Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

Juan had managed to lever his prosthetic limb up just enough so the dagger-sharp remains of his carbon fiber foot sliced into the taut muscles of his opponent’s abdomen. Juan grabbed his attacker’s shoulders, drawing the guard toward him at the same time he kicked hard with the leg.

The sensation of the artificial limb sinking into the guard’s stomach would haunt the chairman’s nightmares for years to come. Juan pushed the guard aside as his screams gave way to wet gurgles, and finally silence.

He staggered to his feet. The back half of the yacht was engulfed in fire, flames torn almost horizontal by the powerful wind. There was no way to battle the conflagration so Juan stepped to the side of the boat. He eased over the railing and lowered himself to the deck. He knelt and quickly rinsed his prosthesis in the sea.

“Sloane,” he shouted into the night. “You can come out now.”

Her face emerged over the top of the immense pipe, a pale oval against the dark night. Slowly, she rose from a crouch and came toward him. Juan hobbled across the deck to meet her. They were two feet apart when he saw her eyes go wide. Her mouth began to open but Juan had already anticipated her warning. He whirled, his damaged leg kicking out from under him on the slick dock yet still he raised the Glock as a fifth guard appeared on the yacht’s foredeck, carrying a pistol in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He was also a second faster than Cabrillo.

His weapon cracked once as Juan continued to lose his balance, falling as if in slow motion. Juan triggered off two rounds as his backside connected with the dock. The first missed but the second impacted center mass. The guard’s gun flew from his lifeless fingers and the case clattered onto the floating pier.

He turned to look at Sloane.

She was on her knees, her hand pressed into her underarm. Her face was a mask of silent agony.

Juan slithered to her side.

“Hold on, Sloane, hold on,” he soothed. “Let me see.”

He gently raised her arm, causing her to suck air through her teeth. Tears leaked from her eyes. Her blood was hot and slick as Juan felt for the wound and when he accidentally touched the torn flesh Sloane cried out.

“Sorry.”

He pulled her blouse away from her skin, wedged his fingers into the rent torn by the bullet, and ripped the fabric apart so he could see the entry point. He used a flap of cloth to softly wipe away some of the blood. The light from the burning yacht was wavering and erratic but he could see that the bullet had gouged a two-inch trench along the rib cage under her arm.

He looked into her eyes. “You’re going to be okay. I don’t think it penetrated. It just grazed you.”

“It hurts, Juan, oh sweet God, it hurts.”

He held her awkwardly, mindful of her wound. “I know it does. I know.”

“I bet you do,” she said, stifling her pain. “I’m crying like baby over this when you had a leg shot off by the Chinese Navy.”

“According to Max, when the shock finally wore off I sounded like a whole nursery full of colicky infants. Wait here for a second.”

“Not like I’m going to go for a swim or anything.”

Juan went back to the yacht. The fire was too advanced for him to recover anything from the cabins but he managed to strip the guard he hadn’t expected of a sports coat. The fact that he was wearing a thousand-dollar Armani blazer told him this guy wasn’t a guard but was most likely the head of this operation. A suspicion confirmed when the briefcase turned out to be a laptop computer.

“If it was important enough to save,” Juan said, holding up the ThinkPad when he returned to Sloane’s side, “it’s important enough to retrieve. We have to put some distance between us and that boat. When its twin exploded against the side of the Oregon she made one hell of a fireworks show.”

It was almost as if they needed each other to move, Juan with his damaged prosthesis and Sloan with her wounded chest, but somehow they managed to stagger back to where Juan had stashed the satellite phone. He laid Slone down onto the warm metal pipe and sat next to her so she could rest her head on his thigh. He covered her with the sports coat and stroked her hair until her body overcame the pain and she slipped into unconsciousness.

Cabrillo opened the laptop and began to scan the files. It took him an hour to figure out what the thousand-foot-long machine did and another to discover that there were thirty-nine more just like it nearby arranged in four long rows. Although he still had no idea as to its purpose, dawn was an hour away when he finally figured out how to shut it down by plugging the laptop into a service portal under the access hatch where he’d hidden the phone.

When the indicator light on the slim monitor showed that the machine was no longer generating electricity even though its mechanisms were still responding to the action of the waves passing down its length Juan checked his sat phone. He got a signal immediately.

It was the massive electrical field created by the wave-driven generator and its clones that had played havoc with the electronics on the lifeboat, knocked out the phone, and made the compass needle spin out of control. With the generators off-line the field collapsed, and his telephone worked fine. He assumed the laptop had been hardened against the powerful EM pulses.

He dialed a number and the phone on the other end was picked up after the fourth ring.

“This is the front desk, Mr. Hanley. You wanted a four-thirty wakeup call.”

“Juan? Juan!”

“Hiya, Max.”

“Where the hell are you? We couldn’t reach you on the lifeboat. You wouldn’t pick up your phone. Even your transdermal locator wasn’t broadcasting.”