Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

“What just happened?”

“The thought of all computers in the world going dark wasn’t working for me,” Murph said. “I didn’t want to risk someone else picking up Mallik’s baton. Since the satellites were still operable, I set each of the Vajra satellites to fire a deorbit burn. Number fifteen just reentered the atmosphere and disintegrated.”

Then satellite number three went red, followed by nine and thirteen. Soon all twenty satellites were gone.

Murph stood up and faced Juan.

“I probably overstepped my authority on that one,” Murph said.

Juan got to his feet and smiled. “You probably did. Are you gunning for my job?”

Murph grinned back at him. “And lose my reputation as a rebel? Are you kidding?”

EPILOGUE

INDIA

Five days later

Juan clasped his hands behind his back as he kicked his flippers to propel himself down the underwater passage. His headlamp picked up the bloated face of another dead body, the fourth he and Max had passed since venturing into the passageway to what Lionel Gupta had called the Library.

The ancient fortress on a sprawling estate turned out to be one of the only properties in India to be held in private hands continuously since the time of Ashoka. Although Gupta hadn’t kept the location of the Library in his files, Murph and Eric were able to hack into the phone records of both Carlton and Mallik. The last time their phones were in the same location was when they visited this location south of Mumbai.

It took a day of probing for Juan and Max to find a way in, but they had loads of time on their hands. Although the repair team finally got the main engines on the Oregon working again after the fight with the rogue frigates, the revolutionary drive mechanism had been severely damaged. It took three days for the ship to limp into the Port of Kochi, a trip that normally would have taken her four hours at top speed. Thanks to an ethically flexible shipyard owner who didn’t see the need to report the ship’s presence to the authorities, Juan arranged for her to go through a full refit in a massive covered drydock adjacent to the facility where India’s newest aircraft carrier was being built. The maintenance work wouldn’t begin for another week, so Juan thought it would be a good chance to chase history and solve the mystery of the Nine Unknown Men at long last.

Once they had found the underwater passageway marked by the lion-head pillar with the swastika symbol of the Nine on it, he and Max secured some scuba equipment and went for a swim.

They finally surfaced again at a gate with yet another dead guard.

“I don’t think this one drowned,” Max said, taking out his regulator and removing his mask.

Juan did the same and said, “Looks like his larynx is broken. And judging by the smell of the corpse, he’s been lying here for a while.”

They laid down their air tanks, BCDs, and swim fins. The water had been so warm that they were just wearing lightweight neoprene diving suits and boots.

“Shall we take a look around?” Juan asked.

“Lead the way,” Max said. “Can’t get any worse than what we’ve already seen.”

“Famous last words.”

As they explored the dank building, their flashlights occasionally supplemented by skylights built into the stone, Max said, “Do you think someone’ll try to build the Vajra system again?”

“If they could, they would. But Lang told me the CIA discovered that the Vajra records were destroyed. Mallik must have done it before he was killed.”

“He didn’t want anyone to figure out a way to disable them.”

Juan nodded. “That’s my guess, too. Because the same thing happened with the Colossus records.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Murph and Eric went to look at Gupta’s files again after we took down the satellites, they found that all records about Colossus had been erased. That made it easier to discover the one mention of the Library among all those files.”

Max scratched his head. “Who do you think is responsible for deleting them?”

“Not who,” Juan corrected. “What.”

Max gaped at him. “You mean, Colossus did it?”