The Malacca Conspiracy Page 8

  “No kidding!”

  “No, Skipper. I mean with the men. It’s not good.”

  “Skipper! Behind you! Watch out!” Grimes said.

  Eichenbrenner looked over his left shoulder.

  A dark gray triangular fin cut through the water in a flash. It disappeared. Eichenbrenner groaned.

  “Another one!” Basnight said. “Opposite direction! Get your legs up!”

  This one was swimming from their right. Eichenbrenner pulled his knees to his chest as the shark bore down on them.

  Twenty feet…

  Fifteen feet…

  Ten feet…

  The fin vanished.

  “Where’d it go?” blurted Basnight.

  “Maybe it’s gone,” Grimes said.

  A moment passed.

  Something slammed their legs. The jolt knocked the three men away from the life ring.

  Eichenbrenner went under and came back up splashing, gasping for air. Grimes and Basnight flailed in the water nearby.

  The life ring drifted off to the left, maybe ten feet away. Eichenbrenner started a breast stroke toward it.

  “Watch out!”

  The fin surfaced again, about fifteen feet to his right. It made quick, violent circles in the water, then disappeared.

  Eichenbrenner swam and instinctively prayed that he would reach the ring without being bitten in half.

  A few seconds later, his hand reached the flotation device.

  The shark resurfaced, maybe twenty-five feet away. It set a course directly for him. Angry white teeth like glistening sharp razors bore straight at him. Its black eyes blazed fury. It swirled in the water, then slowly started a death swim in his direction.

  “Dear Jesus!”

  Suddenly, the shark jumped. It splashed down to his right, spraying sea water in his face. Eichenbrenner grasped the life ring and looked around.

  Gone again. The shark was toying with him before the kill.

  “Skipper!” Basnight yelled from about twenty feet away. He and Grimes were floating close to each other. Hooking the raft in one arm, the captain paddled toward them.

  “You okay, Skipper?” Grimes asked.

  “Fine,” Eichenbrenner lied. Panting and breathless, he pushed the donut toward the men.

  “Sir, they got several of our crew members already,” Grimes said.

  “They?”

  “Skipper, four of our guys tried to swim aft. We saw the fins surface, and they disappeared under the water.”

  “Who disappeared?”

  “The men, Captain,” Basnight said. “The sharks got ’em!” Terror crossed the man’s face. Almost a delayed reaction.

  The shark surfaced again.

  This time, fifteen feet to their right.

  Making a wide loop, the fin orbited their position in the water, its wet skin reflecting the leaping flames from the ship in the background.

  “There’s another one!” Grimes shouted.

  Eichenbrenner looked over his left shoulder. A second shark had joined the first.

  Basnight swore and pointed. “Another.”

  Over his right shoulder, a third fin cut through the water in the circle.

  Like bloodthirsty savages circling a defenseless wagon train, the sharks circled their prey slowly, in an inexplicable ritual of cruel, psychological torture.

  “I wish they’d get it over with,” Basnight groaned.

  “You boys believe in prayer?” Eichenbrenner asked.

  “Never believed in it. Not gonna start now,” Basnight said. Cold fear filled his voice.

  “If there was a God, why would he put us on a burning ship and then throw us out to the sharks?” Grimes muttered.

  “There may or may not be a God,” Eichenbrenner said, “but I’m going to try it.”

  “Try what?”

  “Prayer. I suggest you do the same.”

  USS Boise

  The Andaman Sea

  3:25 p.m.

  Range to target one thousand yards,” the chief of the watch said. “All ahead one-third,” Captain Hardison said.

  “All ahead one-third,” came the reply.

  “Very well. Up scope!”

  “Up scope. Aye, sir!”

  The commanding officer moved over to the periscope station as mechanical motors inside the stainless-steel cylinder whined and clanked, raising the top of the scope to a position just a few feet above the level of the surface.

  “Scope’s up, Captain,” the chief of the watch announced.

  “Very well.” Captain Hardison stepped up to the eyepiece, grabbed the handle bars, and peered through the scope. Nothing but open water and late-afternoon horizon.

  Rotating clockwise, he turned slightly to his right.

  Still nothing.

  He turned a bit more. Orange smoke and black flames billowed into the sky. Below the smoke, the silhouette of a ship lay low in the water. He hit the magnification button, bringing the ship in full view in the viewfinder.

  Hardison squinted, meticulously searching for any signs of life still aboard the ship. His eyes quickly swept twice from the smoking bow to the stern area.

  Nothing.

  He’d seen enough.

  “Down scope. Prepare to surface.”

  The Andaman Sea

  4:05 p.m.

  They had drifted another fifty yards away from the burning ship, perhaps just far enough to avoid getting sucked down when the Altair Voyager went under.

  But getting sucked down was the least of their worries at the moment.

  Like a hangman tightening a noose, the gray fins continued to swirl angrily in a concentric ring about ten yards from the tiny flotation device. They were so close now that the men could see the shadows of the sharks’ bodies swimming by.

  Against the chopping roar of helicopter motors, which remained invisible above the black smoke, Eichenbrenner silently prayed.

  Basnight and Grimes cursed that they had no effective means of committing suicide.

  “Look!” Basnight suddenly pointed outward. “One of them is leaving.”

  One of the sharks had left the circle and seemed to be swimming away, toward the direction of the burning ship.

  “It’s turning around!” Eichenbrenner warned.

  “It’s headed back!” Basnight unleashed a string of profanities.

  “It’s coming fast!” Grimes yelled.

  “Lord, help us,” Eichenbrenner blurted. The shark slid through the circling perimeter of fins, then disappeared.

  A moment passed.

  “Aaahhhhh!” Basnight screamed. “My leg! Aaaaahhh!” Basnight’s face contorted. Blood bubbled and gushed up around his neck. He cocked his head to the heavens and released the raft, drifting in his own blood.

  The shark surfaced a few feet to Grimes’ left, then submerged again.

  A second later, with a violent jerk, Basnight was snatched under the water. More blood pooled on the surface.

  Grimes swore. “We’re dead, Captain.”

  “Pray.”

  Basnight’s blood excited the circle of sharks. They swam faster now, splashing at the surface violently, as if in a war dance.

  A second shark broke away and swam toward the burning ship. Like the one that got Basnight, he turned and started swimming toward Eichenbrenner and Grimes.

  The fin disappeared. “God have mercy!” Eichenbrenner said.

  A second passed.

  Then another.

  Nothing.

  Five seconds.

  Still nothing.

  Maybe God had heard his prayer.

  “No!”

  The shark’s powerful jaws clamped around Grimes’ arm. Grimes screamed, flailed, splashed in the water, and tried punching the creature on the nose with his fist. The shark dragged him across the surface of the water, away from the life ring. “Help me! Help!” Grimes’ screams even drowned out the sound of the helicopters.

  With a jerk and a splash, Grimes vanished with the shark under the surface. Bloo
d bubbled up from the spot where he had disappeared.

  Eichenbrenner grasped the life ring hard. Coiling into a human ball, he tucked his knees tightly against his chest, as if that would somehow give the monsters less of a target to sniff.

  Two fins circled his position now, in equidistant spots, each about ten yards from the life ring.

  “If anyone is in the water, please swim aft of the ship! We need you to clear that smoke cover! This is the US Navy!”

  Eichenbrenner cocked his head back, gazing at the spreading smoke cloud.

  If God would part that cloud…

  Still scrunched in a ball, he felt cramping set into his calves. He instinctively kicked his feet down into the water to relieve the pain. The sharks were circling faster now.

  One of the sharks broke away, and just as before, began swimming away, toward the ship. Then the second also broke away. Both swam away from him.

  They were now at least twenty yards away.

  Then, as if choreographed by a trainer at Sea World, both sharks pivoted, one a time. Their vicious snouts took aim at him.

  Swirling and splashing their tail fins, they started swimming back toward the life ring.

  Fifteen yards. Ten yards.

  His life flashed in front of him. His marriage. His divorce. His girls.

  This was it.

  Fred closed his eyes and remembered words his grandmother once taught him: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come…Thy will be done…”

  Chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah!

  The wall of water sprayed from left to right in a line right in front of the sharks.

  The sharks went limp on the surface. They floated on their stomachs for a second, then rolled over, belly-up, limp and bleeding.

  Eichenbrenner looked over his shoulder.

  The rubber boat was bobbing in the water, perhaps twenty feet behind him.

  Crouched in the front of the boat in a black wet suit, holding a black submachine gun with white smoke billowing from the barrel, the man with the rugged chin sported a triumphant grin.

  Rambo had risen from the sea!

  “I can nail the suckers if they’re close to the surface,” the man said. “But no guarantees if they’re under the water. Now we’ve got to get you out of there.”

  “Dear Jesus!”

  “Nope. I’m not him. But you can thank him if you want. Lieutenant McKinley Kennedy, US Navy SEALs, at your service, sir,” the man said. “This is Senior Chief Comstock.” Eichenbrenner had not noticed the other man in the back of the boat. “Give me your hand, sir.”

  Eichenbrenner reached up. The SEAL’s grip was an iron vise. The SEAL heaved, and instantly, Eichenbrenner was lying on his back in the bottom of the rubber boat.

  “Any other survivors?” Kennedy asked.

  “I don’t know. The sharks got several of my crew. Some tried swimming out from under the smoke. I was the last off the ship.”

  “You the captain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. We’ve got three other squads out on the water looking. If anybody’s out here, my men will find ’em. You sound American, Captain.”

  “Born and raised in Southern California.”

  “Well, sir, I want you to look back there.” The SEAL pointed across the stern of the raft.

  It was long, black, and sleek, floating just above the surface of the water.

  Toward the front of it, a black, square-shaped superstructure rose into the air. Off the back, lit by the orange glow of the sun setting on the horizon beyond the edge of the cloud cover, the flag of the United States of America flapped in the late afternoon breeze.

  “That, Captain, is the USS Boise. We’re going to take you there now, and then we’re going to take you home. Chief, let’s do it.”

  “Aye, sir.” The chief revved the electric motor. The boat turned in the water and cut a course directly for the submarine.

  Eichenbrenner took one last glance over his shoulder at his sinking ship. The stern was rising off the water like the high end of a seesaw. It would not be long now until she slipped under the sea. He looked away, never to look back.

  The sight of the Boise, of the flag draped in the afternoon sunlight, of his ship burning and sinking, then the realization that he would see his girls again, that his desperate prayer had been answered…Tears began rolling.

  “It’s okay, Captain.” Kennedy put his hand on Eichenbrenner’s back. “We’re going home.”

  Chapter 6

  New York Mercantile Exchange

  6:00 a.m.

  Robert Molster sat back in his chair and looked at the electronic clock on the wall. 6:00 a.m. Two more hours to go. What a night. He took another sip of coffee, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at the screen that flashed continual news from the Associated Press. He had been monitoring it since he saw the first reports of the attacks on the tankers. Now word was coming in that there had been another tanker hit, this time in the Andaman Sea. Robert shivered.

  The phone rang. “What now?” He picked it up. “Light, Sweet Crude Section. May I help you?”

  “Lieutenant Molster?” a woman’s voice inquired.

  Lieutenant? This was odd. Why was he being referred to by his military title? “Robert Molster speaking.”

  “Lieutenant, this is the White House switchboard. Could you hold, please?”

  “The White House? What the…”

  “Lieutenant Molster?” A deep, resonating voice came on the phone.

  “Lieutenant Molster speaking.”

  “Lieutenant, this is Admiral Roscoe Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

  Was this a joke?

  “Are you still there, Lieutenant?”

  “My apologies. How may I help you, sir?”

  “Well, Lieutenant, it’s not me who’s asking for your help. It’s the president.”

  “President Williams?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. He was still president as of zero-four-hundred hours this morning, when the National Security Council was concluding an emergency meeting.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “We’ve heard from the chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange that you’ve had some concerns about the overnight movement of oil price futures. The president has ordered me to inform you that as of this moment, you are being recalled to active duty in the United States Navy.”

  “Immediately?”

  “Immediately. I want you to go home. Get packed. Throw on your service dress blues, and be at Newark Airport by ten-hundred hours. BUPERS”-the admiral was referring to the Bureau of Naval Personnel-“has already cut your orders and made flight arrangements. Your flight leaves Newark at eleven-hundred. Your tickets will be waiting for you at the US Airways counter. Just show your Navy Identification card. We’ll pick you up at Reagan National at noon. From there, you’ll be driven to the Pentagon, where you’ll report for duty at the JCS.”

  Robert let that settle in. This was happening so fast. “But, sir, I’m scheduled to brief the chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange in just about an hour.”

  “Son,” the admiral said with a tinge of impatience in his voice, “at fourteen-hundred hours this afternoon, you’re scheduled to brief the president of the United States. The chairman of the Mercantile Exchange can wait. We’ll take care of all that. As of now, your commander in chief is in need of your services. Any questions?”

  “No sir, Admiral, but…” He hesitated.

  “But what, son?”

  “Well, sir, I’ve been monitoring the news about these tanker attacks in Singapore and now the Malacca Straits. And I’m concerned that…” He hesitated again.

  “You’re concerned that there might be a linkage.”

  Robert exhaled. “I can’t prove it, sir, but as an intel officer and as a commodities analyst, yes, sir, I do have that concern.”

  “We’re concerned about that too, Lieutenant. That’s part
of the reason you’re being called to active duty. You might be a reservist, but you’re the only intel guy we’ve got with the breadth of commodities experience to give us a briefing on this. Now then, do you have any other questions?”

  “Negative, Admiral. No other questions.”

  “Very well. Then get your stuff packed, get in your uniform, and get your tail down to the airport. Understood?”

  “Understood loud and clear.”

  St. Stephen’s Catholic Church

  Jakarta, Indonesia

  5:05 p.m.

  It had seemed so right in one sense. She was, after all, a woman, with all the needs and wants of any healthy, trim, and fit female in her late thirties.

  They called her “beautiful,” “lovely,” and “stunningly gorgeous.” Such praise had been lavished upon her all her life from friends, family members, and the men she had been with over the years.

  Yet despite the beauty they claimed she possessed, she had been living with a chasm of emptiness within her soul.

  So lonely.

  God hadn’t meant for her to feel this way, had he?

  Years had passed since she was last in this place. Would she still know what to do?

  She closed the door of the confessional and sat. A small wooden table supported a single lamp with a dim bulb burning. On the wall hung a single picture of Jesus. His eyes were sad and his face compassionate.

  Just under the picture, and also on the table, lay two black, Catholic Bibles, one in English and one in Indonesian. She allowed her fingers to caress both of them. It had been years since she had touched a Bible. Perhaps it was her imagination, but something like a surge of electricity ran down her back as her fingers touched the leather.

  She stared at the bell next to the veiled window. Should she ring it? Perhaps she should leave now.

  Could she trust that her darkest confidences would remain secret? They would place her head on a chopping block if her confessions got out.

  The risk was too great. She stood to leave. But the twisting in her soul forced her back into the chair.

  For a few seconds, her hand hovered over the bell.

  God, if you are still there, tell me what to do.

  No answer.

  Her hand struck the bell. The single, brassy chime echoed throughout the room.