Valhalla Rising (60 page)

“Not well,” said Dover in exasperation. “So far there is no sign of explosives or detonation devices. The captain and crew are not acting like men on a suicide mission. I’m beginning to fear we’ve been conned.”

Twenty minutes later, Jacobs reported in. “She’s clean, Admiral. We found no trace of explosive material.”

“There!” roared Walsh. “I told you so. You people are crazy.”

Dover made no attempt to soothe the irate captain of the tanker. He was beginning to harbor large doubts about Sally Morse’s truthfulness. But he was also vastly relieved to find that the ship had no intention of blowing up half of San Francisco.

“Sorry for the intrusion and the delay,” he told Walsh. “We’ll be on our way.”

“You can bet there will be a protest launched by my government against yours,” said Walsh angrily. “You had no legal cause to stop and board my vessel.”

“My apologies for any inconvenience,” Dover said, with honest regret. He turned to Compton as they exited the bridge, and spoke in a low tone. “I’d hate to see the looks on everyone’s faces in Washington when I notify them that they’ve been hoaxed.”

P
itt was seated at his desk, clearing it of NUMA business before flying to Elmore Egan’s farm in New York, when Admiral Sandecker abruptly walked past his secretary, Zerri Pochinsky, and entered his office. Pitt looked up in surprise. When the admiral wanted to discuss NUMA concerns, he nearly always insisted that his special projects director come up and meet in
his
office. It was obvious that Sandecker was deeply disturbed. His lips were taut beneath the red Vandyke beard and the authoritative blue eyes reflected uneasiness.

Before Pitt could say a word, Sandecker snarled, “Zale threw us a red herring.”

“I’m sorry?” replied Pitt, confused.

“The
Pacific Chimera
came up empty. Admiral Dover just reported in. There were no explosives on board. The ship was clean, the captain and crew are completely innocent of any plot to destroy the San Francisco waterfront. Either we were duped or Sally Morse was hallucinating.”

“I trust Sally. I prefer to think we were duped.”

“For what reason?”

Pitt looked thoughtful before answering. “Zale has the wits of a jackal. The chances are he fed Sally a fake story, knowing she was about to defect and would alert the government. He used the old magician’s method of waving one hand to distract the audience while using the other to perform the trick.” He looked directly at Sandecker. “I think he has another disaster up his sleeve.”

“All right,” said Sandecker. “I’ll go along with your thinking, but where does it lead?”

“I’m counting on Hiram Yaeger and Max to come up with the answer,” Pitt said, as he came to his feet, hurried around the desk and headed out the door.

Y
aeger was studying pages of overseas bank accounts, whose computerized records Max had penetrated while tracking down Cerberus’s illegal payoffs and bribes to almost a thousand members of the United States government. The total sum was nothing less than astronomical.

“You’re sure about these totals, Max?” asked Yaeger, stunned by the amount. “They seem a trifle bizarre.”

Max’s holographic figure shrugged. “I did the best I could. There are probably at least fifty or more I haven’t tracked down as yet. Why do you ask? Do the amounts surprise you?”

“Maybe twenty-one billion, two hundred million dollars doesn’t seem like big money to you, but to a poverty-stricken computer tech it’s big bucks.”

“I’d hardly call you poverty-stricken.”

Pitt, with Sandecker two steps behind, rushed into Yaeger’s office like someone being chased by a water buffalo. “Hiram, the admiral and I need you and Max to launch a new probe as quickly as possible.”

Yaeger looked up and saw the look of gravity in both Pitt and Sandecker’s faces. “Max and I are at your disposal. What do you wish me to search for?”

“Check all maritime ship arrivals at major U.S. ports, beginning now and for the next ten hours, with emphasis on super oil tankers.”

Yaeger nodded and turned to Max. “You hear that?”

Max smiled bewitchingly. “I’ll be back to you in sixty seconds.”

“That fast?” asked Sandecker, always in awe of Max’s potential.

“She hasn’t failed me yet,” Yaeger said, with a knowing grin.

As Max slowly vaporized and vanished, Yaeger handed Sandecker the results of her latest probe. “There it is. Not quite complete yet. But with over ninety-five percent of the findings in, here are names, offshore bank accounts and the amounts of deposit of those who were paid off by Curtis Merlin Zale and his Cerberus cronies.”

Sandecker studied the figures and looked up in astonishment. “No wonder Zale has so many high officials in his pocket. The sums he paid out would cover NUMA’s entire budget for a hundred years.”

“Did the Coast Guard and Special Forces teams stop the oil tanker from entering San Francisco Bay?” Yaeger asked, uninformed of the events.

“Zale made fools out of us,” said Sandecker curtly. “The ship was transporting a full load of oil all right, but it was empty of explosives. None could be found on board, and the ship continued on its voyage to its scheduled mooring terminal south of the Bay Area.”

Yaeger looked at Pitt. “You think it was a decoy?”

“I believe that was Zale’s plan. What bothered me from the beginning was the extraordinary draft of a fully loaded tanker the size of the
Pacific Chimera.
The bottom of the bay surrounding the city of San Francisco is too shallow for a ship that size to cross. It would have grounded long before it could have come ashore.”

“So you’re considering the prospect that Zale is sending another tanker into a different port city,” Yaeger suggested.

They went silent as Max’s feminine form materialized on her little stage. “I believe I have what you gentlemen were after.”

“Did you check all supertankers entering our domestic ports?” asked Sandecker anxiously.

“There are several Very Large Crude Carriers arriving at several ports, but of the Ultra, Ultra Large Crude Carriers, there is one bound for Louisiana from Saudi Arabia, but her mooring terminal is a hundred miles from a major city. Another is headed for the offshore pumping station off New Jersey, but she isn’t due until tomorrow, and finally, a UULCC bound for Long Beach, California, is still two days out to sea. That’s the lot. It looks like your friend Mr. Zale has lost any opportunity of sneaking in another tanker.”

“So the whole exercise was a waste,” murmured Sandecker. “Zale never intended to devastate San Francisco or any other densely inhabited port city.”

“Looks that way,” said Pitt, dejectedly. “But if that’s the case, why the subterfuge? What did he have to gain?”

“Maybe he was just testing us?”

“That’s not his modus operandi.”

“There are no mistakes?” Yaeger asked Max.

“I got inside the records of every port authority in the lower forty-eight states.”

Sandecker made as if to leave the office and shook his head wearily. “I guess that ends that.”

“Did you gentlemen ever consider a different type of vessel?” asked Max.

Pitt looked at her with interest. “What do you have in mind?”

“I was thinking on my own. An LNG ship could do far more damage than a UULCC.”

The revelation struck Pitt like a hammer blow. “A Liquefied Natural Gas tanker!”

“One blew up in Japan back in the forties with nearly the explosive power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb,” Max enlightened them. “The death toll ran more than a thousand.”

“Did you check to see if any are bound for stateside ports?” asked Yaeger.

Max acted as if she were pouting. “You don’t seem to have a high regard for my intuitive talents. Of course, I checked all incoming LNG ships.”

“
Well?
” Yaeger prompted.

“The
Mongol Invader,
bound from Kuwait, is scheduled to dock in New York at ten-thirty.”

“
A.M.
or
P.M.
?” asked Sandecker.

“
A.M.”

The admiral checked his watch. “We can eliminate her. She would have docked twenty minutes ago.”

“Not so,” said Max. “She was delayed by problems with her generators and had to heave to until repairs were made. She’s running five hours late.”

Pitt and Sandecker exchanged stricken expressions.

“That has to be Zale’s plan,” said Pitt. “Feint with the
Pacific Chimera
on the West Coast and strike New York from the east with the
Mongol Invader.
”

Sandecker pounded his fist against a table. “He caught us napping like diapered infants.”

“There’s not much time to stop her before she reaches the lower bay and heads into the Narrows,” Max remarked.

“What does the
Mongol Invader
look like?” Yaeger asked Max.

She revealed an image of the ship on the screen of a large monitor. The vessel looked like something out of a science-fiction comic book. The hull had the same lines as an oil tanker, with its engines and superstructure mounted at the stern, but there the resemblance ended. Instead of an expansive flat main deck, there were eight identical mammoth, freestanding, spherical tanks rising out of the hull.

Max began to tick off the ship’s specifications. “The largest LNG tanker yet built. Overall length is one thousand eight hundred sixty feet with a three-hundred-sixty-foot beam. She carries a crew of only eight officers and fifteen crewmen. The low number is due to the fact that she is almost entirely automated. Her cross-compound, double-reduction gear turbine engines put out sixty thousand shaft horsepower to each of her twin screws. Her country of registry is Argentina.”

Yaeger asked, “Who owns her?”

“I traced her pedigree through a façade of paper companies that led to the doorstep of the Cerberus empire.”

Yaeger grinned. “Now, why did I think that’s who you’d find?”

“LNG tankers have a much shallower draft than oil tankers due to the difference in weight between gas and oil,” said Sandecker. “She could very well make it up the Hudson River before turning and running toward lower Manhattan, then slip between the docks without grounding until she struck the shore.”

“Sally Morse said the
Pacific Chimera
was going to ram the city at the World Trade Terminal,” said Yaeger. “Can we assume that Zale made a slip and meant the World Trade Center in New York?”

“Exactly where I would strike Manhattan’s shore if I wanted to do the most damage,” Sandecker said in agreement.

“What gas volume is she carrying?” Pitt asked Max.

“Seven million five hundred seventy thousand three hundred thirty-three cubic feet.”

“Very bad,” Yaeger muttered.

“And the gas cargo?”

“Propane.”

“Even worse,” Yaeger moaned.

“The fireball could be horrendous,” explained Max. “A railroad tank car exploded in Kingman, Arizona, in the seventies. It held eight thousand gallons of propane, and the fireball extended almost an eighth of a mile. One gallon of propane will produce two hundred seventy of gas. Or, figuring one hundred sixty-two cubic feet of propane vapor per cubic foot of liquid, then multiply it by seven and a half million, you could conceivably produce a fireball almost two miles wide.”

“What about structural damage?” Sandecker queried Max.

“Heavy,” answered Max. “Major buildings such as the World Trade Center skyscrapers would still stand, but their interiors would be gutted. Most of the other buildings close to the center of the blast would be destroyed. I don’t even want to speculate on the loss of life.”

“All because that crazy Zale and the Cerberus cartel want to inflame the American public against foreign oil,” Pitt muttered angrily.

“We’ve got to stop that ship!” said Sandecker in a cold tone. “There can be no mistakes this time.”

Pitt said slowly, “This ship’s crew won’t allow it to be boarded like the
Pacific Chimera.
I’ll bet a month’s pay Omo Kanai has his Viper group operating the ship. Zale would never trust such an undertaking to amateurs.”

Sandecker checked his watch again. “We have four and a half hours before she enters the Hudson River off Manhattan. I’ll report what we’ve discovered to Admiral Dover and have him alert his Coast Guard units in the New York area to launch an intercept.”

“You should also call the New York State Antiterrorist Division,” suggested Max. “They train and run practice drills for just such a possibility.”

“Thank you, Max,” said Sandecker, warming to Yaeger’s computer creation. Previously, he’d always thought Max was a strain on NUMA’s budget, but he had come to realize that she was worth every nickel, and much more. “I’ll see to it.”

“I’ll round up Al. Using NUMA’s new tilt-wing
Aquarius
jet, we should be on the NUMA dock in New York inside an hour.”

“What do you plan to do after you get there?” inquired a curious Max.

Pitt looked at her as if she were asking Dan Marino if he knew how to throw a football. “Stop the
Mongol Invader
from destroying half of Manhattan. What else?”