Skeleton Coast

  “Those are the same two points my boss threw at me when I brought this to him. And to that I said: If I was able to figure all this out, then someone else could, too, and a billion dollars’ worth of diamonds could be sitting a couple miles offshore where anyone with scuba tanks and a flashlight could find them.”

  “To which he said?”

  “ ‘I’ll give you a week and Tony Reardon to help you. And no matter what, destroy all the evidence you’ve gathered.’ ”

  “That isn’t anywhere near enough time to check an area that must be a couple hundred square miles,” Juan said. “To do it properly you’d need a ship able to tow a side-scan sonar unit as well as metal detection gear. And even that isn’t guaranteed.”

  Sloane shrugged. “They didn’t put much credence in my idea. Giving me a week, a little money, and Tony was more than I could hope and why I wanted to tap local sources for information.”

  “I’m curious—why did you take this to your superiors? Why not just search for the ship yourself and keep the diamonds if you found them?”

  Her mouth turned downward in a deep frown as if he’d just insulted her, which he had. “Captain, the thought never crossed my mind. Those diamonds were mined at a DeBeers facility and rightfully belong to the company. I would no more keep them for myself than I would walk into the vault and load my pockets with loose stones.”

  “I’m sorry I said that.” Juan was charmed by her integrity. “That was way out of line.”

  Sloane said, “Thank you. Apology accepted. Now that I’ve told you the truth, will you help? I can’t promise you anything but I’m sure the company will reimburse you for your time if we do find the Rove. It’s only a couple hours of your time to check the coordinates Papa Heinrick gave me.”

  Juan said nothing for a moment, his blue eyes cast toward the ceiling as he thought through his next moves. He suddenly got to his feet and started for the door. “Would you excuse me a moment,” he said to Sloane, then addressed the hidden microphones. “Max, meet me at my cabin.” He meant the faux cabin they used for Customs inspectors. It was the midway point between the elevator up from the op center and the mess hall.

  Hanley was waiting outside the filthy cabin when Juan rounded the corner. He was leaning against a bulkhead tapping his pipe stem against his teeth, a sure sign something was on his mind. He straightened when the Chairman approached. Even with the door closed Juan’s nose wrinkled at the stale smoke smell emanating from the cabin.

  “What do you think?” Juan asked without preamble.

  “I think we need to stop messing around and get to Cape Town to pick up the equipment we’re going to need if we want to rescue Merrick before he dies of old age.”

  “Besides that.”

  “The whole thing sounds like a crock to me.”

  “I’d agree totally if we hadn’t seen the attack on the Pinguin for ourselves.” Juan paused, marshaling his thoughts.

  “You think we’ve stumbled onto something?” Max asked to prod his friend.

  “Guys on million-dollar yachts don’t go blasting away at someone without a damned good reason. In this case, I believe they’re protecting something. Sloane says no one knew what vessel they were looking for so it’s possible they’re guarding something other than a purported treasure ship.”

  “You don’t seriously believe in Papa Heinrick’s giant metal snakes?”

  “Max, there’s something here. I can feel it.” Juan turned to his friend, catching his eye so there would be no misunderstanding. “Do you remember what I told you just before we took on those two guys from NUMA headed for Hong Kong harbor?”

  “They were checking out the old SS United States. That was the mission you lost your leg,” Max said, his voice matching Cabrillo’s introspective tone.

  Juan unconsciously shifted, placing his weight on the limb made of carbon fiber and titanium. “The mission that cost me my leg,” he echoed.

  Max stuck his pipe in his mouth. “It’s been a couple of years but I believe your exact words were ‘Max, I hate to quote an overused cliché, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ ”

  Juan didn’t blink and held Hanley’s appraising stare. “Max, I’ve got the same damn feeling.”

  Max held the gaze a second longer, and then nodded. A decade together had taught him to trust the chairman no matter how irrational the request and no matter how long the odds. “What’s your play?”

  “I don’t want to delay the Oregon any more than we already have. As soon as I’m away make for Cape Town and pick up the equipment we need. But on the way I want you to send up George to have a look where the snakes were spotted.” George Adams was the pilot of the Robinson R44 Clipper helicopter secreted inside one of the holds. “I’ll get the coordinates from Sloane.”

  “You’re headed for Walvis Bay?”

  “I want to talk to Papa Heinrick for myself and also to Sloane’s guide and her chopper jockey. I’ll take one of the lifeboats off the topside davits so Sloane won’t know about the boat garage or anything else.” Though they looked as dilapidated as the rest of the Oregon, the two lifeboats were as high-tech as their mother ship. If they had the range Juan would feel more than comfortable crossing the Atlantic during hurricane season in one of them.

  He continued. “This shouldn’t take more than a day or two. I’ll link back up with the Oregon when you return to Namibia. That reminds me, I’ve been in the gym for the past hour and haven’t been updated. What’s the latest?”

  Max crossed his arms. “Tiny Gunderson’s rented us a suitable plane, so that’s taken care of. As you know, the ATVs are waiting for us at Duncan Dock in Cape Town and Murph’s got a librarian in Berlin pulling out everything they have about the Devil’s Oasis or, as we now know, the Oase des Teufels.”

  Their break at finding the location where Geoffrey Merrick was being held had come when Linda Ross guessed that the Devil’s Oasis might be in Namibia, and checked for references using its German name. But after gathering preliminary data their break seemed short-lived.

  At the turn of the twentieth century the Imperial German government decided to copy the notorious French penal colony in Guiana called Devil’s Island, a remote, escape-proof penitentiary for the nation’s most hardened criminals. The German government constructed a maximum-security prison in the middle of the desert in what was their most isolated colonial outpost. Built of native stone and surrounded by hundreds of miles of sand dunes, even if a prisoner were to escape there was no place to go. They would die in the desert long before they reached the coast. Unlike Devil’s Island or even San Francisco’s infamous Alcatraz, there wasn’t even a hint of rumor that any prisoners successfully escaped from the jail until its closure in 1916 because of the drain the remote facility caused to Germany’s wartime economy.

  A rail line that once serviced the Devil’s Oasis had been removed when the prison was abandoned, so there was no reliable access except by air or all-terrain vehicles. Both options posed their own challenges and obstacles because even a small contingent of captives holding Merrick prisoner would detect either a helicopter or a truck long before Cabrillo could get his forces into attack position.

  By trolling archived databases and using commercially available satellite images, they were well on their way to finalizing an audacious plan to rescue the billionaire.

  “Anything from the kidnappers or Merrick’s company?”

  “Nothing from the kidnappers and Merrick/Singer is talking with a couple different HRTs.” While normally the job of the military or police, there were private companies who handled kidnappings. Though it was not the usual kind of job they undertook, Hanley was presenting the Corporation as a hostage rescue team and while they intended to rescue Merrick/Singer’s founder no matter what, it wouldn’t hurt if they could get a little something for their efforts.

  “How about Overholt at Langley?”

  “He likes the idea of us being here so long as it doesn’t interfere with any upcoming missions. A
lso, he confided that Merrick has been a big contributor to the president in the past and that the two of them had skied together a few times. We do this right and our stock in Washington’s on the rise.”

  Cabrillo grinned wryly. “For what we do it doesn’t matter where our stock is. When it comes to ops so far off the books they’re actually out of the library, Uncle Sam doesn’t have many options. And what do you bet if we pull this off there will be a flurry of diplomatic messages between the Administration and the Namibian government and in the end everyone will claim it was an American commando team working with local forces that saved Merrick?”

  Max feigned a hurt expression. “I can’t believe you’d say that about the slipperiest agent at the CIA.”

  “And if we fail,” Juan added, “he disavows all knowledge blah, blah, blah. Escort Sloane down to the Pinguin so she can explain to Reardon that she’s remaining aboard, and get someone to unlimber the portside lifeboat. I need to shower and pack.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything,” Max said as he started down the hallway, “but even standing upwind you’re pretty gamey.”

  Juan peeled off the graying uniform shirt he’d worn for Sloane’s benefit as soon as he was through the door to his real cabin and had his shoes kicked off by the time he reached his bathroom. He turned the gold taps in the shower stall to a comfortably cool temperature and removed the rest of his clothing. He leaned against the glass enclosure to pull his leg from his prosthetic limb’s suction socket.

  The powerful multihead sprays of water cascaded over him and while he’d like time to think through his decision to help Sloane Macintyre, he knew enough to trust his instincts. He doubted there was a treasure ship in these waters as much as he doubted the seas were infested with monstrous steel snakes. But, there was no denying the fact that someone wanted Sloane to suspend her investigation. That was what he wanted to discover for himself—who they were and what they were protecting.

  After toweling off and refitting his artificial leg, Juan threw some toiletries into a leather dopp kit. From the wardrobe in his bedroom he tossed a couple changes of clothes into a leather bag, and some sturdy boots. Next he went back to his office. He sat at his desk and spun the chair around to face an antique safe that had once sat in a train depot in New Mexico. His fingers on the dial were well practiced and fast. When the final pin clicked in place he spun the handle and heaved open the heavy door. Besides bundles of hundred-dollar bills, twenty-pound notes, and stacks of a dozen other currencies, the safe contained his personal arsenal. There was enough firepower in the big safe to start a small war. Three machine pistols, a couple assault rifles, a combat shotgun, a Remington 700 sniper rifle, plus drawers containing smoke, fragmentary, and flashbang grenades as well as a dozen pistols. He gauged the possible situations he could be facing and grabbed a Micro Uzi submachine gun and a Glock 19. He would have preferred the FN Five-SeveN pistol, which had quickly become his favorite handgun, but he wanted interchangeability of ammunition. Both the Glock and the Uzi used 9mm.

  The four magazines were stored empty to preserve their springs, so he took a moment to load them. He stuffed the weapons, magazines, and a spare box of ammo under the clothes in his bag and finally dressed in lightweight duck trousers and an open-collared shirt.

  He caught his reflection in the glass covering a picture on one wall. His jaw was firmly set and behind his eyes he could almost see the embers of anger stoking into a fire. He owed Sloane Macintyre nothing, nor did he owe anything to Geoffrey Merrick, but he would no more abandon them to an unknown fate than he’d strand a little old lady at a busy intersection.

  Cabrillo snatched the bag off his bed and started topside, his body already responding to the first tingle of adrenaline.

  12

  IT was inevitable that sand fleas would learn that the once abandoned prison deep in the desert was occupied again. Drawn by the scent of warm bodies, they had returned to the prison to act as a natural torture to the man-made ones meted out there over the years. Capable of laying sixty eggs a day, the first few that had entered the penitentiary had quickly grown to an infestation. The guards had been prepared with chemical sprays to keep the loathsome insects at bay. Their prisoners weren’t so lucky.

  Merrick lay with his back propped against the hard stone wall of his cell scratching furiously at the bites that seemed to cover every inch of his body. In a perverse way it was good they had found him because the painful welts and constant new stings kept his mind focused on something other than the horror that had already taken place and the even greater calamity to come.

  He cursed as a flea bit deep into the back of his ear. He caught the insect and crushed its body between his fingernails, grunting with satisfaction when he heard the carapace snap. A small victory in a war he was losing.

  Without the moon, the darkness in the cell block was a tangible presence, a spectral ether that seemed to rush down Merrick’s throat whenever he opened his mouth and filled his ears so he couldn’t hear the whisper of wind he knew had to be blowing. The prison was slowly robbing him of his senses. The pervasive sand had choked his nose so he could no longer smell the food he’d been given, and without smell his sense of taste was but a dull suspicion that the meals were something other than dust. He was left only with his hearing and sense of touch. And with nothing to listen to and his body aching from so many days spent on a stone floor and now stinging with flea bites, they did him little good.

  “Susan?” he called. He’d said her name every few minutes since being returned to his cell. She hadn’t once responded and he suspected she might have been dead but he continued anyway for no other reason than calling her name was more rational than giving in to the overwhelming urge to scream.

  To his amazement he thought he heard her stir, a mewling sound like a newborn kitten and the rasp of cloth against stone.

  “Susan!” he said more sharply. “Susan, can you hear me?”

  He distinctly heard her moan.

  “Susan, it’s Geoff Merrick.” Who else would it be? he thought. “Can you speak?”

  “Dr. Merrick?”

  Her voice was ragged and weak and yet it was the most glorious sound he had ever heard. “Oh, thank God, Susan. I thought you were dead.”

  “I—um.” She faltered and coughed and that made her moan all the more loudly. “What happened? My face, it’s numb, and my body, I think my ribs are broken.”

  “You don’t remember? You were beaten up, tortured. You said they never asked you any questions.”

  “Did they hit you, too?”

  Merrick’s heart squeezed. Through her pain and confusion, Susan Donleavy could still care about his condition. Most people never would have asked and just gone on about their own injuries. He wished, God how he wished, that she hadn’t been dragged into this nightmare. “No, Susan,” he said gently. “They didn’t.”

  “I’m glad about that,” she replied.

  “I learned who kidnapped us, and why.”

  “Who?” There was hope in her voice when she asked, as if putting a name and face to their captors would make their situation better.

  “My former business partner.”

  “Dr. Singer?”

  “Yes, Dan Singer.”

  “Why? Why would he do this to you?”

  “To us, you mean. Because he’s sick, Susan, a twisted, bitter man who wants to show the world his warped vision of the future.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Neither did Merrick. He couldn’t get his mind around what Singer had already accomplished and what he was about to carry out. It was all just too much. Singer had already killed thousands of people and no one knew it. Now he was preparing to kill tens of thousands more. And for what? To teach the United States a lesson about environmental control and global warming. That was part of it, but Merrick knew his former best friend all too well.

  This was personal to Dan, a way for him to prove to Merrick that he had been the brains behind their succes
s. They had been like brothers in the beginning, but Merrick was the charmer, the one who could turn a good phrase in an interview, so it was inevitable that the media singled him out as the face of Merrick/Singer and marginalized Dan to the shadows. Merrick had never thought this had bothered his partner. He’d been an introvert at MIT so why would it be any different in the real world? He now knew that it had, that Singer had fostered a hatred toward him that bordered on the pathological.

  It had changed everything about Singer’s personality, driving him from the company he’d helped build and sending him to the fringes of the environmental movement, where he used his wealth to do everything he could to ruin Merrick/Singer. But when that failed he turned his back on his newfound eco-friends and returned to his home in Maine to lick his wounds.

  If only that were true, Merrick thought. But Singer had used his time to let his hatred grow and fester. And now he was back, with an incredibly audacious and horrifying plan. A plan that had already been taken so far that there wasn’t any way it could be stopped. He hadn’t abandoned his environmental crusade, but had taken it in a new and twisted direction.

  “We have to get out of here, Susan.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We have to stop him. He’s out of his mind, and the people he’s gathered together are environmental fanatics who don’t give a damn about humanity. And if that’s not enough he claims to have hired a bunch of mercenaries, too.” Merrick buried his face in his hands.

  It was his fault. He should have seen Dan’s anger in the beginning and insisted that he get a share of the limelight. He should have recognized the fragility of Dan’s ego and how the attention paid to Merrick tore it to pieces. If he had, then none of this would be taking place. The sting of tears turned into sobs, and all thoughts of his own discomfort vanished as he was overcome by what was happening. He just kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” without really understanding who he was apologizing to, Dan or his intended victims.