Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

“Linc has done a couple of stints on fast-attack subs in his SEAL days. Says they’re nicer than a lot of the hotels he’s stayed in.”

“Linc’s cheap. I’ve seen the places he goes for. Hourly-rates-available, clean-sheets-extra kind of joints.”

Wind started to blow as the Oregon accelerated eastward. In a few minutes, the magnetohydrodynamics would have them going so fast that standing on the deck would be like facing into a hurricane. The deckhands had finished securing the crane boom, and the trolley had been returned to the torpedo room.

“What do you say, Max?”

“What do I say about what?”

“The derelict out there. Do we stop and take a quick look-see or hightail it to Karachi?”

Max led Cabrillo into the protection of a stairwell, where he could light his pipe. “Kyle’s been missing since the day before yesterday. My ex thinks she knows who he’s with—some group of friends she doesn’t care for—which makes me think this isn’t as big a deal as she’s making it. It’ll take us at least twenty-four hours to get to L.A., once we reach Pakistan, so losing an hour investigating a ghostship isn’t going to matter much.”

“You sure?” Juan asked, blinking rapidly because hot ash from Max’s pipe whipped across his face.

“Sorry.” Max tapped the pipe over the side. “Yeah. It’ll be fine.”

“Eric, you read me?” Juan asked into the walkie-talkie.

“Right here.”

“New course. Get us over to that ship at best possible speed. Track down Gomez and have him prep the Robinson.” George “Gomez” Adams was a matinee-idol-handsome chopper pilot who’d gotten his nickname after using his charms on a South American drug lord’s wife, a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Carolyn Jones, the actress from the old Addams Family television show. “Tell him I want a UAV on the launch rail as soon as we’re in position. If need be, you can fly it.”

Eric couldn’t fly a real plane to save his life but played enough flight simulator games to easily handle the Oregon’s remotely operated drones.

Cabrillo asked, “What’s our ETA?”

“Little over two hours.”

“Put yourself down for a bonus if you make it in two.”

CHAPTER 7

BY THE LIGHT OF THE STARS SMEARED ACROSS THE night sky, she looked like a wedding cake, multiple tiers rising higher and higher, a delicate balance of form and function. Yet to the men and women in the Op Center studying the feed beamed back by the flying drone, she also looked like a ghostship.

Not a porthole was lit, nothing stirred on her deck, even the bar of her radar transmitter was stationary.

Cresting waves slapped against her long white hull, hitting her as if she was as immutable as an iceberg. Thermal imaging off the drone’s IR camera showed that her engines and funnel were cold, and while the ambient air temperature in this part of the Indian Ocean hovered near the high eighties the gear was sensitive enough to detect body heat. They saw none.

“What the hell happened here?” Linda asked, knowing there couldn’t possibly be an answer.

“Gomez, buzz the deck,” Juan ordered.

George Adams sat at a workstation at the rear of the Op Center, his slicked-back and brilliantined hair shimmering in the dim neon glow of his computer. He ran a finger across his pencil mustache and eased the joystick forward. The UAV, nothing more than a commercial radio-controlled airplane fitted with powerful cameras and an extended transceiver, complied with his command, diving down toward the cruise ship lying dead in the water thirty miles east of the hard-charging Oregon.

The crew watched expectantly as the tiny aircraft arced out of the sky and ran along the ship’s starboard rail, the camera tracking along her deck. For several long seconds, it was quiet in the room, each person absorbed with what they were seeing. It was Cabrillo who finally broke the silence.

He keyed his communications pad. “Medical to the Op Center. Hux, we need you now!”

“Are those what I think they are?” Eric Stone asked in a hushed whisper.

“Aye, lad,” Max replied, equally subdued. “Her deck’s littered with bodies.”

There had to be a hundred corpses on the deck, sprawled in twisted shapes of agony. Their clothing fluttered with the breeze. Adams zoomed in on the open deck around the ship’s swimming pool, where it seemed as if every guest at a party had simply collapsed, the area was strewn with dropped dishes and glasses. He tightened the camera’s focus as he slowed the UAV to narrow in on one passenger, a young woman in a dress. She lay in a pool of her own blood. It looked as though everyone was.

“Did anyone notice the ship’s name?” Mark Murphy asked.

“Golden Dawn,” Juan told him, all thoughts of salvage and prize money driven from his mind.