Skeleton Coast

  “Dr. Merrick? Dr. Merrick, please, why is Dr. Singer doing this to us?”

  Merrick heard the agony in her voice but couldn’t reply. He was crying so hard it sounded as though his soul was being shredded. The wracking convulsions went on for twenty minutes until he’d cried his tear ducts dry.

  “I’m sorry, Susan,” he gasped when he’d finally gained enough control to speak. “It’s just—” He didn’t have the words. “Dan Singer blames me because I was the public face of our company. He’s doing this because he’s jealous. Can you believe that? Thousands of people are already dead and he’s doing it all because I was more popular than him.”

  Susan Donleavy didn’t respond.

  “Susan?” he called and then louder, “Susan! Susan!”

  Her name boomed and echoed, then faded. Silence once again filled the cell block. Merrick was certain that Daniel Singer had just claimed another victim.

  13

  “YOU can rest down below if you want,” Juan offered when Sloane yawned.

  “No thanks, I’m fine,” she said and yawned again. “But I will take some more coffee.”

  Cabrillo pulled the silver thermos from the holder at his knee and handed it across, his eyes automatically scanning the lifeboat’s rudimentary gauges. The engine was running fine and they had more than three quarters of a tank of fuel and only another hour to go to reach Walvis Bay.

  When Max had called an hour after they departed the Oregon to tell him that George Adams’s helicopter reconnoiter of the area where the crazy old fisherman had seen his metal snakes had turned up nothing but glass-smooth empty ocean, Juan briefly considered simply returning Sloane to her hotel and catching a flight to Cape Town to rejoin his ship. It would have been the logical thing to do. But now, hours later and having a better sense of what made Sloane Macintyre tick, he was sure helping her was the right decision.

  She was as driven as he was, someone who couldn’t leave a job half-finished and someone who didn’t back down from a challenge. There was something mysterious taking place in these waters and neither would be satisfied until they learned what it was, even if it had nothing to do with their respective jobs. He admired her curiosity and tenacity; two traits he also prized in himself.

  Sloane poured some of the black coffee into the thermos lid, her body swaying to the rhythms of the waves passing under the hull so she didn’t spill a drop. Still wearing her shorts, Sloane had accepted Juan’s offer of a Windbreaker, one of the two safety orange nylon pullovers that he’d retrieved from a storage bin. He had his tied around his waist.

  The vessel was stocked with enough provisions to last forty people for a week and a miniature desalinator to provide potable, albeit still a little salty, water. The bench seats inside the enclosed cabin looked like cracked vinyl, but were in fact soft kid leather that had been distressed to make it look shabby. A panel mounted on the ceiling could be lowered to reveal a thirty-inch plasma TV with an extensive DVD library and surround sound. It had been Max’s perverse idea to cue up the movie Titanic first if the crew ever actually had to man the lifeboats.

  Every nook and cranny had been carefully designed to maximize the comfort and convenience of anyone forced into the boat. It was more like a luxury motor yacht than a life-saving vessel. She was also built for safety. When her hatches were sealed the boat could turn completely over and still right herself, and with three-point harnesses for every seat, the passengers wouldn’t be tossed around. And because she was owned by the Corporation there were a few tricks built into her that Juan had no intention of showing his guest.

  There were two positions where the boat could be commanded: inside near the bow protected by the boat’s fiberglass and composite cabin, or on a slightly elevated platform at the stern where Juan and Sloane stood so they could enjoy the spectacular sunset earlier and now the star-smeared night sky. A small windscreen protected them from the worst of the salt air, but the cold waters of the Benguela Current flowing north from Antarctica had dropped the temperature into the sixties.

  Sloane cradled the coffee in her hands and studied Cabrillo’s face in the muted glow of the dashboard lights. He was traditionally handsome, with strong, well-defined features and clear blue eyes. But it was what lay under the surface that really intrigued her. He had an easy command of his crew, a natural leadership that any woman would find attractive, but she also got the impression he was a loner. Not the walk into a post office and open fire with a rifle loner, or the geek living in cyberspace type, but someone comfortable in their own company, someone who knew exactly who he was, what he was capable of, and found what he saw to his liking.

  She could tell he made decisions quickly and apparently never second-guessed himself. That level of confidence only came from being right more often than wrong. She wondered if he had military training and decided he did. She imagined he’d been in the Navy, an officer, but one who couldn’t put up with the incompetence of those above him so he quit. He had traded in the structured life of the armed forces to live like a drifter on the high seas, clinging to an old way of doing things because he was really born a couple of centuries too late. She could easily see him on the bridge of a clipper ship crossing the Pacific with a load of spices and silk.

  “What are you smiling at?” Juan asked.

  “Just thinking you’re a man living in the wrong time.”

  “How so?”

  “Not only do you rescue damsels in distress, you also take up their causes.”

  Cabrillo puffed out his chest and struck a heroic pose. “And now, fair lady, I gird myself for battle against metallic sea serpents.”

  Sloane laughed. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Fire away.”

  “If you weren’t the captain of the Oregon what would you do?”

  The question didn’t veer into any dangerous territory so Juan gave her an honest answer. “I think I’d be a paramedic.”

  “Really? Not a doctor?”

  “Most doctors I know treat patients like a commodity—something they have to work on if they want to get paid before returning to the golf course. And they’re backed by a huge staff of nurses and technicians and millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. But paramedics are different. They are out there working in pairs with just their wits and a minimum of gear. They have to make the first critical assessments and often perform the first life-saving acts. They’re there to tell you everything is going to be all right and make damn sure it is. And once you get the person to the hospital you simply fade away. No glory, no God complex, no ‘gee, doc, you saved my life.’ You just do your job and go on to the next.”

  “I like that,” Sloane said after a beat. “And you’re right. My father cut his leg really badly on a charter once and we had to radio for an ambulance and I had to take the boat back in. I still remember it was Dr. Jankowski who stitched up the leg in the hospital but I have no idea of the name of the guy who first dressed the wound on the dock. Without him my dad would have probably bled out.”

  “Unsung heroes,” Juan remarked quietly. “Those are the ones I like.” For a moment his mind flashed to the wall of stars in the entrance to CIA headquarters at Langley. Each one represented an agent who had been killed in the field. Of the eighty-three agents represented thirty-five remained nameless, still keeping the Company’s secrets long after their deaths. Unsung heroes, each and every one. “What about you? What would you do if you weren’t a security specialist for a diamond company?”

  She threw him a saucy grin. “Why, I’d be captain of the Oregon.”

  “Oh, Max would love that.”

  “Max?”

  “My chief engineer and first officer,” Juan said fondly. “Let’s just say Max put the rump in grumpy.”

  “Sounds like I’d like him.”

  “He’s a piece of work, my Mr. Hanley. In truth, I’ve never met a more loyal man or had a better friend.”

  Sloane finished her coffee and handed the lid back to Juan. He screwed the c
ap back onto the thermos and checked the time. It was nearly midnight.

  “I was thinking,” he said, “rather than tie up in Swakopmund at oh dark thirty and possibly arouse suspicion, why don’t we head south to where you met Papa Heinrick? That way we can catch him first thing in the morning before he goes out fishing. Do you think you could find his camp again?”

  “No problem. Sandwich Bay is about twenty-five miles south of Swakopmund.”

  Juan checked their GPS, estimated the new coordinates, and punched them into the automatic navigator. Servos moved the wheel a few degrees to port.

  A little over forty minutes later Africa emerged from the darkness with bluffs of sand shimmering in the moonlight and occasionally the brighter white of waves curling onto the beach. The long peninsula that protected Sandwich Bay was a quarter mile to their south.

  “Nice bit of navigating,” Sloane said.

  Juan tapped the GPS receiver with a knuckle. “Gladys here gets the credit. GPS has made lazy navigators of us all. I don’t think I could compute my position with a sextant and watch if my life depended on it.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  Juan backed off the throttle to reduce their wake as they entered the fragile ecosystem. They motored for twenty minutes until reaching the southernmost edge of the bay. Sloane panned the dense wall of reeds with a flashlight as they tracked along the shore looking for the cut in the grass that led to Papa Heinrick’s private little lagoon.

  “There,” she said, pointing.

  Juan slowed the boat to a crawl and edged its bow into the reeds. He kept a sharp eye on the depth gauge and constantly checked that floating chunks of vegetation didn’t foul the props. The lifeboat cut through the tall grass and the blades made a hissing sound as they scraped the hull and sides of the cabin.

  They had covered seventy yards when Juan caught the scent of smoke. He raised his face and sniffed the air like a dog but couldn’t detect it again. Then it came back, stronger, the sooty smell of burning wood. He grabbed Sloane’s wrist so he could cover the lens of her flashlight with his hand.

  Ahead he could see the orange glow of a fire, but not the contained fire pit Sloane had described. This was something altogether different.

  “Damn.” He gunned the throttles and prayed the water maintained its depth as the boat leapt forward, knocking Sloane into his arms. He steadied her quickly and tried to peer through the curtain of grass that blocked their way.

  They suddenly burst into the clearing that surrounded Papa Heinrick’s island. Juan glanced at the depth gauge. There was less than a foot of water under the keel. He jammed the throttles into full reverse, causing a torrent of water to erupt at the stern, and hit the release for the anchor. They hadn’t yet picked up a great deal of speed, so he managed to stop the lifeboat before she grounded.

  He idled the engines and only then did he take in the scene around them. The shack perched at the center of the island was a pyre, with flames and embers leaping twenty feet from its thatch and driftwood roof. Papa Heinrick’s overturned fishing boat was also ablaze, but the craft was so waterlogged that the fire hadn’t really caught. Banks of thick white smoke coiled from under the skiff and wafted from the seams of its wooden hull.

  Over the roar of the burning cabin Juan heard the unmistakable scream of a man in mortal agony.

  “Oh, my God!” Sloane cried.

  Cabrillo reacted instantly. He launched himself onto the roof of the lifeboat’s cabin and raced down its length. The cabin ended five feet shy of the boat’s sharp bow. Cabrillo measured his steps perfectly, jumping off with his artificial leg so his left foot landed on the aluminum railing that ringed the bows and then kicking off from that in a long graceful dive. He knifed into the water, kicking strongly, and came up swimming.

  When his feet touched bottom he charged out of the water like a rampaging animal and ran up the beach. That was when he heard another sound, the deep bass rumble of a marine engine.

  A white bow runner circled around the far side of the little isle and one of the two men in its open cockpit opened fire with an automatic weapon. Sprays of sand erupted all around Cabrillo as he dove for cover, his hand reaching instinctively for the small of his back. He hit the ground, rolled twice, and came up into a kneeling firing position, the Glock he’d stuck in his pants when he had gotten the Windbreakers held steady in a two-handed grip. The range was thirty yards and widening, and he was firing into the darkness while the gunman had Juan backlit by the burning hut.

  Cabrillo didn’t even get a shot off before more autofire poured onto the island, forcing him to roll back into the lagoon. He drew a deep breath at the moment a round blasted into the beach inches from his head, forcing him to inhale the gritty sand.

  Ducking underwater and fighting the uncontrollable urge to cough his lungs out, Juan swam about thirty feet, making sure his hands were in contact with the bottom so he didn’t reveal himself. He sensed through the water that the powerboat was coming around, hunting him. He approximated their location and swam a little further, gagging silently as his chest tried to convulse. When he thought he knew where they were he planted his feet firmly on the bottom and raised himself quickly, continuing to hold his breath for a fraction longer.

  The boat was ten yards away and the two men aboard were looking in the wrong direction. With water streaming down his face and his lungs ready to explode, Juan raised the Glock and fired. The pistol’s recoil broke the lock he’d maintained on his breathing and he began to cough violently. He didn’t know if he hit anything or not. But he must have been close because the low burbling engine suddenly ramped up and the bow runner made for the channel back out to the open bay, kicking up a rooster tail as she ran.

  Juan bent double, his hands on his knees, and coughed until he vomited. He wiped at his lips and looked across the lagoon at the lifeboat. “Sloane,” he croaked. “Are you okay?”

  Her head emerged from behind the cockpit coaming. The fire’s shifting light couldn’t hide the roundness of her eyes or give hue to the pallor of her skin. “Yeah,” she said and then firmed her voice. “Yes, I’m fine. Are you?”

  “Yeah,” Juan replied then turned his attention to the flaming ruins. He could no longer hear Papa Heinrick’s cries but he forced himself closer. The roof was moments from collapsing and the heat thrown off by the blaze forced Juan to shield his face with an arm as he moved closer. The smoke burned his eyes and sent him into another paroxysm of coughing. His lungs felt like they were filled with ground glass.

  Cabrillo used a length of wood to rip down the burning flap of cloth that Heinrick had used for a door. He could see nothing because of the smoke, and was about to edge into the burning structure when a gust came up and parted the soot like a curtain. For a moment Juan had a clear view of the bed and he knew at that instant the sight would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  What remained of Heinrick’s arms were still manacled to a bed frame, and despite the ravages of the flames on the corpse, Juan could tell the old man had been tortured before his shack had been set on fire. His gaptoothed mouth remained open in his final scream of life while the blood pooled under the bed sizzled.

  The roof collapsed in an explosion of flames and sparks that licked at Cabrillo before he could turn away. None of the embers could burn through his wet clothes but the sudden surge of adrenaline galvanized him.

  He sprinted back to the water’s edge and dove in, striking out for the idling lifeboat. Because it rode high in the water, he made for the vessel’s bow and used the anchor chain to heave himself up to the deck. Sloane was there to help him slide under the railing. She said nothing about the pistol shoved into the waistband of Juan’s trousers.

  “Come on.” He took her hand and together they jogged down the length of the boat and jumped into the cockpit. Juan hit the switch to raise the anchor. He firewalled the throttle as soon as it lifted from the bottom, and used his palm to spin the wheel furiously.

  “What are you doi
ng?” Sloane shouted over the roar of the engine. “That was a ski boat. They’ve got a five-minute head start and can outrun us by twenty knots or more.”

  “Like hell they can,” Cabrillo said without looking at her, his rage barely in check. He straightened their course when the lifeboat’s prow was facing the little channel out of the lagoon.

  “Juan, we’ll never catch them. Besides, they had machine guns. You’ve only got a pistol.”

  Reeds whipped at them like switches as they rocketed down the channel. Juan steered with one eye on the depth gauge and a moment after bursting out of the grass he grunted with savage satisfaction.

  “Hold on,” he said and hit a switch hidden under the dash.

  The forward part of the lifeboat’s hull began to rise out of the water as hydraulics under the boat activated and extended a series of fins and underwater wings. Sloane was a second late to react. She staggered and would have fallen overboard had Juan not clutched for the front of her jacket and held her tight. The hydrofoils began to generate more lift and raised the hull even higher until just the wings and telescoping propeller shaft were dragging through the water. It took just seconds but their speed more than doubled to forty knots.

  Sloane looked at Juan incredulously, unsure what to say or how to react to the plodding lifeboat becoming a streaking high-performance hydrofoil. She finally blurted, “Who in the hell are you?”

  He glanced at her. He normally would have come up with a pithy remark but his anger at Papa Heinrick’s murder was all-consuming. “Someone you don’t want to piss off.” His eyes were as hard as agate. “And they just pissed me off.” He pointed ahead. “Do you see how the sea is glowing a little bit?” Sloane nodded. “Their boat’s motion through the water caused bioluminescent organisms to fluoresce. We never would have found them in daylight but at night Mother Nature’s giving us some help. Can you take the helm and keep us on that trail?”

  “I’ve never driven a boat like this.”