Piranha (4 page)

“I think it's nothing more than a cargo ship two voyages away from going under.”

“Did you take his photo as I ordered?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Send it to me now.”

Lozada messaged the picture to her.

After a slight pause, she said, “That's him. Holland is the same man as the one in my photo. We have intelligence identifying him as the captain of the spy vessel.”

Lozada felt a rush of adrenaline. Admiral Ruiz was the most powerful woman in the Venezuelan Navy and next in line to be defense minister. He could write his ticket if he captured a foreign spy. “I'll have them arrested at once.”

Her voice stabbed through the phone like an ice pick. “You will do nothing, Commander. I'm aboard the frigate
Mariscal Sucre
. We are currently three and a half hours from Puerto La Cruz. If the rumors are true, we will need all the firepower at my disposal. I plan to capture the vessel myself.”

Lozada swallowed hard at her bloodcurdling tone. “I must warn you, Admiral, the
Dolos
is carrying four thousand tons of fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate is volatile. If a fire is started by gunfire, it could blow up and destroy the entire harbor.”

“How long before she is scheduled to depart?”

“Four hours.”

“Then we'll lie in wait outside the harbor. Let her get her cargo on board and set sail. We'll intercept her in open water.”

“And if they do have all those mythical weapons on board?”

“It doesn't matter.
Mariscal Sucre
is more than capable of sinking her.”

Once he was sure Lozada wouldn't be returning for an even bigger bribe, the man who had introduced himself as Captain Buck Holland returned to the office and set his hat and wig on the desk, revealing a blond crew cut.

“Okay, Max,” he said to the air, removing the latex prosthetic appliances from his face as he spoke. “I think we're clear. You can turn off the odorant vents.”

Silent fans kicked on and the foul smell was sucked from the room in seconds, replaced by a crisp pine scent. Max's disembodied voice said, “You like my new concoction?”

Next to go were the fake teeth and glued-on mustache. “‘Like' is not the word I'd go with. If you were aiming for eye-watering, you blew right through it and hit vomit-inducing. I'm surprised the harbormaster didn't lose his dinner.”

“But it worked, didn't it?”

Last to be removed were the brown contacts. His eyes were now back to the crystal blue that he had gotten from his mother. Juan Cabrillo smiled. “It sounds like he bought the story. I'll see you in my cabin in a few minutes.”

He shoved the disguise—including the rubber belly that had covered a muscled torso sculpted by a daily hour of swimming—into a trash bag. He wouldn't be using it again.

The black man who'd barged in during the meeting returned, carrying the rat less gingerly this time. He tossed it on the desk, where it bounced against the wall. The stuffed animal looked so real that Juan could imagine it coming to life and scurrying away.

“Not a fan of rats, Linc?” Juan said, deliberately avoiding the implication that the former Navy SEAL was scared of them. If the massive Franklin Lincoln was afraid of anything, Juan sure never wanted to meet up with whatever that was.

Linc smirked. “Are you kidding? Back in Detroit, we'd call one this size a mouse. Ours were nearly as big as raccoons.”

“They sound like they'd make great pets.”

“Where do you think I got the name Charlie for this one?”

Juan laughed, and checked his watch. “We're scheduled to sail as soon as our cargo of fertilizer is unloaded in three hours,” he said, leading them down the corridor, where he stopped at a tiny utility closet crammed with mops and cleaning supplies that had never been used. “What's our equipment status?”

“Everything is prepped and ready to go.”

“Good. I'll check in with Max and then meet you at the moon pool.”

“You got it, Chairman.” He continued down the corridor, humming Otis Redding's “(Sittin' On) The
Dock of the Bay” as he walked.

Juan spun the handles on the faucet of the nonworking sink in a specific pattern. With a sharp click, the back wall opened wide, revealing a hallway that would have been at home on the finest cruise ship. Recessed lighting glowed softly above mahogany walls and sumptuous carpeting, a far cry from the rust and grime the harbormaster had seen. He walked through the opening and down the corridor toward his cabin.

Juan always enjoyed the transition from the deceptively decrepit topside to the sleek and elegant world belowdecks. It symbolized everything he loved about the ship. Although her fantail currently bore the name
Dolos
, down here he never referred to her as anything but her original name—
Oregon
.

The
Oregon
was Juan's creation. As Chairman, he had conceived a ship that would not only avoid attention but would actually repel it. Few knew about the technological marvels hidden within the
Oregon
's apparently crumbling hull. That trickery made her virtually invisible in the Third World ports that she plied. In reality, she was a fourth-generation, state-of-the-art intelligence-gathering vessel. She could travel where no U.S. Navy warship could go, enter ports closed to most commercial shipping, and transport highly secret cargo without arousing suspicion.

Juan entered his cabin, which was the antithesis of the fake one he'd shown to Lozada. Like all the members of his crew, he had a generous allowance to decorate it to his taste since the space served as his home. It was currently fashioned as an homage to Rick's Café Américain from the movie
Casablanca
.

Juan shucked his costume and removed the artificial leg that was strapped below his right knee, a disability he'd acquired courtesy of shell fire from a Chinese destroyer called the
Chengdo
. He rubbed the stump, but as usual the phantom pain wouldn't go away. He hopped over to his closet and placed the prosthesis at the end of a neat line of them that all had different purposes, some cosmetic, some practical. The one he'd taken off mimicked the look of a real leg, down to toenails and hair.

He picked up the one he'd dubbed the “combat leg” and put it on. The unique titanium prosthesis was packed with backup weapons, including a classic .45 ACP Colt Defender with a Crimson Trace laser sight—an accurate and reliable upgrade from his old Kel-Tec .380—a package of plastic explosives no bigger than a deck of cards, and a ceramic throwing knife. The heel concealed a short-barreled shotgun loaded with a single .44 caliber slug.

With the leg attached, he pulled on a pair of swim trunks, a breathable swim shirt, and fin boots for comfort.

He walked into his office and opened the nineteenth-century railroad safe, where he kept his personal armory. Most of the small arms aboard the
Oregon
were stored in a central armory adjacent to the ship's shooting range, but Juan preferred his own cache. Rifles, submachine guns, and pistols shared space with cash from multiple countries, gold coins totaling over a hundred thousand U.S. dollars, and several small pouches of diamonds.

Juan chose his favorite pistol, a Fabrique Nationale Five-seveN double-action automatic, loaded with 5.7mm cartridges that allowed the grip to hold twenty rounds plus one in the chamber. Despite their small size, the bullets were designed to drill through most ballistic armor but tumble once they reached their target to prevent overpenetration. Heavier weaponry wouldn't work for this operation, much as he wanted to bring some along.

A double-tap knock came at the door, and Max Hanley walked in without waiting for a response. The
Oregon
's chief engineer had been Juan's first hire for the Corporation and Juan relied on his old friend's judgment more than anyone else aboard. Auburn hair fringed Max's otherwise bald head, and a paunch was the only other clue that the solidly built president of the Corporation was into his sixties, having served two tours of duty in Vietnam.

“Lozada seemed to fall for the whole thing,” Max said with a frown. He had seen and heard the entire exchange via the hidden cameras and microphones generously apportioned throughout the upper decks.

“You don't look happy about it,” Juan said.

“It's not Lozada. I just don't like us being spread thin like this.”

“Even though most of the plan was your crazy idea?”

“It was
your
crazy idea. I just came up with how to make it work.”

The CIA suspected the Venezuelans of supplying arms to North Korea, defying a United Nations embargo of the pariah state. The U.S. didn't know how the weapons were being smuggled, but the shipments did correlate with known deliveries of diesel from Puerto La Cruz to Wonsan. Electronic eavesdropping pinpointed a warehouse along the dock of the oil terminal, which was less than a half mile across a mountainous peninsula from La Guanta Harbor, as a probable coordination point for the shipments. The Corporation's mission was to obtain evidence of the arms shipments while simultaneously dealing a blow to the fuel delivery that was critical to running the tanks and armored personnel carriers of the North Korean Army. Juan and Linc would be getting the evidence—documents, computer files, photos, anything they could find.

“And your plan is brilliant,” Juan said. “So let's go put it in motion.” He led Max out of the cabin and walked side by side toward the center of the ship, passing artwork that would have befit any of the world's great museums. Juan walked without a limp, the result of years of practice perfecting his gait with the artificial limb.

“Are we on schedule?” Juan asked.

“Everyone has checked in and is ready to go.”

“See?” Juan said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I get the heebie-jeebies when you say that.”

“It's good luck, like saying ‘break a leg' to an actor.” Juan looked down at his own metal replacement. “Well, maybe the wrong choice of words.”

“At least I know you won't break my ship, since I'll be in command while you're gone.”

“Since she'll be tied to the dock, you shouldn't have any problems, either.”

“Just be back on time,” Max said like a worried mother hen.

“Johnny-on-the-spot as always.”

“Unless you put one of your infamous Plan C's into effect.” Max turned and headed back to the op center, where he could coordinate all of the mission activities.

Juan called after him, “You should only worry when I get to Plan D.” A dismissive wave of Max's hand was the only response.

After a ride on an elevator down three decks, Juan reached a cavernous space amidships. A submersible was suspended by a gantry crane over a swimming-pool-sized depression that was filled with water at a level even with the waterline outside the ship. The sixty-five-foot Nomad 1000 could dive to a thousand feet with six people aboard, including the pilot and copilot. Its smaller sister, the Discovery 1000, was missing from its cradle, away on another part of the mission.

The moon pool allowed either sub to be launched undetected through huge doors below the pool that swung downward. The port was too shallow to allow the doors to be fully opened, so the Discovery 1000 had been launched before they entered La Guanta Harbor. Juan wouldn't need the Nomad for this mission, so it would stay in its cradle.

Linc was already donning his black neoprene wetsuit. Their scuba equipment lay next to him. Juan put his pistol inside Linc's waterproof weapons bag and slipped into his wetsuit. The water in the tropical harbor didn't require the suits, but the black color would render them invisible to any casual observers on the dock.

They both checked over their Draeger rebreathing units. Regular scuba rigs released the exhalations as bubbles that would rise to the surface, leaving a trail that would be easily followed. The Draeger consisted of carbon dioxide scrubbers in a closed-loop system that eliminated bubbles. Although the unit was dangerous to use below thirty feet, the restriction wouldn't be a problem in this case because Juan and Linc were using the gear only to exit the
Oregon
undetected.

Juan knew that the harbormaster would have the ship staked out and would follow anyone who left the dock area. He and Linc needed to get to their rendezvous without a tail, so underwater was the only option.

Linc nodded that he was ready. With his gear in place, Juan climbed down the collapsible stairs into the moon pool. He put on his fins, clamped his teeth over the rebreather's mouthpiece, and lowered his mask. He drifted out into the center, and Linc came behind him. Juan gave the A-OK, and the technician in charge of the moon pool dimmed the lights to a faint smolder so that nobody on the dock would notice anything unusual going on beneath the ship.

Juan felt a slight eddy tug at him as the doors below cranked open with a muffled thrum. After a few seconds, the sound stopped. The technician waved a flashlight, signaling that the crack in the doors was now wide enough for their departure.

They released air from their buoyancy compensators and descended until they were floating below the keel. Juan clicked on a wrist flashlight, just bright enough to see the ship's metal hull in the murky harbor water. He and Linc swam to the stern, where he shut off the flashlight and referred to the waterproof compass on his other wrist to guide them.

Fifteen minutes later, he grabbed Linc's arm and gave him a thumbs-up. He slowly kicked upward until his mask broached the surface with the barest of ripples. He silently patted himself on the back. They were only twenty yards from the ancient shed that the Corporation had rented for the month.

Juan scanned the perimeter and confirmed that they were alone. No boats were nearby, and the road along the shore was empty. They had chosen this part of the harbor because it was the least traveled.

Juan and Linc removed their fins and crept onshore. Sure that there were no oncoming vehicles, they dashed across the road and into the run-down shed.

Instead of a grimy storage place for rusty equipment and fishing supplies, it seemed as if they'd stepped into the dressing room on a movie set. On one side of the shed was a well-lit mirror, a counter spread with makeup and latex prosthetics, and a director's chair. Next to it stood a metal frame where two Venezuelan Navy working uniforms were hung—one for a master chief petty officer, the other for a captain, both in camo gray.

The other side of the shed was occupied by a hulking Humvee painted in the livery of the Venezuelan military. Leaning against it was a slim man with a thick beard. He threw each of them a towel.