“Mr. Mallik might have,” Torkan said, thumbing his phone.
“Why would someone do this?”
Instead of answering him, Torkan spoke into the phone.
“Mr. Mallik, we have a situation,” he said. “Someone tried to kidnap Jason Wakefield . . . Yes, he’s all right . . . Thank you, sir. Just doing my job.” He turned and smiled at Wakefield. “But if it weren’t for your foresight, right now Mr. Wakefield would probably be as good as dead.”
THIRTEEN
THE INDIAN OCEAN
The USS Gridley reached the Oregon and Triton Star a day after the missile attack. The hazmat team was already searching the contaminated cargo ship for clues, and the captured crew had been handed over to the CIA agents on the destroyer for further interrogation.
Juan sat next to Max in one of the Oregon’s two high-speed lifeboats. An orange sun was setting over a calm horizon. Max was at the wheel, piloting the boat away from the Gridley after Juan’s daylong debriefing with the ship’s CIA contingent. To keep the Oregon out of view of the destroyer’s crew, she maintained a position ten miles away, while the crew painted her and reconfigured her profile to make her unidentifiable by anyone on the Triton Star.
Max shook his head as Juan told him about the B-1B lying with its nose in the surf next to Diego Garcia’s runway.
“Those guys got lucky if they all survived a crash like that,” he said.
“Sounds like they had a good pilot,” Juan replied. “He brought it in on hydraulic power alone.”
“Any word on how the computers were shut down?”
Juan shook his head. “They’re coming back online, though. The computers weren’t permanently fried. The technicians on the island said it was as if the computers had been scrambled. Something about disrupting the electron flow in the transistors. The event didn’t disable basic electrical functions, only computer chips. The effect seemed to end a minute before the missile arrived, which explains why it wasn’t disabled as well. Now all the computers on the island and in the harbor’s naval ships are working again.” Then, turning his head, Juan said, “Maybe Eric and Murph can make some sense of it.” Juan’s tech wizards had been part of the debriefing before returning to the Oregon earlier.
“Whatever the weapon was,” Max said, “it could do a number on the Oregon. Everything on board is computer controlled. We’d be dead in the water.”
“I thought about that, too. Take some time to figure out how to keep us operational if our computers conk out.”
“Already on the agenda. I’ll have more time now that we’re not acting as babysitters for Tao’s crew anymore.”
“They’re the CIA’s problem now,” Juan said, “along with the Triton Star.”
“Do we know where the missile came from?”
“The CIA thinks that it was shipped in pieces to Mozambique. That’s what was in the container labeled FARM MACHINERY. They traced the launcher’s serial number to a missile supposedly stolen by the Pakistanis, but so far it’s a dead end.”
“Then that puts us back at square one,” Max said. “Does the CIA have any theories for who’s behind this?”
“They’re focusing on the Iranians—because of Rasul, whose last name we still don’t know—and the Pakistanis. They think it’s either an Iranian plot to take out the island or that Islamic terrorists in Pakistan tried to cripple America’s ability to bomb Afghanistan.”
“But why frame the Triton Star crew? If we hadn’t been there, it would have looked like they had launched the missile, then killed themselves by accident or committed suicide.”
“I agree,” Juan said. “And no one has claimed responsibility for the attack.”
“Most of the world doesn’t even know there was an attack. I’ve been keeping tabs on the world news, and right now the official story is that the island suffered a sudden power failure during routine maintenance of the electrical plant.”
“The military suspended all social media feeds, telephone service, and internet access from Diego Garcia to keep a lid on the real story. The people who organized the attack might even think they succeeded.”
“Do you buy the CIA line?” Max asked.
“I don’t think the Iranians are behind it,” Juan said. “If we discovered they were responsible, they’d be risking all-out war with the U.S.”
“What about terrorists? ISIS? Al-Qaeda?”
“If it had been a group like that, they’d be bragging to every news outlet in the world about how they had handed big, bad America a huge defeat. No, I think something else is going on here. Maybe a test?”