The Silent Sea

by Clive Cussler

  “Surely you don’t think they’ll attack,” Laretta said, waving his Cohiba airily.

  Espinoza stared at him flatly. “I am paid to be prepared, if they do. I don’t have the luxury of opining.”

  “We each have our jobs,” the facility director replied, thinking it was better the soldiers freeze out there than his people.

  There came a knock on the door.

  “Come,” Laretta bellowed.

  In walked Lee Fong, the head of the Chinese search team. He was grinning ear to ear.

  “Fong, how are you?” Luis greeted.

  “Most excellent. We found the Silent Sea.”

  The director came halfway out of his chair. “So soon? That’s wonderful. Here, have one of my cigars.” When he sat back down, he retrieved a bottle of brandy and some paper cups from his bottom drawer.

  “I don’t normally smoke,” the soft-spoken engineer said, “but under the circumstances . . .”

  “Are you sure about your find?”

  Lee pulled out his PDA and clicked through to a picture. He handed the small device to Espinoza. “After we got a solid sonar return, I sent down a camera. I admit the resolution is poor, but you are looking at the stern of one of the biggest junks ever built.”

  To Jorge, the picture just looked like a dark blur. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  “Trust me. It’s the Silent Sea. Tomorrow we will dive on the wreck and bring back irrefutable proof. I tried to report this when we were out there and have you send a boat with divers right away, but we couldn’t seem to transmit.” He accepted a drink from Laretta.

  Espinoza declined. “I’m on duty.”

  “Your loss.” The director saluted him, then toasted Lee Fong. “Congratulations. From this moment, there can be no questioning our rights to this land and the riches off her coast. I’ve got to be honest with you guys. Ever since we started construction, I’ve always been afraid our operation would be discovered and we’d be booted out. Well, no more. We are here to stay.”

  “Have you contacted you superiors?” Espinoza asked Lee.

  “Yes, just now. They are most pleased,” he beamed. “My immediate boss says I will be awarded a medal and that our company will be guaranteed a lifetime of government contracts.”

  “Hold out for a big raise,” Laretta told him, pouring more brandy into his glass. “Make them know you’re worth it.”

  “I might just do that. Oh, I forgot. The ship on the beach.”

  “What about it,” Espinoza asked sharply. He’d been suspicious about that boat, and even seeing with his own eyes that she was a derelict didn’t allay his concerns.

  “She’s off the beach and starting to float away.”

  “You didn’t see any engine smoke?”

  “Oh, no. And she’s leaning heavily to one side. I think she will flip over soon.”

  Espinoza was regretting his moment of earlier charity. He should have let Sergeant Lugones lay some charges and blow her to pieces. It wasn’t too late. He could ask the captain of the Guillermo Brown to sink the old scow with a missile, but he could think of no valid reason why the Navy would waste such expensive munitions on his paranoia. With any luck, the storm would either sink her or blow her so far away that he wouldn’t have to worry about her presence any longer.

  “Mr. Laretta, might I have some more of your brandy?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Luis slopped some more into Lee’s paper cup.

  The Major stood abruptly. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t instinct but the cold tickling of premonition that was setting his nerves on edge. The Americans would come. Tonight or tomorrow, when the storm picked up, and they would lay waste to what these two men were so smugly proud of.

  “Gentlemen, I needn’t remind you that until the world formally recognizes the Antarctic Peninsula as sovereign Argentine territory, we are at risk.”

  “Come, come, my dear Major.” Laretta had no head for alcohol. He was already slurring his words. “There is no harm in celebrating our success.”

  “Maybe so, but I believe you are being a little premature. Get word to your workers that curfew tonight starts in one hour, and there will be no exceptions. My men are going to be on patrol with orders to shoot. Do you understand?”

  That sobered him up. Laretta nodded. “Curfew, one hour. Yes, Major.”

  Espinoza turned on his heel and left the office. He’d been pushing his soldiers hard since their arrival and tonight he’d push them harder still. By the time he and Raul had them all deployed, there wouldn’t be one inch of uncovered space around the oil terminal, and, knowing the American proclivity for coming to the rescue of others, he would double the guard on their captives.

  JUAN PULLED THE STRAIGHT RAZOR from his neck and swirled it in the copper basin of his sink. The Oregon’s steep list forced him to brace himself with his other hand. He made one more pass, rinsed the blade, and dried it very carefully on the towel. His grandfather had been a barber and had taught him that the secret of keeping a razor sharp was never to put it away wet.

  He pressed the plunger to drain the sink and splashed his face with palmfuls of water. He looked himself in the eye in the mirror over the vanity. He wasn’t sure what he saw. He was proud of the decision he had made, yet he also thought they should have cut and run and headed for South Africa, where five million a week for the next three weeks was guaranteed for doing nothing more than babysitting a head of state who had no enemies.

  He dried his face with a towel and pulled on a T-shirt. They had turned up the heat somewhat, but his arms and chest were covered in goose pimples.

  He hopped across to his walk-in closet and selected a leg for the day’s mission among the five artificial limbs he owned. They were lined up on the floor like a bunch of left-only cowboy boots. A few minutes later, he was finished dressing and on his way to the moon pool. He knew he should eat something, but his stomach was too knotted.

  The underwater operations center was a hive of activity, with teams of technicians working on the Nomad 1000 that had just returned with Trono and his group. Mike reported that the charges were planted and ready to go. His team had been drilling into the underside of the glacier, hanging over the bay and packing the holes with enough explosives to calve off a hundred thousand tons of ice.

  Juan keyed in some of the outside cameras at a workstation. The low-light cameras revealed a world gone mad. Swirling snow buffeted the ship from every direction as the wind shifted constantly. The seas heaved up waves that ran high enough to explode across the deck, and when they hit shore they had the power to move hundred-pound rocks back and forth like pebbles. He checked the meteorological display. The temperature was minus twelve, but the windchill brought it down to thirty below.

  Eddie Seng and Linc showed up a couple minutes later. Because of the number of passengers they would hopefully be returning to the ship, the raiding party had to be small. The Nomad was designed for ten people, and somehow they were going to shoehorn twenty-one into it.

  As before, they wore arctic clothing to resemble the Argentine soldiers, and they’d packed enough extra parkas for the captive scientists into a waterproof bag strapped to the sub. Another similar bag contained the bones of the long-dead Norwegians. Juan still wasn’t sure how he was going to make up for disturbing their eternal rest.

  Maurice appeared at Cabrillo’s side bearing a serving tray. It was three o’clock in the morning, and he looked fresh and impeccably turned out as always. “I know you rarely eat before a mission, Captain, but you need to. In these conditions, the body burns calories too fast. I don’t know if I ever mentioned, but I deployed with the Royal Navy the last time the Argies became uppity in the South Atlantic. The boys who retook the South Sandwich Islands returned as stiff as Stonehenge.”

  He pulled off the cover and presented Juan with an omelet stuffed with ham and mushrooms. The aroma seemed to untie the knots in his belly. It also reminded him of something he’d forgotten, and he sent Mauric
e back to the kitchen on an errand.

  The launching went smoothly, and they were soon on their way. The first inkling that something had changed happened when the minisub passed close to the Admiral Guillermo Brown. Juan could hear over the other ambient noise that she had fired up her main engines. The sound and vibration carried through the water and echoed inside the steel pressure hull. It wouldn’t alter their plan, but Juan didn’t take it as a good omen.

  Unlike before, when they had docked near the workboats, this time they surfaced at the far end of the pier, closer to where the prisoners were being held. The storm’s fury overwhelmed the sound of the Nomad broaching under the dock.

  Linc had the hatch open a moment later. He climbed from view, while Juan struggled into his parka and settled his goggles. The big SEAL came back a moment later.

  “We got problems.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I just scoped the dock using infrared and counted three guards.”

  “On a night like this?” Eddie asked.

  “Exactly because it’s a night like this,” Juan told him. “If I were in Espinoza’s shoes, I’d plan for the storm to hide an assault and deploy my forces accordingly.”

  Juan took the night vision binocs from Linc and did his own survey, lying flat on the pier. He saw the sentries Linc had spotted, and as he scoped the rest of the base he could see more ghostly images moving around. In one minute, he counted no fewer than ten men on duty.

  “Change of plans.”

  All along, they had intended to free the prisoners and get them at least into the submersible before going after the Argentine cruiser. With so many men patrolling the facility, the chance of them being discovered was too high. Now they would use the warship as a distraction. He explained what he wanted the men to do, and made sure that Max back on the Oregon was listening in.

  “I don’t like it,” Hanley said when Juan was finished.

  “Not much of a choice. We won’t get within ten feet of those scientists otherwise.”

  “Okay. Just tell me when you’re ready.”

  “Get as close to the jail as you can,” Cabrillo told the other two men with him, “and wait for my signal.”

  They exited the submersible together, Linc and Eddie each taking one of the waterproof bags in tow. They had to crawl on their bellies and move inches at a time, not to attract attention. It would take twenty minutes for them to just reach the temporary prison.

  Juan went in the opposite direction. The wind tore at his clothing and made each pace a struggle. It would come at his face and then reverse itself and send him staggering. His scarf drooped, and it was like his skin had been splashed with lye.

  He had to time his movements for when the Argentines were turned away from him. The wind did provide one thing of use. Most of the soldiers moved with their backs toward it, giving Cabrillo a chance to cover more ground when the gusts became constant.

  Visibility remained dismal, and he almost blundered on one soldier who stood in the lee of a bulldozer. He froze, no more than five feet from the sentry. The man was in profile. He was close enough to see the fur trimming around his hood whipping furiously. Juan backed up a step, and then another, but froze once again when a second guard approached.

  “Jaguar,” the first guard called out when he saw his comrade.

  “Capybara,” the second responded.

  These were their recognition codes. Juan smiled tightly. That was an intelligence coup. When he had cleared around the duo, he radioed that information to Eddie and Linc in case they were challenged.

  From here on, Juan moved more swiftly, and when he came up on a guard the man turned on him sharply, his gun not at the ready but raised in an aggressive manner.

  “Jaguar.”

  “Capybara,” Cabrillo said confidently. The other man lowered his machine pistol.

  “The only thing that makes this worthwhile,” the guard said, “is knowing that the Major is out here with us and not warm inside.”

  “He’s never one to ask us to do something he wouldn’t.” Juan had no idea if this was true, but he’d seen enough of Espinoza to think he wasn’t a lead-from-the-rear kind of soldier.

  “I guess. Stay warm.” The soldier moved on.

  Juan kept going. Ten minutes and three cold and bored guards later, he reached the gas-processing building. “I’m here,” he called to his men. “Where are you?”

  “We’re still shy of our target,” Linc said. “It’s like Rio during Carnival out here, there’s so many people.”

  “Max, are you ready?”

  “Ballast is pumped clear and the engines are purring sweetly.”

  “Okay. Stand by.”

  Juan opened the plant’s personnel door next to the giant overhead door and moved into the entry vestibule. He was challenged by a guard instantly. “Caiman.”

  Cabrillo swallowed. They had different code words for when someone came into a building. He mentally cursed Jorge Espinoza’s foresight, as he frantically ran though the names of all the native South American animals he could remember. Llama. Boa. Anaconda. Um, Sloth. From there, he drew a blank.

  A half second had passed, and the sentry was about to become suspicious. Capybara is to Jaguar as what is to a Caiman? Predator and prey. Caimans eat fish. It’s a fish. Which one? He said the only one he could think of. “Piranha.”

  The soldier lowered his weapon, and it took all of Cabrillo’s self-control not to show his relief.

  “You know you aren’t supposed to be in here.”

  “Just for a second. I need to warm up a little.”

  “Sorry. You know the Major’s orders.”

  “Come on, man. It’s not like he’s around right now.”

  The soldier thought for another second, then a look of compassion crossed his face. “All right, go ahead inside. But five minutes, and if Espinoza or Jimenez shows up I’m gong to tell them you’ve been hiding in there since before I came on duty.”

  “Five minutes. Promise.”

  Juan moved past the guard and walked into the overheated facility. He had to pull back his hood and unzip his parka. Machinery hummed as it processed the natural gas flowing in from the offshore pipes, while, on the other side of the yawning space, the blast furnaces were hard at work keeping the bay from freezing over. Cabrillo was again amazed at the size and complexity of the Argentine facility.

  “Max, I’m in. Go for it.”

  Juan found one of the main trunk lines for incoming gas. He pulled out a small explosive and set the motion sensor. It wasn’t particularly sensitive, but for what was coming it didn’t need to be.

  He turned to go just as four men entered from the vestibule. They had removed their arctic coats, and at once Cabrillo recognized Major Espinoza. With him was the Sergeant who’d been aboard the Oregon and two other NCOs. Juan moved behind a piece of machinery before they spotted him.

  “We saw you come in here,” Espinoza shouted above the industrial din. “Don’t make it harder on yourself. Come out now, and I won’t charge you with desertion.”

  Cabrillo looked at the bomb, then back at the burly soldiers staying by the door while Espinoza and Sergeant Lugones started fanning out to find him.

  “Max,” he whispered urgently. “I might be blown, but don’t stop. You read? I’ll get out somehow.”

  “Roger,” Max said tersely, knowing full well that the Chairman was lying about the last part.

  HANLEY STARED INTO SPACE for a moment and then forced himself into action. “Mr. Stone, bring us up to five percent, and set some tension on the cable, if you please.”

  “Aye.” Eric dialed up the Oregon’s unrivaled engines and moved her forward at a quarter knot.

  A tech stationed in the fantail locker where the cable drum was located called out when the line started showing stress.

  Even with wind and waves pummeling the ship, Eric didn’t need to be told when she was pulling against her tether. He knew how she responded in almost any circumstance. />
  “Tension on, Mr. Hanley,” he said with customary op center formality when a mission was under way.

  “Okay, steady acceleration. One hundred feet per minute. Don’t jerk the thing, lad.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  A mile astern of them, the cable looped around the pier and back to the bow of the Admiral Brown became as rigid as a steel girder when the magnetohydrodynamics encountered the cruiser’s deadweight. The forces in play were massive. Imperceptibly at first, the big cruiser started to move, but not so much that her crew thought it was anything other than a swing of the wind pushing against her stern.

  One foot became two, then ten. And then she came up hard against her anchor.

  Eric kept piling on more power, causing the Oregon’s stern to dig deep as water rocketed through her drive tubes. But the stubborn lynchpin that Juan had so carefully sabotaged refused to give that last fraction of an inch.

  One of his welds holding a pad eye popped, increasing the strain on those remaining. The Oregon pulled harder still, and a second pad eye popped off the hull, leaving only six. Metal ground against metal as the stubborn anchor pin struggled to do its job.

  It released, and the energy stored in the carbon fiber during that frantic tug-of-war was suddenly discharged. The Admiral Guillermo Brown went from a virtual standstill to six knots, fast enough to knock crewmen to their knees. The captain happened to be on the bridge at this early hour, and he looked up from the report he was perusing. He knew immediately what had happened, while his less experienced crew looked confused.

  “Good God, the anchor chain’s snapped. Helm, give me power. All back one third.”

  “All back one third, aye.”

  With a pair of gas turbine engines capable of a combined twenty thousand shaft horsepower, he felt confident he could best whatever wind was thrown at him. But when he checked the gauge of their speed over the bottom, it wasn’t slowing but rather accelerating.