Skeleton Coast

A shadow crossed Linda’s eyes. Rather than satisfied with her work she appeared sad.

“What is it?” Juan asked.

“Nothing.”

“Talk to me. What’s the matter?”

She looked up at him. “I hate doing this. Breaking people, I mean. Lying to them to get what I want. It leaves me, I don’t know, dead inside. I climb into someone else’s mind to ferret out information and in the end I end up knowing everything about them—how they think, what their hopes and dreams are, every secret they thought they’d never tell. In a couple of hours I will know more about Susan Donleavy than anyone else in the world. But it’s not like having a friend confide in you. It’s like I’m stealing that information. I hate doing it, Juan.”

“I had no idea,” he said softly. “If I did I wouldn’t have asked you to do this.”

“That’s why I’ve never told you. You hired me because I have a certain background, and skills that no one in the crew possesses. Just because I hate part of my job doesn’t mean I don’t have to do it.”

Juan gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah. I’m going to let her scream for a few more minutes and then go back in. I’ll find you when I’m done. Then I’m going to have a glass of wine too many and try to get Susan Donleavy out of my head.

Go get some rest. You look terrible.”

“Best suggestion I’ve heard all day.”

He turned to go, wondering how much each of them was sacrificing of themselves to the Corporation.

They were always mindful of the physical dangers they faced when they accepted a mission, but there was a hidden cost, too. To fight from the shadows meant the justifications for their actions had to come from within each person. They weren’t soldiers who could merely say they were taking orders. They’d chosen to be here and do the things necessary to guarantee a free society even if they themselves operated outside of societal boundaries.

Juan himself had felt that burden on more than one occasion. And while the Corporation regularly flouted international law in order to achieve their perfect record of success, there were gray areas that they had skirted that made him more than a little uncomfortable.

As he walked back toward his cabin, he knew there were no alternatives. The enemies he’d faced when he’d been with the CIA played by the rules for the most part. But the rulebook went out the window when slamming airplanes into skyscrapers became a legitimate form of attack. Wars were no longer fought between armies in the field. They were being fought in subways and mosques, nightclubs and market squares. It seemed that in today’s world anyone and anything was fair game.

He reached his suite of rooms and pulled the curtains over his cabin portholes. Now, with his bed no more than a couple of feet away, the wave of fatigue that hit Cabrillo made him stagger. He undressed and slid between a set of cool sheets.

Despite his exhaustion sleep was a long time coming.

24

JUANknew by how the diffused sunlight seeping around the drapes was the color of blood that he’d been asleep for only a couple of hours when the phone rang. He shimmied up against the headboard, feeling as if he’d just gone fifteen rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world. And lost.

“Hello,” he said, working his tongue around his mouth to loosen the gummy saliva.

“Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep.” It was Max. If anything, he sounded as though he was enjoying waking the chairman. “We’ve got some major developments. I’ve called a meeting in the boardroom.

Fifteen minutes.”

“Whet my appetite.” Juan threw aside his sheets. The skin around his stump was red and swollen. One of Julia’s orderlies was a professional masseuse, and he knew he’d need the leg tended to if he was going to function.

“Daniel Singer plans to cause the biggest oil slick in history and helping him is a mercenary army that we provided the weapons to.”

The news shocked any vestiges of sleep from Cabrillo’s brain.

He reached the boardroom in fourteen minutes, his hair still wet from the shower. Maurice had coffee waiting for him and an omelet bursting with sausage and onions. His first thought was for Linda Ross. The diminutive intelligence officer was at her customary seat with a laptop opened in front of her. Her face had the pale brittle look of a porcelain doll, and her normally bright eyes were as dull as old coins.

Though only a few hours had passed since she began interrogating Susan Donleavy, Linda seemed to have aged a decade. She tried to smile at Juan but it died on her lips. He gave her a nod of understanding.

Franklin Lincoln and Mike Trono were also present, to make up for Eric Stone’s and Mark Murphy’s absence.

Max was the last to arrive and he was talking on a phone when he entered the room. “That’s right. A coastal oil facility. I don’t know exactly where, but your pilot must have some ideas.” He paused a beat while he listened. “I know some of the radio tags must have failed by now. I also know that you overbuilt them enough so a couple are still transmitting. You’ll just have to get closer to find them.”

“Murph?” Juan asked after hastily swallowing a bite of his omelet.

“I want him focusing on the coast. I did a little research and found there’s a long string of offshore oil production platforms at the mouth of the Congo River that arc north to Angola’s Cabinda province.”

“Angola’s to the south of the Congo,” Eddie said.

“That’s what I thought, too.” Max eased himself into his chair. “But there is an enclave north of the river and it’s sitting on a couple billion barrels of oil. For what it’s worth, I actually found out the U.S. gets more crude from Angola than it does from Kuwait, which pretty much negates the war for oil rant of a couple years ago.”

Juan turned to Linda. “Want to fill us in?”

She straightened her shoulders. “As you all know, Daniel Singer forced Geoffrey Merrick to buy him out of the company. Since then Singer’s used his money to fund environmental groups—rain-forest preservation in South America, antipoaching efforts in Africa, and a lot of the best lobbyists money could buy in capitals all over the world. Then he began to realize that all the money he’d spent had done very little to change people’s attitudes. Yes, he was saving a couple of animals and some tracts of land, but he hadn’t made an impact on the fundamental problem. That problem being that while people say they care about the environment, when it comes down to dollars and cents no one is willing to sacrifice their lifestyle in order to effect change.”

“So Singer decided to get more radical?” Juan asked.

“Fanatical is more like it.” Linda checked her computer for a second. “According to Susan he became active with groups that burned down luxury homes under construction in Colorado, Utah, and Vermont, as well as destroying SUVs sitting on dealers’ lots. She claims he used to put golf balls in the fuel tanks of logging trucks as well as sand in the oil filler tubes.”

“Golf balls?” Linc asked.

“Apparently the diesel will dissolve them, allowing the rubber strings inside to unravel. Does more damage than sugar or salt. Singer bragged that he’d caused at least fifty million dollars’ worth of damage, but that still wasn’t enough. He thought about sending bombs through the mail to top executives in the oil industry but knew they would just end up killing some poor mailroom clerk. He also knew that it wouldn’t change anyone’s life.

“That’s when he heard how the hurricane seasons over the next couple of years are going to be particularly brutal. While it’s part of a natural cycle, he figured the media would try to link it with global warming and he wondered if he could make the storms even worse.”