by Rich Johnson
“You are the master of follow-up questions, aren’t you?”
“Sorry. One at a time, I know.”
Pfister chuckled. “Well, I shouldn’t be so hard on you. I need to remember that you’re only a civilian.”
“Oh, that was a nasty dig,” Josh shot back. “I’m only sort of civilian. I’m in the intel business, and I get anxious to have it all at once.”
“I understand. Well, to answer your first question, she’s about 320 miles from here. We’ll need to do a refuel aboard a cutter with a helo platform mid-way. The HH-65A doesn’t have the range for an out and back without a pit-stop going each way.”
Josh tucked the photos back in the folder. “How’d she drop off the chart?”
“From the look of the antenna array on top of the bridge, I’d say she got pretty badly torn up by the storm, which is why we could not make radio contact. Our radar from ground stations doesn’t reach much beyond the horizon, so once the storm hit and we grounded all our airborne radar assets from flying near Yolanda, there was no way we could see the ship.”
“What about the EPIRB?”
“It’s only speculation, but either someone onboard thought it was time to activate the distress signal, so that if the ship went down we would have her GPS coordinates for SAR, or one of the units got knocked overboard. These devices are engineered to float free of a sinking ship, activate itself and then float on the surface so it can keep sending a GPS and ship identification signal to the satellite system. A container ship the size of Desdemonda has several of these in brackets positioned around the outside of the bridge.”
The lengthy explanation made Josh smile. “I know,” he said. “I carry a mini PLB. Same thing, almost. Except it doesn’t float free and turn itself on if I sink.”
The car rolled to a stop. In the background, the sound of rotors and the whine of a jet helicopter engine could be heard. Captain Pfister opened the door. “We’re here.”
Fifty-one miles out of the San Blas Islands
“I’ve got an idea.” Nicole Plover spread a chart of the western Caribbean across the dinette table in front of Cadee and Jacob. “We’re right about here.” She pointed to an empty spot of blue half an inch north of the San Blas Islands. “We’ll be passing by these islands in a couple of days.” Her finger traced an imaginary line between Honduras and some dots of brown surrounded by blue. “Maybe we can visit some of those islands, buy postcards and send them back to Maria Elena and Kirsten. What do you say?”
“You’re just saying that to cheer us up, right?” Jacob, still in his pajamas, had a dour look on his face. After helping hoist anchor at dawn, he’d gone back to bed and slept until now. He didn’t bother to comb his hair before coming to the main salon, and it was the worst that Nicole could remember since they arrived in the San Blas months earlier. Of course, she reminded herself, he never used to comb his hair in the morning until he met Kirsten. The thought made her chuckle.
“No,” – her mind returned from its muse about Jacob’s hair – “I was just thinking that it would be nice to stay in touch with our friends.”
“Did I hear somebody say something about touching?” Dan bounded through the cabin door, the autopilot remote control in his hand and an oversized smile that bordered on being a mischievous grin. He slid into the dinette seat beside Jacob, intentionally crowding his son, swarming over him with a hug. “I’m here to touch someone, and I’m starting with you, little buddy.”
“Ah dad,” Jacob protested, trying unsuccessfully to shove his dad away. “You’re not exactly what I was hoping to hug today.”
Dan jumped back. “Ooh!” He feigned surprise with wide eyes and brows raised. “Not soft enough for you, huh?”
Dan moved on to Cadee, swallowing her up in a bear hug. “And how are you this morning, my little angel?”
“I decided to be happy,” Cadee said. “But I sure do miss Maria Elena.”
“I know, honey,” Dan consoled her, “but you’ve still got me.”
Cadee put her arms around her dad’s neck and kissed his cheek. “I love you, dad. You’re the best.”
“Spread the word,” Dan chirped. “I don’t think this guy over here believes it.”
Jacob sat up, put his elbows on the table and rested his face in his hands. “Yeah, I do. You’re the best dad there ever was. You’re just not much of a girlfriend.”
Dan slid in beside his son. “Man, I’m glad to hear you say that. Girls come and girls go, but of dads you have just one.”
“Hey,” Nicole said. “Watch it. Some girls come and don’t go. Some stick around forever.”
“Yes, and I am lucky for that.” Dan reached across the table and took Nicole by the hand. “Forever sounds good enough for me.”
Jacob took his face out of his hands. “Dad, all I want is to be as lucky as you are.”
For the first time, Dan realized that his son was growing up fast. Too fast. It wouldn’t be long before Jake was looking for the love of his life. He was a thoughtful and tenderhearted young man, and if Kirsten were the right gal for him, who was Dan to throw up roadblocks or to tease his son about it?
He reached for Jacob’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Sorry, son. Didn’t mean to make light of something so important to you. Will you let me off the hook this time, kind of like catch-and-release fishing?”
Jacob laughed. “Sure, dad.” Then with mock seriousness, “Just don’t let it happen again or you’ll have to spend some time in your room.”
“It’s a deal.” Then Dan’s eyes opened wide and he stood up. “Oops, I better get back out there. The autopilot can steer, but it can’t see what’s up ahead or make life-saving decisions. That’s the job for super-skipper.” He stepped out through the door, called back to his family, “Glad to see you’re all up by the crack of noon.”
“He is such a character,” Nicole told her children.
“He sure is,” Jacob said. “How did you two ever get together? You’re so … um, so normal.”
“Well, just for the record,” Cadee piped in, “I wouldn’t want to have a normal dad. Too boring.”
The sound of his family’s voices drifted through the open cockpit door and Dan’s eyes filled. He sat at the helm and looked up, as if checking the mainsail, but he was looking far beyond the top of the mast. Under his breath he whispered. “Thank you, God. I am such a lucky man.”
Manila, Philippines
“We’ve got numbers.” Susan Vellum held the cell phone close to her head and cupped her other hand over the ear to quiet the noise of the airport. “I finally cracked Alicia Gomez, and I’ve got all I can get here.”
Curt Delamo leaned back in his office chair, tossed his pen onto the desk and smiled. “Finally, something’s going right. So, what did it take? Nothing for the media to wring their hands about, I hope.”
“Nope, just a little heart-to-heart girl talk.” Susan laughed. “I’ll give it all to you later. I’ll be sending across a flashcrypt right after this call, with all the pertinent data. I know this is a secure line, but somehow I still trust flashcrypt more.”
“Fine, I’ll go pick it up. What’s your sense now?”
“I have a package to deliver, if you know what I mean, and I think she’ll be an asset.”
“You want to bring her here?”
“I think she’ll be useful to us if we keep her very close. Besides, she won’t last the night if we leave her here. She knows that. It’s one of the things that convinced her that a long and relatively easy life working for us would be better than the slow and painful razor-and-acid torture and death that waits for her if we leave her behind. Let me tell you, she is more than anxious.”
“So, you kind of went public with her?”
“Only to a few key players. But her gig is over here.”
“When are you leaving? I’m concerned about your safety.”
“Boarding the plane right now, boss. Don’t worry about a thing. Gotta go now.”
“All right,
be safe. Call me when you can.” Delamo put the phone back on the cradle and worry lines crept across his forehead.
Susan pushed the button on her cell phone to end the call, then keyed in the code for a flashcrypt and sent an encoded message containing the container description and serial numbers via secure satellite to a receiver in the NIA office in a fraction of a second. Then she closed her cell phone and tucked it inside her purse. Over the airport intercom, the call went out announcing her flight from Manila to Los Angeles. She turned to face the beautiful, dark-haired woman sitting alone in the corner of the waiting area. Somehow, Alicia Gomez didn’t look so dangerous now. In fact, as she stood, her face revealed a hint of fear.
“Don’t worry,” Susan said, taking her by the elbow as if escorting someone who was unable to walk without assistance. “I’ll get you through this.”
“You don’t know these people,” the woman with the auburn hair and green eyes said.
“Well, I don’t think they can reach us now. The airport is secure and once we’re in the air you will have nothing to worry about. Trust me, your future is brighter than if you stayed in this business.”
“I only worked for them because the money was good. For a girl like me, the choice was either that or prostitution. I was good at what I did. But I never really converted to Islam. My grandparents were Catholic. My parents were Catholic, and I am Catholic. It was only for the money.”
“Prostitution probably would have killed less people,” Susan said as they handed their tickets to the woman at the gate, then walked down the enclosed boarding tunnel.
At the door to the plane, Alicia Gomez hesitated. “I think I know that woman,” she whispered to Susan. “I am not certain, but I think I recognize her.”
The airline hostess welcoming passengers into the plane wore a friendly smile and nodded at Susan and Alicia as they approached. “Welcome to Philippine Airlines. Please make yourselves comfortable. We are almost finished boarding and will be taking off in just a few minutes.”
“She looks safe enough to me,” Susan whispered to Alicia.
“Perhaps so. It was only an impression. I just thought her eyes hung on me too long.”
They stepped through the doorway and turned right into the aisle leading to their seats. “Do you mind if I take the a window seat?” Alicia asked. “I will want to bid farewell to my homeland.”
“You got it.” Susan stepped aside and let Alicia seat herself first.
The entry door was shut and latched, and the high-pitched sound of jet engines revving up filled the airplane. An announcement came over the speaker system telling passengers to observe the flight attendants as they demonstrated the seatbelt procedure and other safety information. Susan looked forward and saw the flight attendant who had greeted them at the door. She was saying something into a hand-held radio, and for an instant they made eye contact. A second attendant was making announcements into the intercom microphone and a third held up a sample seatbelt buckle for all the passengers to see. Susan had long since memorized the process, so she buckled up, laid her head back on the seat and closed her eyes.
A sudden crack and the impact of something wet and sharp against her face stunned her. Instinctively, she reached a hand to shield the side of her head, but it was too late. Blood, brain tissue and bone fragments filled her hand. Just before losing consciousness, the last thing Susan saw was that Alicia Gomez had been shot through the head from outside the plane.
Chapter Twenty-four
The bright orange HH-65A Dolphin helicopter sped across the open ocean at 120 knots for ninety minutes before falling into a circling pattern and lining up for a landing on the platform of a 210-foot WMEC Coast Guard cutter. In addition to carrying out drug interdiction missions, the fast cutter was equipped both for carrying and servicing the short-range helos when they were on extended flights. Even though Yolanda was more than 200 miles to the northwest, the residual wind and waves that followed in her wake for the next day and a half made landing on the moving platform a tricky operation. Winds buffeted the chopper, and the turbulence was like a ride over a very bad stretch of road.
“New Jersey,” Pfister said into his helmet’s mouthpiece.
The two flight crewmembers grinned and nodded agreement, but Josh didn’t understand what he had heard through the helmet earphones. “Why do you say that?”
A smile crossed the Pfister’s face. “Have you ever driven through Jersey City?”
“Ah,” Josh said. “I get it. Are we going to make it down okay?”
“Oh yeah.” Pfister shook his head emphatically. “I told these guys that they better take care of me, or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Trust me, there is even worse duty than Colon. Besides, these guys are the best in the business. They’ll get us down.”
It took two passes, but finally the chopper touched down on the pitching and rolling platform. Two Coasties sprinted from their safe positions and attached tie-downs to the Dolphin, and the rotors slowed and then stopped. With one finger, Josh pushed the mouthpiece up in front of his lips. “Now what?”
Pfister was already unfastening his seatbelt. “Everybody off while she’s being refueled. Safety regs.”
Josh and Pfister exited the helicopter, followed closely by the pilot, co-pilot, engineer and rescue swimmer. They were shown the way forward along the ship’s side deck, climbed a flight of stairs and stepped into the nav station. The pilot busied himself with the logbook from the chopper, and the rest of them were handed cups of coffee by one of the young crewmembers.
The crewman who had led them to the nav station approached Pfister. “Fifteen minutes, and we’ll have you back in the air, sir. We’ve begun refueling already.”
“Very good,” Captain Pfister said, lifting the steaming cup to his lips. Then he turned to Josh. “We’re half way there. The Dolphin’s operational range is 360 nautical miles. Of course, that’s with a built-in safety factor. It’ll get us to the Desdemonda and then back here for another refuel.”
“Not knowing what we’re going to find out there,” Josh said, “I might need as much as a couple of hours.”
“No problem. We’ll shut down the chopper and strap her down on top of the most stable-looking stack of containers. From the aerial photos, it looks like most of the cargo is still in fairly good shape. She’s on the back side of the storm now, and even though there’s still a lot of wave action where she is, we probably won’t see waves above ten or twelve feet; a ship that size will have a pretty slow rate of pitch and roll.”
“Do we just show up unannounced?”
“Of course, we haven’t been able to contact the ship’s commander by long-range communications yet. But when we get within five miles or so we’ll try to raise the captain by VHF. They should have some hand-held marine band VHF radios on the bridge, and those units will still be intact, since their antennas are built in. Failing that, when we circle the bridge a couple of times he’ll get the message that we’re going to come aboard.”
“What will they do about their radios?”
“Now that the storm has passed, I expect that the ship’s engineer, communications officer and electrician will be working on repairs to the antenna array. I have no idea how much damage was done to the rest of their navigation system. They might need to be escorted back to Colon for major repairs.”
The door swung open and the young crewman poked his head inside. “All set, sir. You can board when you wish.”
Pfister tossed the empty foam cup into the waste bin, straightened his cap and nodded to Josh on his way out the door. “Time to fly.”
More than an hour into the second leg of the flight, Pfister pushed the helmet mic up in front of his mouth. “Mr Adams.” Josh looked up from the packet of photos he was studying. “Everything I said back there was assuming that there are still people alive on the Desdemonda.”
The thought struck Josh like a clap of thunder. “What are you saying?”
P
fister shook his head slowly. “Wouldn’t be the first ghost ship in these waters.”
“Ghost ship?”
“Maritime history is full of them, and every one is a mystery that leads folks to speculate about piracy or mutiny and abandonment of the ship. Or maybe a horrible storm that batters a ship so badly the crew are lost overboard while trying to escape in a life raft and they all drown. Or they are injured and die aboard, and by the time the ship is found there’s nobody left alive.”
That was all he said, then he leaned back and looked off into the distance as the sea rushed by below, leaving Josh to dwell on the subject of ghost ships. There was nothing to see. Cloud cover overhead was high and broken in places, and the drone of the rotors began to put Josh’s mind into a trance. Without warning, the earphones in his helmet suddenly crackled to life with the pilot’s voice. “I’m showing a ship-sized blip on the radar, sir.”
Pfister pushed the mic to his mouth. “How far out?”
“I’m on the 48-mile scale, and it just showed up. Time to target?”
“Twenty one minutes, sir.”
“At fifteen miles out, begin trying to raise the bridge on VHF. Maybe there’s a hand-held turned on.”
“Aye, sir.”
Josh pressed his helmet against the window, but couldn’t see forward well enough to spot anything, so he sat back and waited. The chopper bounced in turbulence caused by residual wind behind the great storm. The eye was more than 100 miles away and moving to the northwest, but the chopper was gaining on the powerful swirling winds and the closer they got, the bumpier the ride. The helmet came to life again. “Sir, I’ve got contact with the C-130. They’re circling and shooting more photos.”
Pfister moved the mic again. “What’s their report?”
