Mirage tof-9 Page 21

  Over the next hours, Cabrillo sat wordlessly drinking coffee while the plot showing the Oregon’s position and the blip representing the RHIB according to its locator drew closer and closer. Because they didn’t know their quarry’s capabilities, they were maintaining strict radio silence. Juan was relieved by the fact that they were maintaining a steady southeasterly course. The RHIB hadn’t deviated more than a couple of degrees since the chase had begun nor had it changed speed. They’d also maintained a steady fifteen knots.

  It was well past dusk when they had closed to within twenty miles of the RHIB and thus about twenty-one from the stealth ship. Juan judged they were close enough to have MacD and Eddie break off and return to the Oregon. He knew where his target would be over the next hour and wanted to be in a position to do something about it.

  “Hali, open a line to Eddie.”

  Hali Kasim, at the communications station, had been waiting for this for hours and had a channel open in seconds.

  “Time to head home,” Juan said over the link. “Reverse course. Eighteen.”

  Eddie Seng clicked his radio in response and knew to turn back and expect to find the Oregon eighteen miles away.

  Because he was no longer shadowing the slow stealth ship, Eddie would doubtlessly firewall the RHIB’s twin outboards so the two vessels would have a closing speed in excess of eighty knots. The Chairman called down to the boat garage to inform them that the RHIB was inbound and should be off their beam in less than fifteen minutes.

  It actually was just ten, but because the Oregon had to come to an almost complete stop in order for the RHIB to enter the hull, it was seventeen minutes until Juan could give the order for full speed again. Only, this time, he took the Oregon on a wide arc around their target so when they finally approached, it would seem that they were coming from the east and not like they’d been trailing the rogue vessel.

  Linda Ross finally sauntered into the op center, looking none the worse for her adventures.

  “How are you doing?” Juan asked with genuine concern.

  “Doc says I’m fine, and who am I to argue? Where do we stand?”

  “Endgame’s coming,” Cabrillo said. “We’re flanking them now.”

  “Anything on radar?”

  “He doesn’t show at all,” Juan admitted. “But he hasn’t changed course or speed since fleeing the Sakir.”

  As if on cue, Mark Murphy called out from the weapons station, “Contact bearing forty-seven degrees. Range twenty miles.” Cabrillo had already figured out the tactical positions before Murph added, “Directly in line with the stealth ship.”

  “Rendezvous,” Cabrillo mouthed.

  The situation had changed in an instant. Juan now had to get the Oregon between the stealth ship and this new contact before that vessel spotted them on radar. His ship had a much smaller radar cross section than she should thanks to signal-absorbing materials applied to her hull and upperworks, but she was far from invisible.

  “Helm, make your course three-three degrees. All ahead flank.” Like a hunter, Cabrillo knew to lead his target so that the bullet — in this case, the Oregon herself — arrived where the target would be, not where it currently was. Like before, he had the angles and speeds worked out in his head. Eric Stone would double-check them with the ship’s navigation computer but as usual would find no error in the Chairman’s calculations.

  “Wepps, prep the main gun. Once he figures out we’re coming, who knows what he’ll do.”

  “Not missiles?” Murph questioned.

  “If that ship can produce a magnetic field strong enough to capsize Dullah’s yacht, a missile won’t stand a chance. Load solid tungsten rounds. Field won’t affect them.”

  Murph nodded at Cabrillo’s insight while mentally chastising himself for not coming to the same conclusion and set about readying the 120mm cannon secreted behind doors in the Oregon’s bow. The smooth-bore gun used the same sophisticated fire controls as an M1 Abrams main battle tank and could fire accurately no matter how the ship pitched or rolled.

  “Curious, Juan,” Max said, fiddling with his pipe, “how are we going to hit it if it doesn’t show up on radar?”

  “Easy. Launch a UAV.”

  In minutes, the drone, little more than a large model airplane fitted with sophisticated cameras, was aloft and racing ahead of the Oregon at a hundred miles per hour. When it reached two thousand feet, its starlight camera picked up the stealth ship’s wake, a dazzling line of green phosphorescence that sliced across the ocean like an arc of electricity. Its terminus was the ship itself. The ungainly craft was fighting the seas but maintaining its steady pace. The rendezvous ship was too far to see, but they would tackle that after dispatching their primary target.

  “I’ve got bearings,” Mark announced, “but we’re still a little out of range.”

  “He’s going to see us soon,” Hanley cautioned.

  Juan had to agree. He just didn’t know what would happen.

  “Twenty seconds,” Mark said.

  Come on, Cabrillo silently entreated.

  “Ten.”

  The image from the drone changed. The angular hull of the stealth ship began to shimmer, and a blue glow erupted from its center and spread outward. The ship blurred before vanishing altogether.

  A second later, the feed from the drone turned to static as it was swatted from the sky by an expanding dome of electromagnetic pulses.

  “In range!” Mark cried.

  “Fire!” Juan shouted as the wall of invisible energy slammed into the Oregon.

  He didn’t know if Murph got off the shot because a deafening blast of noise filled the ship as she began a rapid roll onto her port side, the red numbers on the digital inclinometer blurring to keep up with the list. Water was soon pouring across her decks and slamming into the superstructure. The combination of her speed and the pulse seemed to be driving her into the depths.

  Then as suddenly as it started, the noise cut off like a switch had been flicked, and the ship began to right itself once again, albeit slowly as she had to shrug off hundreds of tons of seawater.

  Cabrillo picked himself up off the floor, where he’d been unceremoniously dumped. Main power had tripped so the op center was bathed in emergency lights. All the computer monitors and controls were dead, and he became aware that he couldn’t hear the Oregon’s engines. “Is everyone all right?”

  He received a slow roll call of muted responses. No one was hurt, but they were all rattled.

  “Max, get me a damage report. Hali, get ahold of the Doc, I’m sure there are going to be injuries. Mark, get another UAV in the air as soon as you’re able. I want eyes on that ship. And for the record, I think you saved our lives.”

  “Chairman?”

  “You got the shot off, didn’t you?”

  “Barely.”

  “In this game, barely counts. Nice shooting.”

  It took twenty minutes for the engineering staff to reboot the power system and get the computers back online. But they were forced to use battery backup because the magnetohydrodynamic system was still down. Dr. Huxley patched up one broken arm and diagnosed two concussions among the crew, and Mark Murphy utterly failed to get a drone into the air. As bad as the magnetic pulse was on the ship’s hardened electronics, it destroyed those not protected. Small devices like PDAs, electric shavers, and food processors had all been fried. The remaining UAVs were nothing more than toy gliders now. Cabrillo was forced to lead a team in a RHIB, and even that had to have its engines started manually with old-fashioned pull cords.

  The going was tough as the storm intensified. Icy needles of rain pelted any exposed skin, though the sturdy craft rode the waves well. When they reached the spot where the stealth ship had been hit, they found a debris field encircled by a slick of diesel fuel that was rapidly breaking up. Cabrillo ran the RHIB to one of the largest pieces of flotsam, a section of composite material that looked as if it had been part of the ship’s pointed prow. He and Eddie Seng lifted the
lightweight chunk of debris into the RHIB and lashed it to the deck so they could examine it back on the Oregon.

  “What do you think?” Eddie asked.

  “I think when that shell hit, the boat blew apart like a grenade. Whatever powered the magnetic pulse generator had to be very unstable.”

  “You think when the field failed it cratered the ship?”

  “That’s my guess. I’ll run the idea past Murph and Stone to get their opinion, but I think I’m right.”

  “What about the rendezvous ship?”

  Juan looked around the darkened sea. “Gone the instant they figured out what happened to their buddies here.” He added grimly, “If we can’t get the Oregon running in the next hour or two, we’ve lost them.”

  They headed back home.

  When the civilian radar finally came back online, the seas around them were empty, as Cabrillo predicted. The military radar came up a short time later, and its extended range showed a pair of ships, but neither was traveling in the right direction to be the rendezvous vessel. They were approaching, not fleeing. The main engines were finally refired five hours after the EMP blast. As chief engineer, Max insisted that they be brought up to full power in slow, carefully monitored increments.

  As satisfied as Cabrillo was that the stealth ship had been destroyed, he was equally bitter that the trail was now going to go cold. With the damage they’d sustained, Hanley recommended some time in port so they could sort out all the problems and do a thorough systems check. Juan reluctantly agreed, and a day later they tied up at Hamilton Harbour’s commercial pier. What stores they needed for repairs that couldn’t be bought in Bermuda could easily be flown in from the States. Max would see to that.

  Cabrillo’s job was to find two men who most definitely didn’t want to be found.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They were called favelas. The slums of Rio de Janeiro were world famous. No one was quite sure why, but some had even become tourist destinations for the wealthy of the world to stare, agape, at the misery of others. While some of the slums clinging to the hillsides surrounding Brazil’s second-most-populous city had been gentrified to an extent with running water and electricity, many of them had not and were still little more than clusters of shipping containers with crude mud tracks between them. These favelas, especially, were the homes of criminal gangs, usually drug dealers and professional kidnappers who would snatch people off the streets and hold them for ransom.

  One such slum spilled off a hill like so much trash flung from a giant’s hand. It was home to thirty thousand people crammed into a space not much larger than three city blocks. Dogs and half-naked children meandered the dirt paths that wound around the buildings. There were only a few of any permanence, cinder-block structures erected by one aid agency or other, with the intent of housing a few hundred people in tiny apartments. Instead, several thousand called each one home, many living in staircases or hallways or in tin and plywood shacks atop the roof.

  Sewage ran in channels along the roads, and only occasionally would one of the cars lining the streets move. Most had been stolen and abandoned here and were stripped down to their shells, like the carapaces of dead beetles eaten by ants. The stink and squalor were appalling. It was a place of gray hopelessness where even Rio’s perfect weather could not give joy to the inhabitants. It was also a place of oppressive fear of the drug gang that ran the favela with an iron fist. The police never ventured into the slum, and not once had the government tried to intervene in the region’s internal affairs. Its leader was called Amo, which meant “boss.” Nothing happened in his territory that he didn’t know about.

  The stranger looked like any of the thousands of peasants who flocked into the city from the countryside searching for work. He wore frayed tan pants and a simple cotton shirt. His sandals were soled with the tread of a truck tire. On his head he wore a hat made from woven palm leaves. No one paid him any attention as he moved slowly up the hill, weaving between heaps of trash and kids roughhousing in the streets.

  Finally, two young men with slicked-back hair and predatory eyes lifted themselves from the five-gallon buckets they were using as stools. One adjusted his shirt so the taped butt of an ancient revolver was visible. His partner hefted a baseball bat.

  They approached the stranger and called out, “What’s your business here?”

  They could see the man was in his sixties and had a dim look in his eyes. He muttered a response that neither man understood.

  “I think you should head back down the mountain, old man,” the leader of the two thugs suggested. “There is nothing but trouble for you here.”

  It was obvious the old man had nothing of value, so there was no sense robbing him, and letting him linger would mean one more beggar clogging the streets. Better to send him packing now than disposing of his corpse later when he died of starvation or dysentery.

  “I want no trouble,” the man said in Spanish.

  “He ain’t even Brazilian, man,” the young thug complained. “We can’t feed ourselves, and some Bolivian expects to live off our charity.”

  The kid with the gun spat angrily. “Not your lucky day, pal.”

  He grabbed the old man by the arm while his partner got him by the other, and they quickly marshaled him into a tight alley between two shipping containers that served as homes for dozens. A cat had been sunning itself on a tire pile at the entrance of the alley, but its primal sense of trouble sent it fleeing. The ground was oil soaked and packed as hard as cement.

  They tossed the man into the side of one of the containers, but he turned so that he hit it with his back and not his face as they had intended. If either street tough realized how deftly the old man had moved, things might have ended differently. The space was too narrow to swing the bat properly, so the thug used its butt end like a ram aimed at the old man’s stomach. He wasn’t a big kid, and perpetual hunger did little to give him superior strength, but the blow would be enough to drop the old man to the ground with his lungs emptied of air.

  The wooden bat hit the side of the container with an echoing thump. The man had dodged the bat, and then he went on the offense. He snatched the gun out of the leader’s waistband before the man realized he’d moved and used it like a pair of brass knuckles. His punch broke the kid’s cheekbone and flayed open the skin so that blood poured from the wound.

  He howled in pain and outrage even as the old man turned his attention to the youth with the bat. He was still numbed from the unexpected hit against the unyielding container, so he could do nothing to defend himself as the pistol smashed into his nose, breaking it with the kind of force even the world’s greatest plastic surgeon would have trouble repairing. He dropped to his knees, clutching at the wound. He keened like a siren, high then low. Next to him, the leader of the little duo of Amo’s sentries was out cold.

  The stranger finally took the time to notice the gun wasn’t even loaded. When he’d first seen it, his instincts had been right not to try to fire it. He hadn’t thought it was empty, just that it would probably explode in his hand if he’d pulled the trigger. He pocketed the gun for later disposal and hauled the still-conscious kid to his feet.

  The camera was no bigger than a tube of lipstick, and its wireless router the size of a pack of cigarettes. It was mounted part way up a telephone pole.

  The stranger pulled off his ridiculous hat and held up the kid’s bloody face to the camera, saying, “I know this guy is low level and that you’ve got better guards deeper in there, but you also know they’re not going to stop me. I’ve tracked you this far and I’ll keep going until I get to you. Admit defeat and no one else needs to get hurt.”

  As he let him go, the kid immediately fell back to his knees, sobbing.

  The stranger moved back out onto the main street. Nothing appeared any different. Some women were in line next to a truck that had carried water into the favela for sale. Some old men were sitting on a sofa left out in the elements so long, it was moldy. Chicken
s tethered to a stick pecked at the stony ground near a hut. All was as it should be.

  A few seconds later, a white pickup truck appeared at the head of the street. Though old and filthy, it represented real wealth in the favela. He waited as the vehicle ground its way to him. It came to a stop, and the passenger leaned out the window.

  “He says to get in back. No tricks. He says you found him.”

  The stranger nodded. There was an honor code at play here, one he knew he shouldn’t respect, but he felt it was better to play safe than sorry. He vaulted over the fender and squatted in the bed as the truck laboriously turned around in the constricted street and began slogging back up the hill. The truck belonged to Amo, so no one dared look at it, yet people seemed to part like a shoal of fish breaking for a shark to get out of its way. It pulled up to a three-story, cinder-block building. As soon as the stranger’s feet hit the ground, the truck drove away. Lean-tos, running three deep, had been constructed around the building’s perimeter, with the exception of the entry, so to reach it he had to walk down a tight alley of tin sheeting and sullen faces.

  The building’s front door had long been torn from its hinges. The concrete floor was filthy, and the air inside the building reeked of garbage. He did not know which way to go until he looked up the stairs to his right. What he saw startled him with its incongruity. It was a woman wearing a white nurse’s uniform so crisp, it looked like she had just put it on. She was blond and attractive, at least from this distance, and her legs, in the white hosiery of her uniform, were shapely. Amid all this misery and ugliness, she was like an angel sent from heaven.

  She beckoned him with a finger and he mounted the stairs.

  The second floor was also concrete, but it was painted a subtle gray and was impeccably swept. The walls were also painted and clean. There was only one door on this landing, and as he walked through, an alarm chimed. A man dressed as a security guard rose from behind his desk, a hand going for his sidearm in a well-practiced motion.