Piranha (37 page)

Juan's blood went cold. The white and blue 747 was instantly recognizable as soon as he saw
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
emblazoned on its fuselage.

He grabbed Trono's phone and sprinted for the exit tunnel, yelling over his shoulder as he ran. “Stay here as long as possible and find out everything you can about what Kensit was watching.”

He didn't wait for a response. He was nearly to the other end of the tunnel before he could get a signal to radio Gomez for immediate pickup and a dash back to the
Oregon
.

He had a yacht to sink.

Kensit was shaken by the invasion of the cave and his continuing inability to get in touch with anyone at the facility, including Bazin, but he had a mission to complete. At least he'd retaken control of Sentinel—that is, until it self-destructed in less than thirty minutes. But once Brian Washburn was vice president, he would have a powerful ally in the government to protect him while he built Sentinel 2.

Unbeknownst to the ground controllers at Tyndall, he had been commanding the QF-16 drones for an hour, with the two manned F-15s following in close formation, as they approached the Bahamas. Now it was time to set them on an intercept course with Air Force Two.

He disabled the video and data feeds from all six drones to Tyndall. He wished he could see the operators' faces at losing their connection, but he couldn't take his eyes off the drones. His current viewpoint was following a quarter mile behind the rearmost planes. All eight planes were flying in a stacked V formation, separated by only a few hundred feet.

Surely the controllers were contacting the fighter pilots now, who would be telling them that they saw no change in the flight pattern, that it must be a communication malfunction.

Kensit took manual control of Quail 6, the drone closest to the F-15 on the left. Quail 6 suddenly banked left and rolled into the nose of the F-15, which sheared it off. The QF-16 drone exploded in a fireball as its external fuel tank ignited, catching the F-15 in the blast and blowing it apart as well. The pilot inside never had a chance.

Kensit quickly switched control to Quail 5 on the other side of the formation. He attempted the same maneuver, but this F-15 pilot was more alert. He loosed a volley from his M61 Vulcan cannon at Quail 5, but the rounds hit Quail 4 instead, chopping its tail to pieces and sending it into a rolling dive toward the Caribbean.

Quail 5 yawed to the right, catching the tip of the F-15's wing as it tried to bank away. The wings of both the drone and the F-15 snapped off, and they began to break up as fire streamed from their tanks. The pilot punched out, and his ejection seat disappeared from Kensit's view.

Kensit breathed a sigh of relief after the most difficult part of the mission was over. If one of the F-15s had gotten away, it could have brought down the rest of the drones with missiles. Now there were no fighters close enough to reach the drones before they intercepted the vice president's plane.

The three drones left were plenty to do the job. Even one should be enough to destroy the unarmed 747.

Pleased with himself, Kensit took another gulp of Red Bull and set the course for the three autopilots, and, with afterburners lit, sent the drones to their doom at greater than the speed of sound.

—

Thanks to a spare set of fatigues
on the helicopter, Juan was out of his wetsuit by the time he, Linda, and Hali reached the
Oregon
. Juan had briefed Max and Murph during the flight in. The ship was ready to depart as soon as the chopper landed. Then he'd made a call to Langston Overholt to warn him about what he'd seen on Sentinel's screen.

They dashed to the op center, and Juan had barely taken his place in the Kirk Chair when he ordered Linda to set a course for Kensit's last-known location, a spot northwest of Haiti that was over a hundred miles from their current position. Based on the coordinates from Trono's phone recording, it looked like the yacht had been traveling east. But since Kensit knew Sentinel had been compromised and they could see his yacht's position from its connection to the neutrino telescope, he'd probably changed course to put more distance between them.

Juan glanced back at Max and grinned, happy to be back on board. “Are the engines revved?”

“She's champing at the bit,” Max replied.

“Then give me all she's got.”

“Flank speed, aye,” he replied, and the magnetohydrodynamic engines spun up to full power, gushing jets of water behind them as the
Oregon
shot out of the Bahia de Grand Pierre.

“Wepps,” he said, calling Murph by the nickname for the weapons station. “How long until we're in Exocet range?”

“At present speed, it'll be at least forty minutes. If we can't get an exact coordinate from Eric, we'll have to be even closer to make a positive ID on the yacht.”

“Hali, get Eric on the line. I want to know if he has any more intel for us. Then, while we're talking, call Langston Overholt and let me know when you've got him.”

Eric had previously established communications with them through the Oz cave's landline and his voice issued from the op center's speakers. “This thing is incredible.”

“Man, you have all the fun,” Murph said.

“I could spend weeks studying the technology.”

Juan looked at the ship's chronometer. “You've actually got twenty-three minutes left, so give us the highlights.”

“Right. Okay, we've been able to establish Kensit's location, but we'll only have that as long as we're in here and Sentinel is connected to his yacht. After that, he's a ghost.” He passed the new coordinates on to Linda.

“He turned northwest,” Murph said. “We won't be there for fifty minutes.”

“That's a big problem,” Eric said.

“Why?” Juan asked.

“Because Kensit took over six QF-16 fighter drones over an hour ago. They took off from Tyndall Air Force Base and are headed in our direction. They should be almost directly above Kensit right now.”

Juan banged his fist in triumph on the arm of his chair. “That's how he's going to shoot it down.”

“I've got Overholt on the line,” Hali said.

“Patch him in.” Hali nodded, and Juan said, “Lang, did you get in touch with the president?”

“It's not the president,” Overholt said. “He's in Chicago this morning. But Vice President Sandecker is on his way back from Brazil.”

“Where is his plane?”

“It just passed over Haiti.”

“You need to get the pilot to turn around. Lawrence Kensit is about to bring Air Force Two down with drones he's hijacked.”

“Oh, my God,” Overholt said. “We just got a flash report that the data feeds from six drones were lost as they were flying toward the Bahamas for a demonstration at the UNITAS naval exercise. They haven't been able to make contact with either the drones or the chase planes.”

“If the drones are modified F-16s, they'll be able to chase down Air Force Two unless their fuel is exhausted before they can intercept.”

“Convincing the Air Force that the vice president's plane is about to be shot down by their own jets is going to be a tough sell, but I'll see what I can do.”

The line clicked.

“Did you get that, Eric?” Juan said.

“Yes, and I might be able to help. I'm sending the transponder codes for both the drones and Air Force Two to Hali so you can track them. I got them off of Kensit's remote control panel.”

“Good work.”

“That shot from Trono's recording also might show Murph how to deactivate Kensit's connection with the drones if he can figure out how Kensit is controlling them.”

Juan nodded to Murph and threw him Trono's phone. Murph caught it with one hand and began downloading the video from the phone to the ship's computer system.

“Before you go, I have another troublesome issue for you,” Eric said.

“By all means,” Juan said, shaking his head. “We're just twiddling our thumbs anyway.”

“I found a video of Admiral Ruiz taken last night.”

“Where?”

“I don't know. It starts with an overhead shot of three ships, then zooms down to the bridge and there's Ruiz talking on the phone. According to a sign on the bridge, the ship is called the
Reina Azul
. I think she's speaking with Kensit and he was watching her.”

The
Blue Queen
, Juan thought. “Can you play back the conversation for us?”

“Yes, but you can only hear Ruiz's part of it. Here it goes.”

Juan immediately recognized the dusky voice that threatened him just a week ago off the coast of Venezuela. Pauses interrupted her speech while she listened to Kensit.

They're launched from a container,
she said.
No, even the
Oregon
will have trouble evading them. They're called Carrier Killers for a reason . . . Don't worry. The captains of the
Maracaibo
and
Valera
think we're going into Port-au-Prince to pick up a huge load of cement bound for Puerto Cabello . . . Through a shell company. They have no idea I'm on board . . . I had my men attach bombs to their hulls during the night. There won't be survivors or witnesses . . . Then I expect you to deliver . . . Yes, we'll be there on time.

“That's it,” Eric said.

“Not good,” Murph said as he watched Trono's video. “Carrier Killer is the nickname for the Russian 3M-54 Klub antiship missile. It's very hard to shoot down because it accelerates to mach three during the final approach to the target and has thrust vectoring for high-angle defensive maneuvers.”

This was sounding worse and worse to Juan. “Can the Gatling guns hit them?”

“If we're lucky, but it's not a sure thing. The Klub's speed is over three times as fast as our own Exocets. I'd say the Metal Storm gun is our best shot.”

“Why the other two ships?” Max wondered. “Safety in numbers?”

Juan nodded. “Human shields. Ruiz knows we won't attack unless we know which ship to sink.”

“But we'll know as soon as they launch. Those tailpipes spew out a lot of smoke.”

“There's something we're missing,” Juan said. “Linda, get on the radar and keep an eye out for any three-ship convoys. I'll control the helm from here. Wepps, be ready on the defensive weapons.”

Murph lowered the false doors hiding the radar-guided Gatling guns and raised the Metal Storm array into place on the deck. “Weapons ready.”

Juan thought about the names of the two ships Ruiz mentioned. Maracaibo was a large lake in Venezuela. It made sense that Ruiz would dupe cargo ships from her own country. It was possible that their guest Maria Sandoval knew one of the ship captains who was unwittingly serving as a decoy for Ruiz. She did say that the Venezuelan ship captains were a tight-knit group.

“Hali,” Juan said, “ask Captain Sandoval to join us in the op center.”

“After the great smuggling cover story we got her to swallow?” Max said in amazement. “She won't believe that after seeing what we've got in here.”

“I have a feeling we don't have much time left, we need to get her on the satellite phone. We'll get her to pinkie-swear not to talk, if that makes you feel better.”

Max shrugged in acquiescence. “That's a binding contract, as far as I'm concerned.”

“She's on her way,” Hali said. “I'm putting the transponders up on the view screen.” A map of the Caribbean appeared with parts of Cuba, the Bahamas, and Haiti visible. Graphics of three red planes just north of Cuba was slowly converging with a blue-plane graphic northwest of Haiti. “That blue one is Air Force Two. The red ones represent three drones.”

“What happened to the rest of them?” Juan wondered.

“They must have crashed or we'd be getting a signal from them.”

“Murph,” Juan said, “tell me you can disable those drones.”

Murph was bent over his console in concentration and didn't respond.

“Murph?” Juan prompted again after a few seconds.

Murph finally raised his head. “It looks like he's controlling one of the drones manually and letting the other two fly on autopilot.”

“Can you interrupt the signal?”

“No, and I can't take over the one he's controlling manually. I wouldn't have the right setup here to maneuver the plane anyway. But it's possible that I could reprogram the autopilot.”

“Do it. At their current closing speed, we've only got ten minutes until those drones are on top of Air Force Two.”

Maria Sandoval was escorted into the op center and her eyes went wide as she took in the high-tech command bridge.

“Who
are
you people?” she said in awe.

“We're the good guys, Captain,” Juan said as he rose to greet her. “And I need your help. I can't explain everything that's going on right now, but it seems that your friend Admiral Ruiz is going to try to sink us and I need to know where she is. Do you know the captains of the cargo ships
Maracaibo
or
Valera
?”

“Not the
Maracaibo
,” she said, “but Eduardo Garcia is the master of the
Valera
. I've met him a few times while we were docked in Puerto Cabello. He's a good captain, though he's a bit of an odd character.”

“It's very important that we speak to him. I'm going to pass you to Hali and he's going to help you get in touch with Captain Garcia. What we have to ask him will be better coming from someone he knows.”