The helmsman on the yacht jerked the wheel as if to follow, then corrected his course when he realized they were going too fast to stay on the Pinguin’s tail. He’d pass the freighter down her starboard side and using his superior speed reach the stern abreast of his target.

“Helm,” Juan said calmly, “on my mark I want bow thrusters to starboard at full power and give me right full rudder. Increase speed to forty knots.” Juan clicked through camera angles until he caught a glimpse of the Pinguin. He had to make sure she didn’t get crushed as he made his turn. He expertly judged speeds and angles, knowing he was risking lives to preserve his ship’s secrets. The yacht was almost in position, the Pinguin almost out of danger, but time had run out.

“Mark.”

With just the click of a few keys and a subtle twist of a joystick, the eleven-thousand-ton ship did something no other vessel its size was capable of. The athwartship thrusters came to life, forcing the Oregon’s bow laterally through the water, fighting the inertia of her own speed and the increased thrust of her magnetohydrodynamic engines as they ramped up even faster.

One second the yacht and the freighter were running parallel if opposite courses, and the next the Oregon had turned forty-five degrees and rather than racing down her long flank, the yacht was headed directly for her bow at a combined closing speed of sixty knots. Like a whale protecting its young, Juan had put his ship between the yacht and the charter boat. He glanced at the screen showing the Pinguin. The Oregon had turned just past her, cutting through her wake and sending her bobbing on the rollers peeling off his ship.

As if racing to cross train tracks ahead of a locomotive, the yacht’s driver tried to beat the surging bow of the Oregon by turning to port and outrunning what he believed to be a relatively slow ship. Had he seen the boil of water erupting under her fantail he would have cut his own engines and prayed he survived the impact with her hull.

The vectors in place were a matter of simple mathematics. The Oregon continued her turn, cutting across the bow of the yacht even as it desperately tried to turn a tighter circle than the freighter.

At the last moment one of the gunmen on the yacht lunged forward to yank back the throttles but the gesture was too little too late.