The Silent Sea (41 page)

“Strange name for an Argentine ship.
Brown
,” Eddie said as he handed Juan his helmet.

“His name was really William Brown, and he was born in Ireland and then emigrated to Argentina. He’s credited with forming their Navy in the early 1800s to fight the Spanish.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Linda asked from the cockpit.

“What? I Googled him when we first saw the cruiser. I thought it was an odd choice of name, too.”

Juan waddled to the tiny air lock, laden with a belt from which he hung his tools. Strapped to his back like a World War II flame-thrower were two cylinders. Once he was in and the door secure, he jacked his umbilical into a port and checked over his connections, making certain that warm water was flowing through his suit and that he had good airflow and good comms with the sub. Only when Eddie was satisfied did he open the valve that flooded the closet-sized compartment.

Water foamed and hissed as it climbed his body, pressing the rubber suit against his legs when the pressure grew. It was a comfortable temperature, but he wouldn’t discount running into icy pockets once he was outside. He could see Eddie watching him through a small window in the air-lock door. Juan gave him the traditional divers signal that everything was okay. Eddie returned it.

Moments later, the water had closed in on the ceiling. Juan reached overhead to open the outer hatch. A few stray bubbles burst free as it swung up. He climbed out of the sub, making sure to keep his head down and his lights pointed away from the surface. He felt reasonably confident that the Argentines didn’t have lookouts posted in such freezing conditions, but he hadn’t thought he and Linc would run into a guard last night either.

The low vibration in the water came from the cruiser’s secondary power plant, which produced enough energy to run the ship’s systems and keep the men warm. The main engines were off. He knew this already by observing that only a small amount of smoke escaped the warship’s single raked funnel.

He jumped free of the sub, floating down to the bottom in a graceful arc. His boots hit and kicked up a little silt that drifted gently away. One of the six-inch-thick conduits for the bubbler was to his left. Air rose from its length in thin streams of silver.

Juan turned his attention to the
Admiral Brown
’s anchor. It looked to be about eight feet long and would probably weigh in at about four tons—more than enough to keep the ship stationary against the tides. A small pile of extra chain lay next to it in a rust-colored heap.

“How are you doing out there?”

“No problem so far. I’m looking at the anchor now.”

“And?”

“I should be able to unshackle it from the chain. The lynchpin is held in place with bolts.”

Cabrillo bent over the anchor and pulled an adjustable wrench from his belt. He fitted it over the first bolt and used his thumb on the oversized adjusting wheel until it was snug. It fought him the entire way. Tiny bits of paint lifted from the bolt head when it first moved an eighth of a turn, and it would turn no more than that. Juan heaved on it until finally bracing his legs against the anchor and pulling until he though he was going to pass out. The bolt gave another eighth turn. It took ten backbreaking minutes to remove that first bolt, and Juan was bathed in sweat.

“Shut down the hot suit, Eddie. I’m dying out here.”

“It’s off.”

The next bolt spun out so easily that, once he had it started, he could twist it with his fingers. The third and fourth weren’t quite as easy, but nowhere near as bad as the first. He clipped the wrench back to his belt and grabbed a rubber mallet. He used rubber to avoid making any noise.

He swung at the lynchpin, the water hindering his actions, but the blow was enough to knock it an inch out of alignment. Three more shots, and it was almost free of the anchor. It would still hold the ship in position against the normal flow of water into and out of the bay, but any hard jolt would slip the pin entirely, and the
Admiral Brown
would be left to the vagaries of the sea.

“That’s it. Oh, man!”

“What?”

“I was just hit by a pocket of cold water. Damn, that is brutal.”

“Want the hot suit back on?”

“No. It drifted away.”

Juan started walking across the seafloor for the minisub, gathering up loops of his umbilical as he went so it wouldn’t tangle.

He unclipped the carbon-fiber tow cable from its slot and dragged it back to the anchor. He added a little air to his buoyancy compensator to make his ascent easier and, hand over hand, he climbed the chain. For now, he left the cable on the bottom.

He paused when he reached the underside of the four-hundred-foot warship. Her bottom was coated with red antifouling paint and was remarkably free of marine buildup. His next task was to spot-weld eight metal pad eyes to the bow. That’s what the two tanks he carried were for. They were high-capacity batteries for a handheld arc welder. The gear was normally used to make quick repairs to the
Oregon
.

He adjusted his buoyancy again and slid eye protection over his helmet so he could work comfortably next to an electric spark brighter than the sun. The curvature of the cruiser’s hull shielded him from above, and in twenty minutes he had all eight welds completed. There were so many in case one or more of the welds failed. Juan carried no illusions that he was an expert at this particular skill. Ten minutes after that, he had the tow cable threaded though all of them. Over the very tip of the cable he clamped in place a steel box about the size of a paperback book. The box served as the belay point for the cable while inside was an explosive charge. A signal from the
Oregon
would detonate the small amount of plastique, and the box would disintegrate, freeing the cable so it could be yanked away from the ship. The only evidence left behind was the eight pad eyes. Chances were, they wouldn’t survive what Juan had planned.

No sooner had he returned to the Nomad and closed the outer hatch over himself than Linda powered her up and they were under way.

“Operation Crack-the-Whip is on,” he said when Eddie helped him off with the helmet.

“Any problems?”

“Smooth as silk.”

“More good news,” Linda said. “Eric’s tracking a storm headed our way. Should hit tomorrow at what passes for dawn in these parts.”

“Call Eric back and have him pull the ship off beach a bit. Also, tell him to drain the starboard ballast tanks but leave the port side flooded. That should give the old girl a convincing list.” Juan had an anticipatory gleam in his eye. “I hope the Argentines have enjoyed their time ruling this part of world because it’s about to end.”

By five that afternoon, the Chinese survey boat had motored past the
Oregon
where she lay just off the beach. She was still close enough in that an occasional large wave would cause her hardened bows to slam against the bottom. There was little doubt they would report the
Norego
had unbeached herself and was starting her soulless wanderings once again. An hour later, an exhausted and frozen Max Hanley returned with his team and their grisly cargo.

“That sucked,” Hanley proclaimed when the RHIB was winched inside the boat garage along the ship’s side. “Not only is it colder than a brass monkey’s you know what out there, but that cemetery would creep out Stephen King. The headstones are all carved whale bones, and there’s a fence around it made up of ribs as tall as me. The arched gate is built of skulls the size of Volkswagens.”

“Any problem recovering the remains?”

“Do you mean besides the eternal damnation of my soul for desecrating holy ground?”

“No.”

“In that case, everything went fine. The graves were only about a foot deep, and the men were laid to rest in canvas bags sewn from sails. I was surprised to find they had mostly decomposed.”

“The ground would have been too frozen to bury them in the winter, and in spring it’s just warm enough for bacteria to do their thing.”

“So now what?”

“You get yourself warmed up. Mike Trono and his gang just took off back to the wreck. By the time they return and we get the Nomad prepped again, it’ll be showtime.”

“Weather coming in?”

“Eric said it’s going to be a bitch out there come dawn.”

“It isn’t exactly skittles and beer now.”

“As the saying goes, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ ”

 

 

 

M
AJOR ESPINOZA LAID THE WEATHER REPORT BACK ON Luis Laretta’s desk. The small office, with its obligatory picture of Generalissimo Ernesto Corazón on one wall and a poster of a scantily clad girl on the other, was thick with their cigar smoke.

“This storm would be perfect cover for an American Special Force strike. They’ll be expecting us to sit down here all snug in our bunks while they sneak around and place explosives all over the camp.” He brooded for a moment. “I’m going to push out the perimeter patrols another couple of miles. If they’re here, they would have parachuted in well back from the coast and would need to come overland.”

“Surely you don’t think they’ll attack,” Laretta said, waving his Cohiba airily.

Espinoza stared at him flatly. “I am paid to be prepared, if they do. I don’t have the luxury of opining.”

“We each have our jobs,” the facility director replied, thinking it was better the soldiers freeze out there than his people.

There came a knock on the door.

“Come,” Laretta bellowed.

In walked Lee Fong, the head of the Chinese search team. He was grinning ear to ear.

“Fong, how are you?” Luis greeted.

“Most excellent. We found the
Silent Sea
.”

The director came halfway out of his chair. “So soon? That’s wonderful. Here, have one of my cigars.” When he sat back down, he retrieved a bottle of brandy and some paper cups from his bottom drawer.

“I don’t normally smoke,” the soft-spoken engineer said, “but under the circumstances . . .”

“Are you sure about your find?”

Lee pulled out his PDA and clicked through to a picture. He handed the small device to Espinoza. “After we got a solid sonar return, I sent down a camera. I admit the resolution is poor, but you are looking at the stern of one of the biggest junks ever built.”

To Jorge, the picture just looked like a dark blur. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“Trust me. It’s the
Silent Sea
. Tomorrow we will dive on the wreck and bring back irrefutable proof. I tried to report this when we were out there and have you send a boat with divers right away, but we couldn’t seem to transmit.” He accepted a drink from Laretta.

Espinoza declined. “I’m on duty.”

“Your loss.” The director saluted him, then toasted Lee Fong. “Congratulations. From this moment, there can be no questioning our rights to this land and the riches off her coast. I’ve got to be honest with you guys. Ever since we started construction, I’ve always been afraid our operation would be discovered and we’d be booted out. Well, no more. We are here to stay.”

“Have you contacted you superiors?” Espinoza asked Lee.

“Yes, just now. They are most pleased,” he beamed. “My immediate boss says I will be awarded a medal and that our company will be guaranteed a lifetime of government contracts.”

“Hold out for a big raise,” Laretta told him, pouring more brandy into his glass. “Make them know you’re worth it.”

“I might just do that. Oh, I forgot. The ship on the beach.”

“What about it,” Espinoza asked sharply. He’d been suspicious about that boat, and even seeing with his own eyes that she was a derelict didn’t allay his concerns.

“She’s off the beach and starting to float away.”

“You didn’t see any engine smoke?”

“Oh, no. And she’s leaning heavily to one side. I think she will flip over soon.”

Espinoza was regretting his moment of earlier charity. He should have let Sergeant Lugones lay some charges and blow her to pieces. It wasn’t too late. He could ask the captain of the
Guillermo Brown
to sink the old scow with a missile, but he could think of no valid reason why the Navy would waste such expensive munitions on his paranoia. With any luck, the storm would either sink her or blow her so far away that he wouldn’t have to worry about her presence any longer.

“Mr. Laretta, might I have some more of your brandy?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Luis slopped some more into Lee’s paper cup.

The Major stood abruptly. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t instinct but the cold tickling of premonition that was setting his nerves on edge. The Americans would come. Tonight or tomorrow, when the storm picked up, and they would lay waste to what these two men were so smugly proud of.

“Gentlemen, I needn’t remind you that until the world formally recognizes the Antarctic Peninsula as sovereign Argentine territory, we are at risk.”

“Come, come, my dear Major.” Laretta had no head for alcohol. He was already slurring his words. “There is no harm in celebrating our success.”

“Maybe so, but I believe you are being a little premature. Get word to your workers that curfew tonight starts in one hour, and there will be no exceptions. My men are going to be on patrol with orders to shoot. Do you understand?”

That sobered him up. Laretta nodded. “Curfew, one hour. Yes, Major.”

Espinoza turned on his heel and left the office. He’d been pushing his soldiers hard since their arrival and tonight he’d push them harder still. By the time he and Raul had them all deployed, there wouldn’t be one inch of uncovered space around the oil terminal, and, knowing the American proclivity for coming to the rescue of others, he would double the guard on their captives.