Mirage

“We can assume this has to do with our past mission, so why don’t we go through it together.”

And they did, from the very top when Yuri Borodin’s aide-de-camp, Misha Kasporov, rang them to tell them about Borodin’s illegal incarceration up to the moment the Discovery 1000’s hatch closed in the Huangpu River for the ride back to the Oregon. She hadn’t realized how close some of the calls had really been and rebuked him for being reckless. He took her remarks the way a lifetime smoker takes the advice of their doctor to quit. Great tip, but it ain’t gonna happen.

“It has to be L’Enfant’s betrayal,” Julia concluded for him. “Everything else about this is pretty straightforward, at least by your standards.”

“Obviously we can never use him as a contact anymore. He might have come through with Kenin’s location, but the trust is broken. We both recognize that. And, yes, he’s the best in the world at what he does, but there are others we can turn to.”

“So you’re saying that isn’t it?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Juan raked his fingers through his hair, which was now the length of a Marine recruit’s. “Kenin deduced who we are after we rescued, well, almost rescued Yuri. He must have known our reputation because he immediately started eliminating any connection to his optically stealthed ship. He also leaned on L’Enfant to find out where we were going to be. He sent his ship out to capsize the Sakir and I assume sink us as well.”

Juan paused as something began to gel in the back of his mind. “What do you think it cost to develop that stealth ship?”

“Who knows? Even if he had Tesla’s formula for making a ship invisible and samples of his equipment, we’re still talking a hundred million at least.”

“Exactly, and yet he risked it to go after a Sheik’s boat and us. If he had access to a submarine, surely he had people in the surface fleet loyal to him. Why didn’t he just launch a few ship-killing missiles at us and Dullah’s yacht?”

“We could have shot them down,” Julia pointed out.

“He didn’t know that. He threw a hundred-million-dollar asset at a hundred-dollar problem. That bothers me. This was also his big score, his final act of thievery before leaving Mother Russia for good. It’s inconceivable that someone was willing to pay that kind of money to kill an Emirate’s sheik who happens to be our client at the time. That is too big of a coincidence.”

He grabbed the phone off Julia’s desk and dialed Mark Murphy’s room. Murph answered on the second ring. Juan could tell he was on speakerphone.

“How are you two coming with that laptop?”

“We just got it back from Linc,” Eric shouted over some god-awful techno playing in the background.

“Turn that noise down,” Juan admonished.

“Noise?” Mark shot back with indignity. “That’s the Howler Monkeys.”

“I’m sure it is.” The volume thankfully dropped. “Why did Linc have the computer?”

“You didn’t get my e-mail?”

“Obviously not or I wouldn’t be asking.”

“The laptop was booby-trapped with a packet of C-4. Eric and I figured it might be rigged, so we X-rayed it first. Good thing we did. We guessed the charge goes off after the computer is opened and the password’s not entered within a certain amount of time. Linc needed until tonight to remove the detonator and explosives.”

“How long before you guys get anything?”

“We’re just starting on the password now. After that, there’s no way to know how many levels of encryption Kenin used. My guess is, a ton.”

“How long?” Juan demanded again, his tone harsh and accusatory.

“Days. Weeks. There’s no way to say. Sorry, Chairman.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Juan snapped. “That’s an order.”

He slammed down the phone. Julia looked concerned.

“They work better when they think I’m mad and make unreasonable demands.”

“So that was theater?”

“Partially,” Juan said. “But we need answers quickly.”

“I don’t understand,” she admitted. “What’s the rush?”

“You know that conflict between China and Japan over some islands?”

“Yeah, something about sovereign rights and newly discovered oil or gas or something.”

“I don’t think it was a recent discovery. I think China has known about it for some time. I remember when I was rescuing Yuri he asked me about current events. I made some lame joke, but I mentioned that the civil war in Sudan was winding down.”

“And?”

“China was a major backer in that conflict because they were getting a lot of their oil from the region. They stopped funding the war because they realized they won’t need to import fossil fuels from Africa if there are decades’ worth right off their coast.”

“But the Japanese,” Julia said by way of roadblock.

“Could do nothing without our help. And what do we do in situations like this where two naval powers are butting heads?”

“Ask Max or Eddie. They’re your military guys.”

“Come on, Hux. Everyone knows what we do.”

“We send in an aircraft carrier.”

“Exactly. Force projection at its finest. And it’s not just a carrier. It’s a whole battle group with several destroyers, a frigate, some cruisers and two submarines. They all act as a screen to keep the carrier safe. The system is so well designed that it’s also considered impervious to attack. Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, the Soviets figured they would need at least a hundred cruise missiles to have a hope of taking out just one carrier.”

“O-kay,” Julia drew the word out. “In comes our carrier, both sides back down, and crisis averted.”

“Think it through, Doc.”

And the horrifying thought that had nagged at Juan’s mind until he’d talked it out with her too. She blanched. “There’s another of those stealth ships out there.”

“That’s got to be it. The ship was conceived before the Soviet Union dissolved as a way to counter our carriers. The Russians don’t need something like that anymore, but a burgeoning and increasingly hostile China would love to be able to take out a big nuclear carrier and do it in such a way that they can’t be blamed.”

“Would they be so bold?”

“This has been coming for years,” Juan said. “All the hacking into our computer systems and industrial espionage. We’ve been in a closet war with China for at least a decade. Now that energy independence is within their reach, they will do anything to fulfill its promise.” A fresh thought struck Cabrillo. “Sinking the Sakir was a demonstration to the Chinese of the weapon’s power. They must have been monitoring the sinking from the rendezvous ship that escaped us when we were dead in the water. Kenin chose Dullah’s yacht to get back at me, and I bet he even got some Middle East faction to pony up some dinars for the hit on Dullah too.”

“What do we do?”

“I’ll alert Langston but without anything concrete, like Kenin’s computer having a file labeled ‘bill of sale,’ there isn’t much he can do. The Navy won’t act on anything so insubstantial.”

“Our vacation is going to end before it even starts, isn’t it?”

Juan just gave her a look. He called the op center and asked the duty officer to track down the location of the nearest carrier battle group. If it was called in to the region, he needed to know its route since the Chinese would place their deadly stealth ship directly in its path. He was relieved to learn ten minutes later that the Johnny Reb, as the USS John C. Stennis was nicknamed, had just left Honolulu en route to the Navy base at Yokosuka, Japan. They had a few days’ breathing space even if the President ordered her into the disputed area immediately.

There were other practical considerations to take care of. Cabrillo thanked Julia and headed to the office just off his stateroom. He roused Max from his Taipei hotel suite to tell him the change in plans and to meet the