Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

“You got it.”

Juan killed the connection. “Wepps, what’s the status on our fish?”

On each side of the Oregon’s prow below her waterline was a tube capable of launching a Russian Test-71 torpedo. Each of the two-ton weapons were wire guided, with a range of nearly ten miles, a maximum speed of forty knots, and four hundred and fifty pounds of high explosives loaded into its nose. When he’d designed the Oregon Cabrillo had wanted American-made MK-48 ADCAP torpedoes, but no amount of sweet-talking would budge Langston’s refusal. As it was, the surplus Soviet torpedoes were powerful enough to sink any but the most heavily armored ships.

“You’re not considering torpedoing the Sidra, are you?” Mark asked. “That’ll dump her entire load of gel in one concentrated spot. At this stage that much heat could have nearly the same effect as if the ship had completed her circle.”

“I’m just covering all my options,” Juan reassured him.

“Okay, good.” Mark called up a diagnostic on the torpedoes. “They were pulled from the tubes three days ago for routine inspection. A battery on the fish in Tube One was replaced. Both are showing full charge now.”

“So what’s your play?” Max asked Juan.

“Simplest solution is to chopper a team over there, take control of the tanker, and shut off her discharge pumps.”

“You know, Chairman,” Eric said, “if we sail her far enough away from the eye and start dumping the gel again, the heat should generate excess evaporation and create another powerful low pressure zone. It would disrupt the storm and literally tear it apart.”

“Oh, God!” Hali exclaimed suddenly. He hit a switch on his panel and a strident voice filled the control room.

“I repeat, this is Adonis Cassedine, master of the VLCC Gulf of Sidra. A storm has cracked our hull. We are under ballast so there is no oil spill but we must abandon ship

if she breaks up any more.” He gave his coordinates. “I am declaring an emergency. Please, can anyone hear my signal? Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

“Under ballast, my eye,” Max grumbled. “What do you want to do?”

Cabrillo sat motionless, his hand cupped around his chin. “Let ’em sweat. He’ll keep making reports even if nobody answers him. Eric, what’s our ETA now?”

“Still looking at about three hours.”

“The Sidra won’t last that long in these seas with a cracked hull,” Max said. “Especially if her keel’s affected. Hell, she could break apart in three minutes.”

Juan couldn’t argue the point. They had to do something but his options were limited. Letting the tanker break up on her own was the worst of them and it seemed Eric’s idea of using her to defuse the storm was out. The best he could hope for was to put the ship on the bottom with the least amount of spilled gel. The Test-71 torpedoes could do the job, but it might take hours for the hull to finally disappear under the waves, which meant hours of her continuing to disgorge her cargo.

Inspiration came from his experience on the Or Death with Sloane, when the boat was hit by a missile fired from the yacht guarding the wave-powered generators. She’d sunk in an instant because her bow had been ripped off while she was at speed. Cabrillo didn’t consider the countless pitfalls in his crazy idea, he just set about getting it organized.

“Linc, Eddie, go down to the stores and get me two hundred feet of Hypertherm, the stuff with the electromagnets on the casings.” The plastic explosive–like material was a magnesium-based compound capable of burning at nearly two thousand degrees Celsius and was used in salvage operations to cut steel underwater. “Meet me in the hangar. Eddie, kit up on your way. I can’t guarantee what kind of reception we’re going to get on the Sidra.”

“What about me?” Linc asked.

“Sorry, but we’ve got weight limitations.”

Max touched Juan’s shoulder. “Obviously you’ve come up with something devious and underhanded. Care to enlighten us?” After Cabrillo explained his plan, Hanley nodded. “Like I said, devious and underhanded.”

“Is there any other way?”

31

GEORGE Adams’s face was a mask of concentration, his fingers curled tightly around the Robinson’s controls. Wind and the furiously spinning main rotor blades made the small chopper jittery on the raised helipad, but he wouldn’t take off until the timing was just right.

The Oregon dropped down the back of a large swell and a wall of water suddenly loomed up over the deck, its crest curled and threatened to swamp the helicopter and its three occupants.

“Talk to me, Eric,” he said as the ship started to climb the next wave.

“Hold on, the camera’s almost reached the top. Okay, yeah, there’s a large trough on the other side. You’ve got plenty of time.”

The instant the ship reached the apogee of its ascent Adams gave the Robinson a bit more power, knowing that when they took off the Oregon would drop from under them rather than rise up on a hidden wave and crash into the chopper. As they took to the air the tramp freighter plummeted. George dipped the nose to gain airspeed and then lifted out of the reach of the surging sea and into a maelstrom of wind. He had to turn with the wind to gain more speed and altitude before swinging back into the gale. Hammered by a fifty-knot headwind, the Robinson was making only sixty knots over the ocean, not much faster than the Oregon herself, but Juan had wanted to get to the Gulf of Sidra as quickly as possible.

If the plan held, his ship would be in torpedo range by the time he and Eddie had finished laying the Hypertherm charges.