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 flight 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
“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
