Dark Watch (Oregon Files 3)

Juan moved to the Zodiac’s bow to call directions to the helmsman as they entered the flotilla of derelict ships. He’d donned a pair of night vision goggles. The outboard reverberated between the decaying hulls as they threaded their way toward the Oregon. With this many vessels, it was like running full speed through a maze. Trono bobbed and weaved the Zodiac, following Juan’s hand signals, barreling past a supertanker that had to be a thousand feet long and between a pair of car ferries that still carried the livery of the English Channel company that ran them.

They rounded the bow of the ferry, and were angling for a gap between a partially sunken tugboat and another container ship when the last utility boat appeared from behind another ship. The Corporation team responded a second quicker and raked the utility boat from stem to stern with well-aimed fire.

The utility boat cut a tight arc in the water and took off after the Zodiac. With the tide changing, the bay was growing rougher. Both boats buffeted in the rising swells, making it impossible to engage with their weapons. In calm seas the Zodiac could more than outrun the heavily laden work boat, but the waves were acting as a great equalizer.

Every time Trono tried to break out of the forsaken armada, the utility boat was there to cut off their escape back to the Oregon.

The outboard coughed, dropping power for a moment before rehitting on all cylinders. Mike Trono felt around the big engine cowling and cursed when his fingers felt a bullet hole. They came away wet, and he sniffed at the liquid clinging to his skin.

“Juan, they got the gas tank,” he shouted over the engine noise. “I don’t know how much longer we can play cat and mouse.”

The utility boat had broken off pursuit, but the Zodiac was headed away from the Oregon and still boxed in by so many ships they couldn’t tell where Singh’s men would attack from next.

“Did they head back to shore?” Tory asked.

“I doubt it,” Juan replied just as the work boat leapt from behind a big commercial fisherman.

More gunfire stitched the seas around the Zodiac as Trono tried to squeeze another half a knot out of the engine. He could smell oil burning inside the cowling. The bullet had done more than hole the gas tank. They zigzagged past the ferry boats again when something caught Cabrillo’s eye.

“Mike, take us back to that sunken tugboat. I have an idea.”

They raced across the bay toward the dark shape of the sunken ship. She’d settled awkwardly on some obstruction on the seafloor so that her bow was thrust out of the water and her back deck was awash. A broken crane dangling over her deck was nearly invisible in the moonlight.

Cabrillo concentrated on the course he wanted to take, ignoring all other distractions, including the fire coming from the utility boat. He had one shot to make this work. With his arms outstretched he called minute direction changes that the helmsman responded to instantly, feathering the hurtling Zodiac with a light touch.

“Okay, slow us down, draw them in.”

Everyone heard the crazy order, but no one questioned it. The Zodiac dutifully slowed, which allowed the utility boat to cut their separation to seventy feet. As if senseing the moment of victory, the utility boat’s driver hammered his throttles to their stops in hopes of running down their quarry.

Juan continued to feed course changes to Trono, guiding them so they would pass astern of the sunken ship. He looked over his shoulder to see the utility boat bearing down on them like a shark making its final lunge. Through his goggles’ enhanced optics he could even see the delight on the helmsman’s face as he prepared for the kill.

A few more seconds, Juan told himself, studying his target once again. A few more seconds. Now!

He dropped his left hand to order Mike to make a hard turn to port. The Zodiac was now racing for the gap under the tugboat’s broken crane. The larger utility boat was cranked over in pursuit, its driver never seeing he was being led into a trap.

“Down,” Juan shouted as the Zodiac crossed behind the tug’s sunken rail and shot under the ruined crane boom. There was barely three feet of clearance, and had they not ducked to the floorboards, the rusted steel derrick would have taken off their heads.

Juan looked back as soon as they were through. The utility boat was following in their wake but at the last second the helmsman must have seen the crane. He threw the wheel to its lock, but it was too late. They were going too fast. The boat smashed into the crane, and the metal easily ripped through the fiberglass hull. A gouge was torn down her entire length, and one of her big fuel tanks was ripped from its mounts.

None of the men aboard the doomed craft had time to brace themselves, and all twelve of them on the deck were launched over the bow by the sudden deceleration. Most landed safely in the water, although one hit the crane boom headfirst and died instantly.

The diesel spilling from the ruptured tank pooled inside the filthy bilge, but before enough seawater could dilute it, a spark from the ruined electrical system detonated the mixture in a ballooning fireball of orange and black.

“Scratch the last utility boat,” Cabrillo said over the tactical radio. “We’re headed home.”

The Zodiac’s engine died when they were still a hundred yards from the Oregon, forcing them to man the paddles. With the motor silenced they could hear continuous gunfire from the beach as Singh’s men fired blindly out to sea.

Juan threw the painter to a waiting deckhand as the rubber craft reached the ramp. By the time the last of Linc’s SEALs had piled out, Juan had limped to where Julia Huxley waited with a spare prosthetic leg. He’d radioed ahead. She used surgical scissors to cut away part of his wet suit and examined the stump. Apart from some purple swelling, his leg seemed okay, so she let him strap on the second prosthesis as she examined his head wound.

“What happened?” she asked, peering at the gash with a penlight.

“Rifle butt.”

She flashed the light into his eyes, checking if he had a concussion. She grunted, unsurprised that his pupils reacted normally. “You have a head like a cannonball. How do you feel? Dizzy? Lightheaded? Nauseous?”

“None of the above. It just stings a bit from the salt water.”

“I bet.” Julia knew that like most men, Juan was downplaying the pain. She swabbed out the four-inch-square wound, making sure that the antibacterial made him wince a few times before putting a large sterile dressing over the cut and swathing the top of his head with a gauze wrap. “That should hold you. Sorry, but I’m fresh out of lollipops.”