Linda rolled onto her back and smiled into the face of the Zodiac driver. “Jesus, thanks. For a second there I thought I was…”
“For a second there you were.”
“The other guard?” Linda asked.
“Taken care of.”
“Okay, we only have another minute or two before these guys are going to be missed.” Linda removed her combat harness as she spoke. She unclipped the suspenders from the belt, then reclipped them in a way to create an eight-foot-long rope of sorts. “Team two, bring the body out here.”
“Roger.”
“Hand me your harness.” Linda worked this belt, too, doubling the length of her safety line.
She threaded an arm through a loop she had made, then secured a night vision monocle over her eyes. She averted her face from the perimeter floodlights to preserve her vision.
“Belay me,” Linda ordered once the other team arrived and lowered the dead guard to the deck. She noted two things. One was that someone had thought to close up his trousers and the other was that his neck was at an oblique angle to his body.
She crawled toward the elongated hole. Nikoli’s knife had sliced next to a seam, the area of maximum tension, which was why it had torn open so easily. Originally she had planned to burn a hole in the fabric to dispose of the bodies, hoping the other guards would assume a hastily tossed cigarette was at fault. But this gash would serve her purpose just as well. The others aboard the
She lowered her head into the hold and snapped on a tiny flashlight.
Her first concern was Nikoli. Had he landed in such a way as to make his bullet wound noticeable, their covert inspection would be blown. Linda peered downward. Because of the two-dimensional quality of the low-light optics, she didn’t experience the sense of vertigo she expected. Directly below her was a ship, a small tanker with its superstructure at the stern. She peered aft, seeing that they had cut off the ship’s funnel and masts to make it fit under the tarpaulins. From this vantage she saw nothing to identify the vessel, no name or distinctive characteristics. But now they had their proof that they were dealing with hijackers as well as pirates.
She switched her goggles from low-light to infrared. Her vision went black with one glowing exception. A smear of light appeared at the ship’s rail and continued down to the bottom of the hold where she saw a growing pool of bright color. She changed back to the night optics and trained her flashlight on the spot. It appeared that Nikoli had hit the freighter’s rail when he fell, blood that had shown up as warmth on IR looked black now, and his body lay on the lowest deck, covered in gore. She doubted very much that anyone but a trained pathologist would notice the bullet wound amid the carnage the fall had caused.
Satisfied, Linda called for her men to drag her back.
“There’s a tanker in the hold. They hacked off her funnel to make her fit. I put her length around four hundred feet.”
“Is there any way you can get her name?” Max asked from the op center.
“Negative. We have to clear out. Those guards are due back from their patrol about now.”
“Okay. We’ll be ready for you.”
At a crouch the team ran back to where they had secured the Zodiac and climbed down the rope. The driver started the electric motor and was ready when the sniper released the rope. The inflatable smashed into the sea and immediately pulled away from the
Fifteen minutes later they approached the
Max Hanley was there to greet them. He handed his cell phone to Linda.
She peeled her watch cap from her head. “Ross here.”
“Linda, it’s Juan. What did you find?”
“She’s hauling a midsized product tanker, Chairman. I couldn’t tell her name.”
“Any sign of the crew?”
“No, sir. And since the hold was completely dark, my bet is they’re either dead or on one of the tugboats.”
Neither needed to say that the second option wasn’t likely.
“Okay, great job to all of you,” Cabrillo said. “Put yourself down for an extra ration of grog.”
“Actually, I’m going to avail myself of a couple shots of the Louis XIII brandy you keep in your cabin.”
“That is to be enjoyed in a warm snifter, not shot down like cheap tequila.”
“I’ll warm the shot glass,” Linda teased. “Here’s Max.” She handed back the phone and left the garage for a long shower, and yes, a snifter or two of Juan’s fifteen-hundred-dollar cognac.
“So what do you want us to do now?” Hanley asked.
“According to what Murph told me, the
“And if she changes course and heads someplace else?”
“Stay with her.”
“You realize she’s making about three knots. We could be shadowing her for a couple of weeks before she makes landfall.”
“I know. Can’t be helped, old boy. Think of yourself as one of the cops following OJ on his low-speed chase along the L.A. freeways.”
“Low speed? Hell, lobsters migrate faster than that damn drydock.” Max turned serious. “You do remember that the last ship taken from your Japanese friend’s fleet was a tanker. The, ah…”
“Right. Stands to reason that’s her in the
“Oh, I’m certain it’s the
Maus
Toya
“Sounds reasonable,” Max agreed. “We’ll play tortoise to their snail and see where this chase takes us.”
“I’m handing the phone over to Eddie. He has a list of things he’s going to need for his insertion into China. You can send someone to act as courier when you pass through the Korea Strait. The Robinson has more than enough range to make it to Pusan. From there, the courier can take a commercial flight to Singapore and meet up with Eddie at the airport.”
“Hold on, let me get a pen. And some paper. And my reading glasses.”
Five hundred miles north of where the
Maus, was making six knots despite the fact that the ship hidden inside her hold was considerably larger than the tanker Linda had seen.
The seas were building around the vessels, high, rolling waves that alternately tightened and slackened the long towlines so one moment they were submerged and the next they were as taut as steel bars, bursting with water wrung out by tension. The tugs turned into the seas, shouldering aside the waves as they plowed northward, meeting the ocean as a ship should, nimble and responsive to her vagaries. The drydock played no such game. She took the waves square into her bow so explosions of white froth were flung almost to her top deck. Then she would throw off the water, slowly, ponderously, as though the sea was merely a distraction.
Like the
Cabrillo was already thinking ahead. He didn’t know many people in the cold water port city of Vladivostok, but he still had contacts in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In fact, several of his old Cold War foes worked in private security for the new-generation capitalist oligarchs, and more than a few were wealthy oligarchs themselves.
“So I’m headed to Moscow,” Juan said.
“Not so fast, Chairman,” Mark countered. “You might end up there, but there could be another way.”
“I’m listening.”
“I thought about how hard it would be to track down forty Russian gangsters and what leverage we could use to get them to talk. Mike Halbert and I talked about it at length, and we both came to the conclusion that the Russians probably don’t have a clue what these companies do. It’s likely that whoever set up D Commercial Advisors and Ajax Trading and the others paid the Russians a fee to use their names, and they know nothing beyond that.”