Chapter 73

73

Aboard the Oregon

Juan Cabrillo feared no man, but he wasn’t an idiot.

The Vendor’s technological prowess was considerable, and he had nearly done the Oregon in. But the Oregon only survived his long-range missile and torpedo assaults because her systems were fully intact. Now she was nearly crippled in her defensive and offensive capabilities thanks to the Vendor’s mysterious lightning assault. Extreme caution was the order of the day if they hoped to survive long enough to thwart his Guam attack.

Cabrillo assumed the Vendor had some kind of surveillance system in operation. After consulting the sea charts, he and Max decided to anchor the Oregon on the far side of a nameless, uninhabitable rocky islet about five nautical miles south of Pau Rangi. At least that put them out of direct line of sight of any optical devices the Vendor might have stationed at his base.

They also took the extra precaution of deploying a camouflage scheme over the Oregon’s entire deck and superstructure. A small electrical charge was all it took to transform the ship’s meta-material coatings into any camouflage design stored in the Cray computer. But in this case, the Cray copied the imagery of the nearby rocky islet, its crooked, wind-swept trees, and surrounding water. If a drone scanned the Oregon from above, it would look like an extension of the island’s jagged coastline instead of a break-bulk carrier.

But hiding from the Vendor was only half his problem. Cabrillo also needed to find both him and his operation if he hoped to neutralize it and capture the elusive merchant of death.

The AW tilt-rotor was still out of commission, but Gomez Adams, the Oregon’s best drone pilot, ran a below-the-radar surveillance flight over Pau Rangi. It was as uninhabited as the nameless islet. No people, no activity—and certainly no submarine.

“Did we pick the wrong island?” Cabrillo asked, sitting in the Kirk Chair.

“Sure looks like it,” Max said. “We can keep searching. Or we can try somewhere else.”

“Like where?” Hali asked.

Max shook his head. “I wish I knew. It feels like we’re just chasing our own tail now.”

Callie stood next to Juan. “Can’t we fly another one of those EMP missiles over the island, just in case? Knock out any electronics that might be down there?”

“Irony alert,” Murph said. “The last CHAMP missile we had in the arsenal got fried in the electrical storm. Good idea, though.”

Cabrillo glanced over at Linda’s empty chair. He trusted her judgment. But she was in a clinic bed, face down, and under orders not to budge unless Huxley approved it. It was the only way her vision could be saved.

“Hey, Stoney, didn’t you say that Pau Rangi was a Japanese navy base during the war?”

“Yeah, but the Aussies didn’t find anything. Must not have been much of an operation.”

“We’re looking for a sub. If that island was actually a sub base—”

Murph palmed his forehead. “An underwater sub pen! Should’ve thought of that!”

“But with both the Nomad and Gator out of commission, how do we find it—let alone breach it?” Max asked.

“Five miles is a long swim,” Eric added, “and that’s just to get there.”

“If there is a sub pen beneath the island, that means there’s an underwater entrance, right?” Murph asked.

“Keep going,” Juan said.

“This morning I was trying to figure out how the Vendor might have caused that lightning storm. I decided to check out the weather patterns in the region. Thought maybe that had something to do with it. Around here, we’ve been in the nineties for quite a while.”

“And you think ambient air temperature caused it?”

“Possibly, but that’s not what I’m getting at.”

Callie grinned. “I know where you’re going with this. With the hot sun and air temperature, the surface sea temperature would be warmer, too. And if there is some kind of underground lagoon or cave beneath the island, the water in there would be shielded from the sun, making it cooler—”

Eric finished her sentence. “So we could check for a water temperature variation along the coast. Wherever we find a cold spot, that’s where the entrance is. Brilliant.”

“A sub pen would also be leeching chemicals and other contaminants,” Max said. “If we could check for those at the same location we’d have all the confirmation we’d need.”

“Wepps, can you and Eric assemble a sensor array and put that on one of our drones and do another flyover?” Juan asked.

“Right away.”

“Then get cracking. And have Gomez lend you a hand.”

The two techies scrambled out of the conference room.

“Assuming we find the entrance, what’s the plan?” Max asked. “The Oregon has the offensive capabilities of a declawed kitten.”

“We put a team of Gundogs in there. Tear the place up.”

“How? The AW’s shot, and the Nomad and the Gator are kaput. We’ve got no way to get near it unless we want to expose the Oregon to more of the Vendor’s missile and torpedo attacks.”

“How about the Spook Fish?” Callie asked.

“You can’t carry enough operators in it, and they have no way to egress while underwater,” Juan said.

Callie smiled. “Anybody got a towrope?”

Raven wasn’t with them. She complained bitterly she couldn’t participate, but there wasn’t anything for her to do since her gunshot confined her to a bed or a pair of crutches. She managed to finagle her way into the armory and sweet-talked Mike Lavin, the Oregon’s chief armorer, into letting her hand-load all of the ammo mags.

The team’s dry bags were loaded with FN P90 bullpup submachine guns, dozens of extra fifty-round mags Raven had topped off, and flash-bangs. A few carried C4 plastic explosive with timers. They all wore one-hundred-cubic-foot dive tanks.

With Raven out of commission, Linda’s eye injury, and the other ’dogs banged up, Murph volunteered for the mission. Juan agreed, but put him under Linc’s close supervision. Murph had trained extensively with small arms in recent years and had been on a few ground ops. But he had never scuba dived before. At the moment, Linc was showing him the finer points of breathing through his regulator and monitoring the HUD display on his mask for oxygen and nitrogen levels.

“Comms check,” Callie said from inside the Spook Fish floating in the moon pool.

“Five by five,” Juan said. The other’s confirmed as well.

“All set?” Juan asked Murph.

Murph threw two thumbs up as he treaded water, his fins pedaling beneath him. “The plan’s so crazy it just might work.”

“Sometimes crazy is the plan,” Juan said.

“Roger that,” Callie said.

“Okay, everybody, let’s saddle up.”