Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

Adams looped them around and into the wind, coming at the tanker from an altitude of a hundred feet, the restless sea seeming to pulse just below the landing skids. They crossed over the ship’s rail and George reined in the little chopper, holding her steady against the gusts in an expert flying demonstration as he dumped altitude. He maintained a hover twenty feet higher than the deck rose on even the biggest waves.

“Eddie, go.”

Eddie Seng pushed open the door opposite him, fighting to keep it open with one foot while he used the other to kick the coils of Hypertherm out of the helicopter. The explosives fell to the deck below like an entangled nest of snakes. When the last of it disappeared over the sill he straightened and the wind slammed the door closed.

“Now for the hard part,” George muttered, keeping an eye on the horizon, gauging the swells and the frequency of the gusts. A few drops of rain pattered against the windscreen. He didn’t let this ominous development crack his concentration.

Juan and Eddie both waited with their hands poised on their door handles, their machine pistols slung across their backs.

An explosion of spume erupted across the width of the tanker’s bow as she plowed into another monster wave; as she started riding up it, George started to lower the Robinson. He’d judged it perfectly. The deck was no more than five feet from the chopper’s skids when the ship started to settle again.

“See ya, boys.”

Cabrillo and Seng opened their doors and jumped without a moment’s hesitation, freeing Adams to lift away from the ship before she slammed another wave in the unrelenting cycle.

Juan hit the deck and rolled, immediately surprised at how hot the metal was. He could barely stand the temperature through the thick weave of his fatigues and he got to his feet as fast as he could. He knew the heat would seep through the rubber soles of his boots in minutes. He didn’t care about his prosthesis, he’d never feel it, but his other foot and Eddie’s were in for first- or second-degree burns if this took too long.

“This is going to suck,” Eddie said as if reading Juan’s mind.

“The spray hitting the bow should make it a little cooler there,” Juan said as they reached the pile of Hypertherm. He waved up at George in the Robinson hovering five hundred feet above them. Adams was their lookout in case Singer appeared.

Because of the Gulf of Sidra’s inertia, Juan had decided changing the ship’s course or ramming her engine into full reverse would have little effect. The best chance of stopping Singer was laying the Hypertherm as quickly as possible.

The metal-cutting explosives were configured in twenty-foot lengths with electricity-conducting clips on their ends so sections could be joined into a single charge. The detonator and battery pack could be set between any two segments, but in order to produce the desired results they would need to set it as close to the middle as possible.

Juan lifted ropes of the Hypertherm over his shoulders until he felt his knees about to buckle. By the time he was finished his left sock was soaked with perspiration.

“Ready?” he grunted.

“Let’s go.”

Staggering under their hundred-and-fifty-pound loads, the two men marched toward the bow, both trailing dreadlocks of gray explosives. The wind and the ship’s motion made them lurch drunkenly but they fought on. When they finally reached an area soaked by spray they saw tendrils of steam spiraling up from the deck. It reminded Juan of a visit to the hot springs at Yellowstone when he was a kid. He dumped his burden thirty feet from the prow. It was as close as they could get without risking being swept overboard by the eruptions of spray.

“How are we looking, George?” Juan panted.

“I did a flyby of the bridge but didn’t see anyone. The decks are a mess of pipes and manifolds. I don’t see Singer anywhere.”

“How about you, Max?”

“We’re within the torpedoes’ range and waiting for your signal.”

“Okay.”

What Juan thought was an eruption of spray blasting over the front of the ship turned out to be a microburst of heavy rain. It slackened after a few seconds but didn’t entirely abate. They had been running under two unforgiving deadlines. One was to prevent the tanker from completing its turn, and the other was to lay the explosives and be back aboard the Oregon before the rain made flying impossible. He could only hope they had better luck with the former.

Eddie started laying the explosives across the width of the ship along one of the seams where two hull sections had been welded together. Juan was busy with the detonator, testing it a couple of times with the remote control he carried in his pocket before jacking it in to the first length of Hypertherm. It took six twenty-foot segments to span the tanker’s beam. Each one contained a battery that when activated generated a magnetic field that anchored the explosives to the steel deck and prevented it from rolling with the ship.

Eddie and Juan had to work together to lower a length over each of the tanker’s sides so that some of the Hypertherm dangled in the water. Again the electromagnets clamped it to the hull along one of its welded seams. When they were finished they had a line of explosives that covered every inch of the ship above the waterline. The extra lengths they left piled on the deck.

Juan radioed George for extraction as soon as Eddie made the final connection. The rain was growing heavier, near horizontal sheets that cut visibility so the distant superstructure was as nebulous as a ghost. As Adams prepared to make the trickiest pickup of his distinguished career Cabrillo called Hanley.

“Max, the charges are laid. Go ahead and fire the torpedoes. We should be out of here by the time they arrive.”

“Roger that.” Max replied.

Back in the op center Mark Murphy opened both outer tube doors and brought up the torpedo control program on his computer. Linked through the ship’s radar and sonar systems, a three-dimensional wire frame representation of the tactical picture came up on his screen. He could clearly see the Gulf of Sidra steaming seven thousand yards from the Oregon. In the parlance of World War Two submariners, this was going to be a turkey shoot.

“Wepps, on my mark fire Tube One,” Max ordered. “Mark.”