“Was there a girl involved in this story?”
“Callie Romano,” Joe admitted.
“Of course.”
Kurt yanked the stick collar back, and Ion was dragged across the floor and almost fell on his face. As Kurt shut the door, the Komodo dragon closed its eye and went back to sleep.
“So what do you suggest?” Kurt asked, beginning to enjoy himself.
Joe moved slowly down the row of enclosures. “How about this?”
He stopped in front of one of the largest enclosures in the small store. Eight feet deep and six feet wide, with some foliage, a small pool of water, and brown dirt on the floor. There was also a box with a grate over the top just outside it. A pair of large rats crouched inside the box.
Kurt looked into the larger enclosure. What he first thought was part of a tree moved a bit.
“Reticulated python,” Joe said, looking at the notes on the front of the clear plastic door. “Nocturnal hunters. They can reach almost thirty feet in length,” he added, “though this one is supposed to be only twenty-two.”
“Constrictor,” Kurt said, thinking aloud. “A twenty-two-foot, two-hundred-seventy-pound snake. Perfect.”
“You’re not going to—”
Before Ion could finish his sentence, Kurt had flipped the latch on the door, swung Ion in front of the opening and shoved him backward. He splashed down in the snake’s water pit.
Kurt opened the collar, pulled it over Ion’s head, and withdrew it. Joe slammed the door and pinned the latch.
“This thing’s handy,” Kurt said, looking at the stick collar and putting it down.
Ion got to his feet and looked around. Incredibly, the snake had already begun to move. Just its head and neck, sniffing around, nothing aggressive so far, but it seemed interested.
“I’ve been to a couple zoos,” Kurt said. “Honestly, never even seen one of these things move before.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “The pythons in zoos are fed all the time, and they get so fat and overweight that they don’t do much of anything. But see how thin this one is.”
Joe pointed. The snake didn’t exactly look thin to Kurt, but he played along.
“He does look a little skinny,” Kurt said.
“Probably been starved for months,” Joe said.
By now Ion had moved toward the door.
“Why would they starve him?” Kurt asked.
“The owners of these places sell to rich collectors who want to see the snakes in action, crushing something and eating it,” Joe said. “So they keep ’em hungry until a buyer comes around. That what the rats are for.”
Kurt had no idea if Joe was serious or just making this stuff up, but it was a good shtick.
The snake was cooperating too, sliding down from the ledges near the back of the enclosure and beginning to stretch out.
Ion came up to the door. “Let me out of here, Austin.”
Kurt ignored him, instead looking at some type of poster describing the python. He looked at Joe. “It says here these things can eat a goat.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Joe said.
Kurt looked into the enclosure. “He’s not much bigger than a goat. I wonder if it can get him down.”
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “He’s got a big head.”
Kurt turned. “He does have a big melon. Bet his neck gets tired holding it up.”
Ion went to speak and then froze. The snake had moved up behind him, its tongue had flicked out and grazed his thigh.
Kurt wondered if it would bite him first or just start coiling around him. Before it did either, Kurt decided to give Ion another shot at freedom.
“You want to tell me about Andras?” he asked, the joking nature of his voice long gone.
“I can’t,” Ion whispered.
“Once that snake wraps around you, there’s nothing I can do but leave and try to shut the door behind me,” Kurt said, “so you’d better talk quick before it’s too late.”
Ion was pressed against the plastic door. He seemed as if he was barely breathing. The snake slithered past his legs and began to curve back around.
“Can it sense him?” Kurt asked Joe.
“Oh yeah. That tongue senses heat.”
The snake began to coil up as if it would strike.
Ion sensed it; he was shaking but he didn’t speak. Then the snake lunged, knocking him down, and wrapping around him.
Kurt hadn’t actually expected it to happen.
Ion screamed and struggled. Both moves were a big mistake because they expended air, and as soon as his chest cavity shrank a smidgen, the constrictor tightened.
“Austin,” he managed, freeing one arm and grabbing at the snake’s neck. “Austin . . .”
Ion could speak no more, and obviously he could say nothing if he was dead. Kurt opened the door and sprang into action. He looped the stick collar over the snake’s head and tightened it. Moving to get leverage, he forced the snake’s head and neck up and away from Ion.
Kurt pushed with all his might. He found it hard to believe how strong the snake was. It fought him and twisted and flipped, even with Ion still in its coil.
“Joe,” Kurt shouted. “A little zookeeper help please?”
Joe was already there. He’d dropped down beside Ion and grabbed the snake’s midsection, pulling with all his might. He arched his back and managed to create a small amount of space in its tight coil.
Thin, wet, and desperate to live, Ion squirmed free, crawled out of the pen, and collapsed on the floor.
Joe followed right behind him, and Kurt released the snake and slammed the door shut. He immediately placed the stick collar over Ion’s head again. The man didn’t even resist.
“Where can I find Andras?” Kurt asked.
Ion turned his eyes toward Kurt, his face drawn, his look that of a beaten man.
“I haven’t seen him in over a year,” Ion said.
“Bull,” Kurt said. “You were his go-to guy for work. We all know that.”
“He doesn’t need work anymore,” Ion said. “He has a permanent gig now. He hasn’t looked for action in two years.”
“And yet you saw him a year ago,” Kurt said, tightening the collar again. “Get your story straight.”
“I did see him a year ago,” Ion admitted. “But he wasn’t looking for a job. He was hiring.”
“Hiring?”
“He needed men,” Ion said. “He needed some guys who knew demolitions and ships. More than he could round up on his own.”
Kurt thought about that, thought about the pirate attack on the Kinjara Maru and Dirk Pitt’s information about the mercenary group that had loaded the superconducting material on board in Freetown. It certainly sounded like Andras had built a small army. But why?
“How do you contact him?” Kurt asked.
“By e-mail,” Ion said. “You want to go beat up a server in some office tower somewhere?”
One of the problems with the modern world: people could send and receive information anywhere at any time. The days of the dark meeting and the dead drop had passed, for the most part.
Kurt looked down at Ion. He was still holding back, Kurt was sure of it. “You know something you’re not telling me,” Kurt said. “Otherwise, you would have told me all this without the hassle.”
Ion didn’t respond.
“Joe,” Kurt said. “If you please, it’s feeding time again.”
Joe unlatched the door to the snake pen one more time. Kurt began to drag Ion over there.
“Wait . . . Wait,” he said.
“Talk to me,” Kurt said, “or talk to the snake.”
“He lives at sea,” Ion said. “Andras lives on the sea. He doesn’t have a home. He goes from place to place on a ship. That’s why no one can find him. That’s why he can get in and out of almost any country even though he has no citizenship or passport and is wanted everywhere. He comes ashore as part of the crew or even with the cargo.”
Now it made sense. Eve
ry time the CIA, FBI, or Interpol got a lead on Andras, he seemed to vanish into thin air like a ghost, only to pop up somewhere else a month later. It was like an international game of Whack-A-Mole. But no one had been able to figure out how he did it. Turned out he was like an evil version of Juan Cabrillo.
“What’s the name of this ship?” Kurt asked.
“It could be any ship,” Ion said.
Kurt pushed him toward the door.
“I swear,” Ion said. “Do you think he would tell me?”
Kurt relaxed. He had a better idea. “When was he last in Singapore?” he asked. “The exact dates.”
“The last I saw him was February fourth,” Ion said. “I know because it was the day after Chinese New Year, a holiday here.”
Kurt sensed that Ion was telling the truth. He glanced at Joe, who closed the door of the snake enclosure tight. The python had retreated to the back of the enclosure and coiled itself up defensively anyway.
Kurt released Ion and stood over him. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Don’t even think about warning Andras. If you do, he’ll know you ratted on him. And you’re right. He’ll do far worse than feed you to the snakes.”
“What are you going to do?” Ion asked, looking up and rubbing at his neck where the collar had choked him.
“I told you, I’m going to kill him,” Kurt said. “For your own sake, you’d better hope I succeed.”
45
KURT AUSTIN SAT huddled over a laptop computer in his room. He and Joe had arrived back safely at the hotel and reported seeing a leopard in the shopping district to the proper authorities. And then they’d promptly gotten down to business.
For Joe that meant a hot shower and tending to his various wounds. For Kurt it meant toweling off his face and hair, changing into dry clothes, and getting on the horn to NUMA headquarters. He needed downloads of information, some which NUMA had access to, some which they had to beg Interpol, the FBI, and other agencies for.
Fortunately, NUMA had a long and positive history with these agencies, and there were enough markers to call in to still be on the right end of the balance sheet.
He’d been working at it for nearly forty-five minutes before Joe reappeared through the room’s adjoining door.
“What took you so long?”
“I was cleaning the gravel out of my knee.”
Kurt laughed. “That’s what you get for wearing Italian shoes to foot-race in the rain.”
“I didn’t know we were going to be running all over town,” Joe said.
Truthfully, neither did Kurt. “How’s your arm?”
Joe held it out. The claw marks were bandaged but clearly visible. “That’s gonna make a great story one day. Maybe even for your old girlfriend at the zoo.”
Joe did not seem too amused. “Very funny,” he said. “Just tell me my favorite Armani shirt didn’t die in vain.”
Kurt turned back to the computer. “A valiant sacrifice, my friend. And not without results.”
He brought up parallel lists.
“On the right, we have official confirmed sightings of our friend Andras, courtesy of Interpol, the FBI, and someone Dirk knows at the Agency.”
As Joe studied the list, Kurt read the names off. “Pyongyang eighteen months ago. Singapore five weeks later, on the exact date Ion gave us.”
“Score one for snake intimidation,” Joe said.
“Yeah,” Kurt said. “It gives a whole new meaning to squeezing information out of a suspect.”
Joe laughed, and Kurt continued.
“After Singapore, we find Andras in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He’s there for twenty-four hours, at which point he disappears for three months until a possible sighting in Yemen. Six weeks later he was confirmed in Madagascar.”
“Madagascar?”
Kurt nodded. “Another possible in Cape Town, South Africa, back to Madagascar again, and then three months ago an extended stay in Lobito, Angola. Well, extended for him. Four sightings in approximately three weeks before he vanished. The next time he pops up is when I ran into him on the Kinjara Maru. But if Dirk’s theory is right and he was part of the crew that loaded that superconducting material onto the ship, that would put him in Freetown, Sierra Leone, less than a month ago.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “So we know his course. How do we figure out what he’s traveling on? He could be on an oceangoing yacht, a freighter, a garbage scow. Maybe the submarine we’re looking for is his.”
“I don’t think so,” Kurt said. “My encounter with him on Santa Maria occurred almost simultaneously with the attack on Paul and Gamay five hundred miles away. The submarine they’re looking for has to be under someone else’s command. But the rumor about Andras is, he doesn’t trust anyone enough to even have a second-in-command. He works on a totally flat command structure. It’s him and a bunch of pawns. That way, there’s no one in a natural position to challenge or usurp him.”
“Sounds paranoid,” Joe said.
“Absolutely,” Kurt said. “And that means if he had a submarine, he wouldn’t hand the keys to someone else, especially not someone he picked up at Mr. Ion’s Shop of Mercenaries.”
“Good point,” Joe said. “So it’s a surface ship. But there are probably ten thousand ships capable of making the journeys he’s made.”
“Maybe more,” Kurt said. “But think about it this way. Starting with Singapore and its harbormaster’s records, we can substantially narrow that list down. If we assume he was there on February fourth, and that his vessel was in the harbor or nearby, we can eliminate ninety-eight percent of the vessels in the world’s inventory right off the bat.”
He looked at his notes. “During the days Andras was here, one hundred seventy-one oceangoing vessels were either docked here or anchored offshore and submitted papers to customs officials.”
“That’s not a small number, Kurt.”
“No,” Kurt said. “But if we cross-reference it with the other places Andras was seen and the ships docked in those places at the time, we narrow it down substantially.”
“I’m guessing we don’t have records for Yemen, Madagascar, or Angola,” Joe said.
“No,” Kurt said, “but we have satellite images of their harbors on pretty much every day of the year, including those days that Andras was reported present.”
“And?”
“With the exception of South Africa, one ship has been present or in close proximity to every spot our friend Andras has been in the past year and a half. And only one.”
Kurt clicked on a name from the list on the right-hand side of the screen. A photo came up, displaying a large tanker with a black-painted hull, a white main deck, and a Liberian flag flying from its mast.
“The Onyx,” Kurt said proudly.
Joe looked impressed but skeptical. According to the stats at the bottom, the ship was a 300,000-ton supertanker. “You’re telling me this guy has that kind of funding?”
“Didn’t you ever read Sherlock Holmes?”
“I saw the movie,” Joe said. “Does that count?”
“It’s elementary, my dear Zavala,” Kurt said. “Rule out the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. This ship was docked offshore in every port Andras appeared in over the last year except Cape Town. But the sighting there was debatable. Also, she’s too wide for the Suez Canal, which may explain the long route around Africa to Freetown before they pulled their little bait and switch on the Kinjara Maru.”
Joe began to look convinced. “Who’s she registered to?”
“Some corporation out of Liberia that no one’s ever heard of,” Kurt said.
Joe stepped back, still looking concerned. “So let’s tell Dirk and Brinks we think this ship might have our suspect on it, call it a day, and go fishing.”
Kurt shook his head. They needed hard evidence. And if by any chance Andras had the scientists on the ship, they needed the element of surprise. Otherwise the people he was interested in saving—Katarina, in particula
r—would be in worse danger than ever.
“Since when has the machinery of government sprung into action because a regular Kurt or Joe thinks any particular thing?”
Joe looked away. “Not often.”
“Exactly,” Kurt said. “We need proof.”
“You want to get on board that ship?” Joe guessed.
Kurt nodded.
Joe looked resigned to helping him as usual but seemed none too happy about where this was going.
“And how exactly do you plan on boarding a hostile vessel, crewed by terrorist thugs and killers who are undoubtedly watching for any type of advance from any quarter or direction, without them knowing about it?”
Kurt smiled. He had a plan. It may have been even crazier than his last plan, but that one had worked.
“The same way you remove a tiger’s teeth,” he said. “Very carefully.”
46
USS Truxton, July 1
PAUL TROUT SAT with a sonar operator in the air-conditioned comfort of a darkened control room on the USS Truxton. The space around them was given over to flat-screen monitors and computer controls. Part of it resembled a mixing studio, which was appropriate as the recorded sounds were sliced and diced and spliced back together in segments.
Part of the problem in getting any coherent information out of the signal was the nature of the Matador’s sonar system. It was twenty years old and had been designed to map the seafloor in broad swaths for various survey teams. In its active mode, a sound wave would be sent from a bell on the bottom of the Matador and bounced off the floor and collected by the system’s hydrophones. In passive mode, it simply listened and picked up ambient noises.
Another limitation was that each hydrophone pointed downward, covering a thin but widening swath as it penetrated into the depths, like a cone of light beneath a streetlamp. The problem was, like the metaphorical streetlamp on an incredibly dark night, nothing outside the cone was visible.
One of the Truxton’s anti-submarine warfare operators, Petty Officer Collier, was with them. A wiry young man with a calm demeanor, Collier had been slicing and dicing the tapes with them for hours. While Paul found it tedious, the petty officer seemed to latch onto even the smallest thing and get enthusiastic about starting the process over.