Free Operation Sea Ghost by Mack Maloney

was crazier than usual.
    The agent went on. “Now, this thing was hatched strictly by the Bangkok office. No one in the White House or the Pentagon has any idea the operation was going on. The cruiser we used is assigned to us for special ops, and ninety-nine percent of its crew didn’t have a clue what was up, either. But what was supposed to be a mission to avoid embarrassment for the Agency has now become an incident that could draw huge negative publicity for everyone involved. Just because no one ever counted on the ship being seized by real pirates…”
    Finally the team burst out laughing—they couldn’t help it. Lamebrained didn’t come close to describing the scheme.
    But the briefer surprised them by saying: “Let me finish, because it gets worse. The people in charge were so sure this would work, they’d prepared a press release to be sent out once the ‘pirate ship’ was sunk.
    “Now, thank God the people on the Navy ship were smart enough not to issue it—but some dumb-ass in our Bangkok field office discovered his computer might have been hacked and now this press release might be out there, somewhere, too. At any moment, the world might hear the U.S. Navy sank a pirate ship off the coast of Sumatra, rescuing its Vietnamese crew in the process. The press release even says something like the ‘first full-scale U.S. Navy sea battle with pirates since the 1800s.’ But when it gets out that there was no battle, no heroes, no pirate ship sunk … it will be very bad for all involved.”
    There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
    “So, why are you telling us this?” Nolan finally asked him.
    The agent wiped some sweat from his forehead; he seemed a little out of his element here.
    “Isn’t it obvious?” he replied. “You’re the Pirate Hunters. We want you to hunt down these pirates and get this Z-box back, before they realize what they have.”
    “And what do they have exactly?” Nolan asked; it was the question on everyone’s mind. “What’s in the box?”
    But the agent shook his head gravely. “I can’t tell you,” he replied. “In our own lingo, the box, and what it was doing on that plane that night, has been described to me as both ‘catastrophically compromising’ and ‘potentially horrific and beyond any plausible deniability.’ If you speak the language, you know what all that means. But what’s inside is no concern of yours. It could be feathers and popcorn for all you care. Just get it back and we’ll pay you handsomely.”
    “OK—then can you define ‘handsomely?’” Gunner asked.
    “How’s a hundred million sound?” the agent replied.
    The team gasped.
    “A hundred million dollars ?” Gunner whispered.
    The agent nodded. “You heard right … that’s how bad we want this thing back.”
    The team was stunned into silence. It was an enormous figure.
    “And that’s tax-free,” the agent went on. “But, there are guidelines you must follow or there will be no payment.”
    “I knew there’d be a catch,” Twitch muttered, speaking for the first time. “There’s always a catch.…”
    “Well, this is a big one,” the agent told them. “Like I said, no one in the Pentagon or in the White House is aware this Z-box has been found—and it must stay that way. This means no help can be asked of any U.S. military units or any other U.S. government agency in looking for this thing. None. If word of this leaks out from you guys, the whole thing goes down the drain—and I don’t care if your fingers are three inches away from grabbing the box. The lid on this has to be sealed tight and you should all go down fighting before anyone gets a peep out of you.”
    Twitch raised his hand—his way of asking if he could ask a question.
    “Why doesn’t the Agency just go after this thing itself? You got a worldwide network; you got spies, informants, satellites. It seems you could find it quicker than us or anyone else.”
    Once again, the agent was shaking his