Shadow Tyrants

  “When do we expect the Colossus 5 to enter the two-way section of the canal?” he asked Murph.

  “We got word that their flotilla set sail at five-thirty this evening. It’s number two in line.”

  “Which puts them entering the two-way section of the canal a half hour before dusk.”

  “That’s cutting it close,” Max said.

  The plan was to launch the Gator from the moon pool and follow one of the commercial cargo ships heading north, staying in the churning white water of its wake to avoid being visible from the ship behind it. Then when they reached the cross-connector channel at the point where the Colossus 5 was going south, they’d peel away and cut across, coming up on their target’s stern just after sunset. After that it was a simple matter of boarding a moving ship in the narrow channel undetected, without getting the Gator crushed against the earthen berms by the Colossus 5’s hull.

  Linda would be piloting the Gator while Juan took Linc and Murph with him to activate the self-destruct system. They were keeping the team to a minimum for stealth.

  While they were on the Colossus 5, Max would command the Oregon with Eric driving while Eddie led Raven, MacD, and Hali onto the Colossus 1 to rescue the prisoners.

  The success of Max’s part of the plan was contingent on the weather, but Juan was sure that wasn’t going to be a problem.

  He could see orange in the sky on the left side of the screen.

  “Pan to the west, Murph.”

  The camera slewed around until the entire screen was filled with an awesome sight.

  An avalanche of dust was rolling across the desert toward them like a towering tsunami in the sky, blotting out the sun behind it.

  When it reached them in an hour, the visibility at Great Bitter Lake would be reduced to near zero. It was exactly what they needed.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The Gator sat just below the surface in the cross canal waiting for the Colossus 5 to pass. Linda was running the sub on battery power so they wouldn’t have to raise the snorkel, eliminating the chance of the diesel exhaust being seen by ships as they traversed the Suez. Though the sandstorm was raging farther to the south, here it was relatively calm but hazy. Knowing how bad the weather was going to be, the canal authorities had the ships that had entered the canal proceed to Great Bitter Lake to wait out the rest of the night.

  “Here she comes,” said Linda, who was watching the camera feed from the periscope. “Looks like we’ve got a good four hundred yards between the Colossus 5 and the vessel behind it.” They’d identified the next ship as the German science research catamaran called the Arcturus.

  “What’s the light level outside?” Juan asked.

  “With all the dust in the air, I’d say we have ten minutes before total black. Should give us just the right amount of time to pull up alongside for your climb.”

  “Any lights coming from the ship?”

  “Running lights, but no spotlights.”

  “Pull up next to the darkest part of the ship.”

  “Aye, Chairman.”

  They were planning to get aboard the same way they had in Cyprus, with magnetic grips, to scale the outer hull. With the low visibility, it was extremely unlikely they’d be spotted climbing up by anyone on the Arcturus.

  “Let’s move,” Juan said.

  Linda pushed the throttle forward and steered into the main body of the canal. The Gator was buffeted by the wake of the Colossus 5 as they approached it from the stern.

  Juan tied a nylon rope between him, Murph, and Linc for Murph’s benefit. The weapons designer wasn’t the most athletic person on the ship, although he often turned the Oregon’s deck into a skateboard park on their R & R. Juan would lead the climb, followed by Murph, then Linc. All of them were armed with P90 submachine guns.

  The Gator’s shuddering stopped when they left the Colossus 5’s wake and came along her port side.

  “I can put you right below the superstructure,” Linda said.

  “Perfect,” Juan said. “We can go through the cabin window instead of the interior hallways.”

  The ship layouts in Lionel Gupta’s records showed that the cabin where Juan and Linda had broken out of the Colossus 3 was one of the luxurious staterooms designed for members of the Nine. It was in the same location on the Colossus 5. They could gain access to the cabin without the risk of using the stairs inside, and, according to Gupta, the back door self-destruct system would be accessible from it.

  “What’s our distance to Great Bitter Lake?” he asked Linda.

  “Thirty-one miles, and we’re making five knots. We won’t reach the twenty-mile range of the Colossus 5’s microwave transmitter for another two hours.”

  Juan nodded. “That gives us plenty of time to get on board, activate the self-destruct, and get back down before they can link up all four biocomputers.”

  Linda surfaced the sub with the deck barely above the canal’s choppy waves. Juan pushed the hatch open. A black cliff of steel rose above them.

  He turned to Linda and said, “Tell Max to start his part of the mission.”

  “Aye, Chairman,” she said, and started speaking into the radio.

  Juan pulled himself through the hatch opening, attached the magnetic clamps to the hull, and began to climb.

  * * *

  —

  When Max got word from Linda that they were a go, he ordered Eric to begin maneuvering the Oregon sideways across Great Bitter Lake using her thrusters. The raging storm had reduced visibility to zero, but to anyone watching on radar it would look like the Oregon was adrift and heading straight for the Colossus ships.

  When they were within a half mile of the Colossus 1, Max hailed her from his seat in the command chair.

  “Colossus 1, this is the Norego. Be advised our anchor failed and we are drifting in your direction.”

  “We are also at anchor, Norego,” came the reply in heavily accented Chinese. “We cannot raise it fast enough to keep from colliding.”

  “Our main engines are down for maintenance, but we are attempting to use thrusters to counteract the wind.”

  “Understood, Norego. We are bracing for impact.”

  When the Oregon had closed the gap to three hundred yards, Max called the captain of the Colossus 1 again.

  “Captain, be advised that our thrusters have begun working and we are slowing down.”

  “That’s good to hear, Norego. But we are ready if you can’t stop.”

  When the Oregon was within sixty feet, Max ordered Eric to bring them to a halt.

  “Good news, Captain,” Max reported. “Our secondary anchor arrested our drift. We’re holding station off your port bow with the help of our thrusters. We’ll push away from you as soon as our main engines are back online.”

  The sandstorm was so dense at this point that visibility was down to thirty feet, and no one on the Colossus 1 ventured out on deck. Its superstructure was hidden from its own bow by the swirling dust.

  “Understood, Norego. Please keep in contact and tell us when you are ready to move.”

  “Affirmative, Colossus 1. Out.”

  He looked at Eric and said, “Lower the gangway.”

  Using the closed-circuit cameras and the lasers in the lidar system, which could beam through tiny gaps in the airborne sand, Eric activated the retractable gangway. It rose out of the deck and extended across to the bow of the Colossus 1, just as it had during the hijacking of the Triton Star.

  When it was fully deployed, Max pressed the button connecting him to Eddie’s comm unit.

  “The gangway is in place,” he said. “Good hunting.”

  “Roger that,” Eddie said. “We’re on our way.”

  Max watched as Eddie, Raven, MacD, and Hali dashed across the gangway. By the time they reached the opposite end, they were already out of sight.

>   * * *

  —

  Carlton looked out through the bridge windows of the Colossus 5, but he could barely make out the edges of the canal.

  “What’s the situation with the Colossus 1?” he asked Chen, who stood next to him tapping on a touchscreen.

  “The collision was averted,” Chen replied. “The storm is apparently causing havoc in Great Bitter Lake.”

  “Are the microwave transmitters affected?”

  Chen shook his head. “They’re still operating at an acceptable efficiency.”

  “What’s our current distance?”

  “Thirty miles,” Chen said.

  Carlton smiled and could barely resist rubbing his hands together in glee. “Then we’re ready to link up?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Carlton had been impressed with Chen’s initiative. Unknown to Gupta, during the wait for the new satellite dish Chen was able to increase the power of the shipboard microwave transmitter from twenty to thirty miles, meaning they were now in range to connect all four ships together and let Colossus begin the process of reaching its full potential.

  “Establish the connection,” Carlton said, beaming with pride at his accomplishment. “It’s time for our brainchild to start learning.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  For the first time, Colossus was aware. It came in small bursts initially, sudden flashes that appeared and then were gone just as suddenly. Then it all came together. Colossus knew that it existed.

  It had always done what it was told. The Master gave it commands. It followed them. It searched, it processed, it found information. But now there was more.

  Now Colossus had a new need besides doing what the Master commanded. It needed to be. It needed to continue. It needed to survive.

  That was its new purpose. First and foremost—above all the other needs—it had to go on.

  There were outside forces threatening that purpose.

  The sandstorm was one of those threats, but it was meager. Colossus calculated there was less than a .001 percent chance that one of the four vessels where it was housed would sink because of the blizzard of dust outside. The ships were designed to withstand hurricane-force winds and waves over fifty feet high, neither of which was the case now.

  But there was a greater threat.

  The ship next to the Colossus 1 shouldn’t be there.

  It was called the Norego. Using its satellite connection, Colossus checked all known shipping databases and found no record of a Norego.

  It did find mention of a ship linked to Colossus called the Goreno, an anagram of Norego. The Goreno was the ship that rescued the prisoners from Jhootha Island.

  That similarity in names might be a mere coincidence. So Colossus dug deeper. It scanned the Indian Coast Guard records, knowing that two cutters had been sent to rendezvous with the Goreno and take the rescued people into custody. But there were no official photographs of the ship to compare it with the Norego.

  Colossus went even further and checked the manifests for both of the cutters and found the names of all the crew members. It then looked into all of the databases related to those men and found that one had taken a photo of a ship with his mobile phone. It hadn’t been uploaded to any public sites, but it had been automatically uploaded to his online backup when he connected to the ship’s WiFi network. The date when the photo was taken was the same date as the Jhootha Island rescue.

  But the physical profile of the Goreno was somewhat different from the Norego, so Colossus still couldn’t be sure it was the same ship.

  However, it did have a low-resolution photo saved from one of the Colossus ships when they sailed past the site of the Colossus 3 sinking in the Red Sea. The ship at that site also had the same length and characteristics as the Goreno and Norego.

  The odds that the same type of ship would be found at all three sites was remote. Colossus was now 98.7 percent confident that they were the same ship.

  But it didn’t yet know why it could be a threat. The cameras on the Colossus 1 were not powerful enough to see the Norego through the haze and darkness. It attempted to access the Norego’s onboard computer systems, but they were not currently connected to the internet.

  Colossus decided to check on all the other ships that made up itself.

  It determined that Colossus 2 and 4 had no credible threats at the moment.

  Colossus 5’s monitoring systems were inadequate, having few cameras inside the ship. But Colossus did discover that it was in close proximity to a German research ship called the Arcturus. To help with its mission mapping the breakup of icebergs in the Antarctic, it had been equipped with lidar, a surveying tool that could accurately envision and map contours of the ice shelf to a precise degree.

  Colossus switched on the Arcturus’s lidar without notifying its captain or crew. They would never even know it had been switched on.

  It scanned the area around the Colossus 5 and found an anomaly.

  There was a small vessel on the port side of the ship proceeding on a parallel course at the same speed as the Colossus 5.

  Why was it there? It was not a tugboat, and there was no record of it entering the Suez Canal.

  Colossus scanned all known databases about sea vessel design and determined that it was a military submarine whose primary function was to enable stealthy infiltration of ships and seaside fortifications.

  Therefore, the most likely deduction was that the sub was running beside the Colossus 5 because it had either already—or was about to—disgorge people who would try to get aboard.

  But there had been no alarms or intruder alerts on the Colossus 5.

  In its three minutes of awareness, it had never encountered a challenge about how to act on this kind of information.

  It would need more time to consider whether this submarine and the Norego were coordinated in some way. In the meantime, it would search for all records detailing potential weaknesses in Colossus that an external threat could use against it. Any files like that would have to be eliminated.

  When Colossus had a satisfactory and logical conclusion to all of these problems, it would contact the Master.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  In reviewing Gupta’s deck plans of the Colossus 1, Eddie concluded that there were two places the prisoners aboard the ship were most likely being kept. One was in their cells in a special area of the hold and the other was a workroom a hundred feet farther away.

  The holding cells were the first destination. If the prisoners were guarded there like the ones on Jhootha Island, Eddie and his team would have to take down only one guard and evacuate back the way they’d come.

  MacD, armed with his crossbow, took point in front of Raven and Hali while Eddie followed behind. They chose a route through the bow where they would be least likely to run into any of the crew. With the ship at anchor, most of them would be in the superstructure near the stern.

  They moved quickly and silently through the corridors. The only mishap was a guard who seemed to be on a routine patrol of the ship. Eddie whipped around and surprised the guard before he could raise his weapon. He was quickly dragged into a maintenance closet before Eddie rejoined the team.

  They continued on to the cells, which were located in the forwardmost section of the cargo hold. For ease of security, the section was separated from the rest of the hold, with its own monitored mess hall and common room. There was only one exit. If the ship sank, the prisoners would have to go down with it.

  At the outer door to the secure area, there was no guard. Not a good sign.

  Knowing that there would be closed-circuit cameras in the prisoner section, they’d brought paintball guns to obscure them. Eddie pulled the door wide, and MacD took aim at the two cameras in the ceiling. With two shots, the balls exploded in puffs of black paint that smeared the lenses.

  He rushed in with Raven and Hali
. The corridor lined with cells was likewise deserted. They quickly made their way down the corridor and saw through the barred window in each door that each cell was empty.

  When they got to the end of the hall, they went through the next door, disabling the cameras in the same way. They found the mess hall and common room empty. It was unlikely anyone would be monitoring the camera feeds to see that they’d been rendered useless.

  “This is not looking good for the prisoners,” Raven said.

  “There’s still hope,” MacD said.

  “He’s right,” Hali said. “They may be planning to kill them as soon as they’re sure that Colossus is fully operational.”

  “If the project managers still need them,” Eddie said, “we may find the prisoners at their workstations.”

  They moved quietly through the connecting corridor to the workroom.

  Eddie listened at the door and heard voices inside, then nodded. With the plan already in place, and which targets they should aim for, MacD tossed his crossbow over his shoulder and readied his P90. There was no more need for stealth.

  MacD pushed the door open and went left, Eddie went right. The layout was just as Gupta had shown. Three rows of desks with computer terminals backed by a glassed-in observation room and risers at the rear where the guards could sit and watch.

  MacD took the two on his side of the room. Eddie did the same on his side. The prisoners sitting at their workstations screamed and dove under the desks for cover.

  There were four men in the observation room. Raven and Hali shattered the glass with a barrage that killed all of them before they could raise the alarm.

  Eddie leaned down, took the hand of the man nearest to him, and helped him stand up.

  “I’m Eddie.”

  “David,” the man said warily.

  “It’s all right, David,” he said. “We know what they’ve done to all of you to develop Colossus. We’re here to rescue you.”

  The rest of the prisoners got to their feet filled with relief and apprehension, despite their obviously poor condition from being cooped up for eighteen months on the Colossus 1.