Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

She sported launchers for surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, as well as 20mm Gatling guns and a monstrous 120mm cannon hidden in the bow that could be deployed through clamshell-type doors. Of the dozen old oil drums sitting on the deck, six held remotely controlled .30 caliber machine guns that were operated from the Oregon’s high-tech op center. These were used to repel pirates, and more than a few off the Somali coast had felt their sting.

The Oregon also possessed a sophisticated suite of sensors that made her optimal for intelligence-gathering operations in places the United States could not send in her own spy ships. They’d lingered near any number of adversarial nations, such as Iran and Libya before its fall, gathering signal intelligence that satellites couldn’t detect. One recent mission had them posted off the coast of North Korea, armed with an experimental high-energy laser “loaned” to them by Sandia National Laboratories. The result had been the spectacular though inexplicable, at least to them, failure of that reclusive regime’s test launch of its Unha-3 long-range missile.

Juan chatted up a few crew members as he made his way to his cabin to shower off nearly twenty-four hours of travel. He still had grit from Uzbekistan under his nails. He dressed in charcoal slacks with a striped button-down shirt and custom-made shoes from Otabo.

He had time to enjoy a Cobb salad in the dining room, surrounded by overstuffed leather furniture and a gentlemen’s club’s cozy atmosphere, before heading to the Oregon’s boardroom for a status meeting with his senior staff.

The room was rectangular in shape and done in a sleek modern style, with a glass table and black leather chairs. Had they been at sea, portals would be opened to give the room natural light, but since they were hard against the Newark pier it wouldn’t do to give dockworkers a glimpse of the ship’s true interior.

Seated at the table were Max Hanley, Eddie Seng—another CIA veteran like Cabrillo—who headed up shore operations, along with the big former SEAL at his side, Franklin Lincoln. Across from them were Eric Stone and Mark Murphy. Stone had put in his five after Annapolis and retained a Navy man’s bearing, though he was still trapped in a nerd’s gawky body. Murph was one of the only civilians on the crew. Possessor of several Ph.D.s, a near-photographic memory, and the paranoia of a true conspiracy theorist, he usually dressed like he’d picked up last night’s laundry from the floor, and his wild dark hair was an unkempt bush. He’d been a weapons designer for one of the big defense contractors and had joined up with the Corporation on Eric Stone’s suggestion.

Absent from the meeting was Linda Ross, who was still with the Emir on his yacht, and the ship’s medical officer, Julia Huxley, who was visiting her brother in Summit, New Jersey.

“Welcome back,” Max said, lifting a cup of coffee. “Good flight?”

“Why do people still ask that?” Murph interrupted. “It’s not like flying is so rare these days that the answer is important. The plane landed. Good or bad, who cares?”

Max shot him a look. “For the same reason people pick up a ringing phone as quickly as possible: it’s a polite social convention.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Mark countered.

“Most of the good social conventions are,” Max replied with a dismissive wave. “Only, your generation’s in too much of a hurry to appreciate them.”

“For the record,” Juan said loud enough to take control of the meeting, “my flight was fine, much better than trying to backtrack out of the Uzbek desert following my old tire prints.”

“Good piece of work,” Linc said, his voice rumbling out of his deep barrel chest. “Make you an honorable SEAL one of these days.”

“Any blowback for Petrovski’s widow?” Stone asked. “It’s clear someone was sanitizing his discovery, and she would be another loose end.”

“When I got back to Muynak,” Juan said, “I told Arkin Kamsin what had happened. He promised to get her and her kids out of the country as quickly as he could. As soon as they were gone he was taking some time to visit friends in Astana, the capital. It’s the best we can do.”

He went on. “Bring me up to speed on your research.”

Mark Murphy wore a pair of fingerless gloves with wires jacked into his laptop, which itself was linked to the ship’s mainframe Cray supercomputer. He moved his hands through the air, and on the big flat screen his moves shuffled aside data windows in a way similar to a science-fiction movie. It was the latest generation slide-screen

technology that he was beta-testing for a friend’s start-up company.

“Here we go,” he announced as an aerial photograph of an industrial site alongside a body of water came up on the display. “This is a shot of the C. Kraft and Sons shipbuilding facility taken in 1917, only three years before it was destroyed by fire. The company was founded in 1863 by Charles Kraft to build iron casements for the Union’s ironclad fleet. After the Civil War, they started constructing iron ships for the Great Lakes, mostly coastal ore carriers. At its peak in 1899, it was the prominent shipbuilder on the lakes.

“After Charles Kraft’s death, his two sons, Alec and Benjamin, squabbled over control. Alec, the elder son, eventually bought out his brother’s shares, but the debt he incurred eventually doomed the company. Rather than expand, it grew smaller and smaller as Alec was forced to sell off assets to cover his expenses. It didn’t help matters that he had a severe drinking problem.

“The fire that destroyed the yard was deemed suspicious, although the insurance company couldn’t prove arson. Alec Kraft died in 1926 from chronic liver disease. Benjamin Kraft hadn’t stayed in Erie after his buyout but moved to Pittsburgh with his family. He lived a quiet life off the proceeds of the sale. Neither man has any children alive today, but there are four grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren, mostly in Pennsylvania or Upstate New York.”

“Any record of the company ever selling a ship to anyone in Russia?” Juan asked the question that had been burning in his mind since discovering Karl Petrovski’s eerie boat, in fact, had been a boat built in Erie.

“No direct overseas sales at all,” Mark said. He flicked his hands, and up came a list of the ships they had built. “I found this on a database of the Great Lakes Maritime Museum.”

He then highlighted several on the long list and explained as he went. “Going on your description, I’ve narrowed down the vessels that could be the one you found.”

The pages showed more than two dozen craft that fit the rough dimensions and approximate age of the ship Juan had seen.

“Any pictures?” Juan asked.

“Yeah, hold on a second.” Murph worked more of his magic, and soon they were looking at sepia-tone photographs dating back more than a century.

Most of them were designed to carry cargo of one type or another. One of them was a ferry built to haul railcars on tracks laid onto the deck, with an arch over the bow to support the wheelhouse. More pictures clicked by.

“Stop!” Juan shouted. “Go back one. That’s her.”