Mirage tof-9

by Clive Cussler

  “Max,” Adams radioed, “how we looking on winds across the deck?”

  “You’re clear,” Hanley replied.

  “Then we’re out of here.” He applied more power and eased up on the collective so that the angle of the rotor blades changed and they began to bite into the air.

  The chopper lifted from the deck and barely cleared the fantail railing while the Oregon pulled away from under it. They adopted a nose-down attitude to pick up some speed and then rose steadily into the sky. Occasional patters of rain pelted the windshield as they clawed their way up to a thousand feet and continued to accelerate southward.

  “You did the calculations, right?” Juan asked.

  “Yes. I put us over the target with fumes left in the tank if we maintain a speed of one hundred thirty knots.” Gomez glanced over his shoulder to look at Cabrillo for a second. “Not to be the Negative Nelly of the group, but what happens if the yacht isn’t there anymore?”

  “We ditch and wait for the Oregon in this life raft here, and when we’re saved, I deduct the price of the chopper from your stake in the Corporation.”

  “I can follow you on the first two, but number three doesn’t seem too fair to me.”

  “He’s pulling your leg,” Linc said. “Otherwise, he’d have to deduct the cost of replacing the Nomad from his own share. Eddie told me the emergency ascent was the Chairman’s idea.”

  Juan grinned, thankful for the banter to keep him from dwelling on Linda’s predicament. “How’s this. If we ditch, we’ll call it square.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Linc spent most of the flight studying the ocean through a pair of powerful binoculars that even his massive hands could barely fit around. He would watch individual ships plying the Atlantic seaboard until he was certain they were no threat. Then something caught his eye, and he kept watching it far longer than any other target. He finally passed the binoculars over his shoulder and pointed to a spot about forty degrees off their route. “Juan, what do you make of that?”

  Cabrillo adjusted the glasses and looked to where Linc indicated. He thumbed the focus wheel until the image became clear. He saw a ship’s wake where it was widening and flattening into the choppy sea. He followed its trail, but it vanished before he saw the ship making it. Confused, he scanned again. The wake was a white-foaming wedge on the ocean’s surface culminating in absolutely nothing at all and yet its leading edge continued to move away from them.

  The impossibility of what he was witnessing dulled his cognitive reasoning, and he continued to stare without comprehension or the ability to accept the reality of it.

  A hundred feet in front of the flattened apex of the wake, occasional puffs of white water appeared, like the bow of a ship cutting through the swells, but between these two points was nothing but open water.

  Juan blinked and looked harder. No, not open water, a distortion of what open water looks like, a facsimile of nature, not nature itself. Then the reality hit.

  “Science fiction. Those two aren’t going to let me hear the end of it.”

  “You want me to get closer?” Adams asked.

  “No. Keep true. Maybe they don’t know we’ve spotted them.” Juan handed the binoculars back to Linc and keyed on his radio. “Max, you there?”

  “Standing by.”

  “Go to encrypt beta,” Juan ordered, and Gomez switched to the chopper’s secondary encrypted channel. “You still with me?”

  There was a second delay in the rest of their conversation because the computers needed the extra time to decrypt the secure comm line. “Still here.”

  “I don’t know how Kenin capsized the Emir’s yacht, but I know how he got close enough to activate the weapon. We’ve got eyeballs on a ship’s wake, only there isn’t a ship making it.”

  “Come again.”

  “They have some sort of optical camouflage. The ship he used to target the Sakir is, well, it’s invisible.”

  “You sure this isn’t a delayed symptom of the bends?”

  “Linc sees it, or doesn’t see it, too.”

  “Juan,” Lincoln said urgently, thrusting the binoculars back at him. “Check it out now. They must think they’ve cleared the danger zone.”

  Juan found the wake again and again followed it to its source. This time, the ship was there, and what a craft it was. It reminded him of the U.S. Navy’s pyramidal Sea Shadow, an experimental stealth ship with a design based loosely on the F-117 Nighthawk. This boat was painted a muted gray that perfectly matched the surrounding seas, and it had sloped, faceted sides that met at a peak about thirty feet above the waves. Unlike the Sea Shadow, it wasn’t a catamaran but a monohull, with a flat transom and a long overhanging deck above her bow. Function rather than aesthetics had gone into her design, making her the ugliest vessel Juan had ever seen.

  He guessed she was making about fifteen knots, so more than likely if she was running from the scene of the crime, this was her maximum speed.

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” Hanley asked.

  At sea, the preservation of human life took precedence over everything else, there was no doubt about that. He couldn’t order the Oregon to deviate from her course and intercept this bizarre new weapon. And none of their missiles had the range to hit it, but that didn’t mean they were impotent.

  “Give me a few minutes to figure out the vectors and relative speeds. I want you to be ready to launch Eddie and MacD in a RHIB to go after them.”

  “That thing just capsized a three-hundred-foot mega-yacht. What do you think it would do to a puny RHIB?”

  “I just want them to tail it. Once we’re finished with the rescue, we’ll track ’em down and handle it ourselves.”

  “What about the storm?”

  “There isn’t a gale on this planet a RHIB can’t handle.”

  There was concern in his voice when Max cautioned, “It might take us days to find survivors from the Sakir.”

  “We’re out of there as soon as the Coasties show up. You did radio them, right?”

  “They’re three hours behind us.”

  “There’s your answer. We do our thing for three hours and turn it over to the professionals. This is a good plan, Max.”

  “A dangerous one,” Hanley retorted.

  “Aren’t they all? Load the RHIB with extra fuel drums, and I’ll call when you’re closest to this stealth boat’s wake.”

  “Okay,” Max relented. “But I’m not sending those boys out without full survival suits and redundant GPS trackers.”

  “I didn’t think you would.” Juan had Max give him the Oregon’s relative position and speed and did the calculations. They would be on the Sakir when the Oregon was at its closest to the ship, so he radioed the time he wanted the RHIB launched and gave a relative bearing on their target.

  “Juan,” Gomez said, “we’re approaching the Sakir’s last-known position. We could use extra eyes looking for her.”

  “Okay,” Juan said, and over the radio to Max added, “We’re getting close. I’ll call again when we find her.”

  “Roger. Good hunting.”

  “You too.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They were lucky in the sense that they knew to within a couple of miles where the Sakir had been when she’d been attacked. All members of the Corporation team had GPS tracking chips surgically embedded in their thighs. The chips weren’t powerful, so the signal was intermittent. But they had gotten a ping off Linda’s chip when she’d ventured on deck twenty minutes before the Sakir was capsized, cutting down the search area tremendously.

  They were unlucky, however, that the ceiling of clouds had dropped, forcing them to an altitude of four hundred feet and thus cutting how far they could see to the horizon. For ten minutes, as the chopper’s turbine sucked gas like a drunk at an open bar, they crisscrossed grid lines Gomez had laid out on his kneeboard chart. And they found nothing.

  “I don’t want to add to our woes,” Adams said over the chopper’s com
munications net, “but we’ve got about five minutes of fuel remaining.”

  Linc didn’t take the binoculars from his eyes when he said, “Pessimist.”

  And a moment later, he was proven correct. “There.” He pointed ahead.

  Juan leaned forward between the two front seats and accepted the glasses from the former SEAL.

  Like a belly-up fish floating dead in the water, the capsized hulk of the once beautiful luxury craft lay lost and forlorn, with waves crashing along its length and remarkably little debris around it. As they drew closer still, Juan saw two people, who’d been sitting near where one of the propeller shafts emerged from the hull, stand up and begin to wave frantically. For a moment he was hopeful one was Linda Ross, but it quickly became apparent they were both men dressed in identical dark suits.

  “Security guards,” Juan said. “They must have been on deck when she flipped. They would have been thrown clear and then swam back to wait.”

  Gomez flew them in, hovering over the yacht just aft of amidships. He timed the hulk’s gentle roll and settled the helo with its skids straddling the Sakir’s keel. He killed the engine and powered down the electronics. The two guards rushed over to them, ducking below the still-spinning blades to reach the chopper.

  Juan swung open his door. “Is it only the two of you?”

  “There was a third,” the more senior man said. “He was with us on deck, but he never surfaced after the ship flipped over.”

  “Any sign of other survivors? Have you heard anyone tapping from inside the ship?”

  It was clear neither had thought to listen. Linc was already on his hands and knees sounding the hull with a giant wrench, his head cocked like a dog’s listening for a response.

  Juan began to gather up his scuba equipment. “Let me get my gear out, and you two can sit in the chopper and warm up.” The guards were soaked to the skin and looked grateful for the opportunity to get out of the wind and rain. “My ship should be here in another hour or so, and we’ll get you some dry clothes and a hot meal.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Juan Cabrillo of the Corporation.”

  “You’re the outfit the Emir hired for additional security.”

  “The irony isn’t lost on me,” Juan told them.

  Five minutes later, he walked down to where water pulsed and surged against the hull with his flippers in his hand. He bent carefully under the load on his back and slipped the fins over his dive boots, then settled his mask. He turned and walked backward off the side of the hull until the sea took up his weight and he was floating. He swam a few feet farther on so the waves wouldn’t toss him back against the unyielding steel. He adjusted his buoyancy by dumping some air from his vest.

  A moment later, he was falling along the edge of the hull. Ten feet down, where the water was much calmer, he passed the Plimsoll line where the red antifouling paint gave way to the snowy white livery the Sakir was noted for.

  Cabrillo hadn’t fully recovered from the stress and strain of yesterday’s dive, and he wasn’t diving with a partner, two cardinal sins, but if there was the slightest chance of saving Linda he would push on through to the gates of hell. He peered into a couple of portholes, encouraged when one of the rooms had only a little water on the floor — or what had been the ceiling. He tapped the glass in what looked like an officer’s cabin but got no response.

  Once he reached the inverted main deck, he was at a depth of thirty feet. He flicked on his dive light even though visibility wasn’t too bad, considering the storm up on the surface.

  The teak deck had been swept clean when the ship turtled. Gone were the chairs and tables, the piles of fluffy towels at the edge of the hot tub, and the cut-crystal glasses. Farther below him were the second deck and then the third, where the bridge was located. Down farther still were the ship’s radar domes, radio masts, and her mammoth funnel.

  Juan found a sliding glass door that had survived the violent forces of the ship’s capsizing and forced it open. Because it was upside down, it didn’t roll smoothly, and he really had to fight to squeeze through. The corridor went forward and aft. He arbitrarily started for the bow, checking rooms as he went. Each cabin was a flooded maelstrom of bedding, loose furniture, and clothing still swirling and dancing through the water.

  He moved on and found his first body. It was a young woman dressed as a maid. She was floating in a cabin that she must have been servicing. Her cart lay on its side in a corner of the room, and extra sheets fluttered in the beam of his light like undulating sea creatures. She was facing away from Cabrillo, so he swam closer and gently spun her around.

  He blew out a startled breath that overloaded his regulator.

  The poor woman must have hit a wall face-first because her features were distorted beyond recognition. Juan recalled the big ship’s near-instantaneous flat roll and guessed she would have met her death when the wall smashed into her at better than twenty miles per hour. It looked no different had she been struck with a baseball bat.

  He moved on, knowing that his task was only going to become even grimmer.

  Cabrillo found two more bodies on this level. One was dressed like the security detail, in a plain dark suit with tie, and the other wore a chef’s white jacket and gray gingham pants. By the way their heads swiveled so loosely on their necks, he was sure both had died like the maid when they crashed into a bulkhead.

  He reached the main stairs, a grand, sweeping affair that curled around an atrium which had once had a glass ceiling. Juan shone his light down on it, seeing that few of the panes remained in the ornate wrought-iron cupola. Below it, the ocean was inky black.

  A sense of dread creeping up on him, Juan swam up the staircase. This level appeared fully flooded, but he couldn’t take shortcuts on a mission like this. He laboriously checked every nook and cranny for someone who’d found an air pocket and survived his ordeal. He’d been aboard the Sakir on more than one occasion. It was hard to wrap his mind around all this destruction when he remembered her as the epitome of opulence.

  Sadly, there were more bodies. Juan recognized one of the men as the Emir’s nephew, a likable teen who had ambitions of being a scientist. Particle physics, he remembered.

  Each gruesome discovery made his anger at Kenin burn that much more, and the cut was doubly painful because these people were never the intended targets. Kenin put their deaths squarely on Juan’s shoulders, and as much as Juan would have liked to rationalize away the guilt, he could not. These people’s deaths were almost as much his fault as they were the rogue Russian admiral’s.

  The next deck, closer to the surface and thus the waterline, was the crew’s area. Gone were the elegant silk wall coverings, the plush carpeting, and subdued lighting. Here was a world of white steel walls, exposed electrical conduits, and linoleum tile. The Emir had the money to give them better surroundings for when they were off duty, but leaving the space so stark was a not-so-subtle reminder that they were merely staff and he was the master. Sometimes the pettiness of the rich irked Cabrillo.

  He expected to find a lot more bodies, but he didn’t find any at all. Surely there had been some staff down here when the ship capsized, yet he found no one. He eventually located an entrance hatch to the engineering spaces. It had an electronic lock with a card reader, but when the ship lost power, the locks automatically disengaged. He swung open the steel door and swam up what was essentially a ladder because it was too steep to call a stairway.

  The main engine room was as clean as the Oregon’s own. The massive diesels, suspended from the ceiling, were painted white, while the floor had been green anechoic tiles. Juan found two bodies here, both in the overalls of engineering staff. He pushed on through to the auxiliary equipment room, where the ship’s sewage and garbage were processed and fresh water was produced by a reverse osmosis desalinator.

  He was dismayed that he hadn’t found more victims and came to the sad conclusion that they had all been up on the second deck. Because of the physic
s involved in a ship flipping over, they would have all been killed by violent impact or so wounded that they could do nothing to prevent their drowning when water flooded into the ship. He was just about to go explore the upper decks when he spotted a hatch overhead that had once been in the floor. It had to be bilge access. He swam up to it and tested the dogging wheel. It spun as if it had been oiled that morning.

  The hatch swung down on its hinges, and Juan popped his head and arm into this new space, startling himself when he realized he had broken into a chamber free of water. He didn’t think he’d reached the surface level, and a glance at his depth gauge confirmed he was still under eight feet of water. The air in the chamber was pressurized enough to stop the water from gushing in. He cast his light around what appeared to be an antechamber, because it was a small space, and there was another closed hatch to his right. There was only about four feet of headroom. He removed his tanks.

  He realized that if the entire bilge was filled with air, it must be providing the buoyancy that kept the Sakir afloat. Eventually it would bleed out, but, for now, it was keeping the luxury cruiser from plummeting to the ocean floor.

  He closed the first hatch and opened the next hatch, his dive light thrust out ahead of him. He was greeted with a tableau of death. There were thirty people stretched out along the walls, some clinging to one another, some off by themselves, others in little groups as if they’d been chatting before falling over. He had no idea how they’d gotten here or what had killed them. The air tasted fine, a bit musty and tainted with salt but breathable.

  And as his light swept past one of the corpses, its eyes opened, and it screamed. In an instant, the rest of them came alive. They’d all been sleeping in the cloying blackness of the ship’s bilge.

  Two flashlights snapped on, adding their glow to the animated faces of people picking themselves up and rushing at Cabrillo. Several remained on the deck, and Juan could tell they were injured. Questions were hurtled at him in a half dozen languages, but one voice eventually drowned out all the others.