The Jungle

minute. With both ships on the move, and the Oregon’s cross section half of what it should be because of some radar-absorbing material applied to her superstructure, the shots were falling pretty wild.

Juan checked their speed and guesstimated that they would remain in range for the better part of fourteen minutes. That left the potential for more than a hundred rounds coming at them. A few were bound to be magic bullets and hit. His ship was armored against the types of weapons pirates employed—heavy machine guns and RPGs fired at the hull. An explosive round arcing in on a high parabola would slice through the deck plates, and the charge would detonate inside the ship with deadly results. If it managed to hit the liquid nitrogen storage tanks, the resulting explosion would unleash a deadly cloud of superchilled gas that would freeze the entire crew solid and so distort the hull’s steel that the ship would crush herself under her own weight.

It was a risk he couldn’t take. He noted too that a Hainan-class destroyer carried a crew of seventy. An Exocet launch would sink them. And there was no close-by shipping to rescue survivors.

He made his decision quickly.

“Helm, bring us hard about one hundred and twenty degrees. Wepps, when you have a bearing on that ship, engage with the one-twenty. Let’s see if we can convince him that this is a fight he can’t win.”

The Oregon dug her shoulder into the sea as her directional jets, with the help of an athwartship thruster, threw her into the tightest turn she could make. Loose items flew off shelves, and everyone had to lean into the turn to keep balanced. As the bow came about, Mark Murphy waited until he had a lock and then opened fire. Typically, they could fire twice as fast as the Burmese ship, but the gun was at its most oblique angle so the autoloader had to reengage after every round.

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