Текст книги "Corsair"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“Chairman?”There was something in Franklin Lincoln’s voice that Cabrillo had never heard. Fear.

“Don’t you dare slow down now!” Juan said. Below him he could hear their passengers’ screams of panic. As bad as it was riding on top of the car, he couldn’t imagine what they were experiencing in the pitch-darkness inside.

Twice more, they hit the rock, before the turn started to lose its tight radius and the wheels stayed firmly planted on the hot iron rails. That was the last curve before they hit the bridge. Before them was a straight shot down a gentle defile, then across the trestle. A flash of light blazed off the binoculars of an observer in the valley below the bridge. Juan could almost sense the man’s thoughts despite the distance. Seconds later, an order had to have been given, because the men rigging the bridge with explosives started swarming down the trestle, ignoring the blistering fire from Gomez Adams in the MD-540.

Cabrillo moved to the leading edge next to where Linda and Alana crouched behind the M60.

“I know I’m dating myself,” Linda said, her face a little pale under its dusting of freckles, “but that’s what I call an E-ticket ride. Makes the Matterhorn feel tame.”

She no longer had an angle to fire at the men, but Adams was making their retreat hell.

“There’s nothing more we can do,” Juan shouted over the roar of wind filling his ears. They were pushing sixty miles per hour, and the rush of wind over the carriage threatened to blow them off if they rose above a crouch. “Let’s get back to the Pig.”

He hefted the big gun, with its necklace of shining brass shells dangling from the receiver, so Linda and Alana could crawl back to the rear of the car together. They lowered themselves down onto the Pig’s cab and then vanished through the open hatch. Cabrillo paused for a moment, forcing his eyes to slits to look up the tracks. Adams ducked and weaved in the chopper, dancing away from enemy fire, while his door gunner—Cabrillo thought he recognized the beefy form of Jerry Pulaski—peppered the bridge supports whenever the helo was steady enough to shoot.

The tone of wheel against rail suddenly changed. They were on the first section of the bridge. A quick glance over the side of the car confirmed that the ground was beginning to recede from under them.

The explosion came farther along the bridge’s length, on the valley floor near one of the trestle supports. Smoke and flame climbed the wooden members, mushrooming outward and upward like a deadly bloom. Cabrillo threw himself flat as the train barreled through the pulsing surge of fire and emerged on the other side with no more damage than some singed paint.

Behind them the blast had weakened the bridge’s lattice framework, but Linda’s and then Adams’s sniping had prevented the terrorists from properly rigging the structure. The supports stood firm for a solid ten seconds after the train had rushed past, allowing them to get nearly to the end of the long span before the structure started to collapse. The great timbers fell in on themselves, the valley choking with dust thick enough to obscure the waiting Mi-8 helicopter and the tiny figures of running terrorists.

The bridge fell like dominoes, the steel rails sagging as though they had no more strength than piano wire. Linc had to have seen what was happening behind the Pig in the wing mirrors, because the engine beat changed when he flooded the cylinders with nitrous oxide.

Wood and iron tumbled in a rolling avalanche that chased after the fleeing boxcar. Cabrillo watched awestruck as the bridge vanished in their wake. He should have felt fear, but his fate wasn’t in his hands, so he saw the spectacle with almost clinical detachment. And even as the Pig gained more speed, so, too, did the structure’s incredible failure. A hundred feet behind their rear bumper, the rails quivered and then vanished into the boiling maelstrom of dust.

He didn’t dare look ahead to see how much farther they had to travel. It was better, he thought fleetingly, not to know.

Just as the rails started to dip under them, the hollow sound of air rushing below the carriage changed once again and thick wooden ties appeared under the line. They had made it just as the last of the bridge crumpled into the valley, rending itself apart so that nothing showed above the billowing debris.

Cabrillo pumped his fist, shouting at the top of his lungs, and nearly lost his footing in his excitement. “That was a hell of a piece of driving,” he called to Linc. “Is everyone okay?”

“We’re all good,” Lincoln replied.

There was something his voice, something Cabrillo didn’t like. “What is it, big man?”

“I tore the guts out of the transmission the last time I hit the nitro. I’m looking down the tracks in the mirror and see we’re laying one hell of an oil slick.”

It was only after it was reported that Juan noticed he couldn’t hear the motor’s aggressive growl. Without gears, there was no reason to leave the engine running.

“Mark says the rest of the line is pretty gentle, but . . .” He let his voice trail off.

“And let me guess,” Juan added, “our brakes are shot, too.”

“I’ve got my foot pressed to the floorboards, for whatever good it’ll do us.”

Juan looked in the direction they were heading. The ocean was a slag-gray shimmer in the distance. The train tracks’ terminus was hidden in a fold of land, though he estimated they had only a few more miles to go. He also agreed with Mark Murphy’s assertion that the rest of the way was a gentle glide down to the sea. He could only hope that whatever reception Max had planned would work because when he clamped on the boxcar’s brakes he could tell they, like the Pig’s, were worn down to nothing.

“Max, do you read me?” he said into his mic.

“Loud and clear.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re in position and ready to pick you up.”

“Any word on the choppers of the Libyan strike team?”

“No. I suspect they’ll come in from the south, so we’ll never see them. And more important, they’ll never see us.”

“As soon as you have us with the magnet, I want Eric to make best possible speed into international waters.”

“Relax, Juan. Everything’s ready. Doc Huxley and her people have set up the forward hold with cots, blankets, and plenty of IV drips. The cooking staff ’s been whipping up enough food to feed the people you’ve found, and I’ve got every weapons system on the ship locked and loaded in case someone wants to take them back.”

“Okay. Okay, I get it. We’ll be there in about three minutes.”

The last section of the rail line came out of the mountains through a valley that ran right to the sea. The Corporation people, along with Alana, Greg Chaffee, and their new Libyan charge, Fodl, were strapped into the Pig, while the rest of the refugees in the boxcar had been given a shouted warning to brace themselves.

The old coaling station was a run-down ruin, little more than the metal framework of a couple of buildings with bits of wood still somehow clinging to their sides. The cranes that once filled freighters with coal were long gone, and the desert had hidden where the anthracite had once been mounded in the lee of a cliff.

The Oregonloomed over the newly installed floating dock. Her main cargo derrick was swung over into position, and the large electromagnet dangled less than twenty feet over the pier.

Juan’s pride usually swelled a bit whenever he saw his creation, but this time his mind was on the speed the train was making as it raced for the station. He fought the urge to glance at the speedometer but guessed they were pushing seventy. He’d expected Max would have laid down some sort of barrier foam to slow the train, but he saw nothing on the tracks. Then he realized the dock was much lower in the water than he’d first thought. In fact, the far end of it was completely submerged.

He laughed aloud when the hurtling train left its old railbed and started along the pier. Max had holed the large interlocked plastic pods that made up the dock, most likely with the Oregon’s Gatling gun. The pier’s own weight started it sinking, and as the boxcar pressed down the pier dipped deeper.

Two curling sheets of water peeled off the car’s leading edge, and the ocean absorbed the train’s momentum so smoothly that no one in the Pig felt their seat-belt tensioners react. Two-thirds the way down the pier, the Pig was down to twenty miles per hour, and the water was well above its lugged tires.

The boxcar was barely moving when it tipped off the edge of the pier, dragging the truck with it. The car bobbed in the water for only a few seconds before the magnet swooped over them, and when current was applied it stuck fast. Moments later, the old railcar, with the Pig dangling from its rear coupling, was pulled from the sea. Juan knew Max Hanley himself had to be at the controls because the operator had estimated the train’s center of gravity perfectly.

With water pouring from the car, they were swung over the Oregon’s rail and set onto the deck. Juan threw open his door the instant the tires touched the deck plate. A crewman was standing by with an oxyacetylene cutting torch and was already slicing through the cables that bound the Pig to the boxcar. Juan rushed past him and nearly collided with Dr. Huxley in his haste to open the train’s sliding door. With her were several teams of orderlies with gurneys at the ready.

“Looks like you don’t think I’ve been earning my pay keeping your rogues patched up, eh?” she said. “You had to bring a train car full of patients for me.”

Deep below his feet, Juan could feel the magnetohydrodynamics ramping up. “What else do you give a doctor as a gift after a little relaxing shore leave?”

Juan pulled back on the sliding door and a fresh cascade of water poured onto the deck. Then from the gloomy interior emerged the first skeletal prisoner, owl-eyed and soaking wet.

“You’re safe now,” Juan said in Arabic. “You are all safe. But you must hurry, understand?”

Fodl joined him and Dr. Huxley an instant later, and together they cajoled the shell-shocked men and women out of the car. There were a few injuries, sprains mostly, but a couple of broken limbs as well. And one man who’d caught a bullet in the wrist from one of the terrorists Cabrillo had fought on the car’s roof. As was his custom, Juan would more regret hurting these people further than take satisfaction in saving their lives.

He spotted Mark Murphy. The lanky weapons expert had his kit bag slung over one shoulder and a waterproof laptop case in his hand. He was heading for a hatchway that would lead him to his cabin. “Forget it, Mr. Murphy. As of this second, you and Mr. Stone are on a priority research job.”

“Can’t it wait until after I shower?”

“No. Now. I want to know everything there is to know about something called the Jewel of Jerusalem. Alana Shepard mentioned it may be buried with Suleiman Al-Jama but isn’t really sure what it is.”

“Sounds like a legend out of a trashy novel.”

“It might just be. Find out. I want a report in an hour.”

“Yes, boss,” Mark said dejectedly, and shuffled away.

“Who are all these people?” Julia Huxley asked, passing a woman down to the waiting arms of an orderly.

“They were all in the upper levels of Libya’s Foreign Ministry,” Juan told her. “One of these poor souls should be the Minister himself.”

“I don’t understand. Why are they all prisoners?”

“Because unless I messed up my reasoning, the new Foreign Minister, the esteemed Ali Ghami, is Suleiman Al-Jama.”

TWENTY-SIX

THE HELICOPTERS PAINTED WITH LIBYAN MILITARY COLORS swarmed out of the empty wastes of the southern desert like enraged wasps. Four of the five Russian-made choppers were done in mottled earth-toned camouflage, while the other wore the drab gray of the Libyan Navy.

In his fifteen years with the CIA, Jim Kublicki never thought he would be an observer on a Libyan helo assault of a terrorist base camp. Ambassador Moon had arranged his presence on the attack with Minister Ghami personally. On the surface, the new level of cooperation out of Tripoli was amazing, but both Moon and Kublicki harbored their doubts. The chief among them was the result of the eyes-only report that had been delivered from Langley. Kublicki had no idea how operatives had penetrated Libyan airspace during the height of the search for the Secretary of State’s plane, but somehow they had. The evidence they found led to the only conclusion possible: Her plane had been forced down before the crash—presumably, to remove the Secretary herself. Then the Boeing was intentionally slammed into a mountaintop.

The report also documented how a team of men in a chopper had landed at the crash site and deliberately tampered with the scene. The exact words from the document were “they tore through the wreckage like a twister through a trailer park.”

The team from the National Transportation Safety Board had issued a secret and still-preliminary report backing up what Langley had said. Despite the best efforts of the terrorists, there were inconsistencies in the wreckage that could not be easily explained. When Moon had met with David Jewison of the NTSB and outlined the CIA report, he’d nodded, and said it was quite possible the plane had landed briefly before the crash.

When Kublicki had arrived at a remote air base outside of Tripoli where they were staging the assault, he’d met with the operation’s leader, a Special Forces colonel named Hassad. He’d explained that the Libyan desert was dotted with hundreds of old training bases left over from the days when his government had allowed them sanctuary. In the few years since the government renounced terrorism, he and his men had destroyed most of the ones they knew of, but he admitted there were dozens more they did not.

Hassad sat in the right-hand seat next to their pilot, while Kublicki crammed his six-foot six-inch frame into a folding jump seat immediately behind the cockpit. There was only a handful of men in the rear section of the utility chopper. The bulk of the assault force was in the other helicopters.

The Libyan colonel clamped a hand over his helmet’s boom mic and leaned back. He had to raise his voice over the whopping thrum of the rotor blades. “We’re landing in about a minute.”

Kublicki was a little taken aback. “What? I thought we were going in after the assault.”

“I don’t know about you, Mr. Kublicki, but I want a piece of these people for myself.” Hassad shot him a wolfish grin.

“I’m with you there, Colonel, but the uniform you lent me didn’t come with a weapon.”

The Libyan officer unsnapped the pistol at his waist and handed it over butt first. “Just make sure that me giving you a sidearm doesn’t make it into your report.”

Kublicki smiled conspiratorially and popped the pistol’s magazine to assure himself it was loaded. The narrow slit along the mag’s length showed thirteen shiny brass cartridges. He rammed the clip home but wouldn’t cock the pistol until they were on the ground.

From his low vantage strapped in behind the cockpit, Kublicki couldn’t see through the windshield but knew they were about to land when his view of the sky was blocked by dust kicked up by the helicopter’s powerful rotor wash. He hadn’t been in a combat situation since the first Gulf War, but the combination of fear and exhilaration was a sensation he would never forget.

The craft settled on the ground, and Kublicki whipped off his safety belts. When he stood to peer over Hassad’s shoulder, he saw the terrorist camp a good hundred yards away. Men in checkered kaffiyehs, brandishing AK-47s, were running toward them with abandon. He saw no sign of the soldiers from the other choppers in pursuit.

Fear began to wash away the exhilaration.

Hassad threw open his door and swung to the ground. He vanished from sight for a moment, and then the chopper’s side door slammed back on its roller stop.

Kublicki blinked at the bright light flooding the hold.

The two men stared at each other for what to Kublicki felt like a long time but was only a few seconds. A current of understanding passed between them. The veteran CIA agent cocked the pistol and aimed it at the Libyan in one smooth motion. What had sounded like cries of fear from the gathering terrorists was actually exaltation, and it rose from a hundred throats.

Kublicki pulled the trigger four times before he realized the weapon hadn’t fired. A gun barrel was jammed into his spine, and he sat frozen as Hassad reached across and yanked the pistol from his hand. “No firing pin.” He repeated the phrase in Arabic, and the group of terrorists laughed in approval.

In the last seconds of life Jim Kublicki had remaining, he promised himself he wouldn’t go down without a fight. Ignoring the assault rifle pressed to his back, he launched himself out of the chopper, his hands going for Hassad’s throat. To his credit, he got within a few inches of his target before the gunman behind him opened fire. A one-second-long burst from the AK stitched his back from kidney to shoulder blade. The kinetic energy drove him to the ground at Hassan’s feet. The Libyan stood over him in the stunned silence that followed the attack. Rather than salute a valiant foe who’d fallen into an impossible ambush, Hassad spat on the corpse, turned on his heal, and walked away.

He found the camp commander, Abdullah, outside his tent. The two men greeted each other warmly. Hassad cut through the polite period of small talk that was so much a part of Muslim life and struck to the heart of the matter.

“Tell me of the escapees.”

The two men were of similar rank within Al-Jama’s terror cell, but Hassan had the more forceful personality.

“We got them.”

“All of them? Ah, yes, I heard you were going to blow up the bridge. It worked, eh?”

“No,” Abdullah said. “They got past. But they were going so fast when they hit the end of the dock that they sailed off the end.”

“Someone saw this happen?”

“No, but it was only fifteen or so minutes after they cleared the bridge that our chopper reached the old coaling station. There was no sign of the prisoners on the quay, so they didn’t get off, and they spotted the boxcar about two hundred yards from shore. Only the roof was above water, and it sank completely as they watched.”

“Excellent.” Hassad clapped him on the shoulder. “The Imam, peace be upon him, won’t be pleased he couldn’t witness our former Foreign Minister’s death, but he will be relieved the escape was foiled.”

“There is one thing,” Abdullah said. “The reports from my men aren’t precise, but it appears the prisoners might have had help.”

“Help?”

“A single truck, carrying several men and perhaps a woman, attacked the camp at the same time the prisoners were starting to make their break.”

“Who were these people?”

“No idea.”

“Their vehicle?”

“Presumably, it sank with the boxcar. Like I said, the eyewitness accounts come from some of our rawest recruits, and it’s possible they mistook one of our own trucks for another in their enthusiasm.”

Hassad chuckled humorlessly. “I’m sure some of these kids see Mossad agents behind every rock and hill.”

“After tomorrow’s attack, when we move from here to our new base in the Sudan, at least half of them are going to be left behind. Those who show promise will come with us. The rest aren’t worth the effort.”

“Recruiting numbers has never been our problem. Recruiting quality, well, that is something else. Speaking of . . .”

“Ah, yes.”

Abdullah said a few words to a hovering aide. A moment later, the subaltern came back with another of their men. Gone were the dust-caked and tattered camouflage utilities and sweaty headscarf. The man wore a new black uniform, with the cuffs of his pants bloused into glossy boots. His hair was neatly barbered and his face was carefully shaved. The leatherwork of his pistol belt shone brightly from hours of careful cleaning, and the rank pips on his shoulders glinted like gold.

While the recruits trained with AK-47s that had knocked around the terrorist world since before many of the them had been born, the weapon this man carried at port arms was brand-new. There wasn’t a scratch on the receiver or a nick in the polished wooden stock.

“Your credentials,” Hassad barked.

The man shouldered his rifle smartly, and from a pocket on his upper arm produced a leather billfold. He snapped it open for inspection. Hassad looked at it carefully. The military identification had been made in the same office that produced the real ones by a sympathizer to the cause. Libya’s military was riddled with them at every level, which was how they’d gotten the helicopters for today’s operation and the Hind gunship they had used to disable Fiona Katamora’s aircraft.

Opposite the ID was a pass authorizing the bearer to work the security detail for tomorrow’s peace summit. It had been deemed too risky to try to get them from the issuing office, so these had been forged here at the camp. Hassad had friends in the Army who would be at the conference as part of the massive security force, and he’d studied their passes. What he saw before him was a flawless copy.

He handed back the papers, and asked, “What do you expect tomorrow?”

“To be martyred in the name of Islam and Suleiman Al-Jama.”

“Do you believe you are worthy of such an honor?”

The answer was a moment in coming. “It is enough for me that the Imam believes I am worthy.”

“Well said,” Hassad remarked. “You and your compatriots are going to strike a blow against the West that will take them years to recover from, if ever. Imam Al-Jama has decreed they will no longer be allowed to dictate to us how we should live our lives. The corruption they spread with their television and movies, their music, and their democracy, will no longer be allowed. Soon we will see the beginning of the end for them. They will finally understand their way of life is not for us, and that it is Islam that will take over the world. This is the honor of which Al-Jama believes you are worthy.”

“I will not let him down,” the terrorist said, his voice firm, his eyes steady.

“You are dismissed,” Hassad said, and turned back to Abdullah. “Very well done, my old friend.”

“The military training was relatively easy,” the commander said. “Keeping them true to the cause without making them appear like wild-eyed fanatics was the difficult part.”

Both men knew that countless suicide attacks had been thwarted because the perpetrators looked so nervous and out of place that even untrained civilians knew what was about to occur. And the fifty men they were sending to Tripoli today would be surrounded by legitimate security forces on full alert for the very type of attack they were attempting. They had culled through hundreds of recruits from training camps and madrasas all over the Middle East to find the right men.

Hassad glanced at his watch. “In eighteen hours, it will be over. The American Secretary of State will be dead, and the palace hall will be awash in blood. The tide of peace will once again be pushed back, and in its absence we will continue to spread our way of life.”

“As the original Suleiman Al-Jama wrote, ‘When in the struggle to keep our faith from corruption we find our will slacking, our resolve waning, our strength ebbing, we must, at that moment, make the supreme effort, and the supreme sacrifice if necessary, to show our enemies that we will never be defeated.’ ”

“I prefer another line, ‘They who do not submit to Islam are an affront to Allah and worthy only of our bullets.’ ”

“Soon they shall have them.”

“Now, why don’t you introduce me to the American woman. I have a little time before she needs to board the frigate for her date with destiny, but I would like to gaze upon her.”