Survival (3 page)

“Any guns aboard?”

Carlos shook his head. “No. I mean, not legally. Probably some flare guns.”

“Where is the boat right now?” Fernanda asked in a low voice.

Carlos glanced at his watch. “Off the coast of Peru, heading into Ecuadorian waters.”

“How many miles offshore will she run?” Igor asked.

“That’s part of the plan. The captain’s going to call in a mechanical problem as a pretext to veer east rather than continuing along the shipping lane. As they hug the coast, the passengers will disembark.”

“What country?”

Carlos’s eyes narrowed. “When I have the money.”

Igor finished his coffee. “This stuff runs right through you, doesn’t it? I’m going to use the bathroom again. Excuse me,” he said, and made for the back of the café.

Fernanda pushed her cup around and then looked at Carlos. “You should probably go to the bathroom now. He’s probably getting tired of waiting in that stinkhole.”

“Ah. I see.”

When the two men returned, Carlos looked more relaxed. He tossed a few bills on the table and gave Fernanda a small bow. “It was a pleasure doing business with you. You have my number if you have any questions. It’s a burner cell phone, but I’ll keep it nearby for the next few days.”

“I hope we have no reason to be dissatisfied,” Fernanda said, a warning in her tone.

“You won’t.”

Carlos left, and Fernanda and Igor finished their coffee before leaving themselves. The fog was still thick and the area deserted as they made their way back to the car. Once inside, Igor started the engine and turned to Fernanda. “They’re planning to rendezvous with a fishing boat off Panama. The ship will make for Balboa for repairs and then experience a miraculous recovery and continue north to the U.S. By which time the fishing boat will have made it to shore, with no annoying customs or immigration to contend with.”

“Where will the boat take them?”

“He doesn’t know. It’s a local contractor. His organization’s arrangement was to get the passengers to Panama, and that’s it.”

“Damn. The obvious way to do this would be to ambush them when they’re off the fishing boat. We can’t very well intercept a huge cargo ship in international waters.” A thought occurred to her. She tapped her phone to life and went to a web site. After a few minutes studying the coast, she smiled. “Looks like there’s a storm moving west from the Caribbean. The forecast is for it to hit hard on the Pacific side after it passes over land. Late tomorrow afternoon and into the night.”

“And that’s useful how?”

“If we know the course she’s on and can track the locator chip, we can arrange something before she gets near Panama.”

“Arrange something?”

Fernanda explained what she was thinking. When she finished, Igor frowned. “It could work. But there are a lot of moving parts. Not the least of which is getting there and setting it all up.” He paused. “It’ll be expensive.”

“Yes, I expect it will be. What do you think we should budget?”

Igor thought about it. “Hundred thousand U.S.”

“I’ll call the client and get his okay. I’ll give him a summary and leave it to him whether he wants us to intercept it or not. If he does, he can execute a wire today while we’re in the air. If not, we tried. But my gut says he’ll go along with it, because there’s no way we’ll be able to find them once they’re on a small fishing boat headed for some obscure harbor. To dodge immigration, they’re going to have to avoid Panama City.”

“We could look at the ports along that coast.”

“Yes, but remember, the area’s a major fishing hub, so every few miles there are going to be moorings and bays where they could disembark. Even our most educated guess is likely to be wrong.” Fernanda looked at her phone screen. “I’ll call our contact in Panama and see if our cost estimate is about right.” She paused, thinking. “I don’t see a better way to do it. Ideally we want to take them while they’re still in Colombian waters. That stretch is a major narcotics smuggling corridor, so we’ll have much better luck taking them in Colombian waters than off Panama, where there are likely to be coast guard and naval patrols to stop traffic north.”

Igor eyed her appreciatively and put the car in gear. “Have I told you how arousing you are when you’re talking operational details?”

She grinned. “Not nearly enough. I was beginning to think you didn’t care anymore.”

Chapter 3

Madrid, Spain

The plane pulled into the Jetway at the Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas, and Jet watched as the ground crew scrambled to get everything into place so the passengers could disembark. The five-hour flight from Moscow in business class had been bearable, but not something she planned to ever repeat if she could help it. She stretched and continued to ignore the executive in the seat next to her, who’d thankfully spent the entire flight fiddling with spreadsheets and reports.

On disembarking, Jet followed the signs up a long corridor to the connecting international flights. She had a three-hour layover and then a flight to Mexico City, connecting through Panama City, and with any luck at all she’d be in Panama with hours to spare before Matt and Hannah arrived on the fishing boat.

She stopped at a bank of telephones and tried calling Matt’s satellite phone, knowing that the odds of him having it on all the time were slim. She wasn’t surprised when it went to voice mail, and she left a brief message.

“Hi. I made the first leg with no problem. Hope you’re enjoying your cruise. I’m looking forward to seeing you both tomorrow. Matt, this is for Hannah.” Jet paused, envisioning Matt holding the phone to her little girl’s ear. “Sweetie, this is Mommy. I love you more than anything and I miss you something fierce. I’ll see you tomorrow. Be good.”

When she hung up she felt deflated, and her gut twisted into a tight knot. She willed herself to relax, reminding herself that there was no way to accelerate her journey, and so to accept that she’d be flying another fourteen or fifteen hours rather than bemoan it.

Jet moved to an area with wireless and powered on the tablet she’d bought. She searched the news and saw another short piece on the dead Russian attorney – a tragic loss to the community, another casualty of depression. The party line, she thought, still no hint of foul play, so her gambit had worked and she was in the clear. Not that she expected anything different, but you never knew, and it was usually something completely unforeseen that tripped you up.

She’d learned to expect the unexpected as part of her conditioning. She might not be able to control events, but she could certainly control her reactions to them. That was her edge: the ability to remain cool in the face of overwhelming odds, in the midst of entropy and chaos.

Next she went to a satellite map of the Central American coast and checked the weather. The tickle of anxiety she experienced when she called Matt returned. A big storm was moving directly into the path the ship would be taking. Although there were no hurricanes that close to the equator, there were still big blows that could make the seas ugly. A vision of Hannah pitching to and fro as the ship plowed through big waves made her cringe, and she focused on calmer thoughts. Those boats went through storms all the time. A nine-hundred-foot ship would barely slow for twenty-foot swells. There was nothing to worry about.

And yet the image of the ship in jeopardy stayed with her even as she moved on from the storm site to more pleasant fare, researching places to live in Panama and Costa Rica and taking in the breathtaking beaches and swaying palms of the Caribbean coast and the steel and glass skyscrapers in Panama City.

After buying a snack at one of the numerous small restaurants in the departure area, she moved back to the phones and tried Matt again, with the same result – voice mail. This time she didn’t leave a message, knowing that Matt would see she’d called twice. There was no need to explain why.

He knew her well enough.

The hours stretched like years, and when her flight to Mexico City was finally called, she felt like she’d aged a decade. The plane was only half full, and before the plane was at cruising altitude she’d closed her eyes and reclined her seat into a bed, the cumulative effects of her adventure in Moscow slamming home with the force of an avalanche.

Chapter 4

Pacific Ocean, 45 miles west of Colombia

Black waves hissed out of the darkness as the
Seylene
plowed northeast through the confused seas topped with white froth. Violent gusts of wind blew trails of spray from the swells. The storm had gathered strength in the warm water off the coast, and the big vessel had been forced to slow to eighteen knots as it ran in beam seas.

A 965-foot Panamax container ship and a seasoned veteran of the run from South America to the U.S., she was accustomed to ugly weather, and this storm, while uncomfortable, was nothing compared to the hurricanes she had weathered. This was a Force 8 gale, with twenty-five-foot waves, and she’d been through as high as Force 12 without incident. It took much more than a patch of rough equatorial weather to alarm the crew of a ship the size of a hundred-story building laid on its side

The captain and the helmsman stood on the bridge, watching as the massive bow pushed through the water. Spotlights illuminated the oncoming seas so they could make out any rogue waves on approach. Rogue waves were a threat for any oceangoing vessel, particularly along the coasts of Africa and in the North Atlantic, where moving walls of water fifteen stories tall, their faces as sheer as cliffs, could appear out of nowhere and imperil even the largest ships. While it was unlikely that they had to worry about any this close to the Colombian coast, the captain was conservative and preferred to err on the side of caution.

Sheets of rain blew across the deck outside the bridge windows. The captain, his skin the texture of saddle leather and his eyes ringed by deep wrinkles, turned to the helmsman, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. At four a.m. he was up earlier than usual, but during a storm it was the captain’s responsibility to see the ship through without incident, and he took his job seriously. A thirty-year career in the merchant marines had accustomed him to odd hours, and he took the demand in stride.

“Well, Jorge, looks like the worst of it’s past us, eh?” he said, making conversation.

“Yes. I radioed in the alert about our course change, so that’s taken care of.”

The storm provided a convenient pretext for a course change, and he’d instructed Jorge to signal a mechanical problem. They were now well off the shipping lane, steaming toward the Panama Canal port of Balboa, where they would delay for a few hours before announcing that the problem had been fixed and that they intended to continue north to Long Beach.

The captain tapped a cigarette out of a wrinkled packet, one of only ten he allowed himself in any twenty-four-hour period, and lit it with a cheap butane lighter. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled noisily before taking a long pull on his coffee, eyes locked on the bow.

The radio crackled and a tense voice filled the bridge.

“Mayday. Mayday. Fishing boat
Tres Gatos
. Mayday.”

Jorge and the captain exchanged glances. The captain stood and moved to the radio. He raised the microphone to his lips and depressed the transmit button.

“Fishing boat
Tres Gatos
. This is container ship
Seylene
. What is your emergency, and what are your coordinates?”

“
Seylene
, we lost power and we are taking on water. Repeat, we have no power and we are taking on water. Latitude 4°51'6.88"N by 79° 2'29.40"W.”

Jorge studied the chart plotter and looked up at the captain. “Only two miles away.”

The captain gave an exhausted sigh. He couldn’t ignore a mayday on the open sea when he was the nearest ship – especially in a storm, even if it was almost past. A sinking vessel over a hundred miles from the coast was a death sentence if the crew didn’t have safety equipment, which many of the boats in these waters didn’t. He exchanged a dark glance with Jorge and pressed the transmit button again.

“
Tres Gatos
. This is
Seylene
. Do you have lights or flares? We’re two miles southwest of your position and can be there in ten to fifteen minutes. Will your vessel hold that long?”

A long pause, and then the radio crackled again. “Affirmative,
Seylene
. I believe so. But in these seas…”

“We are changing course to intercept. Do you have lights or flares? Over,” the captain repeated.

“Yes. Our running lights are operating. I’ll see if we have a flare gun. We should. Over.”

“Stay on the radio. When we’re close, I’ll ask you to fire a flare if we can’t see your lights. Over.”

“Roger,
Seylene
. Thank you. And please. Hurry. Over.”

“We’re on our way. Over.”

Jorge moved back to the helm, punched in the coordinates, and the ship shifted to starboard a few degrees, putting the seas squarely on its beam.

The captain shook his head. “Notify the crew. I want all hands on deck in five minutes.” He moved to the radar and changed the range, then gestured at it. “There they are. Small. So not commercial. Idiots to be out in this. What the hell were they thinking?”

“They probably weren’t. I’ll call it in.” Jorge got on the intercom and blared an emergency alert to the sleeping crewmen. The ship listed as the seas rolled past it, the wind still gusting to fifty miles per hour. Both men watched as the storm pounded the ship with everything it had, water coursing across the decks, the wipers working to clear the helm windows so they could see.

Ten minutes later the engines had slowed and the crew was assembled on the bridge in rough weather gear – yellow slickers and boots. The crewmen looked sleepy, unshaved and groggy, faces faintly lined from pillows and hair askew. Most were in their twenties or early thirties, except for the mechanical engineer, who was a portly forty-something.