Out on the wing of the bridge he could see the women exercising on the fantail. They were wearing Lycra that showed off their legs and butts, and tight sweaters. They would have been cold if they hadn’t been working out. Zhang smoked his weed to the filter, flipped it into the harbor, and when back inside lit another. Lawrence was trying to drink coffee. His hands shook so badly that he slopped some onto the deck.
The second hour came and went. The minute hand on Zhang’s watch crawled so slowly he had to force himself not to look at it. However, every now and then his gaze did sweep across the ship’s clock on the bulkhead.
Two hours should have been enough. The divers must be having a problem. There was no way to communicate with them, so he had to hope that they could solve it. If they couldn’t, they would be back for more air in their tanks and he would get a report then. How much air did they have? At a shallow depth, but working hard?
Here came the harbor boat. A man stood on the fantail with a loud-hailer.
“We have a problem in the engine room,” Zhang told Lawrence. “Another hour, at least, then we’ll move the yacht.”
The boat came right alongside and slowed to a stop with a burst of reverse thrust on the engines. It wallowed there as its wake rebounded off the hull of the yacht. Every man aboard, all four, were watching the women. Finally one of them called to Lawrence on the bridge wing. “Ocean Holiday, you must move to your assigned anchorage. This yacht cannot remain in the channel.”
“We are working on the engine,” Lawrence replied.
“Do you need a shipfitter? Or a tug?”
“In an hour we will know. Can you give us one more hour?”
“One more.” The harbor boat began to move, the wake boiled, and it accelerated away. The man with the loud-hailer saluted the women.
Lawrence translated for Zhang, then stood on the bridge wing a moment, looking at the water, his hands braced on the rail. The water was dark and dirty and undoubtedly cold. After a moment he pushed himself away from the rail with an effort and came back inside the bridge.
A crewman came up the ladder to the bridge and reported to Zhang in Chinese. “It’s under the yacht. The divers are getting new tanks, then will attach it to the hooks.”
“The condition of the package?”
“It appears to be in perfect shape, sir.”
Zhang merely nodded.
The crewman left.
It. A nuclear warhead. Transported to America in a waterproof container below the waterline of the freighter. Ten megatons.
“I want to get off this yacht,” Lawrence said loudly in Chinese as Zhang puffed contentedly. Unnaturally loud. He had made his decision and had decided to announce it.
Zhang eyed the man. “That wasn’t our agreement.”
“I’ve gotten you here. I’ve been paid enough for that, and I am not going to the police. I just don’t want to go back to China.”
“I may need you again. This vessel must have two licensed officers.”
“Now listen,” the mate said, wiping a bit of drool off his chin. “I am in this as deeply as you are, and I don’t want to go to prison. You can put me ashore when you start down the bay and we’ll just forget—”
That was as far as he got. Zhang took one step toward him, leaped and kicked. His right foot caught Lawrence under the chin and the mate’s head snapped backward. His body went with the kick. It skidded on the deck and lay absolutely still, the head at an unnatural angle. Zhang stepped closer for a look. The man’s neck was obviously broken, his eyes frozen.
Zhang left him there. The second hand on the bulkhead clock went around and around. Zhang smoked another cigarette.
Twenty minutes after Lawrence died the crewman was back. He glanced at Lawrence’s body, then saluted Zhang. “It’s secure under the vessel. The divers and sled are aboard, the door to the sea is closed, and we are pumping the compartment.”
“Very well. Send two men up here to get Lawrence’s body. He fell down a ladder and broke his neck. Put him in his bunk and lock the stateroom door.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Get those women on deck below. Make preparations to get under way. We will back down on the stern anchor, raise it, hose it off and stow it, then move forward and pick up the bow anchor. You know the drill. When you have Lawrence tucked away, wake the captain and send him to the bridge.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
After the sailor had left, a wave of relief swept over Zhang. Ignoring the body on the deck, he seated himself in the captain’s chair.
They were halfway there. Halfway. Now to plant the bomb.
He reached for the book of charts they had used to navigate up Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore and flipped through it. He quickly found the one he wanted.
Norfolk, Virginia. The biggest naval base on the planet.
Zhang lit another cigarette and studied the chart, as he had dozens of times in the past month. There were, of course, no marks on the paper. Still, he knew every depth, every distance. His finger traced a course.
There. Right there! That was where he and his men would plant the bomb.
Seven days later Ocean Holiday passed the Cape Henry light on its way out of Chesapeake Bay and entered the Atlantic. Lieutenant Commander Zhang steered a course to the southeast. A few degrees north of the equator, three hundred miles from the mouth of the Amazon River, on a dark night with no surface traffic on the radar, Zhang rendezvoused with a Chinese nuclear-powered, Shang-class attack submarine. Swells were moderate.
Both the yacht and sub could be seen by satellites, of course — even through the light cloud layer, by infared sensors — but the chance of a satellite being overhead at just this moment was small, since the crew knew the orbits and schedules of most of them. The night and clouds shielded the vessels from anyone peering through an airliner’s window, which was the best that could be achieved.
Captain Vanderhosen, the Ukrainian prostitutes and the Russian couple were dead by then and, like Lawrence, consigned to the sea in weighted sacks that Zhang had brought on this voyage for just this purpose. Demolition charges were set as near the keel of the yacht as possible and put on a timer, and every hatch on the vessel was latched open. The life rings around the top decks were removed. Four of the Chinese rode the ship’s boat over to the sub. One man brought it back for another load of people. Zhang Ping went with the final boatload of crewmen.
He was standing on the sub’s small bridge when the demolition charges detonated and the yacht began settling. He stood watching for the four minutes it took for the yacht to slip beneath the waves on its journey to the sea floor eighteen hundred feet below.
When the mast went under and there was nothing on the dark water to be seen by searchlight except a few pieces of flotsam and a spreading slick of diesel fuel that would soon be dissipated by swells, Zhang went below. Sailors from the sub chopped holes in the bottom of the ship’s boat and the flotation tanks that were built in under the seats. Then they cast it adrift and watched as it too settled into the sea.
Sixty-five minutes after the sub surfaced, it submerged.
CHAPTER TWO
Whoever rules the waves rules the world.
Six miles away and two hundred feet below the surface of the ocean, the officers and sonar technicians of USS Utah listened to the dead-in-the water surfaced Chinese submarine and the gurgling noise of the sinking yacht. They knew exactly what made the noises. And they wondered what was going on.
Utah had picked up the Type 093 Shang-class sub as it exited the Chinese sub base at Sanya, Hainan, four weeks ago, and listened to her submerge. The American sub had fallen in trail about six miles behind her quarry and had no trouble maintaining that position. The Chinese sub was quiet, but that was a relative term. At 110 decibels, she was much noisier than Utah, which was a Virginia-class attack boat with all the latest technology. Utah was so quiet she resembled a black hole in the ocean and was undetectable by Chinese sonar beyond the range of a mile at this speed. She never once got that close.