Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

Zhong stood up and rolled the spent grenade down the center aisle of the car. It didn’t set any more trip bombs off, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any there.

“We’ll have to proceed slowly, which will give them an opportunity to escape.” Zhong looked at Eddie. “If they do, you die.”

Eddie nodded hastily. “Have your men coming from the other direction made contact with the Americans yet?”

Zhong radioed his men and asked the question.

“No, sir,” came the reply. “We’re in the eighth car.”

“They’re in the eighth car?” Eddie repeated for the benefit of Juan. He knew he had to buy time not only for the Chairman but also for the team out on the Oregon . “Then I have an idea how to attack the Americans.”

9

On the deck of the Oregon , near the tramp freighter’s superstructure, Mark Murphy paced, impatiently waiting for the drone carrying the flash drive to arrive. He squinted into the sun as he watched the locomotive enter another tunnel and wished he’d brought some sunglasses with him. He hated not being able to see what was going on in the train. Before coming outside, he’d been down in the ship’s darkened operations center listening to both Juan’s and Eddie’s conversations. He’d heard the threat that the Chairman had given the Ghost Dragon leader about the Predator drone and its Hellfire missile ready to blow up the train. While there was no attack drone circling above, his threat wasn’t a bluff. The Oregon had more than enough firepower to destroy the entire train from its position a mile offshore.

Murph would be the best one to know since he served as the ship’s weapons officer. As the only crew member without a military or intelligence background, he had joined the Corporation after getting his first Ph.D. by the time he was twenty and then working in the defense industry as a weapons designer. One of the reasons he loved his current job was because the crew accepted him for who he was. The Chairman didn’t make him change his punk rock style, even letting Murph convert the deck of the Oregon into a skateboard park during R & R and putting him in a cabin far away from the others so he could blast his music at full volume and play video games with Eric Stone late into the night.

Like on most days, Murph was dressed all in black, a pair of torn jeans and a T-shirt bearing the name of the band Screeching Weasel. His hair was dark and shaggy, with matching scruff on his chin that he passed off as a beard, and the caffeine in the energy drinks he constantly consumed made it tough to put weight on his tall, gangly frame. Not only did he like the nonconformist look, any more effort thinking about his clothes and appearance just wasn’t worth the time.

When Eric, his best friend, was on board the Oregon , he and Murph were usually inseparable. They were the youngest crew members and shared an appreciation for complex software coding, gaming, and Internet dating, the last of which didn’t work nearly as well or as often as they hoped. They had been working together on a still-classified weapons system for the Arleigh Burke class destroyers when Eric convinced him to join the Corporation.

That was why Murph was so anxious to retrieve the drone. He knew that every minute Eric and the others were on the train, they were at risk. The Oregon was more than a workplace. The crew was family. Murph took pride in his job, but helping his crewmates get through dangerous situations was what really drove him.

It was also a very lucrative workplace, although he had earned an even higher salary as one of the world’s top weapons designers. The Corporation was formed as a partnership and all the crew members shared in the profits. The riskier and more difficult the job, the greater the payday. All of them anticipated retiring as multimillionaires.

The current job was one of the trickiest they’d ever undertaken. In this case, the most important part of the operation was out of their hands, which made Murph itchy to get the mission over with.

“Drone One coming in,” Gomez said over the headset Murph was wearing. “Starboard side, four o’clock.”

Murph turned and put his hand up to shield his eyes from the setting sun. The view across the Oregon ’s deck would have concerned anyone not familiar with the ship. From far away she looked like she was ready for the breaker’s yard. Up close, her exterior looked even worse.

The 560-foot Oregon had been built to haul lumber from the Pacific Northwest to Japan, but it’d been years since the 11,600-ton freighter was in her prime. Rust seemed to coat everything, from the leaking barrels and broken machinery scattered randomly about the deck to the chains connecting the sections of railing that were missing. The flaking paint was slathered on haphazardly in several different shades of a sickly green, and the fraying cables of the ship’s five cranes looked as if they were in danger of snapping just from their sagging.

From her blade-like bow to her graceful champagne-glass-shaped stern, steel plates were welded to the Oregon ’s hull as if to conceal cracks that threatened to rip it in two. The dingy white superstructure separated the five cargo holds, three forward and two aft. The bridge was barely visible through the mold-covered windows, one of which was covered in plywood. It was topped with bent antennas held together by duct tape.

Murph was so used to the ship’s rickety appearance that it didn’t even register, as he watched the small quadcopter zoom toward him. It came to rest on the barrel next to him and shut down. He scooped it up and ran toward the nearest door.

“Got it,” Murph said as he went inside. “Let them know I’m on my way down.”

The chipped linoleum of the interior corridor was stained brown every few feet from some unknown substance, the peeling walls bowed out as if they were about to collapse, and the few fluorescent lights that did work flickered and buzzed. A bathroom Murph passed was coated with a layer of grime and emitted a stench so powerful that any harbormaster coming aboard for an inspection would spend the least time possible before fleeing in disgust.

Murph opened a broom closet, which was stacked with mops and cleaning supplies that had never been used. At the slop sink, he twisted the hot and cold handles in a specific order as if he were a safecracker. With a distinct click, the back wall swished open noiselessly. Murph raced through and tapped a button on the other side to close it again as he passed.

It was like stepping from a sewer into a luxury hotel. Instantly, the stink was gone. Paintings by masters like Monet and Renoir adorned mahogany-paneled walls, and recessed lighting cast a warm glow in the halls. Plush carpeting softened Murph’s footfalls.

All of the apparent decay and shabbiness was merely a meticulously designed façade. Though she still outwardly appeared to be a tramp steamer, the Oregon had been refitted from the keel up at a naval base in Vladivostok after a generous payment to a friendly commandant. He told his workers that they were constructing the Russian Navy’s latest secret weapon. Everything on the outside of the Oregon was meant to repel and disgust so that it would go by unnoticed or unsuspected, but the interior was designed for her true mission as a spy ship and as a home for her crew.

Each cabin was uniquely decorated according to its occupant’s specifications. Murph’s wouldn’t have looked out of place as a rich college student’s dorm room. Other than a functional bed and a huge desk with the latest ergonomic chair for work, the key furnishings of his cabin were centered on the leather sofa and gigantic television connected to all of the latest consoles.