Marauder (Oregon Files 15)

As he finished bracing them, Eddie felt the bow rising as it crunched across the sandy bottom of the marsh. He took the captain’s chair and watched as the ship sliced through the stand of mangroves.

To his surprise, the Thai Navigator came to a gentle stop on the shore.

He switched the throttle to STOP, and the vibrations ceased.

“We ain’t going anywhere,” Eddie said. “Better get Doc Huxley over here. She’s got some new patients.”

“She’s on the way,” Linda said.

“What about the Marauder?”

“The trimaran turned east after leaving Cambridge Gulf, but it’s now out of the rail gun’s range and off our radarscope. April Jin got away.”

FORTY-EIGHT

By the time Juan got back to the Oregon with Nomad and his team, the entire crew of the Thai Navigator had been evacuated and brought on board. He oversaw their transfer to the nearby port town of Wyndham, where they’d be treated by an incoming military medical team familiar with the symptoms.

None of the men on the ore carrier remembered the attack, so it was easy to pass off the Oregon crew as Good Samaritans who happened to be in the vicinity and came to their rescue. With the story they’d made up about how they’d found the stranded ore carrier, the questions from the authorities didn’t take long to answer, and they were allowed to leave.

As they left the port, Juan was on the Oregon’s deck with Max inspecting the damage from the battle with the Marauder. The stern Kashtan gun was out of commission, as was the automated control module on the superstructure, the fake bridge would need extensive repairs, and the hull was scorched in several places, requiring new paint to fill in the gaps of their active camouflage system.

“We couldn’t keep her clean for even a week,” Max grumbled. “It’s like driving your brand new sports car off the dealer’s lot and being sideswiped by a garbage truck before you can get home.”

“I’m sure you’ll patch her up nicely until we can get back to Malaysia and finish outfitting her,” Juan said. He pointed at two of the Oregon’s technicians whose cutting torches were showering the deck with sparks. “I’m more worried about the hangar doors. How long until we can get them open again?”

One of the blasts from the plasma cannon had fused several hinges on the doors that allowed the tiltrotor to rise out of the ship. That’s why they hadn’t sent Gomez to keep an eye on the trimaran as it fled, and their short-range drones didn’t have enough battery power to track a ship that could be more than a hundred miles away by now.

“I’d say another three hours before we can crank them up,” Max said. “The mechanism will be held together by spit and baling wire, but it’ll work.”

“You’re an engineering genius, Max,” Juan said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

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“Supergenius, I think you meant. And you’d do what you always do. You’d find a way to get the job done, just like you did with that croc.”

“That was mostly Linc. All I had to do was not get eaten. Let me know when the repairs are complete.”

As he left Max, they were passing the stranded Thai Navigator, the front third of it surrounded by mangrove trees where it had plowed ashore. It would take a very high tide and several powerful tugboats to get it floating again. He’d already been briefed on what it took to save the crew, and he felt a swell of pride in what his well-trained team could accomplish.

Back inside, he headed to the boardroom and found Sylvia and Eric waiting for him. They were huddled closely together and didn’t notice Juan enter.

“Find out anything interesting?” he asked.

Instead of being embarrassed by their proximity, Eric seemed comfortable with it. He smiled at Sylvia and said, “A few things. We’re just waiting for Murph and Doc Huxley to get back to talk about some of them.”

Juan took his seat at the head of the table where the golden eagle he’d found in the shipwreck was on display. It had been cleaned, and its wings gleamed as brightly as the day it had been buried two thousand years ago. The letters SPQR were etched over crossed swords.

“Can you tell me what this idol is?”

“We think it’s an aquila, which is the Latin word for ‘eagle,’” Sylvia said. “It was a battle standard carried by a Roman legion, worshiped by them as a symbol of Jupiter.”

“You think that’s what it is?”

“None have survived,” Eric said, “so we have nothing to compare it to. At least none until now. The closest we’ve found are some imperial seals. But the SPQR definitely confirms it’s Roman. The letters stand for Senatus Populusque Romanus. ‘The Roman Senate and People.’ This might be the only one still in existence.”

“How did it get to Australia?”

“They must have hidden it from the Parthians to protect it when they were taken prisoner,” Sylvia said. “It was considered a shameful disgrace and a terrible omen for an aquila to be captured in battle. When the Romans lost three of them in Germania, they spent the next thirty years trying to get them back.”