The Jungle

Hanley and Cabrillo exchanged a look. Max leaned forward to a small refrigerator and pulled out two beers, a Peroni for Juan and a Bud Light for himself. The “Light” was an admission that his personal battle with the bulge was ongoing. “I’d say,” he said, “that we just barely kept our butts out of a Singapore Sling.”

Cabrillo groaned.

EIGHT HOURS LATER, and half an ocean away, Gomez Adams held the Corporation’s MD 520N over the rearmost of the Oregon’s five cargo hatches. The ship was pitching mildly, but there was a freshening breeze off the port quarter. He massaged the controls, matching pitch, yaw, and speed, and set the big chopper onto the deck. As soon as the skids kissed steel, he cut the turbine and a

A technician immediately rushed forward to secure the chopper.

The eleven-thousand-ton tramp freighter was at the helicopter’s maximum range off the eastern coast of the Indian subcontinent as she drove through the gentle rollers for her rendezvous in Bangladesh. Far to the west the setting sun painted the undersides of the clouds in hues of orange, red, and purple and cast a wavering gilded beam atop the waves.

Nowhere on earth was a sunset as beautiful as those found at sea, Cabrillo thought as he ducked under the chopper’s still-spi

Max gri

“Welcome back, boys,” Linda Ross said as she stepped forward to greet them. She wore a pair of cutoff shorts and a tank top. “You have a knack for finding trouble, don’t you?”

Hanley pointed a thumb at Juan. “Blame him. The guy attracts nothing but suicide bombers, terrorists, and madmen.”

“Don’t forget loose women. What’s the latest on the bombings?”

“Some new group called al-Qaeda of the East has claimed responsibility for the attack. No dead and only five slight injuries. The two blasts on the roof were standard vests packed with Semtex and scrap metal. You know, couture for killers. The explosion in the casino was much smaller. No word yet on what it was, or at least it’s not being reported. Mark and Eric think they can hack into the Singapore police mainframe, but they didn’t sound too certain.”

“Tell them not to bother,” Cabrillo said. “My guess is the primary bombers’ handler tossed a grenade in a trash can to cause more chaos. I’d hate to think of the death toll had Max and I not been there.”

“Amen,” Hanley said, and ambled off to give Adams and his mechanics their orders.

Off along the starboard rail, a crewman had opened the lid of what had started out as a regular fifty-five-gallon steel barrel. It was as dented and neglected as everything else aboard the Oregon. Rather than just some bit of nautical junk left to litter the deck, the barrel was a carefully positioned redoubt for a remotely operated M60 machine gun. The technician from the armory had the lid open, and the gun raised and pivoted to the horizontal position while he cleaned it and checked for any signs of salt-air corrosion. This was one of several identical weapons placed around the main deck’s perimeter that were used primarily to repel boarders.

“Why there?” Linda wondered aloud as she and the Chairman walked to the towering amidships superstructure. Its white paint was faded to the color of curdled cream and was flaking off the ship like she was some prehistoric reptile shedding her skin.

Because there were no other vessels within visual range, they hadn’t bothered pumping ersatz smoke though the ship’s single fu

“The casino’s owned by an American company, and, according to the tenets of Islam, gambling, or maisir, is forbidden,” Cabrillo replied. “That place is the church of all things unholy. Anything on the bombers themselves?”

“Just what was captured on the hotel’s surveillance cameras when they were in the lobby and elevator. They were either Malay or Indonesian. No IDs were found. And it’ll take days to do a DNA search, and most likely these guys aren’t on any databases. Their pictures might match with something, but nada for now.”

“It’s early,” Juan remarked.

They stepped over the coaming of a watertight door and into the superstructure. The lighting was fluorescents bolted to the ceiling, and the hallways were painted steel. When there was no prospect of outsiders entering the ship, the air was kept comfortable, but it could be changed at a moment’s notice. In cold climes, if an inspector or customs agent was aboard, they cranked up the big Trane air conditioners, or in the tropics they would pump in additional heat just to make the interlopers want off the ship as fast as possible. Also, the lighting could be set to flickering at microburst frequencies designed to interfere with neural activity. For some it brought a mild headache and a little nausea. It could send an epileptic into a seizure.

That had happened only once, fortunately, and Doc Huxley was there in moments.

Since an incident involving Somali pirates a few months back hadn’t gone as pla

They stepped into a little-used janitor’s closet, and Linda twisted the taps of a slop sink like she was working the dials of a safe. The water that splashed from the faucet was rusty brown and somehow lumpy.

No detail was too minor.

A secret door clicked open to reveal the opulent core of the Oregon, the spaces where the men and women who ma

They went one deck lower to where most of the crew’s cabins were located, and Juan paused outside the door of his own suite. Linda made to follow him in and continue the briefing.

“Sorry,” he said, “but I need a shower and to get out of these clothes. I look like a Star Wars action figure dressed in an old G.I. Joe doll’s outfit.”

“I wasn’t going to mention your need for a new tailor,” she gri

“We hired Tiny for his flying ability, not his uniformity of size.” He turned away, then stopped. “One more thing. Go down to the boat garage and tell them we need to strip one of the RHIBs of every ounce of weight they can think of. That includes pulling one of her outboards and centering the other. Max has Gomez Adams and his team doing the same thing to the whirlybird.”

An RHIB was one of the two Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boats the Oregon carried, one in a starboard-mounted chamber where it could be launched into the sea and another in storage in a forward hold as a backup.

Linda didn’t point out the obviousness of Cabrillo’s plan. Once they choppered into Myanmar, the only real way around the interior was by boat. “Aye, Chairman. Enjoy your shower.” Linda sauntered off.