The Jungle of-8

by Clive Cussler

  The interior of the ship was just as bad as her scabrous hide. Chipped linoleum floors, weak lighting, and dust bunnies the size of tumbleweeds. Lead paint and asbestos appeared to be the decorator’s preferred mediums.

  “Jesus,” MacD cried. “This ship is like a toxic waste dump. Should I even breathe in here?”

  “Sure,” Linc replied, his barrel chest expanding as he filled his lungs. “Real shallow-like.” He then slapped the back of his hand against Lawless’s taut belly. “Relax, man. It ain’t what you think. The Chairman will show you. Go off with the Doc and then you’ll see.”

  Huxley invited MacD into one of the cabins behind the bridge and set her bag down on the dresser in preparation for her exam. Linc, Juan, and Max continued on to the bridge itself. Linda begged out of the meeting, saying she needed a two-hour soak in the spa tub in her cabin.

  There were no officers of the deck or watch standers on the bridge. They would only bother with such a formality if there were shipping close by or a harbor pilot or customs official were aboard. Otherwise the wheelhouse remained empty.

  The room was broad, with wood-and-glass doors on either end to access the flying bridges. The wheel was a big old-fashioned spoked affair with handholds made smooth by countless years of wear. The windows were frosted with salt rime and barely translucent. The equipment was generations out of date. The radio looked like something Marconi himself had assembled. The brightwork, like the stand-alone engine controls, hadn’t seen polish since it was installed. The wooden chart cabinets were chipped and their tops stained by greasy food and spilled coffee. To all outward appearances, it was perhaps the sorriest excuse for a pilothouse afloat.

  Just seconds after they entered the bridge, an elderly gentleman dressed in black slacks and a crisp white shirt with an unblemished apron around his waist materialized as though from thin air. His hair was as white as his starched shirt, his face both gaunt and wrinkled. He carried a sterling silver tray with a dewy pitcher of some tropical-looking concoction and crystal glasses.

  “The sun’s over the yardarm someplace,” he said in a crisp British accent.

  “What’s this, Maurice?” Juan asked as the ship’s steward handed out glasses and began to pour. Linc looked at his drink sourly and then brightened when the steward produced a bottle of Heineken from his apron. Linc popped the top by ramming it against the chart table.

  “A little juice, a little grog. This and that. I figured you could use something after the mission.”

  Cabrillo took a sip, and announced, “Nectar of the gods, my friend. Absolute nectar of the gods.”

  Maurice didn’t acknowledge the compliment. He already knew how good the drink was and didn’t need to be told. He set the platter aside. Under it was a rosewood cigar box that usually sat on Cabrillo’s desk in his cabin. Max demurred, pulling a pipe and a leather pouch from the back pocket of his coveralls. In moments, the air was as thick as an Amazonian forest fire. The steward left the bridge as silently as he’d arrived, his polished shoes somehow not making a noise on the filthy linoleum deck covering.

  “Okay, so tell me about this new op,” Cabrillo invited, blowing a plume of smoke toward the ceiling while Max opened one of the wing doors for a little ventilation.

  “The financier’s name is Roland Croissard, from Basel. His daughter is Soleil, aged thirty. She’s got a reputation for being something of a daredevil. She’s already got her spot bought and paid for when Virgin Galactic starts up their suborbital flights. She’s climbed the highest mountains on six of the seven continents. She’s been beaten back by Everest twice. She raced as a pay-for-play GP2 driver for a season. For those that don’t know, that’s one tier below Formula One racing. She’s also a scratch golfer, was a world-ranked tennis player in her teens, and just missed the cut for the Swiss Olympic fencing team.”

  “Accomplished woman,” Juan remarked.

  “Quite,” Max agreed. “I’d show you a picture, but you’d start drooling on the spot. Anyway, she and a friend went backpacking in Bangladesh. Judging by the GPS logs her father sent, she made a beeline for the border with Myanmar and kept on hiking.”

  “Sounds deliberate to me,” Linc said, finishing his beer. The twelve-ouncer looked like a Tabasco bottle in his hand. “Does he know what she was up to?”

  “No idea. He said that she rarely kept him informed of what she was doing. I get the impression there’s a little bad blood between them. When I ran the background check on him, it showed there was a divorce when Soleil was seventeen, and he subsequently remarried a few months later.”

  “Where’s the mother?” Juan asked, nonchalantly tapping ash onto the already-grimy floor.

  “Died of pancreatic cancer five years ago. Before that she lived in Zurich, which is now Soleil’s home.”

  “And what’s the father’s story?”

  “Works for one of those Swiss banks shady people like us keep our money in. Murph and Stone didn’t turn up anything through regular and not-so-regular financial channels. Croissard is legit, as far as we can tell.”

  “Did you ask Langston? For all we know he’s Bin Laden’s personal banker.”

  “Actually, he’s helped the Agency track funds heading to the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group.”

  “Could this be payback?” Cabrillo wondered aloud. “Maybe they snatched her.”

  “Anything’s possible at this point,” Max replied. “It could be that, or local drug lords, or it could be her phone’s on the fritz and she’s hiking out as we speak.”

  “How long ago did she go dark?” Linc asked.

  “She’d been checking in once a week. Missed her regular call four days ago. Croissard let it go a day before he got edgy. He made some calls, first to his contact at Langley over the money-laundering thing, and eventually he tracked down L’Enfant.”

  “Was the phone transmitting her GPS coordinates the whole time?”

  “No,” Max said. “She only turned it on when she was calling in.”

  Juan tapped ash from his cigar. “So, at the outside, she could have been snatched twelve days ago.”

  “Yes,” Max agreed glumly.

  “And all we have to go on is her last-known location, which again is eleven days old.”

  This time Hanley merely nodded.

  “This won’t be easy. We’re talking minor needle, major haystack.”

  “Five million bucks to make the attempt,” Max added. “Another two if we bring her out.”

  They were interrupted by Julia Huxley. She entered the bridge from the corridor that linked the six cabins on that deck—all of which were as shabby as the wheelhouse itself.

  “What’s the word?” Juan asked.

  “Physically, he’s fine. He’s got some pretty deep contusions across his abdomen and lower chest, his upper arms, thighs, and his cuteas-a-button buttocks. Nothing is sprained, as far as I can tell, but he says his knees and ankles hurt like heck. Give him a week and he’ll be good as new. I’ve still got to run some samples back in my lab, but from what he told me he’s as healthy as a horse. I have no reason to doubt that.”

  “Send him out to us, and thanks.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  A moment later, Lawless stepped onto the bridge, tucking a clean T-shirt into his combat pants. He looked around a moment, and said, “Y’all don’t pay your maid enough.”

  “It’s been her week off since 2002,” Cabrillo deadpanned. “Well, the doc says you check out, and her word’s good enough for me. What do you say?”

  “I’ve got to be honest with you, Chairman Cabrillo,” MacD replied. “Since coming aboard your ship I’m having second thoughts. You say you make money hand over fist, but living on this scow isn’t exactly my cup of joe.”

  “What if I were to tell you that under all this rust and grime is a ship that has more luxury appointments than the finest yacht you’ve ever seen.”

  “I’d say you’d have to show me.”

  “Juan?” Max said in a questioning
voice.

  “It’s okay,” Cabrillo said. “Just a taste. Nothing more.”

  Cabrillo indicated that Lawless should follow him. They made their way down a flight of internal stairs and through a few dingy hallways until they reached a windowless mess hall. Tacky travel posters were taped to the matte-gray walls. Beyond the pass-through was a kitchen that would turn a health inspector’s stomach. Stalactites of congealed grease clung to the hood above the six-burner stove while the flies buzzing around a sink full of dirty dishes rivaled the air traffic pattern over O’Hare.

  Juan walked up to one of the posters on the wall opposite the entrance. It depicted a beautiful Tahitian girl in a bikini standing on a beach in front of a grove of palm trees. He bent close and looked to be peering into her navel.

  A section of wall clicked open. The door had been so cleverly concealed that Lawless hadn’t seen a thing.

  Cabrillo straightened. “Retinal scanner,” he explained, and pulled the door all the way open.

  He motioned for MacD to take a look.

  He stared, gape-jawed. The carpet on the floor was a rich burgundy and so thick it looked like it could conceal a crouching lion. Polished mahogany wainscoting adorned the walls. Above it was some material that resembled regular residential Sheetrock but couldn’t possibly be because a ship at sea vibrated too much. It was painted a subtle gray, with hints of mauve—very relaxing, very soothing. The lighting was either tasteful sconces hanging on the walls or cut-crystal chandeliers.

  Lawless was no art expert, but he was pretty sure the canvases in gilt frames were the real deal, and he recognized one even if he couldn’t name Winslow Homer as its painter.

  This wasn’t a passageway on some broken-down old freighter. This belonged to a five-star resort hotel—heck, eight stars, for all he knew.

  He looked at the Chairman, confusion written all over his face.

  Juan began to answer his unasked question, “What you see topside is all deception. The rust, the dirt, the sorry state of the equipment. It’s all designed to make the Oregon as innocuous as possible. Anonymity is the name of the game. With this ship we can pull into any port in the world and not arouse suspicion. It’s like when you’re on the freeway. You notice the Ferraris and Porsches, but do you give a second’s thought to some mid-nineties Buick Regal?

  “The best part,” he went on, “is that we have the ways and means to disguise her silhouette and change her name in about twelve hours. She’s never the same ship from mission to mission. We call her the Oregon, but that is rarely the name painted on her transom.”

  “So the rest of the ship ... ?”

  “Is like this,” Juan said, pointing down the hallway. “Each crew member has a private cabin—and a decorating allowance, I might add. We have a gym, pool, dojo, sauna. Our head chef and sous-chef both trained at Le Cordon Bleu. You’ve met our onboard doctor, and as you can imagine she demanded, and got, the latest medical equipment available.”

  “What about weapons?”

  “There’s a full armory, with everything from pistols to shoulderfired antitank missiles.” It wasn’t yet time to tell him that the Oregon herself was a floating arsenal that would rival most navies’ capital ships. That and some of the vessel’s other hidden tricks would remain secret until Lawless completed his probationary period. “Now, what do you say?”

  Lawless smiled and thrust out his hand. “Ah’ll call Fortran and give ’em my notice.”

  From down the hallway came a whoop from an unseen female crew member. It didn’t sound like Hux or Linda, so word had traveled fast about the Adonis-like newbie.

  “It might take some time,” MacD continued, “and Ah’ll probably have to go back to Kabul. Ah’m sure they’re investigating my kidnapping. Plus, Ah’ll need to pick up my passport and personal kit.”

  “No problem,” Juan assured him. “We need a few days to get into position for our next job. We’ll issue you one of our encrypted satellite phones and contact numbers. We’ll have to fly you out to meet us.” Juan had a sudden thought. “By the way, how are your tracking skills?”

  “Ah’m a redneck at heart. Spent my summers hunting in the bayous. My dad used to boast that he had the dogs carrying the guns and me following the scent.”

  6

  IN THE END, THE DECISION OF WHETHER TO SEND AN ADVANCE team to Chittagong, Bangladesh’s principal port city, or wait and drive the Oregon hard around the Indian subcontinent was made easy by the simple fact that the ship had never been there and none of their contacts had a trustworthy man in the area. If they couldn’t guarantee getting the supplies and equipment they needed, there was no sense sending a group ahead to even try.

  They would lose five days getting the ship into position, five days in which the trail would grow colder. While this rankled Cabrillo and the rest of the crew, the demand for a face-to-face meeting with Roland Croissard annoyed even more.

  When Juan had sent his acceptance email to L’Enfant, the reply had been swift, as it always was. The financial terms had already been agreed upon, but Croissard had added the stipulation that he get to meet with Cabrillo. Juan had only agreed to meet Gunawan Bahar because the man had flown to Mumbai, where the Oregon had just off-loaded two containers of South African millet that had been lashed to the forward deck. Croissard was currently in Singapore and wanted Cabrillo to come to him.

  It meant Juan had to chopper back to Karachi, get on the G-V, fly to Singapore, hold the man’s hand for an hour or two, then head off to either Chennai, formerly Madras, or Vishakhapatnam, on India’s east coast. Which city would depend on the length of the meeting and the speed the Oregon could maintain. Once there, they would need to slow the ship so Gomez Adams could chopper in to pick him up.

  Any number of bureaucratic snafus could hold him up. He’d replied to L’Enfant, expressing his concerns, but was told the client was adamant.

  What bothered Cabrillo was the fact that until he could somehow get the Corporation back in the good graces of the United States government, he had no choice but to accept assignments like this. Like any business, they had overhead and expenses that translated to about two hundred thousand dollars a day.

  Taking out entire terrorist cells, thwarting some major attack before it happened—these were the things he’d created the Corporation for. That was why he’d joined the CIA in the first place.

  And knowing that, for the time being, he had been marginalized to a degree ate at the back of his mind.

  He decided to take Max with him for no other reason than to have his company during the long flights. That left Linda Ross in charge of the ship. After she’d gotten out of the Navy, Linda had captained a rig tender in the Gulf of Mexico. She could handle a ship as well as she could handle a gun.

  They landed at Changi Airport, to the north of the futuristic city-state of Singapore. Its skyline was punctuated by some of the most beautiful architecture in the world, including the new Marina Bay Sands Hotel, their destination. Hanley was nearly inconsolable when Juan told him they wouldn’t have the time to hit the hotel’s casino.

  As was usual when arriving on a private jet, customs was a mere formality. The uniformed agent met them at the stairs when they stepped from the plane, glanced at, then stamped, their passports, and didn’t ask to see the contents of Cabrillo’s sleek briefcase, not that they were hiding anything in it.

  Though they had flown casual, both had put on suits and ties just prior to landing. Juan wore an elegantly cut charcoal, with a faint pinstripe that was picked up in the colors of his two-hundred-dollar tie. His brogues were buffed to a glossy black. Keeping shoes spit-polished was a fetish he shared with the Oregon’s steward. Max wasn’t wearing off-the-rack exactly, but he looked uncomfortable. His collar dug into the spare flesh around his neck, and there was the tiniest trace of an old stain on his left sleeve.

  The air was decidedly warmer here than in Karachi, and while they couldn’t detect it over the smell of hot asphalt and jet fuel, it carried the tropi
cal humidity associated with the sea. The Equator was only eighty-five miles to their south.

  Juan checked his watch, an all-black Movado that was barely thicker than a piece of paper. “We’ve got an hour. Perfect.”

  Though offered a super-stretch limousine, they took a less ostentatious town car into the city. Traffic was absolute murder and yet remarkably polite. There were no blaring horns, no aggressive driving techniques. It made Juan recall that for all its wealth and sophistication, Singapore was virtually a police state. Free speech was severely limited, and spitting on a sidewalk could get you caned. This tended to create a homogenous population with a keen respect for the law, and thus no one cut you off or flipped you the bird.

  Their destination rose along the water in three gracefully sloped white towers, each more than fifty stories tall. Atop them was a platform that stretched for nearly a fifth of a mile, one part of it cantilevering off the third tower a good two hundred feet. This was known as the SkyPark, and even from a distance they could see the profusion of trees and shrubbery that adorned it. The SkyPark side facing the marina was composed of three infinity edge swimming pools holding almost four hundred thousand gallons of water.

  At the base of the hotel towers were three enormous domed buildings housing the casino, exclusive shops, and convention spaces. Rumor had it, the casino resort was the second most expensive on the planet.

  The car pulled up to the hotel entrance, and a liveried doorman was there even before the tires had stopped turning.

  “Welcome to the Marina Bay Sands,” he said in cultured English. Cabrillo suspected that had he looked Scandinavian he would have been greeted in flawless Swedish. “Do you have any baggage?”

  Juan jerked a finger at where Max was heaving himself out of the car. “Just him.”

  They stepped through into the hotel’s soaring lobby. It was crowded with vacationers. A group of them were assembled for some sort of tour and were receiving instructions in singsong Chinese from a female guide who couldn’t have been four and a half feet tall. The line waiting to check in snaked through a velvet-rope maze. With twenty-five hundred rooms, this was more like a small city than a single enterprise.