Inquisition

by David Gibbins

  Jack tried to take a deep breath, feeling the pain searing across his chest. He was beginning to understand what it felt like to be crucified. He also knew that his only chance of escape would be to appear to comply. “All right,” he said, wincing again. “But here are my conditions. I won’t tell you where the treasure is now, but I will lead you to it. In return, I want food and water and warm clothes, and for you to get me out of these chains. Now.”

  17

  Jack stumbled out onto the old stone jetty just as the sun was beginning to rise above the eastern horizon. Behind him, set into the rock, he could see where he had spent the night, a low gray structure that looked like one of the concentric forts built during the sixteenth century on the southern coast of England, the curtain walls still armed with cannon that poked out of embrasures facing the sea. The island itself was a bleak coral outcrop only a few hundred meters across and surrounded by open ocean, with no other land visible as far as the eye could see. It was an image that could have come straight out of the age of the pirates, except for the very modern boat that he was heading toward now, a substantial deep-sea fishing vessel with trawl derricks and a mass of netting against the stern railing.

  One of the men who had taken him out of the torture chamber pushed him up the gangplank, and they stood on the stern deck waiting for the others coming behind them to board. Jack looked down instinctively at his wrist, checking the time, then remembered that they had taken his watch. He felt as if every muscle and tendon in his body had been stretched to the limit by his night in chains, and his wrists were already chafing from his hands being tied behind his back. But he knew that if he were to stand any chance of escape, he would need to put that ordeal behind him, and focus on what lay ahead.

  The wind was already up, a bad sign this early in the morning, and the waves were licking the side of the hull, even though the boat was in the lee of the jetty. He looked out to the west, seeing lines of whitecaps on the horizon, and realized that the gloom in the sky beyond was not the receding night but a looming storm, its leading edge already reaching far over them and beginning to blot out the sun. A far-off flicker of lightning lit up the sea, and a few moments later he heard the distant rumble of thunder. He remembered the forecast that Jason had shown them at Port Royal the day before. It looked as if he were about to exchange one form of darkness for another, moving from a seventeenth-century Inquisition torture chamber into the teeth of a hurricane.

  A diver appeared up the stern ladder, tossed a wrench on the deck, and quickly removed his tank and regulator, strapping it to the railing. He made a thumbs-up sign to the deckhouse, and the engine coughed to life, spewing out clouds of diesel exhaust over the sea. The two men who had escorted Jack aboard, both of them carrying MP40 sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders, were joined up the gangplank by the man who called himself Hernandes. Two crewmen cast the boat off from bow and stern, and the captain let her drift off the jetty with the wind, keeping the engine in idle.

  The boat bobbed uncomfortably from side to side, and Jack struggled to keep his balance. He was not looking forward to this; the last thing he needed now was for his old seasickness to return. He remained in the same spot while one of the armed men took the bags that had also been brought aboard down the hatch in front of him, returning a few moments later with a large strip of black cloth in his hands. Jack knew what was coming and took a step toward Hernandes. He needed to stall for time before he was blindfolded, to see everything he could that might hint at their course and position. The other armed man saw him move and immediately grabbed him by his wrist binding and jerked his arms up, pulling him back to his original position. Jack doubled over in pain, his shoulders still tender from being suspended in chains the night before, but the man pulled him up roughly and held his head while the other approached with the blindfold.

  Hernandes had seen the commotion, and signaled for the men to wait. “Dr. Howard. I trust you had a restful few hours after I left you last night?”

  “Your thug here took his time coming to unchain me.”

  “Ah yes. My apologies. We needed to focus our attention on tracking your daughter in Jamaica. But he did bring you food and water?”

  “It was a little difficult to eat with my arms chained to the wall.”

  Hernandes turned to the man with the blindfold, a scarred thug who looked at Jack with piggy eyes, and they exchanged a few words in Spanish. Hernandes turned back to Jack. “I apologize for my men. They did not know that you had become our friend. He will give you water once you are settled in the hold.”

  “I’m no friend of theirs, and no friend of yours.”

  “You should learn to get on with them. They will be your constant companions until you bring us to our destination.”

  Jack nodded up at the sky, feeling the first drops of rain on his face. “It looks to me as if that could take longer than you might have envisaged. If we’re going out into a hurricane, this could be a one-way trip to Davy Jones’s Locker.”

  Hernandes raised his voice against the wind that was now whipping past them. “We are in good hands. We hire this vessel for a reason. The captain knows what he is doing. We will skirt the leading edge of the storm, and actually get where we’re going a little faster. In Colombia we will meet up with my colleagues, who will escort us onward. You are hungry, yes? This evening we will celebrate our new friendship at a beachfront villa I own while you reveal to us our travel plans. The kind of place you would love to take your daughter. My colleagues in Jamaica will invite her along too if there are any hitches in our little expedition, except that she and her awkward boyfriend will not make it further than this island. If you do not cooperate, then here they will stay, permanently. Bon voyage, Dr. Howard.”

  He clicked his fingers, and the man with the blindfold came forward. At that moment the captain put the boat into gear and gunned it forward, expertly avoiding the reef that formed one side of the harbor entrance and steering directly into the waves, toward the lightning that was now visible all along the horizon ahead. The boat crashed and juddered into the first big wave it hit on the open sea, rising high on the crest and then dropping into the trough, the engine screaming and vibrating as the screw broke water. The second wave covered them with spray, and the man with the blindfold slipped and fell, rolling into the scuppers. He picked himself up, cursing and adjusting the gun on his back, just as the captain executed a ninety-degree turn to port and brought the boat around, with the wind now on her starboard quarter, steering diagonally across the waves. Jack just had time to see the far side of the island shoot by to their left before he was roughly blindfolded, the sheet tied painfully around his eyes. The man who had been behind him held him by the wrists and pushed him forward until he reached the stairs at the top of the hatch, then pushed his head down as they went belowdecks. Jack gritted his teeth, smelling the diesel and feeling his stomach rise and fall with the swell. This was not going to be pleasant.

  * * *

  A seemingly interminable time later, Jack braced himself with his elbows against yet another crash as the boat plowed and shuddered through the waves, rising so high at the bow that he felt as if he were being brought upright and then falling equally precipitously in the other direction. With the blindfold still on, he had no way of gauging how long it had been since they had left the island, but he guessed three, maybe four hours. The blindfold did have the advantage of covering his ears and protecting him from the worst of the noise, but the roar of the diesel engine only inches from his head sent a continuous tremor through his body, setting his teeth on edge. He had long ago ceased to smell the fumes, but he knew that his headache and nausea were not caused just by seasickness. In every sense this had turned out to be a voyage from hell, exactly as he had anticipated when he had seen the fury of the storm as they left the island.

  He shifted again as the boat lurched through a trough, trying to cushion the worst of it against a wet rag he had found in the scuppers, flexing his limbs to keep t
he circulation going and to stop his hands from becoming numb where they were tied at the wrists. Remembering to keep moving had kept his mind off the nausea; being able to spring into action was crucial to his plan. He focused on his calculations, running through them yet again. If he was correct about the island, that it was the one that Jason had described, then it was some thirty nautical miles south from the island to the nearest point on the South American mainland, on the coast of Colombia. From the position of the sun when he had fleetingly seen it before being blindfolded, he knew that they had set off on a bearing almost due south; there had been no perceptible change in their course since then. With a boat of this type being able to make seven, maybe eight knots, and with the wind behind them, they might now be within a few miles of the shore of Colombia. They would be beyond the reach of the Caribbean Current, sweeping north toward the Gulf of Mexico, and within the anticlockwise motion of the Colombia-Panama Gyre, the surface current that flowed eastward off Colombia. It was conceivable that someone floating in the water now might be able to make it alive to that shore, swept in by the wind and the current from the grip of the hurricane and into less mountainous seas. If his calculations were correct.

  He remembered in the Embraer flying into Port Royal seeing the radar image of the meteorology showing the storm circling clockwise in the same direction as the Caribbean Current, its eye heading slowly past Jamaica. According to that pattern the leading edge should be about where they were now, with calmer waters beyond it to the south. Jack’s plan depended on his egress still being within the ambit of the storm, where the ship would have no chance of chasing and recovering him. By now, as they headed toward its outer edge, the wind should be abating, but something was not right. Over the last twenty minutes or so, he had noticed the rise and fall of the boat increasing, and the shrieking and battering of the wind outside the hatch becoming even louder. He guessed that the captain’s plan was going awry, that they were no longer abreast of the storm but were being drawn back into it, unable to make adequate headway as they slipped back down each wave. For Jack, the urgency now was not just a matter of escape but of survival. If the boat was failing to climb the waves, there was a greater risk that each following wave might overwhelm it and drive it under. Blindfolded and with his hands tied, there would be no chance of escape. He needed to act now.

  He braced himself against another judder, swallowing his impulse to throw up. He could not let himself succumb to seasickness, something that he knew would instantly debilitate him. He rolled over so that his back was facing the propeller shaft that ran down the length of the keelson beside him. He grabbed the rag he had used as cushioning, and then shifted as close as possible to the point where the shaft came out of the engine cowling. The water and oil in the bilge sloshed back and forth, drenching him. He blinked hard, feeling the water get under his blindfold and into his eyes, but tried to keep steady. What he was about to do would only increase the risk of the vessel being swamped, but it was the only way of attracting the attention he wanted.

  He took a deep breath, braced himself against the hull frames, and with the next lurch pushed the rag into the shaft, narrowly avoiding being drawn into its gyrations himself. He slipped, hitting the small of his back and convulsing in agony, trying to convince himself that the pain was good, that it would keep him focused. He listened for a change in the tempo of the engine, hoping and praying. At first nothing happened, and then there was a deep groaning and screeching sound and the throbbing ceased. The rag had caught around the shaft, seizing it up. It had worked.

  He rolled aside, waiting. Seconds later, he heard a huge shrieking of wind as the hatch swung open, and then the clattering and cursing of someone coming down the ladder. A light switched on, just perceptible through his blindfold, and the man stumbled against him, kicking him hard in the abdomen. Jack had already tensed himself in anticipation, but even so, the pain took his breath away. The man dropped down heavily as the vessel lurched again, then Jack heard panting and more cursing. The man must have seen the rag wrapped round the shaft, and would be desperately trying to cut it away. Now was Jack’s chance.

  He kicked out as hard as he could, catching the man in the legs. The man slipped back, bellowing with rage, and cracked his head somewhere on the engine, falling heavily into the scuppers. Jack pushed frantically with his feet until he and the man were back to back, then wriggled along so that his hands were positioned behind the man’s neck. A thunderous crash shook the boat as a wave broke overhead, and Jack waited, expecting the boat to be swamped and to plummet down. The man moaned, and then began moving. Jack raised his hands over the man’s head and down to his neck, wedging his lower back against the back of the man’s head so that the cord tying his hands would act as a garrotte. He pulled hard against the man’s windpipe, holding tight while the boat lurched again. The man made a terrible noise as his neck gave way, and he slumped limply.

  Jack extricated himself and rolled the body against the propeller shaft, feeling blindly in the scuppers for the knife that the man must have been using to cut the rag, praying that it had not slipped down the keelson out of reach. He felt something sharp, and pulled out a large fisherman’s knife with a serrated edge. Holding it behind his back, he began sawing awkwardly at the cord, bracing himself to stop from falling sideways or accidentally plunging the knife into his own back. Suddenly his hands were free, and he dropped the knife, flexed his wrists, and ripped off his blindfold, blinking hard and shielding his eyes against the light.

  With the blindfold gone, his ears were exposed and the grinding noise of the engine as it tried to re-engage the shaft was deafening. Beside him, the body of the man was rolling to and fro, his eyes open and bulging, with blood running out of them, and his mouth open. The rag on the shaft was barely holding on by a thread, and suddenly it whipped away and the shaft began spinning again, the propeller biting into the water and bringing the boat back on track. Jack crawled across the hull frames toward the base of the ladder, looking up through the open hatch and seeing the storm clouds racing overhead. He had felt nothing while killing the man, just adrenaline. All that mattered now was survival. He picked up the knife, shoved it in his pocket, and began climbing the ladder, knowing that his own life now hung by a thread, that every step might be his last.

  He came out on deck, stumbling and reeling, into a scene of biblical proportions. The waves were mountainous, dwarfing the boat each time it dropped into a trough. The sky was black, but sheet lightning lit it up every few seconds, the crash of thunder distorted into an ear-piercing howl by the wind. Through the spray he could just make out the light in the wheelhouse, and crouched figures silhouetted inside. The captain would know that his only hope now was to drive the vessel forward at full throttle, and to keep the wind dead astern. If the boat wallowed too long in a trough, if the engine faltered again or they got caught in the water slipping back off the crest of the wave ahead, the next wave could swamp them, driving them under with the huge weight bearing down from above. There would be no warning, no chance of escape, just a terrifying maelstrom of struggling and screaming and burst eardrums as the boat hurled down into darkness and oblivion hundreds of meters below.

  A derrick broke loose and whooshed off like a broken helicopter blade into the sea behind, hitting the water but being held there by a cable that was still attached to the stanchion that had anchored the derrick to the deck. Jack jumped back as the cable swept from side to side over the deck, the rope taut against the stern rail as the boat rode up the next wave, then slack and wavering as they slipped into the trough. He knew the derrick would act like a sheet anchor, potentially creating enough drag to hold the boat in the trough for that critical second too long. He had to carry out his plan when the line was taut, when he could slide down the deck without the risk of being swept aside and could reach the diving cylinder that was strapped down beside the fishing net inside the stern rail of the boat.

  He waited until the boat started up from the trough and t
he line went taut, but then hesitated. The wind shrieked around him, tearing at his face, and all he could see was the mountainous wall of water of the next wave bearing down on them. He knew that his decision to jump into that might be his last conscious act. But if he were to go, if this really was time-up, he preferred it to be of his own volition and to be enveloped by the sea alone, rather than trapped in the boat with those who had kidnapped him, who had threatened his daughter and all that mattered to him. He would see them vanquished by the sea and dead, but he would not die alongside them.

  Something smashed into the deck beside him, kicking up a spray of splinters. He heard the crack of the next round above the shrieking of the wind, and quickly squatted down against the stanchion, looking back at the wheelhouse. One of the men had smashed the rear glass and was firing his MP5 down the deck. The captain must have felt the drag and realized that the derrick had gone. They were trying to shoot away the cable, probably having decided that it would be too dangerous to come out on deck and try to chop it away with an axe.

  Bullets ricocheted off the metal of the stanchion only inches from him, but Jack remained still, hoping they had not seen him. And then the boat lurched sideways as the derrick was dragged off to port by a wayward current, and he felt the rudder turned hard right, the captain desperately trying to compensate to keep from wallowing and coming broadside-on to the waves. Another magazine’s worth of bullets sprayed around him, and suddenly the cable parted with an enormous crack, coiling and whipping off as it followed the derrick out of sight behind them. The boat lurched back, and as it did so, Jack was thrown sideways and on to his feet, in full view of the deckhouse. He could see the man with the gun looking at him, and reloading. They would have realized that he was not the man they had sent below to fix the engine. This time, he would be the target.