FORTY-TWO
ZAC CLIMBED DOWN from his container and fell in silently behind the night watchman. They were almost at the upper deck when Zac stopped short. The rumble of the ship’s engine had stopped. Its incessant hum had been a constant distraction during his time aboard ship. Now its sudden absence was equally unsettling. The crewman continued on to the main deck, but Zac hesitated. The deck was much brighter than usual. Perhaps they’d reached France. After five days, they had to be close.
Zac stepped up onto the starboard deck and gazed out over the rail. They were close to shore, barely half a mile away, but the land was dark and uninhabited. He walked to the port side, looking for signs of France, but discovering only that the Castor was in a harbor with a number of other ships. None were moving faster than a few knots and several had their anchors set. In the distance, mountains rose up behind a sandy shore. It wasn’t Marseille. It wasn’t even a city. And the climate was hot and dry like the desert.
He felt light-headed. Maybe he’d misread the schedule or snuck onto the wrong ship. He leaned out over the handrail and fought the urge to throw up. A smaller vessel was making its way between the big ships and Zac watched it meander through the mooring field, coming ever closer to the Castor. When he could read the lettering on its side, he relaxed his grip on the rail and exhaled deeply. He was quite good at geography, but even during his boredom aboard the Castor, he’d completely forgotten about the Suez Canal.
The sand dunes in front of him belonged to the Sinai desert. The Suez was the border between Africa to the west and Asia to the east. Without the canal, ships heading west to Europe or the Americas would have to round the notoriously rough Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.
The spectacle was mesmerizing. The pilot boat continued its journey from ship to ship, dropping off the men who would, for a small bribe, guide the enormous vessels through the canal. More small craft were visible, mostly tugs and other pilot boats. A container ship lowered a small mooring boat over the side to secure the ship’s heavy hawsers. All around, preparations were being made for the voyage through the canal.
Two warships lay at anchor up ahead. A tanker and another container ship were moored nearby and several ships, unrecognizable in the dark, were tied up far astern. All were queued up to pass through the canal. Another blue-and-orange Suez Canal Authority vessel pulled away from a container ship and motored across the bay toward the M/V Castor, whose gangway had been lowered against her side. In a few minutes the SCA boat drew alongside and several men stepped aboard. All were in uniform, and four were carrying rifles.
Zac bolted from his spot by the rail, moving quickly around the stern to the opposite side of the ship. With two warships in the convoy, the security team might conduct a full-scale search of the ship. He needed to hide quickly. The stairway he usually used was by the superstructure, where the team had come aboard. To go back there now would be akin to surrender. He needed to find a new way down to his container.
Zac moved cautiously until he found a ladder well that descended into the hold. The three-by-three-foot opening was scarcely large enough for a man, and completely dark except for a faint patch of light at the bottom, seventy-five feet straight down. Zac took a deep breath and stepped cautiously onto the first rung. Slowly and deliberately, he descended. Soon, every step was taken in complete darkness, every action done by touch. He tested each rung with his foot before shifting his weight. A single misstep could cost him his life.
Several times he stopped to wipe his sweaty palms on the sleeves of his suit. He continued down, patiently, carefully, and wishing he’d found another way into the hold. He stepped off the last rung into a small alcove. The dim glow he’d seen from above was from a single lightbulb on the wall behind him. He was grateful that he’d made it, but wondered why anyone would use the damned ladder in the first place.
The ship had become eerily quiet. There was no mechanical noise, no water rushing past the hull, just silence. The idling engine had been shut down and the ship lay still in the calm water. He hoped the stoppage was a normal part of the crossing.
Footsteps in the distance snapped him from his thoughts. Several pairs of feet walked along the steel decking, the steps echoing off the metal containers. Two of the men spoke in an unfamiliar language. Zac pressed his body closer to the wall, but the light projected his shadow onto the main walkway. Trapped inside the ladder well, he listened as the footsteps grew louder. Repulsed by the thought, but with no better option, he hauled himself back up the ladder. He climbed up ten rungs, then another twenty, until he was draped in darkness once again.
He clung to the ladder, motionless in the dark. Two of the canal security men were in the hold thirty feet below, speaking to each other quietly. One of the men swept the area with a high-powered flashlight. Zac watched the beam find the ladder, then rotate upward. He was illuminated for an instant before the light went out and the men left. He hoped the security men were just going through the motions, oblivious to what their flashlight had discovered. Either that or they were getting reinforcements.
Zac climbed down, listening carefully, and glanced outside the ladder well. The men were gone. He hurried to his container, anxious to get out of sight, but he froze the moment he reached it. Something was different. He’d closed the door when he’d left, but hadn’t secured the latches. They were secured now. He looked inside and walked to the back of the forty-foot-long box. His cache of food and water was gone. He’d been discovered.
Zac bolted from the container. Only luck had saved him from being there when the security team had searched it. He needed to find a new hiding spot, in an area the team had already cleared. During his nighttime walks he’d seen only one other place where a man could open the doors to a container, above the engine room. It was close to the superstructure and the security team had likely gone through it as soon as they’d come aboard.
Multistoried and nearly a hundred feet long, the engine room was the size of a small warehouse and contained a single, massive engine. Zac scaled a ladder to its roof. The large, flat expanse was half-filled with mechanical equipment and exhaust stacks. The uneven shapes left pockets of open space from which he could reach the half-dozen containers stacked in front of it. Most were locked or full, but he found an empty one and pulled the door closed behind him. Hot and sweaty, he lay on his back and spread his arms and legs out from his sides like the spokes of a wheel. Zac stayed there for hours, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps.
FORTY-THREE
ZAC AWOKE THE next morning when the engine restarted. The Castor passed through the canal and he spent three hellish days holed up in the container atop the engine room, leaving only briefly for food and water.
His waking hours were consumed with planning how he might escape when the ship made port. His only clue that they’d reached Marseille might be the sound of the engine stopping, but by then the rest of the ship would already be a hive of activity. He wouldn’t be able to improvise as he’d done when he’d boarded.
He’d already felt the fear of being locked inside a container. He had no desire to be lifted ashore and find himself stacked fifty feet in the air, or packed tightly against another container, unable to open the door. He would have to get off before the unloading started, which meant he’d have to be hidden on deck before they reached port, or find another way off the ship altogether.
Getting ashore before they made land would be ideal. The obvious choice would be to steal a lifeboat, but the Castor was equipped with only one, a massive orange craft mounted on a quick-launch ramp that seemed to be accessible only from inside the superstructure. It would be impossible to steal the lifeboat, but the mooring boat was a different story. Only fifteen feet long, it was lowered into the water by a small crane called a davit. He’d seen mooring boats from some of the other ships ferrying the heavy, five-inch-thick hawsers to the buoys at the entrance of the canal. If he could get the mo
oring boat in the water when they were within sight of land, it could get him to shore. With any luck he’d be able to do it under cover of darkness.
On his tenth day at sea Zac dared to make his way topside after one of the watches. The only welcome change aboard ship since they’d passed through the Suez was the cooler weather. They were heading north into winter in the Northern Hemisphere. As Zac snuck toward the superstructure, he felt a light rain on his face for the first time in weeks.
But by morning the rain had turned into a storm, and he was forced to sit inside his container while the ship pitched and rolled in the heavy seas. He vomited a few times, but was quickly reduced to dry heaves. The smell inside the enclosed space became unbearable. He tottered on his knees for hours, praying for calmer weather, until the engine finally slowed. Zac listened carefully between his bouts of nausea. There was no question about it. The ship had definitely reduced speed. It was the sign he’d been waiting for that they were close to land.
He made a cursory check of the hold and climbed down the engine room ladder. Night had fallen. The storm howled through the containers and the ship swayed underfoot while he staggered along the metal grating. Up on deck, cold rain and sheets of spray saturated his clothes as the Castor thundered through the large waves. Yet Zac was pleased. The fresh air settled his stomach and the foul weather would keep the crew inside.
But the stormy weather also brought dramatically increased risk. Not only was the sea state treacherous, but Zac couldn’t see the shoreline. There was a chance that the ship was reducing speed simply because of the conditions. If he lowered the mooring boat a hundred miles offshore or pointed it in the wrong direction, he was as good as dead. He had to find out if they were close to land. The cold rain blew sideways over the night sea, reducing visibility to almost zero, but he made his way to the starboard side, where a few faint lights were visible on the horizon. Zac couldn’t tell if they were from a passing ship, a small town, or a distant city, but he decided to take a chance. A chance from which there would be no turning back.
He ran back to the port side and hooked a cable to the floor of the mooring boat, then used the davit to raise it from the deck. When it was suspended several feet in the air, the full force of the wind caught the fiberglass boat and spun it sideways. The outboard motor struck Zac in the head and knocked him to the ground. He lay stunned on the deck as a warm trickle of blood mixed with the cold rain.
Zac picked himself up and pushed the flailing boat over the side, but the high winds and rough seas made it swing wildly on the cable. Again he pushed it out over the water only to have it blow back before he could lower it. On his third try the mooring boat finally dropped over the side and began its descent to the sea. The boat swayed erratically on the lengthening cable. Thirty feet down, Zac could barely see the white fiberglass in the waning arc of the deck lights. After fifty feet, the heavy rain obscured it completely. He played out the cable until it went slack and the boat was finally down. It would be taking a pounding in the rough seas. He grabbed a three-quarter-inch rope coiled on deck and tied one end around the arm of the crane. He tossed the coil overboard and gave it a tug. The rough line scraped the skin from his palms. He’d tear his hands to shreds if he tried to lower himself down bare-handed.
He pulled Assad’s wallet and police credentials from the suit jacket. They’d served Zac well, but would serve only as devastating indictments if he were caught with them now. He hurled them over the side and into the raging storm. Zac stepped on the back of the jacket and tore off the sleeves. The material was thin, but strong. He wrapped a sleeve around each of his hands and stepped to the rail, struggling to keep his balance. The weather was worsening, and the ship pitched and rolled as it plowed through the wind-driven seas. He climbed onto the railing and clutched the line. The mooring boat was down there somewhere. Staring into the blackness below, with the wind whipping his clothing and the rain stinging his face, he recalled an expression his father used to say.
Even the longest journey starts with a single step.
Zac leapt off the rail and slid down the side of the ship, his hands and legs wrapped tightly around the line. The roar of the churning sea was deafening. Twenty feet from the deck he lost sight of the cable that held the mooring boat. With thirty feet of line above him, he began to swing like a pendulum as the ship pounded through the swells. The bow pitched down into the trough of a particularly large wave and Zac flew forward. As the bow lifted, he shot back, slamming into the ship. The line ripped out of his hands and he flipped upside down, squeezing the line between his legs. He began to slide down quickly and crashed into the hull again. The collision knocked the pistol from its holster and sent it tumbling into the sea. Zac grabbed the line with his hands and managed to pull himself upright before he was thrown into the hull a third time.
The next time he swung forward, he was able to time the gyration and absorb most of the impact with his legs. He continued his descent until he saw the bow wake emerge from the darkness beneath him. It was enormous; a twenty-foot-high, continuously breaking wave that ground up the sea in front of it. He glimpsed the steel cable blowing slack in the wind. It had been ripped from the deck of the mooring boat. He was halfway between the sea and the deck of the ship, and his only means of getting ashore was gone.
Zac was beaten. He was tired of fighting. If he’d only worn a lifejacket, he could just drop into the sea. At least then he could pretend that there was a chance of survival. Letting go of the line would be easy. Once he fell into the bow wake the pain would be over forever.
His shoulder slammed into the hull, snapping him out of his dangerously mounting despair. His next move was forty feet in either direction, but he couldn’t give up. This wasn’t just about him. He had a mission to complete. For the hundredth time in the last month he picked the harder choice, the choice to survive. Using his arms and legs, Zac climbed the rope one foot at a time. The muscles in his back felt as if they were going to tear, but he hauled himself hand-over-hand toward the deck. His strength left him twenty feet from the top. He pulled himself a little higher and paused, clinging to the line, trying to muster the energy to finish the climb. The first hint of sunrise began to illuminate the clouds. Zac hauled himself up the final ten feet and swung onto the ship. Shivering uncontrollably, he lowered himself to the deck and stared blankly at the painted steel.
Streaks of light broke through the storm-addled sky as the sun continued to rise. It would soon be light. Zac raised himself off the deck and began to clean up the lines. The ship’s crew would notice the missing boat, but he hoped they would blame it on the storm. More likely, it would just confirm their suspicion that they had a stowaway. Then an idea struck him. Let them think that the stowaway had escaped in the mooring boat. It might take some of the heat off Zac for the rest of the trip. Shivering and exhausted, he threw the cable over the side and stumbled back to his container.
FORTY-FOUR
ZAC ROSE TO his feet inside his container. His body was cold and sore from being slammed against the hull the night before, but something else had roused him from sleep. The engine had slowed to idle speed and the ship was moving slowly, as it had when they’d reached the Suez Canal. The lights he’d seen last night had been on shore after all. They’d finally reached Marseille.
Zac opened the container door a few inches. Looking skyward through the tightly packed cargo hold, he saw a sliver of gray clouds. The storm had stopped. If the crew hadn’t discovered that the mooring boat was missing, they would soon. And he had another problem. He had no way to get ashore.
He paced inside the container as he considered his options. Jumping over the side would leave him with broken bones if not severe internal injuries. Even if he lowered himself into the sea he’d probably die from exposure in the winter waters of the Northern Hemisphere. He’d long ago ruled out being lifted ashore inside a container.
I am so screwed.
Yet there
was one possibility he hadn’t considered. To the French, Zac would be nothing but a stowaway, and the country was a U.S. ally. If he turned himself in, he would be allowed to contact the American embassy in Paris, where he knew some of the CIA staff. They could get word back to London and Peter Clements would begin to clear up the whole mess. It would be a relatively painless way to put the nightmare of the past three weeks behind him, and when it came down to it, he had no better option. He decided to surrender to the French customs agents when the ship reached port.
While Zac waited for the ship to dock, he began to appreciate the irony that his ordeal had started in France, when he’d received that fateful phone call, and in France it would end.
* * *
• • •
A BRIEF SHUDDER confirmed that the ship had reached its berth. Each breath of fresh air invigorated Zac’s weary body as he climbed the stairs. By the time he reached the upper deck, his aches and pains were fading into memories. Low clouds and a light rain filled the sky, softening the shock to eyes that hadn’t seen daylight in almost two weeks. A pack of shore-based gantry cranes was already overhead, picking away at the mass of containers like scavengers on a carcass.
Zac walked along the Castor’s deck, grateful that for the first time in a long time his future held some clarity. He looked for the French agents who would meet the ship. There was no one atop the gangway yet, but the steep sides of the container ship blocked his view of the wharf. He continued to the top of the gangway and watched the action on the docks below. Three columns of trucks were idling on the quay, waiting to receive the discharged containers. Far up by the bow, two men wearing hard hats and fluorescent yellow jackets looked at a clipboard while a third spoke into a handheld radio. No one paid any attention to Zac as he descended the long aluminum stairway. There were no police or customs agents at the bottom, no immigration officers or other officials. There was no one at all.
Warning Light Page 18
