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“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.”
