Mirage

The Taiwanese capital was on the northern tip of the island, and they could have steamed there in about fourteen hours, but Cabrillo took the Oregon out of traditional sea routes, both for coastal vessels and those crossing the Pacific for ports in the Americas. And he needed the cover of darkness. A ship deploying a mini-sub, while uncommon, wasn’t unheard of. The ship leaving the area without seeming to recover the mini-sub would raise questions.

Because the Nomad was untested, Juan would let no one else make the initial dive. In the hours it had taken to reach a secluded spot of ocean, the crew had replaced the old batteries with new ones and had attached a system of inflatable bladders to the hull should the mini not respond to Cabrillo’s control. There were safety divers in the water as well, and the area around the Oregon was lit with powerful spots above and below the surface.

After being lowered into the water and having its shackles removed, the mini-sub’s tanks were slowly flooded by Juan. He blew them as a test when the seas overtopped his viewing bubble. He rose as pluckily as a toy submarine in a bathtub.

So then he went for it, diving down along the Oregon’s steel flank and then rising gently into the moon pool. More crew were in place to secure the lifting cables. In moments, the sub was safely stowed in its new home, and Cabrillo was heading to the dining room for a late supper.

He noted the asparagus he was served had come from a can. It was a good thing they were berthing soon. All their fresh provisions had run out, and he was told, when he asked the mess attendant, that they were down to three rather unpopular ice-cream flavors.

Juan couldn’t sleep that evening, and it had nothing to do with fresh vegetables or butter rum taffy ice cream. Something nagged at his subconscious, some little kernel jabbing into his mind that exhaustion couldn’t nacre over like an oyster encasing a bit of sand with pearl. At midnight, he resigned himself to wakefulness and got out of bed. He slipped on his leg and dressed in the clothes he’d discarded an hour and a half earlier.

He wasn’t in the mood for a drink, and sitting alone in his cabin held no interest. Julia Huxley was one of those remarkable people that needed just a few hours of sleep per night. He sought her out and found her not in her cabin but down in medical. She was on the Internet as part of a service for people who had immediate medical questions but no access to doctors.

“Hey, Juan. Can’t sleep?” she greeted when he paused at the door to her office off the main examination room.

Her office was a small cubical barely big enough for her desk and a spare chair. One wall was covered with framed diplomas and awards. She’d confessed once that her version of the “ego wall” wasn’t for her but her patients. Seeing her so lauded tended to put them at ease.

“Master of the obvious,” Juan smiled back and took the spare chair.

“Let me just finish up here. I’ve got a guy in Fiji who I think is having an attack of shingles.” She and her patient typed back and forth for another couple of minutes. “There. Done. Poor fellow is in for a miserable time. So, what’s on your mind?”

“I don’t know,” Juan admitted. “Something.”

“That narrows it down,” Julia teased with a grin. “Okay, try this. How long has something been bothering you?”

“Just tonight. I’ve been on top of the world since escaping Shanghai and then when I went to bed tonight, I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m getting this feeling that I’ve missed something.”

Hux suddenly looked grave. “You and I have been through a lot together.” Julia had overseen Juan’s recovery from having his leg blown off. “I know you, and I know when you think you’ve overlooked something that you are probably right. You have.”

“I know,” Cabrillo said. “That’s what’s making this so tough.”

“We can assume this has to do with our past mission, so why don’t we go through it together.”

And they did, from the very top when Yuri Borodin’s aide-de-camp, Misha Kasporov, rang them to tell them about Borodin’s illegal incarceration up to the moment the Discovery 1000’s hatch closed in the Huangpu River for the ride back to the Oregon. She hadn’t realized how close some of the calls had really been and rebuked him for being reckless. He took her remarks the way a lifetime smoker takes the advice of their doctor to quit. Great tip, but it ain’t go

“It has to be L’Enfant’s betrayal,” Julia concluded for him. “Everything else about this is pretty straightforward, at least by your standards.”

“Obviously we can never use him as a contact anymore. He might have come through with Kenin’s location, but the trust is broken. We both recognize that. And, yes, he’s the best in the world at what he does, but there are others we can turn to.”

“So you’re saying that isn’t it?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Juan raked his fingers through his hair, which was now the length of a Marine recruit’s. “Kenin deduced who we are after we rescued, well, almost rescued Yuri. He must have known our reputation because he immediately started eliminating any co

Juan paused as something began to gel in the back of his mind. “What do you think it cost to develop that stealth ship?”

“Who knows? Even if he had Tesla’s formula for making a ship invisible and samples of his equipment, we’re still talking a hundred million at least.”

“Exactly, and yet he risked it to go after a Sheik’s boat and us. If he had access to a submarine, surely he had people in the surface fleet loyal to him. Why didn’t he just launch a few ship-killing missiles at us and Dullah’s yacht?”

“We could have shot them down,” Julia pointed out.

“He didn’t know that. He threw a hundred-million-dollar asset at a hundred-dollar problem. That bothers me. This was also his big score, his final act of thievery before leaving Mother Russia for good. It’s inconceivable that someone was willing to pay that kind of money to kill an Emirate’s sheik who happens to be our client at the time. That is too big of a coincidence.”

He grabbed the phone off Julia’s desk and dialed Mark Murphy’s room. Murph answered on the second ring. Juan could tell he was on speakerphone.

“How are you two coming with that laptop?”

“We just got it back from Linc,” Eric shouted over some god-awful techno playing in the background.

“Turn that noise down,” Juan admonished.

“Noise?” Mark shot back with indignity. “That’s the Howler Monkeys.”

“I’m sure it is.” The volume thankfully dropped. “Why did Linc have the computer?”

“You didn’t get my e-mail?”

“Obviously not or I wouldn’t be asking.”

“The laptop was booby-trapped with a packet of C-4. Eric and I figured it might be rigged, so we X-rayed it first. Good thing we did. We guessed the charge goes off after the computer is opened and the password’s not entered within a certain amount of time. Linc needed until tonight to remove the detonator and explosives.”

“How long before you guys get anything?”

“We’re just starting on the password now. After that, there’s no way to know how many levels of encryption Kenin used. My guess is, a ton.”

“How long?” Juan demanded again, his tone harsh and accusatory.

“Days. Weeks. There’s no way to say. Sorry, Chairman.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Juan snapped. “That’s an order.”

He slammed down the phone. Julia looked concerned.

“They work better when they think I’m mad and make unreasonable demands.”

“So that was theater?”

“Partially,” Juan said. “But we need answers quickly.”

“I don’t understand,” she admitted. “What’s the rush?”