Plague Ship

“That shaved a few months off my life,” he panted.

“Any chance someone saw you?” Seng asked.

“If you hear an alarm start wailing, you’ll have your answer. Any problems upstairs with the others?”

“One went for his gun. Linc has stopped his bleeding, and if he gets to a hospital in the next couple of hours he’ll make it. We wore face masks, and I was shouting in Mandarin, like we planned, and if those guys know their weapons they’ll recognize the Chinese-made Type 95s.”

“Coupled with the Czech ammunition we’re using, that should keep them guessing.” Max Hanley sauntered over, a wry grin on his face. “You just had to make this harder than it already is, didn’t you?”

“Come on, Max, if we didn’t up the risk we wouldn’t get the exorbitant fees we’ve all grown so accustomed to.”

“I’ll give up part of my cut next time.”

“Any problem with your guy?”

“His nap will last well into tomorrow. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s go find those torpedoes.” In the first of the two large rooms under the elevated platform, they found a store of conventional Russian-made TEST-71 torpedoes, exactly like the ones the Oregon herself carried. It was in the second room, after Linc shot off the lock, that they found Iran’s newest and most lethal weapon. The room was taken up with workbenches, diagnostic computers, and all kinds of electronic gear. In the middle of the space were two shroud-draped shapes that looked a bit like cadavers in a morgue. Max strode over to one and whipped off the sheet. At first glance, the torpedo sitting on the mechanized trolley looked like the TEST-71s except it lacked a propeller. He eyed the twenty-five-foot underwater missile, especially its radically shaped nose. It was this feature that created a bubble of air around the torpedo and allowed it to cut through the water with virtually no friction.

“What do you think?” Juan asked, approaching his second-in-command.

“It’s exactly like the pictures I’ve seen of the Russian Shkval,” the engineer told him. “Form follows function on something like this, meaning there are only a couple of designs that would lead to the supercavitation effect, but this thing is identical to the Russkies’ fish.”

“So they’re helping the Iranians?”

“No doubt.” Max straightened. “The proof’s going to be in the design of the rocket motor, but, for my money, we’ve got them dead to rights.”

“Okay, good. You and Eddie gather everything you can.” Eddie was already at a computer terminal, jacking in a pirate drive that would siphon everything on the system. Linc was looking through log books and binders for anything relevant. Cabrillo turned to Franklin Lincoln, “You ready, big man?”

'Aye.”

Max stopped Juan from leaving the room with a hand to the elbow. “One or two?” Juan cast an eye at the two torpedoes. “In for a penny, in for a pound, let’s take ’em both.”

“You know they are most likely armed and fueled.”

Cabrillo grinned. “So we’ll take ’em carefully.”

While Linc searched the upper platform for the mechanism that would open the main outer doors, Juan climbed up a ladder welded to one wall and walked along a catwalk to the overhead crane’s control cabin. Familiar with all manner of cranes from his years at sea, he powered up the machine and started it trundling down the length of the building toward the head of the dock. As it slid back, a fiendish thought struck him, and he lowered the huge hook assembly. Weighing nearly a ton, and traveling fast enough that it had pendulumed back a couple of degrees, the hook was steered by Cabrillo toward the conning-tower dive plane of Iran’s newest Kilo Class submarine.

The hook didn’t have the momentum to rip the fin off, but the tear it left in the delicate steering control would mean the sub would remain in dry dock for the next couple of months.

When Juan finally had the crane in position, Eddie and Max had wheeled one of the three-ton torpedos from the laboratory and out into the open. He lowered the hook, and they attached sling cables that the Iranians had thoughtfully left in place. When it was secure, Max shot Cabrillo a wave while Eddie went to retrieve his scuba gear.

Cabrillo lifted the torpedo from the trolley and backed the crane out over the water again, making sure to keep it well away from the Kilo. Twenty feet short of the doors, he lowered the weapon into the water, watching for the thick steel cable to slacken, indicating the torpedo was resting on the bottom. He eased off the controls when the line started to bow. Eddie had walked along the jetty, lugging his tanks, helmet, and regulator. He slid into the gear and stepped off the dock. Juan watched where Eddie’s bubbles popped when they reached the surface, and, after a minute, Eddie’s raised thumb rose through the roiling water.

Juan lifted the hook free and set the crane to return to the head of the dock once again, where Max had the second rocket torpedo in position. As the crane crawled along its rails, Juan could see Linc in the upper observation area. He was bent over a computer, working the controls for the outer doors. He must have found the right combination because lights started popping off until only a single one remained illuminated above Hanley. Cabrillo looked over his shoulder. In the distance, he could just make out one of the massive doors swinging outward. That would be Linda’s signal to guide the submersible into the pen. The LIDAR system would pick up the torpedo resting on the bottom, and she knew to wait for word from Cabrillo if they were going to steal another.

Once the second torpedo was slung under the crane, Max joined Linc and together the two men carried the rest of their dive equipment, including Juan’s scuba rig and dry suit, to the edge of the dry dock. They got ready to leave, while Juan positioned the crane to lower the torpedo into the water.

Once the torpedo vanished below the surface and the line went slack, he powered down the crane, reached under the small control panel and ripped out a fistful of wires amid a shower of sparks.

There was no conceivable way the Iranians wouldn’t discover the theft, so the least he could do was make their job of putting the dry dock back in order as difficult as possible. Linc would have set a small explosive charge to disable the computer that controlled the doors and lights and rigged it to blow on a motion sensor. To further muddy the forensic waters, the explosives and trigger were of Chinese manufacture.

Remembering a detail he’d overlooked, Juan pulled the pistol from his holster and flicked it out into space, where it landed with a splash. It was a QSZ-92, the newest standard sidearm of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The Iranians would scour the dry dock for clues, trying to piece together who had infiltrated the base, and he was sure the pistol would be found. What they made of the evidence, he wasn’t sure, but it was fun to mess with their heads.

Rather than waste time laboriously climbing down off the crane, Juan scampered across the enormous I beam that spanned the width of the building. When he reached the cable spool, he gingerly wrapped his hands around the braided cable and lowered himself, hand over hand, until he was ten feet from the dim water, and simply let go.

Max was there with his equipment and helped Juan sling the tank over his shoulders and fit the helmet over his head.

“Linda, do you read?” Juan asked, treading water. Because his helmet was designed to work with the dive suit Linc had bundled in his arms, he wouldn’t be able to use it once he was under.

“Roger, Chairman. Nice dive, by the way. From the splash, I score it a 9.2.”

“Reverse double half twist with a full gainer,” he deadpanned. “We’ve got two fish so start recovery operations while we cycle through the air lock.”

“Affirmative.”

The men could feel water swirl below them as Linda crept forward in the Nomad.

Without an effective dive mask, Cabrillo was guided by Linc down to the air lock, and he let the Chairman enter first. He wedged his considerable bulk through the tight opening, reaching over his head to secure the hatch. When an indicator on the wall turned green, he opened the valves that drained the chamber.

Cabrillo yanked off his helmet as soon as the level dropped below his chin. The air was cold and crisp, refreshing after an hour of breathing the chemically tainted atmosphere trapped in the dry dock. Despite the tight quarters, he managed to wriggle out of his tank without giving Linc too many bruises, so when the air lock was empty he was ready to join Linda in the cockpit.

“Welcome aboard.” She threw him a saucy smile. “How’d it go?”

“Piece of cake,” he said absently, sliding into the reclined seat in his wet Syrian Navy uniform. The computer monitor between them displayed a closed-circuit television shot from below the mini-sub.