Free Plague Ship by Clive Cussler, Jack du Brul

pocket and lit up. The smokes were Dunhills, a vastly superior brand to the cheap local tobacco the men choked down, and he saw that both had noticed the distinctive flat pack. The guard kept the billfold and was turning to grab the walkie-talkie when Juan offered him the cigarettes.
    He hesitated for an instant, so Juan thrust the pack closer.
    “We must call the main security station,” the younger guard told him.
    “Of course,” Juan said, jetting smoke from his mouth. “I thought you might enjoy a decent cigarette while they yell at you for not knowing I am authorized to be here.”
    Sheepishly, both men took a cigarette. Juan held the lighter for them. They only had time to exchange a look, following their first drag, before the fast-acting, narcotic-laced tobacco hit their nervous systems like a freight train. Both men crumpled wordlessly to the ground.
    Cabrillo ground his cigarette into the floor with his foot. “Usually, boys,” he said, crushing out the guards’ smoldering Dunhills and tucking all the evidence into his pant pocket, “these things’ll kill you. In your case, you’ll be out for a couple of hours. However, I don’t envy you when your superiors discover your dereliction.”
    The Corporation tried to keep their operations as nonlethal as possible. From the earliest planning stages of the mission, Cabrillo made sure the guards wouldn’t die doing their job just because Russia was illegally selling advanced military equipment.
    That isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of blood on Juan Cabrillo’s or the rest of his team’s hands, but they wouldn’t kill if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
    Juan was just turning away when the metal door leading to the outside was thrown open and a lab-coated technician flanked by two soldiers strode in. They saw the two unconscious guards on the floor under the table and Juan’s unfamiliar uniform. One guard brought his assault rifle up and shouted a challenge. The second said something to the first that Cabrillo didn’t need to translate to “I’m going for help” before he turned on his heel and vanished into the night.
    In a minute, all three thousand sailors and support personnel were going to be descending on the dry dock like a horde of berserkers.

CHAPTER 3
    AS THE SECOND GUARD WAS RACING FOR THE DOOR, A speck of ruby light appeared on the first guard’s weapon, followed an instant later by a silenced bullet that ripped the AK-47 from his grip amid a shower of blood from his mangled hand.
    Juan didn’t hesitate. Linc or Eddie had immobilized the man, from their position on the raised platform above, and Cabrillo knew they would have the stunned technician covered with their silenced Type 95 bullpup assault rifles. He wheeled and took off after the fleeing guard. He accelerated with each pace, driven by his most stubborn trait, his inability to let himself fail. The guard was disappearing into the darkened naval base, and, if not for his khaki uniform, Cabrillo would have lost him in the gloom. In eight steps, he’d cut the sentry’s two-second head start to almost nothing, and, in another three, he lunged at the fleeing Iranian, grabbing the man around the knees in a tackle that would do a professional football player proud.
    The two went down on the unyielding asphalt road. Juan had been protected by the guard’s body, but the sentry hadn’t been so lucky. His head slammed into the macadam with a sickening crunch, and their slide ripped his face open down to the muscle.
    Cabrillo looked around quickly. There were a couple of darkened warehouses nearby, and, in the distance, he could see a four-story office building with a few illuminated windows, but he didn’t think he’d been spotted. He whipped a pair of FlexiCuffs around the unconscious guard’s wrists and hefted the man over his shoulder to jog back to the submarine pen.
    When Cabrillo closed the door behind him, he saw that Eddie had cuffed and gagged the technician. He was