Battle of the Ampere

  I quietly got up and walked out to the front room. I turned the lights on in the hallway, then the front room. Jaime had opened the door and was carrying in several boxes.

  “I brought some more food,” he said.

  “Is there anything else in the car?”

  “Sí.”

  I walked out to the van and grabbed several large packages of bottled water and brought them back in while Jaime made a second trip, bringing in the rest of the food. I put the water in the refrigerator as Jaime put away the rest of the groceries.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think they’re sleeping.”

  “They went to bed early,” he said.

  I didn’t tell him that we had gone to bed shortly after he’d left. “Did their flight take off okay?”

  He nodded. “Sí.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “They should almost be to Nicaragua by now.”

  As much as I hated seeing them go, I was happy to hear they were out of Peru. “At least they’re safe,” I said.

  “For now,” he said gravely. “For now.” He patted me on the shoulder. “If you think your friends will wake up, I am going to make some dinner. Seco de cordero.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It is a Peruvian specialty. Lamb stew with potatoes. The lamb is cooked in beer until it is tender then seasoned with ají peppers and cilantro.”

  “That sounds good,” I said. “Do you need any help?”

  “Sí. Gracias. You can peel the potatoes.”

  While we were preparing dinner, I turned to Jaime. “I still haven’t spoken to my mother.”

  “We have not had a time to arrange it. I will do my best to contact the voice tonight.”

  When we were ready to eat, I went back to the room and gently woke Taylor. She was as disoriented as I had been.

  “What time is it?” she asked, pulling her hair back from her face.

  “It’s time for dinner,” I said.

  She squinted at me. “Dinner? How long did I sleep?”

  “Most of the day.”

  She pushed herself up. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “We need to get them.”

  We searched the house. We found Jack in the garage working out. He was drenched in sweat and his muscles were pumped, his biceps bulging like grapefruits. His knuckles were red from pounding his homemade punching bag.

  “Time to eat,” I said.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  We found Ostin and McKenna in McKenna’s room. Ostin was holding McKenna while she slept and he put his finger over his lips to silence me.

  “Dinnertime,” I whispered.

  He just waved me off. “I’m not hungry.”

  As we walked out I turned to Taylor. “Did he really just say that?”

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s the power of love.”

  We laughed the whole way to the kitchen.

  *

  The stew was delicious and easily the best meal we’d had since coming to Peru. Halfway through dinner Ostin and McKenna joined us. I’m glad they did. It had been a traumatic day, and it was good to come together.

  Jack was quiet during the meal, and Taylor tried to engage him. “How long have you been working out?”

  “All day,” he replied.

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  He looked at her as if the question hadn’t crossed his mind. Or, more likely, was irrelevant. “I’m preparing.”

  “That is good,” Jaime said. “We must prepare. There is much to do before the Elgen fleet arrives. Tonight I am picking someone up from the airport. We will be here in the morning.”

  “Who are you picking up?”

  “Someone who can help us,” he said.

  “Help us do what?” Taylor asked.

  He looked at us seriously. “Sink the Ampere.”

  I couldn’t believe we were eating real waffles. While we were doing the dishes the day before, Taylor had discovered a waffle iron, and we were all pretty excited about making waffles for breakfast. We didn’t have any pancake syrup, but Ostin knew a trick for making it with brown sugar and vanilla and it tasted pretty much like the real thing. With fresh butter they tasted almost as good as my mother used to make. Or maybe it had just been so long since I’d eaten anything like that, it just seemed that way.

  Jaime arrived as we were cleaning up. He unlocked the door and walked in. “We are here!” he shouted.

  We walked out to see who Jaime had brought home. Standing next to him was a man we’d never seen before. He was tall, at least six inches taller than Jaime, though just as thin. He had messy flaxen hair, a thin face, and a long, beaklike nose, on which rested round, wire-rimmed glasses. We all looked at him curiously.

  “This is Mr. Dodds,” Jaime said. “Mr. Dodds is a naval specialist. And a member of the resistance.”

  “Hello,” he said. “You may call me Bob.” He had an accent that sounded almost British but not quite. “Or Mr. Dodds.”

  “Are you South African?” Ostin asked.

  “You are very astute,” he replied. “You must be Ostin.”

  Ostin looked impressed. “Yes, sir.”

  “May I say, I have very much looked forward to meeting all of you. Like so many others, I have followed your adventures and I am most impressed with your courage and cleverness.”

  “It’s just survival,” I said.

  “Well, I hope to be of service to you,” he said. “And help you survive even longer. I’ve been asked to brief you on the Elgen fleet and help you in your task to sink the Ampere.”

  “Let us talk in the dining room,” Jaime said.

  “Have you had breakfast?” Taylor asked. “We made waffles.”

  “Ah, waffles. Unfortunately we had breakfast at the hotel,” he said. “But thank you very much. May I use this table over here?” He pointed to the kitchen table.

  “We need to wipe it off,” Taylor said. “It’s sticky.”

  I picked up the few plates left on the table, then Taylor ran a damp cloth over it.

  Dodds set his briefcase on the table, then opened it. He took out several folded blueprints and laid them out until they covered the table’s surface. We all gathered around the table.

  “To understand the composition of the Elgen fleet, you must first understand why they even have one. The crimes the Elgen have committed are serious enough to land the entire board in prison for the rest of their lives. They are guilty of money laundering, conspiracy, bribery, fraud, securities fraud, tax evasion, extortion, espionage, and, though still unproven, mass murder.

  “About four years ago, when the FBI began looking into the Elgen’s criminal activities, Chairman Schema purchased a sizable yacht and moved the Elgen operations to international waters.

  “Their first ship was an older-model yacht they renamed the Edison. Now, in international waters and belonging to no nation, the Elgen have become a nation unto themselves. They manage their corporation from the ship and move their money through offshore banks in Switzerland, Bermuda, and Cyprus.

  “As the Elgen grew, they sold the Edison and moved to a custom designed boat called the Ampere. The Ampere is a state-of-the-art luxury superyacht. Think of it as a floating Waldorf hotel with surface-to-air missiles.”

  “McKenna has been on it,” Taylor said.

  She nodded. “It’s pretty amazing.”

  “For a half billion dollars, it should be,” Dodds said. “If you have something to add or if I say anything that you have found inaccurate, please feel free to contribute.”

  McKenna nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Dodds continued. “The Ampere is the first of many ships the Elgen have since acquired. Today, the Elgen fleet consists of seven ships, each named after a famous scientist of electricity. If the Elgen were a country, the Ampere would be their capital. It is the throne from which Admiral Hatch runs his kingdom.”

  “Admiral Hatch?” Ostin s
aid.

  “That is what he now calls himself,” Dodds said. “Actually, his full title is Supreme Commander General Admiral Hatch.” He shook his head. “I’m going to give you a rundown of the complete fleet.” He handed each of us a piece of paper with pictures of seven boats. “This is a list of the Elgen boats. You are to memorize it, then destroy it.”

  I looked at the sheet. It had a picture of each boat accompanied with technical jargon.

  “The first boat on your sheet is the Ampere. We’ll discuss it in greater detail a bit later. The second boat is the Faraday. It is a twenty-thousand-ton refurbished World War Two troopship and, accordingly, is used to transport Elgen guards. It can carry in excess of thirty-five-hundred passengers.

  “Boat three is the Watt, the most powerful of the Elgen fleet. The Watt is a fully operational battle cruiser. Think of it as the fleet’s bodyguard. It is a highly lethal ship, with technology only the most advanced navies carry, including tactical tomahawk cruise missiles, torpedoes, long-range cannons, and advanced targeting systems.

  “A few years ago, while the Ampere was sailing from the Formosa Strait to the Mediterranean, they passed through the pirate-infested waters of Somalia. As happens too often these days, Somalian pirates tried to capture the Ampere, which, frankly, had they succeeded, would have been a blessing to the world.

  “The Watt blew the pirate ship out of the water more than a mile out, then hunted down its survivors and gunned them down in the waters. The Watt is captained by Viktor Chirkev, a former rear admiral in the Russian navy. He is a skilled captain and known to shoot first and ask questions later.

  “Boat four is the Volta, the Elgen’s science ship. It is where Elgen experiments are conducted. It is also where, we believe, the original MEI is being carried.

  “Boat five, the Joule, is the most secretive of the fleet. We do not know much about it except that it is the fastest of the fleet and, if necessary, can submerge. We believe that it’s a floating bank vault and where the Elgen keep billions of dollars of gold bullion, foreign currencies, and diamonds, which would explain why the Joule is almost always in close proximity to the Watt.

  “Boat six is the Ohm. The Ohm is a supply ship and will be the most active during the docking in Port Callao. A floating commissary if you will.

  “Boat seven is the Tesla. The Tesla is a tender, a small landing craft, used for getting troops from the Faraday. As the waters surrounding Tuvalu are too shallow to dock the Faraday, the Tesla will be transporting guards to the shore for the attack. The Tesla can carry seventy guards and crew at a time. Even though it is primarily a transport, it is still armed and dangerous. It is equipped with twin fifty-caliber machine guns and a twenty-millimeter Oerlikon cannon. And, of course, the soldiers’ weaponry.” He looked us over. “That’s the Elgen fleet.”

  “It’s a freakin’ navy,” Ostin said.

  “Fortunately we don’t have to sink the whole navy. Just the Ampere,” Dodds said. “You cut off the serpent’s head, the rest of the serpent dies.” He looked out over the table. “These are blueprints from the ship,” Dodds said. “The Ampere is custom designed with a gross weight of eleven thousand tonnes with a displacement configuration. The ship is powered by a triple-screw, diesel-electric propulsion system with four marine diesel engines. It has a maximum speed of twenty-five knots and a cruising speed of twenty-two.”

  I understood only about half of what Dodds was talking about, but Ostin nodded with interest.

  “How do you know all of this?” I asked.

  Dodds looked at me. “You should know, Michael. You brought us this information.”

  “When did I . . .” I stopped. “Grace,” I said.

  Grace was one of the electric children we had freed from the academy. She had the ability to download information from computers, and she’d taken just about everything from the academy before we got her out.

  Dodds nodded. “She has been a veritable gold mine. We just keep extracting more and more valuable information.

  “So back to our target. The Ampere is one hundred and forty-five meters long and the hull is constructed of steel built over an aluminum superstructure with Kevlar insulation. It has advanced buoyancy system that will keep it afloat even after a hull breech. It is one tough ship.”

  “How do we sink it?” I asked.

  “We don’t,” Dodds said. “We blow it up. The engine room is on the first level, here,” he said, touching the blueprint. “The Ampere’s fuel tanks hold more than a quarter million gallons of diesel fuel. With enough explosives in the engine room we can set off the tanks. If you blow a quarter million gallons of fuel, you’ll blow the entire ship to pieces.”

  We all looked at each other. “How do we get the bomb on the boat?” I asked.

  “There’s the rub,” Dodds said. “There will be guards all along the shore, and the gangplank will be highly guarded day and night.”

  “We could disguise ourselves as Elgen guards and walk on,” Jack said, looking at me.

  “It wouldn’t work,” Dodds said. “They are checking everyone who comes on the boat with metal detectors and fingerprint identification. Even if you got on, you’d never carry the explosives past them.”

  “If they’re loading up with supplies,” Taylor said, “we could sneak into some of the supply boxes and have them carry us on.”

  “Clever,” Dodds said, “but they’re prepared for that too. Their security is like the one you’ll find at an airport, except much more advanced. Everything that enters the ship must pass through a type of backscatter X-ray machine. Remember, these guys developed the MEI. They know how to scan.”

  Jack leaned forward. “We could take a small raft to the back of the boat and throw a grappling hook,” he said. “And climb up.”

  “The deck is more than a hundred feet up,” Dodds said. “You would have to shoot it up. Which means you would need a grapple gun. We can expect that the decks will be patrolled by guards and a grappling hook would be easy to see. You would run a high risk of being discovered and shot before you even climbed to the deck.”

  Dodds was starting to annoy me. “So, you’ve told us why none of our ideas would work. What’s your plan?”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have one,” Dodds said. “The Electroclan has continually succeeded where we have failed. We were hoping you would come up with something.”

  “You said the hull is made of steel?” McKenna asked.

  “Yes,” Dodds replied.

  “We don’t need a grappling hook. Michael could magnetically climb it. The way Kylee does.”

  I looked at her. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “You did in the Starxource plant,” Jack said. “When the rats were chasing us. You could carry the rope up, tie it, then throw it down. Then I’ll climb up, and we’ll pull up everyone else.”

  “It would have to be at night,” Jaime said. “Or else the other boats in the fleet would see you.”

  “That could work,” Dodds said, looking at me. “What do you think? Could you climb it?”

  “I’ll need to practice,” I said. “And my knot tying. I haven’t tied anything since Cub Scouts.”

  “I can arrange both,” Jaime said.

  “The next question is, how do we get around to the back of the boat without being seen?”

  “Scuba,” Ostin said.

  “Scuba?” Taylor said. “What if there are sharks?”

  “Sharks rarely attack humans,” Ostin said. “Besides, there are much worse things than sharks on the Ampere.”

  “Like Hatch,” I said. I looked at Taylor. “I say we keep scuba as one of the options.”

  “If we’re already diving,” Jack said, “why don’t we just put the explosives under the boat and blow it out of the water?”

  “The Ampere has a reinforced hull and is shaped to deflect a hull explosion. Also, the ship’s sonar will detect anything directly under the boat more than four feet in length. They would have divers down after
you in seconds.”

  “If this was a suicide mission, it wouldn’t matter,” Jack said.

  Everyone went quiet.

  I looked at Jack. “But it’s not,” I said.

  Jack just looked ahead with dark eyes. “But it would work.”

  “Not necessarily,” Dodds said. “As I said, the hull is shaped to deflect an explosion. Think of it this way. If you grasp a firecracker in your hand, it will blow up your hand. If you set it flat on your palm, it will hurt but it won’t do much damage. That’s the difference between putting the explosive inside the boat as opposed to outside of it.”

  “Then we’ll get more dynamite,” Jack said.

  “We’re not using dynamite,” Dodds said. “We’ll be using a much more stable water-gel explosive. But either way, one person could not carry enough to sink the Ampere from the outside. In fact, all of you together couldn’t carry enough.”

  “Then we fill a boat with explosives and ram it,” Jack said.

  “That would fall under the whole suicide-mission thing,” I said.

  No one else said a word. Jack’s comment had left everyone speechless. After a moment Dodds said, “Let’s move on. As difficult as boarding will be, it is only the beginning. The Ampere is just as protected on board as it is overboard.

  “The Elgen are exacting about their security. It is rumored that the Ampere has antiphotograph lasers that sweep the boat’s surroundings for cameras. When it detects a CCD, they shine a laser into the camera’s lens to prevent a photograph from being taken.”

  “What’s a CCD?” Taylor asked.

  “It’s a charge-coupled device,” Ostin said. “In a CCD image sensor, pixels are—”

  I stopped him. “It’s something in a camera,” I said.

  “Then how did you get this photograph?” Taylor asked.

  Dodds smiled. “Very carefully.” He looked back down at the blueprint. “In addition, the boat is equipped with a shipwide camera surveillance system, an intruder detection system, armor-plated doors, and bulletproof windows. We aren’t certain how the intruder detection system works, but we suspect that, with all the deck activity during loading, the system will be turned off. But the surveillance cameras will still be a problem.”