Free Plague Ship by Clive Cussler, Jack du Brul Page A

dragging him to the secluded corner of the entry vestibule where he’d already hidden the two drugged guards. Juan dumped his burden next to them.
    “That shaved a few months off my life,” he panted.
    “Any chance someone saw you?” Seng asked.
    “If you hear an alarm start wailing, you’ll have your answer. Any problems upstairs with the others?”
    “One went for his gun. Linc has stopped his bleeding, and if he gets to a hospital in the next couple of hours he’ll make it. We wore face masks, and I was shouting in Mandarin, like we planned, and if those guys know their weapons they’ll recognize the Chinese-made Type 95s.”
    “Coupled with the Czech ammunition we’re using, that should keep them guessing.”
    Max Hanley sauntered over, a wry grin on his face. “You just had to make this harder than it already is, didn’t you?”
    “Come on, Max, if we didn’t up the risk we wouldn’t get the exorbitant fees we’ve all grown so accustomed to.”
    “I’ll give up part of my cut next time.”
    “Any problem with your guy?”
    “His nap will last well into tomorrow. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s go find those torpedoes.”
    In the first of the two large rooms under the elevated platform, they found a store of conventional Russian-made TEST-71 torpedoes, exactly like the ones the Oregon herself carried. It was in the second room, after Linc shot off the lock, that they found Iran’s newest and most lethal weapon. The room was taken up with workbenches, diagnostic computers, and all kinds of electronic gear. In the middle of the space were two shroud-draped shapes that looked a bit like cadavers in a morgue. Max strode over to one and whipped off the sheet. At first glance, the torpedo sitting on the mechanized trolley looked like the TEST-71s except it lacked a propeller. He eyed the twenty-five-foot underwater missile, especially its radically shaped nose. It was this feature that created a bubble of air around the torpedo and allowed it to cut through the water with virtually no friction.
    “What do you think?” Juan asked, approaching his second-in-command.
    “It’s exactly like the pictures I’ve seen of the Russian Shkval ,” the engineer told him. “Form follows function on something like this, meaning there are only a couple of designs that would lead to the supercavitation effect, but this thing is identical to the Russkies’ fish.”
    “So they’re helping the Iranians?”
    “No doubt.” Max straightened. “The proof’s going to be in the design of the rocket motor, but, for my money, we’ve got them dead to rights.”
    “Okay, good. You and Eddie gather everything you can.” Eddie was already at a computer terminal, jacking in a pirate drive that would siphon everything on the system. Linc was looking through log books and binders for anything relevant. Cabrillo turned to Franklin Lincoln, “You ready, big man?”
    "Aye.”
    Max stopped Juan from leaving the room with a hand to the elbow. “One or two?”
    Juan cast an eye at the two torpedoes. “In for a penny, in for a pound, let’s take ’em both.”
    “You know they are most likely armed and fueled.”
    Cabrillo grinned. “So we’ll take ’em carefully.”
    While Linc searched the upper platform for the mechanism that would open the main outer doors, Juan climbed up a ladder welded to one wall and walked along a catwalk to the overhead crane’s control cabin. Familiar with all manner of cranes from his years at sea, he powered up the machine and started it trundling down the length of the building toward the head of the dock. As it slid back, a fiendish thought struck him, and he lowered the huge hook assembly. Weighing nearly a ton, and traveling fast enough that it had pendulumed back a couple of degrees, the hook was steered by Cabrillo toward the conning-tower dive plane of Iran’s newest Kilo Class submarine.
    The hook didn’t have the momentum to rip the fin off, but the tear it left in the delicate