Piranha

Juan was ready with a story. “Pirates. They attempted to take the ship when it foundered and killed your crew.”

“And who killed all of them?”

“Intragroup rivalry. No honor among these thieves, who will eventually be identified as rogue Venezuelan Navy sailors. The rest of them took off in their boat when they couldn’t get the ship under way.”

Juan could see her gears working as she pondered his story. Finally she said, “That all makes sense. It’s the least I can do for you.”

“Thank you. In the meantime, I think you should stay with us. It’s your decision, of course, but if Admiral Ruiz is really behind this, you may be in danger. I don’t think she likes loose ends. That is, if you don’t mind going missing until this blows over.”

“I don’t think I’ll be commanding my ship for a while. And my ex-husband certainly won’t care. But I should at least report in to Cabimas.”

“Tell them the truth, that you’re afraid for your life because the attackers got away. When they’re caught, you’ll feel safe enough to return.”

She thought about the suggestion, then said, “All right. I think they’ll understand that. They’ll be more concerned about recovering the ship for now.”

“Fine. I’ll have my steward Maurice set you up with a suitable cabin.”

“Thank you again, Captain Cabrillo.”

He gave her a smile. “Glad to help.”

Juan left her in Maurice’s capable hands and went to his cabin, where a call from Langston Overholt had been routed.

“You’ve set off all kinds of alarms here with those photos, Juan,” the gruff octogenarian said. “Nobody expected to see them surface—no pun intended.”

“So this is a U.S. design?”

“The Navy was working on it for years until a virus set back the program. All of the controller software was corrupted and the design files were wiped clean. Only someone on the team could have done it.”

“So it was an inside job. Why would you expect that the design hadn’t already made its way into foreign hands?”

“Because we identified who stole them. It had to be a weapons designer named Douglas Pearson. The files were recovered from his home. He must have planted the virus.”

“Is he in prison?”

“No, he’s dead. Or at least we thought he was. He was participating in a training exercise when his boat was destroyed by a malfunctioning aerial drone. His body was never found, but we assumed it was incinerated in the crash and washed out to sea.”

“Now you’re not so sure?”

“Oh, we’re sure he has to be alive. If these subs were built by the Venezuelans, there’s no way they could have done it so quickly without his expertise. He was one of a handful of people who had intimate knowledge of the program. Two of the others were killed in the same incident and the rest are still employed with defense contractors here. We don’t think they’re responsible, but we’re rechecking them just in case. I think Pearson is our man.”

“Then I want him just as much as you do,” Juan said, and told him about the attempts to kill the Oregon crew.

“How did he know where you were?” Overholt asked.

“That’s a question I would love an answer to. But I think there’s something more going on. He seems to have an army of Haitian soldiers at his command and may be pla

“He’s probably the one who sank the subs. Do you think he has more?”

“I don’t know, but one of the Haitians said that the world is going to change in four days. If Pearson is part of this, it sounds like he has the means to pull it off.”

“It’s bad enough that a stolen U.S. weapons design was used to sink three ships and damage a fourth. We can’t let him use it for a terrorist attack.”

“Since you thought he was dead,” Juan said, “I’m assuming you have no leads on his whereabouts.”

“No, and we can’t go internal with this. You know Washington. The story would leak in about five seconds. I’m tasking you with finding Pearson. If you find evidence of a credible threat, I can use that to warn the appropriate agencies.”

“Then I guess the best place to start is the last place he was seen alive. Maybe there are some clues in the boat wreckage that were overlooked. Did Dirk Pitt handle the recovery?”

“NUMA raised the boat from the bottom of the Chesapeake, but Dirk hired a disaster analysis firm to do the forensic investigation into the accident. A company called Gordian Engineering.”

“Who’s my contact?”

“Their chief engineer was brought in because of the sensitive nature of the technology involved. He has all the top security clearances.” Juan heard some paper shuffling in the background. “Here it is. He’s still at Patuxent reconstructing the wreckage. His name is Dr. Tyler Locke.”

—

With the sun now long set, Hector Bazin could make out nothing past the reach of the headlights of the Toyota SUV that David Pasquet was driving. Because Haiti was the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, its rural citizens couldn’t afford power generators, and night lighting was no more sophisticated than a wood-fired stove. The extreme darkness of the hilly central part of Haiti they were now passing through was so profound that the border between Haiti and its wealthier neighbor to the west, the Dominican Republic, was easily visible in night satellite photos of Hispaniola, the island comprised of the two countries.

As they rounded a hillock, the sudden appearance of high-intensity arc lights brightly illuminating a cement factory—in the middle of nowhere—was jarring. Nestled between the hills and Haiti’s second-largest body of water, Lake Péligre, the plant consisted of a dozen buildings, a pattern of cantilevered conveyer belts, and a dome where the raw limestone ore was piled for processing.

If the buildings looked ancient, it was because they’d gone unused for more than fifty years until Bazin reoccupied them. They served as the base of operations for his mercenary force. It was the perfect location, miles from any town that would raise questions about the sound of guns being fired.

There was no chain-link fence to keep the curious out, but motion sensors had been placed at strategic intervals around the facility, setting off alarms the minute any intruders set foot within the property’s perimeter.

Pasquet rolled to a stop in front of a large building closest to the hill behind the plant. Bazin took his duffel bag and entered the building.

Inside, he found sixty men, all Haitians, kneeling with their hands over their heads. His men circled them like wolves, their G36 assault rifles at the ready. Two bodies lay on the floor.

The phone call he’d received on the way from the airport had prepared Bazin, but he was enraged again by this further setback.

“What happened?” Bazin asked the senior officer he’d left in charge.

His officer nodded in the direction of a man kneeling in the front row. Blood dripped from a fresh wound on his forehead. He glared back at Bazin with grim determination.

“While they were digging, he and the other men jumped two of the guards and killed them,” the officer said. “We were able to subdue them before they got to the weapons.”

“The guards should have been more careful,” Bazin said. “I told them Jacques was clever.”

Jacques Duval turned his head and spat blood that had trickled into his mouth. “You can’t keep us here forever, Hector.”

Bazin cocked his head at his old housemate and until recently deputy commander in the Haitian National Police before he was abducted and brought here. “Who says I’m pla

“We won’t keep digging for you.”

“You will if you want your families to live.”

Duval laughed ruefully. “Don’t you see the irony of all this, Hector? You’re keeping us as slaves in the first country that threw off the shackles of slavery and became an independent nation.”

“You’re not slaves, you’re traitors. I offered you a chance to join me and you tried to take me down.”