The Jungle

* * *

DAWN FOUND CABRILLO up in the wheelhouse, a big mug of black coffee in hand. The seas remained calm, and fortunately free of shipping. The water was a green as deep as the finest emerald, while the rising sun, diffused through distant clouds, smeared the horizon in a red blush. Somewhere along the line, probably during their slower passage through the Straits of Malacca, a large gull had landed on the starboard wing bridge. He was still there, but with the ship traveling so fast he’d hunkered down behind a wall plate to shelter himself from the ungodly wind.

Cabrillo continued to use the sling for his broken collarbone. Because of it, he wouldn’t be joining the raid on the J-61. He would have to confine himself to being a spotter in their MD 520N chopper, which was being preflighted down in the hangar under the number 5 cargo hatch. They would be in position to launch in another thirty minutes.

He hated sending his people into danger when he wasn’t there to lead them, so his passive role in this operation was especially maddening. Once the Hercules had been sighted, Gomez Adams would return to the Oregon to pick up the combat team, leaving Juan to sit on the sidelines. Linc, Eddie, and the other gundogs were more than capable of taking down whoever Croissard had guarding Linda.

The central elevator whispered open behind him in an alcove at the rear of the pilothouse. The crew knew that when the Chairman was up here alone, it was best to leave him that way, so he was mildly irritated at the interruption. He turned and the reprimand died on his lips. Instead, he smiled. MacD Lawless wheeled himself off the elevator. It was clear that he was struggling, but also just as clear that he was determined to make it on his own.

“Ah’d forgotten what a pain it is getting into and out of elevators in these damned contraptions.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Cabrillo said. “After the Chinese blew off my leg, I was in one for three months before I could walk on a prosthetic.”

“Ah thought some fresh air would do me some good, but Ah was warned to stay clear of the main deck.”

“Unless you like that windblown look, it’s good advice. We’re making better than forty knots.”

Lawless couldn’t hide his astonishment. Because he was in a wheelchair, he could only see the sky through the bridge windows. Cabrillo got up from his seat and crossed to the portside flying bridge door. It was a sliding door, so that it could be opened or closed no matter the conditions. As soon as it was slid back just a couple of inches, hurricane-force winds howled through the gap, rustling the old chart held to the table with equally out-of- date books on navigation. Though it was early morning, the air was hot and heavy with humidity, but at the pounding velocity with which it blew into the bridge it still felt refreshing.

Cabrillo opened the door completely and stood back so MacD could maneuver his chair out onto the flying bridge. His hair whipped around his head, and he had to raise his voice to be heard over the gale. “This is incredible. Ah had no idea a ship this big could move so fast.”

“There isn’t another like her on the high seas,” Juan told him pridefully.

Lawless spent a minute staring out to sea, his face unreadable, and then he backed himself inside once again. Cabrillo closed the door.

“Ah should get goin’ on to medical,” Lawless said with some reluctance. “Doc Huxley doesn’t know Ah’m AWOL. Good luck today.” He held out a hand.

Juan kept his arms at his side. “Sorry, but we kind of have a superstition about that. Never wish someone luck before a mission.”

“Oh, sorry. Ah didn’t . . .”

“Don’t sweat it. Now you know and you won’t spook the others.”

“How’s this? See you later.”

Cabrillo nodded. “You got it. See you later.”

On Juan’s orders the Oregon’s engines were reversed when they were at the absolute limit of their chopper’s range. They would have very little time over the target area, but he wanted to find the Hercules as quickly as possible. If he had miscalculated and the FLO-FLO heavy-lift ship wasn’t transiting toward the Palawan Trough, there was virtually no chance they’d spot it from the helicopter no matter how much time they had on target. The ship, and its cargo, would be long gone.

The impeller blades inside the gleaming drive tubes had their pitch reversed, and the water that had been blasting through the stern was suddenly jetting out the forward intakes. It looked for a moment like two torpedoes had struck the ship, with frothing water exploding up and over the bows. The deceleration was enough to buckle knees. As soon as her speed dropped below ten knots, the rear hatch cover rolled forward, and a hydraulic lift pushed the black chopper into the daylight. Cabrillo was already buckled into the front passenger seat, a large pair of binoculars over his shoulder. Max Hanley sat in back to act as a second spotter.

Technicians locked the five folding rotor blades into place as soon as they cleared the ship’s rail, and Gomez fired the souped-up turbine. When he had greens across the boards, he engaged the transmission, and the big overhead rotor began to beat the sultry air. Because of her NOTAR configuration, the 520 was a much quieter and steadier helicopter as the blades reached takeoff velocities. Adams fed her more power and gave the collective a slight twist. The skids lifted off the deck, and then he goosed her hard, pulling up and away from the Oregon in a blinding climb that kept them well aft of her forest of derrick cranes.

They had to loop far to the east so that they would approach the search area from behind the Hercules. They did this for two reasons. One, they would be coming out of the rising sun, effectively making them invisible to any lookouts. Second, with the big oil platform straddling her cargo deck, the ship’s forward-mounted radar would have a huge blind spot back over her fantail. They would never see them coming.

The flight was tedious, as any flight over water tended to be. No one was in the mood for conversation. Usually there would be banter between the men, a way to alleviate the tension gripping them all, but cracking jokes while Linda Ross’s life hung in the balance wasn’t appealing to any of them. So they flew on in silence. Juan would occasionally scan the sea through his binoculars, even when they were still far outside their target area.

It was only when they were about forty miles out that he and Max started studying the ocean surface in earnest. They worked in tandem, Max looking forward and left, Cabrillo forward and right, both men sweeping the binoculars back and forth, never allowing themselves to be mesmerized by the sun glinting off the shallow waves. They were ten miles from where Cabrillo estimated the ship would be, and just shy of where the continental shelf plunges into the Palawan Trough, when Juan spotted something ahead and off to starboard. He pointed it out to Adams, and the pilot banked around slightly to keep their backs to the sun.

Cabrillo was instantly concerned. They should have found the ship by first spotting her miles-long wake and following it in. There was no wake. The Hercules was dead in the water.

It was an otherworldly sight. The ship itself was nearly twice the length of the Oregon, but what was so remarkable was the towering drill rig sitting astride her open deck. Her four legs were as big around as aboveground swimming pools. The floats beneath them, covered in red antifouling paint, cantilevered a good seventy feet over the Hercules’s rails and were the size of barges. The platform itself was easily several acres in area, far larger than Cabrillo’s initial estimate, and the distance from the deck to the top of the drill tower was more than two hundred feet. All told, the combination of ship and rig weighed in at well over a hundred thousand tons.

“What do you think?” Adams asked. Their plan was to find the rig and immediately return to the Oregon. But with her lying at idle, he was unsure.

Cabrillo wasn’t. “Get in closer. I want to check something.”

Adams dropped them lower until the skids were dancing over the waves. Unless a lookout was stationed at the fantail, they would still be pretty much invisible. It was when they were within a half mile that Juan realized the Hercules had developed a list to port. He wondered briefly if they had miscalculated the load and stopped to adjust it.

But when they came around the back of the ship, he saw heavy steel cables dangling off the superstructure’s boat deck, and the metal arches of her davits were extended. The lifeboat had been launched. At the waterline he could see roiling bubbles caused by water filling her ballast tanks and expelling air. They weren’t readjusting the load—they had abandoned ship because they were scuttling her.