Plague Ship tof-5 Read online

  When running on her batteries, the Kilo was among the quietest undersea hunters ever built and was capable of sneaking up on ships equipped with sophisticated passive sonar systems. She was fitted with six torpedo tubes, and could stay on patrol for a month and a half without replenishing.

  The presence of the Kilos was seen as a provocation, given the fact that Iran had a history of sinking merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf. The United States and her allies had tried every conceivable diplomatic trick to prevent Russia from selling the Kilos to the Iranian Navy, but neither party could be deterred. Usually, the two-hundred-and-twenty-foot subs were stationed at Chah Bahar in the Arabian Sea and not bottled up in the Gulf, but Overholt’s intelligence indicated that this particular Kilo was being outfitted with the newly developed rocket torpedoes.

  If the Corporation could prove the Russians illegally sold such a technology to Tehran, it would kill any deal Iran might be cooking up to acquire more subs, something they wanted desperately.

  “So, what do you have?” Juan asked, after five quiet minutes of observation.

  “I count six,” Linc replied.

  “Confirmed,” Eddie said.

  “Max?”

  “Are you sure that isn’t a guard catching a few z’s on the left there in what looks like a bundle of linens waiting to be put aboard?”

  The men silently rechecked the location Max had indicated, straining to make out the shape of a man.

  The three breathed in sharply when what they had thought was just a shadow suddenly lurched up, peered around for a second, scratched under his arm, and lay back down.

  “Good eyes, my friend,” Juan said. “I won’t tease you about wearing cheaters when you read a report ever again. So we’ve got four guards upstairs on the observation platform and the two over by the personnel exit door, plus sleeping beauty. Linc, Eddie, the second-floor gang’s all yours. Max, extend that guy’s nap for a while, and I’ll have a go at the pair at the door.” Cabrillo checked his watch. It was one o’clock in the morning. The chance the guards would be relieved before dawn was remote. “We’ve got one hour to be back aboard the Nomad if we are to make our three A.M. deadline, so let’s get a little hustle on, shall we?”

  The men sank back under the water and swam the length of the dry dock, Max stopping approximately where the one guard was sleeping and hovered just below the edge of the concrete dock in the dark shadow cast by the Kilo’s hull. Eddie and Linc swam along the left side of the pier so they would emerge under a set of metal scissor stairs that rose to the second-floor balcony. For his part, Juan pulled himself from the water behind the cover of a stack of crates, a good hundred yards from the well-lit vestibule where a pair of bored guards watched a set of locked doors.

  He silently stripped out of his scuba gear and dry suit. Beneath it, he wore the uniform of a captain in the Syrian Navy, right down to the tie and combat ribbons. The only thing out of place were the rubber dive booties he sported on his feet, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He buckled on his gun belt and set a cap on his head to cover his blond hair. He waited another minute for his men to get in position before boldly stepping around the containers and started marching toward the guards.

  He closed to within twenty feet before one of them became aware of his presence. The man snapped to his feet, looking around in bewilderment for a moment before remembering he’d set his AK-47 on the floor next to the table he was sharing with his partner. Juan kept coming as the man groped for the weapon and came up with it pointed straight at Cabrillo’s chest. He growled a warning, as his teammate gained his feet, his hands clutching an assault rifle of his own, though the sling had tangled around his hands.

  “What is the meaning of this challenge?” Juan asked arrogantly in pitch-perfect Arabic. “I am Captain Hanzi Hourani, of the Syrian Navy, and a guest of your base commander, Admiral Ramazani.” The two guards blinked at him before one said in halting Arabic, “You are who?”

  “Captain Hourani,” Cabrillo snapped testily. “For the love of the Prophet, I have been in and out of this building a dozen times in the past week. Surely you know I am here to watch the demonstration of your new miracle weapon, the torpedoes that will drive the Crusaders out of our waters once and for all.” Juan knew the Farsi speaker was catching every three or four words of his rapid-fire delivery, but it was the attitude more than the words that were important. He had to get them to believe he belonged here, despite the late hour. There was a walkie-talkie on the table next to an overflowing ashtray, plates of congealed food, and a rumpled heap of newspapers. If they called base security, the jig was up.

  “I lost track of time touring the submarine,” Juan went on, then gave a trace of an embarrassed smile.

  “That is not true. I fell asleep in the captain’s cabin, dreaming that it would be me to strike the first blow against the American imperialists.”

  There was still wary suspicion in the guard’s eye, but the admission that a superior officer, though from a different navy, could succumb to the same fantasies as they did put the guard slightly at ease. He translated to his partner what Cabrillo had said.

  It didn’t seem to make much of an impression. He barked at the first guard, gesturing with the barrel of his AK. The Arabic speaker asked to see Juan’s identification.

  Juan withdrew a billfold and presented it to the senior of the two. As the guard looked it over, Juan plucked a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit up. The smokes were Dunhills, a vastly superior brand to the cheap local tobacco the men choked down, and he saw that both had noticed the distinctive flat pack. The guard kept the billfold and was turning to grab the walkie-talkie when Juan offered him the cigarettes.

  He hesitated for an instant, so Juan thrust the pack closer.

  “We must call the main security station,” the younger guard told him.

  “Of course,” Juan said, jetting smoke from his mouth. “I thought you might enjoy a decent cigarette while they yell at you for not knowing I am authorized to be here.” Sheepishly, both men took a cigarette. Juan held the lighter for them. They only had time to exchange a look, following their first drag, before the fast-acting, narcotic-laced tobacco hit their nervous systems like a freight train. Both men crumpled wordlessly to the ground.

  Cabrillo ground his cigarette into the floor with his foot. “Usually, boys,” he said, crushing out the guards’

  smoldering Dunhills and tucking all the evidence into his pant pocket, “these things’ll kill you. In your case, you’ll be out for a couple of hours. However, I don’t envy you when your superiors discover your dereliction.”

  The Corporation tried to keep their operations as nonlethal as possible. From the earliest planning stages of the mission, Cabrillo made sure the guards wouldn’t die doing their job just because Russia was illegally selling advanced military equipment.

  That isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of blood on Juan Cabrillo’s or the rest of his team’s hands, but they wouldn’t kill if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

  Juan was just turning away when the metal door leading to the outside was thrown open and a lab-coated technician flanked by two soldiers strode in. They saw the two unconscious guards on the floor under the table and Juan’s unfamiliar uniform. One guard brought his assault rifle up and shouted a challenge. The second said something to the first that Cabrillo didn’t need to translate to “I’m going for help” before he turned on his heel and vanished into the night.

  In a minute, all three thousand sailors and support personnel were going to be descending on the dry dock like a horde of berserkers.

  CHAPTER 3

  AS THE SECOND GUARD WAS RACING FOR THE DOOR, A speck of ruby light appeared on the first guard’s weapon, followed an instant later by a silenced bullet that ripped the AK-47 from his grip amid a shower of blood from his mangled hand.

  Juan didn’t hesitate. Linc or Eddie had immobilized the man, from their position on the raised platform above, and Cabrillo
knew they would have the stunned technician covered with their silenced Type 95

  bullpup assault rifles. He wheeled and took off after the fleeing guard. He accelerated with each pace, driven by his most stubborn trait, his inability to let himself fail. The guard was disappearing into the darkened naval base, and, if not for his khaki uniform, Cabrillo would have lost him in the gloom. In eight steps, he’d cut the sentry’s two-second head start to almost nothing, and, in another three, he lunged at the fleeing Iranian, grabbing the man around the knees in a tackle that would do a professional football player proud.

  The two went down on the unyielding asphalt road. Juan had been protected by the guard’s body, but the sentry hadn’t been so lucky. His head slammed into the macadam with a sickening crunch, and their slide ripped his face open down to the muscle.

  Cabrillo looked around quickly. There were a couple of darkened warehouses nearby, and, in the distance, he could see a four-story office building with a few illuminated windows, but he didn’t think he’d been spotted. He whipped a pair of FlexiCuffs around the unconscious guard’s wrists and hefted the man over his shoulder to jog back to the submarine pen.

  When Cabrillo closed the door behind him, he saw that Eddie had cuffed and gagged the technician. He was dragging him to the secluded corner of the entry vestibule where he’d already hidden the two drugged guards. Juan dumped his burden next to them.

  “That shaved a few months off my life,” he panted.

  “Any chance someone saw you?” Seng asked.

  “If you hear an alarm start wailing, you’ll have your answer. Any problems upstairs with the others?”

  “One went for his gun. Linc has stopped his bleeding, and if he gets to a hospital in the next couple of hours he’ll make it. We wore face masks, and I was shouting in Mandarin, like we planned, and if those guys know their weapons they’ll recognize the Chinese-made Type 95s.”

  “Coupled with the Czech ammunition we’re using, that should keep them guessing.” Max Hanley sauntered over, a wry grin on his face. “You just had to make this harder than it already is, didn’t you?”

  “Come on, Max, if we didn’t up the risk we wouldn’t get the exorbitant fees we’ve all grown so accustomed to.”

  “I’ll give up part of my cut next time.”

  “Any problem with your guy?”

  “His nap will last well into tomorrow. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s go find those torpedoes.” In the first of the two large rooms under the elevated platform, they found a store of conventional Russian-made TEST-71 torpedoes, exactly like the ones the Oregon herself carried. It was in the second room, after Linc shot off the lock, that they found Iran’s newest and most lethal weapon. The room was taken up with workbenches, diagnostic computers, and all kinds of electronic gear. In the middle of the space were two shroud-draped shapes that looked a bit like cadavers in a morgue. Max strode over to one and whipped off the sheet. At first glance, the torpedo sitting on the mechanized trolley looked like the TEST-71s except it lacked a propeller. He eyed the twenty-five-foot underwater missile, especially its radically shaped nose. It was this feature that created a bubble of air around the torpedo and allowed it to cut through the water with virtually no friction.

  “What do you think?” Juan asked, approaching his second-in-command.

  “It’s exactly like the pictures I’ve seen of the Russian Shkval,” the engineer told him. “Form follows function on something like this, meaning there are only a couple of designs that would lead to the supercavitation effect, but this thing is identical to the Russkies’ fish.”

  “So they’re helping the Iranians?”

  “No doubt.” Max straightened. “The proof’s going to be in the design of the rocket motor, but, for my money, we’ve got them dead to rights.”

  “Okay, good. You and Eddie gather everything you can.” Eddie was already at a computer terminal, jacking in a pirate drive that would siphon everything on the system. Linc was looking through log books and binders for anything relevant. Cabrillo turned to Franklin Lincoln, “You ready, big man?”

  "Aye.”

  Max stopped Juan from leaving the room with a hand to the elbow. “One or two?” Juan cast an eye at the two torpedoes. “In for a penny, in for a pound, let’s take ’em both.”

  “You know they are most likely armed and fueled.”

  Cabrillo grinned. “So we’ll take ’em carefully.”

  While Linc searched the upper platform for the mechanism that would open the main outer doors, Juan climbed up a ladder welded to one wall and walked along a catwalk to the overhead crane’s control cabin. Familiar with all manner of cranes from his years at sea, he powered up the machine and started it trundling down the length of the building toward the head of the dock. As it slid back, a fiendish thought struck him, and he lowered the huge hook assembly. Weighing nearly a ton, and traveling fast enough that it had pendulumed back a couple of degrees, the hook was steered by Cabrillo toward the conning-tower dive plane of Iran’s newest Kilo Class submarine.

  The hook didn’t have the momentum to rip the fin off, but the tear it left in the delicate steering control would mean the sub would remain in dry dock for the next couple of months.

  When Juan finally had the crane in position, Eddie and Max had wheeled one of the three-ton torpedos from the laboratory and out into the open. He lowered the hook, and they attached sling cables that the Iranians had thoughtfully left in place. When it was secure, Max shot Cabrillo a wave while Eddie went to retrieve his scuba gear.

  Cabrillo lifted the torpedo from the trolley and backed the crane out over the water again, making sure to keep it well away from the Kilo. Twenty feet short of the doors, he lowered the weapon into the water, watching for the thick steel cable to slacken, indicating the torpedo was resting on the bottom. He eased off the controls when the line started to bow. Eddie had walked along the jetty, lugging his tanks, helmet, and regulator. He slid into the gear and stepped off the dock. Juan watched where Eddie’s bubbles popped when they reached the surface, and, after a minute, Eddie’s raised thumb rose through the roiling water.

  Juan lifted the hook free and set the crane to return to the head of the dock once again, where Max had the second rocket torpedo in position. As the crane crawled along its rails, Juan could see Linc in the upper observation area. He was bent over a computer, working the controls for the outer doors. He must have found the right combination because lights started popping off until only a single one remained illuminated above Hanley. Cabrillo looked over his shoulder. In the distance, he could just make out one of the massive doors swinging outward. That would be Linda’s signal to guide the submersible into the pen. The LIDAR system would pick up the torpedo resting on the bottom, and she knew to wait for word from Cabrillo if they were going to steal another.

  Once the second torpedo was slung under the crane, Max joined Linc and together the two men carried the rest of their dive equipment, including Juan’s scuba rig and dry suit, to the edge of the dry dock. They got ready to leave, while Juan positioned the crane to lower the torpedo into the water.

  Once the torpedo vanished below the surface and the line went slack, he powered down the crane, reached under the small control panel and ripped out a fistful of wires amid a shower of sparks.

  There was no conceivable way the Iranians wouldn’t discover the theft, so the least he could do was make their job of putting the dry dock back in order as difficult as possible. Linc would have set a small explosive charge to disable the computer that controlled the doors and lights and rigged it to blow on a motion sensor. To further muddy the forensic waters, the explosives and trigger were of Chinese manufacture.

  Remembering a detail he’d overlooked, Juan pulled the pistol from his holster and flicked it out into space, where it landed with a splash. It was a QSZ-92, the newest standard sidearm of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The Iranians would scour the dry dock for clues, trying to piece together who had infiltrated the base, a
nd he was sure the pistol would be found. What they made of the evidence, he wasn’t sure, but it was fun to mess with their heads.

  Rather than waste time laboriously climbing down off the crane, Juan scampered across the enormous I beam that spanned the width of the building. When he reached the cable spool, he gingerly wrapped his hands around the braided cable and lowered himself, hand over hand, until he was ten feet from the dim water, and simply let go.

  Max was there with his equipment and helped Juan sling the tank over his shoulders and fit the helmet over his head.

  “Linda, do you read?” Juan asked, treading water. Because his helmet was designed to work with the dive suit Linc had bundled in his arms, he wouldn’t be able to use it once he was under.

  “Roger, Chairman. Nice dive, by the way. From the splash, I score it a 9.2.”

  “Reverse double half twist with a full gainer,” he deadpanned. “We’ve got two fish so start recovery operations while we cycle through the air lock.”

  “Affirmative.”

  The men could feel water swirl below them as Linda crept forward in the Nomad.

  Without an effective dive mask, Cabrillo was guided by Linc down to the air lock, and he let the Chairman enter first. He wedged his considerable bulk through the tight opening, reaching over his head to secure the hatch. When an indicator on the wall turned green, he opened the valves that drained the chamber.

  Cabrillo yanked off his helmet as soon as the level dropped below his chin. The air was cold and crisp, refreshing after an hour of breathing the chemically tainted atmosphere trapped in the dry dock. Despite the tight quarters, he managed to wriggle out of his tank without giving Linc too many bruises, so when the air lock was empty he was ready to join Linda in the cockpit.

  “Welcome aboard.” She threw him a saucy smile. “How’d it go?”

  “Piece of cake,” he said absently, sliding into the reclined seat in his wet Syrian Navy uniform. The computer monitor between them displayed a closed-circuit television shot from below the mini-sub.