Page 65 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

“Who’s Roy Sullivan?”

“Roy Sullivan was a U.S. park ranger in Virginia. He holds theGuinness World Record for being struck by lightning seven times over the course of his life. Heck, all we need is for this to work twice. Piece of cake.”

“Sometimes you worry me, son.”

Suddenly, Hali Kasim’s voice echoed throughout the cargo hold. “Chairman, we have a problem.”

“What is it?”

“That Chinese container is on the move.”

34

Juan and his senior team assembled inOregon’s op center moments later. Cabrillo fell into the Kirk Chair and everyone else took up their various duty stations, including Murph. His friend Linlin was still confined to quarters, and theOregon’s security team had kept a distant but careful eye on her.

So far she’d been compliant, but Cabrillo was concerned. She surely had noted the hustle and bustle of activity over the last few hours and he didn’t want her wandering around in the middle of this operation. She was becoming a splinter in Cabrillo’s mind—but that was a problem for another day.

Hali had alerted Cabrillo as soon as the tracker began moving. Moments later, one of theOregon’s surveillance drones began broadcasting the infrared image of the container as it was being loaded onto a flatbed truck.

A second drone piloted by Murphy took over from the first and was now tracking the container truck from overhead as it rumbled away from the port, the image displayed on one of the big wall monitors. The imagery was sketchy. A heavy squall had slid over the region and the thick raindrops falling in sheets played havoc with the drone’s camera transmission.

More disturbing than the container truck’s sudden departure was the two escort vehicles. One was a black Chevy Suburban with four armed guards leading the mini convoy about a half mile farther up, and a trailing SUV with four more armed guards following in the rear.It wasn’t enough security to draw a lot of notice from officials, but enough to deter any would-be attackers.

And with a cargo this valuable, the Chinese were no doubt keeping at least one rapid-response team on standby somewhere in the vicinity.

“This is not good, people,” Max said. “We gotta stop this thing pronto and without confronting the Chicoms directly.”

Eddie Seng grunted in agreement. “Not unless we want to start a shooting war.”

“And Overholt warned us that neither theOregonnor the U.S. can be implicated in any kind of operation,” Juan reminded them.

“Where the heck is this little parade even headed?” Linda asked.

“Most likely a lab,” Hali said. “But that could be anywhere.”

“Then why don’t we just track it to its destination? Report it back to the Salvadorans?”

Juan shook his head. “If it’s a Chinese lab, they won’t touch it. They’re even more skittish about a confrontation with the Chicoms than we are. And Chinese lab or not, there’s going to be some serious security there. So we have the same problem as before. We can’t have any direct confrontation with Chinese nationals and we can’t draw attention to ourselves, which a gun battle will most assuredly do.”

“What if we swap out the container?” Eric Stone asked. “Then we can neutralize the fentanyl back here on the ship.”

“We have plenty of empty twenties,” Linda said. “Full ones, too, for that matter, if we need to spoof the weight.”

“There’s still the matter of ‘how’?” Max said.

Gomez had been standing toward the back, still kitted out in his flight suit. “What’s the weight we’re talking about here?”

“The container’s about five thousand pounds, empty. The fentanyl adds another seven thousand pounds, and that tank probably a thousand.”

“The AW can sling up to fifteen thousand pounds,” Gomez said. “But in this weather I wouldn’t risk that heavy of a payload. It’d be like flying a kite in a hurricane. And forget any kind of range.”

“Well, there goes plan B,” Eric said. TheOregon’s tilt-rotor was the ship’s heaviest lift airframe.

“We still need to break into that container, and we need to find a way to do it without the Chinese knowing about it,” Linda said. “And do it without kinetics…while it’s still on the move…to God knows where.”

Max rubbed his tired eyes with his meaty paws. “C’mon, people, think!”

Hanley’s angry outburst cut through the room like a trumpet blast. The op center quieted as everyone puzzled over the problem.