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“Murph, when you’re done decrypting the scientist’s notes, get together with Doc Huxley and see if you two can come up with a way to neutralize the effects of the sonic disruptor. We can’t go up against Tate again without some kind of protection.”
“Do you want us to keep working on the malware?” Hali asked, pointing first to himself and then to Eric.
“Yes. Tell me as soon as you know it works. Then we’ll give Tate a call.”
Juan left and went back to his cabin, where he spent an hour reading the captain’s log. It was sl
ow progress as he kept cross-referencing items on the internet.
He was almost finished when there was a knock on the door. “Come in.” Overholt entered with two mugs of coffee. Juan offered him a seat, and Overholt put one of the mugs in front of Juan.
“Maurice said you’d want this,” Overholt said.
“It’s very welcomed,” Juan said, taking a drink of the rich Brazilian brew. “I think he has a sixth sense for anticipating the crew’s needs.”
“He’s an interesting fellow. We spent the last two hours trading tales, me from the CIA, him from the Royal Navy.” Overholt winked. “Heavily redacted, of course.”
“I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to hear them. Been too busy with this.”
He passed the pages to Overholt, who thumbed through them. He stopped when he was about halfway.
“I recognize this name,” Overholt said. “The Carroll A. Deering. Why is that familiar?”
“It’s a maritime mystery that’s never been solved. Until now, that is.”
Overholt slowly nodded. “Didn’t she show up on the East Coast without her crew?”
“On the shoals of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. There were lots of theories for why the crew abandoned ship. Battered by a storm? Hijacked? Mutiny? None of them were very convincing. Now we know the answer.”
“Which is?”
Juan sat back and looked at the view of the ocean on his 4K video screen. “According to this log, in the early 1920s the Bremen was running up and down the Eastern Seaboard hijacking valuable ship cargo and she never had to fire a shot. All they did was unleash the sonic disruptor on an unwary vessel, and the crew jumped overboard or killed themselves. Because the Bremen was a blockade-runner, she had more than enough space to transfer cargo.”
“It sounds like the Deering wasn’t the only victim.”
“Not even close,” Juan replied. “There were seven other unexplained ship sinkings or disappearances during that time that correspond to hijackings in the Bremen’s log. And that was only along the American coast. The Bremen ranged throughout the Caribbean and South America, changing their hunting grounds often to avoid raising suspicion. They even ventured to the West African coast once, before the raids stopped in 1922.”
“What happened?” Overholt asked.
“Disease. They were using the Amazon as a base, sailing upriver after nightfall, and off-loading cargo onto standard freighters to be shipped to ports around the world. But in the summer of ’22, one of the ships they were trading with brought a disease that sounds like Ebola or some other hemorrhagic fever. The whole crew was wiped out within days. The Hungarian scientist who created the sonic disruptor fled into the jungle with as much food as he could carry.”
“And the Amazon tributary changed course after everyone died, miring the sub in the jungle,” Overholt said, marveling at the sequence of events.
“Once Murph completes his translation of the Hungarian’s notebook, we’ll have proof that the sonic disruptor exists. That should be enough for you to take back to the CIA and clear your name.” As with Bradley, Juan didn’t like putting his old friend in danger aboard the Oregon any longer than he had to. The Portland was out there somewhere, and Tate was eager to hunt Juan down and sink his ship.
Overholt shook his head. “You don’t get to my lofty position at the Agency without making some enemies. The story Ballard planted was good, and she’s been nurturing it for years. Tate embezzled billions from black accounts and pinned the crime on me. There are plenty of people back in Langley who are willing to believe that I’m a traitor if it helps them get ahead. And the people who do believe me won’t want to put the Agency through another public scandal, especially if they have to put their reputations on the line to weather the storm.”
“Then what can we do?”
“We need to stop Tate. Or get solid evidence that he was responsible for sinking the Kansas City.”
“The sonic disruptor plans—”
“—are not enough. Sure, the surviving crew will tell the investigators about the symptoms, and Michael Bradley will tell them that you saved him and the others, but they’ll believe it was all a setup. We need something more concrete.”
Juan sat back and thought about the deepfake malware Eric and Hali were perfecting.
“I might have a solution to our problem,” he said. “I’ll have to make a backchannel connection with NUMA. It’s time to call in a favor from Dirk Pitt.”
