Marauder

by Clive Cussler

  Before they left, Julia finished photographing the archaeologists’ teeth while Sylvia made a thorough video recording of the wall etchings. They headed back out of the cave and down toward the river, guided by Murph.

  They walked along the bank, making sure to keep well back from the rain-swollen water’s edge.

  “All right,” Murph said. “Stop there. You should be able to see it.”

  They looked around, but there was no evidence of an archaeological dig.

  “Could it have gotten overgrown with plants in just a year?” Sylvia said, examining the shrubbery beside them.

  Parsons shook his head. “This isn’t a jungle where vines could cover ruins in a week. If they dug it up, we’d still see it.”

  “Unless Lu’s men blew it up as well,” Eric said.

  “Then there’d be a crater here,” Juan said. “Murph, are you sure this is the spot?”

  “Wait a minute,” Murph said. “If these numbers are correct, you’re still about forty yards away.”

  “Okay. Which direction should we go?”

  “Directly north. Apparently, it’s right on the bank of the river.”

  “We’re already on the bank of the river,” Juan said.

  “Oh. That’s a bummer.”

  Then it dawned on Juan. This wasn’t the normal riverbank. The monsoons had considerably widened the Ord.

  “You mean the ruins of the bireme are underwater?” Julia asked.

  “And it probably will be for a few more weeks,” Parsons said. “This is the wet season.”

  “Then we’ll have to dive on the Salacia to recover the amphorae,” Juan said.

  At that moment, a huge feral pig on the opposite bank of the river crept down to the water to take a drink. It had gotten through a single slurp when a crocodile lunged out of the water and clamped its jaws around the pig’s head, dragging it into the river as the prey futilely thrashed to get free. The twenty-foot-long croc shook it like a dog’s toy. As soon as the pig went limp, the croc disappeared under the surface with its prize.

  Parsons shook his head at Juan’s intention to go into the water. “You were saying?”

  FORTY-TWO

  By the time the shore team got back to the Oregon, there wasn’t enough daylight left to prep and execute a wreck dive, so they planned to go at sunup the next day. The launch point for the operation would be the moon pool.

  The large chamber, which smelled of seawater and grease, was situated in the center of the ship. The Oregon’s two submersibles, the Gator and Nomad, were stowed in cradles in the ceiling, and a gantry crane moved them around. The water surface of the large pool at the bottom was even with the ocean level outside, which was why the room didn’t flood. Large doors in the keel slid apart to allow subs and divers to emerge from the ship undetected.

  Today it was Nomad that was being lowered into the moon pool while the Gator remained suspended in the air. With the Ord River full of crocodiles, diving off a boat like the RHIB would be an invitation to a smorgasbord. Juan thought using Nomad instead would give them a better chance to explore the wreck without being noticed by the hungry predators.

  Although Nomad was designed to dive to a thousand feet, for this mission it would simply be floating on the surface of the shallow river. The sub’s key feature was its two-person airlock, which had a hatch in its belly. Juan and Linc would emerge from Nomad underwater, conduct the search of the Salacia to recover the amphorae, and return to the sub without drawing attention to themselves from the crocs sunning on the surface.

  That was the theory, at least.

  Linc was in the process of checking their dive gear, part of which included two suits made of titanium chain mail. They were intended to be used for diving in shark-infested waters and were so heavy that a diver would sink like a brick without a buoyancy vest. They covered nearly the entire body, from hood to gloves to boots, all of which were secured by Velcro straps. Only the face was exposed.

  “I never thought we’d be using these for diving with crocodiles,” Linc said as he packed up the suits. They would don them once they were on site.

  “Don’t depend on them too much,” Juan replied. “Their teeth might not penetrate the mesh, but they could rip apart our scuba gear and hold us under until we drown.”

  “That’s why we have these.”

  Linc pointed to the knives sheathed in the leg of each suit. They were Wasp injection knives. The handle contained a cartridge of CO2 compressed to 800 psi. When the blade was stabbed into a target, one press of the button on the hilt forced enough freezing cold gas to fill a basketball into the body, killing most animals instantly.

  They would be wearing full-face masks to fit over the augmented reality glasses they’d have on. The muddy river water had a visibility of less than five feet, which would severely hamper their search of the wreckage. The glasses would display the images revealed by sonar signals sent from Little Geek, the remotely operated vehicle that Eric would be directing from Nomad.

  Rounding out the team were Max, Nomad’s pilot for the mission, and MacD and Raven, who would be standing on top of Nomad with assault rifles to ward off any crocs that ventured too close.

  Nomad was now free-floating in the moon pool. Eric popped out of the hatch and said, “Max has finished his pre-dive checklist and says he’s ready to go when you are.”

  Linc and Juan lowered their gear to MacD and Raven through the hatch and got in, closing it behind them. Max filled the ballast tanks, and Nomad sank beneath the surface. He goosed the electric motors, and the sub eased away from the Oregon for its journey upriver.

  * * *

  —

  As the Marauder neared the entrance to the Cambridge Gulf, Jin sat on the bridge drinking a cup of coffee and poring over a map of the area. The eastern arm at the southern end of the gulf was the outlet for the Ord River. The western arm was the navigable waterway that led to Wyndham, a port town that served the mining communities nearby.

  That was the destination for the ore carrier Thai Navigator, which she watched entering the gulf to pick up a load of iron or nickel. The ship looked a bit like the Norego, but it didn’t have the cranes that Polk told her about. Besides, there was no way a ship that size could have beaten her here.

  It was possible that the intruders from the Norego had simply flown out here to search for the dig site. If that was the case, the plan was simple. She would anchor the trimaran at the mouth of the Ord and take a strike team upriver to the cave and wipe them out.

  If there was no one there, she would simply lie in wait for the Norego to arrive and blow it out of the water. And if neither of those happened in the next couple of days, they could be confident that the site hadn’t been compromised.

  Jin consulted the depth charts for the Cambridge Gulf and saw nothing unusual. Still, she might as well take advantage of the ship that sailed these waters on a regular basis.

  “Follow the Thai Navigator,” she ordered her helmsman.

  It wouldn’t take more than an hour to reach the southern end of the gulf.

  * * *

  —

  Sylvia was honored that Juan Cabrillo trusted her enough to let her into the inner sanctum of the Oregon’s op center while they monitored Nomad’s mission on the Ord. She was seated next to Murph, who was grunting in frustration instead of using his voice box.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I should be out there,” he said. “Little Geek is my toy.”

  “I’m sure Eric won’t break it. You’ll be back out in the field in no time.”

  The big view screen showed a shot from Nomad, which was cruising on the surface as it approached the Ord. Black clouds loomed in the background.

  Linda, who was sitting in the command chair, asked Hali, “What’s the weather forecast?”

  “It looks like there is a
squall line coming in,” Hali said. “Intermittent periods of heavy rain.”

  “That shouldn’t affect the dive.”

  “I do have some ship traffic to the north on radar.”

  “Identity?”

  “According to her AIS signal, it’s an ore carrier called the Thai Navigator. She’s gotta be bound for Wyndham and is about fifteen miles out.”

  Hali switched the screen to a camera on the Oregon. The oncoming freighter was nothing more than a dot on the horizon.

  Sylvia leaned over to Murph. “What’s AIS?”

  “Automatic Identification System,” Murph said. “It’s a transponder signal that all commercial cargo ships transmit. We change ours as necessary for the mission. The Thai Navigator is reading us as the Norego right now.”

  “We’re anchored far out of the shipping lane,” Linda said. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Careful not to ground the sub on the riverbed, Max drove Nomad back and forth over the site of the GPS coordinates from the archaeologist’s diary and used the side-scan sonar to verify that the wreck was indeed under the water. They all crouched around Eric’s screen, watching for any sign of the bireme.

  “There it is,” Juan said, nearly an hour after they’d left the Oregon.

  Out of the irregular river bottom, he could make out the defined shape of a boat. The top deck had eroded away, exposing the cargo holds underneath. Most of the wreckage had been excavated from the riverbank, and at the center of the vessel were dozens of objects that looked like flower vases.

  “Those are the amphorae,” Eric said.

  “Looks like we may have to go through a bunch of them,” Linc said.

  “Then we better get started,” Juan said. “Let’s suit up.”

  While they put on their shark suits, MacD and Raven, both dressed in rain gear, climbed through the upper hatch with their weapons. Steamy air washed through the air-conditioned cabin until the hatch was closed again.

  Max spoke over his shoulder from his cockpit seat. “I’ve gotten you as close as I can while still giving you room to open the belly hatch. You’ll have to swim about twenty yards. I’m releasing Little Geek now.”

  A compartment on Nomad’s exterior opened, allowing Eric to guide the remotely operated vehicle from the sub’s underside using its battery-powered propellers. The ROV, connected to the sub by a fiber-optic control cable, was the size of a suitcase and had been specially outfitted with a mini-sonar. Juan and Linc would swim beside it, and the echo reading would be displayed on their augmented reality glasses through additional fiber-optic lines linked from their suits to Little Geek.

  With the full-face masks on, Juan and Linc would be able to talk to each other and to Nomad through the comm link in the ROV.

  Once they had their heavy gear on, Juan and Linc entered the airlock. Linc’s bulk made the fit a tight squeeze, but they were only inside long enough for it to cycle and fill with water.

  When it had equalized with the river water, Juan opened the hatch and lowered himself through the opening. His feet touched the muck of the riverbed before his head was out of the airlock, which meant the depth was no more than fifteen feet. He inflated his buoyancy vest so that he could float. Otherwise, the chain mail suit would anchor him to the bottom.

  He grabbed a handrail on the side of Little Geek and attached his fiber connection. As soon as Linc was on the opposite side, Juan said, “We’re ready to go.” The ROV whirred into motion, dragging them along.

  As they’d expected, visibility was poor, even with the headlamps. Juan could see Little Geek and make out the shape of Linc next to him, but they were hazy. The sonar signal sent out by the ROV was too high pitched for the human ear to hear, but it seemed to be working because Juan could clearly see the contours of the river bottom rendered on his glasses as if he were looking at a movie special effect.

  “There’s the bow,” Linc said.

  A remnant of the Salacia’s prow jutted out of the silt. Its ram had broken off, but the wood was surprisingly well preserved after two thousand years. The floodplain’s clay that had covered the ship obviously did a fine job of protecting it from rot.

  They passed over a large cache of ancient weaponry that Juan would have loved to examine if they had more time. Swords, spears, and arrows were exposed, and Juan was sure there were more artifacts still to be uncovered.

  They continued on to the center of the ship, and Juan could now see the pile of amphorae that poked out of the silt. It looked like they had been painstakingly dug out to minimize damage to them as they were prepared for collection.

  “Okay, Stoney,” Juan said. “You can stop here.”

  Little Geek came to a halt and settled onto the riverbed. They would have to search carefully now by hand, making sure not to puncture the beeswax lids on the ceramic jars.

  “You start on that side,” Juan said, “and I’ll begin over here.”

  Using his dive light, he peered at the first amphora, but there was no lid on it. Same with the second one. The third had a lid, but it said “HERBIS.”

  The next three containers were shattered, as if they’d been hit by something heavy during the recent flooding. Their contents were long gone, swept away by the current.

  He picked up the necks of each one. The second one had a beeswax seal. It read “N V L.”

  “Great,” Juan said.

  “Did you find something?” Linc asked.

  “Yeah. A broken amphora with the label we were looking for.”

  “That stinks. Since they took one of the amphorae away, there’s only one left down here.”

  “Right. Keep your fingers crossed it wasn’t damaged like this one was.”

  Juan dropped the piece, which stirred up the silt, exposing something that glinted yellow in his light. He momentarily paused his search to brush away the mud to reveal more of the object.

  He was astonished to see a gold eagle’s head sticking out of the muck. He levered it loose of the silt that had piled up around it and plucked the weighty relic free. It must have been the item that crushed the ceramics.

  Juan didn’t bother examining it further and placed it into a small mesh bag on his belt. There would be plenty of time to look at it once they’d found the container they were searching for.

  In addition to the noise of the bubbles emitted by his mask’s regulator, a new sound penetrated the gloom. It was like the muted crackle of static on the radio.

  It was rain. There was a downpour up above.

  * * *

  —

  We got the fun part of the job, didn’t we?” MacD said as huge droplets pounded him and Raven while they stood watch atop Nomad. Water sluiced down his hood and rain jacket.

  “Don’t be such a crybaby,” Raven replied. “Showers like these don’t last long.”

  “At least Ah can’t get any wetter. It’s already like a sauna in this thing.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “It’s not that funny.”

  “No, I mean it looks like that croc in the middle of the river is heading this way.”

  She pointed, and MacD saw a huge crocodile moving steadily in their direction.

  “That’s a big sucker,” he said. “Do you think he’s interested in Nomad?”

  “None of them on the other side of the river seemed to pay any attention to us while we were cruising back and forth looking for the shipwreck.”

  The croc was making a beeline for the wreck. “Something’s attracting him. Can he hear the divers?”

  “I don’t know,” Raven said before calling Juan. “Chairman, we’ve a crocodile coming toward us with purpose.”

  “How long do we have?” Juan asked.

  “Not long. Maybe a minute.”

  “Good to know.”

  She and MacD took aim with
their rifles, but they wouldn’t be of any use. Like a U-boat readying its attack, the croc disappeared below the surface.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Jin was getting impatient with the slow speed of the Thai Navigator, so she ordered the helmsman to overtake the ore carrier. The Marauder came along her starboard side only three miles from Adolphus Island.

  As they were passing the Thai Navigator, a new ship came into view. It had been blocked both visually and on radar by the large cargo freighter.

  The ship seemed to be stationary, an odd place to drop anchor. She picked up her binoculars and walked out to the bridge wing.

  At this distance, she couldn’t read the name stenciled on the ship’s stern, but when she focused the binoculars, her stomach knotted at the sight of the four cranes on a break bulk carrier. It was exactly the configuration of the ship that Polk had described defending the Marsh Flyer.

  It couldn’t possibly have arrived here before she had. She had estimated it would take at least another day or two for it to get here. No ship that size could hope to match the speed of her trimaran.

  She dashed back into the bridge.

  “Tell me the name of that ship?” she asked.

  The first officer checked his screen. “It’s called the Norego.”

  It couldn’t be the same ship, but there it was.

  She suddenly realized that the Thai Navigator had shielded her approach, giving her an opportunity for a sneak attack. But she couldn’t have the crew of the ore carrier as witnesses.

  “Activate the plasma cannon,” she ordered. “And arm two Enervum rockets, one aimed at the Thai Navigator, and the other at the Norego.”

  * * *

  —

  Sylvia stood and gaped in horror when she saw the zoomed-in close-up of the trimaran on the Oregon op center’s view screen.

  “It came out of nowhere,” Hali said. “It must have been directly behind the Thai Navigator.”