Текст книги "Plague Ship"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“Let them get right up to us,” Eddie called from the rear of the van, his voice jumping in time with the flattened wheel. He had one hand on the door handle and the other on a pistol.

The jeep had to be doing eighty miles an hour and ate the distance in seconds. Peering out the back window, Eddie watched them come and realized they weren’t going to tuck in behind the van but come alongside it.

“Eddie!” Linda cried.

“I see it.”

He threw open the door when the jeep was ten yards back, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. His first rounds bounced off the jeep’s hood and grille, but the next few found the windshield. They punched neat holes through the glass, forcing the driver to swerve and slow. For a moment, it looked like he was going to roll the four-by-four, but at the last second he cranked the wheel in the opposite direction of the jeep’s slide, and its left wheels crashed back to the pavement.

Almost immediately, he started after the fleeing van.

“Linc, down! Linda, hold on,” Eddie shouted when the guard in the jeep’s passenger’s seat raised himself over the windscreen. He cradled an assault rifle.

The gun’s chattering and the metallic whine of bullets chewing through sheet steel came at the same time.

The windows in the van’s back doors exploded, showering Eddie Seng in a cascade of diamond chips.

Metal crackled with heat where rounds punched through, and one bullet ricocheted inside the van before embedding itself in the back of Linda’s chair.

Eddie raised his second pistol over a window frame and fired blindly, while Linc used his body to shield Kyle Hanley’s unconscious form.

“I don’t know how you did it,” Linda called from the driver’s seat. She was hunched over the wheel and looking at the side rearview mirror. “You hit the shooter in the chest.”

“Did I kill him?” Eddie was slamming home fresh magazines.

“Can’t tell. A guy in the back is taking his gun. Hold on!” Linda hit the brakes and swerved into the jeep’s lane. The two vehicles came together with a sickening crash, the van riding up onto the jeep’s bumper for a moment before coming back down with a hard bounce. The limp passenger was thrown from the jeep, while the men in back crashed into the roll bar.

Hitting the gas again, Linda bought them a hundred-yard head start before the guards could regain the hunt.

“ Oregon, how far are we?”

Eric Stone answered immediately. “I have you in sight from the UAV. You’ve got another six miles.” Linda cursed.

“To make matters worse,” Stone continued, “there are two more jeeps coming up behind the first. One’s maybe a quarter mile back and the other a little farther.” The jeep came up on them again, but rather than get too close, it hung back, and the armed guard started firing at the van’s tires. Linda worked the wheel to foul his aim, but she knew it was only a matter of time.

“Any bright ideas back there?”

“I’m afraid I’m out.” Eddie admitted, but then his face brightened. He tapped his radio mike. “Eric, crash the UAV into the jeep.”

“What?”

“The drone. Use it like a cruise missile. Hit the passenger compartment. It should still have enough fuel on board to blow up on impact.”

“Without it, we won’t be able to pick up the Chairman,” Stone protested.

“Have you heard from him in the past five minutes?” The question hung in the air. “Do it!”

“Yes, sir.”

NO SOONER HAD CABRILLO hit the pavement in front of the jeep, its driver hit the gas. Juan had a fraction of a second to flatten himself and reach up, as the bumper loomed over him. He grasped its underside, with the jeep picking up speed, dragging him down the road. He reached up higher to get his backside off the rough pavement, while rubber was chewed off his boots.

He hung on like that for a couple of seconds to catch his breath. He’d lost the mini-Uzi but still had a Glock in a holster at his hip. He doubled his grip with his left hand and used his right to grab his earbud and set it in place in time to hear the last exchange between Eddie and Eric.

“Negative on that,” he said, his throat mike easily negating the engine roar inches from his face.

“Juan,” Max shouted in jubilation, “how are you?”

“Oh, I’m hanging on.” He tilted his head back so he could look up the road. Even with everything upside down, he saw two sets of car taillights and the unmistakable flicker of rifle fire from one of them. “Give me thirty seconds and the van’ll be in the clear.”

“That’s about all the time we have left,” Linda cautioned.

“Trust me.” With that, Cabrillo tensed his shoulders and pulled himself higher, so that he was lying across the bumper just out of the driver’s view. Clutching the grille as tightly as he could, he cross-drew the Glock from its holster with his left hand. He pushed off with his right to vault over the hood.

He drew down as he came up, double-tapping the driver in the chest. At this range, the plastic bullets would have been fatal, had the driver not worn a Kevlar vest. As it was, the two slugs hit with the kinetic energy of a mule, blowing every molecule of air out of the driver’s lungs.

Cabrillo scrambled across the hood, clutching the wheel as the driver released it, his face already a deathly white as his mouth worked soundlessly to draw air. Cabrillo kept to the middle of the road by looking back at where they’d been rather than forward where they were heading. It didn’t help that the driver kept his foot pressed to the gas pedal.

Juan had no choice but to reach over the dash with his pistol and shoot the man in the leg. Blood splattered the dash, the driver, and Cabrillo, but the shot had the desired effect. The driver’s foot came off the gas and the jeep began to slow. When they were down to twenty miles per hour, Cabrillo leveled the pistol between the driver’s pain-seared eyes. “Out.” The driver jumped clumsily, falling to the macadam, clutching his bleeding thigh and coming to a stop in a heap of abraded skin and broken limbs.

Juan swung over the lowered windscreen, settled into the driver’s seat, and started after the first jeep. In his mirror, he could see a set of headlights barreling down the road and rightly assumed it was another contingent of Responsivist guards. The tenacity of their pursuit set off all sorts of alarm bells in his mind, but that was something to think about when they were well away from here.

The men firing at the van had no reason to suspect Juan’s jeep as he came up behind them, even as the third jeep narrowed the gap. They flashed under a sign announcing in both Greek and English that they were fast approaching the entrance ramp for the New National Road and its vital bridge over the Corinth Canal, so it was the timing, not the execution, that worried him. It would have to be perfect. The ramp was coming up on their right. The third jeep was fifty yards back, and bullets continued to ping off the side of the van ahead.

“Linda,” Juan said, eyeing the jeep in front and the one coming up behind him, “speed up as fast as you can go. Don’t worry about losing the tires. Just floor it.” The van started to open a gap between it and the jeep, but the jeep’s driver fed it a bit more gas and closed the gap again. Cabrillo came up to the jeep’s bumper and hit it with what police refer to as PIT, or Precision Immobilization Technique. The impact wasn’t very hard and didn’t need to be. The trick was to hit in such a way that the back end of the target vehicle gets spun around.

Feeling like a stock-car driver gunning for the lead, Juan hit the jeep a second time, just as the driver corrected from the first impact. This time, there was no saving it, and Juan had to crank his wheel hard to the left as the Responsivists’ four-by-four careened out of control, swinging in a wide arc across the road, before its two left tires hooked and the jeep began to flip over and over, shedding bits of sheet metal and the bodies of its occupants as it rolled.

The jeep came to rest on its roof, lying across the single-lane entrance to the thruway, effectively blocking it. Linda’s back was covered, and she was clear to make her run for the bridge. Juan kept watching his rearview mirror. The party in the third jeep slowed as they approached the on-ramp but must have soon realized their quarry had escaped, because they accelerated again after Cabrillo, who continued to drive toward the heart of Corinth.

NO ONE IN THE OP CENTER could believe what they saw from the flying drone until Eric radioed Cabrillo. “Is that you in the second jeep, Chairman?”

“Affirmative.”

“Nice piece of driving.”

“Thanks. How’s everything look?”

“Linda and her team are in the clear. There are no other vehicles coming out of the Responsivists’

stronghold, and, so far, your fireworks display hasn’t caught the attention of the local authorities. We’re about two minutes from entering the canal. George just came in from the hangar and will be taking over the UAV.”

“What about my route through town?”

“Last sweep looked clear. As soon as Linda reaches the bridge, you’ll have primary aerial coverage.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

Wearing his flight suit with the pant leg cut off and a large bandage taped to his thigh, George Adams settled himself at a computer, keeping the injured leg extended stiffly.

“How you doing?” Max asked, trying to sound more gruff than normal to hide his guilt.

“One more scar to impress the ladies. Hux only needed eight stitches. I’m more worried about the Robinson. Talk about giving something the Swiss cheese treatment. There were eleven holes in the canopy alone. Okay, Stoney, I’m ready.”

Eric flipped UAV control to Adams so he could concentrate on getting the big freighter through the Corinth Canal.

First proposed during Roman times, a canal across the narrow isthmus was beyond their capabilities.

Being master engineers, the Romans built a road, which the Greeks called the diolkos, instead. Cargo was removed from ships at one end, and both freight and vessel were loaded onto wheeled sleds that were dragged by slaves to the other terminus, where the ships were refloated and reloaded. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that the technology had evolved to excavate a proper canal and save modern cargo vessels the one-hundred-and-sixty-mile journey around the Peloponnese. After a failed French effort, a Greek company took over and completed the canal in 1893.

At a little less than four miles long and only eighty-two feet wide at sea level, there wasn’t much to note about the canal except for one special feature. It was carved through solid rock that soared more than two hundred and fifty feet above the ships transiting through it. It was as though an ax had cleaved the living rock to create the narrow passage. A favorite tourist activity was to stand on one of the bridges that span the canal and peer down at the oceangoing ships far below.

Had it not been for the lights of the tiny town of Poseidonia, the view on the Oregon’s main screen would have looked as though the ship was racing toward a cliff. The canal was so narrow it was difficult to spot.

It was just a fractionally lighter slash on the dark stone. An occasional headlight swept along the main bridge a mile inland.

“You sure about this, Mr. Stone?” Max asked.

“With the high tide, we’ll have four feet clearance on each side of our wing bridges. I can’t promise I won’t scrape some paint, but I’ll get us through.”

“Okay, then. I’m not going to watch this on TV if I can get the live show. I’ll be up on the bridge.”

“Just don’t go outside,” Eric cautioned, a little uncertainty in his voice. “You know. Just in case.”

“You’ll do fine, lad.”

Max took the elevator topside and emerged on the dim pilothouse. He glanced aft, to check where crewmen were making preparations under the direction of Mike Trono and Jerry Pulaski, two of Linc’s best gundogs. Crewmen were also stationed at the bow.

The ship was steaming at nearly twenty knots as it made its approach. Though the canal is used today primarily by pleasure boats and sightseeing craft, any large vessel was towed through by tugs because of its tight confines and speed was limited to just a few knots. Max had supreme confidence in Eric Stone’s ship-handling abilities, but he couldn’t ignore the tension knotting his shoulders. He loved the Oregonas much as the Chairman and hated to see even a scratch mar her intentionally scabrous hide.

They passed a long breakwater to starboard, and the collision alarm sounded through every compartment on the ship. The crew knew what was coming and had taken the proper precautions.

Small bridges running along the coast roads spanned each end of the canal. Unlike the high truss bridges that towered over the water, these two-lane structures were just above sea level. To accommodate ships transiting the waterway, the bridges could be mechanically lowered until they rested on the seafloor so that vessels could pass over them. Once the ship was clear, the bridges were cranked back into place and cars could cross once again.

With her bow configured and reinforced to crash through sea ice, the Oregonslammed into the bridge, riding up on it in an earsplitting squeal of steel. Rather than crush the bridge, the tremendous weight of the hull snapped the locks that held it in place and it sank under the hull. The Oregoncame back down with a tremendous splash that sloshed back and forth against the canal sides and dangerously slewed the ship.

Max looked up. It was as if the canal’s featureless rock walls reached the heavens. They dwarfed the ship, and, up ahead, the automobile and railroad bridges looked as light and delicate as girders from his boyhood Erector set.

The tramp freighter continued to charge through the canal, and, to Eric’s credit, he kept it dead center, using the Oregon’s athwartship thrusters with such delicacy that the flying bridges never once touched the side. Max chanced stepping out on one and walking all the way to the end. It was foolish and dangerous.

If Eric made a mistake, a collision at this speed would tear the platform off the superstructure. But Max wanted to reach out and touch the stone. It was cool and rough. At this depth, the canal remained in shadow for most of the day, so the sun never had the chance to warm it.

Satisfied, he hurried to the bridge just as the Oregonheaved slightly and the railing smacked the canal wall. Eric shifted their heading infinitesimally, so as not to overcorrect, and centered them once again.

“Linda’s van is just about at the New National Road bridge,” Gomez called over the intercom. “I can see the Chairman, too. He’s still got a good lead on the jeep chasing him.”

“On my way down,” Max said, and moved for the elevator.

THE DAMAGED TIRE finally shredded a quarter mile from the bridge, and they covered the distance riding on the rim, sparks shooting from the back of the van like a Catherine wheel. The sound was like fingernails across a chalkboard, something Linda hated more than any other noise in the world. She wasn’t sure what made her happier when they reached the center of the span: that they were almost home free or that the unholy shriek had ended.

Franklin Lincoln threw open the side door as soon as they stopped. He could see the Oregonfast approaching and heaved three thick nylon climbing ropes off the bridge. The ropes were secured around the van’s seats and through a frame member that was exposed in the cargo area. They uncoiled as they fell through space and came up just ten feet shy of the sea.

Linda quickly jumped out of her seat and donned her rappelling gear—harness, helmet, and gloves—while, two hundred feet below them, water frothed at the Oregon’s stern as reverse thrust was applied to slow her. With the power of her massive engines, she lost headway almost immediately.

Linc had already strapped himself into a harness used by tandem parachute jumpers, and, with Eddie’s help, they had clipped an unconscious Kyle Hanley to him. The three of them then secured themselves to the lines and waited for word from down below.

On the Oregon, crewmen at the bow grabbed the dangling ropes and guided them aft as the vessel crept forward, making sure they didn’t become entangled with the superstructure, communications antenna, or any of the hundreds of things that could snag them. As soon as the men reached the aft deck, Max ordered his people to go.

Never one to be bothered by heights, Linda stepped onto the guardrail and started lowering herself from the bridge. Eddie was on one side of her, and Linc, carrying Kyle, made his way down the other. They lowered themselves down the bridge’s underpinning girders, and then, suddenly, they were dangling two hundred feet over their ship, nothing holding them in place but the three-quarter-inch lines.

With a whoop, Linda shot down her rope like a runaway elevator. Eddie and Linc quickly followed, almost free-falling through space before using their rappelling harnesses to slow their descent. They touched down at almost the same time, and stood still so that their crewmates could unhook them from the ropes. The lines’ trailing ends were quickly knotted around cast-iron bollards bolted to the ship’s deck.

Breathless from the adrenaline rush, Linda said, “Now for the fun part.” Watching the action on deck from the closed-circuit television system, Eric Stone didn’t wait for orders.

He eased the T-handle throttle forward slightly to edge the ship farther up the canal. The slack in the ropes vanished in an instant, and then they quivered for a second before the ship’s thrust rolled the rental van over the guardrail. It plummeted like a stone, smashing into the water just behind the Oregon’s fantail. The impact flattened its roof and blew out all its windows. The weight of its engine caused the van to upend, like a duck diving for food, and it bobbed in the ship’s wake for a moment before filling with water and sinking out of sight. They would tow the ruined vehicle well into the Aegean before cutting the ropes and allowing the van to sink to the bottom.

The van was rented by a disguised crew member using false identification, and there would be no link back to the Corporation. And only one more person needed to rejoin the ship for the mission to be considered a success, even if they had to go so deep into their playbook that they had to use plan C.

CABRILLO RACED TOWARD the Corinth Canal, flashing by villages and small farms in a blur. In the moonlight, stands of conical cypress trees looked like army sentries guarding the fields.

No matter how recklessly he took corners or how brutally he punished the jeep’s transmission, he couldn’t shake his tail. Denied returning their kidnapped member, the men chasing him wanted blood.

They drove just as hard, using both lanes of the road and often skidding into the gravel verge in their pursuit. They had managed a few potshots at Cabrillo, but at the speeds they were traveling there was no chance to fire accurately, and they’d stopped, presumably to conserve ammunition.

Juan regretted not raising the windscreen as he squinted against eighty-mile-an-hour wind. It didn’t help that a breeze had picked up, and grit as nebulous as smoke drifted across the road and scoured his eyes.

He flashed past the site of ancient Isthmia. Unlike other ruins dotting Greece, there was nothing to see on the low hillock, no temples or columns, just a sign and a tiny museum. What he noticed most, however, was a sign stating the modern town of Isthmia was two kilometers ahead. If the Oregondidn’t get into position soon, he was going to be in trouble. The jeep’s gas gauge was staying above EMPTY on the sheer force of his will.

He heard his name in his earbud and had to adjust the volume on his radio. “Juan here.”

“Chairman, it’s Gomez. Linda and the others are safely aboard. I’ve got you on the drone, and Eric’s making his calculations now, but you might want to slow down a touch.”

“You do see that other jeep behind me, right?”

“I do,” the chopper pilot drawled. “But if we don’t get this just right, you’re going to end up like a fly on the wrong side of a swatter, if you know what I mean.” The simile was more than apt. “Thanks for the mental picture.” The road started to descend down to the coast. In order to save fuel, Juan mashed the clutch and let momentum and gravity take over for a few seconds. He drove with one eye on the side mirror, and a few seconds after spotting the Responsivists’ headlights he eased off the clutch to let the engine engage again.

The motor sputtered. It caught instantly, but gave another weak cough. Cabrillo used an old stock-car driver’s trick, weaving the jeep to slosh the gasoline in the tank. It seemed to work because the engine purred.

“Juan, Eric’s finished with his number crunching,” Adams said. “You’re eight hundred and seventy meters from the bridge, meaning you’re too close. You need to slow down to fifty miles an hour if we’re to make this happen.”

The pursuing jeep was eighty yards back and closing. The road was too straight for Juan to do much maneuvering, and, when he tried to swerve again so they would waste a shot, the motor wheezed. He cursed.

“I’m coming in hot. Tell Eric to goose the old girl and meet me.” He entered the town of Isthmia, a typical Greek seaside village. He could smell the sea and the iodine taint of drying fishing nets. The buildings were mostly whitewashed, with the ubiquitous red-tiled roofs.

Satellite dishes grew from many of them like high-tech mushrooms. The main drag opened on a small village square, and Cabrillo could see the stanchions that raised and lowered the narrow bridge to cross the canal beyond.

“Okay, Chairman.” This time, it was Eric in the earbud. “You need to slow down now. Exactly fifty-two kilometers per hour or you’re going to hit us.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s simple vectors. High school physics,” Eric replied as if he’d been insulted. “Trust me.” The crack of a rifle sounded behind Cabrillo. He had no idea where the bullet went but had no choice but to ignore it and comply with Eric’s directions. As he slowed, the AK-47 chattered on automatic. He could hear the bullets striking the jeep. One passed over his shoulder close enough to ruffle the cloth of his uniform shirt.

The bridge was fifty yards away and the Responsivists maybe fifty yards behind him. Traveling at the required speed took every ounce of self-control Cabrillo possessed. The primitive part of his brain was screaming for him to floor it, to get out of there as fast as he could.

Appearing like a colossus, the bow of the Oregonsuddenly emerged from behind a four-story building that was blocking Juan’s view of the canal. She never looked so beautiful.

And, suddenly, she was rearing up, her plates scraping against the bridge, as she had done when she’d first entered the canal. She rose higher and higher, climbing up the bridge as if she were cutting an ice pack. With a shearing clang, the mechanical systems that operated the bridge gave out under her titanic weight, and the ship crashed back into the canal with barely a check in her speed.

Juan kept driving at her, seemingly bent on crashing into her armored flank. The men chasing him must have thought he was bent on suicide.

Fifteen yards to go and panic began to hit him. They’d timed it wrong. He was going to slam into the ship as she glided out of the canal. He could feel it. More gunfire erupted from behind him. It was answered by someone firing from the Oregon’s railing. He saw the muzzle flash against the darkened hull.

Seconds now. Speed, vectors, timing. He’d gambled and lost and was about to crank the wheel over when he spotted the yawning opening of the boat garage bathed in red battle lights. The Oregonwas ballasted perfectly to the bottom lip of the ramp they used to launch Zodiacs and their assault boat was just slightly lower than the roadway.

Keeping it at exactly fifty-two kilometers per hour, he hit the end of the road, jumping the one-foot gap separating the damaged bridge from the Oregonand landing inside his ship. He hit the brakes and caromed into reinforced netting set up to stop boats during high-speed maneuvers. The jeep’s air bag deployed, further cushioning Juan from the brutal deceleration.

From outside, he heard the squeal of brakes. Tires dug in hard but not hard enough. Spinning sideways, the pursuing jeep slammed into the hull with a dull ring and teetered against the plates as the ship passed by. Metal tore against metal, as the Oregonground the jeep against the side of the canal, flattening the vehicle and its occupants, until Eric Stone gave a little lateral thrust and the jeep fell into the water.

Max materialized at Cabrillo’s side and helped him dig out from under the deflated air bag. "Plan C, huh?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” They exited the boat garage, Juan moving a little stiffly. “How’s Kyle?”

“He’s sedated down in medical with Hux.”

“We’ll get him straightened out.”

“I know.” Max stopped and looked into Juan’s eyes. “Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary.” They started walking toward the infirmary.

"If plan C was this nuts, you’ve got to tell me about plan D.”

“Oh sure.” Juan grinned. “Only problem with that one was, we couldn’t find enough Spartans to re-create the battle of Thermopylae.”

CHAPTER 15

A PATROL CRAFT FROM THE HELLENIC COAST GUARD approached the Oregonjust as the dawn sun crested the horizon. After a mad sixty-mile dash from the Corinth Canal, they were cruising at a steady fourteen knots, an appropriate speed for such a dilapidated ship. The sooty smoke pouring from her funnel made it appear as though the engine was burning as much oil as bunker fuel. Over the radio, the captain of the forty-foot patrol boat didn’t sound too concerned about a rust-bucket freighter, so far from the scene of the crime, being the culprit.

“No, Captain,” Juan bluffed smoothly. “We’ve been nowhere near Corinth. We were on our way to Piraeus when our agent radioed that our contract to haul olive oil to Egypt had been cancelled. We are continuing on to Istanbul. Besides, I don’t even think this old girl could fit in the canal. Too wide in the hips.” Cabrillo gave a lewd chuckle. “And if we had hit a bridge, our bows would have been crushed. As you can see, that is not the case. You are welcome to board and inspect them, if you wish.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the Coast Guard captain replied. “The incident occurred a hundred kilometers from here. By the looks of your vessel, it would take you eight hours to travel that far.”

“And only with the wind at our backs,” Juan quipped.

“If you see any ships acting erratically or have damage to their bows, please contact the authorities immediately.”

“Roger that, and good hunting. Atlantisout.” Juan waved at the small cutter from the wing bridge and ambled back inside, blowing out a long breath. He hung the radio hand mike back on its hook. The coiled cord trailed onto the floor.

“Did you have to invite them over for an inspection?” Eddie Seng asked from where he stood at the ship’s wheel, pretending to steer.

“They never would have taken me up on it. The Greeks want to nail someone’s hide to the outhouse door for what happened back in Corinth. They’re not going to bother with a ship that couldn’t possibly be involved.”

“What happens when they correlate all of their eyewitness accounts of what happened and come to the conclusion that we are the only vessel that fits the description?” Juan slapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll be deep into international waters and they’ll be looking for a ship called the Atlantis. As soon as there’s no other boat traffic around, I want the name plates on the fantail and fairleads changed back to Oregon.” He paused for a moment before adding, “Just in case someone has an eye for detail and a long memory, we’ll be avoiding Greece for a while.”

“Prudent precaution.”

“First watch should be up any second. Why don’t you head below and get some well-earned rest. I’ll want your after-action report on my desk by four this afternoon.”

“Should make for some interesting reading,” Eddie remarked. “In my worst nightmares, I never expected that hornet’s nest we walked in on.”

“Me neither,” Juan admitted. “There’s a lot more to these people than what we saw on their website and what the deprogrammer told Linda. That level of paranoia means they’re hiding something.”

“The obvious question is, what?”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and no one will notice the bug I planted.” Eddie shot him a dubious look. “The first thing their head of security’s going to do is sweep every square inch of that place looking for listening devices.”

“You’re right. I know. So if an electronic spy doesn’t work, we send in a human one.”

“I’ll go.”

“You don’t exactly have the look of a lost soul searching for meaning in life who’s willing to blindly follow some wacko’s rants.”

“Mark Murphy?” Eddie suggested.

“He fits the bill to a tee, but he doesn’t have the skill sets to pull off an undercover job like this. Eric Stone would be another candidate, but the same problem crops up. No. I was thinking of Linda. As a woman, she would draw less suspicion automatically. She’s got a background in intelligence work, and, as we have both seen a dozen times over, she knows how to keep her head.”

“How would you make it work?”

Juan smiled tiredly. “Give me a break, will ya? I’m making this up as I go along. The three of us will meet before dinner and brainstorm a strategy.”

“Just so long as it doesn’t turn into a plan C,” Eddie teased.

Cabrillo threw up his hands in mock exasperation. “Why is everyone giving me a hard time about that?

The plan worked.”

“So do most Rube Goldberg contraptions.”

“Bah!” Juan dismissed him with a wave.

Before heading for his cabin for what he hoped to be about ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, Juan took the elevator down to the Op Center. Hali Kasim was bent over his workstation, papers strewn about his desk as though a hurricane had just passed through. A pair of headphones flattened his otherwise-curly hair. Unlike others whose faces turn to stone when deep in thought, Hali’s Semitic features were serene, a sure sign his brain was churning.