Golden Buddha by Clive Cussler Read Free Book Online

of the truck like Japanese workers during rush hour. The driver shifted the weary old transmission into gear with a brief metallic grind, and the truck leaped forward. The streets were as before, the auto traffic thin, while Cubans were enjoying a balmy evening outside on their balconies, sitting at chairs and tables on the sidewalks or drinking in the cantinas, dancing and singing.
    Seng cocked his ear out the window and listened for any sound of alarms or sirens. There came only the strains of music in the night air. The harshest sound came from the truck’s muffler, which seemed to be coming loose from the engine header pipe. The rattle of the exhaust soon drowned out the city noise. He saw Cubans glance at the truck and then turn away. Loose exhaust pipes and rusted-out mufflers were common on the old cars that traveled the streets of Santiago. The city’s inhabitants had more entertaining thoughts on their minds.
    The truck driver drove maddeningly slow, but Seng knew better than to push him. A truck casually taking its time through town would arouse no suspicion. After what seemed an hour, but was only fifteen minutes, the driver pulled up alongside a warehouse dock and stopped. A quick look up and down the deserted dock and Seng began goading everyone toward the maintenance shed. The five-minute journey to the shed was uneventful.
    Their luck still held. The only activity was centered on the two cargo ships unloading their big containers. Though still apprehensive, Seng finally began to relax. He motioned them through the door of the maintenance shed and down the wooden stairs. In the darkness he saw the vague shape of the Nomad sub’s pilot, standing on the floating dock and helping the Cubans on board. The other pilot was down below, packing them tightly inside the narrow confines of the Nomad’s main cabin.
    When Seng and Julia Huxley, the last to board, climbed onto the sub’s upper deck, the pilot quickly cast off the mooring lines, looked up briefly and said, “You made good time.”
    â€œGet to the ship as fast as this craft can take us,” Seng replied. “We couldn’t help setting off an alarm. I’m surprised Cuban security forces aren’t already breathing down our neck.”
    â€œIf they haven’t tracked you here,” said the pilot confidently as he closed and sealed the hatch, “they’ll never guess where you came from.”
    â€œAt least not until the Oregon ’s found missing from her assigned anchorage.”
    In seconds the sub was dropping beneath the surface of the dark water. Fifteen minutes later it surfaced inside the moon pool of the Oregon . Divers attached the hook and cable of the big overhead crane, and the Nomad was lifted delicately until it was even with the second deck and moored to the balcony. Huxley’s medical team was waiting along with several members of the ship’s crew to help the Cubans to the Oregon ’s well-equipped hospital.
    The time was three minutes past eleven.
    A thin man, his hair white before his time, recognized Cabrillo as an officer and walked unsteadily up to him. “Sir, my name is Juan Tural. Can you tell me who you people are and why you rescued my friends and me from Santa Ursula?”
    â€œWe are a corporation, and we were contracted to do this job.”
    â€œWho hired you?”
    â€œFriends of yours in the United States,” answered Cabrillo. “That’s all that I can say.”
    â€œThen you had no idealistic purpose, no political cause?”
    Cabrillo smiled slightly. “We always have a purpose.”
    Tural sighed. “I had hoped that salvation, when it came, would come from another quarter.”
    â€œYour people did not have the means to do it. It’s that simple. That is why they came to us.”
    â€œIt’s a great pity your only motivation was money.”
    â€œIt wasn’t. Money is simply the vehicle,” said Cabrillo.