Clive Cussler: Golden Buddha

“The cabarets on the waterfront are where you’ll find both cheap entertainment and drinks.”

“I’ll tell my crew.”

“Good-bye, Captain.” Morales did not extend his hand. He already felt unclean just by being on board the ship; he could not bring himself to grip the greasy hand of the obnoxious captain. Morales’s easygoing Cuban warmth had been cooled by the surroundings and he didn’t want to waste another second on board the Oregon . Leaving the wheelhouse, he dropped down the ladder to the deck and descended to the waiting pilot boat, still stunned at experiencing the filthiest ship he had ever piloted into the harbor. Which is just what the owners of the Oregon wanted him to think.

If Morales had examined the ship more closely, he might have realized it was all a façade. The Oregon rode low in the water because of specially fitted ballast tanks, which when filled with water lowered the hull to make it look as though it were loaded with cargo. Even the engine tremors were mechanically staged. The ship’s engines were whisper-silent and vibrationless.

And the coating of rust throughout the ship? It was artistically applied paint.

SATISFIED that the pilot and his boat had pulled away from the Oregon , Captain Smith stepped over to a handrail mounted on the deck that did not seem to serve any particular purpose. He gripped it and pressed a button on the underside. The square section of the deck on which Smith was standing suddenly began descending until it stopped in a vast, brightly lit room filled with computers, automated controls and several large consoles containing communications and weapons-firing systems. The deck in the command center was richly carpeted, the walls were paneled in exotic woods and the furniture looked as if it had come straight from a designer’s showroom. This room was the real heart of the Oregon .

The six people—four men and two women—neatly dressed in shorts, flowered shirts and white blouses were busy manning the various systems. One woman was scanning an array of TV monitors that covered every section of Santiago Bay, while a man zoomed a camera on the pilot boat as it turned and headed into the main channel. No one bothered to give the fat captain half a glance. Only a man dressed in khaki shorts and a green golf shirt approached him.

“All go well with the pilot?” asked Max Hanley, the ship’s corporate president, who directed all operational systems, including the ship’s engines.

“The pilot noticed the delay in the helm.”

Hanley grinned. “If only he’d known he was steering a dead wheel. We’ll have to make some adjustments, though. You speak to him in Spanish?”

Smith smiled. “My best Yankee English. Why let him know I speak his language? That way, I could tell if he played any tricks over the radio with the harbor officials as we anchored.” Smith pulled back a sleeve of his grimy coveralls and checked a Timex watch with a badly scratched lens. “Thirty minutes until dark.”

“The equipment in the moon pool is all ready.”

“And the landing crew?”

“Standing by.”

“I just have time to get rid of these smelly clothes and get decent,” said Cabrillo, heading toward his cabin down a hallway hung with paintings by modern artists.

The crew cabins were concealed inside two of the cargo holds and were as plush as rooms in a five-star hotel. There was no separation between officers and crew on the Oregon . All were educated people, highly trained in their respective fields—elite men and women who had served in the armed forces. The ship was owned by its staff, who were stockholders. There were no ranks. Cabrillo was chairman; Hanley, president; the others held various other titles. They were all mercenaries, here to make a profit—though that did not necessarily rule out good works at the same time—hired by countries or large companies to perform clandestine services around the world, very often at great risk.

THE man who left the cabin twenty minutes later did not look like the man who’d entered. The greasy hairpiece, scruffy beard and grimy coveralls were gone, as was the foul smell. So was the Timex, now replaced with a stainless-steel Concord chronograph. In addition, the man had dropped at least a hundred pounds.

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo had transformed himself from the grimy sea dog Smith to his true self again. A tall man in his forties, ruggedly handsome, he stared through pixie blue eyes. His blond hair was trimmed in a crew cut and a western cowboy-style mustache sprouted from his upper lip.

He hurried down the corridor to a far door and entered a control room perched high inside a vast cavern in the hull amidships. The three-deck-high moon pool, as it was called, was where all the Oregon ’s underwater equipment was stored—diving gear; submersibles, manned and unmanned; and an array of underwater electronic sensors. A pair of state-of-the-art contemporary underwater craft byU.S. Submarines—a sixty-five-foot Nomad 1000 and a thirty-two-foot Discovery 1000—hung in cradles. The doors on the bottom of the hull slid open and water flooded in until it was level with the outer waterline.

The remarkable ship was not what she appeared from her exterior. The outer decks and hull were disguised to make her look like a rust bucket. The wheelhouse and the unused officers’ and crew’s quarters below were also kept in a slovenly condition to avoid suspicion from visiting port officials or harbor pilots.

Cabrillo entered the underwater operations room and stood before a large table showing three-dimensional holographic images of every street in the city of Santiago. Linda Ross, the Oregon ’s security and surveillance analyst, was standing at the table lecturing a group of people dressed in Cuban military fatigue uniforms. Linda had been a lieutenant commander in the navy when Cabrillo had sweet-talked her into resigning and joining the Oregon . In the navy she had been an intelligence officer on board an Aegis guided-missile cruiser before spending four years in Washington in the navy’s intelligence department.

Linda glanced sideways at Cabrillo as he stood quietly without interrupting. She was an attractive woman, not a head turner, but most men still considered her pretty. She kept her five-foot-eight-inch, 130-pound body in firm shape with exercise, but rarely spent extra time on makeup or hairstyle. She was one smart lady, soft-spoken and greatly admired by the entire Oregon crew.

The five men and one woman standing around the detailed 3-D image of the city listened intently as Linda ran through the last-minute instructions, using a small metal rod with a light on the end to point out their objective. “The fortress of Santa Ursula. It was built during the Spanish-American War, and after the turn of the twentieth century it was used as a warehouse until Castro and his revolutionaries took over the country. Then it was turned into a prison.”

“What is the exact distance from our landing to the prison?” asked Eddie Seng, the Oregon ’s master of subterfuge and director of shore operations.

“Two hundred yards less than a mile,” answered Linda.

Seng folded his arms and looked thoughtful. “We’ll be able to fool the locals with our uniforms going in, but if we have to fight our way back a mile to the docks while herding eighteen prisoners, I can’t guarantee we’ll make it.”

“Certainly not in the condition those poor people are going to be in,” said Julia Huxley, the Oregon ’s medical officer. She was going along on the raid to care for the prisoners. A short woman, large bosomed with a body suited for wrestling, Julia was the congeniality lady of the ship. She’d served as a chief medical officer for four years at the San Diego Naval Base and was well respected by them all.