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“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.”
