arrived a minute later from the engine room where he’d been performing an unnecessary inspection. The yoga had taken a toll on him: his gait was noticeably hampered by muscles not used to so much stretching.
“You wanted to see me?”
Linda swiveled her flat-panel display so Max could read the news for himself. The tension in the room had risen as though an electric current had passed between the two.
“Will someone please tell us what’s happened?” Eric Stone asked from the helmsman’s position.
“Benjamin Isaka has been implicated in a coup plot,” Linda replied. “He was arrested a couple of hours ago.”
“Isaka. Why does that name sound familiar?”
Max answered, “He was our government contact in the Congo for that weapons deal.”
“Oh, man, that is seriously not good,” Mark Murphy said. Though there was no need to man theOregon
’s offensive systems he usually took his position whenever the senior staff had the watch.
“Hali, any word on the weapons we delivered?” Linda asked. She didn’t care about Congo’s local politics, but the Corporation had a responsibility for those arms.
“Sorry, I haven’t checked. That report just came through the AP wire service a minute ago.”
Linda looked to Max. “What do you think?”
“I have to agree with Mr. Murphy. This could be a potential disaster. If Isaka told the rebels about the radio tags and they disabled them, then we just handed five hundred assault rifles and a couple hundred grenade launchers to one of the most dangerous group of thugs in Africa.”
“I can’t find anything about weapons being seized,” Hali said. “The story’s still breaking so maybe it will come through later.”
“Don’t count on it.” Max had his pipe in his hand and was tapping the stem against his teeth. “Isaka had to have told them. Hali, is there any way we can check the signals from the radio tags?”
The Lebanese-American frowned. “I don’t think so. Their range is pretty limited. The whole idea was for Congolese army forces to follow the arms back to the rebel base using handheld detectors that could pick up the tags’ signals. They only needed to broadcast for a couple of miles.”
“So we’re screwed,” Linda said, her anger putting a hard edge in her girlish voice. “Those guns could be anywhere and we have no way of finding them.”
“Ye of little faith,” Murph said with a broad grin.
She turned to him. “What have you got?”
“Will you guys ever stop underestimating the chairman’s cunning? Before we sold the guns he asked me and the chief armorer to replace a couple of tags the CIA gave us with some of my own design. Their range is nearly a hundred miles.”
“Range isn’t the issue,” Hali said. “Isaka knew where we hid the tags on the weapons. He’s bound to have told the rebels, and they could disable ours just as easily as the ones we got from the CIA.”
Mark’s smile never faltered. “The CIA tags were hidden in the butt stocks of the AKs and forward grip assembly of the RPGs. I put our tags in the grips of the AKs and modified the sling swivels to hide them on the grenade launchers.”
“Oh, bloody brilliant,” Linda said with true admiration. “Once they find the CIA tags they wouldn’t look for any more. Ours are still in place.”
“And transmitting on a different frequency, I might add.” Mark crossed his arms over his chest and leaned far back into his seat.
“Why didn’t Juan tell us about this?” Max asked.
“He sort of thought he was straying from prudence into paranoia with his idea,” Murph replied. “So he didn’t want to mention it because more than likely our tags would never be needed.”
“How close did you say we need to be to pick up the signals?” Linda asked.
“About a hundred miles.”
“That still leaves us searching for a needle in a haystack without some idea where the rebels were headed.”
Mark wiped the smug look from his face. “Actually, there’s another problem, too. To give the tags that kind of range I had to sacrifice battery life. They’ll start failing in another forty-eight to seventy-two hours.
After that there really is no way to find them again.”
Linda looked to Max Hanley. “The decision to find those weapons has to come from Juan.”
“I agree,” Max said. “But you and I both know he’ll want us to track them down and alert the Congolese army so they can get ’em back.”
“As I see it we have two options,” Linda said.
“Hold on a sec,” Max interrupted. “Hali, call the Chairman on his satellite phone. Okay, two options?”
“One is we turn back and send a team from Cape Town up to the Congo with whatever detection gear they need. Mark, this stuff is man portable, right?”
“The receiver’s not much bigger than a boom box,” the technical wizard told her.
Normally someone would have commented on the size of the boom box he played when he turned part of theOregon ’s cargo deck into a makeshift skateboard park complete with ramps, jumps, and a half pipe made from an old section of ship’s funnel.
Max said, “Going back to Cape Town will cost us the five hours we’ve steamed so far, another couple messing around in port, and a further five to return to this exact same spot of ocean.”
“Or we keep going and send a team in from Namibia. Tiny’s got the jump plane waiting at the airport in Swakopmund and will have one of our jets there by tomorrow afternoon for when we have Geoffrey Merrick. We can chopper them directly to the airport, Tiny can fly them up to the Congo, and be back in time for the raid.”
“I can’t get the Chairman on his sat phone,” Hali told the group.
“Did you try the radio on the lifeboat?”
“Nada.”
“Damn.” Unlike Cabrillo, who could think through a dozen scenarios at a time and intuitively pick the right one, Hanley was more deliberative. “How much time do you think we’d save for the search team by turning back right now?”
“About twelve hours.”
“Less,” Mark said without turning from his computer screen. “I’m checking flights right now between Cape Town and Kinshasa. There isn’t much.”
“So we’d have to charter a plane.”
“That’s what I’m checking,” Eric Stone said. “I’m finding only one company in Cape Town with jet aircraft. Hold on. No, there’s a note on their website saying both their Learjets are grounded.” He looked over at his shipmates. “If it’s any consolation they do apologize for the inconvenience.”
“So we’re looking at saving maybe eight hours,” Mark concluded.
“And costing us twelve and pushing back the rescue attempt by another full day. Okay, there’s our answer then. We keep heading north.” Max focused on Hali. “Keep trying Juan. Call him every five minutes and let me know the instant you reach him.”
“Aye, Mr. Hanley.”
Max didn’t like that Juan wasn’t replying. Knowing how close they were to launching their attack on the Devil’s Oasis there was no way he wouldn’t be carrying his sat phone. The chairman was a stickler about communications.
There were a hundred possibilities why he couldn’t be reached and Hanley didn’t like any of them.
16
CABRILLOsquinted into the distance, not caring for how dark clouds were building to the east. When he and Sloane had motored out of Walvis in the lifeboat there hadn’t been any weather advisories, but that didn’t mean much in this part of the world. A sandstorm could whip up in a matter of minutes and blot the sky from horizon to horizon. Which was exactly what looked like was happening.
