Chapter 51
The journey north was a long one; even at eleven knots it took almost eight hours.
That left plenty of time for thinking, resting, and talking.
With the cargo compartment empty, there was plenty of room to stretch out.
Kurt could even stand without banging his noggin on the overhead, something that was rare even in the largest of NUMA submersibles.
With Joe staying close to Pru for personal and professional reasons, Kurt ended up discussing Ahab with Rand, hoping to tease out what he might have been up to. He figured the best way to do that was to go back to the moment Ahab had disappeared.
“What happened after you rescued Ahab in this thing?”
“He was all shot up,” Rand said. “He needed doctors and a place where the Chinese wouldn’t look for him. I took him to Taiwan like I told you. I had contacts there. They found a hospital that would take him, no questions asked.”
“I’m sure he appreciated that,” Kurt said. “How long did he stay there?”
“A month or so,” Rand said. “They had to patch him up. Get the toxins out of his system. I took him back to Siabat when he was ready. First thing he did was ask me to bring him some equipment.”
“By that you mean weapons,” Kurt assumed.
“No,” Rand said. “We don’t trade in weapons.
He wanted tech stuff from me. Parts and machinery.
Avionics gear. Computers. I must have made a dozen trips to the island hauling that stuff.
The weirdest thing I brought him was a set of mirrors that came from this telescope-manufacturing company.
They weighed a hundred pounds each. Ahab was insanely specific about how they were to be shipped and stored.
He did not want them getting damaged or warped. ”
Kurt could see the picture forming. Ahab had an aircraft; he had the waveguide and the other important parts of the laser; he had technical information and design specs from Ridley; and now he had a pair of high-precision mirrors cast by some specialty optics company. He was building his own laser. But why?
“Who’s he working with?” Kurt asked. “Most of his old crew are dead or in prison.”
“He’s gotten friendly with the Taiwanese,” Rand said. “He linked up with them after his stay there. By the way they talk and all their tattoos, I’d say they’re the Free Chinese types, the ones who intend to fight China to the death if they ever try to take over the island.”
“You’ve seen these new friends personally?”
Rand nodded. “I’ve brought some of them over. Hard men. One of them was silent for eight solid hours. Made me really uncomfortable.”
“What does Ahab want from these guys?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he figures he owes them. Or maybe he hates the Chinese Communists as much as they do now.”
Kurt considered the information. If there was any country in the world that might pay more for the laser system than Russia or China, it would be Taiwan.
A hundred miles of water was all that separated them from an angry neighbor that wanted to conquer and control them.
An angry neighbor with the world’s largest army, a growing navy, and a lethal air force with thousands of combat aircraft and ten thousand cruise missiles in their arsenal.
Taiwan was also a technologically advanced country, one filled with scientists and engineers who could understand and reverse engineer what the Americans had done with the laser, allowing them to build copies on their own.
If Kurt understood it right, the Pentagon figured a fleet of thirty to fifty EAGL-equipped aircraft would be enough to put an impenetrable shield around the United States.
A handful of such planes with overlapping fields of fire would make Taiwan untouchable.
From high above the island, they could wipe out the Chinese air force as its jets took to the sky.
They could fill the Taiwan Strait with spent and shattered cruise missiles.
The U.S. couldn’t sell a weapon like that to Taiwan without starting World War III, but it might be worth it for the Taiwanese government to steal the design, even if it meant the loss of all future support of the United States.
The idea almost made sense. But something was off.
To begin with, the notion of Ahab playing the white knight to the people of Taiwan didn’t quite fit. Helping others was not his way. Using them for his own ends was more on-brand.
And if Ahab was working for Taiwan, he wouldn’t have risked all of the theatrics in the Arctic.
He would have simply taken the laser, blown up the plane that carried it, and hightailed it back to Taipei.
He’d also be living in unrivaled luxury in the hills around the capital, not holed up on a barren island that wasn’t even Taiwanese property.
There was something more going on, but try as he might, Kurt couldn’t decipher the riddle. Ahab’s plan remained an enigma. But knowing the man’s desire for revenge, Kurt didn’t doubt that the end result would be carnage on some massive scale.
A voice from the forward part of the compartment broke his train of thought.
“We’re coming up on the island now,” Pru announced. “I’ll raise the mast in a few minutes so we can all take a look.”