Plague Ship

“That’s a possibility,” Linda said, before seeing Hanley’s obvious pain. “Sorry, Max, but we have to consider it. Besides, your son’s a new convert. He doesn’t want to leave them at all.”

“You sure you want to be here for this?” Juan asked his closest friend.

“Yes, damnit,” Max snapped. “It’s just, I don’t know, painful and embarrassing all at the same time. This is my son we’re talking about, and I can’t help but feel I’ve let him down. If I’d been a better father, he wouldn’t have drifted into something so dangerous.”

No one knew what to say for a second. Uncharacteristically, it was Eric Stone who broke the silence. So versed in technical matters, it was easy to overlook his human side. “Max, I grew up in an abusive home.

My father was a drunk who beat my mother and me every night he had enough money for a bottle of vodka. It was about the worst situation you could imagine and yet I turned out okay. Your home life is only a part of who you become. You being a larger part of your son’s life might have changed things or it might not have. There’s no way of knowing, and if you can’t know for certain there’s no need for useless speculation. Kyle is who he is because he chose to be that way. You weren’t around for your daughter either, and she’s a successful accountant.”

“Lawyer,” Max said absently. “And she did it all on her own.”

“If you don’t feel you can take responsibility for her success, then you have no right to take responsibility for Kyle’s failings.”

Max let the statement hang, before finally asking, “How old are you?” Stone seemed embarrassed by the question. “Twenty-seven.” “Son, you are wise beyond your years.

Thank you.”

Eric gri

Juan mouthed the words Well done to Stone and resumed the meeting. “Is there any way to check Eddie’s theory?”

“We can hack into the Responsivists’ computer system,” Mark offered. “Something might turn up, but I doubt they’re going to break down their membership into lists of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.”

“Try it anyway,” Juan ordered. “Cross-reference the passenger manifest with everything they have going on. Some factor singled these particular people out. If they weren’t about to leave the cult, it has to be something else.” He turned to Linda. “I want to know why so many of them were in the Philippines at the same time. The answer to that question might be our only solid clue.” Juan stood to indicate the meeting was adjourned. “We hit the Suez Canal at oh-five-hundred tomorrow morning. Remind your staffs that we’ll have a pilot on board until we clear Port Said, so we’re ru

CHAPTER 12

JUAN SETTLED THE EARBUD OF HIS RADIO A LITTLE deeper and tapped the throat mike to let the others know he was in position. Below him lay the Responsivist compound, a collection of rambling buildings surrounded by a whitewashed cement-block wall. Behind the compound was a rocky beach with a single wooden jetty ru

The buildings were low-slung, as if clinging to the ground, reminding Cabrillo of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The shallow roofs were covered in barrel tile that looked black through his third-generation night vision goggles, but he knew from their prelaunch briefing the titles were red clay. The lawns within the compound were burned brown from a drought, and the leaves on the few gnarled olive trees were dried husks. It was three-thirty in the morning, and the only lights showing were affixed to strategically placed poles.

He turned his attention to the wall. It stood ten feet high and was a double layer of thick cement blocks, ru

The trip wire ru

Next came the cameras, and, by the time his team had finished counting, they had spotted thirteen on the exterior of the buildings alone. They could only assume there were more inside.

There was a single rolling gate bisecting the stone driveway, and another, smaller gate at the back of the facility in line with the jetty. A pair of chain-link fences jutted from the compound walls and out into the sea to prevent people walking along the shore from trespassing on Responsivist property.

Although the security measures weren’t particularly overt, it did give the complex a forbidding aura—but not from the outside, Juan reflected. It didn’t look as though the place was designed to keep people out but rather to keep them in.

He scoped the grounds between the buildings once again. Three jeeps were parked in front of the main building. A thermal scan showed their engines were cold. There were no guards patrolling the paths crisscrossing the compound, no roving dogs, and the cameras mounted under eaves and on the light poles remained stationary. It was likely that there was a ma

Linc and Eddie had needed only two hours, sitting across the coast road in an olive grove overlooking the facility, to map out the cameras’ blind spots and transmit that information back to the ship. They had estimated that there were currently about forty-five Responsivists inside, although there were enough buildings to house twice that number in relative comfort.

With their strategy worked out ahead of time and final tactics honed, the crew had spent the day putting everything into place, securing rental cars, scouting escape routes, and finding a suitable place nearby for George Adams to land the Robinson and transfer Kyle to the general aviation apron at Athens’s Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport. Chuck Gunderson already had the Corporation’s Gulfstream executive jet prepped for the quick flight to Rome. All the paperwork had been filed, and a limousine was waiting for them at the other end.

And if things didn’t go as smoothly as pla

The details were so meticulous that Eric Stone, aboard the Oregon, who’d been studying the tidal charts, had determined the precise moment they should commence their covert assault.

Although Cabrillo was taking a role in the snatch and grab, Eddie Seng, as chief of shore operations, would lead the four-person attack, and it was his responsibility to make sure everyone involved was ready.

“One minute from my mark,” Juan heard him whisper over the radio. “Mark.” Juan tapped his TRANSMIT button in acknowledgment. He tested the pair of quick-draw holsters hanging from his hips, making certain the pair of compact Glock 19s came out easily. Though he favored the new Fabrique Nationale Five-seveN automatic as his personal sidearm, because the small 5.7mm bullets could defeat nearly any flak jackets, this mission wasn’t about killing. The crew in the ship’s armory had soft-loaded the Glocks’ 9mm rounds with half their normal charge and had topped them not with lead bullets but ballistic plastic. At close range, the bullets could be deadly, but at anything beyond fifteen feet the nonlethal shells would take the fight out of the average person with a single hit.