“But that doesn’t mean that—”
Then the voice of a woman with a strong French accent called from the bridge. “They’re coming, Capitaine,” she said. “Port quarter.”
“All right, Julie. Tell your husband and Marco to take their posts.”
“Right away,” she replied cheerfully, as if he’d invited her to a party.
Looking at the sky, Riley took a deep breath and filled his lungs with salty air. He held it for a moment and exhaled slowly. “Here we go,” he said to himself as he prepared to receive the ship approaching from the coast.
Soon, the Italian ship was on their port side. It was a sixty-foot-long, chipped, wooden fishing boat with traces of green and white paint and gave off the strong smell of fish. Within an hour, thirty of the thirty-two crates of cargo had been moved from its hold to the Pingarrón’s with the help of a crane and five ragged men.
Strangely, the so-called fishermen didn’t exchange a word the whole time. Maybe they don’t have anything to talk about, Riley thought. Their captain, who introduced himself simply as Pietro, hadn’t stopped scanning the horizon as he smoked one cigarette after another. Riley could’ve sworn that he’d secretly told his men to transfer the goods slower than necessary.
Despite the activity, the only sounds were of footsteps on the deck and the rhythmic creaking of the fishing boat’s wooden hull rubbing against the Pingarrón’s steel one. The Pingarrón was a coastal cargo ship 150 feet long and 25 feet wide, with a two-deck superstructure on the rear third. On the first deck were the cabins and a small storage room, while the upper deck housed the dome of the ship’s bridge deck as well as a large open salon that contained the map room, kitchen, and dining room. A solitary smokestack without the markings of any shipping company crowned the superstructure.
The ship’s 420 tons of dry displacement allowed it to transport an almost equal amount of goods, which made it a wonderful coastal shipping vessel. It was built in Scotland in 1929 by the shipbuilder Harland & Wolff and christened Inverness. Originally designed for transporting, laying, and repairing submarine cables, now it sailed under the Spanish flag with a different name, different crew, and different captain who undertook a much more profitable business.
As the last box was being put on the deck, carefully checked like all the others by Jack, Riley handed the Italian captain a bulky sealed envelope. Pietro weighed it, opened it, and pulled out a wad of Swiss francs. He started counting them with excruciating slowness. He lost count a couple of times and had to start over, apologizing.
When Riley was about to offer to count the bills himself, Julie, who’d remained hidden until then, looked out a small window on the bridge. She pointed south and sounded the alarm. “Capitaine! We have company!”
Riley ran to the stern, expecting the worst. Climbing the steps of the bridge, he saw a patrol boat approaching at full speed, its spotlights cutting through the night. It definitely wasn’t there by chance. It was still about ten miles away, but at that speed it would reach them in minutes. “It’s the carabinieri,” he warned Jack. “Cut the ropes and tell Julie to head north at full speed.”
“How the hell did they find us?” Jack said as he walked away.
“I think I have an idea,” Riley said, angrily turning to the fishermen as they returned, unconcerned, to their own ship.
“I’m very sorry, Captain,” Pietro said from the distance of his own vessel, “but they’re difficult times.” He waved, and his men took out rifles hidden in their fishing gear and pointed them at Riley and Jack. “The patrol’s arriving late but in time to settle this.”
Riley put his hands up, shook his head, then smiled reluctantly. It was inevitable, he told himself. “I guess you’ll divide the loot, huh? What’d you decide? Fifty-fifty? Sixty-forty?”
Pietro smiled, took out a Luger, and pointed it at him. “Actually,” he answered coldly, “the money, the cargo, and the reward are for us. Medals and your ship are for them.” He pointed backward with his thumb.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have it your way.” Then Riley shouted, “Gentleman, little help!”
Six gun barrels popped out of six of the eight portholes, and a tall guy came out of a door on the foredeck. He had the cropped hair, crooked nose, and cruel mouth of someone who cares little for life, especially the lives of others. He wore a Yugoslav Army coat and pants from the Afrika Korps and had a cigar in his mouth. He held a Thompson submachine gun on his right hip and a stick of dynamite in his left hand. He lit the fuse of the dynamite with the cigar, and it started to shoot sparks.
“Good,” Riley said, putting his hands down and drawing a Colt 45 pistol. “I have six men pointing rifles at you and a half-crazed mercenary with a stick of dynamite who’s eager to use it. I guess this changes things a little, huh?”
Pietro was dumbfounded. His sailors threw down their weapons when they realized there was nothing they could do. If the dynamite hit their fragile ship, it’d blow into a million pieces. “The carabinieri will get you,” Pietro said.
“Maybe,” Riley said, pulling up the gangplank between them. “But maybe this time they’ll settle for seizing a fishing boat full of local smugglers.” He turned his back and walked quickly to the bridge.
Jack was cutting the last rope with a hatchet when the two Burmeister diesel five-hundred-horsepower engines started to roar and spin the twin propellers in opposite directions.
“Full speed,” Riley said to Julie as he entered the bridge, his hand still on the doorknob. “That boat’s much faster than us.”
“I know, Capitaine.” She took the power lever to all forward. Then she leaned into the intercom and asked sweetly, “My love . . . could you give me a little more power, s’il vous plaît?”
“Already done, princess,” the voice from the engine room answered.
“Merci.” She smiled and blew a kiss.
Marco Marovic barged in, still holding the machine gun and dynamite. “Damn, you guys are pussies,” he said, spitting.
“What the hell are you doing with that dynamite still lit?” Riley said, spinning around.
“I was thinking we still have time to blow those bastards up.”
“No, Marco. We have the goods, we’re not going to blow anyone or anything up.”
“But it’d set an example. Also, the carabinieri would have to stop.”
Riley yanked out the fuse. “Cut the crap and come help me prepare the Hare. And put out that stinking cigar for once.”
“The Hare? Again?” He crushed his cigar against the railing. “You know it didn’t work last time.”
“It will this time. And I gave you an order, why the fuck are we here discussing it?”
With a growl, Marco turned around and headed out. On their way down the ladder to the deck, they passed Jack. Riley told him to take command of the bridge. He then climbed into one of the little skiffs off the stern, put a mast in the center, and began to tinker with some wires and a battery. “Marco!” he yelled. “Hand me the pole!” He pointed to a thin beam about eight yards long that had a light bulb on each end.
In the starlight, Marco grabbed the bar and passed it to Riley, who triggered the winches, making the boat drop into the water ten feet down. Riley rushed to tie the bar perpendicular to the mast, connected another pair of wires to the battery, and gave Marco a thumbs-up.
Marco made the same gesture to the bridge, where Jack turned a switch, and pulverized kerosene mixed with smoke from the smokestack to form artificial fog. The cloud spread behind the stern and would make them almost invisible for a few minutes to anyone following. On that moonless night with the carabinieri on their tails, it could make the difference between enjoying the hospitality of an Italian jail and not.
Jack peered through a small window on the bridge at his old friend struggling with the boat. He made a scissors gesture, signaling Julie to turn off the navigation lights. Riley connected the battery on the skiff
, and three other lights came on. There was a green one and a red one at either extreme of the long pole, at port and starboard, and a white one on top of the disproportionately high mast, in roughly the same positions as the Pingarrón’s.
Riley set the rudder, started the small motor, and climbed onto the rope ladder leading back up to the ship as the little boat started heading through the fake smoke, in the opposite direction. Pulling himself on deck with Marco’s help, Riley leaned over the bulwark and watched the fake navigation lights disappear in the dark. “The bait’s been laid, now they just have to bite.”
“You’d have to be an idiot,” Marco grumbled, “not to realize that isn’t us.”
Riley half turned to Marco, looking at the man who claimed to have been a Chetnik, fighting as part of the Yugoslav movement against the Axis forces. The only survivor when his unit was wiped out, he’d managed to reach the coast and get to Malta as a stowaway on a freighter. The epic story had lots of holes and was different each time he told it. In fact, you’d have to be an idiot to believe Marco had ever fought for anything other than himself. But that was enough in the end. Riley had hired him to make people think twice before taking his crew lightly, and that mountain of muscles with wild eyes filled the role to perfection.
“Well, Marovic,” Riley said with a smile as he watched the police boat change direction away from them, “if idiots were fish, we’d solve world hunger.”
2
The main room of the Pingarrón took up the whole second floor of the ship’s superstructure. It was the crew’s common space. The map room, kitchen, and dining room were all connected without bulkheads. Unlike the cabins below, the room was not paneled with beech. Instead, Julie insisted it be painted entirely turquoise and the borders of the doors and portholes decorated with ivy and little red and yellow flowers. Everyone was upset at first, saying it was the meeting place and relaxation area of seasoned sailors, not a girl’s bedroom. But Julie wouldn’t let up, and it was decorated just how she wanted. The expression “Where the captain rules, a sailor has no sway” needed the footnote “unless there’s a French girl on board.” Everyone quickly got used to the change, however, and eventually had to admit it looked much nicer.
The limited crew sat there in the lounge, the rising sun bursting through the rear portholes. Laughter and jokes bounced across the table as they relived last night’s adventure.
“The best,” Jack said, a piece of pancake dripping in syrup on his fork, “was the guy’s face when he saw the guns come out the windows! I thought he was gonna shit himself!” He shouted and banged on the table.
“Fuck, Jack,” Riley said, choking on his coffee, “we’re eating!”
“True,” Julie agreed, playing with her long ponytail. “You could say ‘poop,’ ‘move bowels,’ ‘go number two . . .’”
“You too?” Riley said. “I expected better manners from a lady.”
In response, the cheerful twenty-seven-year-old pilot stuck her tongue out and laughed.
“Yes, very funny,” said César, Julie’s husband. He was the Pingarrón’s mechanic, a skinny Portuguese mixed-race man of Angolan descent. He dipped some bread in fried egg. “But sooner or later someone’s gonna realize they’re just broomsticks, then we’ll have a problem.” Confirming that opposites attract, all the cheerfulness and constant good humor of the Frenchwoman was offset by the almost melancholy calm of her husband.
They’d joined up at different times. César Moreira joined when they had to stop in Madeira for a repair, and Riley discovered he was an excellent electrician and mechanic. When he invited him to become a part of the crew, César was delighted. He’d been stuck on that small island for almost two years, abandoned in the Port of Funchal by his boss, who had cheated him out of six months’ pay. César was anxious to leave the place where no one had learned his name, instead calling him preto, or black.
A few months later, Julie “Juju” Daumas showed up.
When their previous pilot had decided to join the French Navy to fight the Nazis, Riley landed in Nice to look for a replacement and found a smiling young woman eager to set sail. As the eldest child of a family with a long maritime tradition, she claimed to have learned to navigate before she could walk. Her reasons for joining the crew, however, were never quite clear. When he asked, she always mentioned her desire to flee the war and see the world, but Riley felt it wasn’t her main motivation—anything but. He was convinced she was running from someone or something that scared her more than the Nazis. Who or what that was, he may never know. But the fact was that, after a brief interview and a difficult test run across the Gulf of Lion to Port-la-Nouvelle with winds over forty knots and fifteen-foot waves, Riley knew his ship would be in good hands.
He hadn’t expected César and Julie to fall in love, though, at least not so quickly. Just a few months later, Jack and Marco served as the ugliest bridesmaids in history, and Riley married them on deck over the dazzling waters of the Aegean. Jack once told Riley he thought they fell for each other because they were both on the run, fleeing a dark past that could only be shared with another fugitive.
Coming back from his thoughts, Riley shrugged. “So far the trick’s worked.” César himself had made it happen through a simple set of ropes and pulleys that ran through the cabins.
“We should carry more and better weapons,” Marco said. “We can’t defend ourselves with smoke and broomsticks.”
“If it were up to you, we’d have more guns than the Bismarck,” Riley said, frowning.
“What’s wrong with protecting ourselves?” Marco pointed toward the bow. “There’s space to install a Browning twenty mil. With that we wouldn’t have to worry about—”
“I said no. We’re a cargo ship, not a warship.”
“A cargo ship in the smuggling business in a sea full of destroyers and subs,” César said.
“That’s exactly why we’re unarmed,” Riley said. “We sail under the Spanish flag, which you’ll recall is neutral in this war. That’s our best defense. What do you think would happen if a German or English boat found military weapons on us? What good would a cannon or heavy machine gun be then? And,” he added, turning to Marco, “not having weapons is the best guarantee we don’t do anything stupid.”
“And why are you looking at me? If you’re talking about last night, I still say we should’ve blown up that fucking fishing ship and the spaghettis.”
Riley leaned his arms on the table and brought his face close to Marco’s. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It wasn’t absolutely necessary, and it would’ve only caused problems.”
“They sold us to the authorities and left with our money,” Marco growled. “Is that okay with you?”
Jack shook his head. “And sinking their ship would’ve gotten our money back? Damn, think. We have the goods, and that’s what we wanted. We’re businessmen, not killers.”
“No,” Marco said, standing up and pointing at them. “We’re smugglers, and one day—”
“One day what?” Jack said.
“One day you’ll regret not listening to me.”
“It’s possible,” Riley said, leaning back in his chair, “but in the meantime, this is my ship and we’ll do what I say. If you don’t like it you can take your earnings and get off at the next port.”
Snorting, Marco pushed his chair aside, picked up his plate, went into the kitchen, and started washing loudly.
“Could someone get me some more coffee?” Julie cooed, motioning to the kettle and breaking the tension as only she could.
“I got it, heaven,” César replied.
“By the way,” Riley said. “How’s the engine? Were you able to fix that filter?”
César looked at him as if he’d been asked to solve the problems of space flight. “Fix it? How the hell am I gonna fix it? I’ve been asking for a replacement for a month.”
“You told me you could fix it.”
“Of course! When I have the part that broke!”
/> “Okay, okay . . . I get it. As soon as we arrive in Barcelona and sell the cargo, I’ll buy the damn part.”
“That’s what you told me two weeks ago when we docked in Naples.”
“I’ll do it this time, I promise.”
“It’s your boat, but until we have a new filter, we’ll dirty the cylinders and sail with less power.”
“Noted.” Riley turned back to Julie. “Sorry to interrupt breakfast, but I’d like you to go to the bridge. Even though we’re in open waters, it’s not a good idea for the helm to be empty for more than five minutes.”
“At your orders, Capitaine,” Julie said, standing up. She gave a mock salute and headed to the bridge, skipping as her dress fluttered.
“I’ll go down to the engine room and see if I can get a few more knots out of this contraption,” César said, piling up their dishes and taking them to the sink as Marco left for his cabin.
Jack watched Marco leave. “I don’t like that guy at all. He’s a trigger-happy jackass, and sooner or later he’s going to get us in serious trouble. Does he have to stay?”
Riley took his last sip of the coffee that had cost them dearly on the black market. “I like him as little as you,” he said quietly. “But he’s useful to us, and though you already know how I feel about carrying weapons, he’s partially right. Sometimes his paranoia makes me more cautious.”
“But he’s a mercenary. He won’t hesitate to sell us to whoever offers him a reward for our heads.”
Riley put an arm around Jack and patted him on the back. “Of course I know that. Why do you think I sleep with a pistol under my pillow?”
“Alex.” There was a knock on the door of the captain’s cabin. “Alex, are you there?”
He’d been holed up for hours. The door opened. Riley frowned as he listened to the sound of a sorrowful jazz trumpet. “What’s going on, Jack?”
Jack showed him a piece of paper with handwritten numbers. “We received a transmission from François in Marseille asking us to contact him on this frequency in an hour.”
Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1) Page 2
