Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

Max was holding his breath watching the main monitor where it displayed the torpedoes’ paths. They passed within six feet of the tanker’s flat bottom and within eleven feet of each other. Everyone in the op center let out a collective breath.

“GET me down there,” Juan shouted, pointing at the tanker.

Adams threw the chopper in a steep dive before saying, “I can’t guarantee I can pick you up again. We’re low on fuel.”

“Doesn’t matter.” There was fury in Cabrillo’s voice.

The Robinson rushed over the tanker’s bow like a hawk coming out of a stoop, its skids no more than ten feet off the deck as Adams chased Singer down the length of the ship. Juan already had his safety belt off and was ready with his shoulder braced against his door. He unslung his MP-5 and dumped it on the seat. When he’d jumped the first time the machine pistol had gouged painfully into his back. This leap was going to be even tougher.

Singer must have heard the chopper because he looked up over his shoulder. His eyes went wide and he started running even harder. There was a dark object in his hand that Juan recognized as the detonator battery. Singer cut to his right, trying to get his pursuers to fly into a manifold tower rising forty feet from the deck and also to reach the rail so he could hurl the battery into the sea.

Juan forced open his door. The drop was ten feet and the chopper was moving at least ten miles per hour, but he leapt anyway.

He hit hard, tumbling across the hot steel plates until he crashed into a pipe support. He hauled himself to his feet, his body feeling the collective result of so much punishment. He took off at a dead sprint, his pistol out of its holster and clutched tightly in his fist.

Singer had seen him jump from the chopper and redoubled his pace, his long strides eating distance like a gazelle. But no matter how badly he wanted to toss the battery overboard and complete his mission the man behind him was driven even harder. He glanced over his shoulder again to see Cabrillo gaining ground, his face a mask of rage.

A fresh waved surged under the tanker, making her hull moan with the stress. The tear along her port side slammed closed as the swell buckled the keel. Then, as it passed by, the split opened again, tearing wider than before. Singer had seen the gap and was far enough from the rail to avoid it when it closed but when it yawned opened he never thought it would rip the deck so easily.

Singer tried to avoid it, and was awkwardly shifting his weight when his foot fell through, shredding his rain pants and the flesh of his leg against the jagged edge. The paperback-sized battery pack went skittering. He screamed at the pain and his other leg fell into the hole, dangling above the slick surface of the flocculent still sloshing in the tank. The searing metal blistered his hands as he struggled to pull himself free before the gap slammed shut.

Cabrillo dove into him at full speed just as the tanker shifted again and the two sides of the tear scissored closed. He tumbled with Singer amid a spray of warm liquid and a keening cry that pierced his brain. When he recovered from the fall he looked at Singer. Everything below the top of his thighs had been cut off and had dropped into the tank. Blood spilled from the clean slices

in torrents that turned pink in the rain.

He crawled to Singer and turned him faceup. He was ghostly pale and his lips had already turned blue. His scream suddenly ended as his brain refused to feel anymore pain. He was slipping into shock.

“Why?” Juan demanded before the man succumbed to the trauma.

“I had to,” Singer whispered. “People have to act before it’s too late.”

“Haven’t you figured out that the future takes care of itself? A hundred years ago you never saw the sun in London because of the industrial pollution. Technology evolved and the pall went away. Today you say the problem is cars causing global warming. In ten or twenty years something will come along that makes the internal combustion engine obsolete.”

“We can’t wait that long.”

“Then you should have spent your millions on inventing it sooner rather than squandering it on a demonstration that can’t possibly change anything. That’s the problem with your movement, Singer. You’re all about propaganda and press releases, not concrete solutions.”

“The people would have demanded action,” he said weakly.

“For a day or a week. To effect change you need alternatives, not ultimatums.”

Singer said nothing, but as he died it was his defiance that was the last thing to fade from his eyes.

Fanatics like him would never understand the nature of compromise and Juan knew he shouldn’t have bothered. He lurched to his feet to recover the battery pack and started running for the bow.

“Talk to me, Max.”

“You’ve got three minutes before the torpedoes run out their charges.”

Because of the guide wires spooling out from the Oregon, the outer tube doors couldn’t be closed to load any more torpedoes from the ship’s store. If Juan didn’t set off the Hypertherm now it would take thirty minutes to get two fresh torpedoes into the water and he knew the Gulf of Sidra would break up before then.

“Don’t wait for me no matter what. If I can’t detonate the Hypertherm, hit the ship with the torpedoes anyway. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the blast will ignite the cutting charges.”

“I hear you, but I don’t like it.”

“How the hell do you think I feel?” Juan said as he ran.

The tanker seemed impossibly long, her bows like a horizon that never grew closer. The heat radiating from the deck made his pores run with sweat and each time his left foot slapped the ground he could feel the blisters popping. He ignored it all and sprinted on.