“I made a call to my counterpart in the Indonesian State Intelligence Agency. Now I owe him a favor, and I will expect to collect the same at a later date from Senators Schmidt and Muñoz. Are their families safe?”
“Oliver Muñoz is badly injured, but Julia Huxley is tending to him.”
“Understood,” Overholt said. “Keep me informed about his well-being. And good work on keeping the attack from being much worse than it was. I look forward to your briefing.”
He hung up.
Juan stood. “I’m going to meet our guests. Stoney, you have the conn.”
“Conn, aye,” Eric replied, taking control of the ship.
Juan left the op center to rendezvous with the tiltrotor. He just hoped the delay in getting them on board hadn’t cost Oliver Muñoz his life.
EIGHTEEN
THE TIMOR SEA
It took Sylvia longer than she thought it would to swim all the way to the Empiric, swallowing and spitting up seawater all the way in her panic. By the time she heaved herself up the dive ladder on the stern platform where the drone was launched, she was completely spent from the ordeal.
She lay on her belly while she gathered strength to stand. The ship was eerily quiet. All Sylvia could hear was her own breathing and water lapping at the ship’s hull.
“Hello?” she shouted. “Is anyone here?”
No answer. She feared what she would find when she ventured into the ship.
Her thirst finally drove her to get up. She found a rinsing hose and slurped fresh water from it, careful not to drink so fast that she vomited it back up.
When she was sure she could move without collapsing, she found the nearest door to the interior and steeled herself to open it. She pulled the handle and peered into the corridor.
It was empty. No dead bodies. No blood.
“Hello. Can anyone hear me?”
In response, a moan came from deeper in the ship.
Even though it sounded as if the person was in trouble, Sylvia was momentarily elated. At least someone was alive.
“It’s Sylvia Chang,” she called out as she walked toward the groaning, which continued unabated. “Where are you?”
The person didn’t answer, but the moan became more urgent.
Sylvia picked up her pace. “Tell me where you are.”
No words, just moaning. Sylvia was becoming more distraught by the second.
Coming to an intersection of corridors, she stopped and called again.
“Who’s there?”
Another moan to her left, from the direction of the galley.
Sylvia raced down the hall and entered the Empiric’s kitchen.
Sprawled on the floor was the ship’s cook, Roberta Jordan, still wearing her apron. Sylvia knew her well from her time spent on the Australian ship. The normally jovial woman’s face was a mask of pain, and she was jerking her arm. A large pot was overturned on the floor, and water was pooled around her.
A burning stench filled the room. Smoke billowed from a pan on the stove directly into the hood fan, which had to be the only reason the fire alarm hadn’t gone off. Sylvia moved the pan to the side and turned off the stove before kneeling beside Roberta.
Sylvia carefully lifted Roberta’s hand, which elicited a wail from the cook. Her arm was already blistering from the burn she suffered when she was splashed with boiling water.
“Let me help you, Roberta.”
Roberta looked at her with despair. The only sound she made was a pitiful groan.
Sylvia got up to retrieve the first aid kit hanging on the wall. She wetted a towel with cool water and took the kit back to Roberta.
“What happened to the ship?” Sylvia asked as she began tending to the wound. “Where is everyone?”
This time, the groan was more staccato, as if Roberta were trying to speak but couldn’t.
Sylvia paused. Something was seriously wrong here.
“Can you understand me, Roberta?”
Roberta gave an effortful nod and made a noise like “Uh-huh.”
“But you can’t talk?”
“Uh-uh.” No.
“Do you remember how this happened to you?”
Another No.
Sylvia ran her hands over Roberta’s skull, but she couldn’t feel any bumps. She took the injured arm, smeared it with antibiotic cream, and wrapped it with the towel from wrist to shoulder. The wound would clearly need care from a doctor.
“Roberta, do you recognize me?”
A groaned affirmative.
“Good. Do you know where you are?”
Yes.
Sylvia finished wrapping the wound and gently eased the arm down. Roberta looked more comfortable, but she didn’t move.
“Roberta, can you sit up?”
No.
“Can you move at all?”
In answer, Roberta spastically moved her arms. Her legs remained immobile.
Sylvia’s stomach knotted at Roberta’s sudden paralysis. She had to find the other crew.
“Roberta, I’ll have to leave you here for a little while,” Sylvia said, retrieving another towel and gently placing it under the cook’s head.
Roberta groaned in terror. Sylvia wanted to stay and comfort her, but she had to go.
“You’re safe now,” she said, reassuringly rubbing Roberta’s good arm. “I’ll be back soon.”
Sylvia went back into the hall and toward the center of the ship where the research staff would have been monitoring the results of the test run.
On the way, she passed an office. Two men were inside, both slumped on the floor. Sylvia checked on them, and they were breathing but immobile. She reassured them that she would get help and continued on.
Three more people she found were in a similar state. Sylvia now suspected that everyone on board had been affected with the same paralysis.
A sudden realization made Sylvia catch her breath. The gas from the rocket fired by the trimaran had to be the source of the condition. Which meant she might be affected as well.
She did a quick self-assessment of her body. She felt no difference in the function of her limbs, not even a tingling sensation. All her muscles seemed to work properly, and she had no trouble speaking. Whatever the gas was, it hadn’t begun to affect her, at least not yet.
Given that people were still at their posts, they must have been affected quickly, but she had no idea how long it would take the gas to dissipate and become inert. She went to the nearest fire station, which held two gas masks. She put one on and went back to the galley to get a pair of latex gloves from the med kit. She checked on Roberta to make sure she was all right and found that there was no change in her condition.
Sylvia left the galley and didn’t stop until she reached the control room.
The data control center was a long room with two rows of workstations facing a wall of monitors that still showed readouts from the experiment they’d conducted that morning.
There were ten people in the room, some of whom were still in their chairs. Most of them lay on the floor.
One of those still sitting was Mark Murphy. Angular and thin, with a wild mess of hair and wisps of stubble that he was desperately trying to grow into a beard, Mark was only a few years older than Sylvia, and he dressed like the skateboarder and heavy metal fan that he was. No one seeing him in his all black ensemble of T-shirt and jeans would guess his intellect and academic credentials.
Mark was rigid in his swivel chair. Sylvia rotated it to face him.
“Mark, it’s me, Sylvia.”
As soon as he recognized who she was, he gave her a weak smile and moved his jaw, but only grunts came out.
She took his left hand. “I was so worried about you. Are you all right?”
He made a sound that clearly meant, “Are you kidding?”
He shook his head in jerks.
“Can you feel my hand?”
Mark moved his head in what Sylvia interpreted to be a nod.
She choked back a sob. Mark Murphy was her half brother, and they’d grown up together with their mother, who had Sylvia after she divorced Mark’s dad and remarried. Despite their differences, her genius brother had always been her best friend and someone she admired. Seeing her sibling in this awful condition was heartbreaking.
She noticed he was rhythmically tapping on the right arm of his chair. No, it wasn’t a rhythm. The index finger on his right hand made long and short taps in a pattern that she instantly recognized. Although she didn’t know Morse code, she understood the message conveyed by three short taps, then three long ones followed by three more short taps.
SOS
Mark was trying to communicate with her.
“Morse code,” she cried out. It was the first time she felt any hope since the trimaran had arrived.
Mark responded with a grunted, “Uh-huh.”
Sylvia had to call for help, that was clear. If all forty-two people on board were in the same situation as the ones she’d already seen, they would be in dire straits soon. But the trimaran had destroyed the communications array, so a radio call was out.
“I can’t send a distress call,” Sylvia said. “All the antennas on the Empiric were destroyed.”
He shook his head and began tapping again, this time with a different message. Sylvia knew Mark served on a ship, so it made sense that he knew Morse, but she didn’t.
“I don’t understand.”
His eyes flicked to the desk that he was sitting in front of. Sylvia followed his gaze and saw his phone.
“You want me to pick up your phone?” she asked.
She got an affirmative response, and she realized why he wanted her to use it. She picked it up and held it up to his face to unlock it. Then she searched for the word “Morse” on his phone. It didn’t have an internet connection, but she found an application that could translate audible Morse code into letters.
She held it close to Mark’s hand and wrote each letter onto a notepad as it was translated. After a few mistranslations, she finally got it down correctly.
SATELLITE PHONE
“Of course,” she said, feeling stupid for not thinking of it herself. “The satellite phone in your cabin.”
She could make a call with it once she found it in the mess of his room. But who could she trust? The fact that they’d been found out in the middle of the ocean made it possible that the attack was an inside job. But why? What was the purpose?
The one thing she was sure of was that someone had discovered where they were and targeted them specifically. This couldn’t have been a random attack, not when it had been carried out so precisely with such advanced weaponry.
“Who should we call?” she wondered aloud.
Mark began tapping again. When he was done, Sylvia looked at what she’d written and said, “Are you sure?”
Mark nodded.
Although Mark had never mentioned a name to her, there was a man her brother had spoken of reverently on several occasions, so Sylvia had faith in Mark’s judgment to trust him with their lives. She scrolled through the list of contacts on his cell phone until she found the entry, which had just a phone number and one word for the name. It matched the one in Mark’s last message that she had scrawled on the notepad.
CALL CHAIRMAN
NINETEEN
BALI
To meet the tiltrotor at the midship hangar bay, Juan used a transportation option not available on the previous Oregon. A broad corridor ran in an oval loop nearly the length of the ship. The corridor was divided into two halves by a yellow line. One side was dedicated to pedestrians, while the other side was reserved for an electric tram system. Each of the four open-air vehicles was large enough for passengers and cargo, and they were equipped with sensors that prevented them from colliding with anyone who might step into their path. They all moved in the same direction around the oval unless an override command told the vehicles to move in the opposite direction during an emergency.
Juan pressed the CALL button, and he didn’t have to wait long for a tram to arrive. It was already carrying a gurney and two of Julia’s medical staff. He nodded to them and got on. The battery-powered cart accelerated smoothly with a soft whine from its motor and a hum from its rubber tires.
When they stopped next to the hangar bay, all three of them exited the vehicle and entered the large space originally designed as one of the cargo ship holds. Maintenance equipment, fuel hoses, and spare parts were neatly stowed along the periphery. The tiltrotor was resting on the descending helipad platform, its propellers pointed into the sky and lazily winding down. The plane’s clamshell doors were already open, and Linc and Eddie were carrying Oliver Muñoz out through the doorway on the backboard, guided by Julia.
Before it had even finished lowering, Juan jumped onto the helipad and walked over to them. Julia’s scrubs were stained with blood. Muñoz was barely conscious.
“How is he?” Juan asked.
Julia nodded, a positive sign. “It’s good we didn’t wait for the ambulance. He nearly coded on me. He has a tension pneumothorax—basically, a punctured lung—so I had to relieve the pressure with a needle during the flight over. Luckily, Gomez was able to give me a few seconds of gentle flying to do it.” She waved the gurney over as soon as the platform was down.
“What happens now?”
“I get him to the infirmary and put a chest tube in. I’ll give him a CT scan to look at the rest of the damage, but I think he’ll require a cardiothoracic surgeon to remove the shrapnel and maybe put some broken ribs back into place. There are some excellent hospitals on Bali. I’d say the prognosis is good.”
“How long do you need?” Juan asked as they loaded Muñoz onto the stretcher.
“It’ll take me less than an hour to get him stabilized,” Julia said, “assuming I don’t find anything surprising.”
Juan nodded. “We can be at a dock in Denpasar by then.”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
Julia and her medical team wheeled Muñoz back to the cart. Juan was confident in Julia’s assessment.
He took out his phone and called Hali.
“Tell Eric to set course for Denpasar. And ask Lang to have a CIA vetted doctor, a private ambulance, and a security team waiting for us at the dock to take Oliver Muñoz and the others to a hospital. He can tell the Senators to meet their families there.”
“What should I tell Mr. Overholt about the status of Mr. Muñoz?” Hali asked.
“That he’s in the best care known to medicine, and Julia thinks he’s going to make it.”
“Aye, Chairman.”
He hung up and saw Gomez exit the tiltrotor as the roof above them closed.
“Thanks for the assist, Chairman.”
“I didn’t want to lose you on our first mission.”
“Me neither. There’s no damage to my new baby, but it’s a bloody mess in there,” Gomez said. “We’re going to have to do a biohazard cleanup.” Gomez headed off to get the supplies while technicians secured the aircraft.
Both Eddie and Linc wore dour expressions, and their clothes were still wet.
“I hope Muñoz is going to be okay,” Linc said.
“Me, too,” Eddie added. “I wish we could have gotten them out of the park before the mortar shells came down.”
“If it wasn’t for you,” Juan said, “all four of them would be dead, along with possibly dozens of other Ocean Land guests. Speaking of, where are they and MacD?”
“MacD took them to get some drinks and fresh clothes,” Linc said. “They’re pretty freaked out by the whole thing, especia
lly Muñoz’s daughter.”
“I thought it was better that they get them off the deck,” Eddie said. “If Kyle Schmidt saw the tiltrotor descend into a hidden compartment on the Oregon, he would have been posting about it on social media the moment he got his phone back.”
“Good thought,” Juan said. “Come on. Let’s get you into dry clothes before the debriefing. While you’re doing that, I’ll go find MacD and the others in the mess to give them an update on Oliver Muñoz.”
As they walked to the tram, Linc said, “So far, I like the new ship, especially that laser. Came in handy.”
“So did the rail gun,” Juan said. “We used it to take out the fishing boat that was firing the mortars, although it looks like Max has to work out the bugs with some of the other new equipment. By the way, your new Harley made it into the hold before we set sail.”
Although they hadn’t lost any crew members when the previous ship sank in a Chilean fjord, many of their personal effects went down with it, including Linc’s beloved custom motorcycle.
“Can’t wait to see it,” Linc said. “As soon as we get back to Malaysia, I’m going for a ride. I’m meeting an old Navy buddy in Penang for Christmas.” The Oregon was scheduled to be back in dry dock two days before the holiday.
They got on the next tram and headed back toward the crew quarters at the stern section of the ship.
“Wish I could have been there for the renaming ceremony,” Eddie said. This Oregon was rebuilt from the frame of a break bulk cargo ship headed to the scrapyard, so they carried out the customary ritual for christening a ship with a new name.
“It was a little rushed because of Raven’s call about the potential hijacking, but the Dom Pérignon went down well while we burned the old logbook. Just remember never to mention the Oregon’s previous name again. We don’t want any bad luck.” Juan knew that sailors tended to be a superstitious bunch and didn’t want to anger the sea gods.
When they reached the crew quarters, Eddie and Linc headed to their cabins, and Juan walked toward the phony mess hall, which was distinct from the actual dining room for the crew. The Oregon had a portion of the ship meant to be seen by harbormasters, inspectors, and anyone else that needed to tour the ship. Those areas could be dressed up or made completely disgusting as the mission required.
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