Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

MacD shrugged. “Why not?”

They sprinted down the hall, expecting at any moment to see a crewman emerge from a door right in front of them. When they got to the end of the corridor, MacD checked the door. It was clear.

Outside, the wind whipped across the deck as the tanker gained speed.

“Linda, we’re about to take a dip on the starboard side,” MacD said, knowing that their electronics would be fried as soon as they hit the water. “We sure would appreciate you coming on over and picking us up when you get a chance.”

“Roger that,” she replied. “I’m on my way.”

With one last look to make sure they were alone, MacD and Mike climbed onto the rail. They launched themselves forward, competing to see who could make the better swan dive. Although they entered the water with splashes, MacD was sure that nobody on the tanker would have noticed in the darkness.

MacD surfaced and bobbed in the Sorocaima’s wake as it churned toward its destination in North Korea. Mike paddled beside him.

“How’s the hand?” MacD asked him.

“Nothing an ice bucket won’t cure,” Mike replied.

In three minutes, with the tanker far in the distance, the Discovery broke the surface and Linda stuck her head out of the hatch.

“You look like you both made it through just fine,” she said with a smile, “but I give you only a three on the dives. Let’s see a gainer or a twist next time.”

MacD turned to Mike and said, “Everyone’s a critic.”

“Especially a squid.”

Like swabbie, squid was a nickname the other services used for a member of the Navy.

“Keep calling me that,” Linda said, “and I might just leave you both behind.”

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In another minute, they were on the sub, with towels and coffee in hand, to begin the wait for the Oregon to return and pick them up.

The beatbox, now detached from the Sorocaima and with its tube deflated, was drifting to the bottom of the Caribbean. The only items they’d left behind were the climbing magnets still stuck to the side of the ship. Once the batteries discharged, however, they would fall away, disposing of the last evidence that any intruders had ever been aboard.

Juan Cabrillo grinned when he spotted the ill-advised roadblock ahead. Two tractor-trailers had been stretched across the far end of a bridge leading to the peninsula where Juan intended to rendezvous with the Oregon. Two Humvees with armed soldiers waited with the trucks, and three more Humvees trailed the tank, their occupants taking the occasional ineffective potshot.

Not wanting to reveal their final destination, Juan and Linc had led their pursuers on a stop-and-go chase around the city while Max got the Oregon in position. Max had just radioed that they were ready, so they were on the way to their hilltop objective.

“You see it?” Juan said into his headset.

“Unless those trailers are filled with lead,” Franklin Lincoln replied from the driver’s seat, “I think they’re underestimating what a sixty-five-ton tank can do.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and show them?”

“My pleasure.”

Linc gunned the Abrams up to its governed top speed of forty miles an hour. The tank bolted across the bridge, an implacable juggernaut charging toward what the Venezuelans must have thought were immovable objects.

Juan knew how wrong they were.

The Abrams plowed through the trucks like a linebacker tearing through a paper banner before a football game. Juan felt the tank barely slow as the empty trucks were pulverized, showering the nearby soldiers with metal shards.

Juan turned to see the Humvees crawling through the wreckage to continue the chase as the tank made its way down the shoreline road. He checked the fuel level. They were getting dangerously close to empty, and they still had two miles to go. If they ran out of gas in the middle of the road, the Venezuelans would be able to call in bigger weapons and either wait them out or blow the tank up. They’d be as good as dead.

Juan’s escape plan depended on having a few minutes outside the tank undisturbed. If they were surrounded by soldiers with rifles when they reached the top of the hill on the peninsula, they’d be shot as soon as they opened the hatches.

That meant slowing down their pursuers, and the power lines strung along the edge of the roadway gave Juan an idea.