The Oregon’s dining room had the hushed sophistication of an English gentlemen’s club from a bygone era. It was all polished brass and dark woods. The furniture was heavy with subtly patterned fabrics, and the carpet was muted and plush. All that was missing were some stuffed animal heads on the wall and a couple old men smoking cigars and regaling each other with tales of safaris and imperial wars.
Juan caught a break from having to read Lawless’s dossier because Murph and Stony were sitting at one of the tables.
Eric Stone was a Navy vet but hadn’t been a fighting sailor. Like Mark, who’d been with a Defense contractor before joining the Corporation, Stone was a technology guy. It was only after he’d come aboard that his innate sense of ship handling came to light. After Juan himself, Eric Stone was the best helmsman on the Oregon . Stone, a shy man by nature, retained a little of the deportment he’d learned in the Navy. He still tucked in his shirts, and his hair was always in place.
Mark, on the other hand, cultivated a nerd-chic vibe, though it seemed pretty heavy on the nerd and light on the chic. His dark hair looked like he dried it in a wind tunnel. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to grow a beard and had since given up, but his shaving schedule was erratic at best. Both men were of average height, though Eric was the slenderer of the two. Because he lived mostly on junk food and energy drinks, Mark had to spend time in the gym to keep from packing on the pounds.
Tonight he wore a T-shirt with a picture of a dachshund puppy lying asleep on a dinner plate with some potatoes and a serving of traditional German spätzle. Next to the plate was a half-full beer mug and eating utensils. Under the picture were the words “Wienerdog schnitzel.”
“That’s just wrong,” Juan said as he approached the table.
“I Photoshopped it myself,” Murph said proudly. “I made another for chimi-chihuahuas.”
Cabrillo took a chair opposite. “Are you eating canned ravioli?”
“You can’t beat Chef Boyardee,” Mark replied, taking a spoonful.
“I sometimes wonder if you’re twenty-eight or just eight.” Cabrillo plucked the crisp linen napkin from the table and draped it over his lap. A moment later a wedge salad with strawberry balsamic dressing was placed in front of him.
“I was actually thinking about a Caesar,” he said to the server without looking up.
“You’ll eat the wedge,” said Maurice, the ship’s impeccably dressed but irascible steward. He added as he walked away, “You’ll have the beef bourguignon too.”
He returned a moment later with a bottle of Dom Romane Conti, a rich French burgundy that would be the perfect accompaniment to the Chairman’s meal. He poured with a flourished twist so as not to spill a drop. “I had to drink two full glasses to be sure it hadn’t turned to vinegar.”
Juan chuckled. Maurice’s little tasting stunt cost the Corporation around eight hundred dollars. Times might be a little leaner than normal, but the retired Royal Navy valet wouldn’t be denied “a touch of the grape,” as he would put it.
Cabrillo turned to his dinner companions. “You guys could save me from staring at my computer for the night by giving me the condensed version of what you’ve found out about MacD Lawless.”
“I see absolutely nothing wrong with staring at a computer all night,” Murph said, setting down a can of Red Bull.
“So, Lawless?”
“Linda used a contact left over from her days on the Joint Chiefs’ staff and was able to pull his service record.” Eric’s tone was now serious. “Marion MacDougal Lawless was an excellent soldier. He’s racked up a Good Conduct Medal, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star. These last two for the same engagement outside of Tikrit. After Iraq he qualified for the Rangers and aced the school at Fort Benning. He was then shipped to Afghanistan and saw some pretty heavy fighting up near the Pakistan border.
“He put in eight years and left the Army as an E7. He was immediately approached by Fortran Security Worldwide, offered a slot as a bodyguard back in Kabul, and, as far as we could tell from their records without triggering any computer alarms, he’s been a model employee for the past year.”
“What about his capture. Anything on that?”
“Reports are still sketchy, but it appears to be the way he told you. The Pakistani camera crew he was hired to protect had come in from Islamabad, but there’s no record of them ever working in Pakistan. The two Afghan security guys with him were legit. They were former Northern Alliance fighters who’d gotten additional training by our Army and then went freelance. The truck was never found, but an Army patrol reported seeing several large holes dug next to the road where Lawless says he was nabbed.”
“Big enough to hide a bunch of ambushers?” Juan asked, and Stone nodded.
Murph added, “The whole thing sounds like an al-Qaeda setup to get an American on tape being hacked to pieces. They haven’t produced one in a while.”
“The Tikrit incident,” Eric said, “where he was wounded.”
“Yes?”
“I read parts of the after-action report that weren’t redacted. Lawless went alone into a building and took out eleven insurgents who’d pinned his team and were turning them into mincemeat. He had a bullet in his thigh when he killed the last three. You want my opinion, he’s the real deal.”
“Thanks, guys. Good job as usual. How are you coming along with getting maps of the Burmese jungle?”
“Hah,” Murph barked. “There are none. Where that girl got herself lost is one of the remotest places on the planet. Other than the major rivers, no one knows what the hell’s in there. For all the good they’ve done, the maps we’ve found should all be labeled ‘Beyond this point, there be dragons.’”
Those turned out to be prophetic words.
8
SORRY ABOUT THE ACCOMMODATIONS,” CABRILLO SAID, swinging open the door to one of the cabins in the Oregon’s superstructure. “But with Smith aboard we have to keep up the appearance that this is all the old girl has to offer.”
MacD Lawless sniffed, made a face, then shrugged. “Y’all said my bein’ here was probational. I guess this is the price I pay.”
“When things quiet down, I’ll personally give you a tour of the parts of the ship we can’t let Smith know about. Oh, and he has the cabin next to yours. Keep your ears open. I’m sure he’ll be in touch with Croissard, and these walls are paper-thin.” There were microphones in every room and cabin in this part of the ship, but Juan wanted MacD to feel like he was already doing something to earn his pay.
Lawless threw his duffel bag onto the cabin’s single cot, where it sagged a good six inches into the near-springless mattress. The porthole was grimy, so the room was cast in shades of shadow and murk. The deck was covered in a mouse-brown carpet with such a thin nap that it could be mopped, and the walls were bare metal painted battleship gray. There was an adjoined private head with stainless steel fixtures like those seen in prisons and a medicine cabinet without a door.
“This place has the charm of an old Route 66 trailer court a decade after they closed the road,” Lawless said, “but I’ve slept in worse.”
He and John Smith had just been heloed to the ship from Chittagong Airport, and the Oregon was already steaming east at sixteen knots, heading for the northern coastline of Myanmar.