The Silent Sea

by Clive Cussler

  It took them ten minutes to enter the narrows. Even submerged, they could see the aura of lights on the far shore. With machinery on the oil platforms banging and whining, the waters sounded like a wrecking yard. The industrial clatter masked the sound of their motors, so there was no need for stealth as they started across.

  “What’s that noise?” Linc asked as they were gliding along at thirty feet.

  “The oil platforms?”

  “No. Like a low-frequency gurgling sound. It was really strong when we first entered the bay, and, while it’s gotten quieter, I can still hear it.”

  Juan concentrated, and he, too, picked up the strange tones. He chanced turning on one of the weaker floodlights. From the surface, it would look like the moon’s reflection off a wave. In its glow, he saw curtains of tiny bubbles rising up from the seafloor. And as his eyes adjusted further, he and Linc spotted the lattice of pipes laid across the ooze and how they were the source of the bubbles.

  He killed the lights, and the two men shared a look.

  “Any ideas?” Linc finally asked.

  “That’s how they keep the bay free from ice.” He checked one of the computer displays. “Yup. That’s it. The water temperature is near sixty degrees. They must use the vent gas from the oil platform to heat air and force it through the pipes. Pretty ingenious, when you think about it.”

  Moments later, they passed within a hundred yards of the big cruiser resting at anchor.

  “Any thoughts about what we’re going to do about her?”

  Juan could almost sense its dark presence in the inky water, like some great predatory shark. A fight between the Oregon and the cruiser would be short and brutal and would most likely end with both ships on the bottom. “Hopefully, inspiration will strike tonight.”

  Twenty yards short of the piers, Cabrillo extended the Discovery’s low-light television periscope. It was no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, and the pictures it took went to an HD display in the sub as well as aboard the Oregon. A dozen sets of eyes studied the docks as Juan panned the camera back and forth for the next few minutes. Other than the workboats tied to the pier, there was nothing to see but concrete pylons. It was simply too cold for men to stand watch for any significant period of time.

  Cabrillo also suspected that, for now, the Argentines were feeling good about their accomplishment and didn’t believe they were in any danger yet. Later, perhaps, there would be an armed response, but for the next few days the world would continue to reel from their audacious play.

  He guided the sub under the dock and slowly brought her to the surface. Less than eight inches of her hull broached, and the coaming around her hatch was a mere five inches taller. With her hull painted a deep blue, the submersible was all but invisible. Add to that, an observer aboard the workboat would have to be on his knees and looking under the pier, so their chance of detection was virtually zero.

  The two men felt like a couple of contortionists when they donned their parkas, but a few moments later Linc popped the hatch and climbed up onto the deck. There was little clearance, and he had to work stooped over as he tied off the submersible so it wouldn’t move when the tide changed. Cabrillo stepped off the minisub and onto the port side of one of the workboats. Linc climbed up next to him, and, as if they didn’t have a care in the word, they moved onto the dock and approached the Argentine base.

  This was the first good look Juan had of the facility, and he was amazed by its size and scope. He knew from Linda’s pictures that there was room around the bay to more than triple its size. Given free rein, there would be a real town here before too long.

  The first order of business was to locate where the Argies were keeping the international scientists they had kidnapped and were using as human shields. It was eight o’clock at night, and, as they suspected, there were hardly any people about. They saw an occasional shape moving amid the buildings, but most people were wisely inside. When they peered through the occasional lit window, they could see men lounging around on sofas watching DVDs or playing cards in rec rooms or in their own private bedrooms reading books or writing letters home. The first area they checked seemed to be dorms for the oil workers, an unlikely candidate.

  They searched several warehouses, thinking the scientists could be tucked into a back room, but found nothing but oil equipment and hundreds of drums of a drill lubricant called mud.

  When they were coming out of one of the buildings, a dark figure was waiting by the door. “What were you doing in there?” he demanded, his voice muffled by a scarf but the accusatory tone unmistakable.

  “Trying to figure the place out,” Juan answered in Spanish. The stranger was dressed as a civilian, so he went on the offense. “If we’re to defend you guys, I need to know every square inch of this place. So if you don’t mind, we will get back to it.”

  “Yeah?” He was still suspicious. “Then why skulk around at night?”

  Juan made a gesture to Linc that said, Can you believe this guy, and replied, “Because I very much doubt the Americans will be sporting enough to attack during the day, and what looks like cover when it’s bright may not be so good in the dark.”

  With that, Juan shoulder-bumped the guy as he passed, and he and Linc moved on without a backward glance. When they were out of sight behind the rounded corner of a dormitory, Juan did look back and saw their interrogator had vanished.

  Linc chuckled. “My Spanish may be rusty, but that sure sounded like a line of the purest bull I have ever heard.”

  “I was just telling Max that the more outrageous the lie, the more likely it’ll be believed.”

  Because the facility was designed to be camouflaged from satellite observation, it was not laid out in a neat, efficient grid. It wasn’t until they were at the very southern edge of the base, near where Linc had earlier spotted a hidden SAM battery, that they saw a lone building on stilts shaped like an igloo lozenge. Light spilled from the window in front, but the rest were darkened.

  They climbed the steps. Juan opened the outer door, and he and Linc stepped into a vestibule lined with pegs on the wall for parkas and racks for overboots. Neither man made to remove their clothing, and they just casually opened the door into the structure. Two soldiers were on their feet, both with pistols drawn. They had heard the outer door open and close and were on alert. When they saw it was two soldiers wearing Argentine gear, they relaxed. The room had all the charm and ambiance of a broken-down trailer.

  “What are you guys doing here? We’ve got duty until twenty-two hundred hours.”

  “Sorry. We’re not here to relieve you,” Juan said. “We were sent to look for the Major. Has he been around?”

  “Espinoza was here checking on our prisoners about two hours ago.” The guard gestured to a locked door behind him. “Haven’t seen him since.”

  Now Juan had a name to go along with the face. “Okay, thanks.” They turned to go.

  “Hold on. Who is that under there, Ramón?”

  Bold as brass he said, “No, Juan Cabrillo.”

  “Who?”

  “Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. I just transferred into Ninth Brigade from MI.” Meaning military intelligence, meaning, I’m probably an officer so you’d better cut your questions short.

  “Yes, sir,” the trooper said, swallowing hard. “If I see Major Espinoza, I’ll be sure to tell him you’re looking for him.”

  It was difficult to put menace in his voice because he was so bundled up, but Juan managed when he said, “Best if this discussion didn’t take place, Private. Understood?”

  “Sir. Yes, sir.”

  Linc and Cabrillo returned to the blistering-cold night, where the stars shone so brightly that the surrounding ice glowed. “Bingo,” Linc said.

  “Bingo indeed. Now we just have to rescue the hostages, close this place down, and neutralize an eight-thousand-ton cruiser without the Argentines realizing we were ever here.”

  The two men continued to reconnoiter for another three hours, moving f
reely about the base. It seemed nothing was off-limits, with the exception of the makeshift jail. Juan was acutely interested in the oil-and-gas-processing plants. They were located in huge hangar-sized buildings that were covered in insulating layers and then snow and ice. Inside each was an industrial-sized tangle of pipes and conduits that joined and diverged in a system only an engineer could understand. One of the plants was set well back from the beach. The other was partially built over the water on stilts driven into the seafloor. Not only was natural gas processed in this structure, but they discovered the massive furnace used to keep superheated air flowing though the pipes under the bay. Everything appeared fully automated, but such importance was placed on this key system that a workman sat watch in an enclosed office a short distance away. He nodded to what he thought were two soldiers when he spotted Linc and Cabrillo. They waved back, and the worker returned to his anatomy magazine.

  By the time they returned to the dock, it was past eleven. Both men were exhausted and chilled to the core. They jumped for the workboat, and Juan was just ducking under the pier to get onto the submersible when a guard shouted, “Stop right there! What are you doing out after curfew?”

  Juan straightened. “I forgot my iPod this afternoon when I went out with the Chinese surveyors.”

  “I don’t care what you forgot. No one is allowed outside after curfew. Get up out of there. You’re coming with me.” He brought up his machine pistol.

  “Easy, pal,” Juan said calmly, thinking it was just rotten luck they were found by the most dedicated soldier in the Argentine Army. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Then you should have stayed in your bunk. Move it!”

  Linc was the first to step onto the dock. The guard unconsciously backed off a pace when he saw the size of one of his prisoners. Linc was almost a full head taller, and looked like a polar bear under his thick arctic clothing.

  Juan came up next to him, but before the guard could issue any more orders the Chairman lunged forward and pushed on the Heckler and Koch to ease off any pressure the Argentine had on the trigger and at the same time he swung his right fist into the man’s face. His hand hit the sentry’s goggles, which crushed into his nose, drawing equal measures of blood and tears.

  Linc moved in, stripping away the weapon and crashing a boot into the man’s knee. The man went down, with Cabrillo staying on top of him to smother his cries. Juan didn’t hesitate. The stakes were too high. He got his hand over the guard’s nose and mouth and held them closed as the man struggled to free himself. It lasted less than a minute.

  “Damn. I didn’t want to have to do that,” he panted, and stood. His hands were bloody.

  “What do we do with him? If we take him with us, it might look suspicious. This isn’t the kind of place you desert from.”

  Juan pulled back the guard’s parka hood and stripped off a woolen balaclava. He then smeared the man’s blood on a nearby bollard and positioned the body so it looked as though he had tripped, knocking himself unconscious and loosening his head protection. Ten minutes in such an exposed position was all it would take for the cold temperature to kill.

  “Problem solved. Let’s go home.”

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Cabrillo was awakened by the sound of a telephone. The mound of blankets over his bed weighed a ton, and he’d slept in sweats. Still, he felt cold. It reminded him of those frosty Kazak mornings when he had infiltrated the Baikonur Cosmodrome back in his CIA days. He snaked a hand out from under the covers and grabbed the headset from his bedside table.

  “Hello.” It was a quarter past eight. He’d overslept.

  “Where are you?” It was Overholt at Langley.

  “In bed, actually.”

  “Are you anywhere near Antarctica?” The tone was sharp, accusatory. Whatever pressure Langston was under, he was making sure Juan felt it, too.

  “We’re halfway to Cape Town for the Emir of Kuwait’s visit,” Cabrillo said so smoothly he half believed it himself.

  “You sure?”

  “Lang, I’ve got a couple million dollars’ worth of navigational gear crammed into the Oregon. I think I know where we are. Mind telling me what has your tighty-whities in a twist?”

  “You know that sub the Chinese sent down to protect the Argentines?”

  “I recall you mentioning they were headed that way.”

  “The People’s Liberation Army Navy has lost contact with her after she was ordered to investigate a ship wandering into their exclusionary zone. That was thirty-six hours ago.”

  “I promise you, we were east of the Falklands by then, halfway to St. Helena Island.”

  “Thank God.”

  Juan had never heard his friend so despondent. “What’s going on?”

  “Since losing that sub, the Chinese have been on a tear. They claim we sank it, but they have no proof. They say that any overt act against the Argentines, no matter who does it, will be seen as an attack by the United States. If something does happen down there, they will recall all outstanding American debt. That’s three-quarters of a trillion dollars. We’ll be ruined completely because everyone else holding treasuries and bonds will call them, too. It’ll be like the bank runs at the start of the Depression.

  “Through diplomatic channels, we got word to them that if they did call the debt we would slap them with tariffs so no one here would buy their goods. In essence, they dared us. They don’t care if their people are out of work and starving. When it comes to economic attrition, they can bury us. We’ve outsourced and borrowed ourselves into a corner and now we’re going to pay the price.”

  “They said ‘overt act’?”

  “Overt. Covert. It doesn’t matter. They have us over a barrel. End of story. The President has ordered any U.S. warships in the Atlantic to stay above the equator, and he’s recalling all our fast-attack submarines to show the Chinese that we won’t interfere with what they and the Argentines have done. As of today, the United States has ceded its superpower status to the Chinese.”

  Coming from a man who had played a significant role in ending the Soviet Union’s bid for world domination, those last words were especially painful to hear. Juan didn’t know what to say, and as of this moment wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

  The right thing was to keep with his plan and let the chips fall where they may. However, he had to consider what would happen to the people back home. What Overholt described would make the Great Depression sound like a boom time—sixty or seventy percent unemployment, hunger and the violence it inevitably spawned, the breakdown of the rule of law. In essence, it would be the end of the United States.

  He finally found his voice. “Well, you don’t have to worry about us. Like I told you, we’re on our way to South Africa.”

  “I guess I’m glad to hear it,” Langston said wearily. “You know, Juan, we still might not get out of this so easily.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can placate the Chinese, but North Korea’s demanding we draw down the number of soldiers we have in the south or risk a military confrontation. And last night a small bomb went off near the Presidential Palace in Caracas. The Venezuelans are claiming it was an assassination plot perpetrated by Colombian Special Forces. They’ve vowed revenge, and a check of satellite imagery shows them moving troops to the border. Interestingly, they started a couple of days ago.”

  “Which means they probably set it off themselves for a pretext.”

  “That’s my read on it, too, but it doesn’t matter. China’s heavily invested in Venezuela, so you can imagine our reaction if they do invade Colombia.”

  “Thumb twiddling?”

  “That might be seen as too provocative,” Overholt said with gallows humor. “We’ll probably sit on our hands instead. Listen, I’ve got a full slate of meetings this morning. I’ll talk to you later about any new developments. Give my best to the Kuwaiti Emir if we don’t speak before you get there.”

  “I’m sure we will,” Juan replied.
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br />   He replaced the handset and threw off his blankets. The floor was as cold as a hockey rink, and just as slippery under Juan’s woolen hunting sock. He wasn’t sure who was better at playing the game. Him for lying to Overholt or Langston for trying to manipulate him. The veteran CIA minder did think that the Oregon was heading for Cape Town, but he’d told Juan about North Korea and Venezuela to get him to turn back.

  “Do the right thing,” Juan’s father had often told him. “The consequences are easier to deal with, no matter what you think.”

  He dressed quickly and was in the op center with a cup of coffee from a silver urn on a back table. With the ship firmly grounded, Maurice had pulled out their finest Royal Doulton. It was the steward’s subtle way of getting back at him for his earlier crack. If Juan recalled properly, the cup in his hand had cost seventy-five dollars.

  “How did Mike and his team make out?” he asked. Murph and Stoney were in their customary seats toward the front of the room.

  “They got back at about four this morning,” Eric Stone replied. “He left word that it went well, but they need at least one more night. But there’s a problem.”

  “Isn’t there always?”

  “The workboat with the sonar gear went south this morning.”

  Juan cursed. If he could find the wreck in a submersible so quickly, it was a safe assumption that the Chinese would, too. “I bet the other bay is iced over, so they’re checking on the right one.”

  “What do you want to do about it?” Mark asked.

  “Not sure,” Juan replied. “We can’t catch them in either of the submersibles, and if we go after them in an RHIB they might radio back to base about an unknown craft approaching them.”

  Hali Kasim was sitting at his customary station. He offered, “So what if they find it today? All they’ll be able to do is take some grainy underwater pictures. It proves nothing, and by this time tomorrow the wreck will be destroyed.”

  “Playing devil’s advocate,” Eric said, “if they find the wreck, who’s to say they don’t stay overnight? That’ll mess up our schedule.”