Mirage

“Per case?”

“Bottle. And the three of them and their nubile guests went through eight of them at dinner.”

Max cocked an eyebrow. “‘Nubile’?”

“My adjective. Linda’s description of them was less kind. I think she even used the word ‘floozy.’”

Hanley chuckled. “There aren’t too many women who can make her jealous in the looks department.”

“Well, six of them are with her now and she’s not too happy about it. She says we have two more days before they break up their little party and the Emir heads to Bermuda. If we don’t find the wreck by this time tomorrow, we’ll call off the search, nursemaid our esteemed friend on one of the safest islands in the world for two weeks, and then head back here to keep looking.”

“What do you think we’ll find?”

“I have no idea, but if Pytor Kenin is interested, it can’t be good.”

Eric Stone’s voice came over the speakers built into the ceiling. “Little Geek’s back aboard, and the keel doors are closed.”

“Helm,” Cabrillo prompted.

“On it, Chairman.”

Juan flipped the main view screen to the bridge cameras and expanded it so he had an almost panoramic view of the ocean. The seas were choppy and leaden under a gray sky, and in the distance there were dark curtains of rainsqualls. He could see the silhouettes of two ships along the horizon, one heading north and the other south. As the Oregon picked up speed, her ride stabilized, and the constant rolling she’d endured while hovering over the old sunken trawler faded away.

He wolfed down the second taco and gave a sudden gasp. His face reddened, and he began panting.

“Ghost chili?” Max asked mildly.

“Yes,” Cabrillo managed to wheeze with tears streaming from his eyes.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Hanley breezed, placing a hand on Cabrillo’s shoulder as the Chairman tried to suck air past his tortured tongue, “but this is payback for adding salt and pepper to your meat loaf last night. Chef said it was seasoned perfectly, and if you want his food spicier, he’s more than happy to oblige. Enjoy.”

He sauntered from the op center, leaving the Chairman literally unable to reply.

An hour later, they were over the spot where the charts indicated an obstruction on the seafloor. They lowered the side-scan sonar, a towed array that hovered just above the seabed, and took acoustical pictures of its surroundings. More often than not, the obstruction, whether man-made or natural, was exactly where the charts said it would be, but ocean-floor mapping wasn’t the Oregon’s primary, secondary, or even tertiary mission. As a result, their sonar unit wasn’t up to par when compared to outfits like NOAA or NUMA, and it took time to find the target. In this case, they spent an hour running lanes north and south over a swath of the sea, much like a weekender mowing the lawn. It was this tedious back-and-forth scanning that tested Cabrillo’s patience.

Finally, after their second hour of fruitless search, the display screen showed an object that began reflecting sonar waves back to the array.

Juan felt the initial spike of adrenaline that any hunter does at the first sign of the quarry. It turned to bitter disappointment when the sonar revealed an object at least five hundred feet long and so oddly shaped that it could only be a stone outcropping on the otherwise barren continental shelf.

Another bust, he said to himself. He keyed the intercom. “Eric, to paraphrase Charlie Brown on Halloween, we got a rock. Go ahead and leave the sled deployed, our next target is only five miles away.”

The cable for the towed sonar was much stronger than the ROV’s umbilical, so they could leave it in the water as they transited to the next grid mark, but they would need to keep their speed below fifteen knots so as not to stress it too much.

“Okay.”

“Helm, next target is five miles away on two nineteen.”

“Making my course two nineteen at fifteen knots.”

Mark Murphy strolled out of the elevator wearing a seemingly blood-stained T-shirt with the words “I’m fine” written out over his chest. The young tech genius had his face buried in an iPad as he walked.

“About time,” Juan said. “You were supposed to spell me ten minutes ago.”

“You and I both know you weren’t going to leave the op center until you identified this latest target, so I monitored communications and came up when you pegged it.”

Juan frowned at being so easily read. “All right. I’ll give you this one. Just so you know, the array is still deployed.”

“Hello. Monitored communications. I knew that.”

“You’re in a mood,” Cabrillo remarked.

“Sorry, boss. I’ve been asked to peer-review an article by a friend at UC Berkeley and his conclusions are all wrong, and no matter how I try to help him see his mistakes, he’s just not getting it.”

“He doesn’t like being out-nerded?”

Murph grinned. “Nobody does.”

Juan spent the rest of the day on paperwork, had dinner with Eddie Seng and Franklin Lincoln, and watched a movie in his cabin before turning in for the night. They’d checked five more targets during Mark’s watch, and, like all the others before, they hadn’t found Tesla’s ship.

They had one more day before heading south for Bermuda. In the great scheme of things, a two-week hiatus guarding the Emir wasn’t a big deal, but Juan felt the specter of time looming over him. Kenin was covering his tracks, first in Kazakhstan, and again with Professor Tennyson. It followed that he would try to destroy Tesla’s experimental ship, if he knew about it, which Juan felt sure the Russian admiral did.

It was little wonder his sleep was restless.

The ringing of his bedside telephone roused him.

“H’lo,” he muttered. Cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello. This is Cabrillo.”

“Chairman, it’s Eric.”

“Yeah, Stoney. What have you got?”

“I think we found her.”

Juan noted it was five o’clock. Weak sunlight spilled around the curtains drawn over his cabin’s portholes.

“What time did you guys start this morning?” he asked, swinging his legs out of bed.

“We ran all night. Figured we’re searching so deep that we need halogens on the ROV anyway, and shipping traffic’s been light.”

“Where are we?”

“Target thirty-two.”

Juan knew that put them about twenty miles due east of Ocean City, Maryland. Almost the exact center of the search grid Eric and Murph had drawn up.

“Nicely figured,” he said.

Stone knew what Cabrillo meant. “Truth told, it wasn’t rocket science, but thanks.”

“You’ve got a visual?” Juan had clamped the phone with his shoulder and was working the sock of his prosthetic leg over his stump.

“Little Geek’s down there now, and it looks to be a small, thirties-era warship, with some weird modifications. It looks like a cage was built over the entire deck up to and over the superstructure and bridge.”

“What’s the condition of the wreck?”

“She’s sitting pretty much upright on the bottom. There’s been some collapse, but, on the whole, she’s in better condition than you’d expect. Only problem is, she’s got a couple of nets snagged over her, so I don’t want to get Little Geek in too close and snarl the umbilical.”

“Okay. Alert the moon pool that I’m coming down, and wake Mike Trono.” Trono was the butt of a lot of jokes on the Oregon because he was the only ex — Air Force member of a crew dominated by Navy veterans. He’d been a pararescuer, one of those tasked to go behind enemy lines to save downed airmen, and he’d made his bones first in Kosovo and later in Iraq. He was also the only diver besides the