Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

She tossed the tablet on her desk and leaned back, running her fingers through her hair. Except for a slight weariness around the eyes, she showed no sign of the stress she’d been through. “The surgery went well. Internal bleeding was causing a pressure buildup around his pleural sac. I’ve removed the bullet, put in a chest tube, and sutured the wounds. He should be up and about in a few days. Six weeks for a full recovery.”

“That’s good to hear. Is he awake?”

“No. I’ll let you know when he’s up for visitors.”

“Thanks. When he comes to, let him know that his boat is well taken care of.”

“I will.”

“What’s the diagnosis for our daring skateboarder?”

“A few stitches and a walking cast. He’ll have a nice scar to impress the ladies.”

“He?

?s cleared for duty?”

“He can certainly sit at his post in the op center, but I wouldn’t make him run laps.”

“Don’t worry,” Juan said, “we’ve already got his skateboard park stowed.”

Julia rubbed her eyes.

“You okay?” Juan asked. “You’re not usually in on the type of action you and Linda went through today.”

“I’m fine. I’m just glad I could get back to saving people instead of killing them.”

“If you and Linda hadn’t defeated those guys, we would have lost a lot of crew today.”

“It was all Linda. I just tripped in the right direction.”

“Craig Reed is happy that you did. I’ll be back later.”

He left and went to Mark Murphy’s cabin, far forward of any other quarters on the ship to isolate the meteor-impact volume levels that were blasted from the room. The door was ajar, so Juan gave a perfunctory knock and then stepped inside. If this had been during Murph’s downtime, Juan would have expected to see him battling Eric at one of his video games on the giant television, but he found them glued to their tablets. Murph’s leg was stretched out on the sofa and wrapped in bandages. The air cast sat on the floor next to him.

“I’m glad you didn’t join me in the Long John Silver Club,” Juan said. “I’m the only one on the ship allowed to have a peg leg.”

“And I will gladly let you keep that distinction,” Murph replied. “I’ve decided I don’t like being shot.”

“Have you finished the analysis of our computer security?” Juan asked, closing the door.

“We’ve gone over it three times,” Eric said. “Nothing.”

“If someone has been tiptoeing around our network,” Murph said, “we should have found something by now. Our firewall is as secure as ever. No one is inside our servers that shouldn’t be.”

“What about eavesdropping devices?”

“No network besides ours is sending any signals from this ship,” Murph said.

“And I’ve swept the op center, conference room, and mess hall with our bug detection equipment. They’re clean.”

Juan frowned. “We were attacked in five different locations at the same time. That took detailed intelligence to coordinate.”

“Everyone could have been tailed from the ship,” Eric offered.

“One or even two of us could have been followed. But all five groups? And they’d have to know where we were going to be ready for us in Montego Bay with considerable firepower to take us down.”

“Besides,” Murph said, “how could anyone know the two of us would be exposed on deck? Someone had to scout out that oil tank to snipe from.”