Mirage

stations and former COs, and then we start looking up the pecking order. Do you give any credence to Overholt’s idea that the American Mr. Big will meet the ship in Indonesia?”

“He wasn’t here, that’s for sure. Mr. Big wouldn’t know a gunny from a hole in the ground. He’s too high up for that. I’m guessing one of the guys here today was a major who served over the gunnery sergeant and the other is a mutual friend of both Mr. Big and the major.”

Max thought about this. “Ages seem right. Gunny and the major worked together, became friendly. They hatch the plot, take it to Mr. Big’s buddy to give them protection from above, and all of a sudden we’ve lost a billion in Benjamins. They’d still need a lot of help just to move that much cash.”

“Most certainly. That’s where the Iraqis come in. They supply the labor while our little cabal of traitors supplies access to the money.”

“I should tell Langston to have the Pentagon concentrate on majors once we have the gunny’s name.”

Just then, the harbor pilot returned from the head. “Ah, and who is this, Captain Mohamed?”

“My chief engineer, Fritz Zoeller.”

Max greeted the man, using an outrageous German accent, before insisting that he had to return to his engine room as the loading was about complete.

An hour later, the ship reached open water, and the pilot transferred to a small boat to return to port. There was a full moon, so only the brightest stars shown from the cloudless sky. As usual, the waters of the sheltered Persian Gulf were as calm and as warm as bathwater. The radar plot showed plenty of activity. The big returns were tankers, ferrying oil out of the Gulf or heading north to have their monstrous hulls filled with crude. Other, smaller blips were the countless fishing vessels that plied these waters. Most now were modern craft, but a few lateen-rigged dhows still roamed the Gulf as they had for hundreds of years.

Radio traffic was heavy, with crews chatting with one another to keep awake during the long night watch. Not knowing if any of the four guards would venture up to the wheelhouse, Juan ordered it manned at all times. Cabrillo acted as officer on deck while Hali Kasim draped himself over the wooden wheel in an effort to stay awake. Juan enjoyed standing watch, even at night, while his communications expert was bored out of his mind. At midnight, just as if they were really conning the ship, they were relieved.

Over the next two days it continued like this, though there was really no point in maintaining the ruse on the bridge. The four men tasked with guarding The Container only left the hallway outside the hold to use the head. They must have formed some sort of loose pact, because they slept in shifts. Food was brought to them from the galley by one of the Oregon’s regular kitchen staff dressed not for the ship’s opulent dining hall but in the stained whites of a short-order cook.

By now, they knew the lone American among them was Gunnery Sergeant Malcolm Winters USMC (Ret.). The Pentagon had e-mailed dozens of pictures of officers Winters had worked with over his twenty-year career, but neither Cabrillo nor Eddie could identify any as one of the other Americans on the pier. They were expecting more photos soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

They came at sunup on the third day of the trip. Just as Cabrillo had suspected, there were three boats — low, cigarette-style powerboats — that surged out of the predawn darkness like sharks circling in for the kill. They had less than a foot of freeboard showing, so they had never appeared on radar. There would be another vessel out here with them, a mother ship waiting over the horizon that would have towed the powerboats to the ambush point. There were five pirates on each craft, coffee-skinned Somalis who had turned this stretch of the Indian Ocean into one of the most dangerous places on earth. Juan suspected it was the crime lord from Basrah who had tipped them off and told them what ship to stalk. Basrah was a port city, after all, so he would have contacts in the pirates’ leadership.

Most of the men brandished AK-47s, but one on each boat carried the distinctive RPG-7 rocket launcher. They attacked from astern so the watch standers on the bridge never saw them, didn’t know about them, in fact, until an RPG round slammed into the fantail just above the waterline in an attempt to disable the Oregon’s prop and rudder.

On any other ship, the explosion would have left them dead in the water, but the Oregon was hardened and armored in critical areas so the rocket-propelled grenade did little but pucker the armored belt and singe some paint.

Because they had to keep the bridge manned anyway, Cabrillo had decided to switch control to there from the op center and keep only one person manning the high-tech room rather than the customary two. Seconds after the blast echoed throughout the ship, MacD Lawless leapt from the Kirk Chair where he lolled in boredom to the weapons station in the front of the room. Although he was the newest member of the Corporation, he knew Oregon’s systems as well as any of them.

It took him just a few seconds of channeling through camera feeds to spot the pirate boats. They were standing off about fifty yards from the ship, well beyond the range of fire hoses that some freighters deployed to protect themselves. They were waiting for their quarry to slow from the damage they’d inflicted with the RPG. If it did not slow, then another couple of RPGs would be fired into her. One way or another, they would not be deprived of their prize.

MacD at first considered using the ship’s 20mm Gatling guns, but their four guests were all ex-military and would know the industrial whine of the Gatling rattling off at three thousand rounds per minute. Best he deploy a more likely weapon on a smuggler’s ship. In one corner of the main view screen, a hidden camera showed the four guards down by the hold, paralyzed by indecision. They did not know what to do. Should they go topside and help defend the ship or should they remain at their post and be ready to make a last stand should pirates make it this far?

MacD activated a pair of M60 machine guns that Juan called their “boarder repellants.” The guns were hidden inside oil drums welded to the deck near the ship’s rail. The barrels’ lids popped open, and the weapons emerged, muzzle first, before rotating to a horizontal firing position. He clicked the targeting icon on his computer screen, locking in the automated firing plots, and let the guns loose.

The guns fired a NATO standard 7.62mm round, and while not particularly large or powerful, this weapon made up for it in sheer volume of fire. The first cigarette boat was raked from stem to stern with fifty rounds before anyone aboard knew what was happening. The driver was killed instantly, two of the gunmen as well. The other two were tossed into the ocean when the out-of-control boat barreled into a wave and flipped.

On the other side of the Oregon, the second gun had an even more devastating effect on another of the pirates’ boats. This one exploded when gas from the punctured tank ignited off the hot engine. The fireball was something out of Hollywood. The third attacking boat took heed and raced for the horizon before the M60 could target it, but the mother boat, which had foolishly approached, either didn’t see or didn’t understand what had happened to their comrades. They held a steady course so that they could launch another RPG at their prey’s fantail.

MacD hit the target icon again. On deck, the M60’s barrel moved mechanically and aimed ever so slightly upward to compensate for the increased distance and a little windage. The computer even took into consideration the ballistic changes caused by the barrel being heated from the first barrage.

The gun chattered again just as the rocket man heaved the launch tube to his shoulder. He was hit multiple times but managed to pull the trigger before he died. The problem for his teammates was that the RPG was pointed straight at the deck of their own boat when the igniter engaged. The rocket blew through the bottom of the mother boat with barely a check in speed and sank quickly out of sight without exploding. The hole in the hull became a huge rend that would have doomed the crew even had the machine-gun fire not continued to pour in on them.

In all, it took just a few seconds from the opening shot to the last. Lawless blew out a long breath while crewmen surged into the op center, Cabrillo being one of the first. He wore a pair of swim trunks under a cotton terry robe and dripped water onto the deck without noticing. He smelled of chlorine from the ship’s pool.

“Pirates in cigarette boats. Three in total. Two were greased, while the last one ran for the horizon. Then the mother ship approached and took a powder too,” MacD reported without being prompted. He knew what the