“Boo,” he said at the image on the large, flat-panel display that dominated the front of the room known as the Operations Center.

The op center was the high-tech brains of the vessel, a low-ceilinged space that glowed faintly blue from the countless computer screens. The floors were covered in antiskid, antistatic rubber, and the consoles were done in smoky grays and black. The effect, as was the intention, was a darker version of the bridge of television’s star-ship Enterprise. The two seats directly in front of the main display panel were the ship’s helm and weapons-control station. Ringing the room were workstations for radio, radar, sonar, engineering, and damage control.

In the middle sat what was known as the Kirk Chair. From it, Cabrillo had an unobstructed view of everything taking place around him, and from the computer built into the arm of the well-padded seat he could take control of any function aboard his ship.

“You shouldn’t have let them do that,” admonished Max Hanley, the president of the Corporation. Cabrillo held the title of chairman. “What if Mohammad Didi’s boys came back when the secret door was open?”

“Max, you worry like my grandmother. We would have retaken the Oregon from them and gone to plan B.”

“Which is?”

“I’d tell you as soon as I came up with it.” Juan stood and stretched his arms over his head.

He was solidly built, topping out near six feet, with a strong, weathered face and startlingly blue eyes. He kept his hair in a long crew cut. An upbringing on the beaches of southern California and a lifetime of swimming had bleached it white blond. Though he was on the other side of forty, it was still thick and stiff.

There was a compelling aura about Cabrillo that people picked up almost immediately but could never really put their fingers on. He didn’t have the polish of a corporate heavy hitter or the rigidity of a career soldier. It was more a sense that he knew what he wanted out of life and made certain he got it every day. That, and he possessed a wellspring of confidence that knew no bottom—a confidence earned over a lifetime of achievement.

Max Hanley, on the other hand, was in his early sixties and a veteran of two tours in Vietnam. He was shorter than Cabrillo, with a bright, florid face and a halo of ginger curls in the shape of a horseshoe around his balding head. He could stand to lose a few pounds, something Juan delighted in teasing him about, but Max was rock solid in every sense of the word.

The Corporation had been Cabrillo’s brainchild, but it was Max’s steady hand that made it such a success. He managed the day-today affairs of the multimillion-dollar company and also acted as the Oregon’s chief engineer. If any man loved the ship more than Juan, it was Max Hanley.

Despite the seven heavily armed pirates roaming the vessel and the twenty-two crew members held “captive” in the mess hall, there was no concern in the op center, especially on Cabrillo’s part.

This operation had been planned with meticulous attention to detail. When the pirates had first come aboard—arguably, the most critical moment, because no one knew how they were going to treat the crew—snipers positioned in the bows had held all seven Somalis in their sights. Also, the deck crew wore micro-thin body armor, which was still under development in Germany for NATO.

There were pinhole cameras and listening devices secreted in every hallway and room in the “public” parts of the ship, so the gunmen were observed at all times. Wherever they went, at least two members of the Corporation shadowed them from inside the Oregon ’s hidden compartments, ready to react to any situation.

The old freighter was really two ships in one. On the outside, she was little more than a derelict trying to stay one step ahead of the breaker’s yard. However, that was all a façade to deflect her true nature from customs inspectors, harbor pilots, and anyone else who happened to find themselves aboard her. Her state of dilapidation was meant to make anyone seeing the Oregon immediately forget her.

The rust streaks were painted on, the debris cluttering her deck was placed there intentionally. The wheelhouse and cabins in the superstructure were nothing more than stage sets. The pirate currently manning the helm had zero control over the ship. The helmsman in the Operations Center was fed data from the wheel through the computer system, and he made the appropriate course corrections.

All this was a shell over perhaps the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering ship in the world. She bristled with hidden weapons, and had an electronics suite to rival any Aegis-class destroyer. Her hull was armored enough to repel most low-tech weapons used by terrorists, such as rocket-propelled grenades. She carried two minisubs that could be deployed through special doors along her keel, and a McDonnell Douglas MD-520N helicopter in her rear hold, hidden by a wall made to look like stacked containers.

As for the crew’s accommodations, they rivaled the grandest rooms on a luxury cruise ship. The men and women of the Corporation risked their lives every day, so Juan wanted to ensure they were as comfortable as possible.

“Where’s our guest?” Max asked.

“Chatting up Julia again.”

“Think it’s the fact she’s a doctor or a looker?”

“Colonel Giuseppe Farina, as his name implies, is Italian. And I happen to know he considers himself the best, so he is after her because she is female. Linda Ross and all the other women have blown him off enough since he first came aboard. Our good Dr. Huxley is the last one left, and since she can’t leave medical in case there’s an emergency Colonel Farina has a captive audience.”

“Damned waste to have an observer with us in the first place,” Max said.

“You go with the deal you’ve got, not the one you want,” Juan pontificated. “The powers that be don’t want anything to go wrong during the trial once they get their hands on Didi. Farina’s here to make sure we follow by the engagement parameters they set out for us.”

A sour look crossed Max’s pug face. “Fighting terrorists using the Marquis of Queensbury rules? Ridiculous.”

“It isn’t so bad. I’ve known ’Seppe for fifteen years. He’s all right. With no way to extradite Didi through legal channels, because Somalia doesn’t have a functioning court system—”

“Or anything else.”

Juan ignored the interruption. “We offered an alternative. The price we pay is ’Seppe’s presence until we get Didi into international waters and the U.S. Navy takes him off our hands. All Didi has to do is set foot on this ship and we’ve got this in the bag.”

Max nodded reluctantly. “And we’ve loaded what looks like enough explosives aboard so he’ll want to see it for himself.”

“Exactly. The right bait for the right vermin.”

The Corporation had taken on what was an unusual job for them. They typically worked for the government, tackling operations deemed too risky for American soldiers or members of the intelligence community, on a strictly cash-only basis. This time they were working through the CIA to help the World Court bring Mohammad Didi to justice. U.S. authorities wanted Didi sent straight to Guantánamo, but a deal was hashed out with America’s allies that he be tried in Europe, provided he could be captured in a manner that didn’t include rendition.

Langston Overholt, the Corporation’s primary contact in the CIA, had approached his protégé, Juan Cabrillo, with the difficult task of grabbing Didi in such a way that it couldn’t be construed as kidnapping. True to form, Cabrillo and his people had come up with their plan within twenty-four hours while everyone else involved had been scratching their heads for months.

Juan glanced at the chronometer set in one corner of the main view screen. He checked the ship’s speed and heading and calculated they wouldn’t reach the coast until dawn. “Care to join me for dinner? Lobster Thermidor, I think.”