Juan saw a palatial office overlooking the factory floor, and a man inside wearing a tailored suit was excitedly talking on his phone. The man turned, and Juan recognized him instantly as Ricardo Ferreira. He was alone.
Thanks to Calvo, Juan knew exactly where the stairs up to the office were. He peeled away from the other workers and headed down the hallway toward the stairs where a single guard was on duty. As soon as he was in the corridor, he took out a handkerchief and held it to his face like he had a bloody nose.
“Eu preciso do banheiro,” he said. I need the bathroom.
“The bathroom is on the other side of the building, idiota,” the guard replied in English and Portuguese mixed, pointing as he did so.
When his hand was up and away from his weapon, Juan elbowed him in the ribs and slammed the guard’s head against his knee. The man crumpled to the floor. He wouldn’t be out long, but it would be long enough.
Juan pocketed the guard’s semiautomatic pistol and looked at his watch. He went to the nearby fire exit, which was chained shut and alarmed. Juan swiftly picked the padlock and deactivated the alarm.
When he opened the door, four people clad in black combat gear and ski masks swarmed in. Each was armed with a suppressed AR-15 assault rifle. One of them also had a carbon fiber crossbow.
“Right on time,” Eddie said.
“Have any trouble?” Juan asked as they crept toward the stairs.
“A couple of guards are going to have headaches in the morning,” Linc said.
“And need ice packs for their groins,” Raven added, handing Juan a pair of handcuffs.
MacD held out his assault rifle to Juan, who said, “I’d prefer the crossbow this time.”
“Really?” MacD asked. “Ah can’t blame you. She’s a beauty.”
“I promise you I’ll give her back once we’re in the Gator.” Linda was currently idling at one of the vacant docks.
Once they were outside the foreman’s office, Juan said, “Give me sixty seconds. Then we’re out of here.”
He left them behind and bounded up the stairs. Ferreira must have felt secure in this building. There was no guard outside his office.
Juan burst in, and a surprised Ferreira stared at him in utter shock. Juan pointed the crossbow at his head.
“Quem é você?” Ferreira demanded indignantly.
“Who am I?” Juan answered in English. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“No.”
“I made a promise to Luis Machado. You knew him as Roberto Espinoza.”
Ferreira was confused for a moment. “That traitor? How did—”
While keeping his aim with the crossbow, Juan pulled the prosthetic appliances off his face. “He found out where this factory was. I told him I’d use the information to get you. So here I am.”
It finally dawned on Ferreira who Juan was. “Jorge González! You were there the day my yacht was attacked.”
“The same day you murdered Machado. And my name isn’t González. It’s Juan Cabrillo.”
“Whoever you are, you won’t get out of here alive.”
“I think I might.”
The fire alarm sounded.
“Evacuar del edifício,” came Eddie’s voice over the loudspeakers. Juan had taught him how to say “Evacuate the building.”
Down on the factory floor, workers scrambled for the elevator, which was the only usable exit. As soon as they were gone, Eddie, Linc, Raven, and MacD fanned out to plant explosives.
“You can’t do this,” Ferreira growled.
“Watch me.”
“I own the police. They will take you down.”
“I’m shaking in my boots.”
Juan lowered the crossbow to get the cuffs out of his pocket, and Ferreira saw his moment. He reached for the pistol that Juan had noticed in his shoulder holster. Before he could get it halfway out, Juan snapped the crossbow up and shot him in the heart.
Ferreira gaped down at his chest in surprise, then keeled over, his now unseeing eyes staring at Juan.
“Promise made, promise kept,” Juan said.
He ran back downstairs and met the four others by the exit. The disarmed guard had fled.
“Let’s go,” Juan said. “They’ll figure out what happened any minute.”
They ran across the empty storage lot to the crumbling dock. The Gator was waiting there, and they quickly climbed inside. As Juan stood in the hatch, a series of explosions tore apart the abandoned fish factory. The Slipstream drones were destroyed.
Juan handed MacD his crossbow and closed the hatch. Linda submerged the boat.
From the cockpit she said, “I’ll have us back home in fifteen minutes.”
“Home” for the Gator right now was a rented boat shed on the other side of the bay.
“By the way,” she added, “Max called. He sounded pretty excited.”
Juan got out his phone and called him.
“How’d it go?” Max asked as soon as he picked up.
“Mission accomplished,” Juan said. “It took a lot longer to plan and execute from our temporary quarters, though.”
“I might have a solution for that. Here, I’m switching to video.”
A second later, he was watching Max walking through a port. Juan couldn’t see any distinguishing features, so he didn’t know where it was. All he could tell was that Max was somewhere on the other side of the world. The bright sunlight gave it away.
For the past month, Max had been on an epic quest to find a new ship for the Corporation, one that could be modified the way the Oregon had been transformed from a lumber freighter to a high-tech spy vessel. Langston Overholt and Vice President Sandecker made it clear the money would be there, some from CIA funds recovered after tracking down Tate’s hidden offshore accounts and some as a reward for turning over the plans that would allow the development of countermeasures against a future sonic disruptor.
Max had been scouring ports, scrapyards, and shipbuilders from Italy to Malaysia to South Korea searching for the perfect replacement. He had been morose since losing the Oregon, but, for the first time in months, Juan saw joy and anticipation on his face.
“You are not going to believe what I found,” Max said. “You know those designs we’ve been working on? This ship is exactly what we were hoping to find. I can’t wait to tell you about it.”
Max’s enthusiasm was infectious. Juan felt a jolt of the same thrill he got when he originally created the Corporation and began recruiting a crew. He knew his friend had discovered something special.
“Don’t just tell me about it, Max,” Juan said. “Show me.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Clive Cussler is the author or coauthor of more than seventy previous books in five best-selling series, including Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, and Sam and Remi Fargo. His life nearly parallels that of his hero Dirk Pitt. Whether searching for lost aircraft or leading expeditions to find famous shipwrecks, he and his NUMA crew of volunteers have discovered more than seventy-five lost ships of historic significance, including the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley, which was raised in 2000 with much press publicity. Like Pitt, Cussler collects classic automobiles. His collection features more than eighty examples of custom coachwork. Cussler lives in Arizona.
Boyd Morrison is the coauthor with Cussler of the Oregon Files novels Piranha, The Emperor's Revenge, Typhoon Fury, and Shadow Tyrants, and the author of six other books. He is also an actor and engineer, with a doctorate in engineering from Virginia Tech, who has worked on NASA's space station project at Johnson Space Center and developed several patents at Thomson/RCA. In 2003, he fulfilled a lifelong dream by becoming a Jeopardy! Champion. He lives in Seattle.
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