Текст книги "Flood Tide"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 35 страниц)

“Where did she come from?” asked Pitt.

“Bad luck on our part,” said Cabrillo. “She just happened to be cruising across our path when the alarm went out and harbor officials notified their navy. I timed our departure so that we sailed in the wake of an Australian freighter and a Bolivian ore carrier to confuse Chinese radar. The other two were probably stopped and searched by fast attack patrol craft before being allowed to continue to their destinations. We had the misfortune to draw a heavy destroyer.”

“Qin Shang has a long arm to get that kind of cooperation from his government.”

“I wish I had his influence with our Congress.”

“Isn't it against international law for a nation's military to stop and search foreign ships outside their territorial waters?”

“Not since nineteen ninety-six. That was when Beijing implemented a U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, expanding China's territorial waters from a twelve mile limit to two hundred miles.”

“Which puts us well within their waters.”

“About a hundred and forty miles inside,” said Cabrillo.

“If you have missiles,” said Pitt, “why not blast the destroyer before we come in range of its guns?”

“Although we carry a small, older version of the Harpoon surface-to-surface missile with more than enough explosive power to blast a light attack craft or a patrol boat out of the water, we'd have to get incredibly lucky with our first launch to take out a forty-two-hundred-ton destroyer bristling with enough weaponry to sink a fleet. Disadvantage belongs to us. Our first missiles might take her launchers out of action. And we can slam two Mark 46 torpedoes into her hull. But that still leaves her with enough thirty-seven and hundred-millimeter guns to blast us into the nearest scrap yard.”

Pitt looked at Cabrillo steadily. “A lot of men are going to die in the next hour. Is there no way to avert the slaughter?”

“We can't fool a naval boarding party,” said Cabrillo solemnly. “They'll see through our disguise two minutes after setting foot on deck. You seem to forget, as far as the Chinese are concerned, Mr. Pitt, you and I and everyone on board this ship are spies. And as such, we can all be executed in the blink of an eye. Also, once they get their hands on the Oregon and her technology and realize her potential, they won't hesitate to use her for intelligence operations against other nations. Once the first Chinese marine sets foot on our deck, the die is cast. We fight or die.”

“Then our only option is surprise.”

“The key is that we won't constitute a threat in the eyes of the captain of that Chinese destroyer,” Cabrillo explained gruffly. “If you were him, standing on your bridge looking at us through night glasses, would you be trembling in your boots at what you saw? I doubt it. He might train the hundred millimeters on our bridge or one of the thirty-seven-millimeter twins at any crewman showing on deck. But once he sees his marines come on board and begin seizing the ship, he'll relax and call off the ship's alert, provided he even bothered to order one.”

“You make it sound as cut and dried as a snowball fight,” ventured Giordino.

Cabrillo gave Giordino a patiently worn look. “A what fight?”

“You'll have to excuse Al's regressive display of humor,” said Pitt. “He gets mentally unstable when things don't go his way.”

“You're just as weird,” Cabrillo growled at Pitt. “Doesn't anything ever faze you two?”

“Think of it as a response to a nasty situation,” Pitt said in mild protest. “You and your crew are trained and prepared for a fight. We're merely helpless bystanders.”

“We'll require the services of every man and woman on board before this night is over.”

Pitt studied the image on the monitor over Linda Ross's shoulder. “If you don't mind me asking, just how do you intend to trash a heavy destroyer?”

“My plan, elementary as it is, is for the Oregon to come to a stop when ordered. Then comes a demand to board and inspect us. Once we sucker him into standing off within spitting distance, we act like innocent, ill-tempered seamen while they observe us at close range. Once the Chinese boarding party climbs on deck, we'll lull the captain even deeper into a state of inertia by lowering our Iranian ensign and raising the People's Republic of China flag.”

“You have a Chinese flag?” asked Giordino.

“We carry flags and ensigns of every maritime country in the world,” answered Cabrillo.

“After your show of surrender?” said Pitt. “Then what?”

“We hit him with everything we've got and pray that when we're through he has nothing left to throw back at us.”

“It beats a long-range duel with missiles we couldn't win,” said Max Hanley, who was sitting in a chair beside an electronics specialist manning a tactical data unit.

Like a football coach in the lockers before the kickoff, Cabrillo went over his game plan carefully with his players. No contingency was left undevised or unpolished, no detail overlooked, nothing left to chance. Tension was nonexistent. The men and women on board the Oregon prepared to go about their jobs as if it was a typical Monday morning in the big city. Their eyes were clear and fixed, they did not have the frightened look of the hunted.

When Cabrillo finished, he asked, “Any questions?” His voice was deep and low, with the tiniest trace of a Spanish accent, and although he was far too experienced and perceptive not to accept fear, no hint showed in his face and manner. Hearing no inquiries from his crew, he nodded. “Okay, that's it then. Good luck to you all. And when this little scrape is over, we'll throw the biggest party the Oregon has ever known.”

Pitt raised a hand. “You said you needed every man. How can Al and I help?”

Cabrillo nodded. “You two gave evidence the other night that you're not afraid of a fight. Go to the ship's armory and pick up a pair of automatic weapons. You'll need more fire-power than that forty-five-caliber popgun of yours. Also check out a couple of sets of body armor. After that check with the costume department for some grungy old clothes. Then join the deck crew. Your talents will come in handy in stopping the Chinese marines once they come on board. I can only spare a few men from more important duties, so you'll be slightly outnumbered. There probably won't be more than ten of them, not enough to matter since you'll have the element of surprise. If you're successful, and I'm counting on it, you can lend a hand at damage control. And you can bet there will be plenty of damage to go around.”

“Will it be absolutely necessary to shoot down the boarding party without warning?” asked Linda Ross.

“Keep in mind,” Cabrillo said to her bluntly, “these people do not intend to allow anybody on board this ship to reach port. Because they are no doubt aware of our involvement with the underwater search of the United States, there is not the slightest doubt they mean for all of us to sleep with fishes before morning.”

Pitt's eyes raked Cabrillo's, searching for a tinge of regret, a sign that he thought that what they were about to do was a colossal mistake, but there was none of it. “Does it bother you that we might be mistaken about their intentions and commit an act of war?”

Cabrillo pulled his pipe out of a breast pocket and scraped the bowl. Then he said, “I don't mind admitting that I'm a bit worried on that score, but we can't run from then air force, so we have no option but to bluff our way out, and if that fails, we must fight.”

Like a gray ghost gliding over a black sea streaked by the full moon, the big Chinese destroyer overhauled the slow-moving Oregon with the malevolence of an Orca killer whale stalking a friendly manatee. But for its ungainly array of navigation, surface– and air-search detection and countermeasure systems that were perched above ugly towers, the ship might have had a sleek appearance. As it was, it looked like it was glued together by a small child who wasn't sure where all the pieces went.

Hali Kasim, the Oregon's vice president in charge of communications, called through the speakerphone on the bridge wing to Cabrillo, who now stood observing the destroyer through night glasses.

“Mr. Cabrillo, they've ordered us to heave to.”

“In what language?”

“English,” answered Kasim.

“An amateurish attempt to get us to tip our hand. Answer them in Arabic.”

There was a short pause. “They called our bluff, sir. They have someone on board who can speak Arabic.”

“String them along for a little while. We don't want to appear too anxious to appease. Ask why we should obey their orders in international waters.”

Cabrillo lit his pipe and waited. He looked down on the deck where Pitt, Giordino and three of his crew had assembled, all armed for a knock-down, drag-out fight.

“They're not buying it,” came Hali Kasim's voice again. “They say if we don't stop immediately, they will blow us out of the water.”

“Are they jamming in anticipation of us sending out a distress signal?”

“You can make book on it. Any message we transmit outside the immediate area will be received garbled.”

“What are the chances of a friendly warship cruising in the neighborhood, like a nuclear submarine?”

“None,” came the voice of Linda Ross in the countermea-sures and surveillance room. “The only vessel within a hundred miles is a Japanese auto transporter.”

“All right,” Cabrillo sighed. “Signal them that we will comply and heave to. But inform them that we will protest this outrage to the World Board of Trade and International Maritime Council.”

Cabrillo could then do nothing but wait and watch the Chinese destroyer emerge from the gloom. Besides his pair of unblinking eyes, the big warship was covered by the two concealed Harpoon missiles mounted in the center of the Oregon's hull, the two Mark 46 torpedoes in their underwater tubes and the muzzles of twin Oerlikon thirty-millimeter guns that could spit seven hundred rounds per minute out of each barrel.

All that could be done in preparation had been done. Cabrillo was proud of his corporate team. If there was unease, none of them showed it. What was visible was a determination, a grim satisfaction, that they were going to tackle an opponent twice their size and ten times as powerful and see it through to the end. There would be no turning of the cheek after a slap. The point of no return had been passed, and it was they who were going to slap first.

The destroyer came to a stop and drifted no more than two hundred yards away from the Oregon. Through his night glasses, Cabrillo could read the big white numbers painted near the bow. He called down to Ross, “Can you give me an ID on Chinese destroyer number one hundred sixteen? I repeat, one sixteen.”

He waited for a reply as he watched a boat being lowered from the destroyer's midships and clearing her davits. The boarding operation went smoothly, and the boat pushed off from the destroyer and headed across the gap between the two ships, coming alongside the hull of the simple-looking old freighter within twelve minutes. He noted with no little satisfaction that the turreted twin one-hundred-millimeter guns on the bow were the only weapons trained on the Oregon. The missile launchers appeared deserted and secured. The thirty-seven millimeter gun mounts had their barrels trained fore and aft.

“I have your ED,” came back Ross. “Number one sixteen is called the Chengdo. She's the biggest and the best the Chinese Navy has to offer. She is captained by Commander Yu Tien. With enough time I could get you his bio.”

“Thank you, Ross, don't bother. It's always nice to know the name of your enemy. Please stand by to fire all weapons.” “All weapons ready to fire when you are, Mr. Chairman,” Ross answered, cool and unruffled.

The boarding ladder was thrown over the side, and the Chinese marines, led by a naval lieutenant and a captain of the marine contingent, quickly scrambled from their boat onto the deck. There was an almost festive air about the boarders, a complacency bordering more on a Boy Scout camping trip than an operation conducted by tough fighting men.

“Damn!” Cabrillo cursed. There were more than twice as many of them as he figured, and all armed to the teeth. He agonized over not being able to spare any more men for the approaching fight on the main deck. He looked down at Pete James and Bob Meadows, the ship's divers and former Navy SEALs, and at Eddie Seng, all three of them standing at the railing, their machine pistols held under their coats. Then he spotted Pitt and Giordino standing squarely in front of the Chinese officers, their hands held high in the air.

Cabrillo's immediate reaction was one of infuriation. With Pitt and Giordino surrendering without a fight, the other three crewman wouldn't stand a prayer against over twenty combat-trained marines. The Chinese would brush them aside and be all over the ship in a matter of minutes. “You yellow-bellied wimps!” he exploded, shaking his fist at Pitt and Giordino. “You dirty traitors.”

“What's your count?” Pitt asked Giordino as the last of the Chinese marines came over the railing.

“Twenty-one,” Giordino answered complacently. “Four to one against us. Not exactly what I'd call 'slightly outnumbered.' ”

“I make the same odds.”

They stood awkwardly, wearing long winter coats, their hands raised over their heads in apparent surrender. Eddie Seng, James and Meadows stared at the boarding Chinese sullenly, like crewmen irritated by any interruption of their normal shipboard routine. The effect had the results Pitt counted on. The Chinese marines, seeing the feeble reception, relaxed and held their weapons loosely, not expecting any resistance from a disreputable crew on a shabby ship.

The naval officer, arrogant and staring as if in disgust at the motley crew that greeted him, strutted up to Pitt and demanded to know in English where he could find the ship's captain.

Without the slightest indication of malice as he looked from the naval lieutenant to the marine captain, Pitt purred politely, “Which of you is Beavis and which is Butt-head?”

“What was that you said?” demanded the lieutenant. “If you don't want to get shot, lead me to your captain.”

Pitt's expression took on a mask of pure fright. “Heh? You want captain? You should say so.” He turned slightly and made a production of tilting his head toward Cabrillo on the bridge wing, who was cursing a blue streak in anger.

In a moment of sheer reflex, all heads and every eye followed Pitt's gesture toward the shouting man.

Then from the bridge, with sudden, startling clarity, Cabrillo understood what the two NUMA men were up to and gazed hypnotized at the bloody fight that erupted before his eyes. He watched in dazed astonishment as Pitt and Giordino suddenly sprouted another pair of hands from under their coats, each hand gripping a machine pistol, fingers locked on the triggers. They cut a deadly swath through the Chinese marines, who were caught totally off balance. The two officers were the first to fall, followed by the next six men behind them. They could never, never have been prepared for such a vicious onslaught, certainly not from men who appeared frightened and cowering. In a fraction of a minute the unexpected assault had cut the odds from four to a little more than two to one. An arrogant confrontation quickly turned into a gory rampage of chaos.

Aware in advance of the phony-arms deception, Seng, James and Meadows instantly leveled their weapons and opened fire less than a second after Pitt and Giordino. It was bedlam. Men falling, scattering, frantically trying to cut each other down. The Chinese marines were professional fighting men and a brave lot. They recovered quickly and stood their ground on the deck, now heaped with their fallen comrades, and fired back. In a lightning stroke of time every clip in every gun had gone empty in almost the same instant. Seng was hit and down on one knee. Meadows had taken a bullet in one shoulder but was swinging his gun like a club. With no time to reload, Pitt and Giordino threw their weapons at the eight Chinese marines still fighting and waded in slugging. Yet even during that raging flash when the two forces fell on each other in a cursing, punching horde of twisting bodies, Pitt was aware of Cabrillo's cry from the bridge.

“Fire, for God's sake, fire!”

A section of the Oregon's hull snapped open in the blink of an eye and the two Harpoon missiles burst from their launchers in almost the same instant as the Mark 46 torpedoes shot from their tubes. A second later the twin Oerlikons opened up, aimed and fired by command from the combat control center, spitting a hail of shells against the Chengdo's missile launchers, that knocked their systems out of action before they could be activated and launched against the unarmored freighter. Time froze to a stop as the Oregon's first missile tore into the big destroyer's hull below the large single funnel and burst into the engine room. The second Harpoon struck the tower mounting the Chengdo's communications systems, effectively silencing any transmission to her fleet command.

The slower torpedoes came next, exploding as one no more than thirty feet apart, throwing up a tremendous pair of geysers beside the Chengdo, rocking it nearly over on its beam ends. It settled back on an even keel for a moment, and then began to list to starboard as the water rushed in through two holes as large as barn doors.

Captain Yu Tien of the Chengdo, normally a cautious man, fell for the sleight of hand as he peered through binoculars at the seemingly innocent old ship, observing his marines board without the slightest show of resistance. He watched as the green, white and red Iranian national flag was lowered and replaced with the red ensign of the People's Republic of China, with its five gold stars. Then suddenly Captain Yu Tien was paralyzed in disbelieving shock. One minute his seemingly invincible ship was calmly overhauling what appeared to be a rusty old tramp steamer, the next the helpless tramp had inflicted a horrifying amount of damage to his vessel with sophisticated precision. Struck by missiles, torpedoes and a hail of small-weapons fire almost simultaneously, his ship was instantaneously mortally wounded. He thought it outrageous that such an innocent commercial vessel could possess so much ftrepower.

Yu Tien stiffened as he saw death and dishonor creeping out of the ventilators, hatches and companionways leading down to the bowels of his ship. What began as white puffs and orange flickers quickly became a torrent of red fire and black smoke from the shambles that had been an engine room but had now become a crematory of helpless men.

“Fire!” he cried out. “Destroy those deceiving dogs!”

“Reload!” Cabrillo yelled through the communications system. “Hurry and reload—”

His orders were interrupted by a tremendous roar followed by concussions reverberating all around him. The big guns on the destroyer's undamaged forward turret belched a torrent of fire as it sent its shells screaming toward the Oregon.

The first shrieked between the loading cranes and burst against the base of the aft mast, sheering it clean and sending it crashing over the cargo deck while hurling a fiery core of white-hot fragments and debris in every direction, causing several small fires but little serious damage. With a convulsive explosion, the second shell slammed into the fantail on the Oregon's stern and tore it away, leaving a gaping hole above the rudderpost. The destruction was severe but not catastrophic. Cabrillo involuntarily ducked as a storm of thirty-seven-millimeter shells from the Chengdo's lighter gun mounts began raking the Oregon from forecastle to shattered stern. Almost immediately he was hailed by Ross, who was also manning the ship's fire-control systems.

“Sir, the Chinese light guns have knocked out the missile launcher's firing mechanisms. I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but our one-two punch is history.” “What about the torpedoes?” “Three more minutes before they're ready for firing.” “Tell the men loading the tubes to do it in one!” “Hanley!” Cabrillo shouted through the speakerphone to the engine room.

“I'm here, Juan,” Hanley answered with quiet calmness. “Any damage to your engines?”

“A few pipes have sprung leaks. Nothing we can't handle.” “Give me full speed, every knot you can coax out of your engines. We've got to get the hell out of here before the destroyer rips us apart.” “You got it.”

It was then Cabrillo realized his Oerlikons had gone silent. He stood still and stared at the twin guns sitting dead in the center of a large wooden shipping crate with its four walls peeled out. The barrels pointed impotently at the destroyer as if neglected, their automated electronic controls severed by thirty-seven-millimeter shells. He knew with sick certainty that without its covering fire, their chances for survival were rapidly going down the drain. Too late did he feel the Oregon's stern dip and her bow raise as Hanley's big engines kicked the ship forward. For the first time he felt fear and hopelessness as he stared down the twin throats of the destroyer's one-hundred-millimeter guns, waiting for them to destroy his dedicated crew and ship.

Having momentarily forgotten the fight raging on the deck in the midst of the destruction, he blinked and glanced downward. Bloodied bodies were heaped and scattered like a truckload of human refuse dumped in the street. He stared with bile welling up in his throat. The appalling carnage had taken less than two minutes, a gory rampage that had left no man still alive uninjured. Or so he thought.

Then, like the flicker of a camera shutter, he saw a figure sway to his feet and begin staggering drunkenly across the deck toward the Oerlikons.

Although protected by the body armor around their torsos, James and Meadows were both down with wounds in the legs. Seng had taken two bullets through his right arm. Sitting with his back against the railing, he tore off a shirtsleeve, wadded it up and calmly pressed it against his wounds to stem the flow of blood. Giordino lay beside him, barely conscious. One of the Chinese marines had clubbed him on the top of his head with the butt of an automatic rifle in almost the same instant as Giordino had savagely sunk his fist into his opponent's stomach nearly to the vertebra. Both men had toppled to the deck together, the marine withering in pain and gasping for air, Giordino knocked nearly senseless.

Pitt, seeing that his friend was not seriously wounded, threw off the coat with the mannequin arms and struggled painfully toward the silent Oerlikons, muttering to himself. “Twice. Would you believe it. Twice in the same place.” He held one hand over the entry wound only an inch above the still-bandaged hole in his hip where he'd taken a bullet at Orion Lake. The other hand gripped a Chinese machine pistol he'd snatched off a dead marine.

From his vantage point on the bridge wing, Cabrillo stood rooted in awe of the unbelievable sight of Pitt contemptuously brushing aside the air filled with the maddening clatter of the Chengdo's storm of thirty-seven-millimeter shells that scythed across the Oregon's cargo deck. The fire splattered all around him like rain, chewing up the wooden crates stacked on the deck. He heard them shriek past his head and felt their demented breeze as they passed within inches of his face and neck. Miraculously, none struck him during his harrowing journey to the Oerlikons.

Pitt's face was not pleasant to see. To Cabrillo it seemed like a mask of unholy rage, the vivid green eyes burning with furious determination. It was a face Cabrillo would never forget. He had never seen a man with such a sardonic contempt for death.

At last, after achieving what seemed the impossible, Pitt lifted the machine pistol and shot away the shredded remnants of the cable leading to the fire-control room, giving the twin barrels freedom of movement. Then he moved behind the twin guns and took manual control, his right hand clutching the trigger grip, which had been installed but never operated. It was as if the old Oregon had come to life again, like a badly battered fighter who rose from the canvas at the count of nine and began punching. His aim was not what Cabrillo expected. Instead of spraying the Chengdo's bridge and thirty-seven-millimeter-gun mounts, Pitt unleashed the Oerlikons' combined 1,400-round-per-minute firepower against the turret, whose hundred-millimeter guns were aimed at and about to devastate the freighter.

Though it seemed like a useless, defiant gesture—the hurricane of small shells merely splattered and ricocheted off the heavily armored turret—Cabrillo realized what Pitt was attempting to do. Stark madness, he thought, sheer, unfettered madness to attempt the impossible. Even with a solid support to rest the barrel of his rifle, only a superb marksman could have put a bullet down the barrel of any one of the turret's gun muzzles from a ship rising and falling on the ocean swells. But Cabrillo overlooked the awesome firepower of the Oerlikons at Pitt's command, not realizing the law of averages was on his side. Three shells, one directly behind the other, entered the muzzle of the center gun and swept down its barrel, impacting with the shell that had been freshly loaded in the breech and detonating its warhead at almost the same instant it was fired.

In a moment stolen from hell, the big one-hundred-millimeter shell burst, causing a sympathetic explosion inside that peeled the turret open like a tin can covering a Fourth of July cherry bomb, instantly turning it into a shambles of jagged steel. Then, as if on cue, the Oregon's last two torpedoes smashed into the Chengdo's hull, one of them miraculously entering through a previous hole made by one of its predecessors. The destroyer shuddered as a great thunderous roar exploded in her bowels, lifting her hull nearly clear of the water. A blossoming ball of fire bloomed around her, and then, like a great, mortally wounded animal, she shuddered and died. Three minutes later she was gone amid a great hissing sound and column of black smoke that spiraled upward and merged with the night sky, hiding the stars.

The shock wave swept against the Oregon, and the following tidal surge from the sinking destroyer rocked her as if she was landlocked in an earthquake. On the bridge, Cabrillo had not seen the final death throes of the Chengdo. Only seconds before Pitt's shrewdly directed fire turned her into a smoldering wreck, the destroyer's light guns had converged their fire on the bridge, pounding it into a shower of debris and shattered glass, as if struck by a thousand sledgehammers. Cabrillo felt the air tear apart around him in a concert of explosions. His arms flailed at the air as he was struck and hurled backward from the bridge into the wheelhouse. He fell to the deck, closed his eyes tightly and wrapped his arms around the brass binnacle and held on. A shell had smashed through his right leg below the knee, but Cabrillo experienced no pain. And then he heard a tremendous eruption and felt a rush of air, followed by an almost eerie silence.

On the deck below, Pitt released the trigger grip and retraced his steps through the wreckage littering the cargo deck. He reached Giordino and helped him upright. Giordino put his arm around Pitt's waist to steady himself, and then withdrew it, staring at a hand stained with red. “It appears to me that you've developed a leak.”

Pitt gave him a tight grin. “I must remember to stick my finger in it.”

Assured Pitt's wound was not serious, Giordino gestured at Seng and the others and said, “These guys are seriously injured. We must help them.”

“Do what you can to make them comfortable until the ship's surgeon can tend to them,” Pitt said as he looked up at the ruins of what had been the bridge, now a tangled mass of debris. “If Cabrillo is still alive I should try to help him.”

The ladder to the bridge wing from the cargo deck was a tangled piece of scrap, and Pitt had to scale the shell-riddled, twisted mass of steel that had been the aft superstructure to reach the wheelhouse. The shattered interior was deadly quiet.

The only sounds came from the racing beat of the engines and the rash of water along the hull as the badly punished ship raced from the scene of the battle, strangely enhancing the eerie silence. Pitt slowly entered Satan's scrap heap, stepping over the rabble.

There were no bodies of a helmsman or first officer in the wheelhouse—all fire-combat systems had been operated from the control center under the forecastle. Cabrillo had observed and directed the battle alone on the seldom-used bridge. Through the edge of unconsciousness he saw a vague figure approach and push aside the splintered remains of the door. Awkwardly, he straggled to sit up. One leg responded but the other proved powerless. His thoughts seemed lost in a fog. He was only dimly aware of someone kneeling beside him.

“Your leg took a nasty hit,” said Pitt as he tore off his shirt and tightened it above the wound to stop the bleeding. “How's the rest of you?”

Cabrillo held up the remains of a shattered pipe. “The bastards rained my best briar.”

“You're lucky it wasn't your skull.” Reaching up, Cabrillo grasped Pitt's arm. “You made it through. I thought you bought a tombstone for sure.”

“Didn't someone tell you,” he said, smiling, “I'm indestructible, thanks in large part to the body armor you suggested I check out.”

“The Chengdo?”

“Settling in the mud on the bottom of the China Sea about now.”

“Survivors from the destroyer?”

“Hanley has his engines wound as tight as they'll go. I don't think he has any inclination to slow down, turn around, go back and see.”

“How badly were we mauled?” Cabrillo asked as his eyes began to focus again.

“Other than looking like she was trampled by Godzilla, there isn't any damage a few weeks in a shipyard won't cure.” “Casualties?”

“About five, maybe six wounded, including yourself,” answered Pitt. “No dead or injured below decks that I'm aware of.”