The Jungle (Oregon Files 8)

“The whole thing was set up so that we would take MacD into the fold. Gunawan Bahar is the mastermind of everything we’ve been through these past couple of weeks. He wanted to plant a spy on the Oregon, so he hired us to ‘rescue’ his son from the Taliban while he also planted a man whose daughter’s life he controls in place for us to rescue too.

“It was a brilliant piece of misdirection. As soon as we were double-crossed by Smith in Myanmar, all suspicion automatically went to Croissard. No one ever considered there was another layer to this onion and that Croissard w

as no more in control of his actions than MacD.”

That last statement wasn’t entirely true. Since his time at Insein, Cabrillo had harbored a nagging doubt about something. He did not know what, but he sensed that some piece of information he’d been given was off in some way. It was instinct, but that was a feeling he’d learned to trust over the years, so when he saw Soleil on the rig he knew what had eluded him for so long.

“What gave it away,” he continued, “was the timing of the rig being sunk. Bahar knew from Lawless that we’d escaped Insein Prison and had Linda’s location because of the tracker chip. That pushed up his deadline to deep-six the J-61 platform by a few days or weeks. The clincher was when MacD came up to the bridge this morning. He’d been told we were steaming hard but had no idea the speeds the Oregon is capable of. As soon as he left me he called his handler, Smith, I assume, because of the way he seemed to get under your skin when we were back in the jungle. He told Smith that we were just hours away rather than days. The Hercules still wasn’t over the Palawan Trough, but they were out of time. They immediately opened the sea cocks and hit the lifeboats. To not only kill Linda and Soleil but also to hide the fact that the platform was home to perhaps one of the largest collections of interlinked computers outside a government lab. How’d I do?” He directed that last question to MacD.

Before Lawless could reply, a searing blast of sound made conversation impossible. It was the buzz-saw clamor of the Gatling raking the sides of the oil rig’s ponderous floats. It went on in staccato bursts for a full minute so that by the time the weapon was withdrawn back into the ship and its redoubt cover slid back into position, three thousand fist-sized holes had been blown through the floats, above and below the water. It would slip beneath the waves within the hour.

“How about it?” Juan prompted when it was clear Mark Murphy had finished the job.

“Nailed it. Everything.”

“I get it now,” Max exclaimed. “Croissard was controlled because Bahar had kidnapped his daughter too. All that crap on her website about going to Burma was bogus. They must have tried to get to that temple themselves, failed, and so he used Croissard to hire us, somehow knowing we’d get the job done.”

Cabrillo nodded. “And with both Smith and his spy on the team, Bahar had regular updates of our progress.”

“It all seems so elaborate. Why bother forcing MacD into this? Why the ruse? Bahar could have simply hired us to go into Myanmar.”

“Wouldn’t work,” Juan said. “No motivation. We would never take on some job to go tomb raiding. He needed the type of mission he knew we wouldn’t refuse. He’d already proven our soft spot for wayward kids, with the whole deal to save his son, so he just pulled the same trick again, only this time using Roland Croissard’s daughter as bait. Then, once he had whatever was in that bag, he called in his friends in the government to take us out.”

“Why not work with the government all along?” Max wondered aloud.

“No idea, but there was some reason. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered with us at all. My guess is that bringing in the military was a last-minute deal. MacD, any thoughts?”

“No, sir. They never gave me any information. Just took it.”

“So you have no idea what was in that bag we recovered from the body in the river?”

“None at all. And before you ask, Ah never even knew the name of the guy above Smith. I knew Smith wasn’t calling all the shots, but Ah didn’t know who was behind him.”

“Another mystery solved,” Max said, turning back to Cabrillo, “is the bombing at the hotel.”

“What? It wasn’t random?”

“It’s obvious that Bahar considers us such a threat that he felt the need to infiltrate our team, but he also took a shot at blowing us up in Singapore to end that threat early.”

Juan considered this for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t think so. As I said before, why not just have Smith blow our brains out as soon as we entered the room?”

Hanley’s face split into a wicked grin. “Because he would know the rest of the Corporation would search the ends of the earth for the shooter. But if we’d died in a suicide bombing, who would they hunt down?”

Cabrillo thought that his old friend might be onto something, but a lingering doubt remained. For the time being the past was unimportant. “For now, we need to concentrate on Bahar. We need to find out what he has planned. It’s something he sees us threatening, and it’s linked to whatever they pulled from the temple.”

“That’s specific,” Max said sardonically

“What about my little girl?” MacD asked, mustering as much dignity as he could. “Now that Smith, or this Bahar guy, knows Ah’ve been found out, they’re goin’ to kill her. They’ve let me talk to her over a webcam. The guys with her are strapped with explosive belts. They’re going to blow up my baby.”

“Who said anything about Smith and Bahar knowing we’ve discovered why you’re here?”

“Ah don’t understand.”

“It’s simple, really. You contact Smith like you’re supposed to and report that the rig was gone by the time we got to it.”

“Okaaay,” Lawless said, drawing out the word as if to draw out more information.

“And then we rescue your daughter, figure out what these sons of bitches are really up to, and nail them to the nearest outhouse door.”