The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

Juan knew better. It was his crew’s training and teamwork that saved them.

“Hold on. There it is.”

Nomad’s lights focused on the only container attached to the deck. The forty-foot-long blue box was tied down amidships, halfway between the port and starboard sides.

Juan activated the pedals so that he did a circumnavigation of the container. The doors were closed, and there were no holes in the corrugated metal.

“It’s intact,” Juan said. “I assume the column is still in there.”

That didn’t mean it remained secured inside the container. The column may have come loose from the chains tying it down. That could make the container very unwieldy if the thirty-ton granite column shifted while they were moving it. It could even slam through the doors and fall to the seabed below, making it more difficult to recover.

Juan took the Jim suit in for a closer look at the fasteners holding the container to the deck. Modern containers were secured with a relatively simple mechanism called a twistlock. Three of the twistlock couplings were undamaged, but the fourth, which was now at the upper corner of the rotated container, had been severed during the attack. That corner leaned out noticeably from the deck.

“I think this might work,” Juan said.

“You always think everything might work,” Max replied.

“I told you. Of the two of us, I’m the optimist.”

The plan was simple in conception, difficult in execution. Juan would connect four lines from the main cable to the four corner castings on the container’s normal top side. Then he would free the container from the deck and, when it swung loose, the Oregon’s crane would reel it in.

The water provided enough drag that the container would sink slowly, if at all, buoyed by balloons that he would attach to the four top corners, the ones farthest from the Narwhal’s deck.

Juan took uninflated balloons from Nomad’s tool tray, which was situated under its nose. One at a time, he tied the balloons to the container. Each was equipped with a light so that the container would be visible in the darkness. When the balloons were all secured, he backed away and radioed Max.

“They’re ready to go. Give them some air.”

“Inflating now.”

Max keyed the signal that ordered the air cartridges to inflate the balloons. The yellow rubber spheres expanded until each was the size of an SUV.

The next step was attaching the crane cables. While Linda held the main cable with Nomad’s manipulator, Juan latched each of the four ends to the same corners where the balloons were connected. Once they were secure, Linda released the cable, and Juan radioed the crane operator to take up the slack.

Juan tried manually disengaging the twistlocks to free the container, but two of them were jammed.

“They aren’t budging,” he radioed Max.

“Looks like it’s time to break out the fireworks,” Max said.

They’d anticipated this problem. The Nomad’s tool tray held four shaped charges to blow the locks.

Juan motored over to Nomad and took one of the charges from the tray. He then carefully attached it to the stuck joint, making sure that the explosive force would be focused toward the lock and away from the container. He repeated the task with the second explosive. After triple-checking the setup, he pulled back to a safe distance.

“Fire in the hole,” Linda said calmly.

Two bright flashes lit up the entire ship like a strobe, followed by muffled thumps a moment later. They waited expectantly for the container to swing away.

For a second, it seemed to separate from the deck, then nothing. It remained lodged in place. They waited another minute to see if the container would work itself free, but it remained stubbornly attached.

“I’ll check it out,” Juan said.

“Be careful,” Max said. “Stay on top of it in case it decides to break loose.”

Juan used his thrusters to get a close look at the problem. He checked both twistlocks and saw that the explosives had worked perfectly. The locks were sliced away without damaging the container.

What Juan hadn’t been able to see before was the damage to the ship under the container, which had pulled away enough to expose the underside.

An explosion from one of the railgun rounds had driven a metal girder into the container, possibly destroying part of the column.