Mirage by Clive Cussler
No matter what he found, Cabrillo’s six-minute deadline was carved in stone.
He went to work on the last of the mortar, committed now beyond all shadow of a doubt. When he was done, he got his lock picks ready, the last trick to come from his cache, and kicked his way through the cement blocks. They tumbled to the floor in a chalky heap, and Juan dove through headfirst.
“Yuri,” he called in a stage whisper when he got to his feet.
He was in a long corridor with at least twenty cell doors. At the far end he could see where the hallway bent ninety degrees. From his study of the construction diagrams, he knew there was another door just around the corner and, beyond that, stairs that rose to the prison’s first floor. It was like Hannibal Lecter’s cellblock without the creepy acrylic wall.
“Who’s there?” a voice he recognized from their years of dealings called back just as faintly.
Juan went to the door where he thought Yuri was being held and drew back the observation slit. The cell was empty.
“To your left,” Yuri said.
Juan drew back that slit, and there in front of him was Admiral Yuri Borodin, former commandant of the naval base in Vladivostok. It had been at Borodin’s shipyard that the Oregon had been refitted and the sophisticated weapons systems integrated after the original ship had outlived her usefulness and was nearly scrapped. The fitting of her revolutionary magnetohydrodynamic engines had been carried out at another shipyard Yuri controlled. Both jobs had neared a combined cost of one hundred million dollars, but with Juan’s former boss at the CIA giving him the go-ahead to convert the Oregon into what she was today, financing had not been an issue.
Borodin’s normal helmet of bronze hair lay limp along the sides of his open face, and his skin had an unnaturally sallow mien, but he still had the alert dark eyes of the canny fox he was. They hadn’t broken him yet, not by a mile.
He had a look of wary confusion as he regarded the man before him, as if he recognized him but couldn’t place him. Then his face split into a big toothy grin. “Chairman Juan Cabrillo,” he exclaimed loudly before moderating his voice to a whisper again. “Of all the prisons in all the towns in all the world, why am I not surprised you are in this one?”
“Proverbial bad penny,” Cabrillo said deadpan.
Borodin reached through the observation slit to rub Juan’s head. “What have you done to yourself?”
“Making myself pretty just for you.” Juan started working the lock picks.
“Who sent you?”
“Misha.” Captain Mikhail Kasporov was Borodin’s longtime assistant and aide-de-camp.
“God bless the boy.” A sudden dark thought occurred to him. “To rescue me or kill me?”
Juan glanced up from the lock, which he almost had open. “Does your paranoia know no bounds? To rescue you, you idiot.”
“Ah, he is a good boy. And as for my paranoia, Mr. Chairman of the Corporation, a look at my present surroundings shows that I was not paranoid enough. So what is new, my friend?”
“Let’s see. The civil war in the Sudan is winding down. The Dodgers again have no pitching staff. And I think half the Kardashians are getting married while the other half are divorcing. Oh, and once again you’ve managed to anger the wrong guy.”
On his ruthless rise to power within the Russian Navy, backed by hard-right political cronies, the mercurial Admiral Pytor Kenin had left a trail of destruction in his wake—careers ruined and, in one instance, a rival’s suspicious death. Now that he was one of the youngest fleet admirals in the country’s history, rumors abounded that he would soon turn to politics under the guiding wing of Vladimir Putin.
Yuri Borodin had become one of Kenin’s enemies, though he was too well positioned among the general staff to be dismissed outright and had been arrested on trumped-up charges and sent to this prison to await trial—a trial that he would most likely never survive to see. A company Kenin controlled ran the prison on behalf of the government in a public/private cooperative much like the ones that gave rise to the oligarchs in the days after communism’s demise. His death could be easily arranged and would likely happen after the initial flap over his arrest died down.
That Borodin was corrupt was an open secret, but singling him out was like arresting only a single user in an overcrowded crack house. Corruption in the Russian military was as much a part of the culture as itchy uniforms and lousy food.
“And you do this out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Of course,” Cabrillo said. “And about a tenth of your net worth.”
“Bah. My Misha is a good boy, but he is a lousy negotiator. You love me like a brother for what I did to that oversized scow of yours. We had good times, you and me, while the men at my shipyard turned your tabby cat into a lion. To honor those memories alone you should rescue me for free.”
Juan countered, “I could have charged double, and Mikhail would have paid because even he doesn’t know all your Swiss bank account numbers.” With that, he twisted the picks and sprang the lock.
The first thing Yuri Borodin did was grasp Cabrillo in a big bear hug and kiss him on both cheeks. “You are a saint amongst men.”
“Get off me, you crazy Russian,” Juan said lightly as he extricated himself from Yuri’s grip. “We’re not out of this yet.”
Borodin turned serious. “There is a great deal we need to talk about. The timing of my arrest was not coincidental.”
“Not now. Let’s go.”
They crawled back into Cabrillo’s cell. Juan took up the microburst transmitter, set a mental timer in his head, and activated both. He then keyed the plastic explosives he’d earlier molded to the prison’s exterior wall a good distance from his rabbit hole. The blast was muted by the intervening cinder blocks but could still be felt in every corner of the large facility. The guards would be swinging into action almost immediately.
Juan ducked down to enter the claustrophobic space between the prison’s inner and outer walls. He turned back to Borodin. “No matter what happens, just stay with me.”
Yuri nodded grimly, his normal bonhomie replaced with real concern for his fate.
They moved laterally along the cramped space and had to squeeze by pipes that rose through the floor. These were part of the passive ammonia cooling system that kept what little heat maintained by the prison from melting the permafrost on which it was built. The air thickened with the burned chemical stench of the explosives as they neared the breach through the outer foundation.
The C-4 had blown a ragged hole through the concrete slab about the size of a manhole cover. Chunks of smashed cement shifted under his feet as Cabrillo boosted himself through the opening. On the far side he found himself standing in a moat that encircled the prison’s basement level. This dead space acted as a thermal buffer to again prevent the building’s latent heat from melting the frozen ground.
Twelve feet overhead were panels that hid the moat from the surface. The panels had dozens of holes punched through them so that air could circulate freely and were supported by metal scaffolding. Clots of snow jammed some of the holes, and some drifted down on the men as a result of the blast.
“Come on,” Juan called over the sound of a dopplering siren. They ran away from the hole in the wall, as the blast had surely been seen by the guards in the towers. It was like running through a maze. They had to twist and contort their bodies around the countless struts that made up the scaffold. And yet only a contortionist could have moved quicker than these two. Once they rounded a corner, Cabrillo led them a few more feet and then began climbing upward. The metal was so cold, it felt like his hands were being scalded. The panels were secured from above with threaded bolts screwed into receptors on the steel framework. A final tube of concentrated acid formulated to dissolve steel ate through the rust-stuck nuts and even the bolts themselves.
Cabrillo’s six minutes were al
“Remember, stay with me, and we’ll be fine,” he warned again. “Half of what’s about to happen is for show.”
He pressed with his shoulders to test how hard the panel would resist after so many decades and, to his surprise, the section of perforated steel plate popped free almost before he was ready.
The prison alarm continued to keen, but over it came another sound, the unmistakable whop-whop-whop of a fast-approaching helicopter.
The timer in his head touched zero, and Cabrillo heaved the panel aside. He scrambled up and out of the earth, knowing that his blue prison uniform stood out starkly against the foot-deep snow that lay in drifts all around him. A dedicated guard could spot him in an instant, but he was banking on human instinct to keep from being spotted. The guards should be watching the approaching helicopter.
He could see the chopper out beyond the security fence, an olive drab insect that grew in size until he could recognize it as an ungainly Kamov Ka-26. With two main rotors set one above the other atop the hull and spinning in opposite directions, the craft had no need for a tail rotor on a long, tapering boom. This made the six-passenger helo resemble a flying moving van with two stumpy rudders bolted to its rear bumper.
In seconds, Yuri was at his side, and both men stood with their backs pressed against the prison’s featureless wall.
Now that it was closer, Juan saw the small wings that had been attached to the chopper’s hull just aft of the pilot’s door.
A jumpy guard let loose a long burst with his AK even though the chopper was well out of range. In response, a single rocket shot off one of the winglets and streaked toward the perimeter fence while a heavy machine gun on the opposite side roared to life, spitting a tongue of flame that shot out past the cockpit bubble. Shell casings the size of cigar tubes rained from the weapon as the newly fallen snow between the perimeter fence and the building came alive under the blistering assault of lead.
“Run!” Juan shouted over the hellish din.
To Yuri’s utter astonishment, Cabrillo charged into the maelstrom kicked up by the machine gun as though he were a member of the Light Brigade riding into the Russian guns at Balaclava.
“No matter what, follow me,” the man who called himself Chairman had said, and, to his greater amazement, Yuri let out a full-throated bellow that was unheard over the siren and chopper and still-pounding machine gun and took off after his friend.
The rocket detonated at the base of the fence, throwing up even more snow and clumps of frozen soil. Borodin expected to be cut down at any moment while geysers of snow erupted all around him, tossed high by bullets he had yet to hear cracking past.
Then he felt a small hit to the bottom of his left foot. It wasn’t enough to toss him to the ground, but it did make him stagger. It was the clue he needed to tell him he wasn’t immune to the massive amount of bullets pouring down from the chopper’s machine gun, for, in truth, there were no rounds. The Kamov was firing blanks, and the detonations of snow that created a ten-foot-high fog were small explosive charges that Cabrillo’s team had likely sown during the last snowstorm by simply tossing them over the fence.
But their luck couldn’t last forever. Bullets from autofire by the men in the guard towers began searching them out, the micro supersonic booms ripping the air near his head. Borodin wished Cabrillo wasn’t so soft. Had he planned this escape, the first missiles off the Kamov’s rails would have taken out the guards’ lofty perches. But Juan was different. Though a mercenary, as tough as any, he loathed killing when it wasn’t necessary, even if that put his own life at risk. Juan also didn’t know these men, didn’t know that they were Kenin’s private army, paid more for their loyalty to the admiral than to Mother Russia. They wore the uniforms of their country, but they were no less mercenary than Cabrillo himself.
With more and more real bullets stitching the ground, Cabrillo and Borodin made it across the open killing field with neither man being hit. The rocket had blown apart a section of the fence near one of its support stanchions, leaving a gap wide enough for them to run through but forcing them to angle to the left to avoid the mound of deadly razor wire lying on the ground.
Now clear of the shooting gallery and much closer to the chopper, they saw that ropes dangled from each side of the Kamov that were long enough to trail on the ground.
Juan led them to the ropes, and he quickly found the loop for his foot and another for a hand. “Hang on,” he shouted over the jarring rattle of rotor and gunfire.
The chopper’s downblast was a maelstrom of Category 5 proportions.
The pilot must have seen the two men take their places, for no sooner had Yuri slipped his shoe into one of the loops and his hand through another than it felt as though his stomach was trying to leave his body through the soles of his feet.
The Kamov lifted and whirled, swinging both men like pendulums and leaving the ground a good hundred feet below them. The wind, as the chopper gained speed, clawed at their exposed bodies like stinging needles that numbed skin and turned eyes into streaming torrents.
Borodin fought to cling to the twisting, sinuous rope and prayed that Cabrillo’s plan called for them to land soon and crawl into the nice warm cabin—and knowing Juan’s style—where a good bottle of brandy awaited. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold on, but looking down at the snow and stone racing by below, he knew he could last for the rest of his life because a fall would certainly kill him.
The chopper thundered due east and deeper into the mountains, the pilot flying as close to the earth as he dared with his two passengers dangling below the helo’s tricycle landing wheels. Each dip and rise and swooping turn sent shocks through both men’s bodies. Dusk was beginning to settle over the landscape, but the pilot didn’t turn on any landing lights. Borodin suspected he had some night vision capabilities to be flying so recklessly through these uncharted canyons.
After an eternity of ten freezing minutes, the beat of the rotors changed when they neared a copse of pines sheltered under yet another granite cliff. They were finally landing. Borodin would curse the Chairman for such a torturous flight, but only after he stopped shivering.
The chopper dropped lower and lower until both men could simply step out of the loops and duck under the wind screaming at them from the whirling blades. Borodin expected the Kamov would continue to the ground, but instead the engine’s whine increased, and once again the ungainly aircraft was shooting eastward, leaving the two men alone in a frozen wasteland. He knew that they’d both be dead of hypothermia within the next hour, if not sooner. He also knew that Juan Cabrillo hadn’t yet finished dipping into his bag of tricks.
Borodin pointed to where the helicopter had vanished around a cragged tor. “Decoy, yes.”
Juan switched from Russian, one of the four languages he spoke, but said in Russian-accented English to mock Borodin’s syntax, “Decoy, da.”
“What about the pilot? Will he be okay?”
“Why wouldn’t he be? He’s sitting at a console aboard the Oregon.”
Juan enjoyed the range of emotions that played across Yuri’s wind-chapped face as he absorbed that information. Incomprehension morphed into understanding, and then horror at the implications, and then outrage at the potential consequence.
“You mean while we were whizzing by mountains and skimming the ground, there was no pilot? He could have killed us while he sat safe and secure on your ship?”
Juan couldn’t help but taunt him a bit more. “My pilot, Gomez Adams, so nicknamed for a dalliance he had with a woman who looked remarkably like Carolyn Jones, the original Morticia, had less than a week to practice tele-flying the Kamov after we bought it and installed the remote controls.”
“You’re mad.”
“Barking,” Juan agreed with a grin. “Come on.?
He led them a short distance into the trees, where Cabrillo’s team had another surprise waiting. It was a Lynx Rave RE 800R snowmobile painted a matte white that perfectly matched the snow. With its massive caterpillar tread and double runner skis, it was the perfect machine for crossing any arctic terrain. Bundled next to it was a bag containing helmets and white snowsuits, one helmet battery-powered and the other able to jack into the Lynx’s electrical system, as well as insulated boots and gloves.
“Put these on. There’s a chopper at the prison, and they’ll soon be in pursuit.”
As they dressed Yuri said, “That was why we didn’t change direction when we flew off. You wanted them to follow the Kamov.”
“And while they head east in pursuit of an empty chopper, we go north to where the Oregon’s waiting for us.”
“How long?”
Juan threw a leg over the sled’s saddle seat and flicked the 800cc Rotax engine to life. Over the whine of the two-stroke he replied, “About an hour.”
He jacked a cord dangling from his helmet into a satellite phone that had been secreted with the rest of the gear.
“This is Edmond Dantès calling.” His code name referenced the famous prisoner who escaped a life sentence in the Dumas masterpiece The Count of Monte Cristo. “We have gotten out of the Château d’If.”
“Edmond,” came Max Hanley’s happy reply. “Ready to go find your treasure and exact your revenge?”
“The treasure’s going to be sent to a numbered account as soon as we’re back aboard, and revenge has never been my intent.”
“How’d it go?” Max asked, dropping all pretense that he hadn’t been concerned for Juan’s safety.
“No problems as yet. The squib bombs worked better than we’d hoped, and Gomez could have thread that chopper through a needle if he’d needed to.”