Dark Watch

Cabrillo had thrown caution to the wind, literally, in this mad dash up the Sea of Okhotsk. He was trying to outrace the fast-moving storm. The prize would go to the first to reach the coastline where Eddie Seng’s transponder said he was stranded. With the storm tracking northward at eight knots, the Oregon and her crew had been subjected to two full days of constant punishment. Juan didn’t want to contemplate the strain the engines were going through, and he’d politely told Max Hanley where he could shove his disapproval.

He’d had no choice but to suspend most routine maintenance and with it too rough to cook, the crew had subsisted on U.S. Army issue MREs, meals ready to eat, known affectionately as morsels of recycled entrails, and coffee.

But the gamble was paying off. The latest meteorological information showed them nearing the storm’s leading edge, and already the barometer was rising. To his seasoned eye the freezing rain seemed to have lost its needle edge, while the swells, still towering, were coming with less frequency.

Juan called up their position on the GPS and did some mental calculations. Eddie was sixty miles away, and once they broke free of the storm, he could probably increase speed to forty knots. That would put the Oregon off the coast in an hour and a half with the storm barreling in on them less than six hours later. If he was right about there being thousands of Chinese laborers being used in a gold mining operation, then the window to rescue them was just too tight. They could pack maybe a few hundred onto the Oregon, a thousand if they jettisoned the submersibles and the Robinson helicopter, but given the ferocity of the storm, the impending volcanic eruption, and the weakened condition of the people he expected to find, the death toll could be staggering.

He had worked with guys in the CIA, mostly senior case officers, who could imagine such loss of life with the indifference of an actuary reading columns of numbers, but he had never developed skin thick enough for that. In truth he wouldn’t let himself lose that much of his own humanity even if it meant paying for it with nightmares and guilt.

“Chairman, I have a contact.” Linda Ross spoke without straightening from the radar repeater.

“What have you got?”

She glanced over at him, her elfin face looking even younger in the glow of the battle lights. “Storm’s playing havoc with the returns, but I think it’s the sister drydock to the Maus. I’m getting two hits forty miles out in close proximity. One’s a lot bigger than the other, so I think it’s the Souri and a tug.”

“Course and speed?”

“She’s headed due south from where Eddie’s transponder has been pinging, and she’s not making more than six knots. She’ll pass at least ten miles to starboard if we don’t change course to intercept.”

Juan called over to Hali Kasim at the comm station. “Any change on Eddie’s signal?”

“Last sweep was eight hours ago. He hasn’t moved.”

Again Juan ran the numbers. It was possible given the Souri’s speed and the amount of ocean she’d covered that Eddie was aboard her, but his gut was telling him his crewmate and friend was still on the beach.

“Ignore the Souri.”

“Chairman?”

“You heard me. Ignore her.” Juan knew he could leave it at that, and his orders would be followed implicitly, but he felt he had to give them more. Since his conversation with Tory before heading into the storm he hadn’t uttered a sentence with more than five words. His concern, even fear, at what they’d find on Kamchatka had sent his thoughts inward. Now that they were getting close, he needed his crew to understand his logic.

“Once she hits the storm,” he said, “the tug is going to have to haul that pig against thirty-knot winds with the drydock’s hull acting like an enormous sail the entire time. Even if they ballast her down to reduce her profile, they won’t make any headway in this slop. There’s a good chance they even might be driven northward again. All this will give us enough time to reach Eddie, do whatever the hell we can, and then cut back south and take the Souri on the high seas.”

Juan saw that everyone on the bridge agreed with his logic, although he could see in their faces they wanted to take the easy prey first. He expected no less from them.

“Now,” he continued, “we were burned the last time we shadowed one of Shere Singh’s drydocks. They have radar capabilities that probably rival our own, so I want full jamming on her, a complete radar blackout.”

Linda Ross raised her hand slightly. “If they have the kind of sophisticated gear we think they do, they’ll have to know they’re being jammed.”

“Not if we hit them now,” Juan answered.

“He’s right,” Hali added. “Their radar is looking into the storm and is picking up so much backscatter from the waves and lightning that they can’t see us yet, and if we hit the jammers, they never will.”