Flood Tide - Cussler Clive - Страница 57
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“You'd need several trainloads of explosives to blow a ship the size of the United States out of existence and everything within a mile around her.”
“Qin Shang is capable of most anything. Could it be he got his hands on a nuclear bomb?”
“Suppose he did?” suggested Pitt. “What's his upside? Who'd waste a good nuclear bomb unless you've got a target of conspicuous magnitude? What could he gain by leveling San Francisco, New York or Boston? Why spend millions reconverting a nine-hundred-and-ninety-foot ocean liner into a bomb carrier when he could have used any one of a thousand old obsolete ships? No, Qin Shang is not a fanatical terrorist with a cause. His religion is domination and greed. Whatever his grand design, it has to be devious and brilliant, one that you and I wouldn't have thought of in a million years.”
“You're right,” Cabrillo sighed. “Devastating a city and killing thousands of people is a no-win situation for a man of wealth. Especially when you consider that the bomb carrier could be traced back directly to Qin Shang Maritime.”
“Unless,” Pitt added.
“Unless?”
Pitt gave Cabrillo a distant look. “Unless the scheme called for a minimal amount of explosives.”
“For what purpose?”
“To blow the bottom out of the United States and scuttle her.”
“Now there's a possibility.” Cabrillo's eyelids were beginning to droop. “I do believe you may be onto something.”
“That could explain why Al found all the doors to the crew's quarters and lower cargo holds welded shut.”
“Now all you need is a crystal ball to predict where Qin Shang intends to sink her ...” Cabrillo murmured softly. His voice trailed off as he drifted off to sleep.
Pitt started to say something, but saw that he would only be talking to himself. He quietly stepped from Cabrillo's cabin and softly closed the door.
Three days later the Oregon picked up the harbor pilot, passed through the shipping channel and slipped alongside the dock at Guam's commercial terminal. Except for the stump where her aft mast once stood and her pulverized stern, the ship looked little the worse for wear.
A string of ambulances was waiting on the dock to receive the wounded and transport them to the hospital at the island's naval station. The Chinese marines were the first to be taken away, followed by the ship's crew. Cabrillo was the last of the injured to leave the ship. After saying their goodbyes to the crew, Pitt and Giordino muscled aside the stretcher bearers and carried him down the gangway themselves.
“I feel like the sultan of Baghdad,” said Cabrillo.
“You'll get our bill in the mail,” Giordino told him.
They reached the ambulance and gently set the stretcher on the dock before loading it onto a gurney. Pitt knelt down and stared into Cabrillo's eyes. “It was an honor knowing you, Mr. Chairman.”
“And a privilege to work with you, Mr. Special Projects Director. If you ever decide to leave NUMA and want a job sailing the seven seas to exotic ports, send me your resume.”
“I don't mean to criticize, but I didn't exactly find the cruise aboard your ship a benefit to my health.” Pitt paused and looked up at the rusty sides of the Oregon. “Sounds strange to say so, but I'm going to miss the old boat.”
“Likewise,” Cabrillo agreed.
Pitt looked at him questioningly. “You'll mend and be back on board in no time.”
Cabrillo shook his head. “Not after this trip. The Oregon's next voyage is to the scrap yard.”
“Why?” asked Giordino. “Are the ashtrays full?”
“She's outlived her usefulness.”
“I don't understand,” said Pitt. “She looks perfectly sound.”
“She's been what is called in the spy trade 'compromised',” explained Cabrillo. “The Chinese are wise to her facade. Within days every intelligence service around the world will be on the lookout for her. No, I'm afraid her days as disguised gatherer of classified information are over.”
“Does that mean you're going to dissolve the corporation?”
Cabrillo sat up, his eyes gleaming. “Not in your life. Our grateful government has already offered to refit a new ship with state-of-the-art-technology, bigger, more powerful engines and a heavier weapons system. It may take a few operations to pay off the mortgage, but the stockholders and I are not about to close down operations.”
Pitt shook the chairman's hand. “I wish you the best of luck. Perhaps we can do it again sometime.”
Cabrillo rolled his eyes. “Oh God, I hope not.”
Giordino took one of his magnificent cigars and slipped it into Cabrillo's shirt pocket. “A little something in case you tire of your smelly old pipe.”
They waited as the attendants transferred Cabrillo to the gumey and lifted him inside the ambulance. Then the door was closed and the vehicle moved across the dock. They were standing there watching for a moment until it disappeared onto a street lined with palm trees when a man came up behind them.
“Mr. Pitt and Mr. Giordino?”
Pitt turned. “That's us.”
A man in his middle sixties, with gray hair and beard, held up a leather-encased badge and identification. He was wearing white shorts, a flowered silk shirt and sandals. “I've been sent by my superiors to take you to the airport. An aircraft is waiting to fly you to Washington.”
“Aren't you a little old to play secret agent?” said Giordino, studying the stranger's identification.
“We oldies but goodies can often pass unnoticed where you younger guys can't.”
“Which way to your car?” asked Pitt conversationally.
The senior citizen pointed to a small Toyota van painted in the wild colors of a local taxi. “Your carriage awaits.”
“I had no idea the CIA cut your budget so drastically,” Giordino said sarcastically.
“We make do with what we've got.”
They piled into the van, and twenty minutes later they were seated in a military cargo jet. As the plane rolled down the runway of Guam's Air Force base, Pitt looked out the window and saw the senior intelligence agent leaning against his van as if confirming that Pitt and Giordino had departed the island. In another minute they were flying above the often overlooked island paradise of the Pacific with its volcanic mountains, lush jungle waterfalls and miles of white-sand beaches graced with swaying coco palms. The Japanese swarmed into the hotels and onto the beaches of Guam, but not many Americans. He continued staring down as the plane passed over the turquoise waters inside the reef surrounding the island and headed out to sea.
As Giordino dozed off, Pitt turned his thoughts to the United States, sailing somewhere on the ocean below him. Something terrible was in the works, a terrible threat that only one man on earth could prevent. But Pitt knew with crystallized certainty that nothing, except perhaps an untimely death, would deflect Qin Shang from his purpose.
The world may be a place that is scarce of honest politicians, white buffalo, unpolluted rivers, saints and miracles, but there is no shortage of depraved villains. Some, like serial killers, may slay twenty or a hundred innocent victims. But given financial resources they might kill many more. Those like Qin Shang who possessed enormous affluence could hold themselves above the law and hire homicidal cretins to do their dirty work for them. The evil billionaire was not a general who felt remorse over losing a thousand men in battle to achieve an objective. Qin Shang was a cold-blooded sociopathic murderer who could drink a glass of champagne and eat a hearty dinner after condemning hundreds of illegal immigrants, many of them women and children, to a horrible death in the frigid waters of Orion Lake.
Pitt was committed to stopping Qin Shang whatever the consequences, whatever the cost, even killing him if the occasion presented itself. He was drawn in too deeply to struggle back over the edge. He fantasized what it would be like if they ever met. What would the circumstances be? What would he say to a mass slaughterer?
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