Treasure of Khan (14 page)

The swinging container had reached its shipside apex and now arced toward the port rail. Stepping into its path to fire his gun, the guard ducked low to let it pass over him. But as the flying container approached the gunman, Giordino yanked down on the elevation controls, lowering the boom to the deck. The container followed suit, plunging the short distance to the deck just ahead of the gunman.

A piercing shriek wailed across the stern as the container struck the deck, then rolled onto one side from the momentum. Careening over, the container clipped the left leg of the guard as he scrambled to get clear. Pinned under the massive container with a smashed leg, the guard howled in agony. Giordino sprinted over and stepped on the man's wrist, grabbing the pistol that fell out of his clenched grip. He then yanked off his borrowed wool cap and jammed it in the man's mouth, temporarily stemming the guard's cries.

“Beware of flying objects,” Giordino grunted at the man, who stared back through glassy eyes that cringed with pain.

Taking aim at the padlock, Giordino ripped off two point-blank shots, then tore away the demolished device. Grasping the release lever, he threw open one of the doors, which fell flat to the deck from the tilted container. Pitt and Sarghov tumbled out like a pair of rolled dice, staggering to their feet, rubbing aching body parts.

“Don't tell me, you spent a previous life as a carnival ride operator?” Pitt said with a crooked smile.

“Naw, just practicing my bowling,” Giordino replied. “If you boys are able, I suggest we vacate the premises posthaste.”

On the forward part of the ship, a thunder of footfalls mixed with loud shouts could be heard storming up the gangplank. Pitt scanned the stern deck, noting the unconscious bodies lying there, before turning his gaze to Sarghov. The beat-up Russian scientist was moving slowly and appeared in no condition to be outrunning anyone that night.

“I'll get the boat. Take Alexander and get off down the stern line,” Pitt directed.

Giordino barely nodded a reply when Pitt took off at a sprint toward the starboard rail. Climbing over the rail, he bent his knees and sprang toward the dock. Without a running start, he nearly missed the pier, managing to catch a foot and propel himself forward, landing in a self-cushioning ball on the dock.

More voices yelling aboard the ship, now moving closer following a spray of flashlight beams. Pitt abandoned any attempt at stealth and sprinted back to the Zodiac as a drumbeat of footsteps tailed him down the dock. When he leaped into the small boat, his prayers were answered when the worn outboard motor fired on the first pull of the rope. Gunning the motor, he aimed the Zodiac toward the freighter's stern, charging ahead until the rubber boat's bow bounced off the steel transom.

Pitt cut the throttle and looked up. Directly overhead, Sarghov plunged into view, clinging to the stern rope line with a tenuous grip.

“Let go, Alexander,” he urged.

Pitt stood and half caught the heavy Russian as he dropped into the boat with all the finesse of a sack of flour. Above their heads, an automatic handgun suddenly barked, spraying a half dozen shots about the ship and dock. A second later, Giordino appeared on the stern line, quickly lowering himself hand over hand until he dangled a few feet above the boat. As the shout of voices resumed on the deck above them, Giordino dropped silently into the boat.

“Exit stage left,” he urged.

Pitt was already gunning the throttle, steering under the ship's stern and around to the port beam before turning into the lake. The small boat quickly planed up on its fiberglass hull, raising the buoyancy tubes above the waterline, which provided an added surge of acceleration. For several seconds, they remained in clear view of the ship and dock and the three men ducked low in the boat to avoid gunfire.

Yet no one fired. Pitt glanced back to see nearly a half dozen men surge to the ship's port rail, but they just stood and watched as the little boat disappeared into the darkness.

“Odd, they went pacifist on us at the last minute,” Giordino noted, observing the sight.

“Especially since you already woke up the neighborhood with your exhibition of quick-draw shooting,” Pitt agreed.

He made no effort to disguise their course, running a direct path to the
Vereshchagin
. Approaching the research vessel a few minutes later, Pitt motored alongside a lowered stairwell on the starboard beam. On shore, the police rookie suddenly noticed their arrival and shouted for them to stop. Sarghov stood up in the boat and yelled back in Russian. The policeman visibly shrank, then quickly turned and hightailed it into the village.

“I told him to go wake the chief,” Sarghov explained. “We're going to need some muscle to search that freighter.”

Rudi Gunn, who had nervously paced the deck during their absence, heard the shouts and ran from the bridge as the three men staggered aboard.

“Dr. Sarghov…are you all right?” Gunn asked, staring at his swollen face and bloodied clothes.

“I am fine. Please find the captain for me, if you would be so kind.”

Pitt shepherded Sarghov to the
Vereshchagin
's sick bay while Gunn roused the ship's doctor and Captain Kharitonov. Giordino located a bottle of vodka and poured a round of shots while the doctor examined Sarghov.

“That was a close call,” the Russian scientist declared, regaining color and strength once the vodka surged through his bloodstream. “I am indebted to my friends from NUMA,” he said, hoisting a second shot of vodka toward the Americans before downing it in a casual gulp.

“To your health,” Pitt replied before kicking back his shot.

“Vashe zdorovie!”
Sarghov replied before downing his drink.

“Do you know what became of Theresa and the others?” Giordino asked, concern evident on his heavy brow.

“No, we were separated once we boarded the ship. Since it was apparent they were going to kill me, they must have wanted them alive for some reason. I would presume they are still aboard the ship.”

“Alexander, you are safe!” bellowed Captain Kharitonov as he barged into the cramped sick bay.

“He has a sprained wrist and a number of contusions,” the doctor reported, applying a bandage to a cut on Sarghov's face.

“It is nothing,” Sarghov said, waving away the doctor. “Listen, Ian. The Avarga Oil Consortium freighter…there is no doubt that they were responsible for attempting to sink your ship. Your crewman Anatoly was working for them, and possibly the woman Tatiana as well.”

“Anatoly? I had just hired him on at the beginning of the project when my regular first officer fell ill with severe food poisoning. What treachery!” the captain cursed. “I will call the authorities at once. These hoodlums will not get away with this.”

The authorities, in the form of the chief of police and his young assistant, arrived nearly an hour later, accompanied by the two Irkutsk detectives. It had taken that long for the impertinent chief to rise, dress, and enjoy an early breakfast of sausages and coffee before casually making his way to the
Vereshchagin,
retrieving the two detectives from a local inn along the way.

Sarghov retold his tale of abduction, while Pitt and Giordino added their search for the missing derrick and their escape from the freighter. The two Irkutsk men gradually took over the interrogation, asking more probing and intelligent questions. Pitt noted that the two detectives seemed to show an odd deference to the Russian scientist, as well as a hint of familiarity.

“It will be prudent to investigate the freighter with our full security force,” the police chief announced with bluster. “Sergei, please round up the Listvyanka auxiliary security forces and have them report immediately to police headquarters.”

Nearly another hour passed before the small contingent of local security forces marched toward the freighter's berth, the pompous chief leading the way. The first light of dawn was just breaking, casting a gray pall over a damp mist that floated just above the ground. Pitt and Giordino, with Gunn and Sarghov at their sides, followed the police force through the dock gate, which was now open and unguarded. The dock was completely deserted, and Pitt began to get a sick feeling in his stomach when he realized that all three trucks parked by the ship had now vanished.

The bossy police chief charged up the freighter's gangplank, calling out for the captain, but was met by only the sound of a humming generator. Pitt followed him to the empty bridge, where the ship's log and all other charts and maps were noticeably absent. Slowly and methodically, the police team searched the entire ship, finding an equally purloined and empty vessel. Not a shred of evidence was uncovered as to the ship's intent, nor a person around to tell its tale.

“Talk about abandoning ship,” Giordino muttered, shaking his head. “Even the cabins are empty of personal effects. That was one quick getaway.”

“Too quick to have been carried out unexpectedly in the short time we were gone. No, they had finished their work and were already sneaking out the door when we stopped by. I'll bet there weren't any personal effects or links to the crew brought aboard in the first place. They planned on walking away from an empty ship.”

“With a kidnapped oil survey team,” Giordino replied, his mind centered on Theresa. After a long silence, he returned to the bridge, hopeful to find some sort of clue as to where the departed trucks had gone.

Pitt stood on the bridge wing, staring down at the stern deck and its array of empty containers. His mind whirred with puzzlement over the motive for the abductions and the fate of the survey team. The pink glow of the rising sun bathed the ship in a dusky light and illuminated the gouge marks imbedded in the deck where the sunken derrick had stood the night before. Whatever secrets the ship possessed had departed with the crew and cargo that vanished quietly in the night. But the sunken derrick was something they had not been able to hide. The significance was lost on Pitt, but, deep inside, he suspected it was an important clue to a bigger mystery.

C
APTAIN
S
TEVE
H
OWARD SQUINTED THROUGH
a scratched pair of binoculars and scanned the bright aqua blue waters of the Persian Gulf that glistened before him. The waterway was often a bustling hive of freighters, tankers, and warships jockeying for position, particularly around the narrow channel of the Strait of Hormuz. In the late afternoon off Qatar, however, he was glad to see that the shipping traffic had almost vanished. Ahead off his port bow, a large tanker approached, riding low in the water with a fresh load of crude oil in its belly. Off his stern, he noted a small black drill ship trailing a mile or two behind. Tanker traffic was all he was hoping to see and with a slight relief, he lowered the glasses down to the bow of his own ship.

He needed the binoculars to obtain a clear view of his own ship's prow, for the stodgy forepeak stood nearly eight hundred feet away. Looking forward, he noted rippling waves of heat shimmering off the white topside deck of the
Marjan
. The massive supertanker, known as a “Very Large Crude Carrier,” was built to transport over two million barrels of oil. Larger than the Chrysler Building, and about as easy to maneuver, the big ship was en route to fill its cavernous holds with Saudi light crude oil pumped from the teeming oil fields of Ghawar.

Passing the Strait of Hormuz had flicked on an unconscious alarm in Howard. Though the American Navy had a visible presence in the gulf, they couldn't blanket every commercial ship that entered the busy waterway. With Iran sitting across the gulf and potential terrorists lurking in a half dozen countries along the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, there was reason to be concerned. Pacing the bridge and scanning the horizon, Howard knew he wouldn't relax until they had taken on their load of crude and reached the deep waters of the Arabian Sea.

Howard's eyes were drawn to a sudden movement on the deck and he adjusted the binoculars until they focused on a wiry man with shaggy blond hair who tore across the deck on a yellow moped. Ducking and weaving around the surface deck's assorted pipes and valves, the daredevil whizzed along at the moped's top speed. Howard tracked him as he rounded a bend and sprinted past a shirtless man stretched out on a lounge chair holding a stopwatch in one hand.

“I see the first mate is still trying to top the track record,” Howard said with a grin.

The tanker's executive officer, hunched over a colored navigation chart of the gulf, nodded without looking up.

“I'm sure your record will remain safe for another day, sir,” he replied.

Howard laughed to himself. The thirty-man crew of the supertanker was constantly creating ways to stave off boredom during the long transatlantic voyages or the slack periods when oil was being pumped on or off the ship. A rickety moped, used to traverse the enormous deck during inspections, was suddenly seized upon as a competitive instrument of battle. A makeshift oval course was laid out on the deck, complete with jumps and a hairpin turn. One by one, the crew took turns at the course like qualifying drivers for the Indy 500. To the crew's chagrin, the ship's amiable captain had ended up clocking the best time. None had any idea that Howard had raced motocross while growing up in South Carolina.

“Coming up on Dhahran, sir,” said the exec, a soft-spoken African American from Houston named Jensen. “Ras Tanura is twenty-five miles ahead. Shall I disengage the auto pilot?”

“Yes, let's go to manual controls and reduce speed at the ten-mile mark. Notify the berthing master that we'll be ready to take tugs in approximately two hours.”

Everything about sailing the supertanker had to be done with foresight, especially when it came to stopping the mammoth vessel. With its oil tanks empty and riding high on the water, the tanker was somewhat more nimble, but, to the men on the bridge, it was still like moving a mountain.

Along the western shoreline, the dusty brown desert gave way to the city of Dhahran, a company town, home to the oil conglomerate Saudi Aramco. Steering past the city and its neighboring port of Dammam, the tanker edged toward a thin peninsula that stretched into the gulf from the north. Sprawled across the peninsula was the huge oil facility of Ras Tanura.

Ras Tanura is the Grand Central Station of the Saudi oil industry. More than half of Saudi Arabia's total crude oil exports flow through the government-owned complex, which is linked by a maze of pipelines to the rich oil fields of the interior desert. At the tip of the peninsula, dozens of huge storage tanks stockpile the valuable black liquid next to liquid natural gas tanks and other refined petroleum products awaiting shipment to Asia and the West. Farther up the coast, the largest refinery in the world processes the raw crude oil into a slew of petroleum offshoots. But perhaps the most impressive feature of Ras Tanura is barely visible at all.

On the bridge of the
Marjan,
Howard ignored the tanks and pipelines ashore and focused on a half dozen supertankers lined up in pairs off the peninsula. The ships were moored to a fixed terminal called Sea Island, which stretched beamlike across the water for more than a mile. Like an oasis nourishing a heard of thirsty camels, the Sea Island terminal quenched the empty supertankers with a high-powered flow of crude oil pumped from the storage tanks ashore. Unseen beneath the waves, a network of thirty-inch supply pipes fed the black liquid two miles across the floor of the gulf to the deepwater filling station.

As the
Marjan
crept closer, Howard watched a trio of tugboats align a Greek tanker against the Sea Island before turning toward his own vessel. The
Marjan
's pilot took control of the supertanker and eased the vessel broadside to an empty berth at the end of the loading terminal, just opposite of the Greek tanker. As they waited for the tugs to push them in, Howard admired the sight of the other seven supertankers parked nearby. All over a thousand feet long, easily exceeding the length of the
Titanic,
they were truly marvels of ship construction. Though he had seen hundreds of tankers in his day and served on several supertankers before the
Marjan,
the sight of a VLCC still filled him with awe.

The dirty white sail of an Arab dhow caught his eye in the distance and he turned toward the peninsula to admire the local sailing vessel. The small boat skirted the coastline, sailing north past the black drill ship that had tailed the
Marjan
earlier and was now positioned near the shoreline.

“Tugs are in position portside, sir,” interrupted the voice of the pilot.

Howard simply nodded, and soon the massive ship was pushed into its slot on the Sea Island terminal. A series of large transfer lines began pumping black crude into the ship's empty storage tanks, little by little settling the tanker lower in the water. Secured at the terminal, Howard allowed himself to relax slightly, knowing that his responsibilities were through for at least the next several hours.

 

I
TWAS
nearly midnight when Howard awoke from a short nap and stretched his legs with a stroll about the forward deck of the tanker. The crude oil loading was nearly complete, and the
Marjan
would easily meet its three
A.M.
departure schedule, allowing the next empty supertanker in line to take its turn at the filling depot. The distant blast from a tug's horn told him that a tanker further down the quay had completed its fill-up and was preparing to be pulled away from Sea Island.

Gazing at the lights twinkling along the Saudi Arabian shoreline, Howard was jolted by a sudden banging of the “dolphins” against the tanker's hull. Large cushioned supports mounted along the Sea Island berths, the breasting dolphins supported the lateral force of the ships while being loaded at the terminal. The clanging blows from the dolphins weren't just coming from below, he realized, but echoed all along the terminal. Stepping to the side rail, he leaned his head over and looked down along the loading quay.

Sea Island at night, like the supertankers themselves, was lit up like a Christmas tree. Under the battery of overhead lights, Howard could see that it was the terminal itself that was pulsing back and forth against the sides of the tankers. It didn't make sense, he thought. The terminal was grounded into the seabed. Any movement ought to come from the ships drifting against the berths. Yet peering down the distant length of the terminal, he could see it waver like a serpent, striking one side of tankers and then the other.

The banging of the bumpers grew louder and louder until they hammered against the ships like thunder. Howard gripped the rail until his knuckles turned white, not comprehending what was happening. Staring in shock, he watched as one after another of the four twenty-four-inch loading arms broke free of the ship, spewing a river of crude oil in all directions. A nearby shout creased the air as Howard spotted a platform engineer clinging for life aboard the swaying terminal.

As far as the eye could see, the steel terminal rocked and swayed like a giant snake, battering itself against the huge ships. Alarm bells rang out as the oil transfer lines were torn away from the other tankers by the rippling force, bathing the sides of the ships in a flowing sea of black. Farther down the quay, a chorus of unseen voices cried for help. Howard peered down to see a pair of men in yellow hard hats sprinting down the terminal, shouting as they ran. Behind them, the lights of the terminal began disappearing in a slow succession. Howard stood unblinking for a second before realizing with horror that the entire Sea Island terminal was sinking beneath their feet.

The clanging of the terminal against the
Marjan
intensified, the mooring dolphins physically mashing the side of the tanker. For the first time, Howard noticed a deep rumble that seemed to emanate from far beneath his feet. The rumble grew in intensity, roaring for several seconds before silencing just as quickly. In its place came the desperate cries of men, running along the terminal.

A tumbling house of cards came to Howard's mind as the footings of the terminal gave way in succession and the mile-long island vanished under the waves in an orderly progression. When he heard the cries of the men in the water, his horror was replaced by a newfound fear for the safety of his ship. Tearing off across the deck, he pulled a handheld radio from his belt and shouted orders to the bridge as he ran.

“Cut the mooring lines! For God's sake, cut the mooring lines,” he gasped. A rush of adrenaline surged through his body, the fear pushing him to race across the deck at breakneck speed. He was still a hundred meters from the bridge house when his legs began to throb, but his pace never slowed, even as he hurtled past a river of slippery crude oil that had splashed across the deck.

“Tell…the chief…engineer…we need…full power…immediately,” he rasped over the radio, his lungs burning for oxygen.

Reaching the tanker's stern superstructure, he headed for the nearest stairwell, bypassing an elevator located a few corridors away. Clambering up the eight levels to the bridge, he was heartened to feel the throb of the ship's engines suddenly vibrate beneath his feet. As he staggered onto the bridge and rushed to the forward window, his worst fears were realized.

In front of the
Marjan,
eight other supertankers lay in paired tandems, divided minutes before by the Sea Island terminal. But now the terminal was gone, plunging toward the Gulf floor ninety feet beneath the surface. The supertankers' mooring lines were still attached, and the force of the sinking terminal was drawing the paired tankers toward one another. In the midnight darkness, Howard could see the lights on the two tankers in front of him meld together, followed by the screeching cry of metal on metal as the sides of the ships scraped together.

“Emergency full astern,” Howard barked at his executive officer. “What's the status of the mooring lines?”

“The stern lines are clear,” replied Jensen, looking gaunt. “I'm still awaiting word on the bowlines, but it appears that at least two lines are still secure,” he added, gazing through binoculars at a pair of taut ropes that stretched from the starboard bow.

“The
Ascona
is drawing onto us,” the helmsman said, jerking his head to the right.

Howard followed the motion, eyeing the Greek-flagged ship berthed alongside, a black-and-red supertanker that matched the
Marjan
's length of three hundred thirty-three meters. Originally moored sixty feet apart, the two ships were slowly moving laterally together as if drawn by a magnet.

The men on the
Marjan
's bridge stood and stared helplessly, Howard's labored breathing matched by the quickened heartbeats of the others. Beneath their feet, the huge propellers finally began clawing the water in a desperate fury as the tanker's engines were rapidly brought up to high revs by the frantic engineer.

The initial movement astern was imperceptible, then, slowly, the huge ship began to creep backward at a sluggish clip. The momentum slowed for a second as the bow mooring line drew taut, then suddenly the line broke free and the ship resumed its rearward crawl. Along her starboard side, the
Ascona
drew closer. The Korean-built tanker had nearly a full load of crude and rode a dozen feet lower in the water than the
Marjan
. From Howard's perspective, it looked as if he could step right off the side of his ship and onto the deck of the neighboring tanker.