Comfortably conditioned by a soft Pacific Ocean breeze, the beautiful tropical day was a backdrop for a variety of activities.
In Chiguanada, Jim Phelps haggled with a dealer over the price of a battered 4-wheel-drive truck.
On the waterfront, Willy and Barney shopped marinas and boatyards for a motorized launch.
On his villa terrace, Cidd Menendez sat at breakfast, favoring the tension in his stomach with a few nibbles of his huevos rancheros. He didn't expect to be able to eat much of anything. Tonight, after all, was the night. Once the money was ashore and in the hands of Pau Saldana and his men, Menendez couldn't foresee much that could go wrong. Soon now, Menendez promised himself, it would all be over. The island would be his. This ambition, this monstrous thing that had burned and driven and obsessed him for a lifetime, would be fulfilled. He wondered if he would enjoy his dinner table any better then. He pushed the thought quickly from his mind.
Aboard the Haigui, the captain and Law Zongxian strolled the corridors and calmly discussed the knot to be tied in a discovered loose end: the killing of a rival submarine.
Amid the ghosts of an Incan pyramid, Pau Saldana came out of his command post to start morning inspection. He was smiling to himself as he mentally composed his acceptance speech for when he was head of a new, iron-booted government.
In the presidential office at Chiguinada, Fulco Rodriguez and Paco Zamora bypassed, for the moment, questions concerning Cidd Menendez, Law Zongxian, and the submarine Haigui. A more immediate enigma tormented their powers of reasoning. When the NATO people had failed to show up for breakfast, Paco's men had closed on their rooms. Both were empty. The hotel was examined from basement to roof, with an impossible result. The most trusted and trained eyes in San Gonzalo had been on guard at the Nacional. A mouse couldn't have got out unobserved---but the young man and woman had!
The youthful people in question were several miles from the Nacional this fresh, sunny morning.
Paris was now safely aboard the sturdy Seaview, with still lurked, partially submerged, in the sheltered lagoon, Lago Machabu.
Kinning, the Seaview's radio operator, had been assigned a vitally essential job by Captain Crane. If the Haigui or guerilla base camp called, he was to immediately plug into the gap Barney Collier had created. Paris would then emulate the tones of Law or Saldana, as the case might be.
But the task was proving irksome and dull. Nobody at the guerilla base came or aboard the Haigui seemed to have last-minute questions. They were all set to re-write the future of San Gonzalo, and radio silence prevailed.
100 yards distant from the Seaview's narrow, low-lying deck and tall conning tower, Molly rippled through the water with the grace of an exuberant young porpoise. Her slender feet flashed for an instant as she surface-dived. She broke out after a 50-yard exploration of the cool, clear water and floated on her back.
The swim was invigorating. She felt terrific. And yet the morning held an awareness of what might happen in the unmarred beauty of this place. She turned, treading water, sunlight-bejeweled droplets clinging to her face and eyelashes.
The towering cliff walling the northern rim of Lago Machabu drew her attention. She faced it with a shiver.
Looking up at its sheer, forbidding heights, she thought of all that Barney had told them about these lagoons and the mountains frowning over them. His knowledge was firsthand, gained when he'd come to San Gonazalo 3 years ago with the inter-American geological team. He had deep-dived the base of this very cliff for rock samples, clambered its heights, explored the terrifying darkness of its dank underwater grottos. Little had he known then that he would be back here on a very different mission.
By nightfall the final touches were added to a counterplan that had begun in the unlikely surroundings of a music store in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, U.S.A.
Willy and Barney had purchased a launch, and Jim had bought a secondhand 4-wheel drive truck.
Jim had driven the truck across the mountains on the old logging road to Carcayos. He'd stashed it in the ruins of a forgotten lumber company's abandoned slab and tin buildings.
Barney and Willy had come in by sea, in the launch, meeting Jim at the forsaken, barnacle-encrusted timber dock.
The three had returned in the launch to Lago Machabu and the Seaview a few miles south, slipping in under cover of the darkness that rushed upon a brief tropical twilight.
Now reunited, the IMF team crowded around the Seaview's control and communications center. Paris right now was the center of attention. The Haigui was calling the camp on the returned frequency, and the Seaview was close and hot with a quivering tension no less real than the power pulsing through wires and transistors.
"Banker to Midas. Do you read? Come in."
Kinning handed Paris the microphone. Eyes half closed, projecting himself into the roles he must play, Paris took the microphone into his hands and said: "Midas here. We read you, loud and clear."
"Final check, Midas."
"We are go all the way, Banker."
"Confirmed," the Haigui instructed. "No hold, no revision in plan."
"We read, Banker."
"Over and out."
The circuit was broken. Paris stepped back. Kinning leaned back in his seat at the banked electronic array. Everyone took a breath.
Kinning prepared himself for a moment, then reached up and punched a button, leaping the frequency gap that Barney had set up. He nodded at Paris to proceed.
"Banker to Midas," Paris said in his best guttural accents. "Banker to Midas. Come in."
"Midas here." A Spanish-accented voice at the guerilla base camp slurred through the loudspeaker. "We read."
"Put Midas leader on for Banker leader."
"¡De inmediato!" Sounds crossed space to the Seaview's circuitry. Footsteps hurrying across the guerilla radio shack. The operator yelling to someone outside to fetch the capitan quickly.
Saldana was breathing as if he'd run 100 yards when he came on. "Midas leader here."
"Banker leader, Midas," Paris intoned.
Even expecting the voice change, Molly had to repress a gasp. She could almost imagine she was back in the role of Angela, hearing Law Zongxian talk via a loudspeaker in a guerilla radio shack.
"Revision, Midas leader," Paris continued again in Law's tones. "You will delay all action by a matter of 2 hours and 35 minutes. Rendezvous time will be 12:35 A.M."
"But we're all set to move...." Saldana's impatience flared.
"I know. But you will revise, Midas. Confirm!"
"Confirmed," Saldana said in a voice already sulking because of the delay. "Will revise. But what's the trouble?"
"There is a minor problem with the launch's engine. No cause for alarm. With your splendid cooperation, all will go smoothly, Midas leader."
"Muy bien." Saldana relented. "I'll get busy with the changes. Over and out."
Paris lifted his thumb from the depressed button, killing the mike, and then handed the mike back to Kinning. A rustle went through the team, but it was not one of relaxation.413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFNMzDAfH6g
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Time: 10:00 A.M.
The Haigui's trim motor launch, running without lights, nosed to the old dock at the head of Lago Machabu. One of the 4 sailors aboard threw a line about a half-rotted piling. Law stepped across, Menendez bringing up the rear.
"Watch your step, Comrade," Law advised. "This planking isn't any too trustworthy."
As they picked their way the few steps to the shore, two shadowy figures came along the beach to meet them, resolving into the night-shrouded images of Pau and Angela Saldana. The girl, Law noted, dallied behind, as though scornful of this meeting with her father. Pau, on the other hand, brushed past Menendez as if he couldn't wait to pump the hand of a more important personage. Almost before Menendez could murmur fast introductions, the son-in-law was apparently trying to crush Law's knuckles and yank his arm loose at the shoulder.
"Comrade, I can't express my pleasure!" Pau was also a backslapper. "We are beginning big things...."
"Yes." Law disengaged himself with a graceful movement and a smile from what promised to be an egotistic torrent. "It's a big night."
In his own mind, Law dismissed Saldana as a swaggerer on a small stage. His counterparts could be found in guerilla camps dotting the jungles and deserts of the globe.
The girl could be the most dangerous of the lot---except, Law suspected, her heart wasn't in the night's work. She acknowledged the introduction with a cool and cynical nod, a murmured "Comrade."
She surely fitted every detail Law had researched on her. She glanced at Menendez. "If I can't be of any use here, Papa, I'll wait at the truck."
Menendez dabbed at his neck with a handkerchief as he watched her walk away. Then he dismissed her from his thoughts, giving Law a nervous glance. "Shall we get on with it, Comrade?"
He's better suited, Law thought, to scheming in the comfort of his villa than to clandestine meetings on a dark beach. He was tired of Menendez's company. But he'd never met Pau and Angela face-to-face, and he'd brought Menendez along as a pair of eyes familiar with the couple. It was one of those little precautions, that attentiveness to the remotest detail, that he, Law Zongxian, seldom overlooked.
"Where are your men?" Law asked the hovering image of Saldana.
"A couple at the truck, Comrade. Others guarding the trail. I should leave one strategic point unobserved? Never! You'll find that my efficiency...."
"Yes, yes," Law broke in hurriedly.
Saldana wasn't so easily dissuaded from a demonstration of his tactical genius. He spun, cupped his hands about his mouth, and shouted, "Velasco!"
"Si, Capitan?" Willy Armitage boomed in return from somewhere in the darkness above the road.
Law gave Saldana's arm a quick touch. "Your squads are well deployed, I'm sure. I have the manpower to load the truck." He shouted an order over his shoulder to the sailors.
In the guise of Saldana, Paris yelled a command that brought the heavy truck backing toward the dock. In guerilla garb, Jim Phelps was driving the vehicle.
Law, Menendez, and the image of Saldana stood aside as the aluminum cases of fake currency began coming along the pier and into the truck. They reminded Paris of shiny oversized coffins, each carried between two straining sailors. For the burial of a little nation, he thought.
Watching the loading progress, Darstov chuckled. "In World War II, you know, the Germans drew plans to shower Britain with counterfeit currency from the air. They abandoned the idea, fearing the British would retaliate with a flood of German marks. But we don't have that problem, eh, Comrade?"
"No," the image of Saldana agreed. "Here we have the perfect setup. Small country, scanty population, economic scarcity, a per capital income that's always been next to nothing. Here, Comrade, the weapon is ideal. The enemy can't strike back."
Swabbing his face with his handkerchief, Menendez chocked out a breath when the tenth and last crate thudded onto the truck. He touched Paris's hand in a quick shake, anxious to be away, but not so anxious as to omit a last warning. "Pau, the next step is yours. We are depending on you."
"I'll handle it well," Saldana's image promised. He then shook hands with Law. "We'll meet again soon."
"In Chiguanada," Law predicted.
Paris strode off, leaping upon the running board of the truck. "Velasco, let's move!"
Jim meshed the gears. The truck trundled from sight around a dark curve while Menendez and Law hurried along the dock and climbed into the launch.
The boat purred off on its return trip to the Haigui. Darkness and silence settled over Carcayos.413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgkavTBs8oq
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Time: 11:05 P.M.
A second unlit launch slipped into Carcayos, Barney Collier at the helm. He cut power, ready to snub a line. The shadowy old pier drifted close.
Engine growling, the truck reappeared, crawling to the dock. Willy was now on the running board opposite Paris. The truck halted. Paris, Willy, Molly, and Phelps spilled from it. Barney came up, lugging two suitcases he had lifted from the launch.
The action was instant and precise, nobody needing to speak, question, or instruct.
Paris took one of the cases and hurried off to one of the abandoned buildings nearby. The sagging walls would hide the electric torch glow while he remade the image of Pau Saldana into that of Law Zongxian.
Phelps and Willy began wrestling the aluminum cases from the truck. As each was lowered to the ground, Barney unhasped and opened it, his flashlight glaring on the tightly-packed stacks of peotacas. In denominations ranging from 10 to 100, the notes in a single case totaled in the millions.
Barney priced a dozen inches from a stack in the middle of the case. Molly was ready with an object she had taken from the second piece of luggage that Barney had brought. She planted, in the heart of the currency, a liquid-filled plastic container. It was about the size of a coffee can, and to its top was taped one of Barney's brainchildren, a small, black electronic device.
Barney neatly repacked the money, dropping the leftover bills into the open suitcase. He and Molly moved on to work the next aluminum crate. Jim and Willy picked up the one Barney had finished with and went grunting off to load it onto the launch.
The minutes ticked, too rapidly. The truck was empty, at last, the launch loaded. Jim got into the truck and drove it, crunching and bucking, out of sight behind a wall of underbrush.
Paris emerged from the tumbledown ruins, the living image of Law Zongxian. He recieved a quick inspection and a nod as Jim met him at the foot of the dock; then, together, they hurried to the loaded boat and clambered in. Barney started the engine and cast off.
The launch left a curving, phosphorescent wake as traveled toward the mouth of the narrow bayou of Carcayos. Then, touching open sea, Barney cut back the engine. The boat slowed to a drift, wallowing a bit under its load. The IMF team watched the blackness veiling the shore. They knew they hadn't long to wait....413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjXuBjGTJ3i
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Time: 12:35 A.M.
For the second time in less than 3 hours, a light winked, the prearranged guerilla signal from the head of Carcayos.
His boat toes at the lapping water's edge, Pau Saldana shifted impatiently. The schedule change and delay had chafed. The trip across the nearly impassible old logging roads had jarred every bone. And now---where was that idiot Law?
Then a light flickered from the sea, responding to his signal. Pau's vexation dissolved. Half turning, he threw a torrent of orders at the figures in the darkness behind him. "Vicente, quick! The truck to the dock. Rodrigo, Pablo, hurry out! Get ready to unload the money!"
Pau raced ahead of his men to the pier, almost tripping a couple of times as he ran the length of the unstable planking. He leaned with outstretched hands as the dark helmsman tossed a line over from the incoming launch. Hands trembling with excitement, he snubbed the small hawser and quickly turned to offer a helping hand to the boyish, dark-haired figure clambering from the launch.
"Capitan Pau Saldana of the Popular People's Liberation Front, I presume." The shade of aloofness in the voice was as irritating as it had been on the radio.
But Pau's exuberance of the moment could absorb the coolness. He grabbed the limp hand and pumped. "Law! At last we meet face to face."
"Quite," the Law image said. He dropped an order toward the launch. "Ho-Tsai and Chang-Li, give the capitan's men a hand. Pass those money cases up!"
He thawed a little then, dropping a friendly hand on Pau's shoulder and casually edging them both aside, out of the way of the unloading operation. "Cidd sends his regards. His stomach, you know...."
Pau shrugged aside the irrelevance of his father-in-law. Clearly he wanted to talk of the nation-shaking events that seemed at hand. Paris let him yammer on until the final moment when the money case was on the dock. Then he threw an arm around Pau's shoulders. "True, Comrade! We'll remake San Gonzalo. And you're now the key that shall turn that lock for us."
Pau's chest bulged. He saw that his men were about to pick up the final crate. On happy impulse, he suggested, "Wouldn't you like to take a final look, Comrade?"
Actually, Paris knew, Pau was eager for his first look at the mass of fake wealth.
"Of course!" The Law image nodded.
Pau dropped to one knee, quickly opened the crate, shone his light inside, and almost moaned with delight. "It surpasses my dreams! So much money!"
"Beautiful." The word of agreement was formed with a smile. "But time is short, and I must now take my leave."
A handshake and a final word of parting, and Paris was stepping into the launch. Pau watched the craft slide away into the night; then he turned and swaggered down the dock. Right now, he was the biggest man in all San Gonzalo!413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4LLTbgrOrg
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Time: 1:15 A.M.
A vast shadow lay in the depths of the northern coastal waters---a shadow of a vessel of impossible size. The shadow of the now-submerged Haigui. No longer was she a shining black pearl of the sea, as she looked when surfaced. The deepening underwater darkness toned her black hulls to an even deeper black. Killer-whale black. She was lean and had a hungry look. Her superstructure cut through the tons of water surrounding her like a dagger.
Law stood beside the seated sonar man, watching the telescreen. Neither spoke.
Law reviewed the past three hours in his mind.
Following the delivery of the counterfeit money, he had returned Cidd Menendez to La Junares in the motor launch. They had put in at the marina maintained by the few San Gonzalans who could afford membership in a yacht club. There Menendez's car awaited. There Menendez had friends who would say he had spent the evening playing bridge, if a question ever came up.
The launch had readied to cast off when Menendez had come running back onto the canopied pier between the rows of cabin cruisers bobbing in their slips.
"Wait!" Menendez had croaked. "I have a message from my contact still in the government....the same man who reported NATO people in the country. Now they have disappeared, vanished----walked out of the Nacional....
Menendez had stood gasping, and Law had taken time to calm him and send him off to his villa and a stomach pill.
Law had returned to the Haigui at full speed. "Enemy agents have disappeared from the country," he'd advised the captain. "They may well make a run for it tonight to take out a report of whatever they've learned."
The captain had ordered the crew to seal all bulkheads and prepare to dive. The search for the unknown submarine was about to begin. "This time," the captain said grimly, "if the electronic probe pinpoints a craft on the bottom, we won't dismiss is as the old wreckage of a galleon!"
The crew had snapped to red alert duty. Engines throbbing, hull plates sliding back to clear her armaments, the Haigui descended beneath the waves, flexing her muscles and baring her teeth.
She had swept the sea from La Junarez northward. She was surging now with the distant Andes mountains off her port bow, mountains whose breaks and folds shaped the ragged series of small bays, lagoons, and bayous. Among these were Carcayos, Bahia La Junares, and Lago Machabu....413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkfGlkkXnQs
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Time: 1:21 A.M.
Jim Phelps was the last to leave the launch. He held the craft against the Seaview with a boathook while Willy, Paris, Molly, and Barney, stepped across onto the deck and disappeared into the conning tower.
With the prow of the empty craft aimed at the inner shore, Jim crawled out until he was barely hanging onto the deck. By stretching an inch more, he could reach the launch's controls with the tip of the boathook. In a way, he hated to see the craft go. During the brief hours since Willy and Barney had bought her in Chiguanada, Jim had grown fond of the boat. She had played the role of stand-in for the Haigui's launch quite well. Maybe they could arrange an anonymous letter to President Rodriguez, advising him that a sound, seaworthy launch had beached herself and awaited salvage by a San Gonzalan who could put her to honest labor.
With the wavering, unsecure wooden shaft, Jim found the throttle. He pressed. The out-of-gear engine began to snarl. He lowered the shaft, feeling for the gear lever. He slammed it into place, and the launch leaped away with a fantail spray that washed the Seaview's deck and drenched Jim.
He listened to the launch run the lake to the south strip of sandy beach. She slithered up, grinding over sand until it was halfway down her keel. Then an obstruction caught her prop, and the engine stopped so suddenly that the cessation of reverberating sound was like a crash.
Jim got up and eeled down through the hatch, closing it behind him. He found a scene of cool activity below.
Nelson and Crane both exhaled with relief. Crane stepped to the microphone by the command station. He switched it to all compartments.
"This is Captain Crane," he said. "Repeat: This is Captain Crane. Mr. Phelps and his people are back aboard Seaview and we will get under way in a few minutes. All Watch No. 2 crewmen assume duties," said Crane. "Report when ready."
One by one the crewmen assumed their at the various compartments and stations quietly and reported in sequence to Crane. "Reactor room is ready, sir! "Diving station one manned and ready, sir!" "Diving planes 1 and 2 ready, sir! "Ballast control panel manned and ready, sir!"
And there was also Willy and Tracey. The two of them entered the airlock and began stuffing an assortment of items into it: a kapok pillow, sweater, slacks, a piece of wooden shelving Nelson had ripped from a wall, a nearly empty plastic milk container which was capped with air inside. As Willy dogged the door shut upon being the last to leave, Nelson set the atmosphere controls to build up a mixture of helium and oxygen at a pressure of nearly 25 times the normal atmospheric pressure. This would equalize the enormous pressure of the water that would be outside the sub.
"If it won't float it won't help," Nelson said.
Back in the control room, Jim turned and went forward, squeezing past the sonar operator to stand beside Crane. "Can we give them an oil slick?" he asked.
"We're a nuclear submarine," Crane said calmly. "We can blow an entire barrel and not miss any of it."
Having said that, Crane then turned the command over to Lt. Mason. "Make way out of Lago Machabu and flee the Haigui at maximum speed."
The submarine began to move under the sure guidance of Curley's hands. Jim, Paris, Barney, and Nelson went back to the upper deck and sat down by the great bow ports of the observation room. They watched as the black-green water washed across the transparent Herculite windows. Other than that, nothing--without the beam of the powerful spotlight mounted in the prow.
"We're under way," Paris remarked.
No one in the observation room felt like speaking.413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKEx8ynsU2J
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Time: 1:30 A.M.
The Haigui's captain stepped into the bridge captain, turned on the sail camera, and studied the underwater world outside.
It was an unbroken expanse melting into the blackness of the deep. If there was another sub, she had to either be cruising on the surface, or hiding out in one of those inlets in the portside distances. The periscope sweep had been as thorough as the sonar probe of the depths.
The captain nibbled thoughtfully at his lip. He shared Law's certainty that there was another sub. The difference, which he hadn't voiced, was that he wasn't so sure they would find a sub. Only the man who has made it his life knows the size of the sea. It won't be like picking an apple from a tree, the captain thought.
Still, he wholeheartedly agreed with Law's deductions and assessment of all the odds. If a man was looking for an apple, he first went to the orchard, then sought the tree. Those waters, by their very nature, were surely the orchard....
The intercom interrupted the captain's thoughts.
"We've got her!" Law said.
The captain caught his breath. "Location?"
"She's making for the open sea out of Lago Machabu." Law's voice crackled out of the loudspeaker. "Range is less than eight thousand yards."
"Hard left rudder," the captain said to the helmsman. Then he cut his eyes to the first officer, who stood a little farther away. "Sound general quarters!"
As the massive bulk of the Haigui scythed the waters around her in a fast turn to port, the captain moved to a chart table. His finger quickly traced the mapped shoreline, stabbed motionless. Lago Machabu. Shaped like a wide-mouthed bottle. Zongxian was right, the captain thought. They'll never get out. We'll drive the stopper in tight!413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq6ADdleUsn
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Time: 1:39 A.M.
Nelson, Crane, and Jim had the sensation that the first torpedo wasn't blowing up the Seaview; instead, surely, the craft was being hurled bodily out of the water. The submarine began to shake with a furious vibration that penetrated every plate and girder. It tore wildly at the whole ship. A short circuit flare at an electronics panel was suddenly blinding. Everybody was thrown to the floor!
As suddenly as it had begun, the terrible vibration ceased. Crane leaped to his feet and switched the intercom to general alarm. "Emergency check!" he commanded. "Reactor first, then all systems!"
Inch by inch the vessel would be combed for any damage to its structure or machinery.
"Full rudder left!" ordered Crane. They had already turned and fled back into Lago Machabu the instant the detector operator picked up the Haigui 's charging approach. Now, the Seaview, pitching from the first attack, was headed straight for the submerged depths of the stone cliff that walled the north side of the lagoon.
"I think this has to be your decision, Harry," said Jim.
"Lee's the skipper," said Nelson. "But if you ask for my vote, I say let's do it."
Crane nodded. "There isn't any other answer. Mr. Halpert, release the oil slick. And Jim, you can tell Willy to go ahead and blow all the flotsam out of the airlock."
But even as Willy worked feverishly in the airlock compartment aft of the control room, the Seaview was battered by another thunderous explosion that rammed through the sea and smashed against the steel hull. The submarine heeled over, spilling its passengers and crew against the hull and bulkheads and throwing them into control panels. Here and there lights died.
Slowly the great ship righted itself. The officers and men at all stations scrambled to their feet and sought their operating posts. An emergency battery-powered light flashed on automatically. Crane reached the intercom. "All stations report!"
Water was coming in an aft storage compartment. It had already been sealed off by a watertight bulkhead door. Engines and controls had withstood the shock except for minor external damage to knobs and levers where the crewmen were thrown against them.
The bow planesman hesitated, checked his controls once more. "Bow plane damaged by shock wave. Port side."
The Seaview continued its tight turn. Now it headed away from the Haigui at flank speed.
It was now Willy's turn to report. "Flotsam released," he said.
"Oil slick released," Halpert called out from another corner of the control room.
"Harry?" Jim asked Nelson, "Can we take another....?"
Curley's voice called out from the helm. "Steady as she goes!" he said. "The underwater entrance to the grotto is our depth, straight ahead---if that short circuit didn't blind our electronic eye....steady....easy...."
Crane snatched up a microphone. "Reactor room, cut power back to 1/3!" he ordered.
Barney, who'd been present on the bridge during the two torpedo shots, rushed to the sonar board to look at the readings. The ship was in the grotto all right. The walls were more than a half mile away on either side.
"I think it's safe to surface now," said Barney. "Yep. We're inside! Where I was exploring three years ago....."
Jim and Nelson looked up, listening to water pouring off the top of the hull. Jim's mouth curled in a slow grin. They were no longer encased wholly in water, which provided the killing effect of torpedoes. He heard two more distant boomings. Their net effect was a few wavelets that finally reached the huge grotto where the Seaview bobbed inside the porous, volcanic mountain, a billion-ton shield of rock!
The IMF team and Seaview crew listened and waited. Finally, the sonarman, Mr. Roberts, said, "Enemy sub has spotted the flotsam and oil slick. He thinks he's got us." Roberts pressed his headphones a little tighter against his ears. "He's sure of it now. He's going away---no doubt with a great big smile."
"But only for the nonce." Paris flung a hand in Shakespearean gesture. "Comrade Law won't be smiling tomorrow. The sonic echoes of his torpedoes have triggered the devices our esteemed companions, the lovely Molly and the shrewd Barney, planted in every one of those cases of counterfeit money so dastardly sent forth on a mission most evil. The liquid is now pouring from the containers, reacting with the cellulose in the paper of the fake money. By the time those crates are opened, they'll contain only a worthless, nose-holding stench and nothing else!"413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaZ4fIpuY0r
"Which should finish it for Menendez," Molly said. "He can't muster another try. He, Angela, and Pau will just have to learn to live like other people. Rodriguez and San Gonzalo will have a chance---while Law Zongxian pecks away in a Gobi Desert rock pile.
"Don't be too hard on him." Jim grinned. "His sonic booms saved us the trouble of an alternate plan---setting off the booms ourselves with a suspicious explosion somewhere in the hills."
"How about going home?" Willy grumbled.
"I'll order my men to start work on the port side bow plane at once!" said Nelson.413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXMumUfYFZd
And nobody tried to top Willy's suggestion!
413Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9PaHFcOh0W
THE END
