Read Online Plague Ship by Clive Cussler, Jack du Brul - Free Book Online

wall, a dark hole that fed the pumps to drain the dry dock. Careful to protect the light, he inspected the metal grille embedded in the concrete that prevented anything from swimming up the conduit. The steel was only slightly corroded, while the concrete maintained its integrity. It took him over a minute of careful inspection to spot the wires at the top and bottom of the six metal rods.
    One way to protect against tampering was to rig the grates with motion detectors, but with so many curious fish in the Persian Gulf the alarms would sound almost constantly. The easier way was to run an electric current through the metal, and if the connection was ever cut guards would be alerted that someone had removed part of the grille.
    Juan pointed the wires out to Linc, the Corporation’s best infiltration specialist. Working mostly by feel, Lincoln rigged bypasses on three of the steel rods, using alligator clamps and lengths of wire to keep the current flowing. Next, he removed two squeeze tubes from his dive bag. He uncapped one tube and applied a bead of a gray puttylike substance around the ends of the bars. He then applied an equal amount of putty from the second tube over the first.
    Inert when separated, the two compounds formed a caustic acid when combined. In less than a minute, the metal under the beads had been eaten away enough for Linc to snap them free, his loose wires still keeping the circuit closed and the alarms silent. He set the broken rods on the sand, making sure he didn’t touch the still-corrosive tips, and held the slack wires apart for Max, Eddie, and Juan to slip through before carefully sliding into the pipe himself.
    Now that they were sheltered from prying eyes, Juan turned up the intensity of his dive light, its beam forming a white ring circling the curved sides of the conduit that seemed to retreat with the pace of his advance.
    A fast shadow suddenly lunged at him. He struck out blindly as a darting shape passed him by. He caught sight of a dorsal fin and the rapier tail of a baby shark before it vanished behind him.
    “Good thing we met him now and not in a couple of years,” Eddie quipped.
    Cabrillo needed a second for his heart to slow before continuing down the constricting pipe. He was jumpier than he’d thought, and that didn’t bode well.
    The conduit fed into a large valve that would be in the closed position if the dry dock was empty, but, in the two days the crew had been watching the facility, they had seen no indication the Iranians had pumped out the sub pen since their navy’s newest Kilo Class diesel-electric boat had been admitted.
    The four men squeezed through the butterfly valve and into the monstrous pump that could drain the pen. The impeller blades were made of bright ferrobronze that had been bolted to the hub.
    Juan had come prepared for bolts, and, in case the blades had been welded, he carried a small torch. He pulled an adjustable wrench from a pouch on his thigh and attacked the bolts. The angles were awkward, and the nuts had been screwed in place by a pneumatic gun, so it took all his effort to get each of the twelve bolts started. One in particular had him straining so hard that pinwheels of colors exploded behind his tightly closed eyes. When the seal finally popped, the wrench kicked free, and Cabrillo sliced his hand on the scimitar-shaped blade. A small cloud of blood hung in the glow of his flashlight.
    “Trying to get the shark to come back?” Max teased.
    “So long as your big butt is between me and him, I’ll be fine.”
    “It’s not big, just well padded.”
    Juan finished with the bolts and set each of the eighteen-inch impeller blades aside. He had to unsling his scuba tank and wriggle beneath the pump’s hub to make it through. He waited on the other side for the men to join him and slide their tanks back in place.
    The pipe continued for another dozen feet before turning ninety degrees. Cabrillo shut off his light, and, after waiting a moment