Clive Cussler Condor's Fury (The NUMA Files, Band 20) - Softcover

Brown, Graham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593716736 ISBN 13: 9780593716731

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Kurt Austin faces mind-control technology and cutting-edge weaponry in the latest novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series created by the “grand master of adventure” Clive Cussler.

    On a NUMA training mission in the Caribbean, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala catch a distress call from a nearby freighter. Leaping into action, they locate a damaged vessel and a dead captain clutching a shotgun.
    While searching the freighter for clues, Kurt and Joe are ambushed by crew members who seem terrified and disoriented, almost brainwashed. The trawler they were hauling has vanished, taken—the men say—by baffling lights that circled the ship.
    Kurt and Joe deduce that the men are suffering from Havana Syndrome, which deepens the mystery and raises the stakes. Soon, they’re confronting Cuban mercenaries who plan to use magnificent modern airships to hijack a nuclear submarine—culminating in a life-or-death showdown in the skies.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Clive Cussler was the author of more than eighty books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt®, NUMA Files®, Oregon Files®, Isaac Bell®, and Sam and Remi Fargo®. His life nearly paralleled that of his hero Dirk Pitt. Whether searching for lost aircraft or leading expeditions to find famous shipwrecks, he and his NUMA crew of volunteers discovered and surveyed more than seventy-five lost ships of historic significance, including the long-lost Civil War submarine Hunley, which was raised in 2000 with much publicity. Like Pitt, Cussler collected classic automobiles. His collection featured more than one hundred examples of custom coachwork. Cussler passed away in February 2020.

Graham Brown is the author of Black Rain, Black Sun, and Clive Cussler's Dark Vector, and the coauthor with Cussler of Devil's Gate, The Storm, Zero Hour, Ghost Ship, The Pharaoh's Secret, Nighthawk, The Rising Sea, Sea of Greed, Journey of the Pharaohs, and Fast Ice. He is a pilot and an attorney.

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Chpater 1
 
A hundred miles northeast of Nassau
Present day

Captain E. F. Handley stood on the bridge wing of the MV Heron, squinting into the distance behind the ship. His dark eyes focused on the line running from the Heron's stern to the dilapidated fishing trawler she was towing.

He grunted a note of displeasure. "We've got a situation brewing."

Handley was a lifelong sailor in his early sixties and the captain of the midsized freighter that made runs between the Bahamas and various American ports. His face was a weathered mix of sun-damaged skin and a bristly beard. It was deeply tanned with a hint of carmine red in the palette. His hair was wild and unruly, a nest of coarse grays that stuck out from beneath an old ball cap, which he repeatedly removed and repositioned in hopes of corralling the bushy mess.

"What kind of situation?" a taller, more kempt individual asked.

Handley looked over at the man in khaki pants and a blue windbreaker. Gerald Walker was not a member of the crew but had chartered the voyage and come along to supervise, taking them to a random spot in the eastern Atlantic, where they'd found the damaged trawler and taken it under tow.

Walker claimed he wanted to take it back to Nassau, but he would allow no radio calls or other forms of transmission, and Handley expected he had another destination in mind.

As a pretense, Walker pretended to work for a big insurance company, but Handley knew an American Navy man when he met one. Walker was too squared away to be a civilian. Too tight-lipped to be telling the whole story. Besides, the trawler was of negligible financial value, cheaper to sink than to save. And then, of course, there were the bodies...

"See our towline?" Handley said. "It should be dipping into the water halfway between us and the trawler, but it's pulling up. The sag has gone out of it. The strain on the line is growing."

"Current or wind?" Walker asked, showing he knew a thing or two about towing a derelict.

"Neither," Handley said. "She's taking on water. She's sinking. We're gonna have to go back on board, set up pumps, and see if we can find the leak."

"I can't allow that," Walker said with a firm but polite tone.

The captain propped the ball cap higher on his head. "Something you don't want us to see on that ship, Mr. Walker? Something other than a bunch of dead Chinamen?"

"Dead Chinese," Walker corrected. "And I don't know what you're referring to. That ship was abandoned when we found it."

Handley laughed. "You play all the games you want, Mr. Walker. Meanwhile, that ship is getting heavier and lower in the water. She's dragging us like an anchor, which means we have to slow down or the line will snap. Reducing speed means Nassau is another half a day's sailing. The slower we go, the longer it takes. The longer it takes, the more water that trawler takes on. Forcing us to slow down even more. See where I'm going with this?"

Walker understood the predicament. "You're saying the trawler will be on the bottom before we reach the Bahamas."

"She'll be un-towable long before that."

As Walker pondered the options, Handley took another look behind them. Out beyond the trawler, something new caught his eye. An odd arc of light had appeared in the sky. It looked like the sunrise, but it was nearly dusk, and the sun was going down in the other direction.

At first, he thought it must be a reflection or a mirage. But the shimmering arc of light was moving closer. "What the devil is that?"

The apparition seemed to be approaching in silence-or perhaps just so quietly that any sound was drowned out by the wind and the waves-but as it crossed above the trawler, a humming sound became audible.

An instant later, the arc of light split into four separate orbs. Two of them branched off to the port side, while the others went to starboard. Before long they were circling the Heron like a pack of wolves.

"Captain?" one of the crewmen said nervously.

"What is this?" Handley snapped, looking at Walker. "A message from your dead Chinese friends?"

Walker was turning from point to point, trying to keep his eyes on the slowly circling balls of light. They were growing brighter with each pass, leaving streaks on his retina as they flared into spheres of gold and orange.

Walker used his hand as a shield against the light, trying desperately to block the glare. Try as he might, he saw nothing that suggested machinery or equipment behind the light. No wings, nor propellers or rotors, just glowing balls of light slowly circling the ship.

Watching them turn, his heart began to race. He knew things. Things that Captain Handley and his crew didn't. This knowledge chilled him to the bone.

The humming noise grew louder and deeper, becoming a haunting tone, like some aboriginal instrument echoing through the canyons. Walker found his skin itching and throat going dry. He stepped back against the bulkhead, his face now shaded, but lit in oscillating waves from the artificial suns dancing around them.

He scratched at his arm, casually at first and then uncontrollably, soon he was digging his nails into the skin, raking them until he drew blood. His eyes darted around, following the globes. Across and back, across and back. It was dizzying and mesmerizing all at once.
 
A pair of rough hands slammed him into the bulkhead, snapping him out of the trance.
 
"What the hell are these things?" Handley demanded.

Walker tried to answer but a shield had gone up in his mind. He tried to force the words through, but the harder he pushed, the tighter his throat cinched.
 
Realizing Walker had become useless, Handley shoved him aside. He ducked through the hatch onto the bridge, noticing that the lights overhead were throbbing in concert with each passing disk.
 
A migraine erupted in his head. A tight feeling spread across his chest. "Get off a distress call," he ordered. "Tell them we're under attack."

One of the crewmen was already fiddling with the radio, switching frequencies and trying to get a message out. He was getting feedback and interference on every channel. The noise got worse until a high-pitched squeal and burst of static blew out the speaker and the unit went dark.

The radioman stared at the ruined unit, which was mounted overhead. The microphone slipped out of his hand and dropped, swinging wildly on the looped cord that connected it to the transmitter.

Several lights blew out in sharp pops, like the flashbulbs of older days. The helmsman went still, his face catatonic, his eyes staring into the distance.

Handley pushed past his immobilized crewmen and pulled open a locker. As the door swung wide, his chest tightened again-much like it had during a heart attack he'd suffered three years earlier.

A damned bad time to be having a second one, he thought.

He pushed his thumb into his sternum to fight the pain while reaching into the locker. The first thing he grabbed was an emergency VHF radio. After lifting a plastic shield from its face, he pressed and held the distress button.
 
A tone confirmed he was transmitting. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," he said loudly. "This is the MV Heron out of Nassau. We're under attack and request immediate assistance."

He let go of the transmit button and heard only a loud electronic squeal.

He turned the squelch down and tried again. "I repeat, this is MV Heron, we're under attack. Our location is-"

A wave of feedback erupted from the speaker as the unit flared hot in his hand. The little LEDs that told him it was generating power. It blazed for an instant and then went dark.

"Damned useless thing."

Handley tossed the radio aside and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593716736
• ISBN 13: 9780593716731
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland