Treasure of Khan (Dirk Pitt 19)

"Cut the mooring lines! For God's sake, cut the mooring lines," he gasped. A rush of adrenaline surged through his body, the fear pushing him to race across the deck at breakneck speed. He was still a hundred meters from the bridge house when his legs began to throb, but his pace never slowed, even as he hurtled past a river of slippery crude oil that had splashed across the deck.

"Tell . . . the chief . . . engineer . . . we need . . . full power . . . immediately," he rasped over the radio, his lungs burning for oxygen.

Reaching the tanker's stern superstructure, he headed for the nearest stairwell, bypassing an elevator located a few corridors away. Clambering up the eight levels to the bridge, he was heartened to feel the throb of the ship's engines suddenly vibrate beneath his feet. As he staggered onto the bridge and rushed to the forward window, his worst fears were realized.

In front of the Marjan, eight other supertankers lay in paired tandems, divided minutes before by the Sea Island terminal. But now the terminal was gone, plunging toward the Gulf floor ninety feet beneath the surface. The supertankers' mooring lines were still attached, and the force of the sinking terminal was drawing the paired tankers toward one another. In the midnight darkness, Howard could see the lights on the two tankers in front of him meld together, followed by the screeching cry of metal on metal as the sides of the ships scraped together.

"Emergency full astern," Howard barked at his executive officer. "What's the status of the mooring lines?"

"The stern lines are clear," replied Jensen, looking gaunt. "I'm still awaiting word on the bowlines, but it appears that at least two lines are still secure," he added, gazing through binoculars at a pair of taut ropes that stretched from the starboard bow.

"The Ascona is drawing onto us," the helmsman said, jerking his head to the right.

Howard followed the motion, eyeing the Greek-flagged ship berthed alongside, a black-and-red supertanker that matched the Marjan's length of three hundred thirty-three meters. Originally moored sixty feet apart, the two ships were slowly moving laterally together as if drawn by a magnet.

The men on the Marjan's bridge stood and stared helplessly, Howard's labored breathing matched by the quickened heartbeats of the others. Beneath their feet, the huge propellers finally began clawing the water in a desperate fury as the tanker's engines were rapidly brought up to high revs by the frantic engineer.

The initial movement astern was imperceptible, then, slowly, the huge ship began to creep backward at a sluggish clip. The momentum slowed for a second as the bow mooring line drew taut, then suddenly the line broke free and the ship resumed its rearward crawl. Along her starboard side, the Ascona drew closer. The Korean-built tanker had nearly a full load of crude and rode a dozen feet lower in the water than the Marjan. From Howard's perspective, it looked as if he could step right off the side of his ship and onto the deck of the neighboring tanker.

"Starboard twenty," he ordered the helmsman, trying to angle the bow away from the drifting tanker. Howard had managed to back the Marjan three hundred feet away from the sunken terminal, but it was not enough to escape the adjacent ship.

The impact was gentler than Howard had expected, not even felt in the wheelhouse. Just an extended low-pitched screech of metal signaled the collision. The Marjan's bow was almost amidships of the Ascona when the two ships met, but the rearward motion of Howard's ship had deflected much of the force at impact. For half a minute, the Marjan's bow scraped along the other tanker's port rail, and then suddenly the two ships were clear.

Howard immediately cut his engines and lowered a pair of lifeboats over the side to search for any dockworkers in the water. Then he gingerly backed his ship another thousand feet away from the melee and watched the carnage.

All ten of the supertankers were damaged. Two of the big ships had locked decks and were so intertwined that it took two days before an army of welders could cut them free. Three of the ships had their double-hulled plates bashed though, leaking thousands of gallons of crude oil freely into the gulf as the ships listed to one side. But the Marjan had escaped with minimal damage, none of her tanks compromised in the collision thanks to Howard's fast action. His relief at saving his ship was short-lived, however, when a series of muffled explosions echoed across the gulf waters.

"Sir, it's the refinery," the helmsman noted, pointing toward the western shoreline. An orange glow appeared on the horizon, which grew like the rising sun as a series of additional explosions rocked across the water. Howard and his crew watched the spectacle for hours as the pyre marched along the shoreline. It wasn't long before thick plumes of black smoke mixed with the odor of burned petroleum wafted over the ship.

"How could they do it?" the executive officer blurted. "How could terrorists have gotten in there with explosives? It's one of the most secure facilities in the world."

Howard shook his head in silence. Jensen was right. A private army guarded the whole complex in a tight web of security. It must have been a masterful infiltration to take out the Sea Island terminal as well, he thought, though there were no apparent offshore explosions. Thankfully, his ship and crew were safe, and he intended to keep it that way. Once the search for survivors in the water was completed, Howard moved the tanker several miles out into the gulf, where he circled the big ship slowly until dawn.

By daylight, the full extent of the damage became apparent as emergency response teams from around the region converged on the scene. The Ras Tanura refinery, one of the largest in the world, was a smoldering ruin, nearly completely destroyed by the raging fires. The Sea Island offshore terminal, capable of feeding eighteen supertankers at a time with raw crude oil, had completely vanished beneath the gulf. The nearby tank farm, providing storage for nearly thirty million barrels of petroleum products, was mired in a waist-deep sea of black ooze from dozens of cracked and fractured tanks. Farther into the desert, countless oil supply pipelines were broken in two like twigs, soaking the surrounding sands black with thick pools of crude oil.

Overnight, nearly a third of Saudi Arabia's oil exporting capability was destroyed. Yet a raft of terrorist suicide bombers was not to blame. Around the world, sei

smologists had already fingered the cause of the destruction. A massive earthquake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, had rattled the east coast of Saudi Arabia. Analysts and pundits alike would lament the happenstance of Mother Nature when the quake's epicenter was computed to be just two miles from Ras Tanura. The shock waves caused by striking at such a critical locale would ultimately ripple far beyond the Persian Gulf, shaking the globe for many months to come.

-11-

HANG ZHOU DREW a last puff from his cheap unfiltered cigarette, then flicked the butt over the rail. He watched in lazy curiosity as the glowing ember flittered to the dirty water below, half expecting the murky surface to ignite in a wall of flames. Heaven knows, there's enough spilled petroleum in the black water to power a small city, he thought as the cigarette fizzled to a harmless demise alongside a belly-up mackerel. As the dead fish could attest, the dank waters around the Chinese port of Ningbo were anything but hospitable. A flurry of construction activity along the commercial waterfront had helped stir up the polluted waters, already contaminated by the steady stream of leaky containerships, tankers, and tramp freighters that frequented the port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta, not far from Shanghai, Ningbo was rapidly growing into one of China's largest seaports, in part due to its deepwater channel that allowed dockage for giant three-hundred-thousand-ton supertankers.

"Zhou!" barked a Doberman-like voice, whose owner more resembled an overweight bulldog. Zhou turned to see his supervisor, the operations director for Ningbo Container Terminal No. 3, high-stepping down the dock toward him. An unlikable tyrant by the name of Qinglin, he wore a permanent scowl painted on his pudgy face.

"Zhou," he repeated, approaching the longshoreman. "We've had a change in schedule. The Akagisan Maru, bound from Singapore, has been delayed due to engine problems. So we're going to allow the Jasmine Star to take her berth at dock 3-A. She's due in at seven-thirty. Make sure your crew is standing by to receive her."

"I'll pass the word," Zhou said and nodded.

The containership terminal where they worked operated around the clock. In the nearby waters of the East China Sea, a steady stream of transport ships milled about, waiting their turn at the docks. China's abundant labor pool ground out an endless supply of cheap electronics, children's toys, and clothing that were immediately gobbled up by the consumer markets of the industrialized nations. But it was the lumbering containership, the unsung workhorse of commercial trade, which empowered global commerce and allowed the Chinese economy to skyrocket.

"See to it. And keep after the loading crew. I'm getting complaints again about slow turnarounds," Qinglin grumbled. He lowered his clipboard and slid a yellow pencil over his right ear, then turned and walked away. But he stopped after two steps and slowly wheeled back around, his eyes widening as he stared at Zhou. Or at least Zhou thought he was staring at him.

"She's on fire," Qinglin muttered.

Zhou realized his supervisor was looking past him and turned to see what he meant.

In the harbor surrounding the terminal, a dozen ships milled about the area, an assorted mix of huge containerships and jumbo supertankers overshadowing a handful of small cargo ships. It was one of the cargo ships that distinguished itself, trailing a heavy plume of black smoke.