Golden Buddha

Then he set the receiver down and dashed out the door.

The rescue team and the freed prisoners were crammed into the cargo bed of the truck like Japanese workers during rush hour. The driver shifted the weary old transmission into gear with a brief metallic grind, and the truck leaped forward. The streets were as before, the auto traffic thin, while Cubans were enjoying a balmy evening outside on their balconies, sitting at chairs and tables on the sidewalks or drinking in the cantinas, dancing and singing.

Seng cocked his ear out the window and listened for any sound of alarms or sirens. There came only the strains of music in the night air. The harshest sound came from the truck’s muffler, which seemed to be coming loose from the engine header pipe. The rattle of the exhaust soon drowned out the city noise. He saw Cubans glance at the truck and then turn away. Loose exhaust pipes and rusted-out mufflers were common on the old cars that traveled the streets of Santiago. The city’s inhabitants had more entertaining thoughts on their minds.

The truck driver drove maddeningly slow, but Seng knew better than to push him. A truck casually taking its time through town would arouse no suspicion. After what seemed an hour, but was only fifteen minutes, the driver pulled up alongside a warehouse dock and stopped. A quick look up and down the deserted dock and Seng began goading everyone toward the maintenance shed. The five-minute journey to the shed was uneventful.

Their luck still held. The only activity was centered on the two cargo ships unloading their big containers. Though still apprehensive, Seng finally began to relax. He motioned them through the door of the maintenance shed and down the wooden stairs. In the darkness he saw the vague shape of the Nomad sub’s pilot, standing on the floating dock and helping the Cubans on board. The other pilot was down below, packing them tightly inside the narrow confines of the Nomad’s main cabin.

When Seng and Julia Huxley, the last to board, climbed onto the sub’s upper deck, the pilot quickly cast off the mooring lines, looked up briefly and said, “You made good time.”

“Get to the ship as fast as this craft can take us,” Seng replied. “We couldn’t help setting off an alarm. I’m surprised Cuban security forces aren’t already breathing down our neck.”

“If they haven’t tracked you here,” said the pilot confidently as he closed and sealed the hatch, “they’ll never guess where you came from.”

“At least not until the Oregon’s found missing from her assigned anchorage.”

In seconds the sub was dropping beneath the surface of the dark water. Fifteen minutes later it surfaced inside the moon pool of the Oregon. Divers attached the hook and cable of the big overhead crane, and the Nomad was lifted delicately until it was even with the second deck and moored to the balcony. Huxley’s medical team was waiting along with several members of the ship’s crew to help the Cubans to the Oregon’s well-equipped hospital.

The time was three minutes past eleven.

A thin man, his hair white before his time, recognized Cabrillo as an officer and walked unsteadily up to him. “Sir, my name is Juan Tural. Can you tell me who you people are and why you rescued my friends and me from Santa Ursula?”

“We are a corporation, and we were contracted to do this job.”

“Who hired you?”

“Friends of yours in the United States,” answered Cabrillo. “That’s all that I can say.”

“Then you had no idealistic purpose, no political cause?”

Cabrillo smiled slightly. “We always have a purpose.”

Tural sighed. “I had hoped that salvation, when it came, would come from another quarter.”

“Your people did not have the means to do it. It’s that simple. That is why they came to us.”

“It’s a great pity your only motivation was money.”

“It wasn’t. Money is simply the vehicle,” said Cabrillo. “It allows our corporation to pick its fights and to fund our charity projects. It’s a liberty none of us had when we were employed by our respective governments.” He glanced at his chronograph. “Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re not out of the woods just yet.”

Then he turned and left Tural staring after him as he walked away.

ELEVEN seventeen. If they were going to make a run for it, now was the time, thought Cabrillo. The alarm had long been answered at the prison, and by now patrols were certainly roaming the city and the countryside in search of the escaped prisoners and their rescuers. Their only link was the truck driver, but he could not provide any information to the Cuban security forces, even if he was captured and tortured. His original contact had made no mention of the Oregon. As far as the driver knew, the rescue team had come from a landing party on another part of the island.

Cabrillo lifted a phone and called down to the Corporation’s president in the engine room. “Max?”

Hanley answered almost immediately. “Juan.”

“Have the ballast tanks been pumped dry?”

“Tanks are dry and the hull is raised for speed.”

“The tide is about to turn and will swing us around. We’d better leave while our bow is still aimed toward the main channel. As soon as the anchor comes free, I’ll set the engines very slow. No sense in alerting any observers on the shore to a sudden departure. At the first alarm or when we reach the main channel, whichever comes first, I’ll enter the program for full speed. We’ll need every ounce of power your engines can give.”

“You think you can get us through a narrow channel in the dead of night at full speed without a pilot?”

“The ship’s computer system read every inch of the channel and the buoy markers on the way in. Our escape course is plotted and programmed into the automatic pilot. We’ll leave it to Otis to take us out.” Otis was the crew’s name for the ship’s automated control systems. It could steer the Oregon within inches of the intended route.

“Computerized automated controls or not, it won’t be an easy matter to race through a tight channel at sixty knots.”