Plague Ship by Clive Cussler Read Free Book Online

up.”
    “You got it.” The line clicked dead.
    Juan addressed the assembled officers. “Okay, we’ve been at this long enough. Are there any last-minute details that need to be cleared up before we adjourn?”
    “The containers on deck,” Max said. “Should we start breaking them down at nightfall or wait until you return from the navy base and we’re under way? And what about the paint and the other camouflage measures?”
    The stacks of containers littering the Oregon ’s deck were so much window dressing, just another way for the crew to hide the nature of their ship. They could be folded flat and stored in one of her holds, altering her silhouette. The blue paint coating her hull and the green covering her upperworks was an environmentally friendly pigment that could be washed off using the fire-suppression water cannons mounted on the superstructure. Beneath the paint her hull was a patchwork of mismatched colors that looked as though they had been applied over a couple of generations of owners. That coating, however, was a radar-absorbing compound similar to the skin of a stealth fighter.
    Metal plates had also been installed around key features of the ship to further distort her shape. A fairing over her bows that gave her a racier look would be removed. The twin funnels she was currently carrying would be dismantled and a large, oval stack erected to replace them. This funnel also acted as armor to protect her main radar domes, which were currently retracted into the amidships accommodations block. To further change her appearance, the ballast tanks would be flooded to make her look like her holds were loaded with goods.
    In all, it would take four hours and the work of every crewman aboard, but, when they were done, the Norego would have vanished completely and the Oregon would be sailing innocently down the Persian Gulf, flying, ironically, the Iranian flag, because that was where the ship was actually registered.
    Juan thought for a moment before answering, balancing risk versus reward. “Eric, what’s the moon tonight?”
    “Only a quarter,” the ship’s navigator and de facto weather-man said. “And the meteorological report calls for cloud cover after midnight.”
    “Let’s leave everything in place until midnight,” Cabrillo told his crew. “We should be back aboard by two A.M. We’ll have a two-hour head start on the conversion work, but if something goes wrong we can put everything back quickly enough. Anything else?”
    There were a few head shakes and a general rustling of papers as everyone got ready to leave.
    “We’ll meet in the moon pool at eleven hundred hours for final equipment checks. We launch the mini no later than eleven forty-five. If we’re late, we’re going to run into trouble with the tides.” Cabrillo stood to get their attention. “I want it clear to all department heads, and especially to shore operations”—he looked pointedly at Eddie Seng and Franklin Lincoln—“that there can be no slipups. We’ve got a good plan. Stick to it and everything will go as smooth as silk. The situation in this part of the world is bad enough without mercenaries getting caught trying to steal a couple of rocket torpedoes.”
    Linc grumbled good-naturedly, “You all know I got out of Detroit to get away from my friends who were boosting stuff.”
    “Out of the frying pan . . .” Eddie grinned.
    “. . . and into an Iranian jail.”

CHAPTER 2
    YEARS OF WORKING WITH THE CIA HAD TRAINED Juan to function on very little sleep over long periods of time. It wasn’t until he’d founded the Corporation and purchased the Oregon that he developed the mariner’s ability to fall asleep on command. After the boardroom conference, he’d returned to his cabin, an opulent suite more befitting a Manhattan apartment than a ship at sea, stripped out of his Captain Esteban costume, and fell into bed. Thoughts of the danger they’d be facing once the team was ashore kept him awake for less