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  "We're not returning to the Oregon by boat?" inquired Pitt.

  "Too late," replied Seng. "Chairman Cabrillo thought it wiser to raise the anchor and put as much water as possible between the ship and Hong Kong before the fireworks start. The Oregon should be passing out of the West Lamma Channel into the China Sea about now. Thus, the helicopter."

  "Did Cabrillo work a deal on the helicopter too?" said Giordino.

  "A friend of a friend runs a charter service."

  "He must not believe in advertising," observed Pitt, looking vainly for a name on the side of the tail boom.

  Seng's mouth stretched in a broad smile. "His clientele prefers to travel in obscurity."

  "If we're any example of his clientele, I'm not at all surprised."

  A young man in a chauffeur's uniform stepped up to the Rolls and opened the door. Seng thanked him and slipped an envelope into his pocket. Then he motioned Pitt and Giordino to follow him into the aircraft. They were in the act of tightening their seat belts when the pilot lifted off the playground and leveled off at only twenty feet before ducking under a network of electrical power lines as if it was an everyday affair. He then set a course to the south and flew out across the waters of the harbor, passing over an oil tanker no more than a hundred feet above its funnel.

  Pitt gazed with longing at the former crown colony in the distance. He would have given a month's pay to walk the winding streets and visit the multitude of small shops selling everything from tea to intricately carved furniture, dine on exotic Chinese cuisine in a suite at the Peninsula Hotel overlooking the lights of the harbor with an elegant and beautiful woman and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin brut champagne. ..

  His reverie was shattered into a kaleidoscope of pieces when Giordino suddenly exclaimed, "God, what I wouldn't give for a taco and a beer."

  The sun was down and the western sky was a bluish gray when the helicopter caught up to the Oregon and landed on one of her cargo-hatch covers. Cabrillo was waiting for them in the galley with a glass of wine for Pitt and a bottle of beer for Giordino. "You two must have had a hard day," he said. "So our chef is fixing up something special."

  Pitt removed the borrowed coat and loosened the tie. "A hard day and an extremely unproductive one."

  "Discover anything of interest on board the United States?" asked Cabrillo.

  "What we found was a ship that has been gutted from stem to stern," answered Pitt. "The entire interior is nothing but a vacuum with an operational engine room and a wheelhouse filled with automated navigation and control systems."

  "The ship has already left her dock. She must be operating with a skeleton crew."

  Pitt shook his head. "There is no crew. If, as you say, she's sailing out of the harbor, she's sailing without benefit of human hands. The entire ship is operated by computer and remote command."

  "I can vouch for the fact there isn't a scrap of food in the galley," added Giordino. "Nor stove nor refrigerator nor even a knife and fork. Anybody taking a long voyage on that ship will surely starve."

  "No ship can sail across the sea without an engine-room crew and seamen to monitor the navigation systems," Cabrillo protested.

  "I've heard tell the U.S. Navy is experimenting with crewless ships," said Giordino.

  "A ship void of a crew might cross the Pacific Ocean, but would she still require a captain on board to take on a pilot and handle payment with Panamanian officials for the passage through the Canal into the Caribbean."

  "They could put on a temporary crew and captain before the ship reached Panama-" Pitt suddenly paused and stared at Cabrillo. "How do you know the United States is heading for the Panama Canal?"

  "That's the latest word from my local source."

  "Nice to know you have a man inside Qin Shang's organization who keeps us up-to-date on current events," said Giordino caustically. "A pity he didn't bother to tell us the ship was converted into a remote operated toy. He might have saved us a boatload of trouble."

  "I have no man on the inside," explained Cabrillo. "I wish I had. The information was obtained from the Hong Kong agent for Qin Shang Maritime Limited. Commercial ship arrivals and departures are not classified secrets."

  "What is the United States' final destination?" asked Pitt.

  "Qin Shang's port at Sungari."

  Pitt stared at the wine in his glass in long silence, then said slowly, "For what purpose? Why would Qin Shang send a fully robotic ocean liner with its guts removed across an ocean to a miscarriage of a shipping port in Louisiana? What can be rolling around in his mind?"

  Giordino finished off his beer and dug a tortilla chip into a bowl of salsa. "He could just as well divert the ship somewhere else."

  "Possibly. But she can't hide. Not a ship her size. She'll be tracked by reconnaissance satellites."

  "Do you suppose he intends to fill it with explosives and blow up something," offered Cabrillo, "like maybe the Panama Canal."

  "Certainly not the Panama Canal or any other shipping facility," said Pitt. "He'd be cutting his own throat. His ships need access to ports on both oceans as much as any other shipping company. No, Qin Shang must have something else in mind, another motive, one just as menacing and just as deadly."

  19

  THE SHIP PLOWED easily through the swells in a slow rocking motion under a sky so brightly lit by a full moon that one could read a newspaper under its beam. The scene was deceptively peaceful. Cabrillo had not called for the ship's full cruising speed, so she loafed along at eight knots until they were far beyond the Chinese mainland. The whisper of the bows cutting the water and the aroma of fresh baked bread wafting up from the galley might have lulled the crew of any other cargo ship on the China Sea, but not the highly trained men on the Oregon.

  Pitt and Giordino stood in the surveillance and countermeasures control room in the raised forecastle of the ship, acting strictly as observers while Cabrillo and his team of technicians focused their eyes and minds on the radar detection and identification systems.

  "She's taking her sweet time," said the surveillance analyst, a woman by the name of Linda Ross who was seated in front of a computer monitor that showed the three-dimensional display of a warship. Ross was another prize from Cabrillo's headhunting expeditions for superior personnel. She had been chief fire-control officer on board a U.S. Navy Aegis guided-missile cruiser when she fell under Cabrillo's spell and an offer of incredible compensation that went far beyond any money she could make in the Navy. "With a maximum speed of thirty-four knots, she'll overhaul us within a half an hour."

  "How do you read her?" asked Cabrillo.

  "Configuration indicates that she's one of the Luhu Type 052 Class of big destroyers launched in the late nineties. Displaces forty-two hundred tons. Two gas turbine engines rated at fifty-five thousand horsepower. She carries two Harbine helicopters on her stern. Her complement consists of two hundred and thirty men, forty of them officers."

  "Missiles?"

  "Eight sea-skimming surface-to-surface missiles and a surface-to-air octuble launcher."

  "If I was her captain I wouldn't be concerned with preparing a missile strike against a helpless-looking old scow like the Oregon. Guns?"

  "Twin one-hundred-millimeter guns in a turret aft of the bow," said the analyst. "Eight thirty-seven millimeters mounted in pairs. She also carries six torpedoes in two triple tubes and twelve antisubmarine mortar launchers."

  Cabrillo wiped his brow with a handkerchief. "By Chinese standards, this is an impressive warship."

  "Where did she come from?" asked Pitt.

  "Bad luck on our part," said Cabrillo. "She just happened to be cruising across our path when the alarm went out and harbor officials notified their navy. I timed our departure so that we sailed in the wake of an Australian freighter and a Bolivian ore carrier to confuse Chinese radar. The other two were probably stopped and searched by fast attack patrol craft before being allowed to continue to their destinations. We had the misfortune to draw a heav
y destroyer."

  "Qin Shang has a long arm to get that kind of cooperation from his government."

  "I wish I had his influence with our Congress."

  "Isn't it against international law for a nation's military to stop and search foreign ships outside their territorial waters?"

  "Not since nineteen ninety-six. That was when Beijing implemented a U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, expanding China's territorial waters from a twelve mile limit to two hundred miles."

  "Which puts us well within their waters."

  "About a hundred and forty miles inside," said Cabrillo.

  "If you have missiles," said Pitt, "why not blast the destroyer before we come in range of its guns?"

  "Although we carry a small, older version of the Harpoon surface-to-surface missile with more than enough explosive power to blast a light attack craft or a patrol boat out of the water, we'd have to get incredibly lucky with our first launch to take out a forty-two-hundred-ton destroyer bristling with enough weaponry to sink a fleet. Disadvantage belongs to us. Our first missiles might take her launchers out of action. And we can slam two Mark 46 torpedoes into her hull. But that still leaves her with enough thirty-seven and hundred-millimeter guns to blast us into the nearest scrap yard."

  Pitt looked at Cabrillo steadily. "A lot of men are going to die in the next hour. Is there no way to avert the slaughter?"

  "We can't fool a naval boarding party," said Cabrillo solemnly. "They'll see through our disguise two minutes after setting foot on deck. You seem to forget, as far as the Chinese are concerned, Mr. Pitt, you and I and everyone on board this ship are spies. And as such, we can all be executed in the blink of an eye. Also, once they get their hands on the Oregon and her technology and realize her potential, they won't hesitate to use her for intelligence operations against other nations. Once the first Chinese marine sets foot on our deck, the die is cast. We fight or die."

  "Then our only option is surprise."

  "The key is that we won't constitute a threat in the eyes of the captain of that Chinese destroyer," Cabrillo explained gruffly. "If you were him, standing on your bridge looking at us through night glasses, would you be trembling in your boots at what you saw? I doubt it. He might train the hundred millimeters on our bridge or one of the thirty-seven-millimeter twins at any crewman showing on deck. But once he sees his marines come on board and begin seizing the ship, he'll relax and call off the ship's alert, provided he even bothered to order one."

  "You make it sound as cut and dried as a snowball fight," ventured Giordino.

  Cabrillo gave Giordino a patiently worn look. "A what fight?"

  "You'll have to excuse Al's regressive display of humor," said Pitt. "He gets mentally unstable when things don't go his way."

  "You're just as weird," Cabrillo growled at Pitt. "Doesn't anything ever faze you two?"

  "Think of it as a response to a nasty situation," Pitt said in mild protest. "You and your crew are trained and prepared for a fight. We're merely helpless bystanders."

  "We'll require the services of every man and woman on board before this night is over."

  Pitt studied the image on the monitor over Linda Ross's shoulder.

  "If you don't mind me asking, just how do you intend to trash a heavy destroyer?"

  "My plan, elementary as it is, is for the Oregon to come to a stop when ordered. Then comes a demand to board and inspect us. Once we sucker him into standing off within spitting distance, we act like innocent, ill-tempered seamen while they observe us at close range. Once the Chinese boarding party climbs on deck, we'll lull the captain even deeper into a state of inertia by lowering our Iranian ensign and raising the People's Republic of China flag."

  "You have a Chinese flag?" asked Giordino. "We carry flags and ensigns of every maritime country in the world," answered Cabrillo.

  "After your show of surrender?" said Pitt. "Then what?"

  "We hit him with everything we've got and pray that when we're through he has nothing left to throw back at us."

  "It beats a long-range duel with missiles we couldn't win," said Max Hanley, who was sitting in a chair beside an electronics specialist manning a tactical data unit.

  Like a football coach in the lockers before the kickoff, Cabrillo went over his game plan carefully with his players. No contingency was left undevised or unpolished, no detail overlooked, nothing left to chance. Tension was nonexistent. The men and women on board the Oregon prepared to go about their jobs as if it was a typical Monday morning in the big city. Their eyes were clear and fixed, they did not have the frightened look of the hunted.

  When Cabrillo finished, he asked, "Any questions?" His voice was deep and low, with the tiniest trace of a Spanish accent, and although he was far too experienced and perceptive not to accept fear, no hint showed in his face and manner. Hearing no inquiries from his crew, he nodded. "Okay, that's it then. Good luck to you all. And when this little scrape is over, we'll throw the biggest party the Oregon has ever known."

  Pitt raised a hand. "You said you needed every man. How can Al and I help?"

  Cabrillo nodded. "You two gave evidence the other night that you're not afraid of a fight. Go to the ship's armory and pick up a pair of automatic weapons. You'll need more firepower than that forty-five-caliber popgun of yours. Also check out a couple of sets of body armor. After that check with the costume department for some grungy old clothes. Then join the deck crew. Your talents will come in handy in stopping the Chinese marines once they come on board. I can only spare a few men from more important duties, so you'll be slightly outnumbered. There probably won't be more than ten of them, not enough to matter since you'll have the element of surprise. If you're successful, and I'm counting on it, you can lend a hand at damage control. And you can bet there will be plenty of damage to go around."

  "Will it be absolutely necessary to shoot down the boarding party without warning?" asked Linda Ross.

  "Keep in mind," Cabrillo said to her bluntly, "these people do not intend to allow anybody on board this ship to reach port. Because they are no doubt aware of our involvement with the underwater search of the United States, there is not the slightest doubt they mean for all of us to sleep with fishes before morning."

  Pitt's eyes raked Cabrillos, searching for a tinge of regret, a sign that he thought that what they were about to do was a colossal mistake, but there was none of it. "Does it bother you that we might be mistaken about their intentions and commit an act of war?"

  Cabrillo pulled his pipe out of a breast pocket and scraped the bowl. Then he said, "I don't mind admitting that I'm a bit worried on that score, but we can't run from their air force, so we have no option but to bluff our way out, and if that fails, we must fight."

  Like a gray ghost gliding over a black sea streaked by the full moon, the big Chinese destroyer overhauled the slow-moving Oregon with the malevolence of an Orca killer whale stalking a friendly manatee. But for its ungainly array of navigation, surface- and air-search detection and countermeasure systems that were perched above ugly towers, the ship might have had a sleek appearance. As it was, it looked like it was glued together by a small child who wasn't sure where all the pieces went.

  Hali Kasim, the Oregon's vice president in charge of communications, called through the speakerphone on the bridge wing to Cabrillo, who now stood observing the destroyer through night glasses.

  "Mr. Cabrillo, they've ordered us to heave to."

  "In what language?"

  "English," answered Kasim.

  "An amateurish attempt to get us to tip our hand. Answer them in Arabic."

  There was a short pause. "They called our bluff, sir. They have someone on board who can speak Arabic."

  "String them along for a little while. We don't want to appear too anxious to appease. Ask why we should obey their orders in international waters."

  Cabrillo lit his pipe and waited. He looked down on the deck where Pitt, Giordino and three of his crew had assembled, all armed for a knock-down,
drag-out fight.

  "They're not buying it," came Hali Kasim's voice again. "They say if we don't stop immediately, they will blow us out of the water."

  "Are they jamming in anticipation of us sending out a distress signal?"

  "You can make book on it. Any message we transmit outside the immediate area will be received garbled."

  "What are the chances of a friendly warship cruising in the neighborhood, like a nuclear submarine?"

  "None," came the voice of Linda Ross in the countermeasures and surveillance room. "The only vessel within a hundred miles is a Japanese auto transporter."

  "All right," Cabrillo sighed. "Signal them that we will comply and heave to. But inform them that we will protest this outrage to the World Board of Trade and International Maritime Council."