The Jungle of-8

by Clive Cussler

  Unlike the smaller gun firing at them, the 120 fired at a flat, lancing trajectory. The Oregon shuddered when the gun roared.

  All eyes were on the view screen. A second after the cannon discharged the discarding sabot round, the tungsten dart hit the destroyer square in the turret. The kinetic energy blew through its thin armor without a check in speed, and it impacted the breech of one of the two 57mm guns and detonated the round that was in the chamber. The turret came apart like an opening umbrella, its skin flaying up and out in a blistering cloud of fire and smoke. The smoke curled and coiled over the ship’s deck as she charged on blindly for a few seconds.

  Juan gave them a count of ten, and, when the Mayanmarian ship didn’t slow, said, “Fire two.”

  The big cannon had gone through the complicated loading sequence automatically, so when Mark pressed a key on his computer, it discharged another round.

  This time he put the shot right through a bridge window. Had he used a high explosive, it would have killed everyone in the room. As it was, the sabot round hit with massive force, blowing out all the windows, wrecking helm control, and turning the radio room just aft of the bridge into a charred ruin.

  The Hainan-class destroyer began to slow. She would have sheered away on a different course but could no longer control her rudder, and it would be several minutes before anyone senior enough left alive transferred steering to auxiliary control.

  “Nicely done, Wepps,” Juan congratulated. A smile tugged at his lips when he saw Maurice enter the bridge, carrying one of his artificial legs. This limb was all titanium struts and exposed mechanics and looked like something out of a Terminator movie. The steward had had the foresight to bring Juan another pair of shoes. “You don’t know how ridiculous I feel without that thing.”

  “And look, Captain,” Maurice deadpanned. “How ridiculous you look too.”

  “What’s our new heading, Juan?” Eric asked.

  “Get us to Brunei at the best possible speed. Maurice, rustle up some food and bring it to the conference room. I want all senior staff except Hux, who has to stay with MacD, in there in thirty minutes. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  * * *

  CABRILLO GAVE THEM a tight deadline because he had no intention of luxuriating in a long, steamy shower. He didn’t want to unwind. He wanted to stay as tight and focused as possible until Linda Ross was safely back aboard the Oregon.

  Juan was the first to arrive in the boardroom. The thick glass table could seat a dozen comfortably on black leather ergonomic chairs. The walls were painted a chocolate/gray with recessed pin spotlighting and flat-panel screens on the two shortest walls. Louvers could be lowered over large square windows to let in natural light, but Maurice had rightly left them closed. The steward was just finishing laying out silver chafing dishes filled with several Indian curry dishes.

  An orderly in blue scrubs was also there with an IV bag on a skeletal metal stand.

  “Doctor Huxley’s orders,” he said when Juan questioned his presence. “The amount of dehydration you suffered has unbalanced your electrolytes and played havoc with your kidneys. This will help.”

  Cabrillo had to admit he wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent. His head ached, and he felt fluey. He sat at the head of the table while Maurice prepared him a plate of food and an iced tea and the orderly threaded the IV into his left forearm, freeing his unhurt right to eat.

  “Any word on MacD?” he asked.

  “Sorry, no change. He’s still in a coma.”

  Eddie Seng and Max Hanley came in moments later, followed by Eric Stone and Mark Murphy. The two techno-junkies were carrying laptops that could jack into the ship’s dedicated Wi-Fi and were discussing the most useless apps for the iPhone.

  Everyone helped themselves to the food and took their customary places around the table. Linda’s empty seat was a grim reminder of why they were there, and the absence of her elfin face and quick wit made for a somber mood.

  “Okay,” Juan began. He set a napkin aside. “Let’s go over the knowns. Roland Croissard double-crossed us. His hiring us to find his daughter was just a pretense to help his henchman, Smith, get into Myanmar and presumably steal whatever was in a small satchel we found on the body of someone I can only assume was a member of a team he had sent into the country earlier.”

  “Their failure was why he brought us in,” Max said in an acknowledging tone. It made sense, and everyone nodded.

  “What was in the satchel?” Eddie asked.

  “No idea,” Juan replied. “Probably it was something looted from a long-lost Buddhist temple. As I look back on it, there was damage to a wooden dais in the main prayer chamber. Whatever it was had probably been hidden there.”

  “Just to play devil’s advocate,” Max said. “What if Croissard’s clean and it was Smith who pulled off the double cross?”

  “Has anyone been able to contact Croissard since this mission turned sour?” Juan looked around the table.

  “No,” Hanley admitted.

  “Besides,” Juan added, “we were sent out supposedly to find his daughter. I’m sure now that the body in the river was that of a slender man with longish hair. You have tried calling Croissard’s office number and not just his cell?”

  “Yeah. We even managed to get to his private secretary. She says that he is traveling and can’t be reached.”

  “Typical runaround,” Juan summed up. He looked to Mark and Eric. “I want you two to track him down. He flew into Singapore on a private jet, I’m sure. Find out which and track where it went after our meeting. It’s probably owned by his company, so it shouldn’t be too tough.”

  “What about the attack in Singapore?” Max asked. “Does our thinking change on that, knowing what we know now?”

  “I had time to consider it while I was being held prisoner. I can’t see how Croissard’s betrayal changes our perception of that assault. I really believe it was just like we thought originally. Wrong place, wrong time. The big question on my mind is, why? Why did Croissard do this? Why hire us only to betray us?”

  “Because whatever he was after was something he knew we wouldn’t get for him,” Eric said. “Croissard came to us through the Cypriot information broker L’Enfant, right? He knows the kinds of missions we deal with. So in order to get us to accept, Croissard had to make it something he knew would interest us. And come on, Juan, could you resist saving the beautiful daughter of a billionaire? Could any of us?”

  “Damsel in distress,” Max grumbled. “Oldest ploy in the book.”

  “The other thing I’m wondering,” Mark Murphy interjected. “How did the Myanmar military get mixed up in all this? I mean, if Croissard had contacts in the government, why not use them instead of sneaking around?”

  The question hung unanswered because no one had a logical answer.

  Eddie finally said, “Could he have brokered a last-minute deal?”

  Everyone agreed quickly since it was the only suggestion put forth. Cabrillo knew that this was dangerous groupthink, but he also had a feeling that in this instance it was the correct answer.

  He asked, “How are we coming on a more in-depth look at Croissard?”

  “Ah,” Mark started, but then Eric Stone stepped in.

  “Max has had us digging since you and Linda dropped comms and began choppering out of the jungle. Of course we looked into his background as a standard part of taking on a new client. That check showed he was squeaky clean. And as much as it pains us to admit it, the more we’ve dug, the shinier the guy is.”

  Mark Murphy nodded. “But we know there’s something, right? I mean this guy has serious ulterior motives. We’ve even double-checked on his daughter, Soleil. The upload to her Facebook account that talks about her upcoming trip came from a personal laptop using a Wi-Fi connection at a coffee shop two blocks from her apartment in Zurich. She was booked on a Lufthansa flight from Zurich to Dubai and then on to Dhaka, Bangladesh. She checked into her room at the Hotel Sarina and caught a fl
ight the next day to Chittagong, where she said she and her friend—”

  “Paul Bissonette,” Cabrillo offered, knowing now that name would be seared on his brain forever. “Smith positively ID’d his body, but I guess that was bogus.”

  “Anyway, his travel itinerary matches hers, though he had a standard room and she slept in the Imperial Suite. It was from Chittagong that they had planned to start their trek.”

  “Any idea how she was getting into the jungle or her exact destination?”

  “No. She was cagey about that on Facebook. She did send a Twitter message from Chittagong, saying that the real adventure was about to begin, and then nothing other than what Croissard says she phoned in.”

  “So Croissard used his daughter’s planned expedition into the jungles of Bangladesh as cover for his own mission. We have to assume that she’ll return soon enough with her buddy, yes?”

  “More than likely,” Murph agreed.

  Cabrillo went silent for a moment, his chin resting on his hand. “Okay, that’s all in the past,” he said. “Tell me about the present. Where did they take Linda?”

  Eric flipped open his laptop and worked the keys for a second. An overhead image of the open ocean appeared on the two flat-panel displays at either end of the room. The picture was tight so the resolution was poor. “This is a Google Earth shot of the exact coordinates where her tracker chip’s signal went dark.”

  “And there’s nothing there,” Cabrillo snapped. He was looking for answers, not more enigmas. “She was ferried out to a ship, probably Croissard’s private yacht, and it’s long gone by now.”

  “That was the first thing we checked,” Stone said. He hit another couple of keys, and the picture of a snowy-white luxury cruiser snapped up on the screens. She looked to be well over two hundred feet long and capable of cruising through the roughest seas. “This is the Pascal, Croissard’s private yacht, and she’s been anchored off Monte Carlo for the past five months. I confirmed with the harbormaster this morning. She hasn’t gone anywhere.”

  “Okay, so another boat.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Eric returned to the original picture of the ocean where Linda vanished and started zooming out so that a greater and greater swath of the sea was revealed. Small square objects appeared at the edge of the picture. Stone moused the cursor over one, clicked to center it, and started zooming back in.

  “What the ...”

  In seconds the image resolved itself to reveal a massive offshore oil platform, complete with a flare stack, loading crane, and a chopper pad cantilevered over the side.

  “These are some of the most oil-rich parts of the world,” Eric remarked. “There are literally hundreds of drilling rigs off Brunei’s coast. That’s how the sultan got so rich. Also, there’s more than enough metal on one of those behemoths to block Linda’s tracker chip.”

  “But there wasn’t a platform anywhere near where her signal dropped out,” Max said.

  “No,” Mark chimed in, “but who knows how long ago these pictures were taken? Google updates their maps all the time, but they still lag far behind the real world. An oil rig could have been installed just a couple months ago and it might not show up for years.”

  “Then we need more updated imagery,” Juan said.

  “We’re doing one better,” Eric told him. “We’re trying to hire a chopper to fly out there and put some eyeballs on the target.” Stone put up his hands in a defensive posture when he saw a look sweep across Cabrillo’s face. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure he stays far enough away so no one gets suspicious.”

  “When will you hear back?”

  “I’m hoping today. The helicopter-charter company is mostly booked up, taking workers and equipment out to the oil fields, but they told me that they might be able to divert one of their helos this afternoon for a quick look-see.”

  “Good idea.” With his belly full and the IV clearing his mind and restoring his body, Cabrillo needed all his focus to stay awake. “What’s our ETA?”

  Eric pulled up another screen on his computer that detailed the ship’s position and speed and had a running estimate of their journey. “Forty-five hours.”

  “Eddie, I want you and Linc to dust off our contingency plan for storming an offshore oil rig. Go over them with the rest of the gundogs and make sure everyone’s up to speed. Eric and Mark, keep digging up anything you can find on Croissard and his pet Neanderthal, John Smith. I bet he really was in the French Foreign Legion. Maybe you can snoop through their electronic archives.”

  “You got it.”

  “What about me?” Max asked.

  Juan got up from the table and winked. “Just sit there and look pretty.”

  He was back in his cabin, the drapes closed, the air-conditioning cranked, and his covers pulled up tight less than sixty seconds later. Despite his exhaustion, his mind was troubled with images of Linda Ross being held captive, and the nagging feeling they had all missed something critical. Sleep came grudgingly.

  The jangling of an old-fashioned telephone dragged him out of the abyss. He threw aside the blankets and grabbed up the handset. The matte-black telephone looked like it had come from the 1930s, but it was a modern cordless.

  “Chairman, sorry to bother you.”

  “No bother, Eric,” Juan said. “What’s up?”

  “Eh, we just heard back from the helicopter-charter company.”

  “I take it it’s not good news?”

  “No, sir. Sorry. There’s nothing at the coordinates we gave them. They say the pilot overflew it directly.”

  Juan swung his legs out of bed. If it hadn’t been a rig, then Linda had been transported to a ship. A ship that had several days’ head start, and they had no idea in which direction it was heading. Linda was well and truly lost.

  “How are you coming along to get better satellite photographs of that area?” he asked after a short pause.

  “Well, we, ah, hadn’t really looked. The chopper was our best shot.”

  “You’re right, I know, but humor me. Find some recent pictures anyway. There might be a clue. Maybe they took her aboard a drill ship of some kind. If that’s the case, we at least know which needle in the Pacific haystack we’re looking for.”

  “Okay.” Stone was about to hang up but remembered his report wasn’t complete. Like anyone, he was reluctant to admit failure. “We’re still drawing blanks on Croissard, and, as for Smith, we can forget it. Just a quick hack into Foreign Legion archives shows roughly fourteen thousand John Smiths have served with the unit over the past fifty years. It’s a popular nom de guerre.”

  “I figured as much,” Juan admitted, “but we have to try everything. Keep me posted.”

  After a quick shower and shave, Cabrillo stopped in the medical bay. MacD Lawless lay on a standard hospital bed surrounded by some of the most high-tech lifesaving equipment in existence. A heart monitor beeped a strong measured cadence. He was able to breathe on his own, but a clear plastic cannula carrying pure oxygen had been fitted around his ears and under his nose. Juan noted that Lawless’s bruising was fading fast and that most of the swelling had gone down. Along with his good looks, the guy had the constitution of an ox.

  Hux came around the curtain separating MacD from the rest of the sleek medical ward. As always, she wore her hair in a ponytail and sported a lab coat. Her face bore a doctor’s professional blankness.

  “How is he?” Juan asked, trying not to sound grave.

  Julia suddenly smiled, a beaming grin that lit up the already bright room. “He’s asleep.”

  “I know. He’s been in a coma—”

  “No,” she cut him off quickly. “He came out of the coma about three hours ago. He actually just barely fell back asleep.”

  For whatever reason, there wasn’t a doctor in the world that was bothered by waking a patient no matter how badly his body needed sleep. Julia Huxley was no different. She gently shook MacD’s shoulder until his eyelids fluttered open. He stared blankl
y until his jade-green eyes could focus.

  “How you doing?” Juan asked warmly.

  “Great,” MacD replied, his voice raspy. “But, man, you should see the other guy.”

  “I did,” Cabrillo said. “He had some of the worst bruised knuckles I’ve ever seen.”

  Lawless started chuckling, but the pain made him moan. “Don’t do that. Don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.” MacD suddenly grew sober as he remembered who he was talking to and how he had crumpled under Soe Than’s torture. “Ah’m sorry, Juan. Ah really am. Ah had no idea it would be so bad.”

  “Don’t worry about it. All you gave was my name and the name of the ship—a name, I might add, that rarely graces her fantail. Had you not told them who I was, the Chinese government wouldn’t have made a deal to haul us back to Beijing, and Eddie wouldn’t have been able to figure out a way to rescue our sorry butts. You unwittingly saved our lives.”

  Lawless looked dubious, as if there couldn’t possibly be an upside.

  “Seriously,” Cabrillo went on. “We’d both be in a Chinese prison right now, looking at life sentences, if you hadn’t told Than what you did. If you want to feel bad about breaking, man, I can understand that, but you also have to own up to the fact that in doing so you made our escape possible. It’s the whole gray cloud/silver lining thing. What you have to figure out is, which one you want to concentrate on. Choose wrong, and I have no use for you. Okay?”

  MacD sniffed back to clear his throat. “Ah understand. And thanks. Ah hadn’t thought about it that way. It looks like that’s the second time Ah saved your life.” He tried to smile but couldn’t make it stick.

  Juan knew that Lawless would come around, and he knew too that hiring him had been the smartest thing he’d done in a long while. “You get some rest. We’re tracking Linda as we speak, so in a few days it’ll all be just a story we tell each other over drinks.”