The rust streaks were painted on, the debris cluttering her deck was placed there intentionally. The wheelhouse and cabins in the superstructure were nothing more than stage sets. The pirate currently manning the helm had zero control over the ship. The helmsman in the Operations Center was fed data from the wheel through the computer system, and he made the appropriate course corrections.
All this was a shell over perhaps the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering ship in the world. She bristled with hidden weapons, and had an electronics suite to rival any Aegis-class destroyer. Her hull was armored enough to repel most low-tech weapons used by terrorists, such as rocket-propelled grenades. She carried two minisubs that could be deployed through special doors along her keel, and a McDonnell Douglas MD-520N helicopter in her rear hold, hidden by a wall made to look like stacked containers.
As for the crew’s accommodations, they rivaled the grandest rooms on a luxury cruise ship. The men and women of the Corporation risked their lives every day, so Juan wanted to ensure they were as comfortable as possible.
“Where’s our guest?” Max asked.
“Chatting up Julia again.”
“Think it’s the fact she’s a doctor or a looker?”
“Colonel Giuseppe Farina, as his name implies, is Italian. And I happen to know he considers himself the best, so he is after her because she is female. Linda Ross and all the other women have blown him off enough since he first came aboard. Our good Dr. Huxley is the last one left, and since she can’t leave medical in case there’s an emergency Colonel Farina has a captive audience.”
“Damned waste to have an observer with us in the first place,” Max said.
“You go with the deal you’ve got, not the one you want,” Juan pontificated. “The powers that be don’t want anything to go wrong during the trial once they get their hands on Didi. Farina’s here to make sure we follow by the engagement parameters they set out for us.”
A sour look crossed Max’s pug face. “Fighting terrorists using the Marquis of Queensbury rules? Ridiculous.”
“It isn’t so bad. I’ve known ’Seppe for fifteen years. He’s all right. With no way to extradite Didi through legal channels, because Somalia doesn’t have a functioning court system—”
“Or anything else.”
Juan ignored the interruption. “We offered an alternative. The price we pay is ’Seppe’s presence until we get Didi into international waters and the U.S. Navy takes him off our hands. All Didi has to do is set foot on this ship and we’ve got this in the bag.”
Max nodded reluctantly. “And we’ve loaded what looks like enough explosives aboard so he’ll want to see it for himself.”
“Exactly. The right bait for the right vermin.”
The Corporation had taken on what was an unusual job for them. They typically worked for the government, tackling operations deemed too risky for American soldiers or members of the intelligence community, on a strictly cash-only basis. This time they were working through the CIA to help the World Court bring Mohammad Didi to justice. U.S. authorities wanted Didi sent straight to Guantánamo, but a deal was hashed out with America’s allies that he be tried in Europe, provided he could be captured in a manner that didn’t include rendition.
Langston Overholt, the Corporation’s primary contact in the CIA, had approached his protégé, Juan Cabrillo, with the difficult task of grabbing Didi in such a way that it couldn’t be construed as kidnapping. True to form, Cabrillo and his people had come up with their plan within twenty-four hours while everyone else involved had been scratching their heads for months.
Juan glanced at the chronometer set in one corner of the main view screen. He checked the ship’s speed and heading and calculated they wouldn’t reach the coast until dawn. “Care to join me for dinner? Lobster Thermidor, I think.”
Max patted his belly. “Hux has me scheduled on the StairMaster for thirty minutes.”
“Battle of the Bulge redux,” Juan quipped.
“I want to see yourwaistline in twenty years, my friend.”
THE SHIP REACHED the coastline a little after dawn. Here, mangrove swamps stretched the entire width of the horizon. Hakeem took the wheel himself because he was most familiar with the secret deepwater channels that would allow them access to their hidden base. While this was the largest vessel they had ever taken, he was confident he could reach their encampment without grounding, or at least get close enough so they wouldn’t have much trouble unloading their cargo.
The air was hazy and heavy with humidity, and the moment the sun peeked over the horizon the temperature seemed to spike.
As the big freighter eased deeper into the swamp, her wake turned muddy brown from the silt her engines churned up. Hakeem had no idea how to read the fathometer mounted on a bulkhead at the helm, but only eight feet of water separated the ship’s bottom from the muck. The trees grew denser still, hemming in the ship, until their branches almost met overhead.
The channel was barely wide enough for him to maneuver. He didn’t remember it being so small, but then again he had never seen it from the wheelhouse of such a large vessel. The bow plowed into a submerged log that would have holed his fishing boat, but to the freighter it was a mere annoyance scraping along the hull. There was one more turn before they reached their base, but it was the tightest one yet. The opposite bank looked closer than the length of the ship.
“Do you think you can do it?” Aziz asked.
Hakeem didn’t look at him. He was still angry about the incident the night before. “We’re less than a kilometer from camp. Even if I don’t, we can unload the ship and ferry everything back.”
He tightened his grip on the wheel, bracing his feet a little farther apart. The prow eased into the corner, and he waited until the last second to start cranking the wheel. The ship didn’t respond as quickly as he had hoped and continued to drive toward the far bank.
Then, ever so slowly, the bows started to come about, but it was a little too late. They were going to hit. Hakeem slammed the engine telegraph to full reverse in hopes of lessening the impact.
Several decks below, Cabrillo sat in his customary seat in the op center. Eric Stone was by far the Oregon’s best ship handler; however, he was currently locked in the mess hall pretending to be Duane Maryweather. In this instance, Cabrillo wouldn’t have had him at the conn anyway. For waters this tight, Juan trusted no one but himself in control of his ship.
Though Hakeem had called for full reverse, Cabrillo ignored his command and hit the bow thruster instead. He also turned the nozzles of the directional pump jets that powered the ship as far as they would go.
Back on the bridge, it had to have seemed that a miracle wind had come up suddenly, although none of the trees moved. The bow swung sharply around as if pushed by an invisible hand. Hakeem and Aziz exchanged a startled look. They couldn’t believe the freighter could turn so quickly, and neither realized the vessel had also righted itself in the channel after coming out of the turn. Hakeem uselessly turned the wheel anyway, still believing he had control.
“Allah has surely blessed this mission from the start,” Aziz said, although neither man was particularly religious.
“Or maybe I know what I am doing,” Hakeem said sharply.
The pirate camp lay on the right-hand bank, where it rose until it was almost level with the freighter’s deck. The high ground protected the area from tides and spring flooding. There was a hundred-foot-long wooden dock built along the shore, accessible from the bank by several flights of steel stairs dug into the hard soil. The stairs had been taken from one of the first ships they had hijacked. Hakeem’s boat was tied to the jetty along with two other small fishing vessels.
Beyond the bank lay the camp, a sprawl of haphazardly placed buildings made of whatever could be salvaged. There were tents once meant for refugees and traditional mud huts, plus structures built of native timber and sheathed in corrugated metal. It was home to more than eight hundred people, three hundred of them children. The perimeter was defined by four watchtowers made of lengths of pipe and weatherworn planks. The grounds were littered with trash and human waste. Half-feral dogs roamed in lean, mangy packs.