White Cargo

by Stuart Woods

  “No problem,” Cat said. “It was just a small adjustment. That rarely happens, and it’ll probably never happen again.”

  “Listen,” the man said. “I’m back on duty at eight tomorrow morning. I’ll get you a soldering iron from maintenance, if you like.”

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate that. I’ll stop in after breakfast to get it.”

  Cat left the communications room with even more information than he’d expected, walked through the foyer, and back to the dining room. Dessert was just being served.

  “You okay?” Meg asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, and I think I may have a shot at getting those troops in here.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Right now, I’ve got to talk to Dell.” Some of the diners were leaving the table, and Dell was among them.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Cat said, rising. Followed by Meg, he made his way out of the room and managed to draw up alongside Dell. “All right,” Cat said. “I’ll help you get the money out.”

  “I can manage by myself,” Dell said.

  “Listen to me, dammit!” he whispered hoarsely. “There’s one man on duty there all night, and by early in the morning, he’s going to be pretty sleepy. I’m going in there at five A.M. to use the radios, and I’m going to have to disable the operator. Can you get there at that time?”

  “Yeah, I can do it.”

  “All right, meet me in the men’s room across the foyer from Vargas’s office at five, and for God’s sake be careful. There’ll be guards out at that hour.”

  “Okay, you’re on.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bring it. Plan on going straight from the radio room to the clearing where the helicopter is.”

  Dell nodded and drifted into the crowd.

  36

  CAT COULD NOT SLEEP. WHILE MEG DREW DEEP BREATHS BESIDE him, he stared at the ceiling and gave in to memories he had fought off for months. He remembered Kate in the days when he had come home from twelve or fourteen hours of work, when she had rushed home from her own job to make his dinner and listen to him enthuse about his work. He remembered Jinx as a doll of a toddler and Dell as a silent, resentful six-year-old. He was still baffled by the contrast in the two children. Jinx had been such a joy, and Dell such a trial. Still, he wanted both of them back, and he thought that if he could only get them out of this place, there might be another chance with Dell. Surely being here had taught him what sort of people he was dealing with.

  At four o’clock he got up and took a shower and shaved. He got into his tennis clothes, unable to shake the feeling that this was his last day on earth. There were so many things that could go wrong with what he was going to do today. Too much was improvised, too little certain. He made some instant coffee and drank it, sweating, in spite of the air-conditioning.

  Meg came into the sitting room and startled him.

  “Jumpy, huh?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I may get you killed today, Meg.”

  “I’ve thought about it. I think you’re doing the best you can under the circumstances.”

  “Under the circumstances, maybe.”

  She put her hand on his cheek. “Listen, I haven’t told you what a great thing you’ve done. You started with nothing on this, and you found her.”

  “I’d have given up on finding Jinx in Santa Marta if it hadn’t been for you. I’d have given up on everything else, too. But you made me realize that there was still something in me that could love somebody, something I thought had been wrung out of me. I do love you, you know.”

  She smiled. “I know. And I love you.” She bent and kissed him.

  “If we get out of here alive . . .” he started to say.

  “Then we’ll talk about it,” she said. “Not much point right now. Let’s concentrate on the matter at hand.”

  He stood up. “You’re right.” He took Hedger’s canvas-and-leather grip and set it on the sofa, open. Then he worked the combination on the aluminum briefcase and started transferring the money into Hedger’s bag.

  “Jesus,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  He packed the money into the case, and put a towel on top of it. “Pack anything you can’t bear to leave into one small bag and take it to the tennis court with you. Our date with Prince and Jinx is at seven, and I may not be able to come back here first. Will you take this bag for me, too?”

  “Sure. All I really need to take of my own is my camera and tapes and my passport. The rest is expendable.”

  “Put some towels on top of the bag to make it look as much like a tennis bag as possible.” Cat slipped the H&K automatic into the shoulder holster and put it on. He put on dark gray trousers and a blue blazer over his tennis clothes and slipped the silencer into his pocket. He took a deep breath. “Let’s be at the court a little before seven.”

  “All right.”

  He didn’t want to go. He kissed her and slipped out the door. He stood in the doorway for a few moments and let his eyes become accustomed to the dark. There was no moon, and he was grateful for that. Nothing was moving in the night. He stepped off the small porch. Would it be best to simply walk to the main house? Then, if he was stopped, he could plead insomnia and a walk. They might just send him back to the cottage. On the other hand, if they caught him sneaking around, he’d be up before Vargas or Prince very quickly. He decided to sneak. It seemed his best chance of making the house.

  He kept off the main path and moved from tree to tree, looking as far as he could in every direction. Still nothing. Finally, he came to a place with little shelter. There were sixty or seventy yards of open ground to cover, and only low shrubs for cover. He took one more look around, then ran for it. It seemed to take forever, but he reached the side of the main house. He paused a moment to let his breathing return to normal. Then he stepped around the corner of the house to the front veranda. He nearly ran head-on into a khaki-clad guard carrying a machine gun. The man was standing, looking up at the sky, not three feet from the corner of the house. Cat ducked back around the corner, hoping he had not made a noise.

  He stood, frozen, the gun in his hand, pressed against the side of the house. Then he realized the silencer had not been fitted to the barrel. He fumbled in his pocket for it, cursing his own stupidity. If he had to use the gun out here without the silencer, he’d bring the whole place down on him. He got the silencer screwed into the barrel; he heard the man yawn, then his footsteps recede. Cat peeped around the corner of the house and saw him walking down the veranda in the opposite direction. Cat waited a few seconds longer to be sure he was gone, then ran to the front door. Locked. Damn. He started back the way he had come, then stopped. There was a window in the men’s room, he remembered. He went back past the front door, found the window, and tried it. Locked. He looked around once more, then with his elbow, smashed the glass. There wasn’t much noise; most of the glass fell inside the house. He reached inside, unlocked the window, and stepped through. Quickly, he removed the fragments of glass from the window and put them into a wastebasket. Maybe no one would notice the empty pane. The room was dark, but the glow from his Rolex said ten to five. Dell was going to have trouble getting into the house, too. Cat eased open the men’s-room door and looked around the large foyer. Empty. A light from the communications room cast a dim glow over Vargas’s office. He could hear the sound of big-band jazz coming from a radio in the room. Cat slipped off his tennis shoes to keep the rubber soles from squeaking on the marble floor, then tiptoed to the front door, keeping his eyes on the door to Vargas’s office. He reached the front door and started to turn the lock. As he turned his eyes back from the office door, he opened the front door an inch, then jerked back. A man was standing on the other side of the door. Too frightened to move, he stared at the shadowy figure on the veranda. The man motioned for him to open the door. Holding the pistol behind him, he did, and Dell stepped in. Cat motioned him toward the men’s room.

  “Ch
rist, you scared me,” Cat said when they were safely inside.

  “Same here,” Dell said, panting.

  They stood there in the dark, composing themselves.

  “What now?” Dell asked.

  “I was afraid you were going to ask me that,” Cat said, ruefully. “I guess we go in there and take that guy. Did you bring a gun?”

  “Yeah.” Dell held up a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver.

  “If there’s any shooting to do, let me do it,” Cat said. “I’ve got a silencer. You can point, but don’t shoot; you’ll bring the house down on us.”

  “Okay, who goes first?”

  “I do, I think. The guy who’s on duty saw me this afternoon. I fixed his printer. I’ll be a familiar face.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  Cat checked the foyer, then stepped through the door. He tiptoed across the floor toward Vargas’s office. At the door he motioned for Dell to hang back, then walked into the communications room. He walked hard into the radio operator, who was coming out.

  The man leapt back. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  The music was coming from a big Zenith Transoceanic radio on the shelf above the other radio equipment.

  “Easy,” Cat said, holding the pistol behind him, “you scared me, too.” He had forgotten how big the man was. “I was in here this afternoon. I fixed your printer, remember? I want to place a call to my bank in Switzerland.”

  The man relaxed a little but still seemed suspicious. “At five o’clock in the morning?”

  “It’s eleven o’clock in Switzerland,” Cat said.

  “You’ve got to have an authorization from the Anaconda or Vargas,” the man said. “How the hell did you get into the house?”

  “The front door was open,” Cat said. “And I have the Anaconda’s permission. I’ve got to transfer some money to his account in Cali.”

  “Nobody said anything to me,” the man said.

  “The Anaconda should have,” Cat said. “And I’ve got to get the money wired before noon Swiss time, or it won’t get to Cali today.”

  The man looked doubtful. “I don’t know.”

  “Shall we wake up the Anaconda and ask him?” Cat asked.

  “Jesus, no,” the man replied.

  “Look, you can place the call and listen in. All I have to do is give them my account number and the Cali account number and the amount, a million dollars.”

  “You didn’t bring it with you, huh?”

  “There was a misunderstanding.”

  The man scratched his head. “Well, okay. Who do you want to call?” He turned toward the chair before the single side-band set.

  “Credit Suisse, in Zurich. Ask the operator to get you the number. Which marine operator do you use this time of day?”

  “New York,” the man said, spinning a knob to set the frequency. “It’ll go a lot faster if you can remember the number.”

  Cat took the pistol by the barrel, and swung it hard at the base of the man’s skull. The man let out a grunt of pain and dropped from the chair to one knee, but he was still conscious. He made another noise, then turned and grabbed Cat’s right arm, twisting. Cat, amazed that the man wasn’t out, went down on one knee, too. He grabbed at the pistol with his left hand and tried to hit him again, but the man got an arm up and blocked it, then grabbed at the pistol. They were both on their knees now. It was a test of strength, and Cat was losing. Dell appeared in the door, saw what was happening. He ran up and put his pistol to the radio operator’s head. The man ignored him.

  “Hit him!” Cat grunted.

  Dell drew back and brought his gun down on top of the man’s head. He grunted again, but kept fighting. Dell put down the gun, clasped his hands together, and swung hard at the back of the man’s neck. His grip on Cat slipped, then he fell forward onto his hands. Dell hit him again, and he collapsed onto the floor.

  “Christ,” Cat panted, “it’s not like the movies, is it?”

  “Let’s the him up or something before the bastard comes to.”

  Cat rummaged through the room, looking for something to the him with. He opened a drawer and found a thick roll of duct tape. “This ought to do,” he said.

  Dell brought the man’s hands behind him, and Cat bound them securely with the two-inch-wide, heavy tape. Then he bound the ankles and passed the roll twice around the man’s head, taping his mouth shut and covering his eyes and ears. Dell took the roll and passed it completely around the radio operator’s body, taping his hands to his back.

  “I think that ought to do it,” Dell said. “What do we do with him? He’s going to wake up soon.”

  Cat went to the bookshelf and found the handle to the closet door. He opened the door, then went and helped Dell drag the man into the closet. The little room was filled with canvas bags, and they placed several on top of him. “By the time anybody starts looking for him, we’ll be gone,” Cat said.

  “This is what I want,” Dell said, opening one of the bags. “How much do you think is in here?”

  “From the looks of it, I’d say four million, maybe five,” Cat said. “I got two million into a large briefcase.”

  Dell slung the bag over his shoulder. “Okay, I’m happy,” he said. “Where’s Jinx?”

  “Prince is bringing her to the tennis courts at seven, and Meg and I will bring her from there. You get out of here and down to where the helicopter is. I’m going to try and contact somebody on the radio.”

  “Can you handle it alone? Is there anything I can do?”

  Cat laughed. “You know, this is the first time in a long time we’ve done anything together.”

  Dell laughed, too.

  “Come on, I’ll go to the door with you.” He led the way out of the communications room, across the foyer to the front door. He opened it and peered out into the darkness, then turned to Dell. “Looks clear. Be careful, I saw a guard on the veranda earlier.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dell said.

  Cat put his hands on the young man’s shoulders. “I will worry, until we’re all out of here,” he said. “The pilot should be down there by eight. I’ll try to be there about then. Stay in the bush and keep a sharp eye out for us.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  It had been a long time since Dell had called him that. Cat wanted to say more, but he pushed his son through the door and waved him off. Cat watched him disappear into the darkness, then turned and went back to the communications room. He switched off the music and picked up the microphone of the high-frequency set. The frequency had been tuned in, but the set was not on. He pushed the power button and waited impatiently for it to warm up. Soon there was a crackle of static. Cat turned down the volume and picked up a headset, switching off the speaker.

  “Marine operator, marine operator, marine operator,” he said into the microphone. A distant garble of voices reached his ears, but no one replied. Cat double-checked the frequency. He knew it by heart from calling from Catbird. “Marine operator, marine operator, marine operator,” he said again. No voice came back.

  Cat sat before the set for half an hour, sweating, calling and calling, with no response. He looked around the room for a list of other marine operators but found none. A hint of light began to show in the sky outside the window. He switched the frequency to 2182, the international emergency channel. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” he said into the microphone. “Does anybody read me?”

  He released the key and waited. No response. The Atlantic must be full of merchant ships, who are supposed to monitor this frequency, he thought, but it’s early morning, and nobody’s listening. He tried again and again. Was the whole world asleep? It was getting to be daylight now.

  Suddenly, someone walked past the window. Cat didn’t see who; it had just been a shape. Then he heard the scrape of a key in a lock and a rattle as the front door of the building opened. There were footsteps on the marble floor of the foyer, then a voice caused Cat to jump. “Yo, there, you alive?�
��

  “Yo,” Cat called back. “All’s well.”

  “I’ll bring you some coffee as soon as it’s made.”

  “Thanks,” Cat replied.

  The footsteps receded across the foyer and another door opened and closed. Cat knew he was all out of time. He had one other shot, he thought. He reached up and switched on the aircraft radio and tuned it to 121.5, the aircraft emergency frequency. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” he said into the microphone. He waited thirty seconds, then repeated the call. Suddenly, a voice, amazingly loud, leapt out at him.

  “This is Avianca 401 to aircraft calling Mayday,” a voice said in heavily accented English. “What is your position?”

  Cat’s heart leapt. “I am on the ground approximately one hundred and forty-five nautical miles northeast of Leticia VOR, on approximately the zero one zero radial. Do you read?”

  “I read one four five nautical from Leticia, zero one zero radial. Is that correct?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “What is your trouble? Have you crashed?”

  “Yes, I have crashed, but I and my party of three are alive. Can you transmit a message to Bogotá for me?”

  “Affirmative. We are en route from Buenos Aires to Bogotá, arriving in one hour fifty minutes.” The voice was growing weaker. It was obviously a jet travelling fast.

  “Can you transmit to Bogotá?”

  “Affirmative. I will ask for a search.”

  “No, listen. I do not need a search. Instead, ask Bogotá to telephone the American Embassy and ask for the duty officer. Do you read?”

  “Your transmission is broken now. You say call the American Embassy?”

  “Affirmative,” Cat said, speaking as rapidly as he could. “Tell them to contact Barry Hedger, that’s Hotel, Echo, Delta, Golf, Echo, Romeo. Do you read?”

  “I didn’t get that. Spell again, please.”

  Cat spelled again, desperate for the man to get it right. “Tell them to contact Hedger wherever he is—repeat, wherever he is, and give him that position. Extreme emergency. My name is Cat. Charlie, Alpha, Tango. Do you read?”