Which was true. The Corporation had never been in better financial shape. Juan’s gamble at forming his own private security and surveillance outfit had surpassed even his most optimistic estimates, but that also meant there was a downside. The need for such organizations in the post–Cold War world was a sobering fact of life in the twenty-first century. He’d known that without the polarizing effects of two dominant superpowers, regional flare-ups and terrorism would proliferate all over the globe. Being in a position to make a profit from conflicts, provided they had a say in which side they chose to help, was both a blessing and a curse that wracked Cabrillo in the sleepless hours of the night.

“Blame my grandmother,” Juan said. “She could stretch a dollar for a mile and have change left over. I used to hate going to her house because she always bought stale bread to save a couple of cents. She’d toast it, but you could tell, and toasted bologna sandwiches are about as disgusting as you can get.”

“Okay, to honor your grandmother, I’ll tell Maurice to stick with Limoges this time,” Max said, and sauntered back to his station.

Hali Kasim approached Juan carrying a flatscreen clipboard. A frown turned down the corners of his mouth and made his gunslinger mustache droop.

“Chairman, the Sniffer caught this a couple minutes ago.” The Sniffer was their name for the dedicated surveillance array that swept the electronic spectrum for miles around the ship. It was able to siphon in everything from regular radio broadcasts to encrypted cell phones. The ship’s supercomputer sifted through the minutia every half second, trying to detect a grain of intelligence wheat in all that chaff. “Computer just broke the code. I’d call it high-end civilian or mid-level military encryption.”

“What’s the source?” Juan asked, taking the glowing clipboard from his communications expert.

“Satellite phone broadcasting from forty thousand feet.”

“That means either a military aircraft or an executive plane,” Juan said. “Commercial jetliners rarely fly above thirty-eight thousand.”

“That’s what I think, too. Sorry, we caught just the beginning of the conversation. Sniffer went down the same time as the radar and by the time it was back up the plane was out of range.”

Juan read the single line aloud. “…not quite so soon. We’ll have Merrick at the Devil’s Oasis by four A.M.” He read it again silently and looked at Hali, his face a mask. “Doesn’t mean much to me.”

“I don’t know what the Devil’s Oasis is, but when you were on the dock unloading the weapons Sky News broke the story that Geoffrey Merrick was kidnapped along with an associate from his company’s headquarters in Geneva. Working backward given the information provided by the wire services, a fast executive jet would put Merrick and his kidnappers right over our heads at the time we intercepted this call.”

“I assume we’re talking about the same Geoffrey Merrick who runs Merrick/Singer?” Cabrillo asked.

“The billionaire whose inventions in the field of clean coal have opened up a world of possibilities for the industry and made him one of the most hated men on the planet by environmental groups because they still think coal’s too dirty.”