Golden Buddha (Oregon Files 1)

The dungeon was not a state-of-the-art prison. The rusting iron cell doors had been hung in the late nineteenth century and still required the large antique key chained to Macco’s belt. Seng ripped the key and its ring from the guard’s belt and began opening the first doors. As soon as the door was swung ajar, Julia Huxley rushed into the cell to check the condition of its inhabitant. Seng’s team helped by assisting the shocked prisoners, who feared the worst, into the dungeon’s passageway.

“Five are in no condition to walk up the stairs and onto the street,” said Julia. “They’ll have to be carried out on stretchers.”

“Then we’ll haul them on our backs,” replied Seng. “We don’t have enough bodies to carry five stretchers.”

“These poor devils think we’re going to execute them,” said a tall, ruggedly built team member with red hair in a buzz cut.

“We haven’t got time to explain!” snapped Seng. He knew that the security officials downtown were wondering why the dungeon alarm in Santa Ursula had been triggered at this time of night. They were certain to call and find the phones down. How soon they would send a squad of men to check was anybody’s guess. “Julia, you round up those who can move on their own two feet. The rest of you men carry the ones too weak to walk.”

They moved off, almost having to drag the poor, suffering Cubans out of the dungeon and up the stairs, every team member with a Cuban over one shoulder, their free arms braced around other prisoners who could barely manage the steps. Julia brought up the rear, supporting two women and whispering encouraging words whose meanings could only come through in her soothing tone—she knew only enough Spanish to order a margarita.

Climbing the winding stone steps was a torturous exertion for the weakened prisoners, but there could be no turning back. Any capture now meant certain execution. They struggled up the steps, chests rising and falling, lungs gasping for air, hearts pounding. Men and women who had long ago given up hope now saw an opportunity to live normal lives again, thanks to these crazy people who were risking death to rescue them.

Seng could not afford the time to sympathize with their plight, or look into their gaunt faces. Any thoughts of compassion were fleeting. Sympathy could come once they reached the safety of the Oregon.

He concentrated on pushing them all toward the main gate, keeping his mind cold and logical.

At last the front of the column reached the guard’s office at the gate. Seng stepped cautiously out onto the brick street. There was no whisper of sound or any sign of vehicles or people. The truck was right where they’d left it.

The team carrying those too weak to walk were huffing and puffing now and soaked in sweat from the tropical humidity. Warily, Seng studied the darkened street and buildings through his laser night binoculars. The area was clear. Satisfied, he hustled everyone through the gate and shoved them roughly in the direction of the truck.

He rushed back into the office and checked the guard. He was still unconscious. He also spotted a red light on a console beside the desk. The alarm had indeed been activated when they’d opened the dungeon door. The phone began to ring, and he picked it up and snapped in Spanish, “Uno momento!”

Then he set the receiver down and dashed out the door.

The rescue team and the freed prisoners were crammed into the cargo bed of the truck like Japanese workers during rush hour. The driver shifted the weary old transmission into gear with a brief metallic grind, and the truck leaped forward. The streets were as before, the auto traffic thin, while Cubans were enjoying a balmy evening outside on their balconies, sitting at chairs and tables on the sidewalks or drinking in the cantinas, dancing and singing.

Seng cocked his ear out the window and listened for any sound of alarms or sirens. There came only the strains of music in the night air. The harshest sound came from the truck’s muffler, which seemed to be coming loose from the engine header pipe. The rattle of the exhaust soon drowned out the city noise. He saw Cubans glance at the truck and then turn away. Loose exhaust pipes and rusted-out mufflers were common on the old cars that traveled the streets of Santiago. The city’s inhabitants had more entertaining thoughts on their minds.

The truck driver drove maddeningly slow, but Seng knew better than to push him. A truck casually taking its time through town would arouse no suspicion. After what seemed an hour, but was only fifteen minutes, the driver pulled up alongside a warehouse dock and stopped. A quick look up and down the deserted dock and Seng began goading everyone toward the maintenance shed. The five-minute journey to the shed was uneventful.

Their luck still held. The only activity was centered on the two cargo ships unloading their big containers. Though still apprehensive, Seng finally began to relax. He motioned them through the door of the maintenance shed and down the wooden stairs. In the darkness he saw the vague shape of the Nomad sub’s pilot, standing on the floating dock and helping the Cubans on board. The other pilot was down below, packing them tightly inside the narrow confines of the Nomad’s main cabin.

When Seng and Julia Huxley, the last to board, climbed onto the sub’s upper deck, the pilot quickly cast off the mooring lines, looked up briefly and said, “You made good time.”

“Get to the ship as fast as this craft can take us,” Seng replied. “We couldn’t help setting off an alarm. I’m surprised Cuban security forces aren’t already breathing down our neck.”

“If they haven’t tracked you here,” said the pilot confidently as he closed and sealed the hatch, “they’ll never guess where you came from.”

“At least not until the Oregon’s found missing from her assigned anchorage.”

In seconds the sub was dropping beneath the surface of the dark water. Fifteen minutes later it surfaced inside the moon pool of the Oregon. Divers attached the hook and cable of the big overhead crane, and the Nomad was lifted delicately until it was even with the second deck and moored to the balcony. Huxley’s medical team was waiting along with several members of the ship’s crew to help the Cubans to the Oregon’s well-equipped hospital.

The time was three minutes past eleven.

A thin man, his hair white before his time, recognized Cabrillo as an officer and walked unsteadily up to him. “Sir, my name is Juan Tural. Can you tell me who you people are and why you rescued my friends and me from Santa Ursula?”

“We are a corporation, and we were contracted to do this job.”

“Who hired you?”

“Friends of yours in the United States,” answered Cabrillo. “That’s all that I can say.”

“Then you had no idealistic purpose, no political cause?”

Cabrillo smiled slightly. “We always have a purpose.”

Tural sighed. “I had hoped that salvation, when it came, would come from another quarter.”