“Your timing couldn’t have been better,” he told Linc. “I think my fin broke surface and gave away our position.”

“Any more in here, boss?”

“Shere Singh took off the instant I pulled my gun, and if you capped the last two on the Toyo Maru, then that’s all I know about.”

“Let’s not wait for reinforcements, shall we?” Tory said.

“I’m with the missus.” Linc keyed his tactical radio. “Oregon, this is Assault One. I’ve got the chairman and the mermaid we pulled off the Avalon. We’re ready for extraction by Zodiac.”

“You have to wait. There’s still one more utility boat out here. We’re tracking it now with the eye in the sky, but we need a few minutes to try to destroy it.”

Cabrillo took Linc’s headset. “Negative, Oregon. Shere Singh could be escaping as we speak. We need him.”

“Okay, Juan. I’ll vector the Zodiac to your position.”

A moment later the Zodiac roared over to the spot where Linc had performed his roll-off and throttled down to a low burble. Juan abandoned the Draeger rebreather and followed Tory and Lincoln under the door. Linc’s SEALs easily plucked her from the water and helped Cabrillo and the team leader into the rubber-hulled craft. Juan wasn’t fully inside before Mike Trono opened the throttle gates and shot the nimble boat across the waves.

They came under immediate fire from men on the beach, their weapons winking in the darkness like angry fireflies. Trono twisted the boat away from shore and out toward the open bay where the Oregon was trying to find the final utility boat. The other three were flaming wreckage that would soon sink to the bottom of the harbor. The fourth had to be hiding amid the dozens of rusted hulks awaiting their turn in the shed or on the beach for dismantling.

Juan moved to the Zodiac’s bow to call directions to the helmsman as they entered the flotilla of derelict ships. He’d donned a pair of night vision goggles. The outboard reverberated between the decaying hulls as they threaded their way toward the Oregon. With this many vessels, it was like running full speed through a maze. Trono bobbed and weaved the Zodiac, following Juan’s hand signals, barreling past a supertanker that had to be a thousand feet long and between a pair of car ferries that still carried the livery of the English Channel company that ran them.

They rounded the bow of the ferry, and were angling for a gap between a partially sunken tugboat and another container ship when the last utility boat appeared from behind another ship. The Corporation team responded a second quicker and raked the utility boat from stem to stern with well-aimed fire.