Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

“Damage?”

“One RPG to the stern. Awaiting a report from damage control. Speed and course are unaffected. The guns are already stowed.”

Juan looked at the camera feed showing the four guards at the entrance to the hold. They were talking animatedly among themselves and finally reached some sort of decision. One of them shouldered his rifle and started for the nearest stairwell that would lead him to the main deck.

“I suppose,” Juan said, “I should go tell him what happened. MacD, pop two of the guns out again. Linc and I will pretend we fired them.”

Max Hanley finally made his appearance.

“Damage?” Juan asked, for he knew Max would check on his beloved ship before anything else.

“We won’t be changing our name anytime soon. My magnetic sign is all messed up, but other than that we’re good.”

“All right, we suspected this was coming. Now we’ll wait to see if we get attacked again and prove once and for all there’s no honor among thieves.”

Linda Ross was manning the op center six days later as the Oregon was coming abreast of the island of Sumatra for the final dash to Jakarta. Juan and Hali had the topside con. Every few minutes, she would scan all the various computer screens and control panels for any sign that there was some sort of trouble aboard the ship. Then she would scan the main display. On it were shots of the sea, both fore and aft, as well as a radar plot refreshed by the repeater’s swing arm. Another part of the screen was a cable news feed where talking heads were discussing heightened tensions between China and Japan over the discovery of a massive gas field near some disputed islands. Yet another was a peek into the hallway outside the hold where their four guests guarded the door. The men were unshaven, and the strain of maintaining vigilance over the past days showed in the hollowness of their eyes and the stoop to their shoulders.

She had to give them props. They were untrusting strangers who had held it together. Although the three Arabs now allowed themselves a half hour on deck each day, Winters never left his post.

She didn’t see anything happen and only realized something was wrong after staring at the screen for another twenty seconds.

In all the days and nights since they’d boarded, only one of the guards slept at a time while the others kept watch. Studying the image, she took valuable time to recognize that three of the guards were sleeping and the fourth was gone. The resolution wasn’t the best, but she quickly realized it was Gunny Winters she could no longer see, and the three men lying on the deck had each been shot execution style. There was remarkably little blood, but each had a bullet hole in their head.

She was about to call Juan up on the bridge and tell him what was happening when the engines abruptly cut off. Winters had had more than enough time to get from the hold to the bridge and take command of the ship. Linda was certain that he’d ordered Juan to cut power. The Oregon was now adrift under the command of a traitor and thief. And just like when the Somalis had struck, Cabrillo had predicted something like this too. And his first standing order when the next attack came was to simply wait it out and see where it headed.

Linda called Max to the op center along with Eric and Mark. She kept helm control up on the bridge for now, but they would want the A Team in place when they retook their ship. She checked the radar repeater. There was a vessel about eighty miles away, and, as she watched, the icon split into two distinct returns. She knew in just a few seconds that this fast-approaching mystery ship had launched a helicopter and it was inbound at better than a hundred knots.

“Here we go.”

Cabrillo could have ended Malcolm Winters’s mutiny in the first few seconds had he so chosen. Winters had been good, stalking his way to the wheelhouse, but Cabrillo had seen him creeping up on him in the reflection of an old coffee urn that sat on a shelf below the fore windows.

Instead of reacting, he’d sat seemingly unaware until Wi

nters pressed the still-warm barrel of his Beretta against the back of Juan’s head. “Sorry about this, Captain, but there’s been a change of plans.”

Hali, standing at the wheel, turned sharply with a quick intake of breath because he hadn’t heard Winters until he spoke.

“Stand easy,” Juan said in Arabic.

“Yes, sir.” Hali fell into the role of frightened crewman.

“What is it you want?” Cabrillo asked, switching to English.

“Number one is, I want you to cut the engines.” Winters moved around so he could cover both Cabrillo and Kasim. An M4 assault rifle was slung across his chest.

Juan suspected a man like Gunny Winters, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, would speak at least some Arabic, so he gave the correct orders to Hali at the helm station. The beat of the engines, an artificial noise created to muffle the whine of the Oregon’s true power plant, eased down until the only sound was the subtle hiss of water floating past the ship’s steel sides.

The morning was as beautiful as only the tropics can be. The sun was up, but the heat and humidity were still some time away. There was the merest of breezes, and the waves were long and ponderous and swelled no more than a few inches.

“What other weapons do you have besides the M60s you used on the pirates last Friday?” Winters asked.

Cabrillo had to admit he was impressed. Judging by the silver in his high-and-tight haircut, Winters was closer to fifty than forty. He had been operating on stress, caffeine pills, and little sleep for over a week and yet he still looked pretty good. Yes, there was the beard, and his eyes were bloodshot, but he had lost none of his military discipline and little of his bearing. In a different world, the two of them would probably be friends.

“I keep a Tokarev pistol in the safe in my cabin, and my first engineer has a shotgun.”

“Tell your man to go and get them. He is to slide them, breeches open, through the door at the rear of the bridge. If I see him or any other member of your crew, you will die. Understand?”

“Yes.” Juan relayed the orders, noting wryly that Winters did seem to understand because he nodded when Juan explained the safe’s combination. Two minutes later, a sawed-off shotgun came sliding from the passageway behind the bridge, followed a moment later by a battered Tokarev pistol. The pistol’s slide was locked back so it could not fire, and the double barrels of the shotgun were broken open so it was evident it was not loaded. Winters squinted at the pistol, satisfying himself that the magazine had been pulled.