Dark Watch

“It doesn’t matter now, but I think the Maus has better radar than we thought. She must have known you were tailing her. Have Hali get ready to file a report with the Indonesian authorities. I suspect Singh’s plugged in with the government, so he’ll have to cut through a lot of red tape, but bottom line is we need this place raided by the navy or coast guard as soon as we’re clear.”

“I’m on the circuit,” Hali Kasim interrupted. There was a manic edge to his voice. “Chairman, you’re not going to believe this, but I just got a signal from Eddie’s transponder.”

“When?”

“Just now! Two seconds ago.”

“Jesus. Where is he?”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Doubt crept into the communications officer’s tone.

“Talk to me, Hali.”

“Russia, sir. The western coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. What the hell is he doing there? I thought the snakeheads had their conduits running into the U.S or Japan.”

Juan went still and turned his mind inward so he could no longer hear Linc and the other SEALs stowing the Zodiac and their gear or feel Julia’s concerned look or Tory Ballinger’s intrigued scrutiny. Eddie Seng had been taken to Kamchatka. While the question of why worried at part of his mind, the bulk of his intellect was forming a plan, calculating speed, distances, and the priorities of the mission. He factored in the Oregon’s speed, the maximum speed of the Robinson R-44 with various payloads, and the need to interrogate Shere Singh.

He was sure Eddie wasn’t the only Chinese immigrant that had been taken to the isolated part of Russia, a volcano-strewn jut of land that had been closed off to the world for the better part of the past century. How many more had ended up on its rugged shores was something he couldn’t know, but instinct told him there would be a great many.

What was Singh’s connection? Transportation was the obvious answer. He could move men and ships inside the pair of floating drydocks with virtual impunity. He could hijack vessels carrying illegals from the open seas and make sure any witnesses, like Tory’s hapless Avalon, never survived long enough to file a report. All Singh needed to know was which ships were carrying immigrants, and he could target them at will. That would mean that someone in China was supplying that information, Cabrillo realized, but was the smuggling the only crime taking place, or was it a means to an end?

“They need cheap labor,” he said aloud.

“What was that?” Tory asked. She’d stripped off her wet jacket and wore only a thin black T-shirt. A fluffy towel was draped over her shoulders to cover her breasts. Her dark hair was damp and untamed and somehow incredibly attractive. If she had any questions about what she’d seen of the Corporation so far, she had the good sense to keep them to herself.

“This is about cheap labor; slaves. The night we saved you we also took out a pirate boat that was carrying a shipping container. We sank the ship and managed to recover the container, but not in time to save the people who’d been locked inside. We later learned they were illegal Chinese immigrants. I had one of my men follow the route those poor bastards had taken in hopes of learning what they were up to and how it related to the pirates. He just turned up on the Kamchatka Peninsula.”

“We at Lloyd’s only suspected Singh of hijacking shipping in the region and using his facility here to eliminate the evidence.”

“There’s more than that,” Juan said. “He’s also hijacking ships carrying Chinese immigrants and transporting them to Kamchatka. And if he needs transporters as big as the Maus and her sister drydock, it leads me to believe they’ve probably seized hundreds, or maybe thousands of illegals. They’re using them as slave labor.”

“What on earth for?” Tory asked.

“It could be anything.” Juan hit the intercom again. “Max, make preparations to get us out of here. I’ll take Linc and Mike Trono with me to find Shere Singh. I want you headed for Eddie’s location with every knot the old girl can give. We’ll catch a flight to…” He needed a second to recall Kamchatka’s capital. “Petropavlovsk.”

“Not gonna happen, Chairman,” Mark Murphy said over the open circuit. “I’ve been on the Internet since Hali said that’s where Eddie is. The government is reporting a major volcanic event is under way. I confirmed it through the U.S. Geological Survey’s website. The Russians are saying there’s so much ash falling that they’ve been forced to shut down the airport. No one’s going in or out.”

Juan cursed under his breath. “Okay, that doesn’t change anything. I still want the Oregon under way as soon as possible.”

“What about Shere Singh?” Max asked.

“My window to catch him just narrowed, that’s all. Even with the Oregon moving at maximum speed, we should have a half hour here before you steam out of the Robinson’s range.”

“May I say something, Captain Cabrillo?” Tory asked.

Juan nodded.