Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

“I’m sure you will.”

He walked over and began the process of exchanging his old tank for a new one. At the same time, Locsin’s men began transferring the barrels of Typhoon from the yacht to the fishing boat.

The acoustic detonator was still lying where Brekker had left it. As he picked up the tank, he palmed the small electronic transmitter, which was wirelessly linked to the yacht’s sonar array. One push of the button would activate an underwater pulse that would set off the bombs they’d already planted on the destroyer below them. The bombs still aboard the yacht wouldn’t be activated because they weren’t yet in the water, but there were more than enough on the Pearsall to cause the ammo in the magazine to explode, taking both the yacht and the fishing boat with it.

But Brekker wasn’t suicidal. He had something else in mind.

He shrugged into the tank harness and took his mask and snorkel. He climbed back down the ladder, and just before he sank into the water, he shoved the small detonator onto a ledge behind the ladder. He couldn’t get the electronics in the transmitter wet because they would short out.

Accompanied by his men, he descended to the Pearsall and had them round up three more barrels. Meanwhile, Brekker went to the destroyer’s ammo magazine and removed one of the bombs they’d placed amongst the piles of five-inch high-explosive shells.

When the barrels were ready, they went back up. Locsin was so eager to get more of the Typhoon pills that he barely looked at Brekker, who carried the bomb in a net cinched closed with a nylon rope. As he took hold of the dive ladder to climb aboard, he quickly knotted the bomb to the lowest rung.

While climbing the ladder, he snatched the acoustic detonator and held it high for Locsin to see.

“If you shoot me,” Brekker said, “I will set off the bomb I just brought up and we will all die.”

He pointed to the bomb dangling next to him. He knew that he needed Locsin to believe his threat. Merely claiming that there were bombs in the wreck below wouldn’t have been convincing enough.

When they didn’t lower their weapons, Brekker yelled, “I mean it!”

Locsin peered over the railing, saw the bomb, then said to his men, “Put down your guns and let him up.”

Brekker slowly climbed up to the deck, watching for any sign they would try to kill him. He wasn’t bluffing. He knew Locsin had no intention of letting him and his men live. If he was going to die, he might as well take them all with him.

All of the barrels except the ones they’d just brought up had been moved to the fishing boat. Brekker dropped the oxygen tank to the deck, eyeing Locsin warily as he did so.

“Now what?” Locsin said. “We have the guns and you have the bomb. Is there a solution where we don’t all blow up or get shot?”

“As a matter of fact, there is,” Brekker said, who had thought of a way out of the standoff during the dive. He pointed at a chest holding the remainder of the explosives they hadn’t planted on the Pearsall . “We’re going to take a bomb out of there and tie it to your fishing boat.”

“Why? So you can blow us up as soon as we’re out of range of your yacht?”

“No. There’s also a backup detonator in the chest and it’s also connected to the yacht’s sonar system, which will send out a pulse at the push of the button. The sound wave will be received by any of these bombs that are underwater within three miles and activate the trigger mechanism. So as your boat leaves, we’ll each have a detonator and a bomb ready to explode. If you press the button, we both blow up. If I press the button, we both blow up. If neither of us presses it, we both come out of this alive.”

Brekker edged over to the chest and opened it. Locsin watched intently as Brekker bent down and removed a bomb and the second detonator.

“Which one do you want?” he asked Locsin.

“How do I know either of them work?”

“You want proof? If I push this button, that bomb lashed to the ladder will explode, and we’ll all be dead a split second after you got that proof. So, what will it be?”

Locsin looked at both of them before answering. “I’ll take the detonator you came out of the water with.”

“That’s exactly what I would have chosen.”

Brekker tossed the bomb and detonator to Locsin, who handed the bomb to one of his men and told him to hang it in the water from the stern railing of the fishing boat.

“When we’re five hundred yards apart,” Brekker said, “we’ll simultaneously lift our bombs out of the water, which will neutralize them. Fair?”

Locsin nodded. “Fair.”

“Oh, and one more thing before you go. I want six of those barrels you already took.”

“What?”

“It’s our compensation for all the work we’ve done. If you want them later, you can always pay us market value.”

Locsin hesitated, no doubt sick at the idea.

“My men and I are willing to die,” Brekker said. “Are you?”

Finally, Locsin said, “We are, but not over this. I’ll give you four since there are two more below. If that’s not satisfactory, you can kill us all.”

Brekker smiled. “You negotiate like a capitalist, Comrade Locsin. I accept your terms.”

“We’ll be watching. If you or any of your men try to remove your bomb before we reach the agreed-to distance, I’ll detonate it.”

“And I will do the same.”

As promised, Locsin’s men moved four of the barrels back to the yacht. Brekker’s team hauled up the three that were still in the water.

Before he got onto the fishing boat, Locsin nodded at the horizon behind Brekker. “We need to get out of here now, and you may not want to stick around to get those other two barrels.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Because that ship rushing toward us knows what we found here today, and they won’t like that you’ve taken the cargo.”

Without fully turning around in case it was a trick, he glanced sideways and saw a merchant ship coming their way at high speed, far faster than he would expect for a vessel her size.

“Who is that? The Philippine Navy?”

Locsin shook his head as he climbed into the fishing boat. “Remember that Juan Cabrillo person you said you didn’t care about, back at the fire truck warehouse? You should care about him now, because I’d bet that’s his ship. A friend of his told me the name when she was in a daze from a gunshot wound. It’s called the Oregon .”

52

Juan leaned forward in his chair in the Oregon ’s op center as he watched the yacht and fishing boat separate on the big screen. They had been butted up against each other right where NUMA had reported the sunken Pearsall ’s position to be. A densely forested islet, no more than a mile across, was visible in the background under dark clouds rolling toward the late-afternoon sun. The fishing boat stopped for a short time a quarter mile from the yacht, then continued toward the north end of the islet.

Juan turned to Max. “Salvador Locsin doesn’t seem to be the type to rent a fancy yacht like that.”

“Not very communistic,” Max replied. “He must be on the fishing boat.”

“Do you think they made the deal they were talking about in the warehouse?” asked Raven, who was standing next to Max.

Juan looked back at the screen and shook his head. “It seems unlikely, after the fight they had, but it does look like it, doesn’t it? And the destroyer hasn’t been blown up like Gerhard Brekker threatened to do, so either they’ve brought up all of the barrels of Typhoon or they were destroyed when it sank.”

“Maybe they just haven’t found them yet, and we’ve scared them off,” Max said. “Look, there goes the yacht.”