Marauder

by Clive Cussler

  The nut supply had to be destroyed.

  Although Blovex security was decent, it wasn’t a military base. Polk had anticipated this day and toured the facility as a prospective business partner months ago to get the layout and location of the nut storage units.

  He drove forward and took the lead, pulling a balaclava over his head to prevent his face from appearing on any security camera footage and putting a suppressed Glock pistol on his lap.

  When he reached the guardhouse at the front gate, he didn’t wait for the two guards to leave their shack. He shot each in the head while they were still trying to figure out why they could only see his eyes.

  He got out and punched the button that opened the gate. He checked his watch to note the time. They had a good five minutes before they could expect any kind of police response.

  The storage unit was contained in the third building past the guardhouse. While one team waited outside the building for any Blovex security guards who might show up, Polk took the other men inside, all four of them rolling hand trucks behind them.

  They found the storage unit marked “Rand’s palm.” Inside were forty canvas sacks filled with nuts harvested from a wild grove on Christmas Island.

  “Load them up,” Polk said.

  It took several trips to transfer all the bags to the SUVs with the carts.

  By the time they were leaving the facility, they could hear sirens in the distance. Polk led them to a vacant lot on the shore of the Citarum River. The toxic waterway was considered one of the most polluted rivers on earth, so choked with garbage and human waste that you couldn’t see the water. His balaclava kept the worst of the stench at bay.

  One by one, Polk sliced open each bag of nuts with a knife and had his men pour the contents into the river. He was sure no one would find them in that noxious stew.

  When they were done, Polk said, “Back to the airport.”

  They’d get some sleep and fly out first thing in the morning.

  It wouldn’t be so easy to dispose of the trees that bore the nuts. Polk made a mental note to call ahead and make sure they could transport the amount of petrol they needed once they landed on Christmas Island.

  FIFTY

  THE CORAL SEA

  After a week in Fiji, Gary Bonner wasn’t eager to get back to his dentistry practice in Cairns, but he wished the five-knot wind would pick up a little. They’d already been delayed by the storm that had blown through a couple of days before, and he had to go over the accounting books before the new year.

  Still, the bright morning sun and calm seas made for a pleasant cruise on his new fifteen-meter sailing yacht, Tooth Ferry. His wife, Vivian, was lounging on the deck in her bikini with a coffee and a romance novel, while their twelve-year-old son, Cameron, sat astride the bow, where he liked to dangle his feet above the rushing water.

  Something seemed to have drawn Cameron’s attention away from his phone, which Gary thought was a triumph. Maybe he’d spotted a pod of dolphins.

  Gary called out to him. “See something interesting?”

  Cameron stood as if to get a better look. “I don’t know. What is that?”

  He pointed, and Gary followed the line out to a point about a mile away. A yellow object was waving in the breeze.

  Except it was going back and forth rhythmically, not fluttering in the wind.

  Gary picked up his binoculars to take a closer look.

  He was shocked to see a man floating in the ocean. He was frantically trying to hail them with a yellow piece of clothing.

  “Viv, get up,” Gary yelled, turning the yacht. “There’s a guy over there in the water.”

  “What?” she said, sitting up. “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “Cam spotted him. He must have eyes like a falcon. Come over here and take the wheel, so I can douse the sails. Cam, put down that phone and give me a hand.”

  Cameron had started to film the rescue, but he pocketed the phone while they quickly took down the sails. Vivian started the motor and drove them full speed toward the yelling man. Cameron took his phone out again and continued the video recording.

  As they got closer, Gary could tell that the man was Asian and yelling in a foreign language. The yellow item was a jacket, and he clung to a white piece of Styrofoam.

  “Did he fall off a ship?” Cameron asked.

  “Probably,” Gary answered. “He was a lucky bloke to find that piece of flotsam.” He retrieved their life preserver and tied it to a rope to haul the man on board when they got close enough.

  As they approached, Gary saw a fin surface fifty meters behind the shouting man. It sliced through the water on a direct line toward him.

  A shark.

  Gary’s stomach went cold when he realized what had happened. The man had been floating motionless since the storm, drawing no notice to himself. But as soon as he started waving at the passing yacht, his thrashing and yelling simulated the movements and sounds of a fish in distress, exactly the kind of motion that would attract a nearby shark.

  Gary waved his hands in what he hoped was a universal gesture to calm down.

  “Stop moving. There’s a shark in the water.”

  He pointed at the oncoming predator, but the man didn’t understand him and continued shouting, waving, and splashing the water with joy at having been saved.

  The fin reached the man when they were within a boat length of him, and his joyous call turned to a bloodcurdling scream. He was yanked underwater for a moment, and then he surfaced amid a sea of crimson.

  Gary threw out the life preserver, and the man desperately grabbed hold of it.

  “Come on,” Gary cried out and pulled with all his might.

  Vivian rushed toward him and gave him a hand. With their combined effort, they were able to get him up onto the boat.

  One of the man’s legs had been bitten off mid-thigh. Blood cascaded across the deck.

  “Whoa,” Cameron said breathlessly, though he didn’t stop filming.

  “We need to put tourniquets on,” Vivian said, rushing below to get the medical kit. Gary was never more glad that she was an intensive care nurse, which also explained why Cameron wasn’t traumatized by such a horrific sight. He loved hearing her gruesome stories about car crash victims and lawn mower accidents.

  The injured man was babbling, repeating the same words over and over, but Gary didn’t understand them.

  “Do you speak English?” he asked.

  The man shook his head and continued his chant, almost like a mantra. They got progressively softer until he went silent.

  Vivian returned and saw that he was turning pale. She knelt and put her fingers to his neck. After a few seconds, she pulled them away slowly.

  “He’s gone,” she said. “Poor fellow. He’s been floating out here in the ocean for who knows how long and then dies just as he’s being rescued.”

  “I didn’t know someone could bleed that much,” Cameron said, lowering his phone.

  Gary sighed and put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to see that. Are you all right, sport?”

  “I’m fine. You have a hard job, Mom.”

  “Some days harder than others,” Vivian said.

  “At least we can give his family some closure,” Gary said. “We’ll take him back to Cairns with us so his body can be returned home.”

  “I’ll go radio the Maritime Border Command,” Vivian said. “Better to let them know now than show up at port with a corpse. Then I’ll get a sheet to wrap him with.” She went below.

  “Let’s see if we can find out who he is,” Gary said.

  He went through the man’s pockets. He didn’t find any ID. Just a pack of Chinese cigarettes and a matchbook that had an image of two clinking glasses of beer. It read “The Lazy Goanna, Nhulunbuy.”

  “I wonder what he w
as saying,” Gary said.

  “Maybe I can find out,” Cameron said and began tapping on his phone.

  “How?”

  “Jeez, Dad. You can do anything on the internet now.” Their satellite connection and Wi-Fi system meant that even out in the middle of the ocean they could stream movies and browse the web.

  Gary could hear the man’s last words on the phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Playing the recording for a translation app,” Cameron said. After a few moments he frowned at the phone.

  “What was he saying?”

  “That can’t be right. Maybe this app doesn’t work.”

  Gary looked at the phone’s screen and agreed with his son. The app couldn’t have translated the phrase correctly. Why would a man with mortal wounds keep repeating the words “the centaur left me”?

  FIFTY-ONE

  CHRISTMAS ISLAND

  After a stopover in Surabaya, Indonesia, to refuel, Gomez landed the Oregon’s tiltrotor at Christmas Island’s airport at eight in the morning. In addition to Parsons, Juan had brought along Raven, MacD, Eddie, and Linc. As they climbed out, Juan noted that the only other airplanes on the tarmac were an Indonesian airliner and a private jet.

  They couldn’t go around brandishing assault weapons on this small island, but Juan didn’t want to travel unarmed, not after the surprise attack on the Oregon. False bottoms in their bags were good enough to fool the customs agents, allowing them to at least have pistols with them.

  At the airport’s exit, a beautiful woman with a blonde ponytail rushed toward them and threw herself into Bob Parsons’ arms.

  MacD held out his hands toward the doors as if expecting his own enthusiastic greeting. When no other women came in, he joked, “Don’t we all get one?”

  She extricated herself. “Bob, it’s so good to see you.”

  Parsons looked shocked. “I thought you might not want to see me.”

  “That was a long time ago. And I was the one who broke up with you, remember?”

  “Because I wasn’t ready to settle down.”

  “That doesn’t mean I stopped loving you.”

  Parsons suddenly noticed the five others looking at him. He cleared his throat.

  “Renee LaBelle, I’d like you to meet your new friends.”

  He introduced each of them, but Renee was more interested in the bandage on his hand.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Actually, that’s why we’re here. Without my knowing it, I was part of a plan that has made a lot of people ill, and now I’m trying to make amends. There might be a tree nut on Christmas Island that can help cure them, and we need to find it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Rand’s palm.”

  Renee nodded slowly as she was thinking. “It’s endemic to the island. Rather rare. The trees are scattered throughout the national park, but there’s only one large grove I know about.”

  “Can you tell us where it is?” Juan asked.

  “Even better. I can show you.” She smiled at Parsons. “I took the day off so we could catch up.”

  As they walked out to the parking lot, Juan said, “Did you see who got out of that private plane?”

  Renee shook her head. “When I got here, I asked if that was your plane, but the security guard said it was government types headed out to the immigration detention center. We get them here from time to time to transport some of the detainees to other locations.” She stopped at a silver Mercedes SUV. “You can borrow my G-Wagen.”

  “Is there room for all of us?”

  “No. That’s why I had a friend drop it off here for you. Bob and I will drive my other car.”

  She pointed behind the SUV to an exquisite Jaguar convertible with burgundy-colored paint, a tan and red leather interior, and wire-spoked wheels.

  “Now, that’s a car,” Linc said.

  “It’s my toy, a 1955 Jaguar XK140. It has the Special Equipment engine option, which is good for two hundred kilometers per hour. Mostly, I just take it for spins around the island with the top down on nice sunny days like today.”

  Parsons leaned over and whispered to Juan. “I didn’t mention that her family is rich, did I?”

  “You left that part out.”

  “Smart, beautiful, and rich. I was an idiot for letting her get away.”

  “I can’t disagree with you on that one.”

  “Shall we?” Renee said, hopping into the Jaguar’s driver’s seat.

  “We shall,” Parsons said, squeezing into the passenger seat.

  The rest of them got in the Mercedes. Juan drove with Eddie beside him and the others in the back.

  The Jag took off with a throaty roar, shaking the SUV’s windows with the exhaust note from its twin tailpipes. Juan had to step on it to keep up.

  Other than the small town of Flying Fish Cove at the north end, the island was sparsely inhabited. Soon they were driving through a dense tropical rain forest.

  According to the research they’d done on the flight in, Christmas Island wasn’t a huge travel destination since there were very few beaches. Most of the shoreline consisted of jagged rocks. Tourists who came were most interested in the biodiversity, including the massive annual red crab migration. Apparently, the Oregon team had missed it by only a couple of weeks.

  The only other industries were several phosphate mines, with some quarries dating from the 1800s, and the immigration detention center on the west side of the island.

  Renee led them on a winding course through the island until she stopped along the side of the road just past a metal overpass. Juan came to a stop behind her and got out.

  “We can leave the cars here. Everyone knows them, so no one will bother them.” She turned and pointed at the overpass behind them. “That’s for the red crabs to cross the road during the migration. Otherwise, they’d get squashed by cars.”

  “I’ll try to come back and see it sometime,” Juan said. “How far are we from the grove?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. I haven’t been out here in a while. There are several trailheads in this area where you can park, but I think this is the closest one. The paths crisscross the entire national park, so we may need to fan out to find the one leading to the grove.”

  “We’ll be able to talk to each other through our earpieces.”

  While she went back to her car, Juan and his team hid pistols under their shirts and got out fifteen balled-up nylon sacks to carry as many nuts as they were able to find.

  They began the trek into the jungle, led by Renee, who took Parsons by his good hand.

  “Be careful not to step on the crabs,” she said. “They live on the forest floor. You could say they’re our local treasure. And if you see any small tree with broad heart-shaped leaves, don’t touch it.”

  “Why not?” Raven asked.

  “It’s another plant unique to our island called the jelutong, or stinging tree. One of its leaves rubbed against my arm once. It felt like being scalded with acid. If you so much as brush your hand against it, you’ll be in agony for days.”

  “I hate jungles,” Linc muttered and kept his hands close by his side as he picked his way through the foliage.

  They reached a fork in the trail. The path went in three directions.

  “This is where we’ll need to split up. The trees are in a clearing that was supposed to be a phosphate mine, but they never started digging after cutting down the trees. The flora is just now starting to come back. I think that’s why the Rand’s palms started growing so well there. Otherwise, they’re difficult to locate.”

  Eddie and Linc took the trail to the left, while Raven and MacD went to the right. Juan stayed with Renee and Parsons and kept going straight.

  They walked for another five minutes before Renee asked, “How did you two
meet?”

  Juan looked at Parsons, who said, “I have to be honest with you. Juan and his friends saved me from some unsavory people.”

  “The ones who hurt you and those others that you need the cure for?”

  “Yes. This is related to the Empiric and Port Cook incidents. And they might come here, so after we find the trees, Juan has asked you and me to leave and wait for them back at the airport.”

  “Absolutely not,” Renee objected. “If my little island can help, I want to do my part.”

  “My dear, we can’t—” Parsons started, but Juan put his hand up to stop the two of them.

  “Do you smell that?” he said.

  Renee sniffed the air. “Is that petrol?”

  Although they were surrounded by thick jungle wilderness, the breeze carried the unmistakable odor of gasoline.

  FIFTY-TWO

  At the same moment that Juan called Eddie to tell him about the gas smell, he and Linc noticed it, too. There seemed to be an opening in the trees up ahead, and voices soon accompanied the odor.

  They got off the path and crept forward. Eddie almost stepped on one of the red crabs that Renee had mentioned. Crunching its hard shell underfoot would certainly draw attention. He pointed it out to Linc to keep him from making the same mistake.

  They kept going until they could see into the clearing that Renee had described. There were a dozen squat palm trees loaded with ripe nuts, many of which had already tumbled to the ground. There were more than enough to supply antidotes for everyone who had been affected by the Enervum gas.

  But the stench of gasoline had gotten stronger as they’d approached the clearing, and Eddie now saw why. A Chinese man only twenty yards away was unloading the last of a plastic gas tank onto the ground near the trees. Three more tanks were discarded nearby.