“I wonder what she was carrying.” Jimenez mused. “If I remember my salvage law, whoever finds her gets to keep not only the ship but her cargo.”

“And when did you study salvage law?” Espinoza asked sarcastically.

“Okay. I saw something on TV about it.”

“Tuck your larcenous hands back in your pockets. We’re soldiers, not scrap dealers. More than likely, this heap will drift off again at the next high tide or when another storm brews up.”

“Think we should pop some more holes in her to make sure she sinks for real this time?”

Espinoza considered Lugones’s question. “You know what? No. Let her keep wandering. If she’s survived this long, more power to her.”

A DECK BELOW WHERE the three men stood, Juan Cabrillo relaxed back into his chair. He hadn’t thought the Argentine Major, whose face he was beginning to see in his dreams, had a romantic side. That had been his one main concern—that they would use the Oregon for target practice. These soldiers were once boys who probably liked to blow stuff up. The only difference is, now they had plastique explosives rather than firecrackers. The crew had defeated the thermal imaging by cutting the heat to the “public” parts of the ship, lowering the temperature in the rest, and letting the flooded ballast tanks shield them from the scan. The trick with the flooded staircase had been accomplished by simply closing the bottom hatch and pumping in some bilgewater.

Cabrillo looked over at Max Hanley, who was shaking his head. “What?” he said. “I told you I could hide the ship right on their doorstep.”

“This doesn’t count,” Max groused.

“The more outrageous the lie, the more easily it’s accepted. By rights, they should be suspicious as hell, and look at them. They called off the search after ten minutes, and our good Major is practically in tears.”

“I’ll give you this, Juan. You are one crafty SOB. So now what? You got us here. What’s your plan?”

“To be honest, I hadn’t thought much past this point. You did notice the piece of cargo under the tarp on the second boat?” The outside cameras had been watching the soldiers since the first group arrived at sunup.

“Seems about the right size and shape for a side-scan sonar probe.”

“Means they’re going to be looking for the Chinese wreck.”

“I assume we’re going to beat them to it?”

“See, the plan reveals itself,” Cabrillo said with the self-satisfied grin of a kid pulling one over on his parent. He really hadn’t thought much beyond getting the Oregon into position.

Max nodded toward the image of the soldiers milling around near the bow. “We’ll need to wait until that lot sods off before we can empty enough ballast to open the moon-pool doors.”