Sabotage (5 page)

The apprenticeship had kindled Jake's interest in oceanography. At seventeen he had earned a scholarship to UC San Diego, where he'd double-majored in marine biology and meteorology. After graduating, he had joined the Hubbs–SeaWorld Research Institute as an assistant to Dr. Boyd Bowles, director of the Bioacoustics Laboratory, and collected data for the analysis of animal sound perception and dispersion. Jake had helped Dr. Bowles study vocal learning in gray whales and killer whales under contract to the U.S. Air Force and Coast Guard. It was at the institute in 1982 that Jake had learned of the budding Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) program, its mission to deploy aboard naval vessels and conduct maritime security and interdiction operations. He'd enlisted in the Coast Guard as a living marine resources specialist.

Following the National Defense Authorization Act of 1989—which tasked the Department of Defense with monitoring maritime drug trafficking—the Coast Guard was chosen as the principal agency for interdicting and apprehending drug traffickers on the high seas. The Defense Department fulfilled its statutory responsibility by deploying ships to support Coast Guard counter-narcotics operations. Among them was the USS
Cohoon,
aboard which then-Lieutenant Rove earned his first LEDET assignment following extensive training in close-quarters combat, precision marksmanship, and vertical insertion techniques.

Rove's first success had resulted in the seizure of a sixty-three-foot semi-submersible vessel 360 miles southwest of Nicaragua. Two small-boats had been launched to intercept the craft, where his team had surprised the crew by boarding under cover of night. In an effort to shake the boarding team, the smugglers had attempted to scuttle the vessel by opening sea cocks, but eventually surrendered contraband amounting to eight tons of cocaine. The same year in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Rove utilized an MQ-8 Fire Scout—an unmanned autonomous helicopter used for reconnaissance and precision targeting—to interdict a cigarette boat carrying over five hundred kilos of cocaine. After gathering video evidence of a rendezvous with a refueling vessel, Rove's team detained the go-fast boat and further discovered munitions and robotic spy technologies belonging to the U.S. military. Ensuing interrogations furnished evidence used to indict a mole at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, along with two other infiltrators, who had been supplying equipment to a drug syndicate.

Following his promotion, Rove had deployed as a LEDET aboard multiple foreign vessels, including the HNLMS
Onbevreesd
of the Royal Netherlands Navy. There he'd conducted operations in the Gulf of Aden as part of Combined Task Force 151, an international naval coalition established to fight piracy and terrorism in shipping lanes off the Somali coast. Rove had led the first capture of a pirate mother ship. Accompanied by a Scout Sniper Platoon, his LEDETs had boarded a dhow in response to a distress signal originating from a French yacht, one that had been picked up by a local U.S. Navy helicopter. They apprehended over thirty pirates, confiscating dozens of assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers—but only after a shrapnel blast had ripped through the lateen sails, torn his back open, and killed his two youngest soldiers.

Rove had spent four months in rehabilitation at a naval hospital in Bahrain before his transfer to Bethesda. When his doctors had deemed him incapable of a swift recovery, despite his furious appeals to resume service as a LEDET, he took station at the Navy's Meteorological and Oceanographic Command at Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi. A sonar research lab utilized his expertise to crack underwater acoustic transmissions mimicking mammalian and other marine vocalizations. To add insult to injury, they had knocked him up a pay grade.

Fully recovered three years after the shrapnel injury, he was asked to accompany a team of combat weathermen through Operation Brother Vigil, an effort to locate and detain a suspected narco-submarine off the coast of Guatemala. Rove was tasked with training the squadron to discern disguised human signals from naturally occurring signals, advising soldiers on the production and propagation of cetacean sounds. The sub was found with several tons of cocaine and 178 illegal migrants on board. The mission proved to Rove not only how much he missed the sun, but what value his training could offer service weathermen. Aware of his likely confinement to the laboratory otherwise, he discharged from the Coast Guard, forfeiting rank and pay to become an Air Force Special Operations Weather Technician (SOWT). Earning his crest and pewter beret at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina after sixty-one weeks of training, he'd been stationed at Hurlburt Field as a member of the 10
th
Combat Weather Squadron.

Rove's military career had ended in the nineties with a full medical discharge after he'd been captured and tortured in a Colombian cocaine plant. “You wouldn't fire a missile without fins or a guidance system, would you?” his doctors had said. “Your first recovery was miraculous. Now you've been seriously injured a second time. You have to accept it. You won't be a full-up round again.” Soon after he returned home, his mother died of a stroke. He rented out her suburban apartment and bought supplies to build a new home, feeling the physical activity would help him heal.

The home would be on the beach in Mazatlán, Mexico. Construction had taken four months. Though hardly bigger than a shanty, it could have withstood a hurricane when he finished it. During summers, the home became a part-time fishing and dive shop. He offered scuba lessons and maintained a small stock of gear for sale. After six years he bought a small catamaran. He sailed alone, riding in waves as high as fifteen feet—or drifting between two islands off the coast. He'd often bring a bottle from his collection of mezcal to sip by sunset.

“Para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien también,”
a friend at a local liquor store had always said: For everything bad, mezcal, and for everything good, too.

He spent most evenings watching an orange sun give way to a drape of cobalt. Shaped like pearls on a neckline, new lights would come alive throughout the bay and stretch south to El Faro, the city's lighthouse of the late 1800s. He would often stroll along the beach there. Some nights he'd join the crowds watching divers leap from a high tower into violent waters. Waves raged against rocks below, and riptides threatened to claim any amateur who mistimed a plunge.

One evening, as he had waited for the divers to arrive, he had observed a group of inebriated teens mingling with a crowd gathering for the show. He had watched as a local bon vivant approached and schmoozed with the girls, offering to drive them around the city on a barhopping spree. The party boy had led the girls to the other side of the bay while Rove tailed them. Joined by three friends, the man had shepherded the girls to a dock, where a speedboat awaited their arrival. Before they could make a getaway, the girls' impromptu guardian had lunged from the shadows. Soon the traffickers had lain comatose on the planks.

The father of one of the girls was a wealthy banker, who had asked to compensate Rove with a blank check in return for having saved his daughter. Rove had declined; he had all he needed to enjoy a retirement spent sailing and diving. But the father had insisted on remuneration. “Have you explored the Great Barrier Reef?” the man had asked. “How about Bonaire? The Grand Cayman? Mr. Rove, I'm sending you on a world cruise, and I'm booking the penthouse. Don't argue. The decision is made. The ticket is in your name and your name only. Use it or not—that's your choice.”

Rove had researched the cruise ship, which according to brochures offered a “symphony of lavishness and sublime comfort.” The dolphin-nosed
Pearl Enchantress
was the grand crown of Pearl Voyages, a cruise line internationally acclaimed for exceptional quality and culinary delicacy. The ship had received highest accolades by readers of
Condé Nast Traveler
and other magazines as a haven of serenity. Pearl's company attracted award-winning stage talent, gourmet chefs, virtuosic musicians, and a host of capable engineers responsible for maintaining functionality across a spectrum of modern technology. Rove had regarded the touted extravagance with disinterest, if not a sad patience. But the itinerary had included a number of colorful dive locales, which had been enough to sell him on the cruise.

Rove looked up at the behemoth of a ship and began estimating its mass and displacement tonnage. How many kilograms of opulence did it take to make these people happy? Luxury was as foreign to him as it was inessential, and he wondered if the look of belonging aboard a vessel like this would ever come. He'd never risen to warm slippers and foamy baths. His mornings had more often opened with gunfire and centipedes. An eighty-pound backpack was more familiar to him than a tuxedo, a soldier's stridence more comfortable than a butler's genteel courtesy. In Rove's mind, luxury entailed an abdication of the very responsibility that had kept him alive. His instincts rejected it.

He feared he'd grow restless during the first weeks of cruising. If he did, he could always abandon ship and fly home, he thought. Spas and massages, champagne fountains, tanning decks, scented steam baths, and infinity pools did little to excite him. Still, he walked the gangway with buoyancy in his stride, if only for the dive tour.

An attractive blonde greeted him at the ship's entrance.

“Welcome aboard!” she said. “May I see your cruise pass?” He handed her a gold, wallet-sized card, one that had been given to him inside a thin metallic box imprinted with the Pearl logo. “This will be your door key, charge card, shore identification, and overall handy friend throughout your cruise. Don't lose it! Now please look into the camera. Every passenger gets a picture. Perfect. Now, smile … Mr. Rove, we're thrilled to have you aboard. Enjoy your one hundred twenty-five days of escape.”

“Thanks,” Rove said. “Which way to my quarters?”

“May I see your pass again, please?”

He showed her the card. His weathered look didn't fit the usual profile of a penthouse guest. Her politeness turned to genuine interest. “Forward end of deck fifteen,” she said. “You have yourself an excellent stay, Mr. Rove.”

The entrance hall fed into a piazza-style grand atrium. Two cherry-carpeted staircases climbed in half-spirals around a central waterfall, cascades gushed in alcoves around the room, and lights that waxed and waned on the ceiling created a starry effect. A string quartet filled the ship's spacious centerpiece with Pachelbel, whose repetitious Canon clashed against jazz chords emanating from a distant lounge. Painters displayed their works on the second of the atrium's three levels, their easels and wall mountings lighted for viewing. Passengers greeted one another in the gathering area, taking drinks and hors d'oeuvres from waiters ambling with trays.

“Foie gras mousse with quince marmalade
en croûton
?”

The French words did nothing to hide a Scandinavian inflection.

Rove took in the assailing presence of the waiter. The man was a bulging tuxedo; Rove had to tilt his head back to see the malicious blue circles that were his eyes, and the sardonic line for a mouth that looked incapable of breaking its horizontal. The square of his face was almost geometrically precise, his blond hair drawn in a ponytail. The server's body looked fit to wrestle any beast in the Serengeti.

He carried a tray of canapés in one hand. There was a diamond ring flashing on his other hand. Rove watched as the man's fingers, moving nimbly and without conscious direction, made the ring vanish from one finger and reappear on another.

“You'll have to forgive my impoverished gastronomical heritage and deliver that in my native tongue,” Rove said.

The server's mouth remained flat.

“Duck liver on bread,” he said.

Rove detected an air of condescension.

“I'll take two.”

The server looked down in a half-nod. His fingers began playing with the ring faster, almost twitching.

“Pretty piece of jewelry you have. You practice sleight of hand?”

“A small hobby. Have a nice evening.”

Biting into a savory topping, Rove nodded.

He climbed the aft staircase and passed a library, eyeballing the interior chocolate suede walls and wine-red upholstery. Next to catch his notice was an expansive Dolby-equipped Hollywood Theater, set near a Mediterranean bistro and card lounge occupied by eight bridge players sweltering in the heat of concentration. He climbed higher still and emerged on the open lido deck, where the buffet of the Century Oasis restaurant, as much a feast for the imagination as the gullet, exerted an inescapable pull on him. Chefs displayed an international assortment of steaming entrees, desserts, and carved fruits. Avian ice sculptures spread their wings over garnished dishes and vegetable figurines crafted from Arcimboldian inspiration. Rove sampled a dish of mango with raspberry sauce as he made his way outside to resume his inspection of the ship. Habit demanded he locate the gym. He found the workout room on the forward end beyond two main pool areas, the Seahorse Lagoon and Neptune's Sanctuary. A brief look at the facilities proved them ample.

He dropped down a deck to find his room. The hallways reminded him of those on aircraft carriers: Four lines converging on a single point gave the illusion of infinite length. As he walked toward the forward end, the hum of revolving laundry emanated from a “Crew Only” sector, as did snippets of conversations in Tagalog.

Letters on a mailbox beside a white wooden door read,
Clifford Pearl Presidential Penthouse.
He inserted the keycard and removed it. A light flashed green. The latch clicked.

Shielding himself from a chandelier bursting with refracted light, he proceeded with soft feet so as not to disturb the sheen of the rug. Wall sconces, shaped like bow maidens of warships, clutched candles in the vestibule and welcomed him with visions of conquest. Gowns billowed on the feminine figures, matching the satin drapes that framed a blue panorama. There were rays of sunlight streaming through the windows and beveled mirrors on opposing walls that extended the cabin's perceived space.