She turned to Seng and Hornsby. “The Oregon’s sending the cavalry,” she said.
“Not a moment too soon,” Seng said as he stared at the temperature gauge for his engine, now beginning to creep into the red.
Not too far distant, the Zodiac carrying Kasim, Murphy Meadows, and Jones heard the message as well. Kasim was steering, Meadows standing alongside, with Jones lying prone on the deck to the stern. Once Meadows heard the news, he turned, crouched down, then yelled the news over the sound of the wind and waves to Jones.
“I wish I’d have known,” Jones quipped. “I would have asked them to bring some aspirin.”
“You want another bottle of water?” Meadows asked.
“Not unless there’s a bathroom on board,” Jones said, grimacing.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Meadows said. “We’ll be home soon.”
LIKE the distant view of a shoplifter across a crowded store, the outline of the Oregonstarted to form through Ching’s binoculars as the fog began to clear. Concentrating on the hull, Ching could see the large white-capped wake being created by the racing cargo ship. The wake and the cargo ship’s track were like nothing he had ever witnessed before. Most cargo ships, and Ching had tracked and intercepted more than a few, moved through the water like lumbering manatees—this Iranian-flagged vessel he was chasing moved like a thoroughbred in heat.
The water out the stern was not churning, as with most ships; instead, it seemed to be forming into concentric whirlpools that flattened the sea to the rear, as if a large container of glycerin had been poured overboard. Ching stared at the decks, but no crew was visible. There was only rusty metal and junk piled high.
Though the decks were deserted, the Oregondid not give the appearance of a ghost ship. No, Ching thought, beneath her metal skin, much was happening. At just that instant, a medium-sized helicopter flew over the Gale Forceabout a hundred yards to the port side, just above wave-top level.
“Where did that come from?” Ching asked his electronics officer.
“What, sir?” the officer said, staring up from a screen.
“A helicopter,” Ching said, “heading from sea toward land.”
“It didn’t show up on the sensors,” the officer said. “Are you sure you saw it through the fog?”
“Yes,” Ching said loudly, “I saw it.”
He walked over to the screen and stared at the radar returns.
“What’s happening?” he asked a few seconds later.
The electronics officer was short and slim. He looked like a jockey in a fancy uniform. His hair was jet black and straight and his eyes brown-edged with bloodshot red from staring at the radar.
“Sir,” he said finally, “I’m not sure. What you see has been happening intermittently since we began the chase. One second we seem to get a clear return, then it jumps to the other side of the screen like it’s a video game playing hide-and-seek.”
“The image is not even the correct size,” Captain Ching noted.
“It grows, then diminishes to a pinprick,” the officer said. “Then jumps across the screen.”
Ching stared out the window again; they were drawing closer to the Oregon. “They’re jamming us.”
“I can detect that,” the officer said.
“Then what is it?” Ching asked.
The officer thought for a minute. “I read in a translated science journal about an experimental system an American engineer was building. Instead of making objects disappear, as with stealth, or using extra signals, as on most jamming equipment, this system has a computer that takes in all the signals from our hull and reforms them into different shapes and strengths.”
“So this system can make them appear or disappear as they decide?” Ching said incredulously.
“That’s about it, sir,” the officer said.
“Well,” Ching said finally, “there’s no way an old rust bucket has anything like that on board.”
“Well, let’s hope not, sir,” the electronics officer said.
“Why’s that?” Ching asked.
“Because the article also stated that by changing the object dimensions, they can increase the targeting potential.”
“Which means?”
“That if the frigate to the rear or the fast-attack corvette coming up quick on our stern fires anything other than bullets, and they have a system like this, they could redirect the fire to us.”
“Chinese missiles used to sink Chinese ships?”
“Exactly.”
“RAMMING and jamming,” Eric Stone shouted. Lincoln was on the far side of the control room at the primary fire control station. He was running a quick diagnostic check on the missile battery. He stared intently at the bar graphs as they filled the computer screen.
“Mr. Chairman, I’m good to go,” he shouted toward Cabrillo a few seconds later.
Cabrillo turned to Hanley. “Here’s the deal as I see it. The entire thrust of this operation was the retrieval of the Golden Buddha. We have it, but it’s still inside the circle of Chinese influence. Our first priority must be to get our teams and the Golden Buddha safely back on the Oregon, while at the same time making our escape.”
“I hate to say it, Juan,” Hanley said, “but I wish the weather wasn’t clearing.”
“A wasted wish, but I agree,” Cabrillo said.
“We don’t know what the navy is sending,” Hanley noted, “but we can safely assume there won’t be surface ships involved—our sensors don’t detect any other vessels for a hundred miles.”
“They launched cruise missiles from the Persian Gulf into downtown Baghdad,” Cabrillo said, “so we can assume either missile or aircraft support.”
“The enemy has rockets on the fast-attack corvette, and some long guns that can fire high-explosive rounds, plus the frigate should have some Chinese-made cruise-type missiles.”
“They any good?” Cabrillo asked.
“Not as accurate as ours,” Hanley admitted, “but they can sink a ship.”
“The hydrofoil?”
“Deck-mounted machine guns only,” Hanley said.
“And the Zodiacs are being pursued by harbor patrol boats?”
“Correct,” Hanley said. “A pair of forty-six-foot aluminum cruisers with diesel power. They each have a single bow-mounted machine gun.”
“Radios?”
“Nothing special,” Hanley said.
“So even if we took out the harbor boats,” Cabrillo said, “the Zodiacs would still need to pass the trio of vessels on our tail.”
“I’m afraid so,” Hanley agreed.
Cabrillo started sketching on a yellow pad with a black Magic Marker. When he finished, he handed the pad to Hanley. “Make sense to you?”
“Yep,” Hanley said.
“Okay then,” Cabrillo said forcefully, “hard a’ starboard. We’re going back toward land.”
33
ADAMS eased the cyclic to the left and banked the R-44. A few seconds earlier he had passed to port of the Chinese corvette and had just picked up a glimpse of the vessel through the fog. It was a wonder the Chinese vessel had not fired on him—surely they had detected the helicopter as it flew toward land. The frigate was fast approaching and Adams planned to give it a wide berth.
He was keeping the Robinson five to ten feet above the tops of the waves—maybe that was shielding him from detection, but Adams doubted it. To avoid radar detection, he needed to be closer to the wave tops—two, three feet maximum. With the weapons pods hanging from each side of his skids and seawater detrimental to their correct operation, Adams was taking no chances. If he had to trade avoiding fire from the Chinese ships to arriving too high to help his team members, he’d do it.