The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

“Juan! Chopper!”

“Pull me up,” Cabrillo shouted.

“I will, but this’ll be over by the time you get up here.”

This was a move by the Argentines that they had discussed but had no real defense against. Hanley had only seconds to react.

The helicopter sounded like it was headed for the beach where he and Juan had come ashore. It was the only logical landing site. Max mashed the control button to winch Cabrillo back to the surface, grabbed Juan’s pistol from the seat next to him, and jumped from the SUV. He started running as fast as he could, drawing his own pistol from its holster.

He calculated the odds that the Argentines had brought their own pilot to the United States to be pretty slim, meaning the guy at the controls had been hired to fly them out to Pine Island. If Max could get there quickly enough, there was a chance he could stop them from landing.

His legs were burning after only a few hundred yards, and it felt like his heart was going to explode out of his chest. His lungs convulsed as they fought to draw air. The extra pounds he carried around his middle weighed him down like an anchor. But he pushed through the pain, running with his head down and his arms pumping.

The rotor beat changed. He knew the pilot was flaring the helo to land. Max actually growled as he charged down the overgrown track. His sixty-plus years seemed to melt away. His feet suddenly felt like they were dancing over the ground, barely making contact with the earth.

Hanley exploded from the forest. Ahead of him was the beach, and just above it was a civilian JetRanger helicopter. The water was being whipped mercilessly by the rotor downwash as it slowly sank earthward. Max saw the outline of a couple of men in the rear seats.

The range was extreme for the Glocks, and when he skidded to a halt his body trembled, but he raised the pistols anyway. He aimed away from the JetRanger’s cockpit and started pulling the triggers, firing right and left so the report from each weapon turned into one continuous roar. In just a few seconds he put up a thirty-round curtain of lead.

He had no idea how many rounds hit the chopper, but he knew some had. The rear door was thrown open, and one of the Argentines prepared to jump for the ground, ten feet below the skids. The pilot reacted by increasing power and starting to veer away.

Max dropped the pistol in his left hand and thumbed the magazine out of the other. The man in the door slid forward, trying to compensate for the tilting aircraft. In the fastest change out he’d performed since Vietnam, Hanley had a fresh magazine in the Glock and the slide closed before the Argentine could jump.

He fired as quickly as before, his ears ringing with the concussive blasts. The guy in the open door suddenly jerked and fell free. He made no attempt to right himself as he plummeted into the surf.

Hanley could imagine what was happening on the JetRanger. The Argentine Major would be screaming at the pilot to turn back to the island, most likely threatening him with a weapon, while the pilot would want to put as much distance between him and the madman shooting at him as possible.

Max slid home another magazine, waiting and watching to see who would win the test of wills. After a few seconds, it was clear the chopper wasn’t coming back. It flew due west, presenting as small a target as possible. In moments it was just a white dot against the gray sky.

The only question in Hanley’s mind now was whether the Argentines would let the pilot live. He didn’t like the man’s chances. They’d already proven themselves ruthless, and he doubted they would leave an eyewitness alive.

His chest was still pumping when he finally started walking toward the beach. The Argentine who’d fallen from the JetRanger lay facedown about fifteen feet from shore. Max kept his pistol trained on the man and waded into the frigid waters, sucking air through his teeth when it reached his waist. He grabbed the man’s hair and lifted his head free. The eyes were open and fixed. Max turned the body. His shot had hit the guy square in the heart, and, had he actually been aiming there, it would have been a remarkable shot. As it turned out, though, it was just dumb luck.

There was no ID in the man’s pockets, only a little cash plus a sodden pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter. Max unburdened the man of his money and towed the body toward the beach. When it was shallow enough, Hanley started stuffing rocks into the man’s clothes. It took him a few minutes, but eventually the body began to sink. Max dragged him back into deeper water again and let go. With the body weighted and the tide ebbing, the corpse would never be seen again. He grabbed up the pistol he’d dropped and started back.

While he wanted to run, his body simply wasn’t up to it. He had to settle for a loping trot that still made his knees scream in protest. It had taken him less than seven minutes to reach the coastline, but it took more than fifteen for the return journey.

Max expected to see Juan, but there was no sigh of the Chairman. To his dismay, the winch hadn’t reeled up the cable. He looked at the control box and realized he had hit the down button by mistake. A glance at the front bumper revealed that the cable drum had completely paid out the line.

He lowered himself onto the SUV’s rear seat and settled the headphones over his mouth. He frowned when he saw the feed from Juan’s camera showed nothing but electronic snow.

“Juan, do you copy, over?” Max should have been able to hear the Chairman breathing inside his dive helmet, but all he heard was silence, a silence with a sense of finality behind it. “Hanley to Cabrillo, do you copy, over?”

He tried three more times, his concern deepening with each unanswered hail.

He decided not to reel in the cable but instead jumped out of the Ford and hauled up the seperate fiber-optic line hand over hand. After just a few seconds, he knew it was no longer attached to anything. Thin filament tangled at his feet as he frantically yanked it from the earth.

When the end appeared at last, he held it up to examine the break. It didn’t look like it had been sheared cleanly. The plastic coating around the delicate cable was shredded, like it had been abraded between two rough surfaces. He’d seen the video himself. There was nothing in the Treasure Pit that could have caused such damage. This was when he engaged the winch and stood fretfully as the cable slowly rose from the depths. Like the fiber-optics, the braided steel appeared severed.

Max bellowed down into the dank shaft until his throat went hoarse, but all that returned was the echo of a very worried man.

FOURTEEN

Against a backdrop of towering icebergs that had been carved into fantastic shapes by wind and wave, and a sky stained red from horizon to horizon, the Oregon still managed to look like a garbage scow. Even this pristine Antarctic environment couldn’t add to the derelict tramp freighter’s tired façade. Even a beautiful frame can’t help an ugly painting.

Linda Ross had done a remarkable job driving them southward. Fortunately, the weather had cooperated, and they had encountered little ice until they were alee of the Antarctic Peninsula. Once there, Gomez Adams scouted a lane through the bergs in their MD-520. The severe storm front that had gripped most of the continent had finally died down, but he reported it was still some of the hairiest flying of his life—and this from a man who used to make his living inserting Special Forces teams behind enemy lines.

Linda looked at herself in the antique mirror in her cabin and decided she would make the perfect wife for the Michelin Man. She knew there was a hundred-and-sixteen-pound woman under all the layers of arctic clothing, but the mirror sure wasn’t showing it. And she still had one more overcoat to go once she got down to the boat garage.