“You don’t know?” Clay asked, with raised eyebrows.
Her blonde hair pulled back into a bun, Lawton shook her head with a serious expression. “No. All we know is that we were ordered to pull out in the middle of our project, without much explanation. We were told to prepare to receive you and head straight for Guyana. We were assuming you would fill us in.”
Clay looked at Caesare. “We have a Chinese corvette class warship sitting in the middle of Guyana, which has been idle for some time. It appears we’re not the only ones interested in finding out what it’s doing there.”
“Corvette class?” Lawton exclaimed. “What’s a corvette doing in the Atlantic?”
Caesare shrugged. “Beats us. They’re new, with a pretty stealthy hull design to boot. Yet this one was being spied upon by the Russian sub.”
“How long has it been there?”
Borger spoke up. “At least a few months from what we can see from the ARGUS.”
Lawton’s looked at him with surprise. “You have access to the ARGUS?”
“We do.”
“I’m impressed. Do you have the data with you?”
Borger smiled at her. “I sure do. Shall I fire it up?”
“Please.”
Once logged in, Borger accessed the data on his external drive and brought up some of the detailed overhead shots he had shown the guys during their call with Langford.
They were examining an overhead shot of the corvette when Lawton leaned closer to the wide screen that Borger was borrowing. “How close can you zoom in?”
“Pretty close.” He used his mouse as they zoomed in, stopping to reposition the frame so that it came in on the middle of the ship. The extreme detail was incredible. They could see the anti-ship armament almost as clearly as if they were standing on the ship itself.
“Wow,” she mumbled.
“The ARGUS is pretty impressive.”
“You’re telling me.” Lawton tilted her head to compensate for the rotation of the picture. She glanced at the bottom right corner where the time and date were displayed. “Midday,” she said. “Where is everyone?”
“Good question. I haven’t had time to run a detailed scan yet, but so far I haven’t seen anyone topside.”
“It supposedly came in for repairs.” Caesare straightened up and folded his arms. “So far, we can’t see any damage or repair equipment.”
Next to Caesare, Neely Lawton straightened as well. “It’s not there for repairs.”
Clay and Caesare looked at each other, then back to her.
“Guyana doesn’t have facilities for repairing a ship that size. I’ve been there. If anything, its capital, Georgetown, is more of a retail and administrative center. Its biggest claim to fame is having the CARICOM headquarters there.”
“So, it’s there for something else,” mused Caesare. “What are Guyana’s primary resources?”
“Rice and sugar exports,” replied Clay, dryly.
“Rice and sugar?”
“And a little timber and gold. But if that’s what the Chinese were after, they would have come with a freighter, not a warship. Which means…”
“They’re probably guarding something,” finished Caesare.
“Without anyone being on the ship?” Borger leaned forward, rotating through the same images taken on different days. Each picture looked the same, with only a few obscured by the cloud cover. They all watched Borger continue further back. He looked up over his shoulder. “Could it be abandoned?”
Clay shook his head. “Not with a ship like this.”
Lawton watched, thoughtfully. “Can we bring it back to present day?”
“Sure.” Borger complied until he was back at the most recent image.
“Now let’s roll back again at, say, an hour a minute.”
After a few mouse clicks, the video began to advance at an accelerated pace. The brightness of the hull dimmed several times from patches of clouds. As they stood, watching silently for several minutes, there was still no sign of anyone. They could then see the resolution begin to darken across the frame as evening approached.
Less than a minute later, the picture had grown almost completely dark. The only exception was the faint lights from the modest city of Georgetown, illuminating one by one.
“This is strange,” said Lawton. “I guess I can see why you hijacked our ship.”
Caesare grinned. “Now you know almost as much as we do.”
Borger spun his chair around to face them. “I’ll see if I can get more data from the ARGUS and go back even further. If we can zoom in from the beginning, when it first arrived, we should be able to find out what happened to everyone.”
“And where the Forel came from.”
“Right.”
“I’m assuming the Forel arrived after the corvette. Something strange is going…” Borger suddenly fell silent as he noticed the expression on Clay and Caesare’s faces change. Their eyes were wide open, as was Neely Lawton’s. All three were staring at the screen behind him. When Borger whipped back around to the monitor, his eyes grew wider than anyone’s. “Whoa!”
The video was still advancing and had elapsed through the first two hours of darkness, as viewed from the satellite. That’s when things changed. At just a couple of hours after darkness, the area around the mysterious warship suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree.
20
“She’s doing what?!” Chris Ramirez’ jaw dropped open as he sat on one of the boat’s padded bench seats.
Alison took a deep breath and shrugged. “She’s going.”
Kelly Carlson was leaning against the skipper’s chair with a similar look of surprise.
The boat was a forty-eight foot Prowler catamaran. Alison still wasn’t a huge fan of the government, but their generous funding certainly helped. It also meant that Alison’s team had been able to replace their old boat with a larger modeclass="underline" one with more range and less mechanical problems. The extra room also meant they were able to stay out in the ocean longer without the team feeling like sardines.
“And you’re just going to let her go?” Chris asked, appallingly.
“Well, I can’t exactly stop her now, can I?”
“Ali,” Chris said, with concern. “I’ve been to South America. I spent almost three years in Paraguay with the Peace Corps.”
“I know.”
“I’m telling you, South America is a dangerous place. Unless you’re in a large city, it can be very dangerous!”
Alison didn’t say anything. She remembered the stories Chris had told her when they’d met. Especially the one night when their camps were raided, a few people in Chris’ group were nearly kidnapped, and a young woman in another group had been raped by two of Paraguay’s soldiers. It still made her sick to even think about it.
Kelly crossed her arms and raised one of her feet, resting it on the rung around the bottom of the chair. “How much do we know about this billionaire guy?”
“He checks out. And he certainly seems genuine.”
“This is nuts,” Chris muttered, shaking his head. He knew how strong-willed DeeAnn was and decided to take a different tack: one of practicality. “How is she even going to talk to Dulce?”
“Lee and Juan are putting together a special vest. One that’s self-contained.”
“Really.” Chris rolled his eyes. “This, from the guys who have to test everything a thousand times?”
“They’re still going to test it… but it will have to be done on the way down.”
“How the hell are they going to do that?”
Alison bit her lip. “Juan is going with her.”
“What?!”
“He’s going with her. He’s going to make sure the vest works. Hopefully, they won’t be gone long.”