“That was fun,” Hali said. “I don’t normally like leaving my comfy chair, but I’ll make an exception when I get to shoot him.” He pointed at the door and the man Lozada knew as Gao Wangshu walked through without a scratch on him. Everyone on the Oregon knew him as Eddie Seng, director of shore operations.
He had already changed out of his bullet-riddled shirt, which had actually been perforated by squibs designed by Kevin Nixon. Like the fake gunshot wounds Hollywood stuntmen used in action scenes, Eddie’s were controlled by a tiny detonator hidden in his sleeve. He was supposed to have “died” during a gun battle while the Oregon was still tied to the dock, but Juan and Linc’s blown cover necessitated a change of plan. When Hali had come out of the bridge firing blanks, Eddie had set off the charges in his shirt, providing a convincing death for Mr. Gao. Harbormaster Manuel Lozada would never know that he’d been duped.
Raised in Brooklyn by Mandarin-speaking parents, Eddie had been recruited by the CIA as a field agent. His specialty had been long-term infiltration of the Chinese government, so he was well practiced at assuming a false identity in covert operations. It had been his idea to insert himself as the final witness to Oregon’s true nature, convincing the Venezuelans that it was the ship Admiral Ruiz had been searching for. For months now, word had gotten back to the Corporation that their cover as a tramp steamer was starting to crumble, given the number of battles they’d fought over the last few years. The Chairman had decided to do something about it, to get their anonymity back, and implying that they were no better equipped than Somali pirates was part of the plan.
Eddie’s part in the mission was to keep tabs on what the Venezuelans were planning and to make sure they discovered the Oregon’s arrival at the proper time. Lozada and Admiral Ruiz were convinced Gao had run into the Oregon before because a Chinese destroyer called the Chengdo had been sunk under mysterious circumstances. In fact, the Oregon had been responsible. It was during that battle that Juan lost his leg to enemy fire. A lie was much more believable if most of it was the truth.
“You look well for a dead man,” Max said.
“It didn’t hurt a bit,” Eddie replied. “I’m just happy Hali is such a good shot.”
“You taught me well,” Hali said with a laugh. After an operation in Libya that resulted in Hali getting hit, he had asked Eddie for more combat training. Eddie held black belts in numerous martial arts and was one of the elite sharpshooters on the Oregon, so Hali had learned from the best.
“How are the Chairman and Linc doing?” Eddie asked.
“He’s on to Plan C,” Max said, knowing Eddie would understand that things had not gone as expected for them. He turned to Hali. “See if you can get Juan back on the line.”
A hiss came over the op center audio system, followed by a click and a roaring background noise.
“Frank’s Tanks here,” Juan answered. “How’s the ship?”
“Not a flake of rust out of place,” Max said.
“And Eddie?”
“Good to be back, Chairman,” Eddie said.
“Great. Now we just have the matter of getting me and Linc onto the Oregon.”
“I wouldn’t recommend commandeering a boat,” Max said. “The harbor is full of angry Venezuelans with itchy trigger fingers. They’re holding off from the Oregon, but you’d eat lead trying to get past them.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’ve picked out a nice spot on the peninsula between Puerto La Cruz and La Guanta where we can meet you.”
Max checked his satellite map for that location. “Are you thinking of swimming? Because those rocks look pretty jagged. The waves would beat you to a pulp against the shoreline.”
“I don’t plan to get my feet wet. Bring the Oregon to three hundred yards offshore at the northernmost point.”
“That won’t be a problem. Why?”
“Remember when we tugged that containership off that reef in the Azores?”
“Yup. We couldn’t get anywhere near it because of the gale.”
“But we could get a line to it.”
Max snapped his fingers. “The Comet.”
“Eddie’s the best shot. Get a disguise for him and get him up on deck. We need him to throw us a lifeline.”
“On my way,” Eddie said, and hustled out of the room.
Max shook his head. In this case, the expression “throw us a lifeline” was going to be the literal truth.
MacD Lawless clung to the port side of the Sorocaima in defiance of gravity like Spider-Man. Mike Trono was next to him, suspended twenty feet above the water. Linda Ross maintained her position on the Discovery, her face visible through the front window as she craned her neck up to watch them.
The tanker’s hull was sitting low in the water with her holds full of diesel, but climbing the bare steel still presented a challenge. Not that MacD wasn’t up to it. Taking on a demanding mission like this was one of the reasons he’d joined the Corporation in the first place.
He disengaged the electromagnetic handhold in his left hand and moved it up a foot, placing the rubberized flat side against the hull before reengaging it. The magnet, a smaller version of the one built into the beatbox still attached to the underside of the Sorocaima, adhered to the metal with enough force to support four times MacD’s body weight. Shoes with high-friction toes allowed him and Mike to brace their feet against the side.
When they reached the lip of the deck, MacD nodded to Mike and they slowly lifted their heads to scan the area for any of the crew. A quick but careful look revealed no one in the vicinity. And since they were directly below the bridge’s flying wing, no one stationed inside would be able to spot them unless they happened to look straight down over the railing.
The original plan was for MacD and Mike to access the holds via the emergency vents atop the deck, injecting the bacteria-laden vapor into each tank one by one. But once they had discovered that all of the tanker’s lights were on, it was clear they would almost certainly be spotted from the bridge with that approach, and there was discussion of aborting the mission entirely. However, Linda pointed out that they wouldn’t get this opportunity again and MacD and Mike had agreed.
They brainstormed alternatives for five minutes before Linda suggested a solution that had previously been rejected in the planning stages.
She told MacD and Mike that modern tankers used residual gas from the boiler flue to replace the air that was left in the storage tanks. The oxygen-deprived exhaust was inert, eliminating the chance that a spark could ignite the fuel vapor inside the tank.
A quick review of the Sorocaima’s schematics confirmed that the tanker was equipped with just such a system. If they could get to the purge controls inside the pump room, they could inject the Corrodium bacteria into all six holds at once.
With the deck still clear, MacD nodded to Mike and they hopped over the railing, leaving their magnets attached to the hull out of sight. The handles had enough battery power to last two hours, so it was simpler to leave them in place for a quick escape.
They pressed themselves flat against the outer wall of the superstructure next to the door leading inside. MacD felt naked in the bright light, and seeing Mike didn’t boost his confidence. Clad in black from head to toe, including a greasepaint-covered face and a black backpack containing three canisters of the Corrodium, Mike might as well have had the word “Intruder” emblazoned on his shirt. MacD was dressed identically. Their only chance at remaining undetected was to stay quiet and out of anyone’s sight.
Neither of them had to refer to a map. They had memorized the route inside the ship that would present the least chance of them being discovered. Once at the pump room, Linda would talk them through the process for injecting the canisters’ contents into the air purge system. She would be able to follow their progress via head-mounted cameras and microphones and communicate with them through their earpieces.
> He nodded to Mike, who eased the door open. They didn’t have their sidearms at the ready. Gunfire would raise all kinds of alarms. If it came to a confrontation, their hand-to-hand combat skills would be more than a match for any crew member, and the crew on a tanker like this would be unlikely to carry any weapons.
MacD poked his head in and saw an empty corridor. With only twenty crew on board the Sorocaima, he hoped most of them would currently either be on the bridge or in the engine room, attending to the supposed malfunction. Of course, a crewman could pop out of a random door at any time, ruining everybody’s night. The way MacD figured it, this mission was going to be at least fifty percent luck.
He and Mike crept along the corridor, using only hand signals to communicate. The path to the pump room was straightforward: the third door on the right was a stairwell, then it was four decks down to a hall leading directly to the room.
They reached the third door. MacD heard footsteps clanking up the metal stairs. He gestured to a utility room across the hallway. With no time to check if it was clear, they ducked inside. To MacD’s relief, it turned out to be empty, and they got the door closed just as the stairwell door banged open. They listened as footfalls trudged down the hallway until the outer door slammed open and then closed. Silence descended.
“I hope we didn’t use up all our luck on that one,” Mike said.
“My daddy always said, ‘Luck never gives, it lends,’” MacD replied. “Let’s get this done before we have to pay it back.”
“Amen, brother.”
MacD pushed the door open and they stole across the hall. They didn’t run into anyone else before they reached the door of the pump room. There was too much ambient noise on the opposite side of the door to be sure that the room was empty.
He cracked the door and, from his limited viewpoint, saw no one. He was tempted to continue inside slowly, but two voices somewhere behind them speaking Spanish made time a luxury. Even if the men simply passed by, he and Mike would surely be seen.
They moved through the door and immediately realized their luck was about to run out. Linda mumbled a curse in their ears because she could see the same thing they saw.
Two crewmen were hunched over a display, both with their backs to the door. Neither of them had heard MacD and Mike enter, and Mike, realizing that the door was closing quickly enough to be heard over the background noise, jammed his hand between the door and jamb to keep it from making a sound. He grimaced in pain but stayed silent. MacD moved the door enough for Mike to pull his hand away and then eased the door latch closed with nary a scrape of metal. MacD silently thanked the crew for being diligent enough to keep all of the hinges well oiled.
The two crewmen still hadn’t noticed them, but one turn of the head and their presence would be known. They were only twenty feet from the purge valve that MacD and Mike needed to access. There was no way to reach it without being seen. Knocking them out wasn’t the answer because it would reveal that intruders were on board.
They retreated behind a vertical pipe as big around as an oak tree and kept an eye on the two men from their hidden vantage point. All they could do now was wait and hope the crewmen would go on to other tasks in another part of the ship.
Five minutes went by. Then six. Then seven. The crewmen didn’t budge.
“This isn’t working,” Linda whispered, knowing they couldn’t respond. “If we wait any longer, the ship will get under way before you can do the job. Let’s see if we can get them out of there.”
Three loud bangs reverberated through the hull. Linda had reactivated the beatbox.
The crewmen’s heads snapped up and twirled around, looking for the source of the noise. One of them raised a walkie-talkie and fired off rapid Spanish, shrugging and pointing to the display as he spoke. Whatever the problem was, it obviously wasn’t in the pumping system because they had been monitoring it when the bangs were heard.
The crewman lowered his walkie-talkie and gestured for the other man to follow him out of the room. The door slammed shut behind them, leaving MacD and Mike alone.
“How did you know that would work?” MacD asked as they dashed over to the gas purge controls.
“I didn’t,” Linda replied, “but it was the only thing we had. They’re probably certain the problem is in the engine room now.”
Mike, who couldn’t hold anything with his injured right hand, removed the canisters from his pack with his left. “What if the captain decides to turn back?”
“That’s a chance I had to take. Unless his gauges are telling him something else, we’ll hope that he’ll assume the noise is incidental and report it to the maintenance crew when he arrives at his destination.”
While Mike stood watch at the door, Linda talked MacD through the injection process. With her guidance, he attached each of the six canisters to the valve junction in sequence and in five minutes the Corrodium bacteria was multiplying inside the Sorocaima’s holds.
Like campers in a national park, they planned to leave no trace. MacD checked the work area to make sure it was clean and started putting the canisters back into their packs.
Before he was finished, he felt a vibration thrum through the floor.
“Is that you?” he asked Linda.
“Negative. They’ve engaged the engine. The tanker is getting under way. Get out of there now!”
MacD, with the shortened deadline, couldn’t argue with that order. He jammed the last of the canisters into the pack and handed it to Mike, who put it on.
They retraced their way out. When they got to the main deck corridor and reached the end of the hall, three men were outside, smoking cigarettes and talking, apparently happy that they were on course again.
“Hurry up,” Linda said. “You’re already up to five knots. I won’t be able to keep up with you much longer.”
“We can’t reach our climbing equipment,” MacD said to her. “The port exit’s blocked.”
“I don’t think we can wait them out this time,” Mike said. He pointed at the other end of the corridor leading out to the starboard side of the ship. “How do you feel like going for a swim?”
MacD shrugged. “Why not?”
They sprinted down the hall, expecting at any moment to see a crewman emerge from a door right in front of them. When they got to the end of the corridor, MacD checked the door. It was clear.
Outside, the wind whipped across the deck as the tanker gained speed.
“Linda, we’re about to take a dip on the starboard side,” MacD said, knowing that their electronics would be fried as soon as they hit the water. “We sure would appreciate you coming on over and picking us up when you get a chance.”
“Roger that,” she replied. “I’m on my way.”
With one last look to make sure they were alone, MacD and Mike climbed onto the rail. They launched themselves forward, competing to see who could make the better swan dive. Although they entered the water with splashes, MacD was sure that nobody on the tanker would have noticed in the darkness.
MacD surfaced and bobbed in the Sorocaima’s wake as it churned toward its destination in North Korea. Mike paddled beside him.
“How’s the hand?” MacD asked him.
“Nothing an ice bucket won’t cure,” Mike replied.
In three minutes, with the tanker far in the distance, the Discovery broke the surface and Linda stuck her head out of the hatch.
“You look like you both made it through just fine,” she said with a smile, “but I give you only a three on the dives. Let’s see a gainer or a twist next time.”
MacD turned to Mike and said, “Everyone’s a critic.”
“Especially a squid.”
Like swabbie, squid was a nickname the other services used for a member of the Navy.
“Keep calling me that,” Linda said, “and I might just leave you both behind.”
/>
In another minute, they were on the sub, with towels and coffee in hand, to begin the wait for the Oregon to return and pick them up.
The beatbox, now detached from the Sorocaima and with its tube deflated, was drifting to the bottom of the Caribbean. The only items they’d left behind were the climbing magnets still stuck to the side of the ship. Once the batteries discharged, however, they would fall away, disposing of the last evidence that any intruders had ever been aboard.
Juan Cabrillo grinned when he spotted the ill-advised roadblock ahead. Two tractor-trailers had been stretched across the far end of a bridge leading to the peninsula where Juan intended to rendezvous with the Oregon. Two Humvees with armed soldiers waited with the trucks, and three more Humvees trailed the tank, their occupants taking the occasional ineffective potshot.
Not wanting to reveal their final destination, Juan and Linc had led their pursuers on a stop-and-go chase around the city while Max got the Oregon in position. Max had just radioed that they were ready, so they were on the way to their hilltop objective.
“You see it?” Juan said into his headset.
“Unless those trailers are filled with lead,” Franklin Lincoln replied from the driver’s seat, “I think they’re underestimating what a sixty-five-ton tank can do.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and show them?”
“My pleasure.”
Linc gunned the Abrams up to its governed top speed of forty miles an hour. The tank bolted across the bridge, an implacable juggernaut charging toward what the Venezuelans must have thought were immovable objects.
Juan knew how wrong they were.
The Abrams plowed through the trucks like a linebacker tearing through a paper banner before a football game. Juan felt the tank barely slow as the empty trucks were pulverized, showering the nearby soldiers with metal shards.
Juan turned to see the Humvees crawling through the wreckage to continue the chase as the tank made its way down the shoreline road. He checked the fuel level. They were getting dangerously close to empty, and they still had two miles to go. If they ran out of gas in the middle of the road, the Venezuelans would be able to call in bigger weapons and either wait them out or blow the tank up. They’d be as good as dead.