Piranha by Clive Cussler Page B

that?”
    â€œNeither of us was stupid enough to become a swabbie.”
    They both turned toward Linda, the lone Navy person on the mini-sub, and pointedly stared before laughing heartily. Mike and MacD were the butts of good-natured ribbing on the
Oregon
for being the only two non–Navy vets on the ship, but now she was the one outnumbered.
    She stared back at them stoically but with a twinkle in her eye. “That’s it. I order the both of you to walk the plank.”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” they said in unison, and started donning their black night gear—sweaters, pants, gloves, boots, and hats. The final touch was black greasepaint smeared on their faces.
    While they were preparing for their excursion, Linda engaged the motor and aimed the Discovery directly into the path of the oncoming
Sorocaima
, which was on its way to the North Korean port of Wonsan.
    The tanker held ten million gallons of refined diesel, ready for use by the North Korean Army for almost every vehicle in their arsenal. With fuel embargoed by most other nations and having few refineries of their own, the increasingly belligerent North Koreans depended on regular diesel shipments from Venezuela, whose president was a personal friend of their leader. Without the fuel, the North’s armed forces would grind to a halt.
    The
Oregon
could easily sink a ship of even the
Sorocaima
’s size with the weapons at its disposal, but the mission was more subtle than that. Not only did the Corporation refuse to sink unarmed vessels but there was no shortage of tankers or Venezuelan oil, so at best the shipment would only be delayed. Instead, Linda, MacD, and Mike were going to ruin the fuel on board the tanker, laying waste to a huge swath of vehicles in the North Korean military.
    At the back of Discovery were six thermos-sized canisters, one meant for each hold on the tanker. The canisters were loaded with bacteria developed in secret by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Mutated from a strain of the anaerobic bacteria
clostridium
and dubbed Corrodium by the biologists who created it, the microbe multiplied easily in diesel, contaminating an entire tank once it was introduced. It was colorless and odorless, so the contamination was undetectable without laboratory testing.
    The bacteria changed the composition of the diesel so that it would burn much hotter. When the tainted diesel was ignited in engines, it would cause them to overheat and seize up, resulting in a total loss. With luck, the Corrodium that they had injected into the holds of the
Sorocaima
would go on to infect the entire North Korean supply, rendering it unusable and destroying the engines of any vehicles into which the diesel had been loaded.
    The hard part was getting the Corrodium into the fuel without being detected. If there was any suspicion that the diesel had been tampered with, the
Sorocaima
crew would test it and find out the problem long before it reached Wonsan. Once the North Koreans knew about the potential for bacterial infection, they would have every delivery of diesel tested for it. Linda and her team had to get the mission right the first time because there wouldn’t be a second.
    The delicacy of the operation was also the reason for conducting it simultaneously with the Chairman’s recon mission. If they were done separately and the initial one in the sequence failed, success with the other operation would be in jeopardy.
    Linda’s responsibility on this mission was to keep the mini-sub on-station while MacD and Mike climbed the side of the tanker with the Corrodium and delivered it into the holds using the ship’s own deck piping system.
    But they couldn’t get on the ship while it was moving. Even if they could match the tanker’s speed, maneuvering the Discovery next to it and keeping it stable while MacD and Mike tried to disembark was a recipe for disaster. They had to get the
Sorocaima
to