“Those Mosby explosive heads must be more powerful than I was led to believe.”
Giordino jerked his eyes back and to the side as another explosion burst on the frame between the starboard hull and the nose-viewing shield. Water began to spurt in where metal met glass. “Those things do more than scratch paint and make dents,” said Giordino. “I can vouch for it.”
“We're losing power to the thrusters,” came Pitt's voice in a precision display of unruffled coolness. “That last strike must have caused a short in the system. Dump the grate. It's causing too much drag.”
Giordino complied, working the manipulator controls and releasing the grate. Through the silt cloud he could see several places in the grate where the rusting iron had been gouged away by the explosive charges. He watched it fall out of sight back into the sediment on the bottom. “So long, old pal, you served your purpose.”
Pitt stared briefly at a small navigation monitor. “Two hundred feet to the antenna. I make us about to pass under the liner's screws.”
“No hits in the last minute,” said Giordino. “We must have left our angry friends behind in the fog. I suggest you cut back on your throttles and conserve whatever battery power is left.”
“Nothing left to conserve,” replied Pitt, pointing to the instrument dial indicating battery power. “We're down to one knot and the needle is in the red.”
Giordino smiled tightly. “It would make my day if Shang's divers got lost and gave up the chase.”
“We'll know soon,” said Pitt. “I'm going to angle up and out of the cloud. The instant we break into clear water, look astern and tell me what you see.”
“If they're still hanging around,” said Giordino, “and they spot us limping along at half a knot, they'll be all over us like maddened wasps.”
Pitt said nothing as the Sea Dog II emerged from the swirling mud storm. He squinted his eyes, trying to pierce the velvet-green water, searching for the antenna line and Cabrillo's diver. A vague silhouette wavering seventy to eighty feet ahead and slightly to port slowly evolved into the bottom of the launch rocking in the waves rolling across the harbor.
“We're almost home!” Pitt exclaimed, his spirits lifted.
“Stubborn little devils,” said Giordino morosely. “Five of them are swimming like sharks up our tail.”
“Smart fellas to catch on so quick. They must have kept one man in the clear as a lookout. Soon as he caught us rising out of the gunk, he alerted his pals by radio.”
An explosive charge smashed against one of the Sea Dog IPs tail stabilizers and blew it away. A second charge narrowly missed the hemispherical nose section. Pitt fought for control, urging, willing the submersible on a straight course toward the launch. The instant he saw one of Shang's divers out of the corner of his eyes, overtaking and coming in from the flank of the sub, he knew it was all but over. Without battery power and help from Cabrillo, there was no escape.
“So near, yet so far,” Giordino mumbled, staring upward at the keel of the launch as he waited helpless but unperturbed for the inevitable final assault.
Then suddenly a series of concussions swamped and reverberated all around the submersible. Pitt and Giordino were thrown about the interior like rats inside a rolling pipe. The water around them erupted in a mass of froth and bubbles that raged crazily in all directions before heading for the surface. The divers, who were about to close in on the Sea Dog II, died instantly, their bodies crushed to gelatin by the sledgehammer blows. The men inside the sub were both stunned and deafened by underwater detonations. They were saved from serious injury by the pressure hull.
It took several moments for Pitt to realize that Cabrillo, forewarned of the chase in progress, waited until the submersible and its attackers were close enough to the Oregon's launch to throw concussion grenades into the water. Through the ringing in his ears, Pitt heard someone calling over the radio.
"You guys all right down there?” came Cabrifto's welcome voice.
“My kidneys will never be the same,” Pitt answered back, “but we're behaving ourselves.”
“How about the vigilantes?”
“They look like they came out of a Jell-o mold,” replied Giordino.
“If we were attacked underwater,” Pitt warned Cabrillo, “it stands to reason they'll come after you on the surface.”
“Funny you should mention mat,” said Cabrillo airily. “There just happens to be a small cruiser coming this way as we speak. Nothing we can't handle, of course. Sit tight. I'll have my diver hook you up to the towline after we greet our callers.”
“Sit tight,” Giordino repeated acidly. “We have no power. We're dead in the water. He must think we're in an underwater amusement park.”
“He means well,” Pitt sighed as the tension inside the sub eased. He lay there idly, his hands loosely holding the handgrips of his now nonfunctioning controls, staring through the transparent canopy at the bottom of the launch, wondering what cards Cabrillo was about to deal.
“They mean business,” Cabrillo said to Eddie Seng, the Oregon's former CIA agent who was their man in Beijing for nearly twenty years before he was forced to make a sudden departure back to the States and retirement. Cabrillo peered through a small, single-lens telescope at the rapidly approaching cabin cruiser. Its configuration reminded him of a U.S. Coast Guard rescue boat, except that this one was not in the business of saving lives. “They figured the game when they detected the submersible, but they can't be sure we're tied in until they board and investigate.”
“How many do you make out?” asked Seng.
“About five, all carrying arms except the helmsman.”
“Any good-sized weapons mounted on the boat?” asked Seng.
“None that I can make out. They're on a fishing expedition and not looking for trouble. They'll leave two men behind to cover us, while the other three come on board.” Cabrillo turned to Seng. “Tell Pete James and Bob Meadows to slip over the unobserved side of the launch. They're both strong swimmers. When the boat comes alongside, tell them to swim under our craft and hang in the water between the hulls. If my plan works, the two guards remaining behind on their boat will instinctively react to an unexpected situation. We've got to take all five without guns. Nothing that makes noise. There'll be enough prying eyes on the dock and ship as it is. We'll just have to tough it out the best we can without drums and bugles.”
James and Meadows slipped over the side under a tarpaulin and waited in the water for the signal to swim under the launch. The rest of Cabrillo's men lounged around the decks as if dozing. One or two acted as if they were fishing off the stern.
Now Cabrillo could plainly see that Qin Shang Maritime's security men were wearing showy, dark maroon uniforms that were better suited for a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Four of them clutched what looked to Cabrillo like the latest-model machine pistols manufactured by the Chinese. The boat's captain wore the indecipherable, hard expression of a Chinese in authority.
“Remain where you are!” he shouted in Mandarin. “We are coming aboard!”
“What do you want?” Seng yelled back.
“Dockyard Security. We want to inspect your boat.”
“You're not the Harbor Patrol,” said Seng indignantly. “You have no authority over us.”
“You have thirty seconds to comply or we shoot,” the captain said with icy persistence.
“You'd shoot poor fishermen?” Seng said bitterly. “You're mad.” He turned to the others and shrugged. “We'd better do as they say. They're just crazy enough to do what they threaten.”
“All right,” he said to the Qin Shang Maritime security captain, “come aboard. But don't think I'm not going to report you to the People's Republic harbor authorities.”
Cabrillo leaned over the helm, shielding his face with a straw hat so the security guards couldn't see his Western eyes. He casually flipped a few coins over the side as the signal for James and Meadows to swim under the launch. Slowly, one of his hands snaked onto the throttle lever. Then, just as the captain of the security boat and his men were in the midst of leaping across the narrow gap separating the two craft, Cabrillo cracked the throttle open and just as quickly pulled it back, abruptly widening the gap between the two boats.