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“Of course,” Julia replied, and exchanged numbers.
Murph rolled out of the room in his wheelchair and did a three-sixty. Eric and Sylvia followed close behind. When Murph came to a stop, he smiled the best he could, his eyes glittering with intensity behind the special glasses.
“Looks like you picked that up quick,” Sylvia said.
He rotated to face her. The artificial voice spoke again, but this time it sounded like James Earl Jones’s commanding basso. “I find your lack of faith disturbing. Now, before we leave and look for a way to get me free of this chair, can I please have my clothes?”
TWENTY-THREE
Sylvia was amazed at how fast Juan Cabrillo could get her and Mark out of the hospital. She expected all kinds of red tape, but less than an hour later they were climbing on board a sleek tiltrotor aircraft at Darwin’s airport.
“Where are we going?” she asked him.
“To the Oregon,” Juan said before climbing into the copilot’s seat.
“She’s a ship,” Eric said as they strapped in. “Our home and base of operations. Mr. Overholt told us you have a top secret clearance, so the Chairman says we can show you around once we arrive.”
“What does my security clearance have to do with it?” Sylvia asked.
Eric smiled at her. “You’ll see.”
“Can’t wait to lay my eyes on it,” Murph said. His artificial voice was now closer to his real voice. Even he was getting sick of constantly sounding like Darth Vader.
Once they were in the air, Juan joined them in the main cabin. Sylvia spent the rest of the ride briefing them on the attack by the trimaran. At Mark’s urging, she even shared the goals of her experiment and a description of the plasma cannon that sank the Namaka.
When she was through with her story, Juan said, “The trimaran sounds like the design of a new patrol ship used by a lot of navies in this region, including the Australians. It’s fast and has a long range for coastal and deep sea operations, so it could have come from anywhere. But the plasma weapon sounds too sophisticated for a terrorist group.”
“It might be the Chinese government,” Sylvia said. “I heard some of the crew on the trimaran speaking Mandarin.”
“You also heard two of them speaking English with an Australian accent. Could you identify them if you saw them again?”
“Absolutely.” Their faces were seared into her memory. Everything about the incident was.
“Eric, take her to see Kevin Nixon. He can draw up a composite sketch of them.” Juan turned back to her. “Is there anything else you can remember to help us narrow our search for the trimaran?”
She nodded. “I don’t know if this means anything, but there was a logo on a metal crate aboard the ship. It was an A and B over a starburst.”
“No name?”
She shook her head.
“Okay. Kevin can draw that up, too. Tracking down this trimaran and the chemical weapon they used might be the only way of discovering an antidote.”
The pilot, a handsome man with a handlebar mustache, announced, “Chairman, we’re approaching the Oregon.”
Juan returned to the cockpit. Then he called back. “We’ll do a flyby so Murph can get a look at her.”
Sylvia went to the window beside Mark’s and gazed out. She saw nothing but open sea lit by the fading sun.
“There she is,” Mark said. “Awesome.”
An ordinary-looking freighter appeared on the water below. Sylvia thought he was joking with her. “That’s it?”
“Looks can be deceiving,” he replied, not taking his eyes off the vessel.
The tiltrotor settled onto a landing pad in the middle of the deck, and to Sylvia’s astonishment, the aircraft was lowered into the ship.
Juan opened the door and said, “I’m going to the op center. Eric, when Kevin has any actionable info, let me know.” With that, he was gone.
