Page 134 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“Smart boy,” Max said in a half whisper when Cabrillo announced he was going to hit Murphy’s zapper and knock out all area electronics including their own comms. Better safe than sorry, he thought.

Like Juan, Max felt a great deal of unease at the fact there was no armed opposition on the island, and he fully agreed with Cabrillo’s suspicion that the Vendor would rely on a technological trap to catch them with their breeches askew. Besides, the lack of comms would only be temporary. As soon as Cabrillo deactivated the unit, the Gundogs would be back in touch and would make their exfil to the ship.

TheOregon’s photonics mast—a combination of glass and digital imaging—gave them a long-range view of the team as they exited the RHIB and made their way forward. Because it was a cloudy night with little ambient light, Max ordered Murph to deploy the mast’s infrared imagery. The op center crew watched the spectral figures on the big LCD wall panel up until the moment they melted away into the forest like an ancient folktale. Lightning flashes, brighter and increasing, lit the panel back up briefly before settling back down to a near perfect black.

Max turned in the Kirk Chair, his bloodshot eyes falling on the blackened LCD just as it flared into a massive white fireball.

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Above theOregon

While Max and the op center crew were fixated on the Gundogs’ teeth-rattling race across the water and onto the beach, a swarm of drones—small, curiously shaped, and unarmed—hurtled through the tumultuous winds. They numbered in the thousands.

The lead elements alighted on the topmost sections ofOregon’s cranes, superstructure, and wire rigging. The rest remained airborne, functioning as leader strokes and streamers. Together, they formed a bridge of connectivity between the unimaginable energy boiling in the sky above and the massive steel frame of the ship.

The Vendor considered weaponized lightning, his most recent invention, the most terrifying weapon in his arsenal. A single lightning strike carried the equivalent energy of twenty-four hundred metric tons of TNT. A lightning storm delivered a relentless cascade of unfathomable power.

At precisely the right moment when the atmospheric conditions were perfectly aligned to the AI’s preprogrammed parameters, Hashimoto’s drones emitted a low-energy wave—just enough to attract and focus the first of dozens of lightning strikes against theOregon’s hull. The resulting superheated air boomed like a relentless artillery barrage as lightning strikes burst in a rapid succession of blinding-white supernovas.

Each lightning bolt unleashed temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun. In the first strike, lines snapped, glass shattered, steel melted, and the crackling air sizzled with the chlorine tang of ozone and burnt metal. But even greater havoc fell on the ship as the lightning barrage escalated.

The Kashtan close-in weapons system and its missiles, housed atop one of the crane masts, exploded in the direct hit, tearing the hidden compartment apart and destroying the entire unit. The plasma-hot bolts arc-welded the sliding plates shut for the 120mm auto cannon, and shrink-wrapped the thin sheet metal of the fifty-five-gallon drums around the repel-boarders machine guns hidden inside of them.

The barrage intensified as the storm fed upon itself.

TheOregonwas doomed.

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OregonOp Center

“Juan!”

Max shouted at the fireball on the giant wall monitor. There was no doubt in his mind that the warehouse had been struck. The op center crew gasped at the roiling clouds of flame. Cabrillo and the team were in the middle of that hell storm.

But the crew’s rapt attention was snatched away by the sudden, screen-shattering lights blasting on the rest of theOregon’s wall monitors as lightning strikes cascaded.

The vessel shook with the volleys of thunderclaps that pounded the decks above them.

“We’ve been hit—” Stoney shouted.

Before the last word escaped his mouth, theOregon’s lights snapped out, while LCDs and computer monitors all crashed.

Emergency red backup lights, powered by batteries on separate circuits, popped on seconds later.

Murph and Eric exchanged a worried glance.

Radar, sonar, and weapons stations were dead.

They were sitting ducks.

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The Timor Sea

Half a mile away, another one of Hashimoto’s drones—a torpedo—lay on the sandy bottom of the sea. It had arrived seven hours before theOregonand settled into its location without fear of detection. Its close proximity to the unsuspecting target was an unplanned bonus.

The torpedo drone’s wire comms antennae were stretched from the drone to the surface via a buoy. Seconds before the drone swarm was destroyed in the lightning storm, the torpedo drone received the signal to launch.