Hunting the Dragon by Peter Dixon Read Free Book Online Page B

dreamed he’d be. What I want you to do is remember that on Benny’s ship you’re no one special. It’s like you were drafted into the army. Follow orders, do your job, and you’ll have a hell of an experience.”
    Sarah had replied, “You’re saying that my famous dad won’t be around to bail me out if I get in trouble.”
    “Well, I’m glad you got that.”
    Sarah and the captain watched the sun emerge from a low band of lacy, tropic clouds. Benny’s thoughts switched from thinking about Gandara and Lucky Dragon to his own vessel. He wondered just how seaworthy Salvador really was. The keel had been laid long before Sarah was born.
    Salvador was ancient by today’s naval standards. She had once been a Canadian Navy minesweeper and had crossed the North Atlantic five times. Her last voyage was from Halifax through the Panama Canal to her final berth north of Vancouver at the torpedo test center near Nanaimo, British Columbia. The navy budget cutters had declared her surplus and the little wooden warship that had never sailed into battle went up for auction. Stripped of military electronics and her single 40 mm cannon, and in need of a refit, the vessel acquired a new owner who tendered the winning bid of 148,000 Canadian dollars.
    Benny knew the minesweeper’s wooden hull was sound, and her big Cummings diesels would run another 150,000 nautical miles at an honest twelve knots without an overhaul. He considered the vessel a bargain. The Canadian Navy had even left the dishes, galley equipment, and bedding aboard. Benny was pleased with his ship. Though small, and tender in a following sea, she was what he needed. With Salvador ’s bow converted into a sharp stainless-steel-reinforced battering ram, she was a dangerous weapon in Benny’s hands. Now, after twenty-seven years of joint Canadian-NATO exercises the ship would at last sail against an unlikely, nonpolitical enemy.
    The real foe, Benny had discovered, was public apathy. He needed people’s hearts and money, lots of money—money for the Zodiac chase boats and cameras, money to pay for the 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel Salvador consumed at sea each month, money to pay for insurance and new radios and a 24-mile-range radar, money for a nationwide mailing to raise more money. And money to fill the freezers and food lockers for a voyage of six months. And he would need extra money to make the old minesweeper’s bow even stronger, to ram through the steel side of a 268-foot tuna clipper named Lucky Dragon . The clipper was out there somewhere in the Pacific and Benny was determined to find and sink her.
    He had had just enough money after presenting his cashier’s check to the Canadian Navy to sail Salvador to Los Angeles. L.A. was where he would find the big donors, if he could create sufficient media interest and produce an “event” to draw movie people and other celebrities to his cause. Enough of them lived along the coast to be familiar with the dolphins who frequently swam, leaping and diving, in front of their Malibu Beach homes. That was where Sarah Thornburg and her movie producer father, Sam, lived. The Thornburgs cared enough to contribute generously to the survival of the dolphins and had supported environmental causes for as long as Sarah could remember.
    At the highest tide of the month he had sailed Salvador into Marina del Rey yacht harbor. Benny intentionally grounded her on the sandbar at the entrance to the marina. As the tide receded, Salvador stuck fast. She would be stranded there inside the harbor until next month’s spring tide—time enough for Benny to accomplish his mission.
    The harbor patrol, coast guard, and Los Angeles County lifeguards had all screamed he was breaking the law. Benny stalled for time, flew his “Save the Dolphins” banners, invited the media aboard, faced the television news cameras and skeptical reporters from the Los Angeles Times , and worked them over as skillfully as a TV pitchman selling miracle