Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

A reporter from the Eos Angeles Times caught Sandecker's attention. "Do you know what possible connection there might be between the two incidents?"

Sandecker threw up his hands and shrugged. "It's a mystery to me. You'll probably have better luck finding answers from the FBI and CIA during their ongoing investigation."

The L.A. Times reporter motioned for one more question, and Sandecker nodded.

"Would that be the same NUMA special projects director who was in on the rescue of the twenty-five hundred people on the Emerald Dolphin, who saved your survey vessel from being destroyed, and who saved the lives of those disabled children in New York yesterday during the dogfight?"

"Yes," Sandecker said proudly. "His name, as you already know, is Dirk Pitt."

The woman in the back of the room shouted the next question. "Do you think there is a connection-?"

"No, I do not." Sandecker cut her off. "And please don't ask me any more questions on that subject because I haven't talked to Mr. Pitt since the incident, and I only know what I read in your newspapers and see on your television news programs." He paused, stepped back from the podium and raised his hands. "Ladies and gentlemen, that's all I know. Thank you for your courtesy."

Hiram Yaeger was waiting in Sandecker's outer office when the admiral returned. Dr. Egan's old leather case was sitting on the floor beside his chair. He had a fondness for the old case and had begun using it to take his workload home because it was larger and more square than the common briefcase. He rose and followed Sandecker through the door.

"What have you got for me?" asked Sandecker, sitting at his desk.

"I thought you might like an update on the CIA's dive project on the hijackers' ship," he said, opening the case and removing a file folder.

Sandecker stared at Yaeger over a pair of reading glasses, his eyebrows arched. "Where did you get your information? The CIA has given out nothing yet. I know for a fact they've only been diving on the wreck"-he paused to glance at his watch-"for the past ten hours."

"The project manager insists on running a constant data program every hour. You might say that we'll know what they've discovered almost as soon as they will."

"If they find out Max is hacking secret CIA files, we'll catch twenty different kinds of hell."

Yaeger grinned deviously. "Believe me, Admiral, they'll never know. Max is gaining the data from the salvage ship's computer before it's cryptogrammed and sent on for analysis at their headquarters at Langley."

Now it was Sandecker's turn to grin deviously. "So tell me what Max found."

Yaeger opened the file folder and began reading. "The hijackers' boat was identified as a one-hundred-thirty-five-foot crew/utility work boat built by the Hogan and Lashere Boat Yard of San Diego, California. She was designed to service the offshore oil industry in Indonesia. She was considered to have great flexibility and speed."

"Did they establish who owned her?" asked Sandecker.

"She was last registered to Barak Oil Company, a subsidiary of Colexico."

"Colexico," Sandecker echoed. "I thought they ceased to exist after they were bought out and shut down."

"A situation that didn't go down •well with the Indonesian government when their main source of oil income disappeared."

"Who acquired Colexico?"

Yaeger gazed at him and smiled. "Colexico was taken over and disbanded by the Cerberus Corporation."

Sandecker leaned back in his chair, a smug expression on his face. "I'd like to see Charlie Davis's face when he hears this."

"There won't be a direct tie-in," said Yaeger. "Ownership of the boat was never transferred. A check through our own library finds no trace of the boat from 1999 to the present. And it's extremely unlikely the hijackers kept any evidence leading to Cerberus on the boat."

"Have the CIA salvage people identified any of the hijackers yet?"

"There's not much left of the bodies to ID, and the guard at the lagoon entrance went out to sea with the tide. As Dirk suspected, dental records and fingerprints will probably find that those guys were former Special Forces warriors who took discharge and went to work as mercenaries."

"A common occurrence with the military these days."

"Unfortunately, there's more money to be made outside than inside."

"Has Max come up with any theories on what possible motives the directors of Cerberus could have for committing mass murder?"

"She can't create a scenario that makes sense."