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“Still, they must be anxious to locate the wreckage.”

“I’m sure they are.” Cabrillo was as stone-faced as a professional poker player.

“Where exactly are you from?” Assad asked suddenly.

“Saint John’s.”

“That is in Nova Scotia.”

“Newfoundland.”

“Ah, part of the Gaspe.”

“It’s an island.”

Assad nodded. Test administered and passed. Perhaps the captain really was Canadian.

“Maybe your government is willing to help their southern friends in this matter,” he probed.

Juan understood that Assad needed reassuring they were here about the plane crash and not something else. It was the only logical assumption Assad could make, given the timing of their arrival, and the Chairman saw no reason not to give the Libyan some peace of mind. “I am sure they would be more than willing to lend any assistance they could.”

Assad’s smile returned. “Foreign Minister Ghami was on television last night, calling for people with information about the crash to come forward immediately. It is in everyone’s best interest the plane be found, yes?”

“I guess so,” Juan replied. He was growing tired of Assad’s questions. He opened a desk drawer. Assad leaned forward as Cabrillo pulled out a bulging envelope. “I think this takes care of our transaction.”

He handed it across. Assad stuffed it into his briefcase without opening it. “Our mutual friend in Cyprus told me that you are an honorable man. I will take his word and not count the money.”

It took all of Juan’s self-control not to smirk. He knew full well that before Assad brought the Oregon into its berth, he would have counted the cash at least twice. “You said earlier that business is all about customer service. I will add, it’s also about reputation.”

“Too true.” Both men got to their feet and shook hands. “Now, Captain, if you will kindly lead me to your bridge I will not delay you further.”

“My pleasure.”

CABRILLO HAD ALWAYS HELD the belief that organized crime had begun on the docks and quaysides of the ancient Phoenician seafarers when a couple of stevedores pilfered an amphora of wine. He imagined they had given a cup or two to the guards for looking the other way, and he also thought that someone saw them and extorted them to steal more. In that one simple act were the three things necessary for a crime racket—thieves, corrupt guards, and a boss demanding tribute. And the only thing that had changed in the thousands of years since was the scale of the theft. Ports were worlds unto themselves, and no matter how authoritarian the local rule they maintained levels of autonomy that only the corrupt could fully exploit.

He had seen it over and over in his years at sea, and had used the ingrained corruption of harbors as an entrée into the criminal underground in several cities during his tenure with the CIA. With so many goods entering and leaving, harbors were ripe for the picking. It was little wonder the Mafia was so heavily invested with the Teamsters Union back in its heyday.

Containerization of general cargo had temporarily quelled petty thievery because the goods were locked up in bonded boxes. But soon the bosses figured they might as well just steal entire containers.

Juan was standing on the wing bridge, overlooking the dock, with Max Hanley at his side. Fragrant smoke curled from Max’s pipe and helped mask the smell of bunker fuel and rotting fish that permeated the port. Across from their berth, a mobile crane on crawler treads was swinging a container from a coastal freighter. There were no lights on the crane, and the overhead gantry lamps were shut off. The tractor trailer waiting to take the load didn’t even have its headlights on. Only a single flashlight carried by a crewman standing near the container gave the scene any illumination. Mr. Assad had gone straight from the Oregon to oversee the unloading. Cabrillo could just make out his silhouette, standing with the ship’s captain, on the dock. It was too dark to see the envelope exchange, but Eric had reported the act after watching with the Oregon’s low-light camera.

“Looks like L’Enfant knows his men,” Max said. “Our Mr. Asssad is a busy boy.”

“What was it Claude Rains said in Casablanca, ‘I am only a poor corrupt official’?”

Cabrillo’s walkie-talkie squawked. “Chairman, we have the hatch cover off. We’re ready.”

“Roger that, Eddie. Assad said we can use our own crane to unload the Pig, so get it fired up and ready.”

“You got it.”

Like the mysterious ship tied to the opposite dock, the Oregon was completely dark. On the other side of the harbor, tall cranes mounted on rails were off-loading a massive containership under the brutal glare of sodium-vapor lights. Beyond it stretched a field of stacked containers, and past that was a security fence and a series of warehouses and towering oil-storage tanks.

One of the Oregon’s only working deck cranes started swinging across the horizon, cable paying off the crane’s drum as the crane’s arm was positioned over the open hatch. The braided-steel cable vanished into the hold for five minutes before being drawn back up through the tackle. The boom took the weight easily.

Although he couldn’t see details in the darkness, Juan recognized the shape of the Pig. The Powered Investigator Ground was Max’s brainchild. From the outside, the Pig looked like a nondescript cargo truck emblazoned with the logo of a fictitious oil-exploration company, but under its rough exterior was a Mercedes Unimog chassis, the only unmodified part on the vehicle. Its turbodiesel engine had been bored, stroked, and tuned to produce nearly eight hundred horsepower, and, with a nitrous oxide boost, could push past a thousand. The heavily lugged, self-sealing tires were on an articulating suspension that could raise the vehicle up and give it almost two feet of ground clearance, six inches more than the Army’s storied Humvee. The four-person cab squatting over the front tires was armored enough to take rifle fire at point-blank range. The boxy body was similarly protected.

When Eric and Mark first heard Max’s plans for the Pig, they had called him Q, in honor of the armorer from the James Bond franchise. A .30 caliber machine gun was hidden beneath the front bumper. It was also fitted with guided rockets that launched from hidden racks that swung down from the truck’s side, and a smoke generator could lay down a dense screen in its wake. From a seamless hatch on the roof, the Pig could fire mortar barrages, and could be mounted with another .30 cal or an automatic grenade launcher as well. The cargo area could be reconfigured to meet mission parameters—anything from a mobile surgical suite to a covert radar station to a troop carrier for ten fully kitted soldiers.

And yet, other than the larger than normal tires, not one aspect of the Pig gave away her true nature. She was the land-based version of the Oregon herself. If an inspector opened the rear doors, he would be confronted with the curved sides of six fifty-five-gallon drums stacked floor to ceiling. And if the inspector were really curious, the first row could be removed to reveal a second. The first ones were actually spare fuel tanks that gave the Pig an eight-hundred-mile range. The second row was a façade to shield the interior of the truck, so they played the odds that no one would ever ask to remove it.

“Well, Max old boy, I guess we get to see if this contraption of yours was worth the effort.”

“Ye of little faith,” Max replied dourly.

Cabrillo turned serious. “You’re set on what to do?”

“As soon as you get clear of Tripoli, I’m leaving the harbor and steaming west. We’ll take up a position in international waters due north of the crash site, with the chopper on ten-minute alert.”