After a two-week layover in Vancouver, where she participated in a series of naval exercises with ships of the Canadian Navy, Briscoe’s command, the Type 42 destroyer HMS Bridlington, was en route home to England via Hong Kong, a stopover for any British naval ship that was sailing across the Pacific. Although the ninety-nine-year lease had run out and the British Crown Colony was returned to China in 1997, it became a matter of pride to occasionally show the Cross of Saint George and to remind the new owners of who were the founders of the financial Mecca of Asia.
The door to the wheelhouse opened, and the second officer, Lieutenant Samuel Angus, leaned out. “If you can spare a few moments from defying the elements, sir, could you please step inside?”
“Why don’t you come out, my boy?” Briscoe roared over the wind. Soft. That’s the trouble with you young people. “You don’t appreciate foul weather.”
“Please, Captain,” Angus pleaded. “We have an approaching aircraft on radar.”
Briscoe walked across the bridge wing and stepped into the wheelhouse. “I see nothing unusual in that. You might say it’s routine. We’ve had dozens of aircraft fly over the ship.”
“A helicopter, sir? Over twenty-five hundred kilometers from the American mainland and no military vessels between here and Hawaii.”
“The bloody fool must be lost,” Briscoe growled. “Signal the pilot and ask if he requires a position fix.”
“I took the liberty of contacting him, sir,” replied Angus. “He speaks only Russian.”
“Who do we have who can understand him?”
“Surgeon Lieutenant Rudolph. He’s fluent in Russian.”
“Call him up to the bridge.”
Three minutes later, a short man with blond hair stepped up to Briscoe, who was sitting in the elevated captain’s chair, peering into the rain. “You sent for me, Captain?”
Briscoe nodded curtly. “There’s a Russian helicopter muddling about in the storm. Get on the radio and find out why he’s flying around an empty sea.”
Lieutenant Angus produced a headset, plugged it into a communications console and handed it to Rudolph. “The frequency is set. All you have to do is talk.”
Rudolph placed the earphones over his ears and spoke into the tiny microphone. Briscoe and Angus waited patiently while he carried on what seemed a one-way conversation. Finally, he turned to the captain. “The man is terribly upset, almost incoherent. The best I can make of it, is that he’s coming from a Russian whaling fleet.”
“Then he’s only doing his job.”
Rudolph shook his head. “He keeps repeating, `they’re all dead’ and wants to know if we have helicopter landing facilities on the Bridlington. If so, he wants to come aboard.”
“Impossible,” Briscoe grunted. “Inform him that the Royal Navy does not allow foreign aircraft to land on Her Majesty’s ships.”
Rudolph repeated the message just as the helicopter’s engines became audible and it suddenly materialized out of the falling rain, half a kilometer off the port bow at a height of no more than twenty meters above the sea. “He sounds on the verge of hysteria. He swears that unless you shoot him down, he’s going to set down on board.”
“Damn!” The oath fairly exploded from Briscoe’s lips. “All I need is for some terrorist to blow up my ship.”
“Not likely any terrorists are roaming about this part of the ocean,” said Angus.
“Yes, yes, and the Cold War’s been over for ten years. I know all that.”
“For what it’s worth,” said Rudolph, “I read the pilot as scared out of his wits. I detect no indication of threat in his tone.”
Briscoe sat silent for a few moments, then flicked a switch on the ship’s intercom. “Radar, are your ears up?”
“Yes, sir,” a voice answered. “Any ships in the area?”
“I read one large vessel and four smaller ones, bearing two-seven-two degrees, distance ninety-five kilometers.”
Briscoe broke off and pressed another switch. “Communications?”
“Sir?”
“See if you can raise a fleet of Russian whaling ships ninety-five kilometers due west of us. If you need an interpreter, the ship’s doc can translate.”
“My thirty-word Russian vocabulary should get me by,” the communications officer answered cheerfully.
Briscoe looked at Rudolph. “All right, tell him permission is granted to set down on our landing pad.”
Rudolph passed on the word, and they all watched as the helicopter angled in from the starboard beam and began a shallow power-glide approach over the landing pad just forward of the stern in readiness for a hovering descent.
To Briscoe’s practiced eyes, the pilot was handling the aircraft erratically, failing to compensate for the brisk wind. “That idiot flies like he’s got a nervous disorder,” snapped Briscoe. He turned to Angus. “Reduce speed and order an armed reception committee to greet our visitor.” Then as an afterthought. “If he so much as scratches my ship, shoot him.”
Angus grinned amiably and winked at Rudolph behind the captain’s back as he ordered the helmsman at the ship’s console to reduce speed. There was no insubordination intended in their shared humor. Briscoe was admired by every man of the crew as a gruff old sea dog who watched over his men and ran a smooth ship. They were wet) aware that few ships in the Royal Navy had a captain who preferred sea duty to promotion to flag rank.
The visitor was a smaller version of the Ka-32 Helix Russian Navy helicopter, which was used for light transport duty and air reconnaissance. This one, used by a fishing fleet for locating whales, looked badly in need of maintenance. Oil streaked from the engine cowlings and the paint on the fuselage was badly chipped and faded.
The British seamen waiting under the protection of steel bulkheads cringed as the helicopter flared out barely three meters above the pitching deck. The pilot sharply decreased his engine rpms too early, and the craft dropped heavily to the deck, bounced drunkenly back into the air and then smacked down hard on its wheels before finally settling like a chastised collie into motionless submission. The pilot shut down his engines, and the rotor blades swung to a stop.
The pilot slid open an entry door and stared up at the Bridlington’s huge radar dome before turning his eyes to the five advancing seamen, automatic weapons firmly clutched in their hands. He jumped down to the deck and peered at them curiously before he was taken roughly by the arms and hustled through an open hatch. The seamen escorted him up three decks through a wide companionway before turning into a passageway that led to the officers’ wardroom.
The ship’s first officer, Lieutenant Commander Roger Avondale, had joined the reception committee and stood off to one side with Lieutenant Angus. Surgeon Lieutenant Rudolph waited at Briscoe’s elbow to interpret. He studied the Russian pilot’s eyes and read terror numbed by fatigue in the wide pupils.
Briscoe nodded at Rudolph. “Ask him what in hell made him assume he can board a foreign naval vessel any time he chooses.”
“You might also inquire as to why he was flying alone,” added Avondale. “Not likely he’d scout for whales by himself.”
Rudolph and the pilot began a rapid-fire exchange that lasted for a solid three minutes. Finally the ship’s doctor turned and said, “His name is Fyodor Gorimykin. He is chief pilot in command of locating whales for a whaling fleet from the port of Nikolayevsk. According to his story, he and his copilot and an observer were out scouting for the catcher ships—”
“Catcher ships?” inquired Angus.
“Swift-moving vessels about sixty-five meters in length that shoot explosive harpoons into unsuspecting whales,” explained Briscoe. “The whale’s body is then inflated with air to keep it afloat, marked with a radio beacon that sends out homing signals and left while the catcher continues its killing spree. Later, it returns to its catch and tows it back to the factory ship.”
“I had drinks with a captain of a factory ship in Odessa a few years ago,” said Avondale. “He invited
me aboard. It was an enormous vessel, nearly two hundred meters in length, totally self-sufficient, with high-tech processing equipment, laboratories and even a well-staffed hospital. They can winch a hundred-ton blue whale up a ramp, strip the blubber like you’d peel a banana and cook it in a rotating drum. The oil is extracted and everything else is ground and bagged as fish— or bonemeal. The whole process takes little more than half an hour.”
“After being hunted to near extinction, it’s a wonder there are any whales left to catch,” muttered Angus.
“Let’s hear the man’s story,” Briscoe demanded impatiently.
“Failing to locate a herd,” Rudolph continued, “he returned to his factory ship, the Aleksandr Gorchakov. After landing, he swears they found the entire crew of the vessel, as well as the crews on the nearby catcher ships, dead.”
“And his copilot and observer?” Briscoe persisted.
“He says he panicked and took off without them.”
“Where did he intend to go?”
Rudolph questioned the Russian and waited for the answer to pour out. “Only as far away from the mass death t as his fuel would take him.”
“Ask him what killed his shipmates.”
After an exchange, Rudolph shrugged. “He doesn’t know. All he knows is that they had expressions of agony on their faces and appeared to have died in their own vomit.”
“A fantastic tale, to say the least,” observed Avondale.
“If he didn’t look as if he’d seen a graveyard full of ghosts,” said Briscoe, “I’d think the man was a pathological liar.”
Avondale looked at the captain. “Shall we take him at his word, sir?”
Briscoe thought for a moment, then nodded. “Lay on another ten knots, then signal Pacific Fleet Command. Apprise them of the situation and inform them we are altering course to investigate.”
Before action could be taken, a familiar voice came over the bridge speaker system. “Bridge, this is radar.”
“Go ahead, radar,” acknowledged Briscoe.
“Captain, those ships you ordered us to track.”
“Yes, what about them?”
“Well, sir, they’re not moving, but they’re beginning to disappear off the scope.”
“Is your equipment functioning properly?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
Briscoe’s face clouded in bafflement. “Explain what you mean by ‘disappearing.’”
“Just that, sir,” answered radar officer. “It looks to me as if those ships out there are sinking.”
The Bridlington arrived at the Russian fishing fleet’s last known position and found no ships floating on the surface. Briscoe ordered a search pattern, and after steaming back and forth a large oil slick was spotted, surrounded by a widely scattered sea of flotsam, some of it in localized clusters. The Russian helicopter pilot rushed to a deck railing, gestured at an object in the water and began crying out in anguish.
“Why is he babbling?” Avondale shouted to Rudolph from the bridge wing.
“He’s saying his ship is gone, all his friends are gone, his copilot and observer are gone.”
“What is he pointing at?” asked Briscoe.
Rudolph peered over the side and then looked up. “A flotation vest with Aleksandr Gorchakov stamped on it.”
“I have a floating body,” announced Angus, peering through binoculars. “Make that four bodies. But not for long. There are shark fins circling the water around them.”
“Throw a few shells from the BOFORS at the bloody butchers,” Briscoe ordered. “I want the bodies in one piece so they can be examined. Send out boats to retrieve whatever debris they can find. Somebody, somewhere, is going to want as much evidence as we can collect.”
As the twin forty-millimeter BOFORS guns opened up on the sharks, Avondale turned to Angus. “Damned queer goings on, if you ask me. What do you make of it?”
Angus turned and gave the first officer a slow grin. “It would seem that after being slaughtered for two centuries, the whales finally have their revenge.”
Pitt sat behind the desk in his office for the first time in nearly two months, his eyes distant, his hand toying with a Sea Hawk dive knife he used as a letter opener. He said nothing, waiting for a response from Admiral Sandecker who sat across from him.
He had arrived in Washington early that morning, a Sunday, and gone directly to the empty NUMA headquarters building, where he spent the next six hours writing up a detailed report on his discoveries on Kunghit Island and offering his suggestions on how to deal with the underwater acoustics. The report seemed anticlimactic after the exhausting rigors of the past few days. Now he resigned himself to allowing other men, more qualified men, to deal with the problem and come up with the proper solutions.
He swung around in his chair and gazed out the window at the Potomac River and envisioned Maeve standing on the deck of Ice Hunter, the look of fear and desperation in her face. He felt furious with himself for deserting her. He was certain Deirdre had divulged the kidnapping of Maeve’s children by her father on board Ice Hunter. Maeve had reached out to the only man she could trust, and Pitt had failed to recognize her distress. That part of the story Pitt had left out of his report.
Sandecker closed the report and laid it on Pitt’s desk. “A remarkable bit of fancy footwork. A miracle you weren’t killed.”
“I had help from some very good people,” Pitt said seriously.
“You’ve gone as far as you can go on this thing. I’m ordering you and Giordino to take ten days off. Go home and work on your antique cars.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” said Pitt, massaging the bruises on his upper arms.
“Judging from your narrow escape, Dorsett and his daughters play tough.”
“All except Maeve,” said Pitt quietly. “She’s the family outcast.”
“You know, I assume, that she is working with NUMA in our biology department along with Roy Van Fleet.”
“On the effects of the ultrasound on sea life, yes, I know.”
Sandecker studied Pitt’s face, examining every line in the weathered yet still youthful-looking features. “Can we trust her? She could be passing along data on our findings to her father.”
Dirk’s green eyes registered no sign of subtlety. “Maeve has nothing in common with her sisters.”
Sensing Pitt’s reluctance to discuss Maeve, Sandecker changed the subject. “Speaking of sisters, did Boudicca Dorsett give you any indication as to why her father intends to shut down his operations in a few weeks?”
“Not a clue.”
Sandecker rolled a cigar around in his fingers pensively. “Because none of Dorsett’s mining properties are on U.S. soil, there is no rapid-fire means to stop future killings.”
“Close one mine out of the four,” said Pitt, “and you drain the sound waves’ killing potency.”
“Short of ordering in a flight of B-1 bombers, which the President won’t do, our hands are tied.”
“There must be an international law that applies to murder on the high seas,” said Pitt.
Sandecker shook his head. “Not one that covers this situation. The lack of an international law-enforcement organization plays in Dorsett’s favor. Gladiator Island belongs only to the family, and it would take a year or more to talk the Russians into closing the mine off Siberia. Same with Chile. As long as Dorsett pays off high-ranking government officials, his mines stay open.”
“There’s the Canadians,” said Pitt. “If given the reins, the Mounties would go in and close the Kunghit Island mine tomorrow, because of Dorsett’s use of illegal immigrants for slave labor.”
“So what’s stopping them from raiding the mine?”
Pitt recalled Inspector Stokes’ words about the bureaucrats and members of Parliament in Dorsett’s wallet. “The same barriers; paid cronies and shrewd lawyers.”
“Money makes money,” Sandecker said heavily. “Dorsett is too well financed and well organized to topple by ordinary meth
ods. The man is an incredible piece of avaricious machinery.”
“Not like you to embrace a defeatist attitude, Admiral. I can’t believe you’re about to forfeit the game to Arthur Dorsett.”
Sandecker’s eyes took on the look of a viper about to strike. “Who said anything about forfeiting the game?”
Pitt enjoyed prodding his boss. He didn’t believe for an instant that Sandecker would walk away from a fight. “What do you intend to do?”
“Since I can’t order an armed invasion of commercial property and possibly kill hundreds of innocent civilians in the process, or drop a Special Forces team from the air to neutralize all Dorsett mining excavations, I’m forced to take the only avenue left open for me.”
“And that is?” Pitt prompted.
“We go public,” Sandecker said without a flicker or change in his expression. “First thing tomorrow I call a press conference and blast Arthur Dorsett as the worst monster unleashed on humanity since Attila the Hun. I’ll reveal the cause of the mass killings and lay the blame on his doorstep. Next I’ll stir up members of Congress to lean on the State Department, who in turn will lean on the governments of Canada, Chile and Russia to close all Dorsett operations on their soil. Then we’ll sit back and see where the chips fall.”
Pitt looked at Sandecker in long, slow admiration, then he smiled. The admiral was sailing in stormy waters without giving a damn for the torpedoes or the consequences. “You’d take on the devil if he looked cross-eyed at you.”
“Forgive me for blowing off steam. You know as well as I there will be no press conference. Without solid, presentable evidence I would gain nothing but a quick trip into a mental institution. Men like Arthur Dorsett are self-regenerating. You cannot simply destroy them. They are created by a system of greed that leads to power. The pathetic thing about such men is that they don’t know how to spend their wealth nor give it away to the needy.” Sandecker paused and lit his cigar with a flourish. Then he said coldly, “I don’t know how, but I swear by the Constitution I’m going to nail that slime bag to the barn so hard his bones will rattle.”
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