Page 144 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

Raven wasn’t with them. She complained bitterly she couldn’t participate, but there wasn’t anything for her to do since her gunshot confined her to a bed or a pair of crutches. She managed to finagle her way into the armory and sweet-talked Mike Lavin, theOregon’s chief armorer, into letting her hand-load all of the ammo mags.

The team’s dry bags were loaded with FN P90 bullpup submachine guns, dozens of extra fifty-round mags Raven had topped off, and flash-bangs. A few carried C4 plastic explosive with timers. They all wore one-hundred-cubic-foot dive tanks.

With Raven out of commission, Linda’s eye injury, and the other ’dogs banged up, Murph volunteered for the mission. Juan agreed, but put him under Linc’s close supervision. Murph had trained extensively with small arms in recent years and had been on a few ground ops. But he had never scuba dived before. At the moment, Linc was showing him the finer points of breathing through his regulator and monitoring the HUD display on his mask for oxygen and nitrogen levels.

“Comms check,” Callie said from inside theSpook Fishfloating in the moon pool.

“Five by five,” Juan said. The other’s confirmed as well.

“All set?” Juan asked Murph.

Murph threw two thumbs up as he treaded water, his fins pedaling beneath him. “The plan’s so crazy it just might work.”

“Sometimes crazyisthe plan,” Juan said.

“Roger that,” Callie said.

“Okay, everybody, let’s saddle up.”

74

Aboard theSpook Fish

Callie’s steady hand guided the submersible motoring along at just over four knots. She trusted the AI piloting program, but her own judgment even more. The weight of the human cargo trailing behind her like a baited dragline altered the vessel’s handling characteristics. The four Gundogs and Murphy held fast to a long nylon tether with handhold loops. Their larger one-hundred-cubic-foot scuba tanks were heavier and created more drag than regular tanks. But they had to travel eighty minutes underwater sixty feet below the surface. The bigger tanks gave them an extra twenty minutes of air for a cushion to make the journey and do everything else. That was cutting it close.

Too close.

Callie was pleasantly surprised that Murph had volunteered. She assumed he was just a sweet nerd. Her only concern was that he had never scuba dived before. Fortunately, all he had to do was hang on.

Callie was also shocked that Cabrillo didn’t put up much of a fight when she volunteered to pilot theSpook Fish—not that she would have given him any other choice. But it also spoke to Cabrillo’s determination to carry the fight to the Vendor, and his lack of resources to do it.

TheOregon’s drone deployed a thermal infrared camera and a spectrometer when it flew back over Pau Rangi. The sensors confirmed a definite temperature spike at one specific location, where a trail ofinorganic compounds were also detected. Callie’s nav computer indicated they were nearing that spot. A thousand feet away she halted theSpook Fishand keyed her comms.

“Sending the drone,” Callie said.

“Copy that,” Juan replied in his mask mic.

Callie deployed theSpook Fishdrone on its long graphene power cable. With the boys on the towrope running low on air she didn’t have time to fool around. She had to be stealthy about it. If she alerted anyone inside the sub pen, she’d likely get them all killed.

The first obstacle she had to overcome was an anti-submarine net barring the way into the underwater entrance. Cabrillo warned her to expect this. Her handy little demolition drone deployed its welding device and cut a perfectly circular eight-foot-diameter hole in the middle of it—plenty of room for the divers to swim through, as well as her drone.

It wasn’t long before the familiar shape of a submarine hull loomed in the gloomy distance about a hundred yards away. She surfaced her drone just enough to allow the camera to record the interior. The images were fed live to the HUD displays on the diving masks of each of the team members. The same images appeared on her screen.

The underground cavern and lagoon was roughly circular and approximately one hundred yards in diameter. It was ringed with a rocky ledge wide enough for a person to walk along.

The sub entrance was at the three o’clock position. The sub itself was docked at a loading pier at the nine o’clock. Directly behind it was an elevator dug into the cave wall. At the eight o’clock position was another, smaller pier where a mini sub was docked.

She counted at least twelve armed men scrambling on or near the larger sub. They were shutting hatches and securing the boat.

Alarmingly, two unmanned, automated machine guns tracked back and forth in silent sentinel, one at the two o’clock position, the other at the six o’clock.

But what really caught Callie’s eye was the large digital clock fixed to the cavern wall. It registered seven minutes, twenty-two seconds. She assumed it was a launch clock.

“You getting this?” Callie asked, choking down the anxiety in her voice.

“Got it,” Cabrillo said. “Retract the drone, and get us closer.”

She checked her own digital clock. By her reckoning, the team had ten minutes of air left to get through the net and unleash hell.