Piranha

“Two minutes and we’re back here,” Juan said. “Nobody should need the potty that soon.”

Linc nudged open the only other door in the room. After a quick sweep of his rifle, he said, “Clear. And I mean clear.”

Juan followed him through into the main body of the warehouse.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said.

The vast warehouse was bare. Although the concrete floor was chewed up as if a rototiller had gouged it, the space was bereft of crates or vehicles. But Dominguez had mentioned a payload. There had to be more here than met the eye.

Then Juan saw it. The back of the warehouse—the side near the dock—had a large door identical to the one at the front. He looked up and saw a section of the ceiling above the door that was similar to the gantry crane above the moon pool on the Oregon. The difference was that instead of a submarine, this crane held a horizontal metal sheet that could be extended out beyond the door, large enough to cover anything moving the fifty feet from the warehouse to a ship from the prying eyes of a spy satellite.

Yet the only ship currently docked was a tanker named Tamanaco.

“I think I know what’s going on here,” Juan said. “Let’s take a look.”

He and Linc went to the back of the warehouse and out the person-sized door next to the garage door.

Only this close could Juan spot a modification to the Tamanaco and, even then, only because he’d made similar alterations to the Oregon. A dark seam etched the outline of a huge door in the side of the ship. They had been loading the weapons onto the tanker, which must have been modified to carry cargo as well as fuel. No one would think of stopping a tanker to look for embargoed arms.

Still, they had no proof. One look inside and they’d have all the evidence they needed.

Juan spotted a sailor standing at his post next to a gangway.

“We’re going to continue the surprise inspection,” he whispered to Linc.

“Sounds good to me.”

They walked past the seaman, Juan returning the salute but saying nothing. Once they were on deck, they took the first flight of stairs they could find and went down until they saw another armed sailor posted at a bulkhead door.

“We’re here to inspect the cargo, sailor,” Juan said. “Open the door.”

The sailor probably had the same orders not to let anyone inside, but he wasn’t going to disobey a captain.

“Aye, sir,” he said, and turned smartly. He swung the door wide, and Juan and Linc stepped through. The sailor flipped a switch and fluorescent lights flickered on.

The payload was here, all right, but it wasn’t what the Corporation had been led to expect. The Venezuelans were suspected of shipping Russian technology to the North Koreans.

Instead, Juan counted twenty American Bradley Fighting Vehicles and a dozen of the latest M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks.

They didn’t have time to snap even one photo. Without warning, the tanker’s steel hull reverberated with the sound of a klaxon.

Someone had pulled the alarm.

Like a crocodile lying in wait for its prey, the submarine drifted at periscope depth as the supertanker cruised toward it. Two freighters had already passed by less than a thousand yards away. Few cargo vessels carried active sonar, so the sub remained undetected. As long as Linda Ross kept the Discovery 1000 below the surface, the oncoming 113,000-ton Sorocaima would have no way of knowing it was there.

The Discovery had been on-station for the past four hours since the Oregon had lowered it into the Caribbean fifty miles north of the Venezuelan coast. The shipping lane curved around the island of Nueva Esparta before turning east. The spot was chosen because it was along a well-traveled route for tankers from Puerto La Cruz heading to the Mediterranean.

The mini-sub was large enough to carry eight passengers to a depth of one hundred feet, but it currently held only Linda and the two men playing cards behind her. This would be a quick in and out mission, and more than two men infiltrating the tanker would increase the risk of them being seen.

Linda, a Navy vet who’d served aboard a guided-missile cruiser and as a Pentagon staffer before she was hired by the Corporation to be vice president of operations, was beneath only Juan and Max in the crew hierarchy. Her petite figure, upturned nose, and soft voice had once been a hindrance in her career, preventing her from being taken seriously enough to ever warrant command of her own ship. But she’d earned the respect and trust of everyone on the Oregon, to the point that she was tagged to lead some of its toughest missions. She had a habit of changing her hair color often and tonight her long ponytail was a fiery red.

Linda peered at the monitor showing the feed from the periscope camera. The full moon and starlight enhancement turned night to day, and the outline of an approaching tanker was unmistakable. Though she couldn’t read the name on the side of the ship from this distance, there was no doubt it was their target. The tracking device Linc had planted on the vessel during his visit to Puerto La Cruz pinged strongly. The Sorocaima was right on schedule, only a mile off their stern.

“Here she comes, guys,” she said.

Marion MacDougal “MacD” Lawless and Mike Trono looked up from their cards. The two gundogs, as Max called members of the shore operations team, had been playing gin rummy, and from the Cajun-inflected whoops of triumph she’d been hearing from MacD for the past two hours she guessed he was trouncing Mike.

“It’s just as well,” Mike said, and tossed his hand on the pile. “I was about to find out how this grunt was cheating.”

As VP of operations, Linda knew the files of every crew member backward and forward. Sporting thin brown hair atop a slender frame, Mike had been an elite pararescue jumper for the Air Force, dropping behind enemy lines multiple times in Iraq and Afghanistan to save downed pilots. He left the military and got his kicks racing offshore powerboats before joining the Corporation when he realized the adrenaline surge of real-world operations was the only thing that would do the trick.

“Cheatin’?” MacD retorted in his molasses-thick Louisiana drawl. “Why would Ah have to cheat against a wing nut like you? Ah’m just good.”

“Because that would make life really unfair. You can’t be good at cards and look like an underwear model.”

Linda had to agree with Mike on that. While Mike was cute and lean, former Army Ranger MacD had a physique sculpted in marble and a face fit for a movie star. He was one of the newest members of the crew, and his down-home New Orleans charisma and quick thinking in battle had charmed everyone on the Oregon.

“Now Mike, you and Ah are two sides of the same coin,” MacD said.

“How’s that?”

“Neither of us was stupid enough to become a swabbie.”

They both turned toward Linda, the lone Navy person on the mini-sub, and pointedly stared before laughing heartily. Mike and MacD were the butts of good-natured ribbing on the Oregon for being the only two non–Navy vets on the ship, but now she was the one outnumbered.

She stared back at them stoically but with a twinkle in her eye. “That’s it. I order the both of you to walk the plank.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison, and started do