Page 148 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

Callie’s eyes flitted to her sensor arrays. Something was wrong.Nothing was registering. She tapped on the screen. Her instruments indicated she was the only vehicle in the water.

How was that possible?

“Copy that,Oregon.I’ll figure something out.”

Callie rang off.Now what?That had been her best and only option.

She couldn’t call Cabrillo. She had redeployed her comms link from inside the lagoon to the surface so she could radioOregon. She was on her own.

She tightened the grip on her controls. Should she disobey Juan’s orders and head into the sub pen lagoon now that the net was open? Or make some kind of crazy dash to stop the unyielding machine that was already beginning to pick up speed?

She watched theGhost Swordapproach her position even though her sonar said it wasn’t there. But her eyes told her the truth.

So did her heart.

As badly as she wanted to help the guys she’d come to really care about, there were nearly two hundred thousand American lives at stake on Guam.

She yanked the yoke and slammed her throttles forward, cursing herself for her indecision. She had no idea how to stop it. But she had to try.

Now.

76

Juan skidded to a halt just shy of the door entrance, his breath shortened by his aching rib cage.

He shot a quick glance around the corner, expecting the Vendor to open fire on him. But all Cabrillo saw was a steep staircase of hand-hewn rock climbing into the darkness. Fresh boot prints marred the emerald-green moss on the nearest steps.

With gunfire still raging behind him, he raised his weapon, turned the corner, and charged in.

Cabrillo’s bare foot hit the first step and he bounded up to the next. But when his bare artificial foot hit the slimy moss, his leg slipped out from under him, crashing him into the steps. Nothing registered in his nerveless carbon-fiber leg, but his left shin felt like it had been cracked with a tire iron. He picked himself up and continued the steep climb, careful to step where the Vendor had already parted the moss.

Suddenly the air split with the sharp retorts of pistol fire from above, the sound magnified by the narrow rock walls, lighting up the darkened stairwell like flashing strobes. Rock shards slashed Juan’s face as he dropped to the stairs, flattening himself as best as he could. He raised his P90 blindly and unleashed a fifty-round torrent of unaimed bullets up into the dark.

More pistol shots rang out. One of the rounds grazed Cabrillo’stemple like a branding iron. He jammed himself up against one wall of the staircase, hoping to avoid the next shots as he fumbled to reload another mag.

“Time to die, Mendoza!” the Vendor called from the top as he ripped off five more rounds. Bullets spanged just millimeters from Cabrillo’s head.

Cabrillo located the Vendor’s distant position up the stairs by the sound of his voice, raised his gun, and pulled the trigger. Fifty more rounds spat out of his weapon in a deafening roar.

Juan slapped another mag in.

His last.

He pulled the trigger and let fly again.

?

Aboard theSpook Fish

An insane plan began to coalesce in Callie’s mind.

She slammed the throttles to the stops and threw theSpook Fishinto the path of theGhost Sword, twenty times the length of her tiny submersible. She maneuvered her fragile vehicle gingerly, careful to not let the mass of the larger vessel smash into her as she guided her ballast pods onto theGhost Sword’s deck.

Even before she landed, Callie’s fingers flew across the drone panel controls. She gave it a specific command, but few instructions. There wasn’t any need to. The whole point of AI-driven robotics was that the machine would self-direct faster and better than she could. Besides, there wasn’t any time.

As soon as she sent the command, the robot launched out of its pod, but it didn’t travel very far. It immediately began wet-welding theSpook Fish’s steel alloy ballast pods to the smooth deck of theGhost Sword. She had no idea if the two metal surfaces could be joined, but she was out of options. The smooth curves of theGhost Sword’s hydrodynamic hull had no points of purchase, no protrusions, no handholds. There just wasn’t any place for her drone’s gripping hand tograb hold. Even if she had gripped it, what would she do? Her engines weren’t powerful enough to stop it.

For a brief moment she even thought about putting theSpook Fishnose-to-nose with the larger vessel in hopes of either slowing her down or misdirecting her. But the chances of maintaining a stable position between two curved surfaces were next to zero even if the AI navigator was in control. It would be like trying to balance one bowling ball on top of another. Just one sharp turn of theGhost Sword’s round nose would send theSpook Fishspinning, and leave it trailing in its speeding wake.