“Don’t wait for me no matter what. If I can’t detonate the Hypertherm, hit the ship with the torpedoes anyway. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the blast will ignite the cutting charges.”
“I hear you, but I don’t like it.”
“How the hell do you think I feel?” Juan said as he ran.
The tanker seemed impossibly long, her bows like a horizon that never grew closer. The heat radiating from the deck made his pores run with sweat and each time his left foot slapped the ground he could feel the blisters popping. He ignored it all and sprinted on.
“Two minutes,” Max said over the radio when Cabrillo finally reached the string of Hypertherm bisecting the ship.
When Singer had yanked the battery from the detonator, he had torn the wires that carried the electricity to set off the charge. Juan had to first disconnect the detonator from between two lengths of the explosives so he didn’t accidentally complete the circuit. Using the pocketknife Eddie had recovered at the Devil’s Oasis, he had to peel back the plastic insulation to expose the copper before he could twist the wires back together. There were three of them and it took twenty seconds each.
A status light embedded in the detonator turned green. He had a complete circuit.
“One minute, Juan.”
He clipped a length of Hypertherm to one side of the detonator and was moving to the second when he heard over the radio. “Chairman, it’s Murph. Torpedoes are a hundred and fifty yards out.”
“Keep them coming. I’ve almost got it. There!”
The string was complete. He turned and started running aft, hampered by the stinging pain radiating from his charred foot. He was now in a race against two torpedoes homing in on the ship at forty knots. He’d covered a hundred feet when Murph reported the torpedoes were a hundred yards away. He accelerated through the agony, not caring that he was crying out with every step.
“Fifty yards, Chairman,” Mark said as if it were his fault.
Juan let it go for another few seconds, gaining a couple more feet before pressing the remote.
In a blazing arc that rivaled the sun, the Hypertherm ignited, its magnesium core spiking to two thousand degrees. The burn raced from the center of the ship like lightning, making the steel deck as soft as wax and then heating it further so it dripped into the hold like water. The bow was wreathed in a noxious cloud of smoke and scorched metal. The light it gave off filled the sky, turning the cheerless gray into brilliant white. The explosive cut completely across the deck and then continued on, slicing open the hull down to the waterline in a blink of an eye.
Juan could feel the intense thermal shock on his back from three hundred feet away and had it not been for the rain he probably would have lost the hair on his head.
As quickly as it had ignited and burned through the ship, the Hypertherm exhausted itself, leaving in its passing a long narrow gash with edges that glowed with residual heat.
He managed to cover another twenty yards before the Test-71s hurtled into the ship directly below where the charge had cut the hull. The concussion from the twin explosions lifted him off his feet and threw him down the deck as water and torn metal geysered up from the blasts. The bow was torn free of the rest of the tanker and sank in an instant. The force of her passage through the ocean caused water to surge into her holds, forcing the nearly three quarter load of flocculent to squeeze toward the stern through the pipes that connected the tanks. A gout erupted from the tear in her side, sending gel squirting more than a hundred feet. They had known this would happen, but accepted it as a small price to pay as the remainder of the organic flocculent remained trapped within the ship.
Juan staggered to his feet, his head pounding with an unholy ring. Looking forward he could see the ocean climbing up over where the bow had been in a wall of water that seemed to grow in height as the ship settled into the sea’s embrace. The Gulf of Sidra was sealing her own fate as her massive diesel engine continued to turn the propeller, ramming her under the waves at seventeen knots.
“Juan, it’s George.” He looked up to see the chopper hovering above him. “I think I have enough fuel to make one attempt.”
“You won’t have time,” Juan said as he ran aft again. “This pig’s sinking faster than I thought she would. She’ll be gone in less than a minute.”
“I’m going to try anyway. I’ll meet you at the stern rail.”
Cabrillo just kept running.
“And we’re coming in,” Max Hanley called from the Oregon. “Rescue crews are gearing up now if you go into the drink.”
Juan ran on, coming down the starboard side of the ship so he could avoid where the hull had been breached. Behind him the sea climbed higher. Already a third of the tanker was awash and every second saw more of her go under.
He reached the superstructure and raced down the narrow space between it and the rail, his legs pumping up the ever steepening deck. He reached the Sidra’s jack post with its soaked Liberian flag just as water reached the leading edge of the accommodation block. There was no sign of George Adams in the Robinson. Cabrillo would just have to hold on and pray he didn’t get sucked too deep when the ship plummeted out from under him.
He had just started climbing over the rail when the chopper careened from around the crazily tilted superstructure. From its back door dangled a patchwork rope made of assault rifle slings, a fatigue jacket, some lengths of wire pilfered from somewhere in the cockpit, and Eddie Seng’s pants looped at the bottom.
A line of portholes one story above Cabrillo exploded, blown outward by the buildup of air pressure as water filled the superstructure. He turned away from the shower of glass that rained downward and looked up again in time to see Eddie’s pants swinging at him.
He leapt as they arced just above his head, slipping an arm through the pant legs, and was jerked into the air, spinning and twisting like a coin on the end of a string. Below him the Gulf of Sidra vanished under the waves, her grave marked by a pool of gel many thousands of times smaller than what Daniel Singer had intended.
The first person to greet them in the Oregon’s hangar after George’s unbelievable landing was Maurice. He was dressed impeccably in his trademark black suit with a crisp white towel over one arm. In the other he held aloft a serving dish with a silver cover. As Juan staggered from the Robinson, and Max, Linda, and Sloane arrived in a jubilant rush, Maurice approached and whipped off the cover with a flourish.
“As per your earlier request, Captain.”
“My earlier request?” Dulled by fatigue, Juan had no idea what the steward was talking about.
Maurice was too dour to ever smile, but his eyes glinted with merriment. “I know this isn’t technically a hurricane but I believe you would enjoy your Gruyère cheese and lobster soufflé with a baked Alaska for dessert.”
His timing had been so perfect that the delicate soufflé hadn’t settled and steam curled from its top. Laughter echoed throughout the hangar.
IT would be the tenth squall of the year to form in the Atlantic powerful enough to become a tropical storm and thus deserve a name. Though it had started to evolve into a hurricane with a massive potential for destruction, the eye never seemed to fully form. Meteorologists had no explanation why. They’d never seen a phenomenon like it.
It was just as well. It was early in the season to have this many storms and a weary public wasn’t really concerned with a hurricane that never was. In keeping with tradition, each storm was named after the corresponding letter in the alphabet so that the first storm always has a name starting with the letter A, the second with the letter B, and so on. So when it came to the tenth storm, a storm that never made landfall, few would recall that it had been given the moniker of Tropical Storm Juan.
32
THE dune buggy carrying Cabrillo, Max, Sloane, and Mafana flew across the desert on its fat tires, the souped-up engine roaring as Juan drove it at breakneck speed. Moses Ndebele had wanted to make the trip, but his doctors at a private South African hospit
al refused to let him leave so soon after the surgery to repair his shattered foot. He’d sent his old sergeant in his place, although he trusted Cabrillo implicitly.
They were running late for their appointment. The man at the company who rented them the vehicle was also a volunteer with the Swakopmund police. He had been delayed because he’d been out arresting a group of Europeans stranded in the desert who were responsible for a kidnapping that took place in Switzerland.
The open-topped buggy crested a hill and Juan whipped them into a slide that dug furrows into the ground. The vehicle rocked on its suspension as the four passengers gaped at the valley below.
The Rove looked as though she was under way on an ocean of sand. Small dunes lapped at her hull like gently rolling swells. If not for her missing funnel and her broken cargo derricks and the fact that every fleck of paint had been scoured from her, she would have looked like she had before being buried for a hundred years by the worst sandstorm in a century.
A short distance from her was a huge cargo chopper painted a bright turquoise with the name NUMA emblazoned on its rotor boom. Near it were two small excavators that had been used to remove the thirty feet of sand that had entombed the ship and a cluster of workers lounging in the shade under a white tent canopy.
Juan leaned over to kiss Sloane’s cheek. “You were right. Congratulations.”
She beamed at the compliment. “Was there ever any doubt?”
“Tons of it,” Max said from the backseat. Sloane reached back and slapped his leg playfully.
Juan put the buggy in gear and raced down the side of the dune. Their appearance made the workers get to their feet. Two of them detached themselves from the others and started across the desert floor to where a ramp had been rigged to give access to the Rove’s main deck. One carried a box under his arm.
Cabrillo braked just shy of the ramp and killed the engine. The only sound was a gentle breeze that stirred the air. He unstrapped his belts and climbed from the bucket seat as the two men approached. Both were solidly built and were maybe a year or two younger than him, though one had pure white hair and eyes that were as blue as his own. The other was darker, a Latino with a perpetually amused look on his face.
“I don’t know a whole lot of people in the world who truly impress Dirk Pitt,” the white-haired man from NUMA said. “So when I had the chance to meet one of them I took it. Chairman Cabrillo, I presume?”
“Juan Cabrillo.” They shook hands.
“I’m Kurt Austin and this rogue here is Joe Zavala. By the way, thanks for getting us away from cleanup duty in Angola where NUMA’s leading a hand.”
“Pleasure to meet you. How’s it coming?”
“Better than expected. Our ship happened to be nearby on a survey mission. Joe was able to modify a suction dredge used to take samples into an effective oil vacuum. We can pump the crude directly to storage tanks onshore. With Petromax deploying everything they have from other facilities in Nigeria, the spill should be totally cleared up in less than two weeks.”
“That’s great to hear,” Juan said, then added with a touch of self-recrimination. “Had we been a couple hours earlier there wouldn’t have been a need for such a cleanup effort.”
“And a couple hours later would have doubled it.”
“True.” Cabrillo turned to his companions. “This is the president of the Corporation, Max Hanley. Mafana here represents Moses Ndebele, and this is Sloane Macintyre, the reason we’re all standing eight miles from the ocean but looking at a steamship.”
“Quite a sight, huh?”
“Not that I’m complaining, but how did you find it so fast?”
Before answering, Joe Zavala produced bottles of Tusker lager from the box. The glass was icy cold and blistered with condensation. He popped the tops and handed them around. “It’s about the best way I’ve discovered to beat back the dust.”
They saluted each other and took long gulps.
“Ah!” Zavala breathed. “That’s the stuff.”
“To answer your question,” Austin said, wiping his mouth, “we turned the problem over to our resident computer genius, Hiram Yeager. He pulled together every scrap of information about the storm that hit the night the Rove disappeared, gleaning it from old ships’ logs, memoirs of people living in Swakopmund, missionaries’ journals, and a report filed with the British Admiralty concerning navigational changes to the coast of South West Africa after it was over.
“He fed everything he could into his computer and then added meteorological data about this area for the century since the storm. About a day later Max spit out the answer.”
“Max?” Hanley asked.
“It’s what he calls his computer. It created a map of the coastline as it is today with a line running parallel to it, ranging from a mile to more than ten miles inland. Had the Rove been close to shore, like to pick up passengers who’d made off with a fortune in diamonds, she would be buried somewhere along that line.”
“The distance variances are caused by different geological conditions and wind patterns,” Zavala added.
“Once we had our map we flew along the line in a chopper trailing a magnetometer.”
“I did the same thing for days,” Sloane told them, “but I was searching out at sea. Guess I should have done more research.”
“It took us two days to get a hit that could be the Rove, and it was less than thirty feet from where Max said she’d be.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I’ve been trying to convince Hiram to make his computer predict lottery numbers for me,” Zavala quipped. “He says it can do it, but he won’t let me ask.”
“We used ground-penetrating radar to confirm it was a ship and not a mass of iron, like a meteorite,” Austin went on. “The rest was just a matter of moving sand.”
Zavala opened a second round of beers. “Moving a lot of sand.”
“Have you been inside her yet?” Sloane asked.
“We were saving that honor for your arrival. Come on aboard.”
He led them up the gangplank and onto the Rove’s teak deck. They had done a masterful job removing the overburden, going so far as to sweep out the corners so the only sand on her was what blew with the wind.
“The bridge windows were smashed in, either by the storm or later when she was buried, so it was filled with sand. However…” He left the word hanging in the air and slapped a hatch. The metal echoed. “The desert never entered her crew’s quarters.”
“I’ve already loosened the dogging wheel,” Zavala said. “So Miss Macintyre, if you’d please.”
Sloane stepped forward and spun the locking wheel another half turn to disengage the latches. She pulled it open and a trickle of sand spilled over the coaming. The wardroom beyond was lit only by a couple shafts of light from small portholes along two walls. Other than the drifts of sand covering the floor, it looked as though a hundred years had never passed. The furniture was all in its place. A stove sat ready to warm the teakettle sitting on its top and a lantern hanging from the ceiling appeared to need just the touch of a match to glow.
But as their eyes adjusted they all saw that what at first looked like sacks of cloth draped over the table were actually the mummified remains of two men who’d died facing opposite each other. Their skin had turned gray as their bodies dried out and seemed as brittle as paper. One wore nothing but a loincloth around his waist and the stalks of feathers that had lost their fletching in a band around his skull. The other wore rough bush clothes and next to where he lay his head sat an enormous slouch hat that had been white eleven decades earlier.
“H. A. Ryder,” Sloane breathed. “The other must have been one of the Herero warriors their king sent to retrieve the stones.”
“They had to have attacked just as the storm hit,” Austin said, returning from down a short corridor. “There are a dozen or more bodies lying in the cabins. Most looked like they died in a fight. Lots of stab wounds. The bodies of the Hereros don’t have a mark
on them, so they probably died of starvation when the Rove was buried.”
“But they didn’t kill him.” Juan pointed at Ryder’s corpse. “I wonder why?”
“From the looks of it, these two were the last of them, Zavala remarked. “Probably died of dehydration when the ship’s water supply ran dry.”
“Ryder was well known in his day,” Sloane said. “It’s possible they knew each other. They could have been friends from before the heist.”
“That’s one mystery we’ll never be able to solve,” Max said, stepping forward to reach for one of the bags placed under the table. “As to another one.”
When he lifted the saddlebag the dried-out leather split and a cascade of diamonds tumbled into the sand. Unpolished and in poor light, they still dazzled like bits of captured sunshine. Everyone began cheering at once. Sloane picked up a twenty-carat stone and held it to the porthole to plumb its depths. Mafana scooped up handfuls of diamonds and let them sift through his fingers. His expression told Juan he was thinking not of himself but of what wealth these stones meant for his people.
The old sergeant broke open the other bags and began sorting through the stones, plucking out the largest and clearest. There were many to choose from because the original miners who’d brought the diamonds to their king had taken only the finest they had wrested from the earth. When his hands were brimming he turned to Cabrillo.
“Moses said that you gave him one handful of stones as a down payment,” Mafana said solemnly. “He ordered me to give you back two as our people’s way of saying thank you.”
Juan was overwhelmed by the gesture. “Mafana, this isn’t necessary. You and your men fought and died for these stones. That was our deal.”
“Moses said you would reply that way so I was then supposed to give them to Mr. Hanley. Moses says he is less sentimental than you and would accept them on behalf of your crew.”
“He’s got a point there,” Max said and held out his hands. Mafana gave him the stones. “Having played a master jeweler not too long ago I’d say there’s about a million bucks here.”
Skeleton Coast Page 42
