Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

“What is it?” Juan asked.

“It’s not my fault!” Tao groaned. “Rasul lied to me. He told me this was the reefer unit we were supposed to smuggle to Jhootha Island.”

Juan and Eddie approached the open door cautiously, crouched with pistols ready to fire. When they were able to see what Tao was gawking at, they stood up and lowered their guns.

The entire forty-foot-long container was completely empty.

SIX

Max Hanley took advantage of the high vantage point on the Oregon’s bridge wing to watch as she edged close to the stationary Triton Star. The captured crew members and their guards observed the operation from the Oregon’s deck below him. There was no breeze, and the sun’s rays were merciless. The filthy bridge, littered with used coffee cups and cigarette butts, was empty as usual. Max was alone, and all his attention was focused on the cargo ship nearing their port side. Normally, attempting to dock two cargo vessels together at sea was extremely hazardous, even on a calm day, but the Oregon wasn’t like most ships. In fact, she wasn’t like any other ship.

Max should know since he was her chief engineer and president of the Corporation, as well as Juan Cabrillo’s best friend and right-hand man. A Vietnam Swift Boat veteran, he was the oldest crew member, with reddish gray hair circling his bald head, deep smile wrinkles around his eyes, and a rotund gut that Jolly Saint Nick would envy. He’d been the first person Juan had recruited when he created the Corporation because Max had the engineering expertise to draft the plans for a ship as unusual as the Oregon.

When the two ships were thirty feet apart, Max spoke into his radio.

“Hold it there, Linda.”

“Holding,” came the reply. The Oregon stopped moving.

“Lock in that distance.”

“Locked in.”

Now the Oregon and the Triton Star would maintain that precise separation indefinitely. Multiple lidar sensors emitted laser pulses to gauge the exact distance between the ships and automatically made tiny adjustments to the Oregon’s thrusters to keep her steady.

“We’re ready to lower the gangway,” Max said.

“Murph was on his way up to you to do that. Isn’t he there yet?”

Max heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Mark Murphy climbing the exterior stairs.

“Here he comes now,” Max said into the radio.

“He must have taken a detour.”

“I did,” Murph replied as he reached the top of the stairs with a can of Red Bull in one hand and a tablet computer in the other. “Needed some sustenance.” He downed the drink and threw the empty can into the bridge, where it joined the rest of the trash on the floor.

Murph’s shaggy dark hair, skateboarder’s scruffy goatee, and fondness for wearing all black belied

his razor-sharp intellect, having received his first Ph.D. by the time he was twenty. A former civilian weapons designer for the military and now serving as the ship’s weapons officer, he was one of the few members of the crew who wasn’t a veteran or former CIA agent. He enjoyed bucking convention, most obviously with the T-shirts he wore, which either bore the name of a heavy metal band no one else had ever heard of or were plastered with some irreverent phrase. Today’s version read Me? Sarcastic? Never.

“There are other food groups besides caffeine, you know,” Max pointed out to his gangly crewmate, who had to weigh half what he did.

“Duh! Nachos, pizza, and cheeseburgers are the other three, right?” Then Murph’s lip curled in a grin. “Wait, you probably don’t remember those because Doc Huxley doesn’t let you eat them, does she?”

Julia Huxley was the Oregon’s chief medical officer and was known for hounding Max about his diet. She’d even gotten Chef to report back to her if Max tried to cheat, much to his chagrin.

“Doc doesn’t believe me when I point out my good genes,” he said. “The Hanleys have never needed to work out to stay healthy. My grandfather lived to ninety-eight on a diet of burritos and tacos.”

Murph laughed. “He gets older every time you whip out that story. Soon it’ll be that he reached a hundred and forty by scarfing down sticks of butter and drinking tequila.”

Max waved off Murph’s good-natured ribbing. “Are you ready to get to work or should I have a large pepperoni brought up to you?”

“Fueled up like a rocket. Let’s do this.”

Murph tapped on the tablet while his eyes flicked between the handheld computer and the deck below to make sure it was clear.

A panel in the decking slid aside and an aluminum gangway rose vertically from the opening. When it was completely out of its recess, it bent ninety degrees toward the Triton Star. Then it telescoped across the span between the ships and came to rest on the other ship’s railing, followed by a set of stairs lowering to the deck on each ship.