Dark Watch

4

“COME,” Cabrillo called at the sharp knock on his cabin’s door.

The Oregon was safely beyond the range of all but North Korea’s best fighter jets and, according to intercepted communications, it seemed unlikely any would be scrambled before the vessel was outside their range, too. He had allowed himself an hour-long soak in the copper Jacuzzi tub in the adjoining bathroom and was just finishing getting dressed. Not one to stand on formalities aboard ship, he wore cotton trousers and an open-neck shirt.

Unlike his Colonel Hourani disguise, and despite his Hispanic name and background, Juan Cabrillo’s eyes were blue, and his spiky hair was white-blond from a youth spent in the sun and surf. His features, too, looked more Anglo than Latin, with an aristocratic nose and a mouth forever poised at a smile from some joke only he knew. But there was a hard edge to Cabrillo, one formed over years of facing danger. While he masked it well, people meeting him for the first time could still detect an intangible quality that commanded immediate respect.

Linda Ross, the Corporation’s newly promoted vice president of Operations, stepped through the door, a clipboard held against her chest. Linda was another navy veteran, having spent time as an intelligence officer aboard an Aegis cruiser followed by a stint at the Pentagon. Trim and athletic, Linda possessed a soft-spoken demeanor and a razor-sharp mind. When Richard Truitt, the Corporation’s former VP, unexpectedly resigned after the Sacred Stone affair, Cabrillo and Hanley knew that Linda was the only one who could fill Dick’s shoes.

She paused at the door, mesmerized by the sight of Juan adjusting his prosthetic right leg and rolling down his pants cuff. He slid into a pair of Italian moccasin-style boat shoes. It wasn’t that she wasn’t aware of the fake limb, but it was always a shock to see it, since Cabrillo never seemed bothered that he was missing a leg below the knee.

Cabrillo spoke without looking up. “On the Asia Star, a North Korean guard smashed the leg against a railing and cracked the plastic. He was sure surprised when I kept fighting with what he assumed was a broken shin.”

“You just proved North Korean propaganda,” Linda said with a low chuckle.

“How’s that?”

“That we Americans are just robots of our imperialist government.”

They shared a laugh. “So what’s been happening since we left for Afghanistan?” he asked.

“Do you recall Hiroshi Katsui?”

It took Cabrillo a moment to place the name. “Hiro? God, I haven’t thought about him since UCLA. His father was the first billionaire I ever met. Big shipping family. Hiro was the only guy on campus with a Lamborghini. I will give him this, though; the wealth never went to his head. He was real down to earth and generous to a fault.”

“Through some cutouts he approached us representing a consortium of shipping owners in these waters. In the past ten months or so, piracy has been on the rise from the Sea of Japan all the way down to the South China Sea.”

“That’s a problem usually confined to coastal waters and the Strait of Malacca,” Cabrillo interrupted.

“Where natives in small boats attack yachts or board freighters to make off with whatever they can handle,” Linda agreed. “It’s a billion dollar a year enterprise and growing every year. But what’s happening around Malaysia and Indonesia is nothing more than thugs mugging old ladies on darkened streets compared to what’s been happening farther to the north.”

Cabrillo crossed to his desk and removed a cheroot from an inlaid box. He listened to Ross as he prepared the fine-leafed Cuban cigar and lit it with a gold and onyx Dunhill.

“What your friend Hiro is reporting sounds more like the bad old days of the mob hijacking trucks at Kennedy Airport. The pirates are well-armed, well-trained, and highly motivated. They are also as brutal as hell. Four ships have vanished completely. No sign of the crew at all. The most recent was a tanker owned by your friend’s company, the Toya Maru. Several others have been hit with significant, and I might add unnecessary, loss of life since none of the crew reported putting up any resistance.”

“What are the pirates taking?”

“Sometimes the ship’s payroll.” It was customary for cargo ships to carry enough cash to pay their crews at the end of a voyage in case some men didn’t wish to continue on. To Cabrillo this sounded like overkill for fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. “Other times they take shipping containers, transferring them to their own vessels, which, from the sketchy descriptions, sound like converted fishing trawlers mounted with cranes. And like I said, sometimes entire ships just disappear.”

Juan let that sink in, watching jets of smoke bloom against the teak coffered ceiling where he blew them. “And Hiro and his consortium want us to put a stop to it?”

Linda glanced at her clipboard. “His words are, ‘Make them pay like a quarterback facing the Raiders defense.’ ”

Cabrillo smiled, recalling Hiro’s fondness for American football and especially for the Raiders when they played in L.A. Then his smile faded. Because of the Corporation’s structure, each crew member was an owner, their percentages determined by their rank and years of service. Dick Truitt’s unexpected retirement had put a dent in the Corporation’s cash reserves. The timing couldn’t have been worse, because the Corporation was heavily invested in a real estate deal in Rio de Janeiro that wouldn’t show a return for another two months. He could bail out of the deal now, but the expected profits were too great to ignore. The just-finished job for Langston Overholt would cover what Dick was entitled to, but that left Cabrillo in a bit of a cash crunch to keep up with payments on the Oregon, insurance for his people, and all the other myriad expenses that any company must meet month to month. Just because they operated outside the law didn’t mean he could avoid the financial realities of a capitalistic world.

“What are they offering?”

Linda consulted her clipboard once again. “One hundred thousand a week for a minimum of eight weeks and a maximum of sixteen, plus a million dollars for each pirate ship we destroy.”