Plague Ship by Clive Cussler Page A

on folding up the containers.”
    “Good. Hali, in about thirty minutes I want you to get under way, but take her out at about three knots.” The Nomad was making four. “We’ll make our rendezvous a little farther down the coast.”
    “That will put us pretty close to the shipping lanes,” Hali pointed out. “We can’t stop out there to pick you up.”
    “I know. We’ll do the recovery on the fly.” Surfacing the Nomad in the moon pool was dangerous enough, but doing it with the Oregon under way was something Cabrillo would only risk if he felt it was absolutely necessary.
    “Are you sure about that?” Max asked, leaning into the cockpit.
    Juan turned to look his old friend in the eye. “My right ankle is acting up.” That was their code for the Chairman having a premonition. He’d had the feeling before accepting an assignment from NUMA that cost him his right leg below the knee, and in the intervening years both men had come to trust Juan’s instinct.
    “You’re the boss,” Max said, and nodded.
    It took an additional two hours to reach the Oregon , as she slowly steamed away from the Iranian coast. The Nomad passed under the dark hull forty feet below the keel. The moon-pool doors were fully retracted and flattened against the hull, and red battle lamps within the ship cast the water in a scarlet glow. It was almost like they were approaching the gates of hell.
    Linda slowed the submersible to match the Oregon ’s sluggish pace, centering the craft beneath the opening. In a normal recovery, divers would enter the water to secure lifting lines to the Nomad, and it would be winched into the ship. Though making only three knots, it was too much of a current to dive safely in the moon pool’s confines.
    When she was comfortable with the speed, she dialed off ballast, pumping the tanks so slowly that the Nomad rose in fractional increments.
    “Not to add pressure or anything,” Hali called over the comm link, “but we have a turn coming up in less than four minutes.” The shipping lanes within the Strait of Hormuz were so tight that any deviation was simply not tolerated.
    “Yeah, that’s not adding pressure,” Linda replied, never taking her eyes off her computer screens.
    She released more ballast, her fingers featherlight on the joystick and throttle. She made tiny corrections as the opening loomed larger and larger.
    “You’re doing great,” Juan said from the copilot’s seat.
    Foot by foot, the gap narrowed until the Nomad was directly below the ship. They could hear the quiet hum of her revolutionary engines and the sluice of water through her drive tubes.
    Linda slowed the Nomad a fraction, so that it drifted back to the aft part of the moon pool, the submersible’s rear fins and propellers less than a foot from the opening. “Here we go,” she said, and dumped the remaining hard ballast, a hopper loaded with a half ton of metal balls.
    The Nomad popped up and broached the surface. Though roiled like a cauldron because the Oregon was making three knots, the water in the pool was motionless in relation to the submersible. The mini began to accelerate forward. Linda kicked on emergency reverse thrust as the little sub quickly crossed the pool, which was barely twice the sub’s length. An inflatable fender that spanned the width of the pool had been lowered to the water’s edge for just such a contingency. The sub hit it so softly that it barely compressed.
    Pairs of feet slapped down on the top of the Nomad as technicians attached lifting lines to the submersible’s hardpoints. Below them, the doors were already closing. Linda let out a relieved sigh, flicking her wrists to ease the cramping.
    Juan patted her shoulder. He could see the strain in her eyes. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
    “Thanks,” she said tiredly. She cocked her head as if listening to a voice in the distance. “I think I hear my bathtub calling me.”
    “Go ahead,” Juan said, sliding back off