“Overcoats, which in this heat should have tipped me off that they weren’t Singapore security forces. Anyway, you and I were the only two Caucasians in the lobby when they started after us. Everyone else was Asian. I think this attack has been in the works for a while, but it was seeing our white faces that triggered them into executing their plan.”
“Seriously?” Max asked, his voice dripping with doubt.
“Just because there has never been a terrorist attack in Singapore doesn’t mean it isn’t a target. The casino’s brand-new, a shining example of Western decadence. Any jihadi worth his salt would be drooling to blow up the place. We just happened to be there when it happened.”
Hanley still didn’t look convinced.
“How about this,” Juan offered. “If by tonight some group hasn’t laid claim to the attack, we’ll assume we were the targets and we’ll back out of our deal with Croissard, since he was the only person who knew we were going to be at the hotel. Would that satisfy you?”
More emergency vehicles went barreling by, followed by a pair of SUVs painted in jungle camouflage colors.
When Max didn’t say anything, Juan caved. “Fine, I’ll call Croissard and tell him we’re out and that he needs to find someone else to save his daughter.”
Hanley shot him a look. “That is the feeblest attempt at manipulation I’ve ever heard.”
“Is it going to work?”
“Yes, damnit,” Max spat, angry at himself for being so predictable. “If some group claims responsibility, our mission’s still on.” He crossed his arms and stared out the window like a petulant child.
Cabrillo felt no qualms about using his friend’s emotions like this. Hanley had done it to him a million times before. And it wasn’t that either needed to be nudged to do the right thing. It was that they needed to be in total agreement. Their relationship was the foundation on which the Corporation was built, and if they didn’t see eye to eye on nearly everything, the entire team would lose its edge.
Juan had the driver drop them about a quarter mile short of the General Aviation area. Just because Tiny had said everything aboard the plane was all right didn’t mean that the area was secure. The pair approached cautiously, using cars parked along the access road as cover. The cement building, with its row of green-tinted glass windows, looked normal. There was an armed guard out front with a valet, but he’d been there when they had first arrived.
Planes were taking off and landing normally, meaning the airport was still operational. That, coupled with the fact that the uniformed rent-a-cop didn’t look particularly wary, told Cabrillo that the authorities had yet to issue any sort of alert.
They were eyed as they entered the building. Juan’s suit had stopped dripping but was still soaked, and Max’s was scuffed-up from the attack.
“Our taxi hit a fire hydrant,” Juan explained as they passed.
Moments later they were escorted by a pretty Malaysian hostess to their Gulfstream and were entreated to return to Singapore soon.
“What happened to you two?” Tiny asked as they mounted the stairs. Despite the cabin’s ample headroom, Gunderson had to stoop over to keep his flight cap atop his blond head. His shoulders seemed to brush both sides of the fuselage.
“Later,” Cabrillo said. “Get us the hell out of here.”
Tiny ducked back into the cockpit and set about following the Chairman’s order with his copilot. Juan got on the aircraft’s satellite phone and dialed Roland Croissard’s cell. It rang eight times, and he was sure it would go to voice mail when the Swiss financier picked up.
“Mr. Croissard, it’s Juan Cabrillo.” The background din was a symphony of sirens. “What’s happening there?”
“A bombing on the roof of the hotel.” Croissard’s voice was edgy, near panic. “They have evacuated all the guests. It is a good thing, because ten minutes after the first explosion another ripped through part of the casino.”
Juan covered the handset’s microphone and relayed that last bit of information to Max, adding, “See, we were nowhere near the gaming floor. It was a coincidence.”
Max’s perpetual scowl deepened, but he knew the Chairman was right.
“Are you and Smith okay?”
“Oui, oui, we are unharmed. Just a little shaken up, perhaps. Well, at least I am. Nothing seems to bother John.”
“That’s good. I think we are all victims of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Juan had to raise his voice when the Gulfstream’s twin engines began spooling up. “I want to assure you that this will not affect our transaction. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do. And I am most relieved.”
“Let Mr. Smith know that I will be in touch with instructions for how we will pick him up. As I said earlier it will most likely take place in Chittagong, Bangladesh.”
“D’accord. I will tell him.”
Juan cut the connection. He rummaged through a storage locker and found a pair of mechanic’s overalls. They were sized for Tiny Gunderson, but a dry tent was preferable to a well-tailored but wet suit.
They took off a few minutes later, and no sooner had the undercarriage clicked into the fuselage than Tiny’s voice came over the intercom. “Singapore control just shut down all departing aircraft. They’re requesting we return to the airport, but I figure we’ll be beyond their twelve-mile limit before they can do anything about it. Whatever you and Max got into back there, Chairman, it sure has their dander up.”
Hanley and Cabrillo exchanged a look. Max leaned forward to a small refrigerator and pulled out two beers, a Peroni for Juan and a Bud Light for himself. The “Light” was an admission that his personal battle with the bulge was ongoing. “I’d say,” he said, “that we just barely kept our butts out of a Singapore Sling.”
Cabrillo groaned.
EIGHT HOURS LATER, and half an ocean away, Gomez Adams held the Corporation’s MD 520N over the rearmost of the Oregon’s five cargo hatches. The ship was pitching mildly, but there was a freshening breeze off the port quarter. He massaged the controls, matching pitch, yaw, and speed, and set the big chopper onto the deck. As soon as the skids kissed steel, he cut the turbine and announced, “We’re home. And, believe it or not, there might just be a little vapor left in the gas tanks.”
A technician immediately rushed forward to secure the chopper.
The eleven-thousand-ton tramp freighter was at the helicopter’s maximum range off the eastern coast of the Indian subcontinent as she drove through the gentle rollers for her rendezvous in Bangladesh. Far to the west the setting sun painted the undersides of the clouds in hues of orange, red, and purple and cast a wavering gilded beam atop the waves.
Nowhere on earth was a sunset as beautiful as those found at sea, Cabrillo thought as he ducked under the chopper’s still-spinning blades. The downdraft made his oversized jumpsuit snap and whip like it was attacking him.
Max grinned at him when the collar slapped Juan across the face.
“Welcome back, boys,” Linda Ross said as she stepped forward to greet them. She wore a pair of cutoff shorts and a tank top. “You have a knack for finding trouble, don’t you?”
Hanley pointed a thumb at Juan. “Blame him. The guy attracts nothing but suicide bombers, terrorists, and madmen.”
“Don’t forget loose women. What’s the latest on the bombings?”
“Some new group called al-Qaeda of the East has claimed responsibility for the attack. No dead and only five slight injuries. The two blasts on the roof were standard vests packed with Semtex and scrap metal. You know, couture for killers. The explosion in the casino was much smaller. No word yet on what it was, or at least it’s not being reported. Mark and Eric think they can hack into the Singapore police mainframe, but they didn’t sound too certain.”
“Tell them not to bother,” Cabrillo said. “My guess is the primary bombers’ handler tossed a grenade in a trash can to cause more chaos. I’d hate to think of the death toll had Max and I not been there.”
> “Amen,” Hanley said, and ambled off to give Adams and his mechanics their orders.
Off along the starboard rail, a crewman had opened the lid of what had started out as a regular fifty-five-gallon steel barrel. It was as dented and neglected as everything else aboard the Oregon. Rather than just some bit of nautical junk left to litter the deck, the barrel was a carefully positioned redoubt for a remotely operated M60 machine gun. The technician from the armory had the lid open, and the gun raised and pivoted to the horizontal position while he cleaned it and checked for any signs of salt-air corrosion. This was one of several identical weapons placed around the main deck’s perimeter that were used primarily to repel boarders.
“Why there?” Linda wondered aloud as she and the Chairman walked to the towering amidships superstructure. Its white paint was faded to the color of curdled cream and was flaking off the ship like she was some prehistoric reptile shedding her skin.
Because there were no other vessels within visual range, they hadn’t bothered pumping ersatz smoke though the ship’s single funnel. Unlike any other watercraft plying the oceans today, the Oregon relied on magnetohydrodynamics. The high-tech system used supercooled magnets to strip free electrons from the briny water. This free electricity was then used to force water through two pump jets. Eventually such propulsion would become standard on all shipping since it was environmentally sound, but the staggering cost and still-experimental state of development made the Oregon the only vessel afloat to use it.
“The casino’s owned by an American company, and, according to the tenets of Islam, gambling, or maisir, is forbidden,” Cabrillo replied. “That place is the church of all things unholy. Anything on the bombers themselves?”
“Just what was captured on the hotel’s surveillance cameras when they were in the lobby and elevator. They were either Malay or Indonesian. No IDs were found. And it’ll take days to do a DNA search, and most likely these guys aren’t on any databases. Their pictures might match with something, but nada for now.”
“It’s early,” Juan remarked.
They stepped over the coaming of a watertight door and into the superstructure. The lighting was fluorescents bolted to the ceiling, and the hallways were painted steel. When there was no prospect of outsiders entering the ship, the air was kept comfortable, but it could be changed at a moment’s notice. In cold climes, if an inspector or customs agent was aboard, they cranked up the big Trane air conditioners, or in the tropics they would pump in additional heat just to make the interlopers want off the ship as fast as possible. Also, the lighting could be set to flickering at microburst frequencies designed to interfere with neural activity. For some it brought a mild headache and a little nausea. It could send an epileptic into a seizure.
That had happened only once, fortunately, and Doc Huxley was there in moments.
Since an incident involving Somali pirates a few months back hadn’t gone as planned, Max had installed injectors that could flood the entire superstructure, or individual rooms, with carbon monoxide, again under the watchful eye of Julia Huxley. The odorless and colorless gas induced drowsiness and lethargy at first, but prolonged exposure would bring brain damage and death. Because individuals react differently depending on their size and physical condition, Cabrillo considered this to be a last-ditch option.
They stepped into a little-used janitor’s closet, and Linda twisted the taps of a slop sink like she was working the dials of a safe. The water that splashed from the faucet was rusty brown and somehow lumpy.
No detail was too minor.
A secret door clicked open to reveal the opulent core of the Oregon, the spaces where the men and women who manned her spent most of their time.
They went one deck lower to where most of the crew’s cabins were located, and Juan paused outside the door of his own suite. Linda made to follow him in and continue the briefing.
“Sorry,” he said, “but I need a shower and to get out of these clothes. I look like a Star Wars action figure dressed in an old G.I. Joe doll’s outfit.”
“I wasn’t going to mention your need for a new tailor,” she grinned saucily. “You look like I did wearing one of my dad’s shirts as an art-class smock when I was a little girl.”
“We hired Tiny for his flying ability, not his uniformity of size.” He turned away, then stopped. “One more thing. Go down to the boat garage and tell them we need to strip one of the RHIBs of every ounce of weight they can think of. That includes pulling one of her outboards and centering the other. Max has Gomez Adams and his team doing the same thing to the whirlybird.”
An RHIB was one of the two Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boats the Oregon carried, one in a starboard-mounted chamber where it could be launched into the sea and another in storage in a forward hold as a backup.
Linda didn’t point out the obviousness of Cabrillo’s plan. Once they choppered into Myanmar, the only real way around the interior was by boat. “Aye, Chairman. Enjoy your shower.” Linda sauntered off.
The Chairman’s cabin was decorated like it had been the stage for the film Casablanca, with all sorts of archways, finely carved wooden screens, and enough potted palms to seed an oasis. The tile floor was laid over a rubber membrane so the ship’s vibration wouldn’t crack it.
Before he saw to his own needs, and inspired by the gun crew up on deck, he retrieved the Kel-Tec pistol from his overalls’ pocket and set it on the blotter on his desk next to what looked like an old Bakelite phone but was actually part of the Oregon’s sophisticated communications array. Behind his desk was a gun safe. He opened the heavy door, ignoring the assortment of arms and the bundles of currency and gold coins stored within. Instead, he retrieved a gun-cleaning kit. He knew the little automatic’s chamber was clear, but he jacked the slide several times, once he’d pulled out the empty magazine. After carefully scouring the barrel and chamber, he wiped all the parts with gun oil. He loaded fresh .380 ammunition into the magazine. He would have chambered a final round, but he wanted the armorers and Kevin Nixon down in the Magic Shop to give his artificial leg a going-over after its dunking, so he just put the pistol into his desk drawer.
An unchambered bullet wasn’t a danger until someone touched the gun.
He fought his way out of the XXL-sized jumpsuit, pulled off the prosthetic leg, and hopped easily into his luxurious bathroom. It had a copper tub big enough for elephants to laze away an afternoon in, but it was rarely used. Instead, he got into the shower, adjusting the heat and the multiple heads until his body was being pummeled by tsunamis of water just a few degrees cooler than scalding.
He dressed casually in lightweight khakis and a rich purple polo shirt, his feet shod in soft leather moccasins without socks. Unlike his combat leg, the prosthesis he had on now was a virtual twin of his flesh-and-bone limb.
His cabin was the closest to the Op Center, the electronic nerve center of the freighter. It was from this room, as high-tech as the bridge of a science-fiction starship, that all the Oregon’s weapons, defensive systems, damage control, helm, and propulsion were controlled. The semicircular room, dominated by a massive flat-panel display and kept dimly lit, had a helmsman and fire-control officer sitting toward the front, with duty stations for communications, radar and sonar, and a dozen others ringing it. The watchkeeper sat at the middle of the space in a single chair with its own monitor and controls that could supersede all others. Mark and Eric had dubbed it the “Kirk Chair” the first time they had seen it, which secretly pleased Cabrillo since that had been his inspiration when he’d designed the space.
Eddie Seng had the conn but leapt to his feet when Juan entered the Op Center.
“As you were, Mr. Seng.” On the split screen were feeds from multiple cameras mounted at strategic locations around the ship. “Anything to report?”
“We’re all alone out here, so I’ve got her humming along at forty knots.”
“Any word from young Mr. Lawless?”
“He’s still in Kabul but will make our p
ickup in Bangladesh.”
“Get word to him that he’ll be choppering out to the ship with another passenger, and that discretion is the better part of valor. A loose lip could sink this ship, and all that.”
“Who’s the other passenger?” Eddie asked.
“A corporate minder named John Smith,” Juan said. “Ex-Legionnaire. He’s Croissard’s muscle, and Croissard’s insisting that he come with us.”
“And I take it by your tone you’re none too happy about it.”
“Truer words have never been spoken, but we don’t have much choice in the matter.” Cabrillo didn’t like variables he couldn’t control, and Smith was definitely one of them.
MacD Lawless was another. He wasn’t sure if this would be the right first mission for him, not with Smith along and Lawless’s abilities still unevaluated. He’d have to think it over further. By now his research team of Mark Murphy and Eric Stone should have all the details of the man’s military career and the circumstances of his capture in Afghanistan. He’d read through it after dinner and then decide if Lawless would be on the mission with the Corporation rescuing Soleil Croissard.
The Oregon’s dining room had the hushed sophistication of an English gentlemen’s club from a bygone era. It was all polished brass and dark woods. The furniture was heavy with subtly patterned fabrics, and the carpet was muted and plush. All that was missing were some stuffed animal heads on the wall and a couple old men smoking cigars and regaling each other with tales of safaris and imperial wars.
Juan caught a break from having to read Lawless’s dossier because Murph and Stony were sitting at one of the tables.
Eric Stone was a Navy vet but hadn’t been a fighting sailor. Like Mark, who’d been with a Defense contractor before joining the Corporation, Stone was a technology guy. It was only after he’d come aboard that his innate sense of ship handling came to light. After Juan himself, Eric Stone was the best helmsman on the Oregon . Stone, a shy man by nature, retained a little of the deportment he’d learned in the Navy. He still tucked in his shirts, and his hair was always in place.