Corsair of-6 Read online

  Corsair

  ( Oregon Files - 6 )

  Clive Cussler

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  ONE - WASHINGTON, D . C .

  TWO - OFF THE COAST OF SOMALIA FOUR MONTHS LATER

  THREE

  FOUR - BAHIRET EL BIBANE, TUNISIA

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN - OVER THE SAHARA DESERT

  EIGHT

  NINE - CORINTHIA BAB AFRICA HOTEL, TRIPOLI, LIBYA

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-01640-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  DIRK PITT ® ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  Trojan Odyssey

  Valhalla Rising

  Atlantis Found

  Flood Tide

  Shock Wave

  Sahara

  Dragon

  Treasure

  Deep Six

  Pacific Vortex

  Night Probe

  Vixen 03

  Raise the Titanic !

  Iceberg

  The Mediterranean Caper

  Inca Gold

  Cyclops

  WITH DIRK CUSSLER

  Arctic Drift

  Treasure of Khan

  Black Wind

  KURT AUSTIN ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  WITH PAUL KEMPRECOS

  The Navigator

  Polar Shift

  Lost City

  White Death

  Fire Ice

  Blue Gold

  Serpent

  OREGON FILES ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  WITH JACK DU BRUL

  Plague Ship

  Skeleton Coast

  Dark Watch

  WITH CRAIG DIRGO

  Sacred Stone

  Golden Buddha

  OTHER FICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  The Chase

  NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND CRAIG DIRGO

  The Sea Hunters The Sea Hunters II

  Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed

  “. . . that it is founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it is written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it is their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle are sure to go to Paradise.”

  —Thomas Jefferson’s testimony to the Continental Congress explaining the justification given to him by the Barbary ambassador to England, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja , concerning their preying on Christian ships, 1786

  “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.”

  —John Adams on the Barbary pirates , 1787

  THE BAY OF TRIPOLI FEBRUARY 1803

  NO SOONER Had THE SQUADRON SIGHTED THE FORTIFIED walls of the Barbary capital than a storm struck suddenly, forcing the ketch Intrepid and the larger brig Siren back out into the Mediterranean. Through his spyglass, Lieutenant Henry Lafayette, the Siren’s First Officer, had just by chance spotted the towering masts of the USS Philadelphia, the reason the two American warships had ventured so close to the pirates’ lair.

  Six months earlier, the forty-four-gun Philadelphia had chased a Barbary corsair too close to Tripoli’s notoriously treacherous harbor and grounded in the shallow shoals. At the time, the frigate’s captain, William Baimbridge, had done all he could to save his ship, including heaving her cannons over the side, but she was hard aground, and high tide was hours away. Under threat of a dozen enemy gunboats, Baimbridge had no choice but to strike the colors and surrender the massive warship to the Bashaw of Tripoli. Letters from the Dutch Consul residing in the city reported that Baimbridge and his senior officers were being treated well, but the fate of the Philadelphia’s crew, like that of most others who fell to the Barbary pirates, was slavery.

  It was decided among the American commanders of the Mediterranean fleet that there was no hope of recapturing the Philadelphia and sailing her out of the harbor, so they determined she would burn instead. As to the fate of her crew, through intermediaries it was learned that Tripoli’s head of state was amenable to releasing them for a cash settlement, totaling some half a million dollars.

  For centuries, the pirates of the Barbary Coast had raided all along Europe’s coastline, rampaging as far north as Ireland and Iceland. They had pillaged entire towns and carried captives back to North Africa, where the innocents languished as galley slaves, laborers, and, in the case of the more attractive women, as concubines in the various rulers’ harems. The wealthiest captives were given the chance to be ransomed by their friends and family, but the poor faced a lifetime of drudgery and anguish.

  In order to protect their merchant fleets, the great naval powers of England, Spain, France, and Holland paid exorbitant tributes to the three principal cities of the Barbary Coast—Tangiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—so the raiders would not attack their
vessels. The fledgling United States, having been under the protection of the Union Jack until independence, also paid a tribute of nearly one-tenth her tax revenue to the potentates. That all changed when Thomas Jefferson took office as the third President, and he vowed that the practice would cease immediately.

  The Barbary States, sensing a bluff by the young democracy, declared war.

  Jefferson replied by dispatching an armada of American ships.

  The very sight of the frigate Constitution convinced the Emperor of Tangiers to release all American sailors in his custody and renounce his demand for tribute. In return, Commodore Edward Preble returned to him the two Barbary merchant ships he’d already captured.

  The Bashaw of Tripoli wasn’t so impressed, especially when his sailors captured the USS Philadelphia and renamed her Gift of Allah. Having taken one of America’s capital ships, the Bashaw felt emboldened by his success and rebuffed any attempt at negotiation, save the immediate payment of his tribute. There was little concern on the Americans’ part that the Barbary pirates would be able to sail the square-rigged ship and use her as a corsair, but the thought of a foreign flag hanging from her jack staff was enough to gall even the most novice seaman.

  For five days after the Americans espied the Philadelphia, protected by the one hundred and fifty guns of Tripoli’s inner harbor, the skies and seas raged in a battle as fierce as any aboard the two warships had seen. Despite the best efforts of their captains, the squadron became separated and drifted far to the east.

  As bad as it was aboard the Siren, First Officer Lafayette couldn’t imagine what the crew of the Intrepid faced during the tempest. Not only was the ketch much smaller than his ship, coming in at a mere sixty-four tons, but until the previous Christmas the Intrepid had been a slave ship called Mastico. She’d been captured by the Constitution , and when her holds were inspected the Americans discovered forty-two black Africans chained below. They were to be a gift of tribute to the Sultan in Istanbul from Tripoli’s Bashaw.

  No amount of lye could mask the stench of the human misery.

  The storm finally abated on February twelfth, but it wasn’t until the fifteenth that the two ships rendezvoused at sea and made their way back to Tripoli. That night, Captain Stephen Decatur, the squadron commander, convened a war council aboard the plucky little Intrepid. Henry Lafayette, along with eight heavily armed seamen, rowed over to join him.

  “So you get to wait out the storm in comfort and now come aboard looking for glory, eh?” Decatur teased, reaching out to give Lafayette a hand over the low gunwale. He was a handsome, broad-shouldered man, with thick dark hair and captivating brown eyes, who wore the mantle of command easily.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir,” Lafayette replied. Though the two men shared the same rank, were the same age, and had been friends since their midshipmen days, Lafayette deferred to Decatur as the squadron commander and captain of the Intrepid.

  Henry was as tall as Decatur but had the slender build of a master fencer. His eyes were so dark they appeared black, and in the native garb he had donned as a disguise he cut as dashing a figure as the legendary pirate they hoped to one day face, Suleiman Al-Jama. Born in Quebec, Lafayette had crossed into Vermont as soon as he turned sixteen. He wanted to be part of America’s experiment in democracy. He already spoke passable English, so he anglicized his first name from Henri and became an American citizen. He joined the Navy after a decade working the timber schooners of Lake Champlain.

  There were eighty men crammed onto the sixty-foot ketch, though only a few wore disguises. The rest were to hide behind her gunwale or wait in the hold when the Intrepid sailed past the stone breakwater and into Tripoli’s principal anchorage.

  “Henry, I’d like you to meet Salvador Catalano. He’s going to be our pilot once we near the harbor.”

  Catalano was thickset and swarthy, with a massive bush of a beard that spread across his chest. His head was covered with a filthy linen turban, and in his belt was stuck a wickedly curved knife with a red semiprecious stone set into its pommel.

  “I assume he didn’t volunteer,” Lafayette whispered to Decatur as he moved to shake the pilot’s hand.

  “Cost us a king’s ransom, he did,” Decatur retorted.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Catalano,” Henry said, grasping the Maltese’s greasy palm. “And on behalf of the crew of the USS Siren, I want to thank you for your brave service.”

  Catalano threw a wide, gap-toothed grin. “The Bashaw’s corsairs have raided my ships enough times that I thought this is fitting revenge.”

  “Good to have you with us,” Lafayette replied absently. His attention was already on his new, temporary home.

  The Intrepid’s two masts stood tall, but several of her stays sagged, and the sails she presented to the wind were salt-crusted and oft-patched. Though her deck had been scrubbed with both lye and stones, a fetid miasma rose from the oak timbers. Henry’s eyes swam with the stench.

  She was armed with only four small carronades, a type of naval cannon that slid on tracks mounted to the deck rather than rolling backward on wheels when fired. The men of the raiding party lay sprawled where they could find space on the deck, each with a musket and sword within easy reach. Most still looked like they were suffering the aftereffects of the five-day storm.

  Henry grinned at Decatur. “Hell of a command you have here, sir.”

  “Aye, but she’s mine. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Lafayette, no one has yet called you captain in all your years of service.”

  “True enough”—Lafayette threw a smart salute—“Captain.”

  Another night would pass before the winds picked up enough for the Intrepid to make her approach on Tripoli. Through a brass telescope, Decatur and Lafayette watched the walled city slowly emerge from the vast, trackless desert. Spread along the high defensive wall and sprouting from the ramparts of the Bashaw’s castle were more than a hundred and fifty guns. Because of the seawall, called the mole, which stretched across the anchorage, they could see only the tops of the Philadelphia’s three masts.

  “What do you think?” Decatur asked Henry, whom he had appointed his First Officer for the attack. They stood shoulder to shoulder behind the Maltese pilot.

  Henry looked up at the Intrepid’s spread of canvas and at the wake trailing behind the little ketch. He judged their speed to be four knots. “I think if we don’t slow down we are going to enter the harbor long before sunset.”

  “Should I order the topsail and jib reefed, Captain?” asked Salvador Catalano.

  “It’s best we do. The moon’s going to be bright enough later on.”

  Shadows lengthened until they began to merge, and the last of the sun’s rays set over the western horizon. The ketch entered Tripoli Bay and began closing in on the imposing walls of the Barbary city. The rising crescent moon made the stones of the mole, fortress, and the Bashaw’s castle gleam eerily, while the black gun emplacements dotting the fortifications exuded an air of menace. Peeking over the wall was the thin silhouette of a minaret, from which the men on the Intrepid had just heard the call to prayer moments before sundown.

  And at anchor directly below the castle lay the USS Philadelphia. She appeared in good shape, and the Americans could see that her once-discarded cannons had been salvaged and refitted in her gunports.

  The sight of her sent conflicting emotions through Henry Lafayette. He was stirred by her beautiful lines and sheer size, while his anger boiled at the thought of the Tripolian flag hanging over her stern and the knowledge that her three-hundred-and-seven-man crew were hostages in the Bashaw’s prison. He would like nothing more than for Decatur to order his men to swarm the castle and free the prisoners, but he knew that command would never come to pass. Commodore Preble, the commander of the entire Mediterranean squadron, had made it clear that he wouldn’t risk the Barbary pirates getting more American prisoners than they already had.

  Clustered around the harbor and tied along the breakwate
r were dozens of other ships, lateen-rigged merchantmen and rakish pirate craft bristling with cannons. Lafayette stopped counting after twenty.

  A new emotion tightened his chest. Fear.

  If things didn’t go as planned, the Intrepid would never make it back out of the harbor, and every man aboard her would be dead—or, worse, a prisoner destined for slavery.

  Henry’s mouth was suddenly dry, and the countless hours he’d trained with his cutlass seemed not nearly enough. The pair of mismatched .58 caliber flintlock pistols tucked into the sash he’d wound around his waist felt puny. Then he glanced down at the sailors hiding behind the Intrepid’s gunwales. Armed with axes, pikes, swords, and daggers, they looked to be as bloodthirsty as any Arab pirate. They were the finest men in the world, volunteers all, and he knew they would carry the day. A midshipman was moving among them, making certain the squad leaders had their lamps lit and their lengths of whale-oil fuse ready.

  He again looked to the Philadelphia. They were close enough now to see a trio of guards standing at her rail, their curved scimitars plainly visible. But with the wind so light, it took a further two hours before they were in comfortable hailing distance.

  Catalano called out in Arabic, “Ahoy, there.”

  “What do you want?” one shouted back.

  “I am Salvador Catalano,” the Maltese pilot said, keeping to the script Decatur and Lafayette had worked out. “This is the ship Mastico . We are here to buy livestock for the British base on Malta but were caught in a storm. Our anchor was torn off so we cannot moor. I would like to tie up to your magnificent ship for the night. In the morning, we will dock properly and effect repairs.”