Page 136 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

Max whipped around in the Kirk Chair. “Status!”

“Bearing ninety-seven degrees. Two hundred yards and closing. Speed 15.64 knots.”

“Sound general quarters. Wepps?”

“Systems still rebooting.”

The Klaxon blared across the ship, sending all hands racing to their combat stations, bracing for whatever might come next.

Max ran a slide rule through his mind, calculating angles and distance. Less than twenty-three seconds until impact.

“Helm, on my mark—make for two hundred eighty degrees on a Fibonacci arc.”

“Aye, Captain.” Eric grinned. He knew exactly what Max was planning. His fingers lightly touched the joystick and throttles.

“Steady hand, my boy…” Max ran the clock down in his mind. If Stoney could cut the turn just right…

“Flank speed—now!”

Stoney turned the controls with the deftness of an eye surgeon. The massive engines powered to full throttle and threw theOregoninto a sharp curve, like the unfolding curl of a seashell. The Fibonacci sequence, also known as the golden mean, was a recurring phenomenon in nature. Nature’s hand loved to draw a line along a series of curving points where each new point in the sequence is the sum of two numbers preceding it, ad infinitum. Artists like Michelangelo used and admired it—and so did engineers like Max, whose calculations had proven correct. Mostly.

Hashimoto’s drone torpedo, originally aimed directly midships to theOregon, suddenly found itself running parallel to its steel hull cutting through the churning waters. But the torpedo had a magnetic trigger along with its other detonating sensors, and as it kissed theOregon’s hull it exploded.

TheOregonshuddered from the double blast. The first explosion was the torpedo warhead erupting just inches from the hull. But the second blast came from theOregonherself. The thickly armored-steel plates beneath the waterline were also protected by exploding reactive armor—the same technology that shielded modern battle tanks fromanti-tank projectiles. The secondary reactive explosion neutralized the first.

“Status report!” Max barked over the roaring Klaxon.

“Hull integrity intact,” Gilreath reported. He had been called to duty in the op center to fill in for Linda while she was on the island mission.

“Stoney?”

“No other tangos in the water. Radar clear.”

“Cancel general quarters—and kill that Klaxon before my head explodes.”

70

Aboard theOregon

Juan, Max, and Murph stood at the bottom of the crane as a warm tropical sun broke the horizon. The top of the crane where the wrecked Kashtan had nested behind its steel sleeve was shattered and blackened from the lightning strike and the subsequent explosions from the missile cook-offs.

Max whistled. “Looks like the business end of an exploding cigar.” He mopped the back of his sweaty neck with a clean rag he kept in his hip pocket. They were all sweating in the tropical heat.

Murph shaded his eyes from the sun to study the wreckage.

“Looks like it got smashed with Thor’s hammer. Shocking.”

Max raised a disapproving eyebrow.Bad joke.

Murph shrugged. “What? Too soon?”

Max shook his head. “Remind me to add a ‘no puns allowed’ clause to your next contract.”

“Sorry.”

Cabrillo ignored their banter. “Thank God nobody got killed.”

He was commenting as much about last night’s mission on the island as he was about the lightning barrage that nearly sank his ship. As soon as Cabrillo realized the island’s GPS signal was a lure and the warehouse a trap, he bellowed out evacuation orders loud enough for Linc and MacD to hear them on the backside of the building. Everyonebolted away just as the drone hit. Two seconds earlier, and the team would have been wiped out. Instead, the five of them found themselves knocked to the ground, bruised and bleeding. Linda was out cold.