“The rearmost.”

“And the lifting assembly?”

“Ready to go.”

“We’ll be alongside in about one minute.” Juan then addressed Murphy. “Disable the tug’s rudder assembly, would you please.”

“With pleasure.”

He called up the Bofors 40mm autocannon, waited for the weapon to be deployed from its concealed bay, and put a half-dozen rounds under the tug’s fantail. Her speed dropped off instantly, and a trail of oil began to seep from where her hull had been penetrated.

Eric Stone kept his hands loose on the controls as he brought the Oregon alongside the tug, slowing to match speed as the gap between the two ships shrank to just a few feet. He used rudder and bow thrusters to keep the vessels in virtual lockstep. Murph never took his eyes off his cameras, waiting to provide cover fire if any of the pirates showed themselves.

Up on deck, a pair of deckhands swung the boom of the Oregon’s main derrick across the gap, feeding out line so the hook dangled scant inches above the shipping container. Trono and Ski finally emerged from under the tarp and attached the hook to the beam they’d secured to the metal box. Mike made a circular gesture with his hand, and the crate came free of the deck.

Mohammad Singh, Shere Singh’s second-eldest and therefore second most trusted son, had survived the initial assault on the tug because he’d hidden in a cabin while his father’s men fought and killed the crew and were later gunned down by the Gatling. Fighting was something that his father paid others to do. However, when he saw the crane swing over the side of his ship, he immediately understood that someone was trying to rob him. He raced down from the bridge, brandishing a pistol, and burst out on the afterdeck, screaming curses at the top of his lungs.

Mark Murphy saw the man dash across the deck but was a fraction too slow training one of the .50 calibers.

Singh leapt for the container just as it began to pendulum from the wave action. He scrambled to find a grip and was forced to drop his pistol in order to hold on tight.

The winchman drew back cable so the container cleared the railing and had just started to pivot the boom back over the Oregon when a heavy rolling wave surged past the two ships. Stone did an excellent job of keeping the vessels from crashing against each other, but the deckhand couldn’t stop the container from arcing across open space and slamming into the tug’s bridge with a wet slap. When it swung back, all that remained of Mohammad Singh was a meaty red stain.

Most of the crew not on duty assembled in the hold where the container had been lowered once the Oregon was well beyond weapons range of the floundering tug.

Ski and Trono doused everyone with a cascade of champagne froth when Maurice handed them each a bottle.

“It’s kind of anticlimactic,” Juan shouted over the revelry, “because these two clowns had to sneak a peek on the tug, however…” He drew the word out as he swung open the big doors.

The lighting in the hold wasn’t particularly conducive for examining treasure, but the golden reflection that radiated from the container was the most beautiful color any of them had ever seen.

Juan hefted one of the bars, pumping it over his head like a trophy, while around him the men and women of the Corporation went wild.

25

JUAN Cabrillo leaned back in the sofa with an exhausted sigh and took a sip of the brandy he’d bought from the duty-free shop at Zurich’s airport. For the first time in nearly two weeks he felt he could finally relax.

He gazed into the fire burning in the open hearth, losing himself in the flames’ hypnotic dance.

When they’d dragged her off the beach, the Selandria’s hull had been holed by sharp rocks. They managed to tow her twenty miles down the Kamchatka’s west coast before maneuvering her into a shallow inlet and letting her sink. They transferred as much food as they could spare and emptied nearly all the supplies from the medical bay. Juan allowed Doc Huxley and her team just twenty-four hours to evaluate and treat as many people as she could before he ordered the Oregon to continue south.

They came across the second tugboat and the drydock Souri only 150 miles from what Eddie said the workers called Death Beach. As Cabrillo had said, she’d had a hard time making headway in the storm. They put a torpedo into the Souri as they passed her by without so much as a warning and blew the rudder off the tug’s sternpost with a blast from the 40mm.

It was only then that Cabrillo contacted the Russian Coast Guard. He routed the radio call through a half dozen satellite relays to mask their position and reported that there were several ships in distress in the Sea of Okhotsk and gave their GPS coordinates. He explained about the Chinese refugees, which the operator he spoke to didn’t seem all that concerned about, and how there was a fortune of illegally mined gold on one of the tugs, which seemed to get more of a reaction.

News of the dramatic rescue and incredible find following the worst volcanic eruption in Asia for a decade broke as the Oregon limped into Vladivostok. They turned the Russian mercenaries over to the authorities and laid up the ship for much-needed repairs.

It was there that Juan phoned Langston Overholt, their principle CIA contact, and told him the whole story. He also called Hiroshi Katsui to inform him that the pirate menace that had overwhelmed the waters off Japan was over and gave instructions for their final payment.

He considered the fortune in gold they’d made off with a bonus that their client didn’t need to know about.

Two weeks after the eruption, Lang sent Juan an e-mail. The first rescue workers to reach the bay reported that someone had survived the eruption aboard one of the cruise ships. He’d barricaded himself in a food locker as the pyroclastic flow buried the vessel under five feet of searing hot volcanic ash. Lang thought Juan would like to know the survivor gave his name as Anton Savich, a volcanologist well-known in the region. Savich was currently staying at a hotel in Petropavlovsk.

Juan wanted to go himself, but he felt that Eddie Seng needed it more. Franklin Lincoln went along for the ride. They were back two days later with the name Bernhard Volkmann. He was the banker who was going to fence Savich’s gold.

“How’d you do it?” Juan had asked his two officers across the desk in his cabin.

“Simple, really,” Eddie had said. “Once we broke into his room and kidnapped him, we drove him to the airport and promised that we wouldn’t kill him if he told us what we wanted to know.”

“And?”

“He had nothing to lose and everything to gain, so he told us.”

“And?” Juan repeated, feeling like he was pulling teeth.

“Well, when the Russians rescued the Chinese off the Selandria, there weren’t enough beds around Petropavlovsk to house them, so they put about a thousand men into a hangar at the airport until they figured out what to do with them. So after Savich told me the name, I went into the hangar with him, explained to a few of the men there that Savich was responsible for what had happened to them, and, well, let nature take its course.”