Shadow Tyrants

SIX

Max Hanley took advantage of the high vantage point on the Oregon’s bridge wing to watch as she edged close to the stationary Triton Star. The captured crew members and their guards observed the operation from the Oregon’s deck below him. There was no breeze, and the sun’s rays were merciless. The filthy bridge, littered with used coffee cups and cigarette butts, was empty as usual. Max was alone, and all his attention was focused on the cargo ship nearing their port side. Normally, attempting to dock two cargo vessels together at sea was extremely hazardous, even on a calm day, but the Oregon wasn’t like most ships. In fact, she wasn’t like any other ship.

Max should know since he was her chief engineer and president of the Corporation, as well as Juan Cabrillo’s best friend and right-hand man. A Vietnam Swift Boat veteran, he was the oldest crew member, with reddish gray hair circling his bald head, deep smile wrinkles around his eyes, and a rotund gut that Jolly Saint Nick would envy. He’d been the first person Juan had recruited when he created the Corporation because Max had the engineering expertise to draft the plans for a ship as unusual as the Oregon.

When the two ships were thirty feet apart, Max spoke into his radio.

“Hold it there, Linda.”

“Holding,” came the reply. The Oregon stopped moving.

“Lock in that distance.”

“Locked in.”

Now the Oregon and the Triton Star would maintain that precise separation indefinitely. Multiple lidar sensors emitted laser pulses to gauge the exact distance between the ships and automatically made tiny adjustments to the Oregon’s thrusters to keep her steady.

“We’re ready to lower the gangway,” Max said.

“Murph was on his way up to you to do that. Isn’t he there yet?”

Max heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Mark Murphy climbing the exterior stairs.

“Here he comes now,” Max said into the radio.

“He must have taken a detour.”

“I did,” Murph replied as he reached the top of the stairs with a can of Red Bull in one hand and a tablet computer in the other. “Needed some sustenance.” He downed the drink and threw the empty can into the bridge, where it joined the rest of the trash on the floor.

Murph’s shaggy dark hair, skateboarder’s scruffy goatee, and fondness for wearing all black belied his razor-sharp intellect, having received his first Ph.D. by the time he was twenty. A former civilian weapons designer for the military and now serving as the ship’s weapons officer, he was one of the few members of the crew who wasn’t a veteran or former CIA agent. He enjoyed bucking convention, most obviously with the T-shirts he wore, which either bore the name of a heavy metal band no one else had ever heard of or were plastered with some irreverent phrase. Today’s version read Me? Sarcastic? Never.

“There are other food groups besides caffeine, you know,” Max pointed out to his gangly crewmate, who had to weigh half what he did.

“Duh! Nachos, pizza, and cheeseburgers are the other three, right?” Then Murph’s lip curled in a grin. “Wait, you probably don’t remember those because Doc Huxley doesn’t let you eat them, does she?”

Julia Huxley was the Oregon’s chief medical officer and was known for hounding Max about his diet. She’d even gotten Chef to report back to her if Max tried to cheat, much to his chagrin.

“Doc doesn’t believe me when I point out my good genes,” he said. “The Hanleys have never needed to work out to stay healthy. My grandfather lived to ninety-eight on a diet of burritos and tacos.”

Murph laughed. “He gets older every time you whip out that story. Soon it’ll be that he reached a hundred and forty by scarfing down sticks of butter and drinking tequila.”

Max waved off Murph’s good-natured ribbing. “Are you ready to get to work or should I have a large pepperoni brought up to you?”

“Fueled up like a rocket. Let’s do this.”

Murph tapped on the tablet while his eyes flicked between the handheld computer and the deck below to make sure it was clear.

A panel in the decking slid aside and an aluminum gangway rose vertically from the opening. When it was completely out of its recess, it bent ninety degrees toward the Triton Star. Then it telescoped across the span between the ships and came to rest on the other ship’s railing, followed by a set of stairs lowering to the deck on each ship.

“Gangway secure,” Murph said.

“Okay, you can take the Triton Star crew back over,” Max said into the radio to the guards.

“Roger that,” came the reply, and the captives were prodded onto the gangway.

Linda called over the radio. “Max, now that you’re done, we’ve got something you and Murph should look at down here.”

“Happy to,” he answered. “Be there in a minute.” To Murph he said, “Let’s get inside.”

They went down a few flights and entered a corridor, with chipped linoleum, grimy walls, and flickering fluorescent lighting. They passed the captain’s office and personal head, which were so disgusting and smelled so vile that they could cause even the most hardened Third World harbormaster to waive inspection and hightail it out after just a few minutes.

Max opened the door to the janitor’s closet, full of unused cleaning supplies and a sink coated with unidentifiable gunk. He twisted the handles as if he were spinning the dials on a combination lock, and, with a soft click, the panel at the back of the closet slid open, revealing a well-appointed hallway that wouldn’t have been out of place in a five-star hotel.

Thick carpeting muffled their steps as Max closed the panel behind them. Soft lighting from recessed ceiling lights softly lit artwork lining the walls, and the air no longer reeked.

A descendant of World War II Q-ships — ocean raiders disguised as harmless cargo vessels — the 560-foot-long Oregon was specially constructed to be invisible, often flying the flag of a rogue nation on her jackstaff. From the outside, she seemed to be a decrepit tramp steamer destined for the scrapyard. But on the inside, she was the most advanced spy ship ever built, with features, armaments, and capabilities that even careful external observers couldn’t possibly imagine.

Since the Oregon was home to her crew for most of the year, the luxurious surroundings were designed to make the ship as comfortable as possible. Crew members received generous allowances to outfit their personal quarters however they wanted, and they had access to extensive entertainment and fitness facilities, as well as gourmet food prepared by an award-winning chef and culinary team.

The Oregon’s operational functionality was even more impressive. She boasted enough weaponry to take on any ship short of a battle cruiser, including a 120mm cannon similar to the one used on the Abrams main battle tank, French Exocet anti-ship missiles, and Russian Type 53 torpedoes, all purchased on the black market to conceal any connection to the United States.

Her defensive armaments were just as formidable. The rusty oil barrels on deck hid remotely operated .30 caliber machine guns for repelling boarders, while plates in the hull slid apart to reveal three Gatling guns that could rake enemy ships with 20mm tungsten rounds or blow apart incoming missiles. Complementing a battery of Aster anti-aircraft missiles was a Metal Storm gun. It rose out of the stern to fire its one hundred barrels of electronically activated ammunition at the equivalent rate of a million rounds per minute, perfect for bringing down hard-to-hit micro-drones.

For infiltration missions, the Oregon could launch submarines from the cavernous moon pool, where immense doors in the keel opened to allow the subs or divers to depart undetected. For surface operations, small craft such as Zodiacs and other rigid-hulled inflatable boats, or RHIBs, favored by the Navy SEALs, could exit from the boat garage accessed by a hidden panel at water level.

Two of the five deck cranes were fully operational, while the other three were distressed and disabled to make the Oregon look as pathetic as possible. Although several of the deep holds could be used for storing cargo to throw off the most aggressive port inspectors, the others contained vital ship areas and were carefully covered with a false layer of crates and containers to make it look like they were full as well. The covering over the rearmost hold retracted to raise the platform for the ship’s MD-520N helicopter.

The diesels that drove the Oregon when she was hauling Pacific Northwest timber had been replaced by the most advanced engines afloat. Two magnetohydrodynamic power plants, cryogenically cooled by liquid helium, forced ionized seawater through massive venturi tubes running the length of the ship, propelling her to speeds unthinkable for a vessel her size and making her as nimble as a Jet Ski. That was the reason she was able to maintain a safe distance from the Triton Star while simultaneously keeping the gangway in position.

In the ship’s Magic Shop, any kind of disguise, gadget, or uniform could be manufactured under the direction of a former movie studio prop and makeup expert named Kevin Nixon. He had transformed Juan and his men into convincingly pitiful castaways who seemingly had been adrift for days.

Everything from the weaponry to the ship’s navigation was controlled from the central op center, which was why the Oregon could maneuver without a single person on the squalid bridge. Situated deep in the Oregon’s belly, the room was well protected from anything short of a ship-killing missile. High-definition closed-circuit cameras mounted all over the ship provided the op center and its commander a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the sea. Operators could also fill or empty ballast tanks on either side of the ship to simulate a catastrophic list, as had been done to fool the Triton Star.

The high-tech design of the op center, with its state-of-the-art workstations, touchscreen monitors, sleek furniture, and huge main viewing screen, would look at home on a starship. The command seat had therefore been dubbed the Kirk Chair by Eric and Murph, the ship’s biggest science fiction fans. The most important functions of the ship could be operated by the controls in the armrests.

When Max and Murph arrived at the op center, the command chair was occupied by Linda Ross. In addition to being a Navy veteran and the Corporation’s vice president of operations, she rivaled Juan and Eric as the best ship driver on the Oregon. Though she was petite and had a young girl’s voice, she commanded respect from the entire crew. Because of her small stature and youthful looks, she hadn’t always gotten the same respect in the Navy. As if to celebrate her freedom from the military, she now regularly changed her hairstyle and color. Today it was magenta and tied up in a ponytail.

She rose to give the command chair to Max, but he waved her down.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

She nodded to the communications workstation and said, “Hali has something he wants you to check out.”

Hali Kasim, the Lebanese-American communications officer with perpetually tousled hair from the headphones that rested on his head, had a knack for pulling encrypted radio signals out of thin air. Normally, Hali was all smiles, but he waved them over with a concerned look on his face.

“The Chairman found all of the Triton Star crew members, right?”

Max nodded. “That’s what he told me.”

“Then why am I detecting a signal piggybacking on the Triton Star’s WiFi network and transmitting through the satellite uplink?”

Murph sat at the terminal next to him and examined the data feed.

“Confirmed,” Murph said. “They have a stowaway somewhere on board. They’re using a texting app through the internet.” He looked at Hali. “Have you been able to decrypt it?”

Hali winced. “Mostly no. The app erases each text as it comes through. I detected the latest conversation just a few minutes ago, so anything transmitted before that is gone. I was only able to decode the last phrase that was sent.”

The way he said it sounded ominous to Max. “What was the text?”

“Whoever is on the other end told the unknown subject on the Triton Star ‘kill them all.’”