amounted to a death trap.

  “Forget the guns,” Juan shouted. “We need to get out of here.”

  “I can’t make it,” James wheezed. His lungs were working overtime but he wasn’t getting enough air. “I need the oxygen. I won’t last five minutes.”

  “We stay here, we won’t last five seconds!” Cabrillo said, even though he saw the truth. James Ronish couldn’t be moved.

  The firing subsided as the Argentines regrouped after the first frantic moments of the gun battle. The only thing that made sense was that they needed Ronish alive. Juan knew he and Max hadn’t been trailed to Washington, so he assumed that the men outside had followed the same informational bread crumbs as he had. It meant they knew something about the Flying Dutchman’s fateful voyage that he did not. Some piece of information that only James Ronish had. And he felt certain it ha
d nothing to do with Pierre Devereaux’s pirate loot.

  Cabrillo pulled the Glock’s trigger three times, laying down suppressing fire to keep the Argentines pinned. Their next tactic would be to encircle the house and come in from multiple angles. Juan still didn’t know how he was going to get the three of them out of this.

  “Mr. Ronish,” he said, “they’re here because of something your brothers found in the Treasure Pit. Something linked to the blimp we discovered. What did they find?”

  Another crackle of gunfire from outside drowned out Ronish’s answer. Dust filled the air from the destroyed drywall, and sofa stuffing was falling like snow. Ronish suddenly stiffened and whimpered softly.

  He’d been hit. In the darkness, Cabrillo put his hand on the older man’s chest. Feeling nothing, he moved his hand lower. Ronish hadn’t been hit in the stomach, so Juan moved to his legs. In just the few seconds since the round penetrated his body, the amount of blood pumping from his thigh told Juan that the bullet had severed Ronish’s femoral artery. Without medical help, he’d bleed out in minutes. Juan transferred his pistol to his left hand and pressed into the wound as hard as he could, while Max fired out through the picture window. There were definitely fewer men on the front yard. One or two of the Argentines were flanking them.

  “What did they find?” Juan asked desperately.

  “A way to the junk” was the pained reply. “The mantel. I kept a rub.”

  Juan vaguely recalled a framed piece of art above the faux-brick fireplace. Had it been some sort of rubbing? He didn’t remember. It had made barely a passing impression. He looked through the darkness in the direction of the mantel and fired. The muzzle flash revealed the outline of the picture on the wall but no details. It was much too big to be easily portable.

  “Mr. Ronish, please. What do you mean ‘a way to the junk’?”

  “I wish they’d never gone to the island,” he replied. He was in shock, his body’s response to his plummeting blood pressure. “It all would have turned out different.”

  Max changed out an empty magazine. Both men had brought only two spares from the Houston safe house.

  Juan could no longer feel Ronish’s heart pumping blood against his hand over the wound. The old man was gone. He didn’t feel responsible. At least not directly. The Argentines would have killed him with or without the Corporation’s presence. But had Juan and his team not stumbled onto the wreckage of the Flying Dutchman, James Ronish would have lived out his final days in obscurity. And therein lay the indirect guilt.

  A voice boomed from outside. He spoke English. “I compliment you on your mastery of my language. My pilot thought you were from Buenos Aires.

  “And you sound like that Chihuahua from the taco ads.” Juan couldn’t resist. Adrenaline was seething in his veins like champagne bubbles.”

  The Argentine shouted a curse that brought into question the marital status of Juan’s parents. “I give you one chance. Leave the house through the back door and my men will not fire. Ronish stays.”

  A kitchen window shattered. A few seconds later, wavering light came from the archway connecting it to the dining room. They’d tossed a Molotov cocktail to hasten the decision.

  Juan jumped from the floor, firing from the hip through the window, and swept the rubbing, or whatever it was, from the wall. He heaved it into the kitchen like a Frisbee. The frame caught on the jamb, breaking the glass, and it vanished from sight.

  Max opened fire again, covering Cabrillo while he changed mags, and together the two men ran down the hallway leading to the bedrooms. The house was a standard ranch, like millions of others built after World War II, like the one Juan had lived in until his father’s accounting practice took off, like the ones all his friends lived in, like the one Max had grown up in. The two men could navigate it with their eyes closed.

  The master bedroom was the last door on the left, just past the single bath. Juan even knew where the bed would be placed, as it was the only logical location, and he jumped on it, bending his knees to absorb some of the spring, and leapt again. He covered his head with his hands when he smashed through the window.

  He hit the wet, needle-covered ground, shoulder-rolled, and came up with his gun ready. The muzzle flash from a snap shot fired from the far corner of the house gave away the gunman’s location. Cabrillo put two rounds downrange. He didn’t hear the meaty slap of a strike, but a low, mounting wail rose from the patch of darkness where the shooter had been.

  Max came through the window a second later, having paused to let Juan clear the area. His exit wasn’t as dramatic as Cabrillo’s, but he made it nevertheless. They moved through the downpour as fast as they could, the wind and rain masking the sound of their escape. There was barely enough light to see but enough so they didn’t run headlong into any trees. After five minutes, and several random turns, Juan slowed and dropped to his belly behind a fallen log.

  Max’s deep chest pumped like a bellows next to him. “You mind telling me,” he panted, “what the hell they’re doing here?”

  Cabrillo’s breathing was far less labored, but he was twenty years younger than his friend and, unlike Max, knew what a workout routine was. “That, dear Maxwell, is the million-dollar question. Are you okay?”

  “Just a small cut on my hand from going through the window. You?”

  “Nothing’s hurt but my pride. I should have had that guy with my first shot.”

  “Seriously, how did they get here?”

  “Same as us. They followed the trail from the Flying Dutchman. What I really want to know is what they hoped to find.”

  “Unless they’re as nerdy as Mark and Eric, they’re not looking for Devereaux’s treasure.”

  “And we’ll never know. The rubbing burned up in the kitchen, and I’d already given the journal or log, or whatever it was, to Ronish.”

  Max fished around in his jacket pocket and tapped something on Juan’s wrist. He felt the spongy mass of latex-sheathed papers. “I nabbed this when I tackled him.”

  “I could kiss you.”

  “Let me shave first so you really get to enjoy the experience.” Humor had always been their way of decompressing from a high-stress situation. “So what’s our play?”

  Where Max had always been the dogged one, the person who would bull through any challenge, it had always been Cabrillo who came up with the plan. Hanley really didn’t see what to do next while Juan had figured it out the moment he leapt up and tossed the picture frame into the growing kitchen fire. If he was honest with himself, he’d known the instant the Argentine Major had shown up on James Ronish’s doorstep.

  “It’s simple really,” he said, turning on his back so that the rain washed the taste of gunpowder from his mouth. “You and I are going to solve the mystery of the Pine Island Treasure Pit.”

  THIRTEEN

  A group of five Latinos, one of whom was wounded, would have stood out in a town as small as Forks or Port Angeles, so Espinoza and his men were forced to return to Seattle. Their injured comrade, shot through the side, suffered in silence for the hours it took to drive to the city. It wasn’t until they were in the seedy hotel on the outskirts of the city that they were able to treat the wound properly. It had been a clean in and out and hadn’t perforated the intestine, so unless he developed an infection he should be fine. They loaded him up with over-the-counter medications and half a bottle of brandy.

  Once his men were settled, Espinoza returned to the room he shared with Raul Jimenez. He asked his friend to excuse himself and powered up a satellite phone. He wasn’t sure how his father would react to the call. He was nervous nonetheless.

  “Report,” his father said by way of greeting, no doubt recognizing the number.

  Espinoza hesitated, well aware that the computers of the American NSA monitored nearly every wireless transmission in the world, trolling through the mountains of data for key words that would make the call of interest to the intelligence community.

  “We ran into competi
tion. The same man I saw a couple of days ago.”

  “I wasn’t sure they would be interested, nor did I expect them to move so fast,” the General said. “What happened?”

  “The target was collateralized, and one of my men was grazed.”

  “I don’t care about your men. Did you learn anything? Or have you failed me again?”

  “I retrieved a document,” Espinoza replied. “I think the American tried to destroy it by throwing it into a fire before making his escape. However, we entered the target’s house before it was damaged. You said it was possible we’d find evidence that the target knew something about China, so when I saw it on the kitchen floor I grabbed it.

  “It appears to be a rubbing of some kind, like when families make tracings of headstones. It shows the map of a bay, but no location is given. There are glyphs on it that almost look like some Asian language.”

  “Chinese?” The General’s tone was eager.

  “It looks like it.”

  “Excellent. If this leads where I think it might, we are going to change the world, Jorge. Were you able to speak to the target?”

  The elder Espinoza hadn’t explained what it was he was after, but the words of praise made his son swell with pride. “He was already gone when we got inside. We burned his house to the ground afterward. I doubt they will bother checking the body for any sign of foul play, so we’re clear.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Seattle. Do you want us to return home?”

  “No. Not yet. Tomorrow, I want you to overnight the rubbing to me.” The General paused. Jorge knew his father was considering angles and odds. He finally asked, “What do you think the competition will do now?”

  “It depends if they extracted any useful information from the target. I checked the hood of their truck when we reached the house. It was still warm, so they hadn’t been there long.”

  “They were interested enough to reach out to the target,” General Espinoza said, more for his own benefit than his son’s. “Will they continue on or have they had enough?”