Текст книги "The Silent Sea (2010)"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

The Silent Sea

Chapter TWENTY-SIX

WHO DO YOU LOVE MORE THAN ME? LINDA ROSS ASKED when she strode into the op center fifteen quiet minutes later. She carried a slim manila folder and a wide grin.

Megan Fox, Mark said at once.

Beyonc+!, the duty tech at damage control called out.

Katie Holmes, Hali said.

I've always had a thing for Julia Roberts, Eric added.

Chairman, Linda asked, care to be a sexist pig, too?

The only woman I love more than you is my mom.

The other men jeered him softly.

Linda smiled. Touch+!.

Remind me again why I love you so.

Because I've found that less than a hundred miles south of here is a Norwegian whaling station abandoned back in the 1930s.

We don't need whale bones.

It has been preserved as a World Heritage Site wait for it because it has a chapel with a graveyard that is the final resting place for twenty-seven whalers who'd died in these waters. You told me to find you some bones, I give you bones.

Juan was on his feet in an instant and at her side in two strides. He had to bend way over to lay a kiss on her velvety cheek. The migraine suddenly vanished, and the pall that had formed over him lifted. What had him so down was the fact that if they hadn't found a bunch of skeletons, he would have had no choice but to leave the hostages to their fate. He doubted they were going to be an Argentine priority once things heated up, so to leave them behind meant to let them die.

Chairman, I'm picking up a transmission from the Chinese workboat, Hali said, turning back to his bank of computers.

Jam it!

He worked his keyboard for a second. I've isolated the frequency. They're dead. The computer will automatically keep following them as they search for a signal up and down the dial.

Okay. Good. If they have any news to report, they'll have to go back to base. That's two problems down in under a minute. Well done, everybody.

Max and Tamara strolled into the op center, their hands so close together that Juan suspected they'd been holding them just seconds earlier. The bullfrog and the princess, he thought, but was happy for them both.

Perfect timing, my friend.

Hanley looked at him like a buyer eyes a used-car salesman. I've got a bad feeling about this.

Cabrillo smiled broadly. And so you should. I need you to play Igor and go rob a churchyard.

Tamara looked aghast. You want him to do what?

You know, Max said, shaking his head from side to side. I have to admit there was a part of me that hoped this piece of the operation wouldn't pan out.

Come on, Juan teased, fresh air, open skies, decomposing Norwegians. It'll be great!

What are you two talking about? Decomposing who?

Max turned to her. In order for us to rescue the hostages so the Argentines don't know they're missing, we have to leave something behind to fool them.

But?

Once we get them out of the building, Juan said, we'll torch it. All they'll find are eighteen sets of charred bones. Only a pathologist would know they weren't the original men and women. We're just grateful the sizes of the winter-over crews are so small, otherwise we'd need to come up with an alternative.

Like what? Her mind reeled.

A small nuke, maybe.

From what she'd seen of the Corporation so far, she wasn't sure if Cabrillo was joking or not. She wouldn't be surprised if it were the latter.

He threw her a wolfish grin that told her nothing beyond the fact that she was surrounded by a bunch of swashbuckling adolescents. She looked to Max for guidance. He merely shrugged. She said, I guess it's a good thing you were going to use a small one.

Linda moved to her side, as if she were an anchor in their craziness, and said, Don't worry. We do know what we're doing.

I'm glad you do because I sure don't.

Hanley left twenty minutes later in an RHIB, towing an inflatable boat. He and his four-man crew shot straight out to sea for about five miles before turning southward, so there was no chance of being spotted from shore. Max brought along a gasoline-powered high-pressure pump he planned to use to excavate the bones. The needle of heated water it threw could be dialed up to four thousand psi, more than enough to melt away the permafrost covering the bodies. As he said when they left, No picks and shovels for Mrs. Hanley's favorite son.

Juan had a decidedly more difficult job today. With the Chinese surveying the bay where the wreck was located, Mike Trono and his team couldn't resume their work. That freed up the Nomad submersible, with its air lock. The perpetually twilit sky was dark enough to provide visual cover, and the Argentines' oil rigs and hot-air bubbling system would screen the sounds of his work.

Down in the underwater operations room, Cabrillo dressed to dive. Under his Viking dry suit he wore a mesh garment embedded with more than a hundred feet of tubing. Warm water would be circulated through the tubes from an umbilical attached to a jack on the submarine. He knew the Argentines were heating the bay, but he couldn't risk encountering freezing water during his trip. The umbilical also carried his communications system and his air, so there was no need for bulky tanks.

The full-face helmet was equipped with powerful lights, which he dimmed down by covering half the lenses with paint. It would make it much more difficult to work but also much harder to be spotted from the surface. He would need to keep reminding himself to never look up and send the beams flashing toward the surface.

Linda would pilot the minisub while Eddie Seng would be Juan's dive master.

As soon as they launched, Linda guided them to the Oregon's stern. Just below the naked flagpole, a hatch had been opened to reveal a huge drum of tow cable. Rather than steel, it was made of woven carbon fiber, with a quarter of the weight and five times the strength of a traditional line. As an added bonus, it was neutrally buoyant. Linda grabbed the end with the Nomad's powerful mechanical arm and fitted it into a slot where it couldn't come loose.

Then they started making their way to the Argentine base. The drag of line wasn't bad at first, but the three of them knew by the time they had enough played out the submersible would be struggling. They had timed their launch so the Nomad would ride into the bay with the tide.

It took more than an hour to reach the pylons supporting the gas-processing plant that Juan and Linc had spent so much time studying the night before. Because the bay was kept artificially warmed, sea life teemed around the thick ferroconcrete piers. Dull-brown crabs scuttled along the bottom and fish darted between the columns, which were encrusted with barnacles and shellfish.

The Nomad was sixty-five feet long, but with multiple thrusters placed strategically on her hull she was wildly maneuverable. Linda had her bottom lip pinched between neat white teeth as she moved them under the industrial complex and around one of the columns. There she lowered them to the bottom.

She switched over to the arm once again. While the carbon-fiber cable was strong, it remained susceptible to abrasion, and being scraped across the rough surface of the pier would weaken it substantially. To protect it, she used the arm to scrape away the accumulation of mussels. The small bivalves snapped their shells violently when dislodged and propelled themselves into the gloom.

Next, she swiveled the grasping hand to pull a bundled length of commercial plastic pipe from a storage bin. It was the same material used in domestic plumbing and would be a common item found anywhere at the base. Their presence, in the unlikely event they were ever found, would not raise suspicion. They would just be other pieces of junk that had fallen into the sea. The pipes had been glued together to form a semicircle that fit around the back of the pier. It would be the smooth plastic that the cable rubbed against and not the cement.

She fitted the protective half sleeve into place and looped the submersible around the far side of the column.

Good job, Juan said as they slowly backed away. The black towline slid easily over the bundle of PVC pipes. One more stop to go.

She pivoted the Nomad and started back across the bay. The weight of the line and the need now to fight the tide, which had yet to slacken, strained the submersible's engine. The batteries drained almost twice as fast as normal, and their speed was down to a crawl, but they still made headway.

Twenty minutes later, they were under the Admiral Guillermo Brown. Her anchor was paid out and rested on its side on the rocky seabed, its heavy chain rising up to the surface. Less than twenty feet of water separated her keel from the bottom.

Strange name for an Argentine ship. Brown, Eddie said as he handed Juan his helmet.

His name was really William Brown, and he was born in Ireland and then emigrated to Argentina. He's credited with forming their Navy in the early 1800s to fight the Spanish.

How could you possibly know that? Linda asked from the cockpit.

What? I Googled him when we first saw the cruiser. I thought it was an odd choice of name, too.

Juan waddled to the tiny air lock, laden with a belt from which he hung his tools. Strapped to his back like a World War II flame-thrower were two cylinders. Once he was in and the door secure, he jacked his umbilical into a port and checked over his connections, making certain that warm water was flowing through his suit and that he had good airflow and good comms with the sub. Only when Eddie was satisfied did he open the valve that flooded the closet-sized compartment.

Water foamed and hissed as it climbed his body, pressing the rubber suit against his legs when the pressure grew. It was a comfortable temperature, but he wouldn't discount running into icy pockets once he was outside. He could see Eddie watching him through a small window in the air-lock door. Juan gave him the traditional divers signal that everything was okay. Eddie returned it.

Moments later, the water had closed in on the ceiling. Juan reached overhead to open the outer hatch. A few stray bubbles burst free as it swung up. He climbed out of the sub, making sure to keep his head down and his lights pointed away from the surface. He felt reasonably confident that the Argentines didn't have lookouts posted in such freezing conditions, but he hadn't thought he and Linc would run into a guard last night either.

The low vibration in the water came from the cruiser's secondary power plant, which produced enough energy to run the ship's systems and keep the men warm. The main engines were off. He knew this already by observing that only a small amount of smoke escaped the warship's single raked funnel.

He jumped free of the sub, floating down to the bottom in a graceful arc. His boots hit and kicked up a little silt that drifted gently away. One of the six-inch-thick conduits for the bubbler was to his left. Air rose from its length in thin streams of silver.

Juan turned his attention to the Admiral Brown's anchor. It looked to be about eight feet long and would probably weigh in at about four tons more than enough to keep the ship stationary against the tides. A small pile of extra chain lay next to it in a rust-colored heap.

How are you doing out there?

No problem so far. I'm looking at the anchor now.

And?

I should be able to unshackle it from the chain. The lynchpin is held in place with bolts.

Cabrillo bent over the anchor and pulled an adjustable wrench from his belt. He fitted it over the first bolt and used his thumb on the oversized adjusting wheel until it was snug. It fought him the entire way. Tiny bits of paint lifted from the bolt head when it first moved an eighth of a turn, and it would turn no more than that. Juan heaved on it until finally bracing his legs against the anchor and pulling until he though he was going to pass out. The bolt gave another eighth turn. It took ten backbreaking minutes to remove that first bolt, and Juan was bathed in sweat.

Shut down the hot suit, Eddie. I'm dying out here.

It's off.

The next bolt spun out so easily that, once he had it started, he could twist it with his fingers. The third and fourth weren't quite as easy, but nowhere near as bad as the first. He clipped the wrench back to his belt and grabbed a rubber mallet. He used rubber to avoid making any noise.

He swung at the lynchpin, the water hindering his actions, but the blow was enough to knock it an inch out of alignment. Three more shots, and it was almost free of the anchor. It would still hold the ship in position against the normal flow of water into and out of the bay, but any hard jolt would slip the pin entirely, and the Admiral Brown would be left to the vagaries of the sea.

That's it. Oh, man!

What?

I was just hit by a pocket of cold water. Damn, that is brutal.

Want the hot suit back on?

No. It drifted away.

Juan started walking across the seafloor for the minisub, gathering up loops of his umbilical as he went so it wouldn't tangle.

He unclipped the carbon-fiber tow cable from its slot and dragged it back to the anchor. He added a little air to his buoyancy compensator to make his ascent easier and, hand over hand, he climbed the chain. For now, he left the cable on the bottom.

He paused when he reached the underside of the four-hundred-foot warship. Her bottom was coated with red antifouling paint and was remarkably free of marine buildup. His next task was to spot-weld eight metal pad eyes to the bow. That's what the two tanks he carried were for. They were high-capacity batteries for a handheld arc welder. The gear was normally used to make quick repairs to the Oregon.

He adjusted his buoyancy again and slid eye protection over his helmet so he could work comfortably next to an electric spark brighter than the sun. The curvature of the cruiser's hull shielded him from above, and in twenty minutes he had all eight welds completed. There were so many in case one or more of the welds failed. Juan carried no illusions that he was an expert at this particular skill. Ten minutes after that, he had the tow cable threaded though all of them. Over the very tip of the cable he clamped in place a steel box about the size of a paperback book. The box served as the belay point for the cable while inside was an explosive charge. A signal from the Oregon would detonate the small amount of plastique, and the box would disintegrate, freeing the cable so it could be yanked away from the ship. The only evidence left behind was the eight pad eyes. Chances were, they wouldn't survive what Juan had planned.

No sooner had he returned to the Nomad and closed the outer hatch over himself than Linda powered her up and they were under way.

Operation Crack-the-Whip is on, he said when Eddie helped him off with the helmet.

Any problems?

Smooth as silk.

More good news, Linda said. Eric's tracking a storm headed our way. Should hit tomorrow at what passes for dawn in these parts.

Call Eric back and have him pull the ship off beach a bit. Also, tell him to drain the starboard ballast tanks but leave the port side flooded. That should give the old girl a convincing list. Juan had an anticipatory gleam in his eye. I hope the Argentines have enjoyed their time ruling this part of world because it's about to end.

By five that afternoon, the Chinese survey boat had motored past the Oregon where she lay just off the beach. She was still close enough in that an occasional large wave would cause her hardened bows to slam against the bottom. There was little doubt they would report the Norego had unbeached herself and was starting her soulless wanderings once again. An hour later, an exhausted and frozen Max Hanley returned with his team and their grisly cargo.

That sucked, Hanley proclaimed when the RHIB was winched inside the boat garage along the ship's side. Not only is it colder than a brass monkey's you know what out there, but that cemetery would creep out Stephen King. The headstones are all carved whale bones, and there's a fence around it made up of ribs as tall as me. The arched gate is built of skulls the size of Volkswagens.

Any problem recovering the remains?

Do you mean besides the eternal damnation of my soul for desecrating holy ground?

No.

In that case, everything went fine. The graves were only about a foot deep, and the men were laid to rest in canvas bags sewn from sails. I was surprised to find they had mostly decomposed.

The ground would have been too frozen to bury them in the winter, and in spring it's just warm enough for bacteria to do their thing.

So now what?

You get yourself warmed up. Mike Trono and his gang just took off back to the wreck. By the time they return and we get the Nomad prepped again, it'll be showtime.

Weather coming in?

Eric said it's going to be a bitch out there come dawn.

It isn't exactly skittles and beer now.

As the saying goes, 'yYou ain't seen nothing yet.'

The Silent Sea

Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

MAJOR ESPINOZA LAID THE WEATHER REPORT BACK ON Luis Laretta's desk. The small office, with its obligatory picture of Generalissimo Ernesto Coraz+|n on one wall and a poster of a scantily clad girl on the other, was thick with their cigar smoke.

This storm would be perfect cover for an American Special Force strike. They'll be expecting us to sit down here all snug in our bunks while they sneak around and place explosives all over the camp. He brooded for a moment. I'm going to push out the perimeter patrols another couple of miles. If they're here, they would have parachuted in well back from the coast and would need to come overland.

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 Maurice 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 i nside.

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.