The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

“It’s off.”

The next bolt spun out so easily that, once he had it started, he could twist it with his fingers. The third and fourth weren’t quite as easy, but nowhere near as bad as the first. He clipped the wrench back to his belt and grabbed a rubber mallet. He used rubber to avoid making any noise.

He swung at the lynchpin, the water hindering his actions, but the blow was enough to knock it an inch out of alignment. Three more shots, and it was almost free of the anchor. It would still hold the ship in position against the normal flow of water into and out of the bay, but any hard jolt would slip the pin entirely, and the Admiral Brown would be left to the vagaries of the sea.

“That’s it. Oh, man!”

“What?”

“I was just hit by a pocket of cold water. Damn, that is brutal.”

“Want the hot suit back on?”

“No. It drifted away.”

Juan started walking across the seafloor for the minisub, gathering up loops of his umbilical as he went so it wouldn’t tangle.

He unclipped the carbon-fiber tow cable from its slot and dragged it back to the anchor. He added a little air to his buoyancy compensator to make his ascent easier and, hand over hand, he climbed the chain. For now, he left the cable on the bottom.

He paused when he reached the underside of the four-hundred-foot warship. Her bottom was coated with red antifouling paint and was remarkably free of marine buildup. His next task was to spot-weld eight metal pad eyes to the bow. That’s what the two tanks he carried were for. They were high-capacity batteries for a handheld arc welder. The gear was normally used to make quick repairs to the Oregon.

He adjusted his buoyancy again and slid eye protection over his helmet so he could work comfortably next to an electric spark brighter than the sun. The curvature of the cruiser’s hull shielded him from above, and in twenty minutes he had all eight welds completed. There were so many in case one or more of the welds failed. Juan carried no illusions that he was an expert at this particular skill. Ten minutes after that, he had the tow cable threaded though all of them. Over the very tip of the cable he clamped in place a steel box about the size of a paperback book. The box served as the belay point for the cable while inside was an explosive charge. A signal from the Oregon would detonate the small amount of plastique, and the box would disintegrate, freeing the cable so it could be yanked away from the ship. The only evidence left behind was the eight pad eyes. Chances were, they wouldn’t survive what Juan had planned.

No sooner had he returned to the Nomad and closed the outer hatch over himself than Linda powered her up and they were under way.

“Operation Crack-the-Whip is on,” he said when Eddie helped him off with the helmet.

“Any problems?”

“Smooth as silk.”

“More good news,” Linda said. “Eric’s tracking a storm headed our way. Should hit tomorrow at what passes for dawn in these parts.”

“Call Eric back and have him pull the ship off beach a bit. Also, tell him to drain the starboard ballast tanks but leave the port side flooded. That should give the old girl a convincing list.” Juan had an anticipatory gleam in his eye. “I hope the Argentines have enjoyed their time ruling this part of world because it’s about to end.”

By five that afternoon, the Chinese survey boat had motored past the Oregon where she lay just off the beach. She was still close enough in that an occasional large wa

ve would cause her hardened bows to slam against the bottom. There was little doubt they would report the Norego had unbeached herself and was starting her soulless wanderings once again. An hour later, an exhausted and frozen Max Hanley returned with his team and their grisly cargo.

“That sucked,” Hanley proclaimed when the RHIB was winched inside the boat garage along the ship’s side. “Not only is it colder than a brass monkey’s you know what out there, but that cemetery would creep out Stephen King. The headstones are all carved whale bones, and there’s a fence around it made up of ribs as tall as me. The arched gate is built of skulls the size of Volkswagens.”

“Any problem recovering the remains?”

“Do you mean besides the eternal damnation of my soul for desecrating holy ground?”

“No.”

“In that case, everything went fine. The graves were only about a foot deep, and the men were laid to rest in canvas bags sewn from sails. I was surprised to find they had mostly decomposed.”

“The ground would have been too frozen to bury them in the winter, and in spring it’s just warm enough for bacteria to do their thing.”

“So now what?”

“You get yourself warmed up. Mike Trono and his gang just took off back to the wreck. By the time they return and we get the Nomad prepped again, it’ll be showtime.”

“Weather coming in?”

“Eric said it’s going to be a bitch out there come dawn.”