The Jungle

way would you have been able to move like that. Your injuries were mostly faked.”

Lawless didn’t deny it.

“I don’t get this,” Hanley persisted. “How did they know when we were going to rescue that kid?”

“You don’t see it yet?” Juan asked. “That kid didn’t need rescuing because his father had sent him to Pakistan in order to lure us to that village.”

“I must be dense or something. Why lure us there?”

“The whole thing was set up so that we would take MacD into the fold. Gunawan Bahar is the mastermind of everything we’ve been through these past couple of weeks. He wanted to plant a spy on the Oregon, so he hired us to ‘rescue’ his son from the Taliban while he also planted a man whose daughter’s life he controls in place for us to rescue too.

“It was a brilliant piece of misdirection. As soon as we were double-crossed by Smith in Myanmar, all suspicion automatically went to Croissard. No one ever considered there was another layer to this onion and that Croissard was no more in control of his actions than MacD.”

That last statement wasn’t entirely true. Since his time at Insein, Cabrillo had harbored a nagging doubt about something. He did not know what, but he sensed that some piece of information he’d been given was off in some way. It was instinct, but that was a feeling he’d learned to trust over the years, so when he saw Soleil on the rig he knew what had eluded him for so long.

“What gave it away,” he continued, “was the timing of the rig being sunk. Bahar knew from Lawless that we’d escaped Insein Prison and had Linda’s location because of the tracker chip. That pushed up his deadline to deep-six the J-61 platform by a few days or weeks. The clincher was when MacD came up to the bridge this morning. He’d been told we were steaming hard but had no idea the speeds the Oregon is capable of. As soon as he left me he called his handler, Smith, I assume, because of the way he seemed to get under your skin when we were back in the jungle. He told Smith that we were just hours away rather than days. The Hercules still wasn’t over the Palawan Trough, but they were out of time. They immediately opened the sea cocks and hit the lifeboats. To not only kill Linda and Soleil but also to hide the fact that the platform was home to perhaps one of the largest collections of interlinked computers outside a government lab. How’d I do?” He directed that last question to MacD.

Before Lawless could reply, a searing blast of sound made conversation impossible. It was the buzz-saw clamor of the Gatling raking the sides of the oil rig’s ponderous floats. It went on in staccato bursts for a full minute so that by the time the weapon was withdrawn back into the ship and its redoubt cover slid back into position, three thousand fist-sized holes had been blown through the floats, above and below the water. It would slip beneath the waves within the hour.

“How about it?” Juan prompted when it was clear Mark Murphy had finished the job.

“Nailed it. Everything.”

“I get it now,” Max exclaimed. “Croissard was controlled because Bahar had kidnapped his daughter too. All that crap on her website about going to Burma was bogus. They must have tried to get to that temple themselves, failed, and so he used Croissard to hire us, somehow knowing we’d get the job done.”

Cabrillo nodded. “And with both Smith and his spy on the team, Bahar had regular updates of our progress.”

“It all seems so elaborate. Why bother forcing MacD into this? Why the ruse? Bahar could have simply hired us to go into Myanmar.”

“Wouldn’t work,” Juan said. “No motivation. We would never take on some job to go tomb raiding. He needed the type of mission he knew we wouldn’t refuse. He’d already proven our soft spot for wayward kids, with the whole deal to save his son, so he just pulled the same trick again, only this time using Roland Croissard’s daughter as bait. Then, once he had whatever was in that bag, he called in his friends in the government to take us out.”

“Why not work with the government all along?” Max wondered aloud.

“No idea, but there was some reason. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered with us at all. My guess is that bringing in the military was a last-minute deal. MacD, any thoughts?”

“No, sir. They never gave me any information. Just took it.”

“So you have no idea what was in that bag we recovered from the body in the river?”

“None at all. And before you ask, Ah never even knew the name of the guy above Smith. I knew Smith wasn’t calling all the shots, but Ah didn’t know who was behind him.”

“Another mystery solved,” Max said, turning back to Cabrillo, “is the bombing at the hotel.”

“What? It wasn’t random?”

“It’s obvious that Bahar considers us such a threat that he felt the need to infiltrate our team, but he also took a shot at blowing us up in Singapore to end that threat early.”

Juan considered this for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t think so. As I said before, why not just have Smith blow our brains out as soon as we entered the room?”

Hanley’s face split into a wicked grin. “Because he would know the rest of the Corporation would search the ends of the earth for the shooter. But if we’d died in a suicide bombing, who would they hunt down?”

Cabrillo thought that his old friend might be onto something, but a lingering doubt remained. For the time being the past was unimportant. “For now, we need to concentrate on Bahar. We need to find out what he has planned. It’s something he sees us threatening, and it’s linked to whatever they pulled from the temple.”

“That’s specific,” Max said sardonically

“What about my little girl?” MacD asked, mustering as much dignity as he could. “Now that Smith, or this Bahar guy, knows Ah’ve been found out, they’re goin’ to kill her. They’ve let me talk to her over a webcam. The guys with her are strapped with explosive belts. They’re going to blow up my baby.”

“Who said anything about Smith and Bahar knowing we’ve discovered why you’re here?”

“Ah don’t understand.”

“It’s simple, really. You contact Smith like you’re supposed to and report that the rig was gone by the time we got to it.”

“Okaaay,” Lawless said, drawing out the word as if to draw out more information.

“And then we rescue your daughter, figure out what these sons of bitches are really up to, and nail them to the nearest outhouse door.”

* * *

AFTER THE LONGEST, hottest shower he’d had in a long time, Cabrillo went to find Linda Ross. She’d write up a full report of her ordeal, but he wanted to get the highlights quickly to help establish their next course of action. He went first to her cabin to discover that Soleil was there and just out of the shower herself. She had one towel wrapped around her and tucked under her arms and another wrapped in a turban, covering her hair.

“Again, you catch me when I am not at my best,” she said with a coy smile.

“Story of my life,” Juan replied. “Good timing with everything but the ladies. Linda didn’t show you to one of the guest cabins?”

“She did, but your selection of feminine toiletries is a little lacking. She was kind enough to let me use hers.”

“I’ll get on the steward,” he promised, and then asked with genuine concern, “How are you?”

A shadow passed behind her Gallic eyes. And, just as quickly, it faded. “I have endured worse.”

“I read up on some of your accomplishments,” Cabrillo said. “And I was very impressed. However, there is nothing quite like being held against your will. That lack of freedom and control can get to anyone. Powerlessness is perhaps the worst feeling in the world.”

She opened her mouth as if to reply, then suddenly plopped herself on Linda’s bed and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed quietly at first, but soon it grew, until her whole body was shaking. Juan wasn’t the type to be put off by a woman crying, at least when she had a reason. Pointless histrionics just irked him, but something like this naked expression of fear was something he understood all too well.

He sat on the bed next to her but kept his hands to himself. If she wanted human contact, it would be up to her to initiate it. His instincts at times like this were spot-on. In seconds, Soleil had pressed her face into his shoulder. He put an arm around her and simply waited for her to get it out of her system. Less than a minute later she straightened and sniffled. Juan plucked a couple of tissues from the box on the nightstand and handed them to her. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

“Pardonnez-moi. That was not very ladylike.”