“What else were you able to get?”
“Not much. He wrote about his dreams and how one day he would be able to afford bringing his girlfriend to Japan with him. Stuff like that.”
“What was the name of that town?”
“Lantan.”
“If we can’t backtrack the Kra or the Maus, maybe we can backtrack the immigrants.” Cabrillo glanced at Eddie. His chief of Shore Operations had heard enough of the call to understand what was coming. It was in his eyes. “I’ll call you right back,” Cabrillo said to Julia and cut the connection.
“China, huh,” Eddie said with an air of the inevitable. “I had a feeling it would come to this as soon as I saw them.”
“Can you do it?”
“You know my cover was blown just before I got out the last time. I’ve already been sentenced to death in absentia. I can name a dozen generals and party officials who would like nothing more than for me to step foot in China again. It’s been a few years, but last I knew, my picture had been sent to every police department in the country, from Beijing and Shanghai to the smallest provincial outpost.”
“Can you do it?” Cabrillo repeated.
“My old network is long gone. I was hustled out of China fast after everything went down and couldn’t get a warning out. I’m sure some of them were rolled up by the state police, which means the rest are compromised. I can’t use any of them.”
He went silent. Cabrillo didn’t ask a third time. He didn’t need to.
“I’ve got a set of credentials in a safe-deposit box in L.A., one the CIA doesn’t even know about. I had them made before Hong Kong was handed over to China in case I needed to get back in to help a couple of friends. They’ve since immigrated to Vancouver, so the identity is still viable. I’ll contact my lawyer first thing tomorrow and have them sent by courier to Singapore. From there I can catch the Cathay flight to Beijing.”
“Shanghai,” Juan corrected. “Julia said the village is in Fujian Province. If my geography is sound, the closest big city is Shanghai.”
“Oh, this gets better and better,” Eddie said as if his mission wouldn’t be difficult enough.
“Why’s that?”
“The people of Fujian have a dialect all their own. I don’t speak it very well.”
“Then we’ll call it off,” Juan decided. “We’ll just have to get some leads from the Kra or the Maus.”
“No,” Eddie said sharply. “It might take you weeks to track these bastards through shipping records and corporate pyramids. If illegal immigrants somehow fit into the pirates’ scheme, we need answers now. You and I both know that the ones dumped over the side of the Kra aren’t the only ones who’ve been taken.”
Juan nodded, a curt, decisive gesture. “All right. Make your arrangements.”
On the main display screen along the front wall of the operations center, the picture was a weirdly distorted view of the ocean, where the foam topping the low waves looked like green lightning forking across the black water. The camera’s optics made the rhythmic pulse of the sea look like a beating heart. The image jerked slightly, and George Adams swore.
Adams was the pilot of the Oregon’s Robinson R-44 helicopter as well as the pair of matching UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, that could be launched from an open space along the freighter’s port rail. Although the U.S. military spent millions on their Predator drones, the Corporation’s UAVs were commercially available remote-control airplanes fitted with low-light cameras. George could sit at a computer workstation inside the operations center and fly the model plane using a joystick within a fifteen-mile radius of the ship.
One of the few aboard the Oregon from the army, George “Gomez” Adams had earned his reputation flying special ops teams into Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Unmarried at forty, Adams cut the figure of a fighter pilot. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, tall and lean with a charming cockiness that never failed to make him a center of attention with women. His good looks had been used in more than one past Corporation mission. He’d earned his nickname after one such mission when he seduced the mistress of a Peruvian drug trafficker who bore a striking resemblance to the television character Morticia Addams.
The telepresence given to Adams through the video link allowed him to see what was in front of and below the gimballed camera in the UAV’s nose, but he couldn’t feel the subtle updrafts or crosswinds that affected the five-foot-long airplane. He adjusted for the sudden gust that hit the plane and eased back on the stick to gain a bit more altitude.
“What’s the range?” he asked Linda Ross, who was monitoring the radar picture.
“We’re four miles astern the Maus and three miles to port.”
The UAV was too small to be seen by even the Oregon’s powerful search radar, but the massive drydock and the pair of tugs towing her showed crisp on her repeater screen.
Adams used a thumb control to pan the camera mounted in the model plane’s nose. The ocean was still streaked with eerie green lines of sea foam, but a few miles ahead of the UAV a bright emerald slash cut the otherwise dark water.
“There,” someone called unnecessarily.
The glowing wedge was the Maus’s wake as she was hauled southward. Just ahead of her were bright, glowing points, searchlights mounted at the stern of the towboats to illuminate their ponderous charge. The thick hawsers securing the vessels looked as fine as gossamer from five thousand feet. There were a couple less powerful lights along the side of the drydock, but her cavernous hold was completely dark.
“Okay, George. Take us in,” Max Hanley ordered from the command station. He then pressed a cell phone to his ear. “You getting this, Chairman?”
“Kind of,” Juan Cabrillo said from his Tokyo suite. “I can’t make out much on this one-inch screen.”
“I’m going for a high pass first,” Adams said as he worked the joystick. “If we don’t get anything, I’ll cut the engine and glide in for a closer look.” He took his eyes off his screen to glance at Hanley. “If the engine doesn’t refire, the UAV’s a write-off.”
“I heard that,” Juan said. “Tell George that we can’t lose the element of surprise if we have to send over boarders. Tell him it’s okay to ditch the drone.”
Max relayed the message, saying, “George, Juan says that if you crash the UAV, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”
“You tell him,” Adams said, fully concentrating on his screen once again, “that I’ll cut him a check as soon as Eddie pays for that submarine he banged up.”
George slowed the UAV to just above stall speed, but it still overtook the slow-moving caravan of ships. There was no chance the black airplane could be spotted from either the drydock or the tugboats; however, it was possible that an attentive crewman could hear the high whine of the UAV’s engine. He kept the drone five hundred feet to the starboard side of the convoy and panned the camera as it flew down the eight-hundred-foot length of the drydock.
It looked more like a fortress than a vessel designed to travel across the ocean. Her sides were sheer vertical walls of steel, and there was only the barest hint of streamlining at her blunt bows. The pair of hundred-plus-foot tugs looked like toys compared to the behemoth in their charge.
Even as the pictures came in, Eric Stone and Mark Murphy were filtering the video through computer software to enhance the image. The pair of tech geeks cycled the feed to increase contrast and eliminate distortion caused by the UAV’s engine vibration. By the time George had completed his run and peeled the drone away from the Maus, they had sharpened the raw data and played it back on the main screen.
“What the hell am I supposed to be looking at here?” Juan asked through the cell phone.
“Damn,” Max said, staring at the big plasma display. He held his cell phone in one hand and his unlit pipe in the other.
“What is it?”
“The lights along the Maus’s rail make it impossible to see into her hold. It’s just a black hole in the middle of the ship. We need to make a run directl
y over her.”
“Coming around now,” Gomez Adams said, his body unconsciously leaning as the UAV swooped in a tight turn.
A few minutes later he had the drone lined up behind the drydock at two thousand feet. Rather than bleed off speed, he pressed the throttle to its stop, hurtling the tiny plane directly at the Maus on what he was sure would be a suicide run. The UAV’s ignition system was temperamental at best, and a crewman usually had to hand crank the little propeller on deck prior to launch.
The bulk of the Maus filled the view screen as the drone bored in. George killed the engine when he was about a quarter mile out, and the picture lost its annoying jumpiness as the plane became a silent glider sliding out of the night sky. He checked the altimeter. The drone was at a thousand feet, and he deepened the angle of attack. It was now arrowing at the drydock like a Stuka dive bomber, but as silent as a wraith.
Eric and Murph double-checked that the recorders were burning the images onto disc just before the UAV crossed over the Maus’s vertical transom. Adams leveled the drone a hundred feet above the floating drydock and soared the little craft down the vessel’s dark length, making sure the camera caught every detail of her murky hold.
Fifty feet from the bow, he heeled over the UAV, diving once again to gain airspeed. At an altitude of thirty feet he hit the starter toggle on his controls. The sea grew on the plasma screen monitor. When nothing happened, he calmly reset the toggle and tried again. The plastic prop turned once, but the engine refused to fire.
It was as though the plane accelerated in its final moments or perhaps the ocean reached up to pluck it from the sky. The team in the control room winced as the UAV augered in, and the screen went blank.
Adams got to his feet and cracked his knuckles. “You know what they say: any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”
A few people groaned at the old joke as Murph put a replay of the aerial pass back on the screen.
“What did you see?” Cabrillo asked over the satellite link.
“Hold on a second, boss,” Max replied. “It’s coming up now.”
While the image was dark, Adams had done a superb job controlling both the UAV and its camera. The shot was steady and clear and not at all what they wanted to see. There was a cover of some type over the entire length of the drydock’s hold. The cover wasn’t solid, because sections of it rippled in the wind, but it completely blocked their view of anything the drydock might have been transporting.
“Well?” Juan’s voice was insistent in Hanley’s ear.
“We have to send over a recon team,” Hanley told the Chairman. “They’ve got the entire hold covered with sections of dark cloth. We can’t see diddly.”
Linda Ross was already at the control room’s rear door. As the senior intelligence officer aboard the Oregon, it was her job to lead the team over to the Maus. She wore a black combat uniform and had slipped into the flak vest she’d had draped over her chair. Her fine, honey-blond hair was covered by a black watch cap.
Despite the determined set to her narrow jaw and the accoutrements of war, she still managed to look young and vulnerable. It didn’t help that she had a high-pitched voice, not shrill but almost pubescent, and her cheeks were dusted with freckles. At thirty-seven, Linda was still carded at bars on her infrequent trips back to the States.
Although she had spent her naval career as an intelligence analyst, Linda was well practiced at the art of intelligence gathering, too. Because of her background, she usually spent less time on a particular covert mission than others simply because she knew exactly what information was needed. She could make quick assessments in the field, innately knowing what was crucial. For that she had more than earned the respect of the SEALs she was to lead.
“Tell Juan we’ll be careful,” she said to Max and left to make her way down to a door at the waterline on the starboard side where they’d launch a Zodiac inflatable boat.
Three commandos were waiting for her in the aqua garage. They were similarly outfitted, and one handed Linda a combat harness. She checked that the silenced Glock she preferred was loaded. She liked that the pistol didn’t have a safety that could be inadvertently activated on a quick draw. Because this was a reconnoiter, a sneak and peek, and they doubted there would be guards posted on a ship under tow, none of the team carried anything heavier than handguns, but these weapons were hot-loaded with mercury-tipped hollow points, a round packing enough kinetic energy to incapacitate with even a glancing blow. She settled the throat mike of her tactical radio next to her skin and secured the earpiece. She and the team did a quick test, making sure they could hear each other and Max in the op center.
The garage was lit by red battle lights, and in their glow Linda applied black camo paint to her face before slipping on tight no-shine gloves. The Zodiac was large enough for eight, powered by a big black outboard. Next to the four-stroke engine was a smaller battery-powered trolling motor that could silently propel the Zodiac at nearly ten knots. A few items they would need had been secured to the floorboards.
A cargo master checked each team member again before flashing the thumbs-up to Linda. She threw him a wink, and the deckhand doused the lights. A cable system opened the outer door, a ten-by-eight-foot section of hull plating just above the waterline. The hiss of the sea passing by filled the garage, and Linda could taste the salt in the air. While there was virtually no moon, the Maus stood out against the darkness, her forward sections lit by floodlights on the pair of tugs, and sodium arc lamps along her top deck cast her silhouette in strong relief.
The Zodiac pilot fired the engine with a press of a button, and with a pair of people along each side, the team shoved the inflatable down a Teflon-coated ramp and jumped aboard as soon as the craft hit water. They shot away from the Oregon in a burst of foam to escape the turbulent water running along the tramp steamer’s flank before throttling back to eliminate their own wake.
The gap between the two ships seemed small when seen from the cameras mounted on the Oregon’s deck, but down in the trough of water between the vessels, the distance appeared enormous. The seas were light, and the inflatable rode the swells easily, gliding up the face, hanging for the barest moment before dropping back in a smooth rhythm. Even muffled, the outboard sounded loud in Linda’s ears, though she knew that the craft was silent at full speed from a mile away.
Five minutes after launching from the Oregon, they had knifed through three-quarters of the way. The pilot cut the outboard and engaged the silent electric motor, taking a cue from Linda to circle around the stern of the Maus in order to find a suitably dark area to board.
The drydock was only making three knots, so they had little trouble passing behind the vessel and easing their way along her starboard side. The hull was a featureless wall of gray steel that stretched from stem to stern. The lights mounted high atop her rail washed down the plating, but amidships there was a patch of darkness where one of the bulbs was burned out. The pilot eased the Zodiac over, running right outside the wake zone next to the darkened section of hull. He had to constantly adjust the motor to keep the vessel stable in the choppy wash.
“Grapple,” Linda called over her throat mike.
One of the SEALs raised an odd weapon to his shoulder. It looked like an oversized rifle, but a hose ran from the pistol grip to a cylinder strapped to the floor of the Zodiac. He activated a laser range finder slung under the ungainly rifle and pointed it skyward, centering his sights at a spot just above the Maus’s rail.
“Sixty-seven feet,” he whispered.
By the light of a small red-lensed flashlight, his partner dialed the number into a valve at the top of the cylinder. He tapped the shooter on the shoulder.
The man centered his breathing, feeling the gentle rise and fall of the Zodiac, and waited for the exact moment the craft reached the zenith of a wave. He eased the trigger.
A precise amount of compressed nitrogen exploded from the tank, launching a stubby rubber-coated arrow from the gr
appling gun. Behind the arrow trailed a millimeters-wide nanofiber line. At the apogee of flight, the arrow peeled apart to become a grappling hook. The hook cleared the rail by scant inches and fell silently to the deck.
Back in the Zodiac, the shooter pulled back on his weapon, dragging the hook high above so it locked around a rail stanchion. “Secure.”
His partner unhooked the reel from the grappling gun and used a snap link to splice a nylon climbing rope to the nanofiber line. In smooth hand-over-hand motions, he hauled the line through a small pulley at the back of the grapple so the climbing rope rose into the night sky. It took barely thirty seconds for him to loop the rope around the pulley and recover the end. He secured one end of the rope to cargo straps at the bow of the Zodiac while the pilot did the same at the stern. Using sheer muscle power, the men pulled on the ropes, and the Zodiac lifted free of the water. They heaved again, and the little inflatable rose another foot. They did this three more times until there was no danger a wave would come along and capsize the craft. Had they left it bobbing in the wash while they were reconnoitering the Maus, the boat’s rubber skin would have shredded against the drydock’s steel hide.
All the lines were locked down, and one by one the team climbed the thick nylon rope, first making sure they had chambered rounds in their pistols. Linda climbed third in the stick, trusting the first team member would clear the rail under the cover of the number-two man. She heard the shooter call “Clear” through her miniature earpiece and looked up to see him slither between the metal railing.
She glanced down as she neared the top. The Zodiac pilot was right below her, and far down in the shadows she could see the inflatable snuggled up against the drydock like a seal pup nursing from its mother. The sea was a surging presence a littler farther down.
She accepted the hand from above and was dragged over the rail, thankful that the heavy flak vest protected her breasts. She doubted Doc Huxley with her 38-Ds could have done it.
The three of them formed a defensive perimeter around the rail until the last man clambered over. The shooter took a second to remove the grappling hook and secure the rope holding the Zodiac with a coupling device that could be disengaged once they were safely back on their boat.