Crescent Dawn (Dirk Pitt 21)

“This is Coast Guard vessel SG-301. You are hereby ordered to heave to and prepare for boarding,” he shouted.

As the Coast Guard captain waited to see if the Dayan would slow, his second officer called out to him.

“Sir, there’s another vessel approaching from our starboard.”

The captain looked over to see a dark-colored luxury yacht pull up abreast of the Coast Guard boat, then drop back behind it.

“Tell him to back off, if he doesn’t want to get blasted out of the water,” the captain ordered testily. His attention was quickly diverted back to the tanker, where a figure suddenly appeared above them at the rail.

The captain was surprised to see it was a woman, who stood waving at the boat while attempting to shout something. The captain stepped to the bridge wing, then called back to his helmsman.

“Bring us in tight, I can’t hear her.”

Maria smiled to herself as the Coast Guard boat eased to within a few feet of the tanker’s hull. Standing at the rail, she towered over the smaller vessel yet was easily able to look right at the bridge.

“I need your help,” she shouted at the pair of officers, who both now stood on the wing.

Not waiting for a reply, she reached down to a small duffel bag at her feet and quickly tossed it over the rail. Her throw was nearly perfect, the bag arcing toward one of the officers, who easily plucked it out of the air. She waited a second to watch the officer open the bag, then she dropped to the deck and covered her head.

The ensuing explosion lit up the night sky with a bright flash followed by a thunderous roar. Maria waited for the flying debris to land before peeking over the side rail. The Coast Guard boat’s bridge was a scene of annihilation. The blast had gutted the entire superstructure, vaporizing all of the men who stood there. Smoke billowed to the sky from a dozen small fires that were consuming the boat’s electronic components. Around the rest of the boat, stunned and burned sailors were picking themselves up after having been knocked flat by the concussion.

Maria crept down the passageway on her own vessel, then yelled through an open doorway.

r /> “Now!” she screamed.

Her small team of armed gunmen burst out of the door and sprinted to the rail, immediately spraying their weapons on the dazed sailors below. The firefight was short-lived, as the 30mm gun crew was quickly eradicated, followed by the boarding crew. A few of the sailors recovered quickly and returned fire. But they were forced to shoot at an awkward angle, which deprived them of cover. Within minutes they were overwhelmed, and the patrol boat’s deck was a mass of dead and wounded men.

Maria called for her shooters to cease, then spoke into a handheld radio. Seconds later, the blue yacht came racing up alongside the patrol boat, then slowed and gingerly began nudging against the Coast Guard vessel’s bow. It took just a few bumps before the patrol boat was scraping and banging against the side of the tanker. Without power, the patrol boat began losing momentum and slid back alongside the tanker’s flank.

The yacht slowed as well, gradually slipping abreast of the patrol boat while keeping it pressed against the Dayan until the Dayan’s stern loomed up. Holding steady, the yacht waited until the tip of the boat’s bow crossed the transom, then gave it a hard nudge with full bow thrusters. The boat pivoted left and surged across the flattened waters off the tanker’s stern. A muffled bang arose from beneath the surface as the tanker’s giant bronze propeller dug into the hull of the boat.

With its decks bloodied by the dead and wounded and its wheelhouse spewing smoke, the Coast Guard boat suddenly lurched and listed heavily to starboard. Only a scattering of screams pierced the night air as its bow nosed into the air, and then the entire ship rocked back onto its stern, disappearing beneath the waves as if she’d never been.

66

BOTH PHYSICAL AND MENTAL FATIGUE WERE BEGINNING to weigh on Pitt after two hours of running at high speed at night. They had traveled past the center of the Sea of Marmara, where they encountered larger swells that sent the Bullet airborne every few seconds. In the rear seat, Lazlo had finally calmed his stomach but had grown sore from the ceaseless pounding on the submersible’s hull.

Their hopes were lifted when they picked up the radio traffic from the Coast Guard patrol boat on the international distress channel.

“I think I heard them call the Dayan,” Giordino said, dialing up the volume on the VHF radio to hear over the roar of the Bullet’s engines.

They listened closely over the next few minutes as the repeated calls to the Dayan went unanswered. Then the radio fell silent altogether. A few minutes later, Giordino spotted a small white flash on the horizon.

“Did you see that?” he asked Pitt.

“I caught glimpse of a flash dead ahead.”

“It looked like a fireball to me.”

“An explosion?” Lazlo asked, craning his neck forward. “Is it the tanker?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Pitt replied. “It didn’t appear that large. But we’re too far away to know for sure.”

“It could be upward of ten miles away,” Giordino agreed. He gazed at the navigation screen, eyeing the entrance to the Bosphorus near the top of its digital map. “That would put them pretty close to Istanbul.”

“Which means we’re still about fifteen minutes behind,” Pitt said.

The cabin fell silent in conjunction with the radio. Pitt, like the others, could only assume that the Turkish authorities had failed to stop the tanker. It might well be up to them to avert a catastrophic explosion that could kill tens of thousands. But what could three men in a submersible possibly hope to do?