by Roger Weston
“It would be.”
“Now, if you listen very carefully, you will hear something. What do you hear?”
“Water rushing in.”
“And what else?”
“People screaming.”
“Excellent. What are they saying?”
“They’re cursing the captain.”
“You’re damn right they are. The man just sealed them into a compartment that is filling with freezing water. But they shouldn’t be cursing the captain. Why not?”
“Not his fault. He had no choice.”
“So who should they be cursing? Here we have a ship full of screaming women and children.”
“The officers.”
“The Americans are to blame!” Richter screamed. “You disappoint me, Koch.” Richter slowly walked a few feet from Koch, then turned around and stepped back toward him. “Why couldn’t you accomplish the simple task of bringing me my satchel? Why have you allowed this American to cause me so much trouble?”
“I’m sorry. I let you down, sir. I guess I brought up some old memories for Sands.”
“Old memories? What are you talking about?” Richter shook his head.
“His dad went down with a ship. A ship I was also involved with.”
Richter glared at the glass case that held the historically accurate model of the Wilhelm Gustloff.
“I see. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.” Richter seethed. “By the way, did you happen to notice the freshly stenciled name on the bow of this ship?”
“No, sir.”
“You really should be more observant. You are now aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff.”
“She sunk 70 years ago, you told me so yourself.”
“I’m sorry to inform you that there’s been a change of plans.”
***
As darkness slipped over the Pacific Ocean, the Hercules crane ship steamed west after handling its mid-ocean cargo transfer. Now it was heading to an oil platform 300 miles off the coast of California. Captain L.W. Collins had been paid in full for his services, which had included a strange, confidential request to help with an offshore paint job and removal of a funnel on the former Queen Mary. He was happy to be away from the nut job that bought the old ship. Why the man wanted to paint the boat and remove a stack mid-ocean he would never understand. Oh well. The man could do what he wanted with it. After all he’d paid a fortune to acquire her.
When the Hercules was three miles away, Charles gave the signal, and the Hercules exploded. A huge fireball consumed the wreck. The impact was so massive that the ship sunk beneath the waves in less than two minutes. The fire was gone, and the ocean was as peaceful as if nothing had happened at all.
CHAPTER 44
Punta Arenas, Chile
Standing at the bottom of the towering memorial statue of Ferdinand Magellan, Jake looked up at the proud man who had one foot firmly planted on a cannon while he gazed sternly out to sea. Jake noticed the sword that hung from under the jacket of the great explorer. If stopping Richter and Koch required lethal force, he was willing to take the actions necessary to save the lives that Richter was so comfortable taking. He called Ashley for an update.
“Any news on the location of the Queen Mary?”
“No, but I did find the Weissenburger. She’s one-hundred miles northwest of the Channel Islands.”
“Excellent. Keep an eye on her. Maybe it’s not too late for me to get that confession. I’m going to board that ship mid-ocean if I have to.”
“Wait. I learned something else.”
“What is it?”
“I discovered that in WWII the Germans were working on a bomb.”
“I’m sure they were working on lots of bombs at that time. Look, I’ve got to go. If I have to throw Koch overboard myself, I will.”
“They were creating a bat bomb.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Germans were working on a bomb that used bats to deliver napalm incendiary devices. The plan was to release a million of them and burn Washington, D.C. to the ground.”
“The lab down at the secret science facility.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind, I’ve got to get going. I’ll call you soon with an update. Try to find the Queen Mary.
***
One hundred miles northeast of the Channel Islands
Carrying a gun, Taine the Samoan walked into the wheelhouse of the Queen Mary and smirked at Koch.
“Take Koch back to the Weissenburger,” Richter spat.
Koch’s face was dark with fury. He shot a look back over his shoulder at Richter. “What the hell are you thinking?”
Taine grabbed Koch’s arm and twisted until the man groaned in pain. Then he slapped on some handcuffs. Koch looked at Richter with pleading eyes.
“You should have told me about Sand’s father. Your silence has cost me dearly. You like to sink boats, do you? Well, you’re going to do just that, but I think you should experience it firsthand. It won’t be on this ship, though. She has one more job to do.”
“What are you talking about? We’re sinking her. I want my cut.”
“You amuse me, Koch. That million dollars you were expecting, well, you won’t be needing it anymore.”
“That was our plan.”
“Get him off my boat. Secure his cabin and make sure that he stays there—permanently.”
Koch lunged at Richter, but Taine grabbed his neck like he was a rag doll and threw Koch ten feet, where he landed on his face, unable to protect himself with his hands cuffed behind his back. Taine hauled him back up and shoved him out the door.
An hour later under the now purple sunset, the second explosion occurred as the Queen Mary steamed toward California. The ocean drank down the Weissenburger even faster than she had the crane ship. Charles stood out on deck to watch the festivities as if it were a Fourth of July fireworks show. The only problem was that he hated that holiday. Nevertheless, there was something very moving about watching two ships and crews disappear as if they had never been. Something eerie and invisible hung on the dark of night, and Charles remembered how similar it was to the Wilhelm Gustloff on the night when she sank in the Baltic Sea seven decades ago.
CHAPTER 45
Airport in the Sky
Santa Catalina Island
January 29
Twenty-five miles off the coast of California a powerful downdraft slammed the Cessna 350 as it came in for landing on Runway 22 on Catalina Island. As the plane bumped its way over the roughly patched landing strip perched on the highest hill on the island, Jake took in the surroundings. While the pilot taxied the plane to the tower, Jake scanned westward over the glittering Pacific Ocean knowing that Richter and Koch were out there somewhere planning something terrible. As soon as he could, he was going to charter a ship to get him out there to intercept them. If he had to board the Queen Mary or the Weissenburger like a Somali pirate then he would. He wasn’t going to let those two psychopaths kill any more people.
Far below where he now stood at the rim of the Airport in the Sky, the vast Pacific Ocean was a universe unto itself, a massive graveyard. Exiting the plane Jake saw the pilot head over to the runway building to pay his landing fee. Drifting down to the edge of the runway, Jake stood and gazed at the ocean 1,600 feet below for a few minutes. Then he walked over to a line of palm trees and stood in their sparse shade next to a weatherworn sign advertising charter flights. While waiting for his taxi, he took a deep breath of the thick marine air and thought about how he was going to stop Richter and Koch. As he contemplated his plan, an old Zodiac plane taxied down the runway with a sleek glider behind it. Jake watched as the plane towed the glider into the sky. As the glider was released, Jake followed it as it gracefully soared over the sea.
CHAPTER 46
Santa Catalina Island
Jake checked into the Craftsman Lodge, which stood atop a hill overlooking Two Harbors. He picked up the phone and dialed Ashley’s number.
“I need to verify the Weissenburger’s exact position.”
“I’ve lost her.”
“What?”
“Jake, I’m sorry. The ship tracker isn’t working.”
“What do you mean?
“I mean the Weissenburger disappeared just like the Queen Mary. She’s off the grid now, too.”
“Ashley, I need a position. Richter and Koch are planning on doing something terrible tomorrow and after what I saw in South America, I think more than just the crew’s lives are at stake. Come on. I need something to go on.”
“What are they going to do?”
“I think he is planning some sort of attack with the bats.”
“You mean he’s going to use them as bombs? But why? Who is he planning on attacking?”
“I don’t know, but the guy is crazy and I think his obsession with the Wilhelm Gustloff has something to do with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“His dad went down with the ship. I found a picture in a briefcase at his estate. It was a picture of his dad standing in front of the Wilhelm Gustloff holding a leather satchel in one hand and the hand of a little boy in another. That little boy is Richter. He was the last survivor found before the Wilhelm Gustloff sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.”
CHAPTER 47
Queen Mary
Richter paced back and forth on the Promenade Deck while he glared at his beefed-up security team—twenty loyal men. They were a rough-looking lot. Most of them were fresh out of prison, a place that had failed to turn them into productive citizens. Richter said to them, “Your job is to make sure the crew sticks to their jobs. Nobody is allowed on the Sports Deck except my scientist.”
A bald man with a wide face and a beard stepped forward. “What is the plan?” he snarled.
“That is none of your business. Like I said, your job is to keep the crew working.” Richter looked across the coldest lot of faces he’d seen in his life, and felt proud that these ruthless men were on his side. Now, after twenty years of planning, everything was set. His revenge was about to be carried out. The Queen Mary was blacked out and everything was on schedule. The thugs-for-hire stood in a line with their backs to the windows. One lone light shined on them. A few of them, including their team leader, were ex-special forces of the German Kampfschwimmer commando unit—highly-trained killers, but also who’d been kicked out of the military for criminal behavior.
Richter nodded. “Like I said, watch over the sailors. Your job is to keep them in line.”
***
Airport in the Sky
Santa Catalina Island
Jake was walking into the Airport in the Sky’s office. He hoped to find someone to fly him over the area where the Queen Mary was last seen. He knew that from the air he should be able to spot one of the ships. His phone rang.
“Jake, I found her.”
“Which one? Where is she?”
“The Queen Mary, but the Weissenburger is still missing.
“How did you track her down?”
“Remember Marilynn?”
“Oh yeah. Richter’s team player.”
“Well, she’s not a team player anymore. She wasn’t too happy when I told her Richter’s plan to visit his lady in Hawaii.”
“What lady?”
“There isn’t one that I know of, but it sure convinced Marilynn to look in Richter’s email to see if Nav-Tracker had been reporting the Queen Mary’s location.”
“Ashley, you’re truly brilliant. You really do deserve a vacation and I am going to take you on one soon.”
“Sure, Jake. But the strange thing about the Queen Mary’s location is that she’s turned back toward Long Beach. She’s a hundred miles offshore.”
“A hundred miles? That means there’s not much time. I’ve got to get onboard her.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m going to get a boat and intercept her. Then I’ll do what it takes to stop Koch and Richter.”
“By yourself? That’s crazy. Don’t you have another plan?” Ashley was desperate now. “Please Jake, Don’t do this. Please.”
“I’m sorry, Ash. I have to. Somebody has to stop them. But don’t worry. There’s at least a hundred other guys on the ship who don’t want to go down with her. I’ll have some help.”
***
Jake walked down to Isthmus Cove on the windward side of the island seeking a boat to charter. He watched as several people turned their boats seaward in their moorings. At the Harbor Master’s office he saw a square red flag with a black dot in the center of it. Not good. That meant a storm with gale force winds was headed their way. He wandered around the marina, hoping to find someone willing to take their boat one hundred miles out to sea in such conditions. Nobody was interested. He was told countless stories of the famed Santa Ana winds that funneled their way over the sea from the hot foothills of Southern California and the boats that were lost as a result. He had to come up with another plan and fast. After sitting on a rocky ledge for a while, he called a shuttle to take him back to the airport.
CHAPTER 48
The skies above the Pacific Ocean
Concentrate, Jake told himself. Watch for the Queen Mary.
Down . . . the glider floated through black darkness. Turbulence shook and battered the light craft . . . down. . .
He didn’t know he was out of the clouds until he spotted a single light, a mile straight ahead and some 2,500 feet below.
As Jake flew the glider downward toward the famous ship, he scanned the upper decks of the Queen Mary through the glass-domed canopy of the glider. His thermal binoculars illuminated a few heat signatures at the starboard rail. Jake’s glider swooped down almost to sea level and soared to the Queen Mary’s opposite side.
He struggled to keep control of the glider as the growing Santa Ana winds thumped and shook the craft. The winds were causing his wings to tip heavily. If he missed his mark, his chances of survival were slim.
When he popped the glass canopy, a wall of wind hit him, and it was like he was driving a convertible down the road to doom. The glider skimmed next to the ship’s port rail, and Jake snapped the rope ladder attachment to the loop on the stalk of the grappling hook. Then he launched the hook over the Sun Deck rail. As the metal barbs caught the railing, their tension ripped a roll of rope from its breakaway placement behind the glider’s wing. Jake looked back and saw the rope ladder unrolling down the ship’s port side. He also noticed that the Sun Deck was stacked with dozens of refrigerated containers just like the ones he had seen in Tierra del Fuego.
Jake brought the glider in for a slow-speed landing, ditching it in the churning sea. At the last moment before the glider set down into the ocean, he glanced up to see the ship’s name, which was painted on the bow in black Gothic font.
It said Wilhelm Gustloff.
As the glider floated on the sea next to the huge liner, Jake stood in the sinking plane then dove into the churning water. He approached the massive steel side of the big ship, swimming for the dangling rope ladder, which was flapping in the wind down the ship’s side.
He grabbed onto a low rung of the rope ladder and held on tight. The rush of water battered him against the hull and pummeled him from all sides, and the strain on his arms was so powerful that he began to lose his grip. He knew that if he did, he would be sucked under the boat and ground up by the ship’s propellers. His left hand came loose, and his right grip started to falter. Jake swung his left shoulder forward, and seized the rung again with his left hand. Fighting for his life, he pulled himself up the ladder. Water spilled off him as he lifted himself out of the churning broth.
Once clear of the powerful current, he began climbing. He stopped long enough to glance back at the glider, which was now sinking beneath the waves.
No sooner had Jake climbed onto the ship’s deck when the strong warm wind slapped him in the face. The Santa Anas were kicking up. Jake knew that within a few hours that warm dry breeze would tran
sform into the famed devil wind—and tonight it carried sinister omens of what was to come. Now on board the ship, he knew that he was definitely aboard the Queen Mary, but it appeared that Richter had done a hasty job of converting her into the Wilhelm Gustloff. That explained the preparations for the removal of the middle funnel that Jake had seen on his first visit to the ship, and now he understood Richter’s obsession with the Wilhelm Gustloff. Not only that, but he realized that a lot more lives were at stake than just the crew aboard the ship.
He groped his way through the eerie, dark ghost town on the old luxury liner. With no lights on and the moonlight kept out by blackened windows, it was the darkest ship Jake had ever explored.
Wandering through the inky black passages, the deck rumbled as if deep down in the innards of the ship, thousands of evil spirits from hell were waging all-out war.
Jake had to get to those containers at the top of the ship. His stomach was raw. If Richter was going to do what he thought he was going to do, then those containers were going to release a million bats implanted with napalm incendiaries.
He climbed a staircase, which was as long as a fifty-yard dash, pivoted on the landing, and then ascended another long flight of stairs.
Summiting at the once forbidden Sports Deck, Jake ran to the refrigerated shipping containers that filled the deck. Just like the ones he’d seen at the science facility in Tierra del Fuego, each container had two columns with thirty drawers.
Fury prodded Jake’s movements. He had to keep those drawers from opening. But how?
Hearing a door swing shut, Jake leaned against one of the containers as a man in a white lab coat hurried past. Jake shadowed him. The man kneeled down by one of the containers. He turned a key, which opened a metal box next to the cooling unit. When he flicked a switch inside the safety box, four-inch metal flaps running up the front edges of the container turned outward on their hinges. Sixty shallow drawers rolled out at once. The scientist immediately began pushing the drawers closed, three or four at a time. As he shut them, Jake heard them click into place. When he came to the last drawer, the man in the lab coat removed it and set it down on the deck. He then shined his flashlight on a tray full of bats.
