Of course, the paper drums, like the ship’s rough façade, was just that: a façade. The rolls were only a foot thick and covered over the top of the hold like the false bottom of a spy’s briefcase and weighed less than a thousand pounds.

He climbed up the ship’s gangplank and looked aft, as was his ritual. The ship normally flew the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one more ruse on top of all the others, and it was his tradition to give it the one-fingered salute. To make their stay here less problematic, the Oregon carried Panamanian registry, and that nation’s quartered and starred white, blue, and red standard hung from the jackstaff.

The interior of the ship’s superstructure matched that of her exterior, with gloomy passages, peeling paint, and enough dust to fill a child’s sandbox. The floors were mostly bare metal or cheap vinyl tiles. Only the captain’s cabin had carpet, but this was an indoor/outdoor variety that was about as plush as burlap. Secreted throughout the accommodations block were doors that led to the hidden and much more opulent spaces where the crew actually lived and worked.

Juan went to one such door, passing through the grease-laden galley and seedy mess area. The secret door opened using a retinal scanner hidden in the belly button of a bikini-clad beauty adorning a travel poster plastered to the wall with other cheap decorations that would be seen to amuse a crew of misogynist seamen.

As the door slid open seamlessly, Juan entered the luxurious interior of the Oregon proper. Here, the carpets were plush, the lighting discreet and pleasing, and the artwork the labor of some of the world’s masters. This was the secret her outer disguises masked—this, and the fact that the ship was armed to the teeth.

She sported launchers for surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, as well as 20mm Gatling guns and a monstrous 120mm cannon hidden in the bow that could be deployed through clamshell-type doors. Of the dozen old oil drums sitting on the deck, six held remotely controlled .30 caliber machine guns that were operated from the Oregon’s high-tech op center. These were used to repel pirates, and more than a few off the Somali coast had felt their sting.

The Oregon also possessed a sophisticated suite of sensors that made her optimal for intelligence-gathering operations in places the United States could not send in her own spy ships. They’d lingered near any number of adversarial nations, such as Iran and Libya before its fall, gathering signal intelligence that satellites couldn’t detect. One recent mission had them posted off the coast of North Korea, armed with an experimental high-energy laser “loaned” to them by Sandia National Laboratories. The result had been the spectacular though inexplicable, at least to them, failure of that reclusive regime’s test launch of its Unha-3 long-range missile.