Marauder (Oregon Files 15)

“Okay. Which direction should we go?”

“Directly north. Apparently, it’s right on the bank of the river.”

“We’re already on the bank of the river,” Juan said.

“Oh. That’s a bummer.”

Then it dawned on Juan. This wasn’t the normal riverbank. The monsoons had considerably widened the Ord.

“You mean the ruins of the bireme are underwater?” Julia asked.

“And it probably will be for a few more weeks,” Parsons said. “This is the wet season.”

“Then we’ll have to dive on the Salacia to recover the amphorae,” Juan said.

At that moment, a huge feral pig on the opposite bank of the river crept down to the water to take a drink. It had gotten through a single slurp when a crocodile lunged out of the water and clamped its jaws around the pig’s head, dragging it into the river as the prey futilely thrashed to get free. The twenty-foot-long croc shook it like a dog’s toy. As soon as the pig went limp, the croc disappeared under the surface with its prize.

Parsons shook his head at Juan’s intention to go into the water. “You were saying?”

FORTY-TWO

By the time the shore team got back to the Oregon, there wasn’t enough daylight left to prep and execute a wreck dive, so they planned to go at sunup the next day. The launch point for the operation would be the moon pool.

The large chamber, which smelled of seawater and grease, was situated in the center of the ship. The Oregon’s two submersibles, the Gator and Nomad, were stowed in cradles in the ceiling, and a gantry crane moved them around. The water surface of the large pool at the bottom was even with the ocean level outside, which was why the room didn’t flood. Large doors in the keel slid apart to allow subs and divers to emerge from the ship undetected.

Today it was Nomad that was being lowered into the moon pool while the Gator remained suspended in the air. With the Ord River full of crocodiles, diving off a boat like the RHIB would be an invitation to a smorgasbord. Juan thought using Nomad instead would give them a better chance to explore the wreck without being noticed by the hungry predators.

Although Nomad was designed to dive to a thousand feet, for this mission it would simply be floating on the surface of the shallow river. The sub’s key feature was its two-person airlock, which had a hatch in its belly. Juan and Linc would emerge from Nomad underwater, conduct the search of the Salacia to recover the amphorae, and return to the sub without drawing attention to themselves from the crocs sunning on the surface.

That was the theory, at least.

Linc was in the process of checking their dive gear, part of which included two suits made of titanium chain mail. They were intended to be used for diving in shark-infested waters and were so heavy that a diver would sink like a brick without a buoyancy vest. They covered nearly the entire body, from hood to gloves to boots, all of which were secured by Velcro straps. Only the face was exposed.

“I never thought we’d be using these for diving with crocodiles,” Linc said as he packed up the suits. They would don them once they were on site.

“Don’t depend on them too much,” Juan replied. “Their teeth might not penetrate the mesh, but they could rip apart our scuba gear and hold us under until we drown.”

“That’s why we have these.”

Linc pointed to the knives sheathed in the leg of each suit. They were Wasp injection knives. The handle contained a cartridge of CO2 compressed to 800 psi. When the blade was stabbed into a target, one press of the button on the hilt forced enough freezing cold gas to fill a basketball into the body, killing most animals instantly.

They would be wearing full-face masks to fit over the augmented reality glasses they’d have on. The muddy river water had a visibility of less than five feet, which would severely hamper their search of the wreckage. The glasses would display the images revealed by sonar signals sent from Little Geek, the remotely operated vehicle that Eric would be directing from Nomad.

Rounding out the team were Max, Nomad’s pilot for the mission, and MacD and Raven, who would be standing on top of Nomad with assault rifles to ward off any crocs that ventured too close.

Nomad was now free-floating in the moon pool. Eric popped out of the hatch and said, “Max has finished his pre-dive checklist and says he’s ready to go when you are.”

Linc and Juan lowered their gear to MacD and Raven through the hatch and got in, closing it behind them. Max filled the ballast tanks, and Nomad sank beneath the surface. He goosed the electric motors, and the sub eased away from the Oregon for its journey upriver.

* * *

—

As the Marauder neared the entrance to the Cambridge Gulf, Jin sat on the bridge drinking a cup of coffee and poring over a map of the area. The eastern arm at the southern end of the gulf was the outlet for the Ord River. The western arm was the navigable waterway that led to Wyndham, a port town that served the mining communities nearby.

That was the destination for the ore carrier Thai Navigator, which she watched entering the gulf to pick up a load of iron or nickel. The ship looked a bit like the Norego, but it didn’t have the cranes that Polk told her about. Besides, there was no way a ship that size could have beaten her here.

It was possible that the intruders from the Norego had simply flown out here to search for the dig site. If that was the case, the plan was simple. She would anchor the trimaran at the mouth of the Ord and take a strike team upriver to the cave and wipe them out.