Shadow Tyrants

FIFTY-FOUR

Predating the Panama Canal by forty-five years, the Suez Canal differed from its Central American cousin in one fundamental way. While the link between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans required a series of locks to carry ships up and over the mountainous terrain of the Panamanian jungle, the isthmus between the main body of Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula barely rose above sea level. No locks were required for the vessels that passed between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

From its completion in 1869 until 2015, most of the canal was too narrow for two-way traffic and was strictly one-way only. Ships in flotillas of a dozen at a time proceeded single file from the Mediterranean to Great Bitter Lake seventy miles to the south. There, they would wait in the fifteen-mile-long lake for the ships traveling in the opposite direction from the Red Sea to complete their traverse of the southern part of the canal before continuing on.

Then in 2015, Egypt added a second waterway parallel to the first for forty-five miles of the northern segment. Each side was linked at regular intervals by connector canals to allow for small maintenance vessels to cross from the northerly canal to the southerly half.

A satellite image of that segment of the canal was now laid out on one half of the big screen of the Oregon’s op center. Juan was back in his command chair, a cup of coffee in his hand to keep him awake after the long night and day. He was still sorry he had had to abandon Carlton’s Cadillac in the city of Suez, where they boarded the Oregon.

It was now six in the evening, and they were heading north in the canal approaching Great Bitter Lake. The view from the bow of the ship covered the rest of the screen. The berms on either side marking the walls of the canal were drawing away to reveal the expansive body of water in the middle of the desert.

“We’re entering the lake,” Eric said.

“Steady as she goes, Stoney,” Juan said. “Can we see the Colossus ships?”

Murph panned the camera to starboard past the mass of cargo ships gathered in the lake and zoomed in on three identical ships anchored a hundred yards from one another at the east side of the lake. Juan recognized the helical masts and large satellite dishes from his dive on the Colossus 3.

“Which ship is Colossus 1?”

Murph zoomed in even more until they could read Colossus 1 on the stern of the closest ship.

“That’s our target,” Max said.

“That’s your target,” Juan corrected. “How many prisoners do we think are aboard her?”

“Lyla Dhawan said that more than twenty passengers from the jet were taken,” Eric said.

“Sorry to be the Gloomy Gus here,” Murph said, “but, for all we know, they could have been killed by now.”

“Lionel Gupta’s information said that they were still alive two weeks ago,” Juan said. The series of characters Gupta had written down before he was killed turned out to be a link to a cache of files about the Colossus Project that he’d kept secret from the other Nine Unknown Men, confirming that the cabal still existed and had planned this artificial intelligence initiative. Gupta’s engineering firm, OreDyne, had been the lead developer of the computer systems. “Unless Carlton has had them killed since then,” Juan went on, “they’re still alive on that ship. We have to proceed on the assumption that they are and rescue them.”

“Once we get them off the Colossus 1, what options do we have for disabling Colossus?” Max asked.

Juan shook his head. “I already spoke to Langston Overholt about the choices. It’s too late to use Julia’s cyanobacteria. The Colossus ships will be able to link up long before the infection can take effect. Who knows the havoc the fully operational AI could cause by then? And sinking the ships by gun or torpedo is out of the question. He thinks attacking unarmed vessels in the middle of a vital international waterway wouldn’t be such a good idea for some reason.”

“But if they happened to sink because of a design flaw on their own ships?”

“Like a faulty self-destruct mechanism?” Juan said with a smile. “Perfect.”

“Then it’s all on you.”

Gupta’s files also provided details about how the self-destruct system on the Colossus ships worked. Because of the shocking sabotage of the Colossus 3, the mechanism had been altered to be initiated only by Carlton and the chief scientist, Chen Min, on the Colossus 5. It would also set the timer on all the other Colossus ships in range of its radio beacon.

However, unbeknownst to the other Nine, Gupta had installed a back door into the self-destruct system accessible from any of the luxurious cabins set aside for the Nine. He didn’t trust the others to do the right thing if the AI went haywire, so he put it in so that he could activate it if he saw the need to.

Once it was activated from this secondary location, it would lock out the abort command from any other location. All Juan and his team had to do was get on the ship and activate the self-destruct once the ships were in range of one another.

“When do we expect the Colossus 5 to enter the two-way section of the canal?” he asked Murph.

“We got word that their flotilla set sail at five-thirty this evening. It’s number two in line.”

“Which puts them entering the two-way section of the canal a half hour before dusk.”

“That’s cutting it close,” Max said.

The plan was to launch the Gator from the moon pool and follow one of the commercial cargo ships heading north, staying in the churning white water of its wake to avoid being visible from the ship behind it. Then when they reached the cross-connector channel at the point where the Colossus 5 was going south, they’d peel away and cut across, coming up on their target’s stern just after sunset. After that it was a simple matter of boarding a moving ship in the narrow channel undetected, without getting the Gator crushed against the earthen berms by the Colossus 5’s hull.

Linda would be piloting the Gator while Juan took Linc and Murph with him to activate the self-destruct system. They were keeping the team to a minimum for stealth.

While they were on the Colossus 5, Max would command the Oregon with Eric driving while Eddie led Raven, MacD, and Hali onto the Colossus 1 to rescue the prisoners.

The success of Max’s part of the plan was contingent on the weather, but Juan was sure that wasn’t going to be a problem.

He could see orange in the sky on the left side of the screen.

“Pan to the west, Murph.”

The camera slewed around until the entire screen was filled with an awesome sight.

An avalanche of dust was rolling across the desert toward them like a towering tsunami in the sky, blotting out the sun behind it.

When it reached them in an hour, the visibility at Great Bitter Lake would be reduced to near zero. It was exactly what they needed.