Golden Buddha

by Clive Cussler

  “So I won’t see you again?” she asked.

  “You never know,” Gunderson said as red-haired Tracy Pilston walked over.

  “Our ride is only a few miles ahead,” Pilston noted, “and we’re both ready to fly the coop.”

  “Did you take her down?” Gunderson asked.

  Pilston nodded. “We’re to receive a signal, so we can time the jump.”

  Gunderson removed two parachutes from a storage compartment where a Corporation team member had hidden them when the 737 was in her hangar in California. He helped strap one on Pilston’s back, then strapped on the other. Removing a sack containing goggles, he handed one over to Pilston.

  “We’ll alert Judy,” he said quietly, “and exit from the rear.”

  “Go forward,” Gunderson said to Rosselli. “Tell Judy it’s time, then stay in the cockpit.”

  “Won’t everything be sucked out the rear?” Rosselli asked.

  “We’re not pressurized,” Gunderson said, “so it won’t be that bad—I wouldn’t try walking around, however. Just stay in the cockpit, and after the egg timer goes off, raise the rear door and untie the pilots.”

  “Okay,” Rosselli said as she went forward, opened the cockpit door and reported the news to Michaels.

  “Understood,” Judy Michaels said.

  Then she checked the speed once more, made sure the autopilot was operating, then pushed the lever to lower the rear door. The door began to lower slowly and the alarms on the dashboard began to beep. Twisting a cheap plastic egg timer, Michaels slid past Rosselli.

  “Keep the door closed, and when that timer chimes, you know what to do.”

  Rosselli nodded.

  “Nice meeting you,” Michaels said as she slipped out the door.

  Racing down the aisle, Michaels stopped for Gunderson to check her parachute. The farther the rear door lowered, the more wind raced through the fuselage of the 737. Magazines rustled, and any loose items inside fluttered in the wind. Gunderson watched as a silk kimono filled like a sail and shot out the rear. Then the trio made their way to the rear, where the steps were now pointing straight below the tail of the 737.

  “What do you think they’ll do to Rhonda?” Pilston asked.

  “Not much they can do,” Gunderson said as he adjusted his goggles and helped Michaels into position to jump.

  “I think she’s sweet on you,” Pilston said as she moved into place next to Michaels.

  “There’s something about,” Gunderson said, “an Aqua Velva man.”

  At that instant, the signal was received from the satellite to his alphanumeric pager. The pager began to vibrate. Gunderson took one lady under each arm. Then he ran off the end of the ramp and, once he was clear, pushed them away.

  PLODDING through the South China Sea, the helmsman on the Kalia Challenger noticed the sky was finally clearing. He noticed it because the sky overhead was suddenly filled with a pair of Chinese antisubmarine aircraft as well as a single long-range heavy-lift helicopter. The Kalia Challenger had originally been built in 1962 for the United States Line as one of an eleven-ship class of express cargo cruisers. Later sold to a Greek shipping concern, she plied the seas on a regular schedule from Asia to the west coast of the United States.

  At just over five hundred feet with a seventy-foot beam, the vessel featured derricks on the upper deck for loading and unloading of cargo. Her lower hull was a rusty red with a black band along the gunwales. She was a work ship who had served a long and useful life, and the wear and tear showed. Still functional, though dated, she was possessed of one major flaw.

  From a distance, to an untrained eye, she resembled the Oregon.

  She was far out in international waters when the antisubmarine aircraft dropped the first depth charge. It landed a hundred yards ahead of the bow and exploded with a cascade of water that reached eighty feet into the air.

  “Heave to!” the captain shouted.

  The alert reached the engine room, and the Kalia Challenger slowed, then stopped in the water.

  It would be nearly an hour before a Chinese boarding party climbed across her decks.

  The illegal stop was never explained.

  DELBERT Chiglack stared up at the sky in amazement. He had seen some incredible things in the fourteen years he had worked on offshore oil rigs: strange sea creatures that defied explanation, unidentified flying objects, weird weather phenomena. But in all the years he had drilled offshore, he had yet to see a trio of parachutists come from nowhere and attempt to land on his rig. Gunderson, Michaels and Pilston had leapt from the 737 at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, just above a cloud layer that hid the airplane from view. Sucking on oxygen bottles as they made their descent, they had floated around near the target before directing their parachutes in arcing corkscrews until they lined up above the helicopter pad on the offshore rig.

  The rig was twenty miles off the coast of Vietnam, eight hundred miles from Macau, and owned by Zapata Petroleum of Houston, Texas. George Herbert Walker Bush owned the company—and someone from Virginia had asked him for a favor.

  Tracy Pilston landed nearly dead center on the X in the center of the pad, Judy Michaels only six feet away. It was Chuck Gunderson who had the worst landing. He alit on the side of the elevated pad. The breeze tugged at his parachute before he could cut it away, and had Del Chiglack not grabbed him, he might have gone over the side.

  Once his chute was free and Chiglack had yanked him back from the edge, Gunderson smiled and spoke.

  “My friends called,” he said. “I believe we have a reservation for three.”

  Chiglack spit some snuff juice into the wind. “Welcome aboard,” he said. “Your ride will be here soon.”

  “Thanks,” Gunderson said.

  “Now,” Chiglack said, “if you and the ladies will come inside, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  BACK in the control room, Hanley turned to Cabrillo. “We just received word from Tiny,” he said. “They arrived safe and sound with the bonds. They’re awaiting a ride home.”

  Cabrillo nodded.

  “You look beat,” Hanley said. “Why don’t you catch a few hours’ sleep and let me hold down the fort.”

  Cabrillo was too tired to argue. He rose and started for the door. “Wake me if you need me.”

  “Don’t I always?” Hanley said.

  Once Cabrillo was walking down the hall to his stateroom, Hanley turned to Stone. “Truitt will be here in a few minutes to relieve you. Take four hours and get some sleep.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stone said.

  Then Hanley accessed the computer next to his seat and began to read the plan again.

  LANGSTON Overholt slept all the way to Paris. The Challenger jet he was riding inside was registered to a company named Strontium Holding PLC, which was allegedly based in Basel, Switzerland. In reality, the jet’s tires had never touched Swiss soil.

  The Challenger CL-604 had been purchased from a broker in London using CIA funds and outfitted with advanced electronics at a shop in Alexandria, Virginia, near Bolling Air Force Base. The large Canadian-made business jet seated ten people, had a cruise speed of 487 miles per hour and a range of 4,628 miles.

  The distance from Virginia to Paris was just over 3,800 miles, where the jet was refueled and provisions were loaded aboard. The second leg of the trip, Paris to New Delhi, would cover 4,089 miles. The first leg of the journey required eight hours to complete; the second leg was made with a favorable tailwind and took just over seven hours. Within an hour of receiving word from Cabrillo at 6 A.M. Macau time that the Corporation was in possession of the Golden Buddha, Overholt had left U.S. soil. Virginia time had been 6 P.M. Good Friday. By the time the Challenger touched down, the time changes and flight time made it 9 A.M. Saturday.

  The trip by turboprop to Little Lhasa in northern India took just over two more hours, so it was almost exactly noon on Saturday when Overholt finally met with the Dalai Lama again. The revered leader of Tibet had made it clear that i
f there was to be a coup d’etat, it needed to take place on Easter Sunday, March 31, exactly forty-six years after his being forced into exile.

  That gave Overholt and the Corporation twenty-four hours to make a miracle happen.

  CARL Gannon had been earning his keep the last several days. After procuring the truck in Thimbu, Bhutan, and plotting a route into Tibet, he had received a shopping list of tasks from the control room on the Oregon. As the Corporation’s head scrounger, Gannon was used to accomplishing the impossible. To obtain what was required, Gannon would have to use the vast network of contacts he had carefully nurtured over the years.

  The funding would come from the Corporation’s bank on the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean, and the Oregon had made it clear that time, not cost, was the object. Gannon loved it when he received directives like this. Using a laptop computer linked to a cell phone, he began typing in a stack of telephone numbers, codes and passwords from memory at seventy words a minute.

  Eighty Stinger missiles were bought from a friendly Middle Eastern nation, with delivery arranged to Bhutan using a South African company that had never failed to comply. Eight Bell 212 helicopters with extra fuel pods from an Indonesian company that specialized in offshore oil work arrived to deliver the load of missiles and small arms. Eighteen mercenary pilots from throughout the Far East were recruited, sixteen to fly, two extras in case someone got sick. Fuel pods, food for all the participants, and a series of hangars manned by Philippine Special Forces guards were secretly arranged.

  Gannon’s last item was the strangest. The Oregon wanted to know if he could procure a large but slow-moving plane in Vietnam. That, and a winch with a hundred feet of thin but strong steel cable that could be mounted on the floor of the plane. It took Gannon a couple of telephone calls, but he found a 1985 Russian-built Antonov AN-2 Colt owned by a Laotian company that had a logging contract with the Vietnamese government. The big biplane, with a wingspan of fifty-eight feet, a cruise speed of only 120 miles an hour and a stall speed of 58, could best be described as a flying pickup truck. The large interior was mainly cargo space and she could carry nearly five thousand pounds of payload.

  The winch he bought new from a dealer in Ho Chi Minh City on a company credit card.

  After finishing the arrangements for the plane and winch, Gannon slurped the last drop from a bottle of Coca-Cola and dialed the Oregon on the satellite telephone. He waited as the number beeped and popped while the signal was scrambled.

  “Go ahead, Carl,” Hanley said a minute later.

  “I’ve got the plane, Max,” he said, “but you didn’t ask for a pilot.”

  “One of our guys will be flying,” Hanley said.

  “It’s a Russian Antonov,” Gannon noted. “I doubt we have someone typed in this model.”

  “We’ll download some manuals off the Internet,” Hanley said. “That’s about all we can do.”

  “She’s fueled and waiting at the airport in old Saigon,” Gannon said. “The mechanic should be finished bolting the winch in place in the next hour. I’m faxing a picture.”

  “We’ll be seeing you soon,” Hanley said. “Everything okay in the meantime?”

  “Smooth as a baby’s bottom,” Gannon said easily.

  ON the Zapata Petroleum rig off Vietnam, Delbert Chiglack took the sheet that had just printed out of the fax machine, then called once more to the incoming helicopter. When finished, he returned to the lunchroom on the rig and handed the sheet to Gunderson.

  “This just came for you.”

  “Thanks,” Gunderson said quickly, staring at the picture of the biplane the Oregon had sent, then folding it and placing it in his flight-suit pocket.

  Just then, a siren on the rig sounded twice.

  “Your ride’s here,” Chiglack said.

  Walking the trio out to just below the helicopter pad, Chiglack waited until the helicopter touched down, then shouted over the noise.

  “Up the ladder, heads down, the door should be open,” he said.

  “Thanks for the hospitality,” Michaels shouted.

  “Watch your hair, ladies,” Chiglack called as they started up the stairs.

  Four minutes later the helicopter was airborne again, heading back toward land. Chiglack shook his head as the helicopter retreated in the distance. Then he walked back to his office to report his guests had left the rig.

  GUNDERSON handed the photo of the biplane to the copilot. “She’s on the north side of the airport,” he said as the copilot clipped the photo to a strap around his knee. “If you can land nearby, we’d sure appreciate it.”

  The copilot replaced his headset over his ears, then relayed the information to the pilot, who made an okay sign with his fingers. The copilot smiled at Gunderson, nodded yes, then motioned for him to sit back in his seat.

  Twenty minutes later, the coast of southern Vietnam came into view. As they passed over shallow water, he caught sight of a wrecked ship below the surface of the water. In the bushes nearby was what looked like the remains of a bombed-out tank from the war some thirty years before.

  Pilston tapped on Gunderson’s arm as the helicopter approached the airport and located the Antonov from the air. Slowing his speed, the pilot neared the large biplane, then hovered in the air above the tarmac. After touching down smoothly some fifty feet away, the copilot unbuckled his belt, then slipped back and unlatched the door to the Bell.

  “Later, alligators,” he shouted.

  Gunderson, Pilston and Michaels bowed their heads and sprinted away from the helicopter.

  Once they were clear, the pilot throttled up, pulled up on the collective and moved the cyclic so the Bell rose in the air and made a sweeping turn. The helicopter disappeared into the haze as it flew off to the south.

  The trio was ten feet from the biplane when Michaels spoke.

  “What are we going to do with this beast?” she asked.

  “The plan is,” Gunderson said as he approached the open door and stared inside, “to fly out to the Oregon.”

  “What on earth for?” Pilston asked.

  “Our chairman has a meeting to attend.”

  35

  INSIDE the Oregon’s Magic Shop, Kevin Nixon was loosening the top off a long wooden crate with a pry bar. The crate was stamped U.S. Air Force, Special Operations. The second line read: (1) ea. Fulton Aerial Recovery System, checked 02-11-90, and then the initials of the airman who had rendered the verdict that the system was operational. Setting the top aside, Nixon peered inside. Then he began to remove the contents.

  First was a harness made out of nylon webbing similar to that on a parachute. On the front of the harness was a swivel hook. Next was a length of high-tension strength line. Last, a deflated balloon and the fittings to hook the system together. Nixon checked each piece carefully as he removed them from the box. Everything looked fine.

  Just then, the door to the Magic Shop opened.

  “How’s it look?” Hanley inquired.

  “Good,” Nixon answered.

  Hanley pointed to a strange forged-metal three-pronged hook on the ground. “What’s that?”

  Nixon nodded at the bottom of the crate’s lid, where a set of directions had been stenciled on the surface. “That’s the hook that grabs the line at the end of the balloon.”

  “Doesn’t it have to be aboard the pickup plane?”

  “Ideally,” Nixon admitted.

  “So?” Hanley asked.

  Nixon pointed across the room. “Good thing we have rules around here,” he said.

  “Always have a backup,” Hanley said, smiling, reading the sign.

  “But of course,” Nixon said.

  “I’ll notify the plane,” Hanley said. “We have a few hours yet.”

  “Mr. Hanley,” Nixon said, “you just tell me when.”

  THE single engine on the Antonov Colt droned with a monotonous sound as Gunderson, Michaels and Pilston headed out into the South China Sea. The skies were clear, the wall of the sou
th-moving storm still hundreds of miles ahead. Gunderson just hoped that the Oregon, which was cruising at full speed, made it out of the leading edge of the storm before he reached the ship. He was a great pilot, but even in clear skies what they were about to attempt was akin to trying to hit a bull’s eye on a dartboard at ten paces while blindfolded.

  Gunderson had the windows in the cockpit and the cargo area cracked open to vent the gasoline fumes as they cruised along. The Antonov normally carried 312 gallons of fuel, but since this plane was used for remote logging operations, two more tanks of 300 gallons each had been fitted along the center of the cargo bay. That was a good thing. Without the additional fuel capacity, there was no way they could make it out to the Oregon and back to Vietnam, a distance far beyond that of a helicopter. The problem was, the inside of the plane smelled like an Exxon station after a big spill. Gunderson stared at his portable GPS receiver.

  “How’s it look, Tiny?” Michaels asked.

  “So far so good,” Gunderson answered, “but this unit burns through batteries like a kid with a video game. Did they by chance load any spare batteries on board?”

  Pilston, who was crouched between the pilot’s and copilot’s seat, rooted around in a pair of paper bags but came up empty. “Sorry, Chuck,” she said, “no luck.”

  “What did we get?” he asked.

  Pilston did a quick inventory. “Some MREs, two thermoses of what I assume is coffee, some Hershey bars and M&M’s, bottled water, maps, and some mouthwash.”

  “What about towels and soap?”

  Pilston dug around in the bottom of one of the bags. “Yep.”

  “Gannon’s pretty good about that,” Gunderson said, yawning.

  Michaels stared at the speed indicator. “We have five more hours until we reach the Oregon,” she said. “Tracy and I got some sleep last night. Why don’t you clean up a little and try to get some rest. We’ll wake you when we get close.”