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  Skeleton Coast

  ( The Oregon Files - 4 )

  Clive Cussler

  Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the covert combat ship Oregon have barely escaped a mission on the Congo River when they intercept a mayday from a defenseless boat under fire off the African coast. Cabrillo takes action, saving the beautiful Sloane Macintyre - who's looking for a long-submerged ship that may hold a fortune in diamonds. But what surprises Cabrillo is her story about a crazy fisherman who claims to have been attacked on the open sea by giant metal snakes in the same area. What begins as a snake hunt leads Cabrillo onto the trail of a far more lethal quarry - a deranged militant and his followers who plan to unleash the devastating power of nature itself against all who oppose them.

  SKELETON

  COAST

  CLIVE

  CUSSLER

  WITH JACK Du BRUL

  “A NEW CLIVE CUSSLER NOVEL IS

  LIKE A VISIT FROM YOUR BEST

  FRIEND.”

  —Tom Clancy

  Clive Cussler’s explosive Oregon Files novels have been hailed as “honestly fabulous” (Kirkus Reviews) and “action-packed” (Publishers Weekly). Now, the author of the bestselling NUMA®and Dirk Pitt®series delivers an explosiveOregon Files novel featuring his unbeatable hero of the high seas—Juan Cabrillo…

  1896:Four Englishmen flee for their lives across the merciless Kalahari Desert carrying a stolen fortune in raw diamonds, and hunted by a fierce African tribe. The thieves manage to reach the waiting HMSRove

  —only to die with their pursuers in a storm that buries them all under tons of sand…

  Today:Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the covert combat ship Oregon have barely escaped a mission on the Congo River when they intercept a mayday from a defenseless boat under fire off the African coast.

  Cabrillo takes action, saving the craft…along with beautiful Sloane Macintyre. Sloane is looking for the now-submergedRove , and her search has attracted unwanted—and lethal—attention from unknown forces. But what surprises Cabrillo is her story about a crazy fisherman who claims to have been attacked on the open sea—by giant metal snakes—in the same area.

  What begins as a snake hunt leads Cabrillo to the trial of a far more lethal quarry—a deranged enemy whose cadre of followers plans to unleash the devastating power of nature itself against all who oppose them…

  PRAISE FOR CLIVE CUSSLER’SNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING NOVELS OF THE

  OREGON FILES

  DARK WATCH

  SACRED STONE

  GOLDEN BUDDHA

  “Ablaze with action.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Readers will burn up the pages following the blazing action and daring exploits of these men and women and their amazing machines.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fans of Cussler will not be disappointed.”

  —Library Journal

  PRAISE FOR

  CLIVE CUSSLER’S NUMA®SERIES

  “MARVELOUS…simply terrific fun.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “YOU CAN’T GET MUCH MORE SATISFYING.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “A GREAT STORY.”

  —Tulsa World

  “WILDLY ENTERTAINING.”

  —New York Daily News

  PRAISE FOR

  CLIVE CUSSLER’S DIRK PITT®SERIES

  “[A] NONSTOP THRILLER…CUSSLER SPEEDS AND TWISTS through the complex plot and hairbreadth escapes [with] the intensity and suspense of a NASCAR race.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “CLIVE CUSSLER…IS AT TOP FORM HERE.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A DELIGHTFUL PAGE-TURNER that is almost impossible to put down.”

  —The San Francisco Examiner

  “THE FUNNEST DIRK PITT ADVENTURE SINCERAISE THETITANIC ! ”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  DIRK PITT®ADVENTURES BY CLIVE

  CUSSLER

  Trojan Odyssey

  Valhalla Rising

  Atlantis Found

  Flood Tide

  Shock Wave

  Inca Gold

  Sahara

  Dragon

  Treasure

  Cyclops

  Deep Six

  Pacific Vortex

  Night Probe

  Vixen 03

  Raise theTitanic !

  Iceberg

  The Mediterranean Caper

  DIRK PITT®ADVENTURES BY CLIVE

  CUSSLER AND DIRK CUSSLER

  Black Wind

  FICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER WITH

  PAUL KEMPRECOS

  Polar Shift

  Lost City

  White Death

  Fire Ice

  Serpent

  Blue Gold

  FICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER WITH

  JACK DU BRUL

  Skeleton Coast

  Dark Watch

  FICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND

  CRAIG DIRGO

  Sacred Stone

  Golden Buddha

  NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND

  CRAIG DIRGO

  The Sea Hunters II

  The Sea Hunters

  1

  KALAHARI DESERT

  1896

  HE never should have ordered them to leave the guns behind. The decision would cost them all their lives. But had there really been a choice? When the last remaining packhorse went lame they’d had to redistribute its load, and that meant leaving equipment behind. There was no debating the necessity of bringing the water flasks the animal had carried, or the satchels bursting with uncut stones. They’d had to abandon the tents, bedrolls, thirty pounds of food, and the Martini-Henry rifles each of the five men had carried, as well as all the ammunition. But even with these weight savings the surviving horses were severely overburdened, and with the sun beginning to rise once more to pound the desert no one expected their mounts would last the day.

  H. A. Ryder knew better than to agree to lead the others across the Kalahari. He was an old Africa hand, having abandoned a failing farm in Sussex in the heady days of the Kimberley rush hoping to make himself a millionaire in the diamond fields. By the time he’d arrived in 1868 the whole of Colesberg Kopje, the hillock where the first diamonds had been discovered, was staked and the fields around it, too, for several miles. So Ryder turned to providing meat for the army of workers.

  With a pair of wagons and hundreds of sacks of salt to cure the game, he and a couple of native guides ranged over thousands of square miles. It had been a solitary existence but one that Ryder grew to love, just as he came to love the land, with its haunting sunsets and dense forests, streams so clear the water looked like glass, and horizons so distant they seemed impossible to reach. He learned to speak the languages of various tribes, the Matabele, the Mashona, and the fierce, warlike Herero. He even understood some of the strange clicks and whistles that the Bushmen of the desert used to communicate.

  He’d taken work as a safari guide so that rich Englishmen and Americans could adorn their mansion walls with trophies and he had spent time finding suitable routes for a telegraph company stringing lines across the southern third of the continent. He’d fought in a dozen skirmishes and killed ten times that many men. He knew and understood the African people and knew better still the savagery of the land itself. He knew he should have never accepted the job of guiding the others from Bechuanaland across the vast Kalahari wasteland in a mad dash to the sea. But there was always the lure of the big payoff, the siren song of instant wealth that had drawn him to Africa in the first place.

  If they somehow made it, if the uncaring desert didn’t claim them, then H. A. Ryder was going to have that fortune of which he’d always dreamed.

  “Think they’r
e still back there, H. A.?”

  Ryder squinted into the rising sun so that his eyes nearly vanished into his weathered skin. He could see nothing on the distant horizon but curtains of shimmering heat that formed and dissolved like smoke.

  Between them and the fiery sun marched dunes of pure white sand—shifting waves that rivaled towering hurricane swells. With the sun came the wind, which lashed at the tops of the dunes so that sand blew off their crests in stinging clouds.

  “Aye, laddie,” he said without looking at the man standing next to him.

  “How can you be sure?” H. A. turned to his companion, Jon Varley. “They’ll follow us to the gates of hell for what we did to them.”

  The certainty in H. A.’s raspy voice made Varley blanch under his tan. Like Ryder, the four other men in their party were all English-born and had come to Africa to seek their fortunes, though none was as seasoned as their guide.

  “We’d best get going,” Ryder said. They’d been traveling under the relatively cool cover of darkness.

  “We can cover a few miles before the sun climbs too high.”

  “I think we should make camp here,” said Peter Smythe, the greenest member of the group, and by far the worst off. He’d lost his swaggering attitude shortly after entering the sand sea and now moved with the shuffling gait of an old man. White crusts had formed at the corners of his eyes and mouth, while his once bright blue eyes had grown dim.

  Ryder glanced at Peter and saw the signs immediately. They’d all shared the same water ration since filling their canteens and jerry cans ten days earlier at a brackish well, but Smythe’s body seemed to need more than the others. It wasn’t a question of strength or will, it was simply the lad needed to drink more to stay alive. H. A. knew to the drop how much water remained, and unless he could find another desert well, Smythe would be the first to die.

  The thought of giving him an extra ration never entered Ryder’s mind. “We go on.”

  He looked westward and saw the mirror image of the terrain they’d already covered. Sand dune piled upon sand dune in endless ranks that stretched seemingly forever. The sky was turning brassy as light reflected off the infinite desert. Ryder checked his mount. The animal was suffering, and for that he felt guilty—worse than his feelings for young Smythe in fact, for the poor animal had no choice but to carry them across this cruel environment. He used a clasp knife to remove a stone from the horse’s hoof and adjusted the saddle blanket where the pannier straps were beginning to chafe. The animal’s once glossy coat was dull and hung in flaps where its flesh had begun to waste away.

  He stroked the horse’s cheek and muttered a few soothing words into its ear. There was no way any of them could ride their mounts. The animals were already struggling under their lightened loads. He took up the reins and started off. Ryder’s boots sank to the uppers as he led the horse down the face of a dune.

  Sand shifted under them, hissing and sliding down the embankment, and threatening to send the pair tumbling if either took a misstep. H. A. didn’t look back. The men had no choice but to follow or die where they stood.

  He walked for an hour as the sun continued its inexorable climb into the cloudless sky. He’d tucked a smooth pebble between his teeth and tongue to try to fool his body that he wasn’t severely dehydrated.

  When he paused to wipe the inside of his big slouch hat the heat scorched the red patch of skin on the crown of his head. He wanted to go for another hour but he could hear the men struggling behind them.

  They weren’t yet at the point where he would consider abandoning them, so he led them to the lee of a particularly tall dune and began to erect a sunshade using the horse blankets. The men flopped to the ground, panting as he set up their meager camp.

  H. A. checked on Peter Smythe. The young man’s lips were nothing but raw blisters that leaked clear fluid and the tops of his cheeks were burned as if with an iron straight from the brazier. Ryder reminded him to only loosen his boot laces. All of their feet were so swollen that to remove their boots meant they’d never get them back on again. They watched him expectantly as he finally took a couple of canteens from a saddlebag. He unstoppered one of them and immediately one of the horses nickered at the scent of water. The others crowded over and his own mount brushed its head against H. A.’s shoulder.

  So as not to lose even a single drop, Ryder poured a measure into a bowl and held it for the animal to drink. It slurped noisily and its stomach rumbled as water reached it for the first time in three days. He poured out a little more and again watered the horse. He did this to all of them first despite his own raging thirst and the angry glares of his companions.

  “They die, you die” was all he had to say, for they knew he was right.

  Having drunk only a quart of water each, the horses could still be cajoled to eat from the feed bags of oats one of them had carried. He hobbled them with leg ropes and only then did he pass around the bowl for the men to drink. He was even stricter with their ration, each receiving a single mouthful before Ryder secured the water in his pannier. There were no protests. H. A. was the only one of them to have crossed this desolate wasteland before and they deferred to him to see them through.

  The shade of the horse blankets was pitiably small compared to the searing oven that was the Kalahari, one of the hottest and driest places on earth, a land where the rain might fall once a year or not for many.

  As the sun beat the earth with hammer strokes of heat, the men lay in torpid lethargy, shifting only when the shadows moved with the revolving sun to expose a hand or leg to the brutal onslaught. They lay with their all-consuming thirst, and they lay with their pain, but mostly they lay with their greed, for these were still motivated men, men close to becoming far wealthier than any had imagined.

  When the sun reached its zenith it seemed to gain strength, making the act of breathing a battle between the need for air and the desire to keep the heat from entering their bodies. It sucked moisture from the men with each shallow breath and left their lungs aflame.

  And still the heat had increased, a smothering weight that seemed to crush the men into the ground.

  Ryder didn’t remember it being this bad when he had crossed the desert all those years ago. It was as if the sun had fallen from the heavens and now lay upon the earth, raging and angry that mere mortals were trying to defy it. It was enough to drive a man insane, and yet they endured the long afternoon, praying for the day to finally end.

  As swiftly as the heat had built up it began to drop as the sun finally settled toward the western horizon, painting the sand with bands of red and purple and rose. The men slowly emerged from under the sunshade, brushing dust off their filthy clothes. Ryder scaled the dune that had protected them from the wind and panned the desert behind them with a collapsible brass telescope for signs of their pursuers. He could see nothing but shifting dunes. Their tracks had been scoured clean by the constant zephyrs, though it gave him little comfort. The men chasing them were some of the best trackers in the world. They would find them in the featureless sand sea as surely as if Ryder had left a trail of marker stones for them to follow.

  What he didn’t know was how much ground their stalkers had gained during the day—for they seemed superhuman in their abilities to withstand the sun and heat. H. A. had estimated that when they entered the desert they had a five-day lead on their pursuers. He felt confident that they held no more than a day’s advantage now. By tomorrow that would be whittled further to half a day. And then? The next day would be when they would pay for abandoning their weapons when the packhorse went lame.

  Their only chance was to find enough water tonight for the horses so they could ride them once again.

  Not enough of the precious fluid remained to water the horses, and the men’s ration was half of what they’d had just after dawn. For Ryder it was like adding insult to injury. The warm trickle seemed to just seep into his tongue rather than slake his thirst, which was now a gnawing ache in his stomach. He forced
himself to eat some dried beef.

  Looking at the raw-boned faces around him, H. A. knew that tonight’s march was going to be torture.

  Peter Smythe couldn’t stop himself from swaying where he stood. Jon Varley wasn’t much better off.

  Only the brothers, Tim and Tom Watermen, seemed okay, but they had been in Africa longer than Smythe or Varley, working as farmhands on a big Cape cattle ranch for the past decade. Their bodies were more acclimated to Africa’s brutal sun.

  H. A. ran his hands through his big muttonchop sideburns, combing sand from the coarse graying hair.

  When he bent to tighten his boot laces he felt twice his fifty years. His back and legs ached fiercely and the vertebrae popped when he stood again.

  “This is it, lads. You have my word that tonight we will drink our fill,” he said to bolster their flagging morale.

  “On what, sand?” Tim Watermen joked to show he still could.

  “The Bushmen who call themselves the San have lived in this desert for a thousand years or more. It’s said they can smell water a hundred miles off and that’s not far off the mark. When I came though the Kalahari twenty years ago I had a San guide. The little bugger found water where I would have never thought to look. They scooped it from plants when there was a fog in the morning and drank from the rumen of the animals they killed with their poison arrows.”

  “What’s a rumen?” Varley asked.

  Ryder exchanged a glance with the Watermen brothers as if to say everyone should know the term. “It’s the first stomach in an animal like a cow or antelope where they produce their cud. The fluid in it is mostly water and plant juice.”

  “I could go for some of that now,” Peter Smythe managed to mumble. A single drop of claret-red blood clung to the corner of his cracked lip. He licked it away before it could fall to the earth.

  “But the San’s greatest ability is to find water buried under the sand in dried-out riverbeds that haven’t flowed in a generation.”