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Back Silent Sea Save as PDF
Chapters (32)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE

Without its driver, the snowmobile’s engine automatically cut out when the safety key, which was tethered to the man’s wrist, was ripped from the dash. It rolled onward for a few feet and came to a stop, its headlight reflecting flakes of snow drifting on the wind.

Linda ran to the downed Argentine. He lay completely still. She peeled off his helmet. The way his head flopped when she did it told her his neck had been broken by the brutal impact. She stood.

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Him, her, us,” Linc said with a career soldier’s fatalism.

He lifted the body and brought it closer to the snowmobile. He set the corpse gently on the ice and took hold of the handlebars. Bracing his legs, he flexed his muscles and threw the five-hundred-pound machine on its side as if it were no more than a toy. He adjusted the body to fit what would look like a tragic accident.

“Wish we could take it and ride it back to the snowcat,” Linda said, although she knew they couldn’t.

“Walk will do you good,” Franklin Lincoln grinned.

“First, I need meat on my bones, and now you say I need exercise. Which one is it?”

Linc knew that answering that was a trap, even if she was teasing, so he wisely said nothing and continued the long slog to Murph and their warm ride back to Wilson/George.

SIXTEEN

SIXTEEN

IN BREMERTON, WASHINGTON, THE ONLY REQUIREMENT Juan and Max had for their hotel was that it have an Internet connection because Cabrillo wanted to transmit the pictures he’d taken in the pit to Eddie Seng aboard the Oregon and get a translation as quickly as possible.

By the time they’d finished stuffing themselves on Wallapa Bay oysters and Dungeness crab at a nearby restaurant, Eddie had a preliminary report for them.

Seng was another former CIA agent and had been with the Corporation almost since its inception. Ironically, though they had served at the same time, he and Cabrillo had never met in the halls of Langley. Born in New York’s Chinatown, Eddie was fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin.

He regarded the world through heavy-lidded dark eyes, and in them Juan could see Eddie had discovered something interesting. Behind the Corporation’s chief of shore operations, Juan could see the back of the op center, so he figured his image was on the main display above the helm and weapons stations.

“You were right, it is Mandarin, but an older form. It reminded me of having to read Shakespeare back in high school.”

“So what is it?”

“Are you familiar with Admiral Zheng He?”

“Some kind of Chinese explorer in the 1400s. He sailed as far west as Africa and as far south as Australia.”