Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

“Two minutes,” Max said over the radio when Cabrillo finally reached the string of Hypertherm bisecting the ship.

When Singer had yanked the battery from the detonator, he had torn the wires that carried the electricity to set off the charge. Juan had to first disconnect the detonator from between two lengths of the explosives so he didn’t accidentally complete the circuit. Using the pocketknife Eddie had recovered at the Devil’s Oasis, he had to peel back the plastic insulation to expose the copper before he could twist the wires back together. There were three of them and it took twenty seconds each.

A status light embedded in the detonator turned green. He had a complete circuit.

“One minute, Juan.”

He clipped a length of Hypertherm to one side of the detonator and was moving to the second when he heard over the radio. “Chairman, it’s Murph. Torpedoes are a hundred and fifty yards out.”

“Keep them coming. I’ve almost got it. There!”

The string was complete. He turned and started running aft, hampered by the stinging pain radiating from his charred foot. He was now in a race against two torpedoes homing in on the ship at forty knots. He’d covered a hundred feet when Murph reported the torpedoes were a hundred yards away. He accelerated through the agony, not caring that he was crying out with every step.

“Fifty yards, Chairman,” Mark said as if it were his fault.

Juan let it go for another few seconds, gaining a couple more feet before pressing the remote.

In a blazing arc that rivaled the sun, the Hypertherm ignited, its magnesium core spiking to two thousand degrees. The burn raced from the center of the ship like lightning, making the steel deck as soft as wax and then heating it further so it dripped into the hold like water. The bow was wreathed in a noxious cloud of smoke and scorched metal. The light it gave off filled the sky, turning the cheerless gray into brilliant white. The explosive cut completely across the deck and then continued on, slicing open the hull down to the waterline in a blink of an eye.

Juan could feel the intense thermal shock on his back from three hundred feet away and had it not been for the rain he probably would have lost the hair on his head.

As quickly as it had ignited and burned through the ship, the Hypertherm exhausted itself, leaving in its passing a long narrow gash with edges that glowed with residual heat.

He managed to cover another twenty yards before the Test-71s hurtled into the ship directly below where the charge had cut the hull. The concussion from the twin explosions lifted him off his feet and threw him down the deck as water and torn metal geysered up from the blasts. The bow was torn free of the rest of the tanker and sank in an instant. The force of her passage through the ocean caused water to surge into her holds, forcing the nearly three quarter load of flocculent to squeeze toward the stern through the pipes that connected the tanks. A gout erupted from the tear in her side, sending gel squirting more than a hundred feet. They had known this would happen, but accepted it as a small price to pay as the remainder of the organic flocculent remained trapped within the ship.

Juan staggered to his feet, his head pounding with an unholy ring. Looking forward he could see the ocean climbing up over where the bow had been in a wall of water that seemed to grow in height as the ship settled into the sea’s embrace. The Gulf of Sidra was sealing her own fate as her massive diesel engine continued to turn the propeller, ramming her under the waves at seventeen knots.

“Juan, it’s George.” He looked up to see the chopper hovering above him. “I think I have enough fuel to make one attempt.”

“You won’t have time,” Juan said as he ran aft again. “This pig’s sinking faster than I thought she would. She’ll be gone in less than a minute.”

“I’m going to try anyway. I’ll meet you at the stern rail.”

Cabrillo just kept running.

“And we’re coming in,” Max Hanley called from the Oregon. “Rescue crews are gearing up now if you go into the drink.”

Juan ran on, coming down the starboard side of the ship so he could avoid where the hull had been breached. Behind him the sea climbed higher. Already a third of the tanker was awash and every second saw more of her go under.

He reached the superstructure and raced down the narrow space between it and the rail, his legs pumping up the ever steepening deck. He reached the Sidra’s jack post with its soaked Liberian flag just as water reached the leading edge of the accommodation block. There was no sign of George Adams in the Robinson. Cabrillo would just have to hold on and pray he didn’t get sucked too deep when the ship plummeted out from under him.

He had just started climbing over the rail when the chopper careened from around the crazily tilted superstructure. From its back door dangled a patchwork rope made of assault rifle slings, a fatigue jacket, some lengths of wire pilfered from somewhere in the cockpit, and Eddie Seng’s pants looped at the bottom.

A line of portholes one story above Cabrillo exploded, blown outward by the buildup of air pressure as water filled the superstructure. He turned away from the shower of glass that rained downward and looked up again in time to see Eddie’s pants swinging at him.

He leapt as they arced just above his head, slipping an arm through the pant legs, and was jerked into the air, spinning and twisting like a coin on the end of a string. Below him the Gulf of Sidra vanished under the waves, her grave marked by a pool of gel many thousands of times smaller than what Daniel Singer had intended.

The first person to greet them in the Oregon’s hangar after George’s unbelievable landing was Maurice. He was dressed impeccably in his trademark black suit with a crisp white towel over one arm. In the other he held aloft a serving dish with a silver cover. As Juan staggered from the Robinson, and Max, Linda, and Sloane arrived in a jubilant rush, Maurice approached and whipped off the cover with a flourish.

“As per your earlier request, Captain.”

“My earlier request?” Dulled by fatigue, Juan had no idea what the steward was talking about.

Maurice was too dour to ever smile, but his eyes glinted with merriment. “I know this isn’t technically a hurricane but I believe you would enjoy your Gruyère cheese and lobster soufflé with a baked Alaska for dessert.”

His timing had been so perfect that the delicate soufflé hadn’t settled and steam curled from its top. Laughter echoed throughout the hangar.

IT would be the tenth squall of the year to form in the Atlantic powerful enough to become a tropical storm and thus deserve a name. Though it had started to evolve into a hurricane with a massive potential for destruction, the eye never seemed to fully form. Meteorologists had no explanation why. They’d never seen a phenomenon like it.