by Cindy Dees
But what were those numbers all about? She pulled up the ship’s cargo manifest on her computer and compared the numbers to the various cargo shipments on the Zhow Min. Nothing even remotely resembled the number sequence. Was 3–6 a date? She couldn’t think of anything special about March 6, and a quick search of the Internet revealed only that it was Michaelangelo’s birthday, the siege of the Alamo ended that day and aspirin was patented on that date in history.
She frowned. Who was MysteryMom, anyway? She’d never heard of the woman.
Bizarre.
She deleted the message, shut down her computer and walked slowly across the island to her room in the employees’ dorm to take a nap before tonight’s festivities. But the numbers continued to dance across her mind’s eye, teasing her—3–6-D-15472.
The cryptic message was still tantalizing her when she finally escaped from the New Year’s Eve party later that night, unable to withstand the memories it evoked any longer. Maybe a walk would help clear her mind.
Frankly, she wasn’t a big puzzle kind of girl. And whoever’d sent her that message had been a tad too cryptic for her. If it was important, MysteryMom would just have to suck it up and send her something that a normal human being could comprehend. She wandered down to the island’s tiny, pristine beach, letting the quiet lapping of waves soothe her troubled thoughts. It was hard to stay worked up for very long in this balmy tropical clime.
“There you are.”
Jeez. Did Schroder have a tracking radio glued to her back that she didn’t know about?
“Why did you leave the party?” he demanded.
As if he really cared about that. She knew darn good and well he wasn’t asking because he took any kind of personal interest in her fun. He just got a kick out of controlling everyone’s life around here.
She considered how to answer him. She couldn’t very well complain about not being with her family when, a, everyone else out here was away from their families tonight and no one else was complaining about it, and, b, she’d volunteered for the holiday work cycle and the double overtime pay that came with it.
Reluctantly, she confessed a piece of the truth. “I’m not a big fan of tight places. And all those people crammed in that one room were a little much for me.”
Schroder’s gaze flickered as if he was cataloging that tidbit for future reference. Not that she could imagine where it would ever come in useful to him. He was always compiling lists of facts, neatly organized, about everything and everyone.
Schroder spoke in tones just shy of an outright order. “Come inside. The food just arrived. Bratwurst, sauerkraut, Wiener schnitzel and good German beer.”
Ah. That must have been the speedboat she’d heard roar up to the pier a few minutes ago. Supplies were often brought over by boat from Lokaina, the nearest inhabited island. It lay about twenty miles away to the east and boasted not only a small permanent settlement, but even a tiny airport. It was from Lokaina Municipal Airport that workers on the Rock shuttled to and from their homes on the big islands of Hawaii, nearly a thousand miles to the east. Tonight’s German feast had been flown in all the way from Honolulu.
Schroder commented as she hesitated to go back with him, “We’ve only got a few hours until the Zhow Min arrives. Not much time to celebrate.”
Current estimated time of arrival on the ship was sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. Reminded of that strange e-mail message yet again, she frowned. Schroder’s brow lowered in determination as well. He must have misread her expression to mean she was planning to refuse his semiorder to go back inside. Although she’d much rather skip the heavy German food and stay out here to enjoy the waves and the isolation, Schroder wasn’t the kind of man to take no for an answer. She sighed and turned to follow him back to the party.
The midnight meal, although tasty, was as heavy as she’d anticipated. She was glad to retire to the big dormitory and tumble into her bed as soon as Schroder seemed to think it was acceptable for her to go. Except sleep wouldn’t come tonight. She lay there for over an hour and finally gave up on it. Those damned numbers kept floating around in her head, taunting her with some meaning hanging just beyond her grasp.
It was probably inevitable that as 2:00 a.m. approached she felt a compulsion to get up and go for a hike around the island. And, oh, maybe she’d stroll over and have a look at the Zhow Min when it came in and see if those damned numbers revealed their hidden meaning to her then.
She stepped out into the humid night. She topped the spine of rock marking the center of the island and was immediately assailed by bright lights coming from the massive pier below. The Zhow Min was gliding the last hundred yards or so to the dock. The top-heavy ship, loaded down with rectangular steel containers in huge stacks from stem to stern, was huge and ungainly and reminded Emily of a pregnant whale. The checkerboard of colored containers—each the size of a semitruck trailer—was brightly lit under giant banks of halogen lights that turned night into day all along the pier.
Emily moved off to her right, away from glare of the lights and toward the promontory that overlooked the pier from one side. The behemoth eased the final few feet into its slip in majestic slow motion and shuddered to a halt. Lines the thickness of Emily’s waist thudded ashore to moor the Zhow Min to pilings the size of small cars.
The same layer of clouds that had provided soft gray cover all day obscured the moon now, and the sea was black beneath the featureless sky. From this angle, the Zhow Min was a building-sized silhouette. One moment Emily saw nothing, and the next, she was aware of several black forms—humans—looking like tiny ants next to the gigantic ship, scaling its hull on invisible lines.
Squinting, she counted three black-garbed figures. Were they doing some sort of maintenance? She didn’t remember any being scheduled, and her master database tracked such things. The men didn’t seem to be pausing anywhere on the hull as if to inspect or repair it. They reached the deck and huddled, then moved off in what could be described only as stealth toward the stern of the ship. She noticed that all of them wore backpacks of some kind. The humps on their backs made the men look vaguely tortoiselike as they crept off into the shadows.
What in the world were they up to?
Then the trio did something even more strange. They commenced climbing one of the mountains of containers. The third clump back from the prow of the ship. They climbed to the fourth layer of containers, and then made their way inward six boxes, to stop at a faded green container. Bemused, she moved farther out the cliff to get a better view. The men were hard to see as they clung to the container in the deep shadows. They were definitely acting as though they didn’t want to be seen.
As she looked on, the container’s door slid open. Her jaw dropped as the men disappeared inside, pulling the door shut behind them. This was not a port of entry! Without Customs present, no container was allowed to be unsealed like that! What could they possibly be doing?
She stepped farther forward, craning to see what the men would do next.
A big, blond man standing on the pier beneath a bank of lights pivoted suddenly, peering in all directions. Schroder.
It dawned on her that she was completely exposed up here on the cliffs like this. Emily dropped to the ground, flattening herself in the shadows behind an outcropping of low stones and praying he hadn’t spotted her.
As she peered out from behind the scant cover of the rocks, Schroder held his position on the pier. Surely he’d have barged up here to check out the unauthorized observer if he’d spotted her. She exhaled in relief. Nonetheless, she stayed right where she was, hidden behind her shield of black volcanic pumice.
Within a minute or two, the container door opened again. The men emerged. They retraced their steps in as much stealth as before, rappelling down the stack of containers and sprinting along the rail to where they’d left their ropes hanging overboard. Something was different about them…then it hit her. All three men had lost their backpacks. They must have left them in that cont
ainer.
What could those men possibly be smuggling in AbaCo containers? A drug shipment would be more bulky than that, wouldn’t it? Illegal weapons would also be bulky and heavy. Jewels would be smaller than the three backpacks. Money, maybe? That might explain it. As she pondered the possibilities, the men shimmied down the hull almost too fast for her to keep sight of, slipped below the edge of the pier and disappeared from sight.
Interestingly enough, Schroder strode off the pier then and headed back toward the office. It was almost as if he’d been acting as a lookout for the men who’d broken into that container. What was up with that? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something fishy was going on around here. The question was, could she contain her natural curiosity and steer clear of trouble as any sensible person would?
She watched the Zhow Min for a few more minutes, hoping to catch sight of the men once more. But they were gone. Schroder didn’t return, either.
Frowning, she made a mental note of exactly where on the ship the container she’d seen them enter was located. She ought to be able to find it in the ship’s load plan the next morning. She could cross-reference that with the ship’s manifest and see what was in that box they’d tampered with. It was the sort of thing she might do in the course of her regular job duties. If somebody noticed her poking around, they wouldn’t think anything of it.
It wasn’t as though she could report what she’d seen. Schroder was clearly in on whatever was going on around here, and he was the guy she’d have to report the incident to. If and when she found evidence of anything suspicious, then she’d have to figure out if Schroder’s superiors were in on the racket out here. She could always call Customs—but they’d want hard evidence, too. Better to look into the matter quietly on her own and not make any waves for now.
She turned around to head back to her bed. She’d taken maybe a dozen steps when a dark shape emerged out of the rocks ahead to loom in front of her. She lurched, violently startled. “Kurt! I didn’t hear you coming!”
Schroder was maybe a dozen yards away from her, striding toward her angrily, his eyebrows slammed together furiously. “What are you doing out here?” he demanded.
She blinked, alarmed. “I couldn’t sleep after all that heavy food. I came out for a bit of fresh air.”
He looked over toward the Zhow Min and back at her suspiciously. “What are you doing up on this cliff?”
She was a lousy liar, so she stuck to the truth as much as possible. Meanwhile, alarm bells clanged wildly in her head. “I stopped for a moment to enjoy the view. She sure is a big ship, isn’t she?”
“How long have you been here?”
He asked that as if there was a definite right answer and a definite wrong one. More internal alarms and sirens warned her to answer evasively, “I just got here.” As he continued to eye her angrily, she added, “Too bad it’s not daytime. I can’t see much in the dark. I’d love to watch one of the big container ships dock.”
The stiff set of his shoulders eased fractionally. “A couple more are due in next week. Take a few minutes away from your desk and watch one. It’s a surprisingly delicate maneuver considering how big and clumsy those ships are.”
She nodded and then said lightly, “Well, I’m off to finish my hike around the island before I turn in. Wanna come along? I’ll race you back to the dorm.”
“Since when are you a runner?”
“New Year’s resolution to get into better shape,” she replied cheerfully.
He made no comment, nor did he make any move to join her as she turned to trot back toward her room and some privacy to think about what she’d witnessed and figure out what to do about it.
The next morning, she was no closer to an answer. She opened her cargo tracking database as usual and casually typed up the manifest for the Zhow Min. Third stack back. Sixth column in. Fourth layer high…and then it hit her, 3–6-D. If letters were used to designate the layers of containers, that was the exact location of the container she’d seen those men climb into. The cargo manifest said the container was a climate-controlled box—commonly called a reefer in the shipping business—with a self-contained ventilation and cooling system. This particular reefer was listed as carrying salmon, caviar and live lobsters to San Francisco. Nothing to inspire a middle-of-the-night break-in there.
She frowned at her screen.
“Something wrong?” Kurt asked from the doorway as he entered the building.
Man, that guy was irritating! And his timing was freakishly good—or bad, as the case might be. She reached up to hit the clear button as she answered, “Nope. Just checking on some cargo.”
He wandered into his office along with a half dozen of those oddly unemployed men who were always hanging out on the Rock and closed his door. She glared at the panel. Schroder had blocked out an hour on his daily schedule for this meeting. Plenty of time for her to stroll down to the dock and have a look at that box.
She could get in trouble…but she could always say that she was checking to make sure the refrigeration was still working and that the seafood wasn’t in danger of spoiling. It was a flimsy excuse. Was it enough to cover her if she got caught? Did she dare try it?
Her instincts screamed at her to go have a look at that container. The combination of that spooky team of men and the strange little e-mail yesterday was too ominous to be a coincidence. Obviously, something exceedingly sneaky was afoot. Equally obvious: if she got caught, she could be in more than trouble. But hey. She’d dedicated the past two years to becoming Danger Girl. This should be right up her alley, right?
Moving quickly before she could second-guess herself, she hunted up a clipboard while her printer spit out a quick copy of the Zhow Min’s manifest. She grabbed it and headed out the door.
It was easier than she’d have anticipated to get onto the ship. She just strolled up the gangplank, flashed her AbaCo ID badge, mumbled something about needing to check the paperwork on a container and the Taiwanese sailor manning the hatch shrugged and let her pass.
An interior stairway to her immediate left beckoned. She climbed it until it ran out and stepped out hesitantly onto the main cargo deck. A towering jungle of containers loomed around her. She looked to be aft of the first stack of containers, which meant she should move to the rail and follow it aft past one more stack.
In a matter of minutes, she was staring up at the green container some twenty feet over her head. Now what? She glanced left and right and spied a tall metal staircase on wheels. She moved down to it and gave it an experimental nudge. It wasn’t ridiculously heavy. It took her a couple of minutes, but she managed to maneuver it into place at the base of the correct pile of containers.
She climbed it quickly. And then she made the mistake of looking down through its mesh steps and had to stop to catch her breath while a minor panic attack passed. Note to self: never look down through see-through steps. She fixed her gaze on the green box above and forced herself to keep going. Danger Girl. I’m Danger Girl.
She arrived at the container. It looked no different than any other reefer container around it. She inspected the door. A heavy steel bar would have to lift clear of a latch, but then it looked as though it would open. She reached for the handle. Holy crow, the thing was heavy. She heaved on it with both hands, pushing with all her might. Thighs and back straining, she managed to pop the bar free with a loud clang.
She froze. Looked left and right in panic. Counted to a hundred, but nobody came along to check on her. She tugged on the door. Soundlessly, it opened a few inches. A strong odor of fish poured out on a gust of cold air. Starting to feel supremely foolish, she stepped into the dark space. She should’ve brought a flashlight. Too late to go back and fetch one now, though. She left the door cracked open and eased forward into the crowded space.
As advertised, boxes labeled salmon and caviar on ice were stacked on the left. The entire right side of the container was taken up with two massive steel containers. She lifted th
e lid of the first one and saw black water. Something alive squirmed a foot or so below the surface and she recoiled in horror before she remembered the live lobsters that were supposed to be in there.
So why had a team of men broken in here under cover of darkness and left backpacks of…something…behind? She kept an eye out for the black backpacks but saw no sign of them or their possible contents. As advertised, this crate seemed to contain nothing more menacing than a bunch of seafood.
She moved deeper into the crate, following a narrow aisle left open down the middle of the space. That seemed a little weird. The whole idea was to pack these things tight and not waste an inch of packing volume. These containers were not cheap to move around the world and nobody gratuitously wasted space in one.
She followed the passage deeper into the dark.
Abruptly, she came up short against a wall. And frowned. She’d thought she had another eight or ten feet to go before she reached the back wall of the container. Usually, her spatial orientation was more accurate than this. Something else was strange, too. The rows of stacked boxes stopped a good four feet from the wall, leaving a substantial gap back here. Now, that was plain wrong. No client in their right mind would load cargo this far short of the back of the box. She looked around for the contents of the missing backpacks, on the assumption that this was the spot the men must have left their loads.
Nada. The space was frustratingly empty, completely clear of anything at all. Just floors and walls back here.
She examined the exposed wall before her. It was finished with cheap paneling instead of the quilted insulation lining all of the other interior wall surfaces of this container. Indeed, all reefer units were heavily insulated to hold in cooled or heated air. Squinting to make out more detail on this oddly paneled wall, she was startled to spot some sort of electronic device mounted on the far right-hand side of it. It was tucked way back in the dark and she could hardly make it out.
She moved over to what turned out to be a numeric keypad of some kind. Her pulse leaped. This little gizmo was definitely not standard issue in a reefer.
