Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

It was an empty threat, thanks to Langston Overholt, but Severance didn’t know that. Nor, it seemed, did he care.

“What’s up?” Cabrillo asked.

“Kevin just finished up with Donna Sky. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Is he sure?”

“They talked for an hour,” Linda said in her pixielike voice. “She’s just an actress who belongs to a loony cult. She’s too high-profile to be directly involved with anything untoward. And, according to the celebrity scandal rags, she’s tied up shooting her new movie for at least the next four months, apparently to the chagrin of her latest paramour who’s in Australia touring with his band, which, by the way, Mark Murphy says sucks.”

“Then I’d probably like them,” Juan said, digesting this latest piece of information. “If Gil Martell didn’t say her name when he was talking to Severance after we broke into his office, then it has to be something else. Can you ask Hali to go over that tape one more time?”

“He cursed up a storm when I told him he might be wrong and then volunteered to listen to it all again.”

“Tell him he gets an extra ration of grog. Anything else?”

“Eddie’s back from Rome, and we’re getting good audio on the arms dealer’s yacht but nothing pertinent so far.”

Cabrillo had completely forgotten about that mission. “Okay. Good. Keep me posted. Linc and I are about three hours from where the Responsivists have their Philippine retreat. We’ll keep you posted.”

“Roger that, Chairman, and good hunting. Oregon out.”

Juan clicked off the phone.

“The whole Donna Sky thing’s a bust?” Linc asked in the darkened confines of the jeep. Wearing all black, Linc was just a large shadow sitting next to Cabrillo.

“Yeah. She doesn’t know anything.”

“It was a long shot anyway. Woman like that can’t take her dog for a walk without the paparazzi following her.”

“Linda said about the same thing,” Juan said moodily. “I should have realized that.”

“Chairman, we’ve been grasping at straws since the beginning. No need to get all morose on me now. We go with the intel we have and see where it takes us. Dead end or not, we have to check it all.”

“I know,” Juan agreed. “It’s just—”

“—that Max’s butt is on the line this time,” Linc finished for him “And you’re concerned.”

Cabrillo forced a tired smile. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“Listen, man, this is our best lead yet. There were four hundred Responsivists here for God knows how long and now they’re all dead, most likely so they’ll never talk about what they were doing. We’ll find what we need and get Max and his son back.”

Juan appreciated the pep talk, but it did little to make him feel better. That would come only when Max was back aboard the Oregon, and Thom Severance and Zelimir Kovac were nailed to the most convenient outhouse door.

The ferry staggered into the harbor, slamming into the wooded pilings in one of the worst displays of seamanship Cabrillo had ever seen. Ten minutes later, with the boat secured to the dock and the ramp lowered, Linc fired the jeep’s engines, and they eased onto the quay. They immediately opened the windows to dissipate the pig smell that had permeated the vehicle.

“Good a time as any,” Juan said, and put his foot up on the dashboard.

He rolled up his pant leg. The prosthesis he wore was a bulbous, ugly limb of flesh-toned plastic. He pulled the leg free, and unlaced his boot, pulling it and his sock free. There was a tiny hole in the bottom of the prosthetic foot. He plucked a small Allen wrench from his pocket, inserted it in the hole, and turned it counterclockwise. This released a mechanism built into the leg that allowed him to split open the calf like an old-fashioned lunch box. Cached inside what he called his smuggler’s leg were two Kel-Tek pistols.

Despite its small size, the Kel-Tek fired P-rated .380 caliber bullets. For this particular mission, the armorer aboard the Oregon had hollowed out the seven rounds each pistol held and filled the voids with mercury. When the bullet struck flesh and slowed, the momentum would cause the mercury to explode out of the round and shred tissue the way a shaped explosive cuts through a tank’s armor. A hit anywhere center mass was fatal, and even a glancing shot to the shoulder or hip would sever a limb. Cabrillo handed one of the diminutive pistols to Linc and slipped the other into the small of his back.

A small block of plastic explosives and two detonator pencils, set at five minutes, were also in the smuggler’s leg. Juan had found over the years that when his prosthesis set off airport metal detectors and he pulled up his cuff to show the limb, he was waved through with an apologetic smile every time. Although they hadn’t encountered any bomb-sniffing dogs on this run, he was ready for that contingency with a small bottle of nitroglycerin pills and an explanation of having a bad heart.

The road out of town and into the hills hadn’t seen new asphalt in decades. The Responsivists had worked on the opposite side of the island, and it took an hour to reach the area. The sun had crested the horizon during the drive, revealing primal rain forest and jungle that hemmed in the road like a continuous emerald tunnel. The few villages they passed were composed of a couple of crude thatched huts and the odd corrugated-metal lean-to. With the exception of the Japanese occupation during the war, the pace of life in this part of the islands hadn’t changed in millennia.

When they were five miles from their destination, Linc pulled off the road, easing the jeep into a thicket of underbrush deep enough to hide the vehicle. They had no idea if the Responsivists had left guards at their facility and weren’t going to take unnecessary chances. He and Cabrillo spent a few minutes putting finishing touches on the camouflage and erasing the tracks the jeep had sunk into the soft soil. Even knowing where it was hidden, neither man could see it from the road. Juan built a small cairn of pebbles on the verge to mark the location.

Shouldering packs stuffed with gear, they stepped into the jungle and started the long walk in. The sun seemed to vanish, replaced by a green-filtered glow that barely penetrated the high canopy of trees. The color reminded Cabrillo of