Clive Cussler: Golden Buddha

Then he turned and left Tural staring after him as he walked away.

ELEVEN seventeen. If they were going to make a run for it, now was the time, thought Cabrillo. The alarm had long been answered at the prison, and by now patrols were certainly roaming the city and the countryside in search of the escaped prisoners and their rescuers. Their only link was the truck driver, but he could not provide any information to the Cuban security forces, even if he was captured and tortured. His original contact had made no mention of the Oregon . As far as the driver knew, the rescue team had come from a landing party on another part of the island.

Cabrillo lifted a phone and called down to the Corporation’s president in the engine room. “Max?”

Hanley answered almost immediately. “Juan.”

“Have the ballast tanks been pumped dry?”

“Tanks are dry and the hull is raised for speed.”

“The tide is about to turn and will swing us around. We’d better leave while our bow is still aimed toward the main channel. As soon as the anchor comes free, I’ll set the engines very slow. No sense in alerting any observers on the shore to a sudden departure. At the first alarm or when we reach the main channel, whichever comes first, I’ll enter the program for full speed. We’ll need every ounce of power your engines can give.”

“You think you can get us through a narrow channel in the dead of night at full speed without a pilot?”

“The ship’s computer system read every inch of the channel and the buoy markers on the way in. Our escape course is plotted and programmed into the automatic pilot. We’ll leave it to Otis to take us out.” Otis was the crew’s name for the ship’s automated control systems. It could steer the Oregon within inches of the intended route.

“Computerized automated controls or not, it won’t be an easy matter to race through a tight channel at sixty knots.”

“We can do it.” Cabrillo punched off and hit another code. “Mark, give me a status on our defense systems.”

Mark Murphy, the Oregon ’s weapons specialist, replied in his west Texas drawl, “If any of them Cuban missile launchers so much as hiccups, we’ll take them out.”

“You can expect aircraft once we’re in the open sea.”

“Nuthin’ we cain’t handle.”

He turned to Linda Ross. “Linda?”

“All systems are online,” she replied calmly.

Cabrillo set the phone in its cradle and relaxed, lighting up a thin Cuban cigar. He looked around at the ship’s crew, standing in the control center. They were all staring at him, waiting expectantly.

“Well,” he said slowly, before taking a deep breath, “I guess we might as well go.”

He gave a voice command to the computer, the winch was set in motion, and the anchor slowly, quietly—through Teflon sleeves the team had inserted inside the hawsehole, which deadened the clank of the chain—rose from the bottom of the harbor. Another command and the Oregon began to inch slowly ahead.

Down in the engine room, Max Hanley studied the gauges and instruments on the huge console. His four big magnetohydrodynamics engines were a revolutionary design for maritime transport. They intensified and compounded the electricity found in saline seawater before running it through a magnetic core tube kept at absolute zero by liquid helium. The electrical current that was produced created an extremely high energy force that pumped the water through thrusters in the stern for propulsion.

Not only were the Oregon ’s engines capable of pushing the big cargo ship at incredible speeds, but it required no fuel except the seawater that passed through its magnetic core. The source of the propulsion was inexhaustible. Another advantage was that the ship did not require huge fuel tanks, which enabled the space to be utilized for other purposes.

There were only four other ships in the world with magnetohydrodynamics engines—three cruise ships and one oil tanker. Those who had installed the engines in the Oregon had been sworn to secrecy.

Hanley took proprietary care of the high-tech engines. They were reliable and rarely caused problems. He labored over them as if they were an extension of his own soul. He kept them finely tuned and in a constant state of readiness for extreme and extended operation. He watched now as they automatically engaged and began pushing the ship into the channel that led to the sea.

Above in the command center, armored panels slid noiselessly apart, revealing a large window on the forward bulkhead. The murmur among the men and women gazing intently at the lights of the city was quiet, as though the men manning the Cuban defense systems could hear their words.

Cabrillo spotted another ship leaving the harbor ahead of them. “What ship is that?” he asked.

One of the team pulled up the list of ship arrivals and departures on his computer monitor. “She’s a Chinese registered cargo vessel carrying sugar to Hangchou,” he reported. “She’s leaving port nearly an hour ahead of her scheduled departure time.”

“Name?” asked Cabrillo.

“In English, the Red Dawn . The shipping line is owned by the Chinese army.”

“Turn out all the outer lights, and increase speed until we are close astern of the vessel ahead,” he commanded the computer. “We’ll use her as a decoy to lead us out.” The outer deck and navigation lights blinked out, leaving the ship in darkness as she narrowed the gap between the two vessels. The lights inside the command center dimmed to a blue-green glow.

By the time the Red Dawn entered the ship’s channel and passed the first of the string of marker buoys, the darkened Oregon was trailing only fifty yards off her stern. Cabrillo kept his ship just far enough back so that the Chinese vessel’s deck lights would not cast their beams on his bow. It was a long shot, but he was betting the silhouette of his ship would be mistaken for the shadow of the Red Dawn .

Cabrillo glanced at a large twenty-four-hour clock on the wall above the window just as the long minute hand clicked onto 11:39. Only twenty-one minutes to go before the Cubans’ defense systems test.

“Following the Red Dawn is slowing us down,” said Linda. “We’re losing precious time.”

Cabrillo nodded. “You’re right, we can’t wait any longer. She’s served her purpose.” He leaned over and spoke into the computer’s voice receiver.

“Go to full speed and pass the ship ahead!”

Like a small powerboat with big engines and a heavy hand on the throttles, the Oregon dug her stern into the forbidding water and lifted her bows clear of the waves as her thrusters erupted in a cloud of froth, creating a vast crater in her wake. She leaped down the channel and swept past the Chinese cargo ship less than twenty feet away, as if she were stopped dead in the water. The Chinese sailors could be seen staring in stunned disbelief. Faster and faster with each passing second she raced through the night. Speed was the Oregon ’s crowning achievement, the thoroughbred heart of the vessel. Forty knots, then fifty. By the time she passed Morro Castle at the entrance to Santiago, she was making nearly sixty-two knots. No ship in the world that size could match her speed.

The beacon lights mounted high on the bluffs were soon little more than blinking specks on a black horizon.

THE alarm spread quickly onshore that a ship was making an unauthorized departure—but the radar and fire control operators did not unleash their shore-to-surface missiles. Their officers could not believe that such a large ship was moving at such an incredible rate of speed. They assumed their radar systems were malfunctioning, and they were reluctant to unleash missiles that they did not think could lock on to such an inconceivable target.