Marauder

One

 

Strait of Malacca

 

Captain Omar Rahal tracked the small boat racing across the placid waters of the narrow strait. It was approaching his California-bound oil tanker from dead ahead, and far too quickly to be a fishing boat. He'd tried to raise them on the radio, but there was no response. It meant only one thing.

 

Pirates.

 

Using his binoculars, he could see that the boat was full of men armed with guns, but there was nothing he could do to avoid them. The Dahar was more than 300 meters long, and the strait between Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra was barely three kilometers across at its narrowest point. The ponderous ship would be impossible to turn around, and the speedboat would easily outmaneuver any attempt to ram it.

 

"Increase to full speed," he nevertheless told the executive officer. "We're not going to make the Dahar an easy target." Such high velocity for a ship as big as theirs was risky in these tight confines, even with calm seas, but he couldn't let them hijack his ship without doing something.

 

As the XO ordered full power, Rahal activated the shipwide intercom. "Now hear this, men. We have hostiles off our bow. They are armed and mean to board us. Initiate emergency lockdowns and go to your action stations. Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to fight them." He didn't want any crew members to die on his watch.

 

The boat passed behind the bow of the Dahar so that Rahal could no longer see it. He went to the port bridge wing so he could watch for it over the side of the ship.

 

They came back into view, and he could now make out seven men clad in T-shirts and armed with automatic rifles. There had to be an eighth driving, hidden by the roof of the tiny wheelhouse. The boat circled around so it could match the tanker's speed. Rahal spied a man

Clive Cussler was the author of more than seventy 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 Confederate 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. Boyd Morrison is the coauthor with Cussler of the Oregon Files novels Piranha, The Emperor's Revenge, Typhoon Fury, Shadow Tyrants, and Final Option, and the author of six other books. He is also an actor and engineer, with a doctorate in engineering from Virginia Tech, who has worked on NASA's space station project at Johnson Space Center and developed several patents at Thomson/RCA. In 2003, he fulfilled a lifelong dream by becoming a Jeopardy! Champion. He lives in Seattle.

"Suspenseful...Readers will race through the pages to see what happens next."--Publishers Weekly

"Enough action and suspense here to keep adventure fans turning the pages...A solid entry in a reliable action series."--Booklist

"The late Clive Cussler and bestselling author Boyd Morrison are back together one more time in this latest Oregon Files thriller...Marauder is everything you would want from this writing team, and the action never slows down."--Bookreporter.com