Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

Anyone gazing at a Liquefied Natural Gas tanker would have done so with grave skepticism, finding it hard to believe such a grotesque-looking ship could ever cross the oceans. The Mongol Invader, with her eight bulbous tanks rising from the upper half of her hull, was the largest of the LNG tankers ever built and did not look as if she belonged on the water, as she burrowed through choppy seas on a course dead set for the entrance to New York Harbor. Strictly utilitarian and painted an adobe brown, she had to be one of the ugliest ships afloat.

Her architects had designed her to envelop, support and protect her eight immense, insulated-aluminum spherical cargo tanks that right now were full of liquid propane that should have been refrigerated to a temperature of about minus 265 degrees Fahrenheit. But on this trip from Kuwait the temperature had been gradually raised until it was only twenty degrees below the danger level.

A floating bomb with the potential to devastate the lower half of Manhattan Island, the Mongol Invader was driven through the unruly waves at 25 knots by her great twin bronze screws, her forward underwater prow shrugging aside the water with deceptive ease. Flights of gulls came and circled but, sensing an ominous aura about her, they remained strangely silent and soon winged away.

Unlike on the Pacific Trojan, no crew could be seen exploring the Mongol Invader's tanks or walking the long runway across their domed roofs. They remained unseen at their action stations. There were only fifteen of them scattered throughout the ship. Four operated the controls in the wheelhouse. Five ran the engine room while the remaining six were arme

d with portable missiles that could sink the largest Coast Guard cutter or bring down any aircraft that might attack. The Vipers were fully aware of the cost of indifferent vigilance. They were secure in the knowledge that they could easily repel any attempt to board by professional Special Forces, to whose military elements most of them had once belonged. They were supremely confident they could prevent any attempt to stop them before the ship entered the outer reaches of the city-and once they passed under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge it was even money whether the commander-in-charge of the intercept operation would risk igniting a massive fireball.

Leaning over the railing of the starboard bridge wing, Omo Kanai stared at the menacing dark clouds that drifted in an overcast sky. He was certain that any force arrayed against him would find it unlikely that fifteen men who were not fanatical terrorists, but simply well-paid mercenaries, would even think of committing suicide for their employer. This was not a James Bond movie. He smiled to himself. Only those on board the ship knew about the submarine attached to the hull one hundred feet forward of the rudder and twin screws. Once the ship was turned toward the Manhattan shoreline, Kanai and his Viper crew would board the hidden submarine and escape into deep water to avoid the ensuing fireball.

He walked back onto the bridge, crossed his arms and ran his eye along the course he'd laid out on the chart, following the red line that traveled past Rockaway Point, then Norton Point at Seagate, before moving under the Verrazano Bridge that spanned Brooklyn and Staten Island. From there the line ran up the center of the Upper Bay and beyond the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Once past Battery Park, the red line made a sharp right turn into the shore and ended at the base of the twin World Trade Center towers.

He flexed his muscular shoulders, his body attuned to the speeding mass of the ship below his feet. The Mongol Invader would not be stopped, could not be stopped before reaching her destiny. He would be remembered a thousand years from now for achieving the worst man-made disaster ever attempted against the United States.

Kanai looked up through the bridge windshield and observed the cars moving over the bridge above the water turned a gray-green by the dark clouds. The colors on the cars' bodies flickered like insects as they crossed. He noted on the instrument console that brisk twenty-knot winds were blowing from the southeast. All the better to expand the killing distance of the fireball, he thought.

The thought of thousands of incinerated victims never entered his mind. Kanai was incapable of emotion. He was immune to death and had no hesitancy about facing it when his turn came.

His second in command, Harmon Kerry, a tough-looking customer with tattoos running up and down his arms, stepped onto the bridge from below. He picked up a pair of binoculars and peered at a cargo ship passing on their port side and heading out to sea. "It won't be long now," he said, with more than a hint of pleasure. "The Americans are in for a nasty surprise."

"No surprise," Kanai muttered, "not if they realize by now that the Pacific Trojan was a decoy."

"Do you think they're wise to the operation?"

"Zale has yet to come up with a flawless plan," Kanai said flatly. "Unexpected and unforeseen circumstances kept them from total success. What we have achieved this far, we have done well. But someone, perhaps many, in the United States government has put two and two together. The five hours we were delayed by generator problems cost us dearly. Instead of arriving unexpectedly at the same time as the Pacific Trojan was boarded, and under cover of darkness just before dawn, we may have to face everything they can throw at us. And you can bet they'll be better prepared this time."

"I look forward to seeing a smoldering and melted Statue of Liberty," said Kerry, with a diabolical grin.

The helmsman who stood at the control console reported, "Forty minutes until we reach the bridge."

Kanai stood and stared at the slowly approaching span. "If they don't try and stop us very soon, they'll never have another chance."

Admiral Dover had flown in aboard a Navy fighter jet from the Alameda Naval Air Station on the West Coast within fifteen minutes of Sandecker's dire alert. His pilot had requested an emergency landing between commercial jetliners at JFK International Airport. From there, an NYPD helicopter flew him over to the Sandy Hook Coast Guard Station, where two fast 110-foot patrol cutters were waiting for his arrival to intercept the Mongol Invader.

He stepped into the conference room of the station, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists from anxiety and desperation. He forced himself to think calmly. He could not allow himself to be overwhelmed by Zale's trick, or blame his powers of deduction for missing something that in hindsight seemed so obvious. Sandecker might still be wrong. There was nothing solid on which to hang another intercept operation, only conjecture, yet he was determined to see it through. If the Mongol Invader turned out to be another false alarm, so be it. They would keep searching until they got the right ship.

Dover nodded silent greetings to the ten men and two women clustered in the room as he walked to the head of the conference table. He wasted no time on niceties. "Have the police aerial patrols flown over the ship?"

A police captain who stood along one wall nodded. "We have a copter on station as we speak. He reports that the tanker is running at full speed toward the harbor."

Dover sighed with relief, but only slightly. If this was indeed the ship that was to devastate Lower Manhattan, it had to be stopped. "Gentlemen, you've all been briefed over the phone and fax by Admiral Sandecker in Washington and know what to expect. If we can't turn it away, it must be sunk."

A Coast Guard commander spoke off to Dover's side. "Sir, if we fire into the tanks, we could very well turn her into one immense explosion. Conceivably, the entire flotilla of intercepting boats, as well as the pilots flying the police patrol helicopters, could be caught in the fireball."

"Better a thousand than a million," Dover replied curdy. "But under no circumstances are you to fire forward of the stern superstructure. If the crew refuses orders to heave to, then I will have no choice but to call in U.S. Navy fighters to destroy the ship with air-to-surface missiles. In that event, everyone will be warned in ample time to put as much distance as possible between their vessels and the Mongol Invader before combustion occurs."

"What are our chances of boarding her, overpowering the crew and cutting off any detonation devices?" asked one of the police.

"Not good if she won't stop, and continues at full speed inside the harbor. Unfortunately, the military force we had in San Francisco was ordered to stand down and return to their respective stations when we found we had the wrong ship. We haven't had time to reassemble them again or fly in new teams in time. I realize New York's Anti-terrorist Response Teams are trained for just such emergencies, but I don't want to commit them until we're certain the crew will put up no resistance." He paused to sweep the faces of the men and women in the conference room. "If you don't already know, the maximum flame temperature in the air of propane is three thousand six hundred degrees Fahrenheit."

One of two New York Harbor fireboat captains present raised his hand. "Admiral, I might add that should the tanker cargo be exposed to fire, the resulting vapor explosion of seven million cubic feet of propane could produce a fireball nearly two miles in diameter."

"All the more reason for us to stop that tanker before she comes anywhere close to the city," Dover answered tersely. "Any more questions?" There was no response. "Then I suggest we launch the operation. Time is running out."

Dover left the briefing and went directly to the dock and walked up the gangway to the Coast Guard cutter William Shea. A deep sense of foreboding fell over him. If the Mongol Invader refused to be boarded and the Navy fighters failed to send her to the bottom short of her goal, time was far too short to evacuate Manhattan. Unfortunately, at this time of day the streets and buildings would be filled with office workers. The damage and loss of life would be horrendous if the LNG tanker were allowed to blow up.

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