Golden Buddha by Clive Cussler Read Free Book Online Page A

“It allows our corporation to pick its fights and to fund our charity projects. It’s a liberty none of us had when we were employed by our respective governments.” He glanced at his chronograph. “Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re not out of the woods just yet.”
    Then he turned and left Tural staring after him as he walked away.
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    E LEVEN seventeen. If they were going to make a run for it, now was the time, thought Cabrillo. The alarm had long been answered at the prison, and by now patrols were certainly roaming the city and the countryside in search of the escaped prisoners and their rescuers. Their only link was the truck driver, but he could not provide any information to the Cuban security forces, even if he was captured and tortured. His original contact had made no mention of the Oregon . As far as the driver knew, the rescue team had come from a landing party on another part of the island.
    Cabrillo lifted a phone and called down to the Corporation’s president in the engine room. “Max?”
    Hanley answered almost immediately. “Juan.”
    â€œHave the ballast tanks been pumped dry?”
    â€œTanks are dry and the hull is raised for speed.”
    â€œThe tide is about to turn and will swing us around. We’d better leave while our bow is still aimed toward the main channel. As soon as the anchor comes free, I’ll set the engines very slow. No sense in alerting any observers on the shore to a sudden departure. At the first alarm or when we reach the main channel, whichever comes first, I’ll enter the program for full speed. We’ll need every ounce of power your engines can give.”
    â€œYou think you can get us through a narrow channel in the dead of night at full speed without a pilot?”
    â€œThe ship’s computer system read every inch of the channel and the buoy markers on the way in. Our escape course is plotted and programmed into the automatic pilot. We’ll leave it to Otis to take us out.” Otis was the crew’s name for the ship’s automated control systems. It could steer the Oregon within inches of the intended route.
    â€œComputerized automated controls or not, it won’t be an easy matter to race through a tight channel at sixty knots.”
    â€œWe can do it.” Cabrillo punched off and hit another code. “Mark, give me a status on our defense systems.”
    Mark Murphy, the Oregon ’s weapons specialist, replied in his west Texas drawl, “If any of them Cuban missile launchers so much as hiccups, we’ll take them out.”
    â€œYou can expect aircraft once we’re in the open sea.”
    â€œNuthin’ we cain’t handle.”
    He turned to Linda Ross. “Linda?”
    â€œAll systems are online,” she replied calmly.
    Cabrillo set the phone in its cradle and relaxed, lighting up a thin Cuban cigar. He looked around at the ship’s crew, standing in the control center. They were all staring at him, waiting expectantly.
    â€œWell,” he said slowly, before taking a deep breath, “I guess we might as well go.”
    He gave a voice command to the computer, the winch was set in motion, and the anchor slowly, quietly—through Teflon sleeves the team had inserted inside the hawsehole, which deadened the clank of the chain—rose from the bottom of the harbor. Another command and the Oregon began to inch slowly ahead.
    Down in the engine room, Max Hanley studied the gauges and instruments on the huge console. His four big magnetohydrodynamics engines were a revolutionary design for maritime transport. They intensified and compounded the electricity found in saline seawater before running it through a magnetic core tube kept at absolute zero by liquid helium. The electrical current that was produced created an extremely high energy force that pumped the water through thrusters in the stern for propulsion.
    Not only were the Oregon ’s