Page 142 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

In a moment of weakness she briefly considered turning herself in and plea-bargaining her way to a light sentence in exchange for betraying the Vendor. But the vulgar thought was beneath her dignity, and entirely out of the question. She could never allow herself to be caged like an animal, not even for a moment, and not even to save her life.

She finally realized there was really only one thing she could do.

Cash in her chips.

And run.

?

Pau Rangi Island

The Bismarck Sea

“Faster, you idiots! Hurry. Hurry! You are all my friends. I beg you.Hurry!”

The Vendor ran around the underground submarine pen in frenzied urgency. The AI-poweredGhost Swordhad to be loaded and depart in less than two hours or the Guam attack would fail.

To his credit, the German and his technicians had loaded the neurotoxins into their dispersion tanks, and most of those had been inserted into the drones. The drones now were being loaded onto theGhost Sword, but the loading crews were falling behind schedule.

Beyond the timetable, the Vendor fretted over his phone call with Banfield. He knew she was hedging her bets, and assumed she wouldfail to follow through on her vague promises. He would deal with her later.

Kidnapping Overholt was a desperate gambit on his part, but he needed to know where Mendoza and theOregonwere. The Americans were a poisoned splinter in his eye. Though no match for his own towering intellect, they threatened his entire operation, if only out of tenacity of will and mindless luck.

They were out there, somewhere. The Vendor’s last surveillance drone hovering over Jaco Island caught the twin explosions erupting beneath theOregon’s waterline the night before. His drone torpedo had undoubtedly hit the vessel. The sight of the geysering water had thrilled him to no end.

But the second explosion was a surprise. At first he’d hoped it had struck the ship’s ammunition stores, but when he saw theOregondidn’t erupt in a ball of flame or break in two, he concluded the hell-born ship possessed reactive armor that defeated his attack.

That was unheard of. He grudgingly acknowledged the brilliance of it as events unfolded. But his thin admiration gave way moments later to rage when the violent storm above the island destroyed his surveillance drone. Now he had no idea where theOregonand its resolute crew were currently located. He hoped they had retreated to a nearby port for needed repairs after his lightning barrage. But his intuition was that Mendoza was as relentless in his pursuit as a lock-jawed pit bull stalking a tethered steer.

The Vendor’s agitation only increased as he realized the dozen uniformed technicians in his employ ignored his rising torrent of vile curses and fawning praises. They were all painfully aware of the giant digital clock counting down the remaining time until launch.

Big bonuses were riding on their success, and he’d hoped that was motivation enough. But they also knew the penalty for failure. And failure was in the cards. The Vendor warned them of an impending assault by unknown forces and ordered them to wear holstered pistols and to sling Uzi mini submachine guns to their chests. They did so without complaint, but the Vendor feared their sloth was a silent protest.

He swore violently as a man stumbled on theGhost Sword’s deck, nearly dumping a container over the side. Just twelve more drone pods needed to be loaded and the ship could finally slip beneath the surface, invisible to any known form of detection save the human eye.

The Vendor glanced at his ancestors’ shrine on the far wall. He muttered a quick prayer, begging thekamito make these fools work faster.

73

Aboard theOregon

Juan Cabrillo feared no man, but he wasn’t an idiot.

The Vendor’s technological prowess was considerable, and he had nearly done theOregonin. But theOregononly survived his long-range missile and torpedo assaults because her systems were fully intact. Now she was nearly crippled in her defensive and offensive capabilities thanks to the Vendor’s mysterious lightning assault. Extreme caution was the order of the day if they hoped to survive long enough to thwart his Guam attack.

Cabrillo assumed the Vendor had some kind of surveillance system in operation. After consulting the sea charts, he and Max decided to anchor theOregonon the far side of a nameless, uninhabitable rocky islet about five nautical miles south of Pau Rangi. At least that put them out of direct line of sight of any optical devices the Vendor might have stationed at his base.

They also took the extra precaution of deploying a camouflage scheme over theOregon’s entire deck and superstructure. A small electrical charge was all it took to transform the ship’s meta-material coatings into any camouflage design stored in the Cray computer. But in this case, the Cray copied the imagery of the nearby rocky islet, its crooked, wind-swept trees, and surrounding water. If a drone scannedtheOregonfrom above, it would look like an extension of the island’s jagged coastline instead of a break-bulk carrier.

But hiding from the Vendor was only half his problem. Cabrillo also needed to find both him and his operation if he hoped to neutralize it and capture the elusive merchant of death.

The AW tilt-rotor was still out of commission, but Gomez Adams, theOregon’s best drone pilot, ran a below-the-radar surveillance flight over Pau Rangi. It was as uninhabited as the nameless islet. No people, no activity—and certainly no submarine.

“Did we pick the wrong island?” Cabrillo asked, sitting in the Kirk Chair.

“Sure looks like it,” Max said. “We can keep searching. Or we can try somewhere else.”

“Like where?” Hali asked.