Текст книги "Dark Watch"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

10

“Y ou’RE going to wear a trail into the carpet,” Eddie Seng said from an overstuffed chair in the corner of the hotel room.

Juan Cabrillo remained silent as he paced to the plate glass window overlooking the dazzling lights of Tokyo’s Ginza District. He paused there with his hands clasped behind his back, his broad shoulders rigid with tension. The Oregonwas fast approaching the floating drydock named Mausand would be going into action soon. His place was on her bridge, not stuck in a hotel suite waiting for Mark Murphy to come up with something about the vessel’s owners. He felt caged.

A driving rain blurred the view of the city from their thirtieth-floor room. It matched his mood.

Twenty-four hours had passed since stepping off the helicopter sent to fetch Victoria Ballinger. A representative from the Royal Geographic Society was on the windswept pad to meet the rented helo, a bearded man in a tan trench coat. From their body language it was clear to Juan that Tory and the representative had never met before. The man introduced himself as Richard Smith. While he thanked Juan for saving Tory, Cabrillo sensed he was reserved, almost wary. Tory was obviously grateful and gave Juan a kiss on the cheek as an orderly guided her to the private service ambulance Smith had arranged for her.

She had held up her hand just as she was about to be placed into the ambulance, her blue eyes steady on Juan’s. “Last night I remembered something from the rescue,” she’d said.

Uh-oh,thought Cabrillo.

“When I was trapped in my cabin I asked if you were the navy, and you wrote back something about being a private security company. What was that all about?”

Smith was already settled on a jump seat in the back of the ambulance and had to lean out somewhat to hear the answer.

Juan paused, looking from her over to him, then back to Tory. “I lied.”

“Excuse me?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Cabrillo smiled. “I said I lied. Had I told you I was the master of a rust-bucket freighter who happened to have fish-finding sonar and a few crewmen with scuba gear, would you have trusted me to get you out?”

Tory didn’t speak for several long seconds, her gaze penetrating and doubting. She arched an eyebrow. “A fish finder?”

“The cook uses it when we’re in port to catch dinner once in a while.”

“Then why was it on in the middle of the ocean?” Smith asked, his tone edged with accusation.

Juan kept his smile in place, playing the role. “Just dumb luck, I guess. It went off when we passed over the Avalon. The watch stander happened to notice the dimensions of the target, realized we’d either discovered the biggest whale in history, or something wasn’t right. I was called to the bridge and decided to turn about. The Avalonhadn’t moved, so we discounted our monster whale theory. That’s when I threw on my tanks and had a look.”

“I see.” Smith nodded. He wasn’t entirely convinced, which made Juan even more certain that neither Tory nor the stiff Englishman were members of the Royal Geographic Society. His first thought was that they were Royal Navy and the Avalonwas a spy ship, most likely in these waters monitoring North Korea or Russia’s Pacific Fleet out of Vladivostok. But if that were the case, it meant the pirates were capable of approaching a modern combat vessel loaded with sophisticated electronics, take out the crew in a lightning raid, and escape undetected. Cabrillo just couldn’t bring himself to believe that. Ex–Royal Navy then, perhaps using a ship belonging to the Society, but still out here on a mission of some kind.

“Then you must also thank the cook for me,” Tory said, nodding to the orderly to settle her in the ambulance.

Juan, Eddie, and the two former SEALs Eddie had selected were left on their own to arrange transportation. Rather than deal with hiring a car or finding a train station, they’d chartered the same helicopter that brought them from the Oregonto fly them to Tokyo, where Max Hanley had reserved a four-bedroom suite under one of the Corporation’s front companies. And that is where they waited. The SEALs spent most of the time in the hotel’s extensive fitness center, while Cabrillo paced the room, willing his cell phone to ring. Eddie took up guard duty, making sure his boss didn’t damage the room out of frustration or boredom.

“They can bill me for a new rug,” Juan finally said without turning from the window.

“What about the ulcer you’re giving yourself? I don’t think Doc Huxley packed you any antacids.”

Cabrillo regarded Eddie. “That’s the pickled octopus I ate, not the stress.”

“Riiight.” Eddie returned to his English-language paper.

Cabrillo continued to stare out into the storm, his mind a million miles away. That wasn’t entirely true. His mind was six hundred miles away, at his seat in the Oregon’s operations center. This wasn’t the first time his ship had gone into battle without him, and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust his crew. He just felt a personal need to be part of the action as they went after the snakeheads.

God,he thought, how old was I when I saw it?He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. They were coming back from an aunt’s house in San Diego. His dad was driving, of course, and Mom was in the other front seat: He remembered her shouting a warning to his dad about the traffic jam several seconds after he’d applied the brake. She’d immediately turned to check on him in the backseat. The quick deceleration hadn’t even locked his seat belt, but she acted as though he had almost been launched through the windshield.

And for what seemed like forever, traffic inched along the highway. He remembered that for a while they were next to a car with a Saint Bernard in the backseat. It was the first time he’d seen one, and he’d been captivated by its size. To this day he still vowed that when he finally retired he’d own one of those huge dogs.

“Have you picked a name?” Eddie asked softly.

“Gus,” Juan answered automatically before realizing that he’d been telling the story out loud rather than in his head. He lapsed into an embarrassed silence.

“So what happened?” Seng prompted.

Juan knew he couldn’t leave it there. His unconscious mind was telling him that this story had to come out. “We finally approached the accident site. A car must have swerved and caused an eighteen-wheeler to jackknife. The trailer had detached and lay on its side, the rear doors facing the road. Only one police car had made it to the scene. The cop had already locked the truck’s driver into his cruiser.

“One of the trailer’s rear doors had popped open when it tipped, and the patrolman was helping the other victims of the crash. I have no idea how many, maybe a hundred Mexican workers had been in the trailer when it went over. Some were only slightly injured and helped the officer with the others. A few were better off and could walk from the wreckage. Others they had to drag. There were already two areas set aside. In one, women tended to the wounded. In the other, the bodies had been lined up in a straight row. My mother was very protective and told me not to look, but she said it softly as she stared at the carnage, unable to tear her eyes away. We passed the accident and soon were back up to speed.

“No one spoke for a few minutes. My mom was crying softly. I sat there not quite understanding what I’d seen, but I knew that people weren’t supposed to be in the back of a semi. I remember my father’s words when Mom finally stopped sobbing. ‘Juan,’ he said, ‘no matter what anyone tells you, there is evil in this world. And all it takes for it to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ ”

Juan’s voice lost its soft tone as his mind returned to the present. “When I was old enough, we talked about that day again. My parents explained how smugglers snuck people up from Mexico and how some never survived the journey. They told me the truck driver pleaded guilty to thirty-six counts of vehicular homicide and that he’d been killed in prison by a Latino gang.”

Eddie said, “And when that cargo container was opened on deck and you saw those Chinese —?”

“I was back on that hot interstate and felt just as powerless. That is, until I remembered my father’s words.”

“What did he do for work, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“An accountant, actually, but he had fought in Korea and believed there was nothing more evil on earth than Communism.”

“If he had as much influence on you as I think he did, you doubly want these guys – smugglers and Communists.”

“If it turns out that China’s behind it, damn right.” Cabrillo gave Eddie an appraising look. “I don’t need to tell you about that. You were in their backyard for years.”

Eddie nodded gravely. “I’ve seen firsthand evidence of entire villages being wiped off the map because someone spoke out against a local party official. The cities may be opening up to the West, but the countryside is ruled as ruthlessly as ever. It’s the only way the central government can control a billion people. Keep them on edge, near starvation, and grateful for whatever handouts they get.”

“Something tells me,” Cabrillo said, “that this isn’t a Chinese operation.”

“It’d make sense to me if it were,” Seng countered. “They have a population crisis, and I’m not talking about overcrowding, though that is a problem. No, what China faces today and over the next twenty years or so is something far worse.”

“Worse than trying to feed a quarter of the world’s population?” Juan asked skeptically.

“In fact it’s a direct result of the one-child policy enacted in 1979. Today China’s birthrate is 1.8 children per woman. The rate’s even lower in the cities. For a sustainable population, a country needs a fertility rate of at least 2.1. Falling birthrates in the U.S. and Europe are mostly offset by immigration, so we’re okay. But China is going to see their population ratios age dramatically in the next decades. There won’t be enough workers to man the factories nor enough people to care for the elderly. Add to that the cultural bias against girls, select-sex abortion, and infanticide, and right now China has one hundred and eighteen boys under the age of ten for every one hundred girls.”

“So what’s that going to do?”

“Unless a significant segment of the male population is gay or chooses celibacy, there are going to be about two hundred million men with no chance of having families of their own by 2025.”

Cabrillo followed through to the logical conclusion of Eddie’s lecture. “So you think they’re shipping excess men overseas now?”

“It’s a theory.”

“A plausible one,” the chairman agreed. “And something I hadn’t considered – the wholesale export of people.”

“About a million Chinese immigrate illegally a year,” Eddie told him, “with the tacit approval of local governments, I might add. It’s not much of a stretch for the leaders in Beijing to actually start their own program to get rid of what’s already being called the ‘army of bachelors.’ ” Eddie’s voice turned bitter. “Despite the propaganda spin over the last few years, China remains a brutal dictatorship. They invariably take the hard approach to any problem. They want to build a dam, they move thirty million people out of the way, show Western reporters the new towns they’re building, but ultimately dump the population on collective farms.”

Juan let Eddie Seng’s accusation hang in the air for a few seconds. He was well aware of how much Eddie hated the Beijing government. “But there were only a few dozen people on the Kra,” he finally said.

“But what’s on that ship Tory Ballinger saw?”

“You mean who?”

“Exactly.”

Juan’s encrypted cell phone chimed. “Cabrillo.”

“Juan, it’s Max.”

“What’s up?” He tried to sound nonchalant, but there was an edge to his voice.

“We’re about twenty miles behind the Maus. We’ve already talked to them, establishing procedure for passing a drydock under tow. In about ten minutes we’re going to launch an unmanned aerial drone with a low-light camera to take a peek into her open hold. I do have a boarding party standing by if we need to send over some Mark-one eyeballs.”

“Sounds good. What’s the weather? It’s raining here.”

“Fine. No moon at all. Seas are only a couple of feet, and the wind’s light. Listen, the reason I called is we have some information for you.”

About time, Cabrillo thought but kept it to himself. “Murph tracked down who owns the Maus?”

“No, he’s still working on it. Julia came up with something during her autopsies of the Chinese folks we plucked from the container. I’m passing her off to you.”

“Thanks. E-mail the feeds from the UAV to my phone. I’d like to take a look at the Mausduring the flyover.”

“You got it. Here’s the doc.”

“Chairman, how’s Tokyo?”

“It’s all warm sushi and cold geishas.”

“I bet. I think I found something about our immigrants. They’re all from the same village, a place called Lantan in Fujian Province. Most of them are part of the same extended family.”

“Did you do a DNA test?”

“No, I read the parts of a diary that hadn’t been destroyed when the container went into the drink. A lot of the journal was illegible, but I scanned everything into the computer and let the translator take a crack at it. The guy who wrote it’s last name was Xang. With him were two brothers, a bunch of cousins, and distant blood relatives. They had been promised work in Japan by a snakehead who called himself Yan Luo. Each of them had to pay this Yan Luo about five hundred dollars before leaving the village and would have to pay back about fifteen thousandonce they reached a textile mill outside Tokyo.”

“Does he talk about the Kra? Was that the boat taking them to Japan?”

“He doesn’t say, or that part of the journal was too damaged to read.”

“What else were you able to get?”

“Not much. He wrote about his dreams and how one day he would be able to afford bringing his girlfriend to Japan with him. Stuff like that.”

“What was the name of that town?”

“Lantan.”

“If we can’t backtrack the Kraor the Maus, maybe we can backtrack the immigrants.” Cabrillo glanced at Eddie. His chief of Shore Operations had heard enough of the call to understand what was coming. It was in his eyes. “I’ll call you right back,” Cabrillo said to Julia and cut the connection.

“China, huh,” Eddie said with an air of the inevitable. “I had a feeling it would come to this as soon as I saw them.”

“Can you do it?”

“You know my cover was blown just before I got out the last time. I’ve already been sentenced to death in absentia. I can name a dozen generals and party officials who would like nothing more than for me to step foot in China again. It’s been a few years, but last I knew, my picture had been sent to every police department in the country, from Beijing and Shanghai to the smallest provincial outpost.”

“Can you do it?” Cabrillo repeated.

“My old network is long gone. I was hustled out of China fast after everything went down and couldn’t get a warning out. I’m sure some of them were rolled up by the state police, which means the rest are compromised. I can’t use any of them.”

He went silent. Cabrillo didn’t ask a third time. He didn’t need to.

“I’ve got a set of credentials in a safe-deposit box in L.A., one the CIA doesn’t even know about. I had them made before Hong Kong was handed over to China in case I needed to get back in to help a couple of friends. They’ve since immigrated to Vancouver, so the identity is still viable. I’ll contact my lawyer first thing tomorrow and have them sent by courier to Singapore. From there I can catch the Cathay flight to Beijing.”

“Shanghai,” Juan corrected. “Julia said the village is in Fujian Province. If my geography is sound, the closest big city is Shanghai.”

“Oh, this gets better and better,” Eddie said as if his mission wouldn’t be difficult enough.

“Why’s that?”

“The people of Fujian have a dialect all their own. I don’t speak it very well.”

“Then we’ll call it off,” Juan decided. “We’ll just have to get some leads from the Kraor the Maus.”

“No,” Eddie said sharply. “It might take you weeks to track these bastards through shipping records and corporate pyramids. If illegal immigrants somehow fit into the pirates’ scheme, we need answers now. You and I both know that the ones dumped over the side of the Kraaren’t the only ones who’ve been taken.”

Juan nodded, a curt, decisive gesture. “All right. Make your arrangements.”

On the main display screen along the front wall of the operations center, the picture was a weirdly distorted view of the ocean, where the foam topping the low waves looked like green lightning forking across the black water. The camera’s optics made the rhythmic pulse of the sea look like a beating heart. The image jerked slightly, and George Adams swore.

Adams was the pilot of the Oregon’s Robinson R-44 helicopter as well as the pair of matching UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, that could be launched from an open space along the freighter’s port rail. Although the U.S. military spent millions on their Predator drones, the Corporation’s UAVs were commercially available remote-control airplanes fitted with low-light cameras. George could sit at a computer workstation inside the operations center and fly the model plane using a joystick within a fifteen-mile radius of the ship.

One of the few aboard the Oregonfrom the army, George “Gomez” Adams had earned his reputation flying special ops teams into Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Unmarried at forty, Adams cut the figure of a fighter pilot. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, tall and lean with a charming cockiness that never failed to make him a center of attention with women. His good looks had been used in more than one past Corporation mission. He’d earned his nickname after one such mission when he seduced the mistress of a Peruvian drug trafficker who bore a striking resemblance to the television character Morticia Addams.

The telepresence given to Adams through the video link allowed him to see what was in front of and below the gimballed camera in the UAV’s nose, but he couldn’t feel the subtle updrafts or crosswinds that affected the five-foot-long airplane. He adjusted for the sudden gust that hit the plane and eased back on the stick to gain a bit more altitude.

“What’s the range?” he asked Linda Ross, who was monitoring the radar picture.

“We’re four miles astern the Mausand three miles to port.”

The UAV was too small to be seen by even the Oregon’s powerful search radar, but the massive drydock and the pair of tugs towing her showed crisp on her repeater screen.

Adams used a thumb control to pan the camera mounted in the model plane’s nose. The ocean was still streaked with eerie green lines of sea foam, but a few miles ahead of the UAV a bright emerald slash cut the otherwise dark water.

“There,” someone called unnecessarily.

The glowing wedge was the Maus’s wake as she was hauled southward. Just ahead of her were bright, glowing points, searchlights mounted at the stern of the towboats to illuminate their ponderous charge. The thick hawsers securing the vessels looked as fine as gossamer from five thousand feet. There were a couple less powerful lights along the side of the drydock, but her cavernous hold was completely dark.

“Okay, George. Take us in,” Max Hanley ordered from the command station. He then pressed a cell phone to his ear. “You getting this, Chairman?”

“Kind of,” Juan Cabrillo said from his Tokyo suite. “I can’t make out much on this one-inch screen.”

“I’m going for a high pass first,” Adams said as he worked the joystick. “If we don’t get anything, I’ll cut the engine and glide in for a closer look.” He took his eyes off his screen to glance at Hanley. “If the engine doesn’t refire, the UAV’s a write-off.”

“I heard that,” Juan said. “Tell George that we can’t lose the element of surprise if we have to send over boarders. Tell him it’s okay to ditch the drone.”

Max relayed the message, saying, “George, Juan says that if you crash the UAV, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”

“You tell him,” Adams said, fully concentrating on his screen once again, “that I’ll cut him a check as soon as Eddie pays for that submarine he banged up.”

George slowed the UAV to just above stall speed, but it still overtook the slow-moving caravan of ships. There was no chance the black airplane could be spotted from either the drydock or the tugboats; however, it was possible that an attentive crewman could hear the high whine of the UAV’s engine. He kept the drone five hundred feet to the starboard side of the convoy and panned the camera as it flew down the eight-hundred-foot length of the drydock.

It looked more like a fortress than a vessel designed to travel across the ocean. Her sides were sheer vertical walls of steel, and there was only the barest hint of streamlining at her blunt bows. The pair of hundred-plus-foot tugs looked like toys compared to the behemoth in their charge.

Even as the pictures came in, Eric Stone and Mark Murphy were filtering the video through computer software to enhance the image. The pair of tech geeks cycled the feed to increase contrast and eliminate distortion caused by the UAV’s engine vibration. By the time George had completed his run and peeled the drone away from the Maus,they had sharpened the raw data and played it back on the main screen.

“What the hell am I supposed to be looking at here?” Juan asked through the cell phone.

“Damn,” Max said, staring at the big plasma display. He held his cell phone in one hand and his unlit pipe in the other.

“What is it?”

“The lights along the Maus’s rail make it impossible to see into her hold. It’s just a black hole in the middle of the ship. We need to make a run directly over her.”

“Coming around now,” Gomez Adams said, his body unconsciously leaning as the UAV swooped in a tight turn.

A few minutes later he had the drone lined up behind the drydock at two thousand feet. Rather than bleed off speed, he pressed the throttle to its stop, hurtling the tiny plane directly at the Mauson what he was sure would be a suicide run. The UAV’s ignition system was temperamental at best, and a crewman usually had to hand crank the little propeller on deck prior to launch.

The bulk of the Mausfilled the view screen as the drone bored in. George killed the engine when he was about a quarter mile out, and the picture lost its annoying jumpiness as the plane became a silent glider sliding out of the night sky. He checked the altimeter. The drone was at a thousand feet, and he deepened the angle of attack. It was now arrowing at the drydock like a Stuka dive bomber, but as silent as a wraith.

Eric and Murph double-checked that the recorders were burning the images onto disc just before the UAV crossed over the Maus’s vertical transom. Adams leveled the drone a hundred feet above the floating drydock and soared the little craft down the vessel’s dark length, making sure the camera caught every detail of her murky hold.

Fifty feet from the bow, he heeled over the UAV, diving once again to gain airspeed. At an altitude of thirty feet he hit the starter toggle on his controls. The sea grew on the plasma screen monitor. When nothing happened, he calmly reset the toggle and tried again. The plastic prop turned once, but the engine refused to fire.

It was as though the plane accelerated in its final moments or perhaps the ocean reached up to pluck it from the sky. The team in the control room winced as the UAV augered in, and the screen went blank.

Adams got to his feet and cracked his knuckles. “You know what they say: any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”

A few people groaned at the old joke as Murph put a replay of the aerial pass back on the screen.

“What did you see?” Cabrillo asked over the satellite link.

“Hold on a second, boss,” Max replied. “It’s coming up now.”

While the image was dark, Adams had done a superb job controlling both the UAV and its camera. The shot was steady and clear and not at all what they wanted to see. There was a cover of some type over the entire length of the drydock’s hold. The cover wasn’t solid, because sections of it rippled in the wind, but it completely blocked their view of anything the drydock might have been transporting.

“Well?” Juan’s voice was insistent in Hanley’s ear.

“We have to send over a recon team,” Hanley told the Chairman. “They’ve got the entire hold covered with sections of dark cloth. We can’t see diddly.”

Linda Ross was already at the control room’s rear door. As the senior intelligence officer aboard the Oregon,it was her job to lead the team over to the Maus. She wore a black combat uniform and had slipped into the flak vest she’d had draped over her chair. Her fine, honey-blond hair was covered by a black watch cap.

Despite the determined set to her narrow jaw and the accoutrements of war, she still managed to look young and vulnerable. It didn’t help that she had a high-pitched voice, not shrill but almost pubescent, and her cheeks were dusted with freckles. At thirty-seven, Linda was still carded at bars on her infrequent trips back to the States.

Although she had spent her naval career as an intelligence analyst, Linda was well practiced at the art of intelligence gathering, too. Because of her background, she usually spent less time on a particular covert mission than others simply because she knew exactly what information was needed. She could make quick assessments in the field, innately knowing what was crucial. For that she had more than earned the respect of the SEALs she was to lead.

“Tell Juan we’ll be careful,” she said to Max and left to make her way down to a door at the waterline on the starboard side where they’d launch a Zodiac inflatable boat.

Three commandos were waiting for her in the aqua garage. They were similarly outfitted, and one handed Linda a combat harness. She checked that the silenced Glock she preferred was loaded. She liked that the pistol didn’t have a safety that could be inadvertently activated on a quick draw. Because this was a reconnoiter, a sneak and peek, and they doubted there would be guards posted on a ship under tow, none of the team carried anything heavier than handguns, but these weapons were hot-loaded with mercury-tipped hollow points, a round packing enough kinetic energy to incapacitate with even a glancing blow. She settled the throat mike of her tactical radio next to her skin and secured the earpiece. She and the team did a quick test, making sure they could hear each other and Max in the op center.

The garage was lit by red battle lights, and in their glow Linda applied black camo paint to her face before slipping on tight no-shine gloves. The Zodiac was large enough for eight, powered by a big black outboard. Next to the four-stroke engine was a smaller battery-powered trolling motor that could silently propel the Zodiac at nearly ten knots. A few items they would need had been secured to the floorboards.

A cargo master checked each team member again before flashing the thumbs-up to Linda. She threw him a wink, and the deckhand doused the lights. A cable system opened the outer door, a ten-by-eight-foot section of hull plating just above the waterline. The hiss of the sea passing by filled the garage, and Linda could taste the salt in the air. While there was virtually no moon, the Mausstood out against the darkness, her forward sections lit by floodlights on the pair of tugs, and sodium arc lamps along her top deck cast her silhouette in strong relief.

The Zodiac pilot fired the engine with a press of a button, and with a pair of people along each side, the team shoved the inflatable down a Teflon-coated ramp and jumped aboard as soon as the craft hit water. They shot away from the Oregonin a burst of foam to escape the turbulent water running along the tramp steamer’s flank before throttling back to eliminate their own wake.

The gap between the two ships seemed small when seen from the cameras mounted on the Oregon’s deck, but down in the trough of water between the vessels, the distance appeared enormous. The seas were light, and the inflatable rode the swells easily, gliding up the face, hanging for the barest moment before dropping back in a smooth rhythm. Even muffled, the outboard sounded loud in Linda’s ears, though she knew that the craft was silent at full speed from a mile away.

Five minutes after launching from the Oregon,they had knifed through three-quarters of the way. The pilot cut the outboard and engaged the silent electric motor, taking a cue from Linda to circle around the stern of the Mausin order to find a suitably dark area to board.

The drydock was only making three knots, so they had little trouble passing behind the vessel and easing their way along her starboard side. The hull was a featureless wall of gray steel that stretched from stem to stern. The lights mounted high atop her rail washed down the plating, but amidships there was a patch of darkness where one of the bulbs was burned out. The pilot eased the Zodiac over, running right outside the wake zone next to the darkened section of hull. He had to constantly adjust the motor to keep the vessel stable in the choppy wash.

“Grapple,” Linda called over her throat mike.

One of the SEALs raised an odd weapon to his shoulder. It looked like an oversized rifle, but a hose ran from the pistol grip to a cylinder strapped to the floor of the Zodiac. He activated a laser range finder slung under the ungainly rifle and pointed it skyward, centering his sights at a spot just above the Maus’s rail.

“Sixty-seven feet,” he whispered.

By the light of a small red-lensed flashlight, his partner dialed the number into a valve at the top of the cylinder. He tapped the shooter on the shoulder.

The man centered his breathing, feeling the gentle rise and fall of the Zodiac, and waited for the exact moment the craft reached the zenith of a wave. He eased the trigger.

A precise amount of compressed nitrogen exploded from the tank, launching a stubby rubber-coated arrow from the grappling gun. Behind the arrow trailed a millimeters-wide nanofiber line. At the apogee of flight, the arrow peeled apart to become a grappling hook. The hook cleared the rail by scant inches and fell silently to the deck.