by Joseph Badal
“You’ll make your flight. You can spend a couple hours on the water with us. Acclimate me to the boat and then we’ll return to port. My crew will meet me here and we’ll take the boat back out after I drop you off.”
Peterson’s expression softened. “Of course, Mister Vangelos. I was . . . just thinking about possible liability in case something happened to one of the passengers before we finished our job.”
“I see,” Nick said. He thought Peterson’s explanation odd. First, he said they were on a tight schedule; now he was worried about liability.
Peterson seemed to think about what Nick had told him for a moment and finally said, “Okay. That sounds fine.”
The Danforths arrived at a few minutes before eight. Nick welcomed them aboard and introduced them to the crew.
“Why don’t you follow me?” Nick said to Bob and Liz. “I’ll show you your stateroom and give you a chance to stow your bags. Then I’ll take Robbie and his mother to their cabins on the lower deck.”
The VIP stateroom on the main deck protruded out from under the skylounge and had front and side windows. It had its own en suite head, television, three bureaus, vanity, and built-in sitting area. A bulkhead separated it from the galley. There were eight steps up from the galley to the skylounge. Aft of the galley was a large saloon furnished with a bar, a table that sat eight people, and a lounge area with a large couch and four chairs.
“This is fabulous,” Liz said.
“Only the best for our clients,” Nick said. “Let me know if you need anything.” Then Nick left to take Miriana and Robbie to their rooms. A sidedeck on the boat’s center line led down in a forward direction to the lower deck. Doors to two cabins were at either side of the foot of the companion, and a short passageway ran forward past two more cabins to the VIP stateroom in the bow. The VIP stateroom was furnished with a double bed and equipped with its own head.
“This is just like Bob and Liz’s stateroom,” Nick said to Miriana, “but without the windows. All you have down here are port lights.”
“This is wonderful,” Miriana said. “I thought I’d be in a tiny little room with a hammock.”
“I would never put . . . .” Nick stopped in mid-sentence when he saw Miriana’s smile and realized she was teasing him. “I can arrange that if you would prefer a hammock.”
“I think this will be perfect,” she said with a smile.
Then Nick clapped Robbie on the back. “While your mother gets settled in, I’ll show you to your room.”
“Cool.” Robbie hesitated a moment and said, “This is sure a nice boat. It looks like a Hampton.”
“You know about Hampton boats?”
The boy shrugged. “A little.”
“You’ve been on a Hampton boat?”
“No, but I read a lot.”
Nick beamed. He loved to talk about boats. Especially the ones in the Vangelos Charters fleet. “You’ve got a good eye. This is an Endurance 870 Skylounge LRC. It’s an eighty-seven footer with a fiberglass hull. It has six staterooms and crew quarters for four.”
“What about the engines?” Robbie asked.
Nick beamed. “It has twin Caterpillar C32 diesel engines with one thousand four hundred and fifty horse power. It will cruise at twenty-one knots per hour, with a top speed of twenty-six knots. We can hold five thousand gallons of fuel and one thousand gallons of fresh water.”
“That’s pretty fast?”
Nick laughed. “Yeah, it is. For a boat this size.”
“I’ll bet you can’t wait to open up the engines.”
“You in a hurry to get somewhere?” Nick asked.
The boy blushed. “No, not really. I just like speed.”
What teenager doesn’t? Nick thought. “We’ll need to test the engines slowly. Going full throttle isn’t a good idea. Besides, you can blow a lot of fuel running the engines at top speed.” Nick paused a long beat and added, “Would you like to steer her?”
The kid’s jaw dropped and his eyes lit up. “You bet I would.”
“I think I can arrange that.”
The morning sun had turned the sea a shimmering gold by the time the Zoe Mou motored out of its slip. The sky was clear and it appeared the day would be glorious, with warm temperatures and calm seas. On the way out of the harbor, the boat passed dozens of slips that housed an array of boats. The sizes and values of the craft moored there ran from all sorts of fishing craft, to two-seater speedboats worth close to one hundred thousand dollars, to massive yachts worth thirty million dollars, and more. The flags of at least a dozen countries flew from their masts.
With Nick and Matt Peterson on the upper deck, and the four passengers in their staterooms, Scott Farnwell rushed over to Colin Davis who stood on the cockpit at the aft end of the main deck. “What the hell will we do with the passengers?”
Davis looked at Farnwell as though the man was mentally deficient. “What do you mean? As soon as the time’s right, the passengers will be disposed of along with the Greek.”
“What if someone misses them?”
“By that time, our mission will be complete.”
Bob and Liz unpacked their luggage and put their clothes in bureaus. Bob finished unpacking first and said, “I think I’ll go into the saloon.”
“Wait a minute and I’ll go with you. I’m almost done.”
“I just want to look around.”
Liz grabbed Bob’s arm and looked squarely in his eyes. “I know that tone. What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Bull,” she said. “What is it?”
“What do you think of the crew?”
“They seem to be very nice young men.”
“Didn’t you notice the way they reacted to Miriana?”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it,” he said. “Those guys are good-looking, seemingly confident, athletic men. From their accents, they appear to be English and American. Right?”
“Yeah, okay. So?”
“When Nick introduced them to us and Miriana tried to shake hands with the one named Peterson, he looked down at the deck like a shy teenager. His face turned red. But the expression on his face was almost malevolent.”
“Come on, Bob. You’re imagining things.”
“Something’s off about them.”
“Like what?”
“For starters, they’re all too well-built. Like commandos. Like DELTA Force operatives. Not ordinary sailors.”
“Don’t sailors have to be in shape?”
“Sure. But these guys don’t look like average sailors.”
“Anything else?” Liz asked.
“Not really.”
“You need this vacation even more than I thought.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’ll see you in the saloon.”
He left the cabin and found a seat in the saloon with a view of the cockpit, where two of the crewmen were in conversation. He watched the men and wondered if Liz was correct. Maybe he didn’t know how to relax. He shook his head but the uneasy feeling he had didn’t go away.
CHAPTER 11
The first two hours at sea were uneventful and, according to Robbie, boring, until Nick asked if he wanted to tour the boat with him. Robbie immediately brightened.
They went down the companionway from the aft port corner of the saloon and entered a vertical hatch that accessed the mechanical area. The overhead was almost high enough for them to stand erect.
“I went through a full set of specs and the maintenance log on the Zoe Mou before I bought her,” Nick explained. He pointed out the mechanical and electrical systems. “Those are the fuel tanks over there.” Nick showed Robbie where the fire suppression system was located. He identified the generators, the bilges under the engine compartment, the prop shafts, the stuffing boxes that the prop shafts went through and prevented water from leaking into the boat, the sight glasses that indicated fuel levels, and the workbench.
Robbie pointed at a pistol-like item secured to th
e inside of the hull near the main fuel tank. “Flare gun?” he said. “I saw a couple of those outside my stateroom and on the main deck, too.”
“Hopefully, we’ll never need any of them. They’re used to signal if our boat is in distress.”
Bob, Liz, and Miriana stretched out on lounge chairs on the upper deck while Nick, accompanied by Robbie, inspected every inch of the yacht. Matt Peterson manned the helm. Scott Farnwell and Colin Davis were somewhere below. Bob pretended to read a book, but kept an eye on Peterson. He couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling he had about the man and his crewmates.
Nick ordered Peterson to have his men prepare lunch just before noon. They had traveled thirty miles from Syracuse at a leisurely pace. “We’ll have a bite to eat and then return to port and drop you off.”
Nick then said to Bob, “After we drop off the crew and pick up my crewmen, we’ll turn right around and head south. There’s a wonderful dive site an hour out of Siracusa.”
Lunch served on the cockpit of the main deck turned out to be simple but enjoyable: Bread, cheese, kalamaria, and horiatiki salata. After a couple glasses of white wine, Nick became talkative and regaled the group with humorous tales about cruises he’d captained.
Bob continued to observe the crew, who were all somewhat reserved during the meal. A couple times Bob met Peterson’s gaze, which was cold and appraising. His rare smiles seemed forced. When Nick and Robbie went up to the skylounge to look at charts, Bob asked, “You guys ever serve in the military?”
“No,” Peterson said. “Why do you ask?”
Bob shrugged.
Peterson laughed but his face flushed. “We work for a very disciplined organization.”
“Nothing wrong with discipline,” Bob said.
“Something more Americans could use.”
Bob nodded, although he thought the comment odd.
“Okay, let’s turn her around and head back to Siracusa,” Nick announced.
While Farnwell cleared the dishes and stowed the table, Nick returned to the helm station and restarted the engines. He turned the boat and headed toward port. Barring any problems, he figured they’d arrive in just under three hours, without pushing the engines.
“You want to see the engine room, Mom, Grandma?” Robbie asked.
Liz rolled her eyes at Bob but graciously agreed to go below with her grandson. Miriana just smiled and went along.
Bob exited to the side deck between the rail and the house, and sidled forward to the bow pulpit. Despite the calm seas, a bit of spray hit him as the boat plowed through the water. The spray was cool and felt good. He looked back to see if he could spot any of the crewmen, but none of them were in sight. He did spy Nick in the skylounge and waved. He turned back to stare at the water in front of the bow and thought, Maybe Liz is right; maybe I badly need this vacation. Perhaps he just didn’t know how to relax. But what was he supposed to do, ignore his instincts, which now vibrated like tuning forks on steroids?
Bob rehashed in his mind the conversation over lunch. He had asked Peterson questions about himself. His answers came across as though rehearsed. There was no emotion in his voice, even when he was asked about his family in England. It was almost as though he was a bad actor playing a role. Questions thrown at Davis and Farnwell elicited the same sort of responses. Bob tried to come up with a word that would describe the men and finally decided that “automatons” was the perfect word.
Peterson did a turn around the boat to confirm the passengers’ locations. He then climbed to the skylounge and said to Nick, “If you don’t need us for a while, we’ll go below and pack our gear.”
“Okay by me,” Nick said.
The three of them went below and huddled together in one of the crew cabins.
“What the hell are we waiting for?” Farnwell demanded.
Peterson grabbed the front of Farnwell’s shirt and jerked him forward.
“You need to calm down,” Peterson said. He released Farnwell’s shirt and pushed him backward. “We’ll do it in ten minutes.” He looked at his watch: 1:30 p.m. “Scott, you’ll take out Danforth. He’s on the foredeck. Colin, you go up to the skylounge and kill Vangelos. I’ll gather the women and the kid. We can chain all the bodies together and dump them overboard, just as we did with the original crew.”
“The engines drive the prop shafts, which turn the propellers,” Robbie explained to Liz and Miriana.
“That’s nice,” Liz said.
“Very interesting,” Miriana said.
Robbie frowned for an instant and then realized his interest in all things mechanical was not shared by his mother or his grandmother. He was about to suggest they return to the main deck when he saw a yachting magazine on the workbench. He picked it up, fanned the pages, and stopped at a page that showed a one-man, long-distance sailing craft. He couldn’t believe the engineering that had gone into the vessel—a retractable keel, a one-hundred-fifty-foot mast, and electronics that were otherworldly. Maybe Nick would be interested in it, he thought.
“You want to see anything else down here?” Robbie asked.
“No, I’m good,” Liz said. “Thanks for the tour.”
“Yes, it was wonderful,” Miriana said.
“My pleasure,” Robbie said. He turned quickly to hide his smile. He knew they’d been bored.
He moved to allow the women to precede him and they climbed the steps up to the main deck. Robbie moved toward the companionway but bumped his hand against a bulkhead and dropped the magazine. When he stooped to retrieve it, something stuck out between its pages. He pulled it out and discovered a photograph of three men on a finger pier, the Zoe Mou behind them. The men were tanned and healthy-looking. Robbie flipped over the photograph and found writing there:
Matt Peterson, Colin Davis, Scott Farnwell
June 15
Tunis, Tunisia
Robbie turned the photo over again and looked at the men’s faces. They weren’t the men who were now on the boat, the men who said their names were Matt, Colin, and Scott.
Robbie felt butterflies in his stomach. His father had lectured him many times to follow his instincts. He moved along the starboard companionway to the bow pulpit where his grandfather stood.
“We need to talk to Grandpa,” Robbie said.
Bob turned and looked at his grandson.
“Grandpa, you need to look at this.”
Bob took the photo from Robbie and looked it over, front and back.
“What do you think?” Robbie asked. He could see his grandfather’s expression harden.
Bob stuck the photo in his shirt pocket and smiled at his grandson. He looked around the boat and didn’t see any of the three crewmen. “Here’s what I want you to do.”
After Liz, Miriana, and Robbie climbed down to the lower deck, Bob pictured the layout of the yacht. He and Nick Vangelos were the only ones on the upper deck. He hoped Robbie had followed his orders to the letter.
Bob quickly looked around and stared at the large storage locker beside the tender on the sundeck. He unlatched the container, raised the lid, and shuffled through the scuba gear there. He lifted out two scuba tanks and placed them on the deck. Then he searched for diving knives. He pushed aside flippers, breathing regulators, and diving masks. He rummaged through the gear and breathed a sigh when he found a spear gun and a scabbarded knife with a six-inch serrated blade. He replaced the rest of the equipment, closed the locker and, weapons in hand, moved to the helm station.
“Nick,” Bob said, “you need to listen to me.”
Nick’s eyes widened when he looked at the spear gun and knife in Bob’s hands.
“We don’t have time for questions. I’m a former senior intelligence officer and I believe the crewmen with us are imposters.” He handed the photograph to Nick and gave him a few seconds to study it. “Our lives could be in danger. If I was them and planned to eliminate us, I would do it now, before we get any closer to shore. If I’m wrong, we’ll be embarrassed. If I’m right, we’re in
trouble. Do you have any other weapons on board?”
Nick shot Bob an incredulous look. But to his credit, after he stared at Bob’s face for a couple seconds, Nick seemed to accept the warning. He pointed at the knife and spear gun. “There are knives and spear guns in a locker on the main deck. Some kitchen knives in the galley. That’s about it.”
Bob handed the spear gun to Nick. “I’ll go below to see if I can do something.”
“Like what?”
Bob shrugged.
“What about your family?”
“They should be in the engine room by now.”
“Why don’t we just go kick those bastards’ asses?” Nick said.
“They’re probably armed. But there is something you can do.”
After they retrieved their AK-47 assault rifles from under their bunks, the three men checked their magazines and clicked off the safeties.
Peterson said, “You two need to get up on deck now. I’ll collect the women and the boy.”
Peterson turned to leave but was thrown off balance. The roar of the boat’s twin engines filled the cabin. “What’s that crazy Greek up to?”
“Probably testing the engines, the steering,” Davis said.
Peterson left Davis and Farnwell in the crew cabin and went up to the main deck, then forward to the companionway that led down to where the boy and his mother had their staterooms. He searched each of the rooms, but they were all empty. He turned to go up one level when he had another thought. Perhaps the geek-of-a-kid was expounding on some esoteric subject down in the mechanical room, showing off to his mother about his knowledge of engines.
Peterson reversed direction and went back up to the main deck, then aft to the companionway down to the aft part of the lower deck. There he found the engine room door open. He slipped inside; looked left, then right. The woman and kid had to be down here. But they were nowhere in sight. Peterson moved forward between two electrical panels, toward the huge diesel engines. “Mrs. Danforth,” he called out, “your father-in-law asked me to bring you up to the main deck.”
