“Sounds like a pretty good crew,” Lawless said neutrally.
“It’s the best at what it does. Each member has been handpicked, and when someone new comes aboard everyone gets a vote.”
“Are you offering me a job?”
“Provisionally. A couple months ago we lost a man. Jerry Pulaski was his name. He was what we called a gundog, a hardened combat veteran used mostly for when the fur starts flying. You’d fill his position.”
“Do you guys mostly operate in this area?”
“No. Actually, this is our first time here. This whole region’s lousy with outfits like yours and Blackwater, or whatever they call themselves these days. We’d just as soon leave it to them. This rescue was a one-time type of deal.”
“My contract with Fortran runs for another few months,” Lawless told him.
“Don’t you think after what happened to you that they would let you out of it?”
“Yeah, probably,” he drawled. “Um, listen, though, Ah’ve got a little girl to support.” He paused, swallowed, and went on. “My folks are raisin’ her, and they need the extra money Ah make.”
“What were you being paid?” Juan asked bluntly. MacD gave him the number, which sounded reasonable.
“Okay, you’ll keep making that during your probationary period. After that, if things work out, you’ll become a full member of the Corporation and share in the profits.”
“Um, are y’all profitable?”
Cabrillo responded by asking, “What do you think this plane’s worth?”
Lawless looked around for just a second. “G-Five like this? About fifty million bucks.”
“Fifty-four, to be exact,” Juan told him. “We paid cash.”
THEY HANDED OVER a still-sleeping Setiawan to his tearful mother on the tarmac between the Corporation’s aircraft and a chartered Citation fitted out as a flying hospital. The grandmother too was weeping, while the grandfather watched the exchange stoically. Arrangements had already been made to have Customs and Immigration look the other way. They whisked the boy onto the idling jet, and as soon as the door was closed and sealed it began to roll.
Juan had planned to send their plane out of the country, but with the possibility of a new job soon he told the pilot to park it and find himself a hotel room in the city. They hefted their guns and equipment in nondescript nylon bags and made their way to where a row of helicopters was backed up to a Cyclone fence about fifty yards from the General Aviation terminal building. These were all civilian choppers. For the most part they were painted white with a stripe of color across their noses and along their flanks.
One, however, was a glossy black and looked as menacing as a gunship, though she carried no visible weapons. This was the Corporation’s MD 520N, a state-of-the-art helo that vented exhaust through its tail rather than relying on a secondary rotor. This NOTAR system made it the quietest jet-powered helicopter in the world.
The pilot saw the four men and one woman approaching and began hitting switches in the cockpit to fire the turbine.
It would be a tight squeeze, but the 520 had more than enough power to take them all out to the Oregon.
“Looks like it went well,” the pilot remarked when Juan opened the passenger door and shoved his equipment bag under his seat.
“Nothing to it,” Cabrillo said in typical fashion.
George “Gomez” Adams knew better. The veteran pilot could tell by their swagger when they were approaching that things had gotten dicey and that they’d handled it well. “Who’s the new guy?”
“MacD Lawless. He’s a Fortran operative who got nabbed outside of Kabul. Seemed a waste to let them behead him.”
“We keeping him?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t like guys who are better-looking than me,” Gomez said. With his gunslinger mustache and matinee idol looks, there weren’t many men in the world who qualified.
“Can’t handle a little competition,” Juan grinned.
“Exactly.” Adams looked over his shoulder and thrust out his hand to MacD. “So long as you never beat me out with the ladies, we’ll be fine.”
It was clear Lawless had no idea what to make of that statement, but he shook Adams’s hand anyway. “No problem. So long as you never crash with me aboard, we’ll be better than fine.”
“Deal.” Gomez turned his attention back to the chopper, radioing the control tower to get flight authorization.
Juan said to Lawless, “When we get to the ship, the first thing we’ll do is get you a secure link to your people. They must be going nuts, about now. Same thing with your folks, if they’ve been told.”
“I doubt Fortran would have contacted them yet. I was grabbed less than forty-eight hours ago.”
“Okay. One less thing to worry about.”
A minute later, the turbine shrieked as Adams fed in more power. The airframe shuddered, and then everything became smooth when the skids lifted from the concrete pad.
Gomez fought his instincts to hotdog it, so they rose at a sedate pace and started flying out over the mangroves and mudflats to the north of the sprawling city of fifteen million. A dense pall of smog cut visibility dramatically so that Karachi’s office towers and high-rise apartment buildings appeared indistinct in the distance. Everything looked like the color of rust, the buildings, the air, even the water in the enclosed inner harbor. It was only when one looked west, out toward the ocean, that there was any true color. The water was a deep sapphire blue. They flashed over the China Creek, where the main port was located, and Baba Channel, which led to the open sea. It was crowded with all manner of shipping awaiting its turn at the docks.
They flew beyond the barrier islands, and soon the smog gave way to clear air. The sun cast a dazzling silver strip across the waves as it rose higher into the sky behind them.
More ships were streaming toward the port or were outbound laden with goods. Their wakes were like white scars. One ship directly ahead of them showed no wake.
By modern standards, she was just midsized at over five hundred and sixty feet. The containership passing off her port side was over twice as long. Their target was also of an outdated design. Built prior to the industry switchover to standardized containers, she was designed to carry her cargo in five deep holds, each secured with a hatch and serviced by a quintet of spindly derricks. Her superstructure was placed just aft of amidships and was topped by a single funnel. Bridge wings and catwalks hung off it like wrought-iron fire escapes. She carried two lifeboats in davits above the main deck. Her bow was like an axhead while her fantail had a little of that champagne-glass elegance.
All this could be seen from a distance. It wasn’t until the chopper was much closer that details emerged. The ship was a rust bucket, a scow that should have been chopped into scrap years ago. Paint peeled in patches all over her hull and decking as if she were infected with some sort of maritime eczema. The paint scheme itself was a patchwork of mismatched colors daubed over one another with no eye at all for aesthetics. Rust formed in pools on the deck, oozed from scuppers and the hawsehole, and streaked the sides of the superstructure like reddish brown guano.
The deck was a tangled jumble of broken machinery, oil drums, and various other junk, including, inexplicably, a washing machine and a massive tire from a tractor.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” MacD muttered when the true nature of the ship was revealed. “Is this some sort of con?”
“She may not be pretty,” Gomez Adams said, “but she sure is ugly.”
“Trust me when I tell you that it’s not what it seems,” Juan assured him. “For the time being we’re not going to let you in on any of her secrets, but secrets she has.”