The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (beach read .TXT) 📕

BEHEMOTH

DRY-DOCK

SEA TITAN STN 1

UFN

“She’s in dry dock for repairs, Ben. The Behemoth left Valencia almost three days ago and parked at Sea Titan’s largest maintenance station two hours later. UFN means until further notice.”

“I know what it means.” Ben wanted to punch the screen for its lies, or maybe Dylan for his pedantic tone. The ONR’s program couldn’t be right. He lifted his chin. “There’s no sign of her at the dock.”

“It’s a covered facility.”

“Sure, but look.” Ben traced a strip of empty concrete visible beside the covered dry dock with his pinky, careful not to touch the screen lest he break Dylan’s rules. “No people. If Sea Titan’s biggest ship is there, where are all the workers?”

“Thin.”

“I know what I saw, and you don’t load a ship with cargo if she’s headed for dry dock.”

Dylan threw his hands in the air, spinning his chair away from the screen. “You’re hopeless.”

“No arguments there. Humor me and keep looking.”

“All right.” The geek spun himself back to the keyboard. “As a matter of fact, I did. I knew you’d keep harping after I showed you the truth. Take a look.” He scrolled the map to a cluster of ships leaving the Strait of Gibraltar. A packet of text followed each vessel. “These are cargo haulers, easy to find because they’re running with their transponders on, as required by law. Your missing plague ship might”—he raised a finger—“might falsely report shutting down in dry dock and then hide from the online tracking apps by running with her transponder off. Smugglers do it all the time.”

“So how do we find her?”

“We use this very program. I told you, the ONR uses alternative tracking methods. Real-time satellite imagery matching, electromagnetic shadow hunting—highly classified stuff. For instance, check out this smuggler.” Dylan zeroed in on a small vessel, highlighted by a red triangle. The packet of text following the boat began with its name—Lazy Ostrich.

Ben huffed. “I know that guy.”

“Then you should probably tell him he’s not as sneaky as he thinks. Your friend is running dark, without a transponder. The ONR is still able to see and identify him and record his movements. Not that they care. His operation is too small. He’s no threat to the United States.”

Ben took note. If he lived long enough, he’d have to send a word of warning to Basile.

“Now,” Dylan said, zooming out to the whole Atlantic. Thousands of ships tracked across the display. “The ONR system tracks and identifies and flags false reports. If the Behemoth skirted the dry dock and headed into the Atlantic, I’d be able to find it with a simple search.” To demonstrate, he typed the name into the program’s search bar, omitting dry-dock results, and hit enter.

“Nothing,” Ben said, frowning at the red Zero hits result.

“Face it, Ben. There’s no plague ship. Either you’ve turned traitor and you’re trying to feed us bad intel again, or you’ve been played—and played hard. Admit defeat and give yourself some peace before you kick off into the great beyond.”

Ignoring Dylan’s boundaries, Ben pushed him aside and tried the search himself.

“Hey!”

The ONR system spat out the same result. Ben rolled his chair away again, shaking his head. “It can’t be. Jupiter must’ve hacked the Navy’s classified server to digitally hide the ship. There’s no other explanation.”

“Spoken like a true crazy man,” Dylan said, cleaning his keyboard with another wipe.

The insult of the action got to Ben more than Dylan’s harsh words. His grip tightened on the SIG. “Your self-assurance is getting on my nerves, kid. Things aren’t always so clear cut. For instance, not too long ago, I thought you were the traitor. The remote detonator I found at the cottage made me think you’d murdered Giselle.”

The geek, oblivious, kept scrubbing his equipment. “Yeah. Don’t remind me. And thanks for passing that little theory to Hale. Even with intelligence coming from a discredited source like you, the Company still had to follow up. Try to wrap your brain around the humiliation of having all your clearances suspended—called back to the States in the middle of an assignment.” Dylan crumpled up his wipe and let out a caustic laugh. “You did that to me. But the investigation cleared me. You, my former friend, were given a severance—a final judgment.”

“So you’re not interested in my side?”

“I don’t need to be. That’s what a judgment means, Ben. No more questions. No more quibbling. The investigation and trial are over, leaving nothing but the binary. A one or a zero. Either you’re innocent or you’re guilty.” Dylan, seeming to forget his fear of Ben or his disease, rolled close enough to poke him in the chest. “And you’ve been found guilty.”

64

“Are we done?” Dylan thrust a hand toward his obliterated foyer. “Because I have a contractor to call, and you’ve run out of arguments.”

“No I haven’t.”

The geek narrowed his eyes.

Ben set the thumb drive he’d taken from the dockmaster’s office on the desk next to the keyboard.

“What’s this?”

“Evidence. Maybe.” Ben told him where the drive had come from. When Dylan balked, claiming it might have a virus, Ben shook his head. “No virus. Tess already opened it once.”

“And? What’d you find?”

“Nothing. It’s empty.”

The kid rolled his eyes.

Ben held up a hand. “But if it contains hidden files, I’ll bet you can find them. In the worst case, you prove it’s really empty and ridicule me some more.”

Dylan wiped the drive down and held it between his fingers, turning it back and forth. “No. In the worst case, I trigger a virus Tess didn’t find and the thing floods my system, wiping out the electricity for the entire eastern seaboard.”

“Why would a virus in your system wipe out the electricity for the eastern seaboard?”

The geek looked at him sideways. “No reason. Forget I said that.” He set to work at his keyboard. “Hang on, I’ll need to partition off a safe space on my system to check your drive.”

While he