Skeleton Coast

“There’s a split in the hull amidships port side and we’re taking on water. My pumps are going at full capacity and we don’t appear to be sinking, but if the tear gets any worse we will have to abandon ship.”

“Has the hole gotten any bigger since it first occurred?”

“Negative. A rogue wave ru

“If you turn due east we can reach you quicker.” This wasn’t true but if theGulf of Sidra turned as she spewed her poison it would distort the hurricane’s eye somewhat. Basically it was a test to see who had control on the ship, its master or Daniel Singer.

Static filled the airwaves for almost a minute. When Cassedine came back there was a new current of fear in his voice. “Ah, that isn’t possible,Oregon . My engineer reports damage to our steering gear.”

“Most likely a gun to his head,” Juan said to Max.

They had considered this scenario, so Max went on as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Understood damage to your steering. In that case, Captain, we can’t risk a collision in these conditions. When we are ten miles from you I will request that you man your lifeboats.”

“What, so you can put a line on my ship afterward and claim her for salvage?”

Juan chuckled. “This guy’s facing death and he’s worried we’ll steal his vessel.”

“Captain, theOregon is a thousand-ton commercial fishing boat,” Max lied smoothly. “We couldn’t tow a tanker on a millpond let alone in the teeth of a hurricane. I am just unwilling to risk a runaway derelict ramming us in the middle of this storm.”

“I, ah, I understand,” Cassedine finally said.

“How many souls aboard?”

“Three officers, twelve crew, and one supernumerary. A total of sixteen.”

The extra man would be Singer, Juan thought, realizing that was a small number even by tanker standards, which were so automated nowadays that they typically carried just a skeleton crew, but he supposed it was enough for what Singer intended.

“Roger that,” Max replied. “Sixteen people. I will call you when we are in range.Oregon out.”

“Affirmative, Captain Hanley. I will radio immediately if our situation changes.Gulf of Sidra out.”

“Don’t get too used to that Captain Hanley stuff,” Juan said when the tanker was off the air.

“I don’t know,” Max said airily. “Has a nice ring to it. So do you think Singer will abandon with them?”

“Tough to say. Though he’s hit a setback he might try to complete his mission without the crew aboard.

They will need to slow in order to launch the lifeboat, but if Cassedine shows him how to get her back to speed then he could finish tightening the storm into an eye less than six miles across.”

“Would you?”

“If I were him and I’d come this far, yeah, I think I would see it through to the end.”

“Which means two things. One is that Singer’s crazier than an outhouse rat and two, you and Eddie better keep an eye out for him when you’re laying the cutting charges.”

“We’ll be careful.”

An hour later George radioed back to theOregon that they had reached their first waypoint on the flight.

It was time to clear theGulf of Sidra of her crew.

“This is theOregon calling Captain Cassedine.” Max said over the radio.

“This is Cassedine, go aheadOregon. ”

“We are ten miles from your position. Are you prepared to abandon ship?” Max asked.

“I do not want to argue, Captain,” Cassedine replied, “but my radar shows you are nearly thirty miles from us.”

“You’re trusting radar in twenty-foot seas?” Max scoffed. “My radar doesn’t even show you. I’m relying on my GPS and by our estimates you’re ten miles from us.” Hanley rattled off the longitude and latitude numbers of a spot ten miles due east of theGulf of Sidra . “That is our current location.”

“Ah, yes. I see that you are correct and are within the ten miles.”

“We can come in closer if you’ve made repairs to your rudder.”

“No, we have not, but the supernumerary has volunteered to stay aboard to keep working on it.”

“The rest of you are abandoning him?” Max asked, playing the part of a concerned mariner.

“He is the vessel’s owner and understands the risk,” Cassedine told him.

“Understood,” Max said with mock unease. “After you launch the boat and get clear of the tanker steer a heading of two seventy degrees and transmit a tone on the EPIRB emergency frequency so we can home in on you.”

“A heading of two seventy degrees and a tone on 121.5 megahertz. We will launch in a couple of minutes.”

“Good luck, Captain. May God go with you,” Max said seriously. Even if Cassedine and his crew were knowingly helping Singer, the sailor in him understood the dangers of getting into a lifeboat in this sea state.

A quarter hour later, Hali Kasim put the 121.5 MHz marine distress band on the op center speakers so everyone could hear the high-pitched directional tone.

“Got that, Juan?”

“I hear it. We’re heading in.”

Even flying at five hundred feet they only broke through the clouds when they were less than a mile from the supertanker. At ninety thousand tons heavier than theOregon she rode the waves much more smoothly with only occasional spray breaking over her blunt bows. They could just make out a tiny yellow speck motoring away from the red-decked behemoth. It was her lifeboat and, like he’d been ordered, Cassedine was heading due west, well away from theOregon so there would be no chance he could interfere. They could also tell that the tanker was picking up steam again after slowing to send the lifeboat down its rails.

“Check that out,” George said and pointed.

Near theGulf of Sidra ’s stern a jet of fluid arced from her side about eight feet below her rail. It was discharge from her sea-suction intake, a system of pipes and pumps that allowed her to take on or expel ballast water.

Only she wasn’t pumping water. The fluid gushing from the three-foot-diameter hole was thick and viscous, like the oil that had contaminated the bay around the Petromax terminal in Angola. Only this was clear and seemed to spread across the ocean faster than the pump was ejecting it from the ship.

“It’s growing on its own,” Eddie said from the backseat. Next to him were the thick ropes of Hypertherm. “The organics within the gel are contaminating the surrounding water and turning it into goo.”

They circled the supertanker to take a look at that damage on her port side. There was a gash in the hull rising up from her waterline and extending to her railing. As the hull flexed with the waves the rend opened and closed like a vertical mouth. The sea around the tear was coated with a growing skin of gelatin-thick flocculent.

“Where do you want me to drop you?” George asked.

“As close as you can to the bow,” Juan said.

“I don’t want to risk getting doused by spray so it’ll have to be at least a hundred feet back.”

“We won’t have the time to hunt for Singer, so make sure when you come back to grab us you can do it quickly.”

“Trust me, Chairman, I don’t want to hover over anything in this wind one microsecond longer than necessary.”

Adams looped them around and into the wind, coming at the tanker from an altitude of a hundred feet, the restless sea seeming to pulse just below the landing skids. They crossed over the ship’s rail and George reined in the little chopper, holding her steady against the gusts in an expert flying demonstration as he dumped altitude. He maintained a hover twenty feet higher than the deck rose on even the biggest waves.

“Eddie, go.”

Eddie Seng pushed open the door opposite him, fighting to keep it open with one foot while he used the other to kick the coils of Hypertherm out of the helicopter. The explosives fell to the deck below like an entangled nest of snakes. When the last of it disappeared over the sill he straightened and the wind slammed the door closed.