Riley couldn’t even see the old man. “Irv, you okay?”
She saw movement in the carpet of her belongings and when she pulled up on a shoulder of the unconscious man, Irv squirmed out from under him. She reached a hand and helped him up onto his feet. Riley looked down at the inert form. “I’m glad you were counting on him making a move.”
Irv brushed off his sleeves and said, “Benny’s that kind of man.”
Riley peered out the galley window at the fishing boat anchored a couple of boat lengths away. “Okay. Now we just have to figure out how to incapacitate their boat.” She stepped back. “Excuse me a second while I go grab another shirt.” She found a bra and a T-shirt on the floor in her cabin and quickly changed.
When Riley came out of her cabin, Irv was finishing tying Benny’s hands behind his back. He sat back on the bottom step and said, “You know when they sat me on top of that plastic fuel drum?”
“Yeah.”
“While you were doing such a good job of distracting all those men,” he said with a wink, “I took out my pocketknife and I wiggled the tip into the plastic until it punched a small hole all the way through. It’s been leaking gasoline onto the deck for half an hour now.”
Riley smiled. “And it’s a wood boat.”
She waved her hand at Irv. “Scoot over.” She stepped over Benny and crawled up the steps and into the cockpit on her hands and knees. The guy with the rifle would still be keeping watch. She grabbed the flare gun, then retreated back into the cabin.
Riley kept a ditch bag in the aft cabin whenever she was at sea. It was there in case she had to abandon ship. The waterproof bag contained everything she would need in the life raft, like food, water, flares, and a signal mirror. The fishermen had emptied the contents out of the bag, but the flares were easy to spot in the mound of stuff. She discarded a couple of smoke flares. She wanted only the rockets.
Out the galley window she looked again at the fishing boat. She saw the man named Hawkes gesturing at her boat. He suspected something wasn’t right. They had to move fast.
“Listen,” Riley said, “I don’t want you to get shot. Stay below here. I can crawl out there and start the engine without raising my head. I have a remote button at the helm to raise the anchor chain, too. They’ll hear the engine start, but they don’t have another boat, so there’s not much they can do about it.”
“Be careful, sweetheart,” Irv said. “I don’t want you getting shot either.”
Riley crawled out into the cockpit, set the flare gun on the seat, and reached for the key at the engine controls. She hit the start button and heard a single click. This had happened a few times before. “Come on, baby, start for me now.”
She hit the start button again. Click.
“Irv, go to the electric panel and turn off the refrigeration and the radio and anything you see that might be drawing juice from the batteries.”
“Okay.” The hum of the refrigeration system stopped. “Try it now.”
Riley silently asked her brother Mikey to put in a good word with whoever might be listening. She hit the start button again and heard the sweet roar as the engine turned over, caught, and revved up. She inched the throttle back a little, then flicked the switch to start raising the anchor. Nothing happened.
“Irv! The switch for the windlass.”
“I got it!” he yelled.
She tried it again and she could hear the sound of the chain rattling into the chain locker below deck.
Crack! She heard the shot at the same time the safety glass in one of her portholes fell in pieces inside the boat. That gave Riley an idea. She crawled below and grabbed the signal mirror. She handed it to Irv.
“Keep your head away from the window, but wave this around inside and try to distract the shooter.”
He moved to one of the forward portholes, and Riley watched the shooter. She saw the man shift his stance when he saw the movement. He raised the rifle to aim. She stood, sighted down the barrel of the flare gun through the broken porthole, and pulled the trigger.
The red ball of flame flew right over the top of the fishing boat and landed in the water on the other side.
About a half mile off up inside the estuary, she saw the long dugout canoe returning. For the moment, the only way they could reach her boat would be to swim. The canoe would change that.
The shooter saw the canoe, too. He turned his head to look. One of the fishermen started waving his hands at it, encouraging it to hurry up.
Riley aimed again, planning to lob it up in an arc this time. She fired.
The flare landed in the middle of the blue plastic tarp they had spread for shade. The flare burned straight through and fell onto the nets, but the plastic tarp caught fire. Pieces of curling flame fell to the deck. She watched as two men ran over toward a patch of flame and began stomping on the deck. The nets smoldered. More pieces of burning plastic rained down.
Hearing her anchor hit the bow roller, she shut the windlass off at the electric panel. She saw no sign of the shooter through the porthole, so she climbed out and slid behind the wheel. She crouched down, put the engine in gear, and pushed the throttle forward. As the boat picked up speed she turned the wheel to put them on a course for the sea.
The first explosion was small. It just sounded like a soft whomp. Maybe that was the gas-soaked decks catching fire. That was when she saw the man called Hawkes jump overboard. He started swimming away from the boat. Riley couldn’t see where the fishermen were. Probably in the water on the other side of the boat. She set the autopilot.
“Irv, help me with this guy.” Between them they dragged Benny out into the cockpit and onto the side deck. Riley pulled a life jacket out of her seat locker and tied it to him. The wooden dinghy was rubbing against the side of her hull. She slowed Bonefish and they rolled Benny over the side. He fell with a thud into the dinghy. The small boat shipped water and Benny started to come around.
“Untie the dinghy, Irv. Let’s get out of here.”
The Red Dog Ranch
Virginia City, Nevada
November 26, 2012
Elijah hollered, “Caleb!” when he reached the bottom of the stairs.
Tess came trotting out of the kitchen, her tail wagging. He stopped and scratched her ears, then patted her on the neck.
His hired man poked his head out the kitchen doorway. “Welcome home, boss.” He disappeared back inside the kitchen.
“Why the hell did you let me oversleep? It’s after ten o’clock.” Elijah rounded the corner into the kitchen and headed straight for the coffeemaker. The pot was full and his mug was on the counter.
Caleb stood at the sink washing up a pile of dishes. “You didn’t get in until two in the morning, and I could hear you moving around up there until after four. I figured you’d be jet-lagged.”
“I’ve told you before, the best way to get over jet lag is to ignore it. Get on local time immediately.” Elijah dumped two large spoonfuls of sugar in his cup and stirred. He didn’t like Caleb noting his movements, and jet lag was the least of his problems. The last forty-eight hours had been brutal, and Elijah had much on his mind. After the Indonesian fishing boat had burned to the waterline, Elijah and the fishermen had climbed into the pirogue and their weight nearly sank the boat. There was no way they could pursue the sailboat. By the time they reached Benny, Elijah wanted to kill him. That woman had eluded them for the last time. Next time, he would not only get the information he sought, but he would make her pay for all the trouble she had caused him.
“Sorry, boss,” Caleb said.
“We’ve got people coming today.”
“I got your text, and I did everything you told me to. We got lunch if they want it and the place is clean as it’s ever been.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. I’ll tour the house and grounds first thing, then, assuming you haven’t got something royally screwed up, I’ll come back and grab a quick workout and shower.”
Mr. Black was the first to
arrive. Caleb buzzed him in through the gate and directed his driver to park the car in front of the freestanding garage. The security monitors were mounted in a utility room off the kitchen, and Elijah watched over Caleb’s shoulder as the black Escalade drove up the drive to the house. When Black climbed out of the car, Elijah was surprised to see the man dressed in a suit instead of his usual tracksuit. Obviously, it was in deference to their other guest.
Elijah met Black at the door and ushered him into the game room. This was not his first visit to Elijah’s home. The remote location had become a favorite for meetings that required deniability. But this was the first time Elijah had seen the man nervous about a meeting.
“Do you ever dress for an occasion, Hawkes?”
Elijah looked down at himself. This was dressed up for him. White Stetson Oxford shirt with matching bolo and belt buckle, black Circle S slacks and the Lucchese boots that Caleb had cleaned and shined. He decided to ignore the comment.
“Can I get you a drink?” Elijah asked.
“Fuck yeah,” Black said. Then he raised his hand palm out. “Wait. I don’t know. These fucking Muslims don’t drink, do they?”
“Some do,” Elijah said. He’d spent time in the Middle East back when he worked for the CIA. “Who is this who’s coming?” Elijah reached for a bottle of mineral water. He would need a clear head.
“I didn’t tell you?”
“No. You just said he was a possible buyer.”
“He said we’re supposed to call him al-Habib, which is some kind of nickname. But the word is he’s an honest-to-God fucking Saudi prince.”
Elijah looked up from the ice bucket. “Interesting,” he said. There are only a few hundred of those, he thought.
Black laughed. “You can say that again. He shouldn’t have any trouble meeting our price.”
From the direction of the kitchen they heard a soft chime. Elijah said, “That should be him at the gate now.”
The man at his front door did not look anything like what Elijah had expected. There were no robes or head cloths. He was dressed in an exquisitely tailored charcoal suit that matched his graying hair and beard and wore a navy tie. The eyes that greeted him behind the rimless gold spectacles sparkled with humor at Elijah’s surprise.
“Welcome to the Red Dog Ranch.” Elijah extended his hand. “I’m Elijah Hawkes.”
“Pleased to meet you. You may call me al-Habib, or just Al if you prefer.”
The man’s English and manners were perfect. “Please, follow me, Al. Mr. Black is in the game room.”
After the greetings were complete, the new visitor turned in a circle, admiring the heads on the walls all around the room. “These are all yours?” al-Habib asked.
Elijah looked around at the animals’ heads and images flashed through his mind of the hours he had spent hiking, tracking, and waiting, bow in hand. “Yes.”
Al-Habib turned to Black. “I like this man.”
“Would you care for some lunch?” Elijah asked. “My man Caleb has it all prepared.”
Black said, “I’m starved.”
“I understand you have horses,” al-Habib said. “Would you show them to me?” He turned back to Black. “You go on ahead and eat. Mr. Hawkes will show me the horses and we’ll join you soon.”
“This way,” Elijah said. He saw Black scowling at al-Habib’s back as they left the room.
As they walked toward the paddock, Elijah explained to his new Saudi friend that the hills of northern Nevada were home to herds of wild horses, as well as deer, bobcats, and coyotes. One of his own horses was a mustang that he had adopted from the Bureau of Land Management. The other two were an Appaloosa and a palomino. Al-Habib told Elijah about the horses he owned back in Saudi Arabia. On the whole walk, they only discussed their common love for animals.
The two men stood with their arms resting on the top fence rail admiring the three horses munching hay on the far side of the paddock. The silence stretched out.
Finally al-Habib spoke. “You have a beautiful home and life here, Mr. Hawkes.”
“Yes, I do love this ranch.”
“But I understand you spend a good deal of time in the Philippines.”
“That I do. I’m a mining engineer and Brightstone Security owns the Benguet Gold Mine. That’s where my work is.”
“Yes, gold. Your specialty, as I understand it, is in figuring out ways to defeat gold fingerprinting technologies.”
“You certainly know more about me than I do about you.”
The prince smiled. “And I understand you might have located another mineral?”
Elijah laughed. “We haven’t located it yet, but we are hot on the trail.”
“Can you tell me about this trail?”
“During the Second World War, the Japanese had their own atomic bomb project. My work in the Philippines concerns what the Japanese did in those later days of that war.”
“I am aware of the Black Eagle Trust.”
Elijah shook his head. There didn’t seem to be much this man didn’t know. “Okay. A German U-boat, U-234, surrendered to the US shortly after Germany surrendered in May of 1945. She had been en route to Japan with a load of uranium oxide. Most think that was the only instance of Germans sending uranium to Japan.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. You see, my firm does research to determine if and where more gold can be found in the Philippines. There is a man who works for us, an expert in cryptography and a World War II veteran, who has been responsible for most of our finds after Marcos left. When the Purple decrypts were declassified—”
“Purple?”
“Yeah, that was the name of one of the Japanese diplomatic codes. Our fellow went through these archives, and he found signals in July of 1943 from a General Kawashima requesting uranium from the Germans. When he told me about it, I decided to see if there had been any earlier shipments of uranium. I made it a side project for him. He determined that there was a load of eight hundred kilograms of uranium oxide aboard each of the two U-boats, U-219 and U-195, that arrived at Batavia, Djakarta, in December 1944.”
“That is eight hundred kilos each?”
“Yes. We found evidence both of the U-boats off-loaded the uranium in Batavia onto a hospital ship called the Teiyō Maru.”
The Saudi laughed.
“Yeah. That was one of their favorite tricks—loading weapons and men aboard ships that the US could not bomb. The Teiyō Maru then headed for the Philippines to take on an additional load of gold. She was supposed to sneak the whole lot past the US sub patrols that had virtually created a blockade around Japan.”
“I take it she never made it.”
“No. And our flyboys had become more aware of the Japanese tricks. There was one instance where they sank a real hospital ship carrying Allied POWs, thinking it was flying the Red Cross as a ruse.”
“So you think she was sunk by American planes?”
Elijah nodded. “Recently at a dig site near Tuguegarao we found some documents that we believe will lead us to the location of the wreck.”
Al-Habib took off his glasses, removed the handkerchief from his breast pocket, and began to clean the lenses. When he was finished he threaded the curved backs around his ears and positioned the lenses on his face. Two of the horses across the paddock whinnied and took off at a playful gallop in the dusty open space.
“Some of us in my country believe it is time for us to join the nuclear club. We find ourselves with Israel on one side, and Iran on the other. The problem is, there is not agreement. Pakistan has offered to sell us weapons, but as you have seen in the headlines, they are unable to keep secrets.” The Saudi prince turned to face him. “Can you keep secrets, Mr. Hawkes?”
Elijah held his stare. “Yes,” he said.
Al-Habib smiled. “Good. And would you be willing to deal with me directly? Your organization has too many close ties to those still in the intelligence service. I am willing to pay you two million dollars in untraceable f
unds for this untraceable uranium.”
“Let me get this straight. If I locate this uranium, you want me to keep quiet about it and then sell it to you without informing my employer. You know they would kill me for doing something like that.”
“Yes. But I also know they underpay you and you have expensive tastes. What I am proposing would remain a secret. When my countrymen reveal to the world we have joined the nuclear club, no one will know where the uranium came from. Do we have a deal?”
Elijah looked across the paddock at his favorite mare, the palomino with the blaze of white on her face. Her head was turned and her big brown eyes stared at him expectantly. “Underwater salvage is expensive,” he said.
“Of course I will pay for all expenses.”
“Make it four million and we’ll have a deal.”
Al-Habib smiled and slapped Elijah on the back. “We have a deal then.”
Aboard Bonefish
South China Sea
November 26, 2012
That first day at sea she had cleared the quarter berth bunk and told him to get in it and stay out of her way. Riley wasn’t accustomed to having anyone else on board her boat, and she didn’t know what to do with a ninety-three-year-old crewmember. She certainly didn’t want him to die on her.
He started to tell her that the men they were running from had resources beyond her imagination. They would find a bigger, faster boat, he said. But she assured him she was not sailing the rhumb line. It might take them a little bit longer, but they wouldn’t be where Mr. Hawkes might expect them to be, either.
As it turned out, no one had followed them. She figured Peewee was feeling a little green the first twenty-four hours because he stayed put in his bunk. Riley cleaned up the mess they had made of her home, and some items she never did find—like her satellite phone. Seemed the fishermen who had searched her boat had helped themselves to her phone, some jewelry, and her stash of a thousand US dollars in her underwear drawer. Fortunately, that wasn’t all her cash. The larger amount was better hidden.
Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) Page 23
