Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

There were other practical considerations to take care of. Cabrillo thanked Julia and headed to the office just off his stateroom. He roused Max from his Taipei hotel suite to tell him the change in plans and to meet the Oregon at the Bali District piers the following day. They had already reserved a berthing space for the two weeks they’d planned for the Corporation-wide vacation. Cabrillo called the port authority to tell them they would only need it for a few hours.

The penalty for the change had been stiff, and Cabrillo wasn’t sure if he was on the right track. Thanks to them being over the international date line, it was one o’clock yesterday afternoon in Washington, D.C. He called Langston Overholt.

After explaining the situation, Cabrillo asked his old mentor and the CIA’s Spook Emeritus what he would recommend.

“This

isn’t actionable intelligence, Juan,” the octogenarian said. “It’s guesses and supposition. Which from you are usually enough to go to the Secretary of Defense, but on this, I’ll need something more.”

“Like proof from Kenin’s laptop?”

“That would only show that he had sold such a weapon to the People’s Republic. Unless he also had their battle plans, I don’t think we can do much of anything. Of course I will pass along a memo of interest and that might get a nonspecific threat warning to the carrier group’s commanding admiral. But you must understand that if they do get sent in to intervene on this whole Senkaku/Diaoyu islands mess, they will already be at maximum alert status. Your crying ‘Bogeyman’ won’t change a thing.”

Cabrillo had expected as much. That was the problem with Washington. Bureaucratic inertia was measured at a glacial pace. The system wasn’t designed for quick lateral thinking. The news was not all bad. Langston continued, “I will talk with Grant down at the China desk to see what they’ve heard. We are aware that China is taking this much further than they have with other disputed islands, like their row over the Spratlys. Japan doesn’t want to back down either, which is why we’ve dispatched the John Stennis.”

“I thought there is a carrier already based in Japan,” Juan said.

“The George Washington, yes. There was a fire aboard her a week ago. A sailor was killed. They claim she’s not fit for sea duty.”

There was an odd tone in Overholt’s voice when he said this, and Cabrillo suspected he knew what caused it. Lang was a World War II veteran. They sent ships back into the fight just days after they took hits from kamikazes. Today, it would take months for safety inspectors and inquest panels and JAG attorneys to make the decision that the carrier was seaworthy.

“We are monitoring the situation,” Overholt said. “Where are you going to be?”

“Trying to guard the entrance to the East China Sea.”

Cabrillo was sitting watch in the op center when he got the call from Mark Murphy to meet in the Oregon’s boardroom. Juan checked the time on the main screen. His pet nerds had missed his deadline by only three hours.

They had already docked at Taipei’s new port, nestling like an ugly duckling between two beautiful swans in the form of a couple of cruise ships disgorging passengers for a day of sightseeing in Taiwan’s capital. The truck from the chandlers was already at the dock, and within an hour of their arrival, the crates of perishables and other food had been hoisted aboard.

Juan nodded to the navigator that she had the conn and made his way to the boardroom. Murph and Stoney looked like they hadn’t slept since getting the computer back from Linc. Both men had red-rimmed eyes with bags sagging below them. But they also had knowing grins spreading from ear to ear.

“I take it there’s good news?” Juan asked and took his seat at the head of the table.

“Oh yeah,” Mark said. “We just finished cleaning out Kenin’s last account. All told, he had fifty million in various banking centers all over the world—Caymans, Dubai, Luxembourg. You name it.”

“Well and good,” Juan said. “What about there being another stealth ship? Did they build another one?”

“Sure did,” Eric Stone confirmed. “China paid twenty million for it, plus picked up the tab for Kenin’s luxury retreat in Shanghai.”

In most cases, Cabrillo delighted at being right about something. Not so today. The news sent a chill through to his heart because this meant China was likely emboldened enough to use this new weapon against an American target.

“They were built in 1989,” Stone added. “Originally, the Russians wanted to build one for each of our carrier battle groups. But they abandoned the project after only two were constructed. They were in mothballs at a shipyard and appeared to be all but forgotten. Kenin discovered them two years ago and had them both refurbished, adding some improved technology discovered on Tesla’s mine tender. He knew that the Chinese would be his only potential clients and courted them for months. They finally agreed to the deal at about the same time the disputed gas fields were first mentioned in the media.”

That timing seemed right to Cabrillo. The Chinese knew that if they stuck to their plan the U.S. Navy would intervene. They needed something to counter an American flattop that wouldn’t ignite World War III. In his opinion, he thought Kenin should have held out for more money. Then again, the Russian already had more money than he could spend in a lifetime, so why bother asking for something you’ll never need?

“Are the technical specs on the computer?”

“Sorry, Chairman,” Eric said with an air of hangdog about him. “We cracked every file on his laptop. He had a file describing the capabilities that he used to entice the Chinese, but nothing about how the weapon worked or what equipment he’d recovered off of Tesla’s ship.”

“We’ll keep going over it, Chairman,” Mark replied, “but it’s not looking good. Kenin wasn’t a nuts-and-bolts kind of guy. He didn’t care how the ship functioned, only that it did function.”

“Okay,” Juan said. “Thanks, you two. That was great work. Go hit the sack.”

Cabrillo pulled up a map of the China Sea on the big screen at the far end of the boardroom table and tried to place himself inside the mind of the man in command of the stealth ship. He needed to pre-position himself in front of the carrier battle group and let them come to him since his wake would be visible when the ship was in motion and would surely catch the eye of a pilot flying combat air patrol. It would all depend on the ability to track the unbound carrier group and project its course, a straightforward task because of the constellation of Chinese spy satellites.

Juan could get the battle group’s course from Overholt, so he had the same information as his opponent. The real question was, then, how far out from the disputed islands would I want to take down my quarry? The farther away, the better. However, that decreases the odds of the ships remaining on the projected course. They zigged and zagged at random intervals even as they steamed in a steadily western direction.

He gamed a dozen scenarios and came up with a dozen places he’d lie in wait. It was fruitless yet telling at the same time. Fruitless because, after more than two hours of staring at the map, he was no closer to finding a solution, and telling because it showed how desperately important this was for the Chinese. If the carrier reached the region, any hope of taking the islands by force vanished.