Clive Cussler: Plague Ship

The reply was a whistle of cold wind through the downed aircraft.

Kessler rummaged through a cabinet below the radio and found a flashlight. Its naked beam revealed the body of Max Ebelhardt, the copilot, who had died in the first instant of the attack. Calling out for Josef and Lichtermann, he trained the light on the inverted cockpit. He spotted the men still strapped to their seats, their arms dangling as limp as rag dolls’.

Neither man moved, not even when Kessler crawled over to them and laid a hand on the pilot’s shoulder. Lichtermann’s head was back, his blue eyes unblinking. His face was dark red, suffused with blood pooling in his skull. Kessler touched his cheek. The flesh was still warm, but the skin had lost its elasticity. It felt like putty. He flashed the light over to the radioman/gunner. Josef Vogel was also dead.

Vogel’s head had smashed against a bulkhead—Kessler could see the blood smeared against the metal—while Lichtermann’s neck must have been broken when the plane flipped over.

The rank smell of gasoline finally burned through the fog in Kessler’s head, and he staggered to the rear of the aircraft, where the main door was located. The crash had crushed the frame, and he had to slam his shoulder into the metal to pop it open. He fell out of the Kondor and sprawled on the ice. Chunks of the fuselage and wing were strewn along the glacier, and he could plainly see the deep furrows the aircraft had gouged into the ice.

He wasn’t sure how imminent the threat of fire was or how long it would be before he could safely return to the damaged Kondor . But with the wind chilled by the ice as it came down off the glacier, he knew he couldn’t remain out in the open for very long. His best bet lay in finding the mysterious building he’d spotted before the crash. He would wait there until he was certain the Kondor wouldn’t burn and then return. Hopefully, the radio survived the crash. If it hadn’t, there was a small inflatable boat stored in the tail section of the plane. It would take him days to reach a village, but if he hugged the coastline he could make it.

Having a plan helped keep the horror of the past hour at bay. He just had to focus on surviving. When he was safely back in Narvik, he would allow himself to dwell on his dead comrades. He hadn’t been particularly close to any of them, preferring his studies to their carousing, but they had been his crew.

Kessler’s head pounded, and his neck became so stiff he could barely turn it. He took bearings on the mountain that hid so much of the tight fjord and started trudging across the glacier. Distances on the ice were hard to determine, and what had looked like just a couple of kilometers turned into an hours-long walk that left his feet numb. A sudden rain squall had drenched him, the water freezing on his coat flaking off in icy bits that crackled with each step.

He was thinking about turning back and taking his chances with the plane when his eye caught the outline of the building thrust partially out of the ice. As he got closer and details emerged from the dark, he began to shiver with more than the cold. It wasn’t a building at all.

Kessler came to a stop under the bow of a huge ship, constructed of thick wood with copper sheathing and towering over his head, that had become trapped in the ice. Knowing how slowly glaciers moved, he estimated that for the vessel to be so deeply buried it had been here for thousands of years. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Even as that thought crossed his mind, he knew it wasn’t true. He’d seen pictures of this ship before. There were illustrations in the Bible his grandfather used to read to him when he was a boy. Kessler had much preferred the Old Testament stories to the preachings of the New, so he even recalled the ship’s dimensions—one hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits tall.

“. . . and onto this ark Noah loaded his animals two by two.” CHAPTER 1

BANDAR ABBAS, IRAN

PRESENT DAY

THE TIRED-LOOKING FREIGHTER HAD LAIN AT ANCHOR off the busy port of Bandar Abbas long enough to arouse the suspicion of the Iranian military. An armed patrol boat was dispatched from the nearby naval base and streaked across the shallow azure waters toward the five-hundred-plus-foot ship.

The vessel was named the Norego and carried a Panamanian registry, if the flag hanging from her jack staff was any indication. From the look of her, she had been converted to container duty after serving her life as a general cargo vessel. Growing up from her deck like branchless trees were five cargo booms, three forward and two aft. Around them were stacks of brightly colored containers piled to just below her bridge windows. Despite the large quantity of containers, she sat high in the water, with at least fifteen feet of red antifouling paint showing below her maximum-load line. Her hull was a uniform blue, but looked as though she hadn’t seen a new coat of paint in some time, while her upperworks were a mismatched shade of green. Her twin funnels were so darkened by soot that the original color was indeterminate. A trickle of smoke coiled from the stacks and hung over the ship in a pall.

Scaffolding of metal struts had been lowered over her fantail, and men in grease-smeared coveralls were working on the freighter’s rudder bearing.

As the patrol craft approached, the NCO acting as captain of the nimble boat raised a megaphone to his mouth. “Ahoy, Norego ,” he said in Farsi. “Please be advised that we are going to board you.” Muhammad Ghami repeated his words in English, the international language of maritime trade.

A moment later, a grossly overweight man wearing a sweat-stained officer’s shirt appeared at the head of the gangway. He nodded to a subaltern, and the boarding stairs began to descend.

As they drew nearer, Ghami saw captain’s epaulets on the man’s shoulders and sourly wondered how a man of such rank could let himself go so badly. The Norego ’s master carried a heavy gut that sagged ten inches over his belt. Under his white cap, his hair was greasy black with gray streaks, and his face was covered with stubble. He could only imagine where the owners of such a decrepit ship would find such a man to command her.

With one of his men standing behind the patrol boat’s .50 caliber machine gun, Ghami nodded for another sailor to tie the rigid-hulled inflatable to the gangway. Another sailor stood close by, an AK-47

slung across his shoulder. Ghami checked that the flap over his holster was secured and leapt onto the boarding stairs with his second-in-command at his heels. As he climbed, he observed the captain try to smooth his hair and straighten his filthy shirt. They were futile gestures.

Ghami reached the deck, noting that the plates were sprung in places and hadn’t seen paint in decades.

Rust caked nearly every surface except for the shipping containers, which probably hadn’t been on board long enough for the crew’s lack of diligence to affect them. There were gaps in the railing that had been repaired with lengths of chain, and corrosion had eaten into the superstructure so much that it looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Hiding his disgust, Ghami snapped a crisp salute at the captain. The man scratched his ample stomach and made a vague gesture at the bill of his cap.

“Captain, I am Ensign Muhammad Ghami of the Iranian Navy. This is Seaman Khatahani.”

“Welcome aboard the Norego , Ensign,” the freighter’s master replied. “I am Captain Ernesto Esteban.” His Spanish accent was so thick that Ghami had to go over each word in his head to make sure he understood. Esteban was a few inches taller than the Iranian sailor, but the extra weight he carried hunched his shoulders and curved his back so that he and Ghami appeared almost the same height. His eyes were dark and watery, and when he smiled to shake Ghami’s hand his teeth were yellowed and crooked. His breath smelled like curdled milk.