Point of Honor

by Maurice Medland

  “Forget it. The only thing that kept me from barfing was you.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. How would it look for an officer to toss his cookies in front of an enlisted type?”

  Kelly laughed. “I can see that Melinda was right.”

  “Melinda?”

  “Davidson, the new radar tech who came aboard with me. She was excited about me being picked to go with you. Finally, the women get in on a little action.”

  “What was she right about?”

  Kelly shook her head. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “She said you’re not like most officers.”

  Blake laughed. “That’s part of my problem.”

  “She meant it in a nice way. Just that you’re not a stuffy type.”

  Blake looked at her. It was the first time he’d seen her uncovered. Her reddish brown hair was cut short in a feminine version of a military haircut. Strands of auburn hair skittered around her forehead. He hadn’t paid that much attention before, but now that he looked at her, he could see what all the fuss had been about when she’d reported aboard. Large brown eyes, widespread under arching eyebrows, set off by a straight nose, white teeth, and full mouth. He knew she wasn’t wearing makeup - she’d been roused out of the sack like they all had - but she was pretty. Not drop-dead beautiful like Vicki, but pretty. The blood returning to her face brought her cheeks back to their normal glow. The first time he’d seen her on the boat deck of the Carlyle, he’d thought she had a well-engineered tan, but seeing her up close it was obvious that the slightly golden cast of her skin was natural. He wondered if she had some Spanish or Italian blood somewhere in her history.

  “Just sit here for a minute,” Blake said. “I need to find the manifest.” He walked over to the open safe, pulled the door back and secured it to a hook welded to the bulkhead. Kneeling, he reached inside and retrieved a sheaf of paper from the top shelf.

  He thumbed through the stack. The documents appeared to be routine shipboard paperwork for the most part: customs declarations, payroll records, copies of memoranda. On the third shelf down he found a thin folder marked Manifesto. He turned it over in his hands and looked at it skeptically; it was too clean to be a working manifest. It wasn’t unusual for merchant ships carrying illicit cargo to carry dual manifests: one to be handed over to knowing port officials with a wink, and one that reflected the actual cargo for the owners. Odd that the real manifest wouldn’t be here, he thought, looking at the empty floor of the safe. He started to get up and did a double take. Tiny scratch marks lined the base of the floor. He ran his thumb along the edge. The scratches felt fresh. He picked up a knife from the captain’s dinner tray and pried up the floor. A Manila envelope with Confidencial stamped across it in red letters lay in a shallow compartment. Bingo. He carried it over to the table where the beer bottle was still weaving its monotonous pattern and shoved the moldering food to one side.

  He ran his eye down the official list of cargo and started to whistle, but his mouth was suddenly dry. Thirty-six tons of ether. Twenty-four tons of acetone. A total of sixty tons of highly flammable chemicals that could blow a crater in the ocean a mile wide and a mile deep. They were sitting on a floating bomb with a storm coming that would toss them around like a chip of wood. If that cargo ignited, the storm would be the least of their worries. A film of cool sweat broke out across his forehead. He didn’t think they could be in more trouble than they were until he turned the page.

  A list of pallets loaded with cocaine ran down the page by serial number, with the number of kilos each contained. He flipped back through the pages to get to the total: thirty tons. Good God. He remembered reading somewhere that the price for one kilo of cocaine was $40,000. He tried to compute the value of thirty tons of cocaine at that price and was so overwhelmed by the arithmetic he had to stop. They were sitting on a bomb, all right. A time bomb, and it was ticking loudly. He turned the page.

  The next page began with a list of numbered cartons and the amount of cash each contained. The list of cartons ran for thirty pages, segregated in descending order by the U.S. dollar denomination of their contents. The list of $100-denominated cartons ran several pages, followed by a list of $50 cartons for nine or ten pages, then page after page of $20-denominated cartons. He turned to the last page and stared at the grand total. It had to be a mistake. There wasn’t that much money in the world. He read it again: $350 million.

  Head spinning, he flipped through the manifest, piecing together the route of the freighter and the destination of the cargo. The ship had been en route from Buenaventura, Colombia to Montevideo, Uruguay through Drake’s Passage with stops scheduled for Peru and Argentina. The chemicals were destined for a cocaine processing lab in the Peruvian jungle, someplace called Campanilla, near the source of the coca leaf. The finished product was destined for Argentina for repackaging and transshipment to Europe, with Spain as the intended port of entry. The cash was bound for Montevideo, Uruguay.

  He laid the manifest face down on the table and looked off into the corner, his heart racing in his chest. They were in trouble. Big trouble. The owners of this cargo had to be one of the major players in Colombia, and they wouldn’t just walk away from it. They were probably prepared to write off an occasional loss - that was part of the game-but not like this one. They would be coming, were probably on their way at that very minute. He thought about the helicopter landing pad on the fantail. What would he do with the Carlyle disabled? One marine with a rifle and a pair of pistols in the hands of two engineers who couldn’t shoot straight would be laughable against the kind of assault those people could launch.

  He became aware of Kelly’s eyes on him and stuffed the manifest back into the envelope. He looked at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. He glanced at her and smiled. “Feel better?”

  “I’m okay.” She brushed her hair back self-consciously with a graceful sweep of the hand. The color which had been returning to her cheeks seemed to accelerate under his gaze.

  “How’s your Spanish?” Blake asked, looking at a page in the ship’s log.

  “The log’s in Spanish?” Kelly asked. “I thought I saw you reading it.”

  “No, it’s in English, most are, it’s the universal language of commerce. But there are some Spanish words here I don’t understand.”

  Kelly looked at him suspiciously. “What makes you think I speak Spanish?”

  “Just a guess.”

  “Actually I do, a little. My grandmother on my mother’s side. Plus some in college.”

  “You went to college?”

  “San Jose State.” She shrugged. “Just a year.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “Ran out of money. My Volkswagen died in front of a Navy recruiting station.”

  “Any idea what El Callado means?” Blake asked, looking at a page in the log. He pronounced it El Cal-a-doe.

  “How’s it spelled?” Kelly asked, wrinkling her brow.

  Blake spelled it out.

  “Two Ls in Spanish make a Y sound,” Kelly said. “That would be pronounced Ky-yad-o, with the emphasis on the second syllable.”

  Blake nodded. He should have remembered. He’d learned the Lladro lesson from a stuffy sales clerk at Macy’s when he’d bought one of the Spanish artist’s figurines for Vicki. “What does it mean?”

  Kelly frowned and rubbed her chin. “Callado, callado. Quiet, I think.”

  “Quiet?”

  “No, wait.” Kelly narrowed her eyes. “Callado means silent, mysterious.” She looked at Blake. “I guess the most literal translation of El Callado would be . . . the silent one.”

  Blake stared at Kelly, then down at the log. He felt a tingling sensation on the back of his neck. The words seemed to come alive on the page. The silent one. Whatever it was, it had murdered the entire crew, one by one. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. Adrenaline roared through him like a freight train. He slapped the
Beretta out of its holster, snapped the safety off and spun on the door.

  “Whoa, don’t shoot.” Frank Kozlewski’s round face peered through the door, his wide eyes looking down the barrel of the automatic.

  “Christ,” Blake said, thumbing the safety on. “Scare a man to death.” He holstered the pistol and felt his knees tremble slightly.

  “Why so jumpy, Lieutenant?” Kozlewski stepped into the captain’s stateroom with Robertson and Tobin stumbling in behind. “Jesus. Another one?” He picked up a corner of the shroud and grimaced at the yawning mouth. “Good thing Sparky’s not here.”

  Blake felt the deck vibrate. The overhead light in the stateroom flickered and came on with a white steady glare. He let out a long breath. The sense of relief he felt wasn’t just from the light flooding the cabin; it was from the vibration pulsing through the hull of the ship, bringing her at least partially back to life. A dead ship was a dangerous place to be on the high seas.

  “I didn’t think it’d take him long to get some lights on,” Kozlewski said, looking down at the body. “There’s a guy looks just like this one next to the emergency diesel. I told Sparky he couldn’t come out of the engine room till he got some power going.”

  “You shouldn’t have left him alone,” Blake said.

  “We secured it first. Ain’t nobody down there alive except Sparky and I’m not so sure about him.” Kozlewski chuckled and rubbed his belly. “The men’ll be getting hungry, sir.”

  “There should be plenty of food in the galley,” Blake said, wondering how anyone could eat after what they’d seen. “See if you can find a volunteer.”

  They all looked at each other.

  “I ain’t no cook, but I did some pearl diving once,” Robertson spoke up. “Little place down in Mobile. I watched the cooks fry eggs and stuff. Don’t look too tough to me.”

  “You’ve got the job,” Blake said. He motioned Kozlewski over to the side. “Send someone down to get Sergeant Rivero.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “We’ve got big problems. The deeper we dig, the bigger they get.”

  “We’ve got a radio. Let’s call home. Get some help out here.”

  “I need to know for sure what we’re up against before we push the panic button. Get Rivero up here. I’ve got a feeling he knows more about this stuff than any of us.”

  The friendly smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted through the compact galley, which separated the officer’s dining salon from the crew’s mess, and served both. Blake breathed in the aroma and filled his cup with a steaming brew the color of molasses. He blew across the coffee and smiled at Robertson dancing over the inky black grill with sweat pouring off his forehead, frying steak and eggs, the sailor’s traditional favorite. The nearly thawed steaks from the frozen-food locker hit the grill with a sizzle, sending up vaporous clouds of steam and a slightly burnt aroma, dissipating the smell of cold grease and stainless steel that hovered over the galley.

  Blake stood at the coffee urn and nursed his coffee, collecting his thoughts. Frank Kozlewski had just given him a report on what they’d found in the engine room. The chief had discovered two additional bodies, one near the control-room console, the other near the high-pressure steam turbine. Both had suffered the same fate as the corpse found near the emergency diesel generator. He had also checked out the main propulsion machinery and opined that it ought to be in a museum somewhere, but appeared to be undamaged.

  Rivero hadn’t said a word during the chief’s report, which wasn’t too surprising. Blake had never heard more than a handful of words out of him at all. He felt sure the Colombian could shed some light on what they were up against if Blake could find a way to make him open up. He walked back over to the table in the far corner of the dining salon where Frank Kozlewski and Sergeant Rivero were seated, hoping he could get the Colombian to respond in words of more than one syllable. The others were scattered about, two or three to a table, chattering in hushed tones.

  “Hey, Chief,” Robertson shouted over the hiss of the grill. “How you want your eggs?”

  “Just warm ‘em up a little,” the chief yelled over his shoulder.

  “Now there’s a man knows how to eat eggs.” Robertson cracked a brown egg in each hand and dive-bombed them across the grill.

  Blake sat down at the table and glanced at Sergeant Rivero. He was struck by the inky depths of his eyes, peering out from under his combat helmet. Eyes so dark they were almost black. “What about the cargo holds, Sergeant? Find anything interesting?”

  Rivero loosened his chin strap and tilted his helmet off, exposing a haircut that Blake thought must be the standard for marines all over the world. A narrow strip of black bristles not more than a quarter of an inch high ran down the top of his head, fading into white sidewalls. Rivero gave his report in a surprisingly articulate monotone, a straight reporting of the facts. It was what Blake had been afraid of. He let Rivero run through the inventory of cargo to verify what he’d read in the manifest. When he’d finished, Blake hadn’t learned anything he didn’t already know, except for the two additional dead bodies, which were no surprise under the circumstances.

  Blake looked at Rivero sitting stiffly upright in his chair and decided it was the old bugaboo between officers and enlisted men that was getting in the way. He’d always been able to get around that with his own people by making self-deprecating small talk and by showing respect. It wasn’t an act. He firmly believed that many enlisted people were just as smart as he was; the only difference was that he’d had the opportunity to get a commission and they hadn’t. He decided to probe a little, try to draw him out. He leaned back in his chair and took a sip of coffee. “What do you make of all the chemicals?”

  Rivero sat stiffly. “They’re used in the extraction process.”

  “I assumed it had something to do with the manufacture of drugs,” Blake said. “How does it work?”

  Rivero shrugged. “It’s a fairly simple process. The coca leaves are harvested by hand by local farmers, then taken to processing plants in their village where the process of extraction begins.”

  “That’s where the cocaine is made?”

  Rivero smiled indulgently and seemed to loosen up a little. “Not exactly. The first step is to prepare coca paste by the process of maceration - they soak the leaves in a mixture of kerosene, water, sodium carbonate and sulfuric acid. Depending on the quality of the leaf, it takes between 100 and 200 kilos of leaves to extract one kilo of paste.”

  Blake raised his eyebrows, stuck his bottom lip out and nodded. The Colombian obviously knew what he was talking about. “What do they do with the paste?”

  “The paste contains up to 90 percent pure cocaine. It’s easier to transport than huge quantities of leaves would be. The paste is then flown to central processing plants in the jungle where it’s converted into pure cocaine hydrochloride, the white powder your people seem to love so much.”

  Blake stiffened. “My people?”

  “The people in America.”

  Tactful son of a bitch. Blake felt a tinge of red creeping up the back of his neck but told himself not to react. He needed Rivero’s cooperation. “And how do they convert it?”

  “By adding various chemicals to the paste. Hydrochloric acid, ether, acetone, sulfuric acid, sometimes kerosene.”

  “Sounds like real healthy stuff.”

  Rivero’s face grew dark. “Coca leaves have been chewed by my people for at least fifteen centuries without any problems.” His eyes focused on Blake. “It has been foreigners who have exploited the coca leaf.”

  “Take it easy,” Blake said. “That wasn’t meant to be a dig.”

  Rivero went on as though he hadn’t heard. “It started with the Spanish conquerors. They were opposed to its use at first; they thought it would make conversion of the Incas to Christianity difficult. But when they discovered it enabled the Indians to work long hours in their gold mines with little food or sleep, they quickly had a change of heart.” He
snorted with disgust. “It wasn’t long before the King of Spain declared that the coca habit was essential to the health of the Indians. They even had the gall to start paying them with coca leaves for their labor.”

  Blake stared at Rivero, stunned by his diatribe, wondering how he was going to establish any kind of rapport with this guy. “Well, that was a long time ago.”

  “Nothing has changed. Even now, your country creates the demand, then punishes the poor peasants for filling it.”

  We’re off to a great start. Obviously, xenophobia wasn’t limited to Americans. He decided to take another tack. “Those problems are a little beyond our scope,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and mentally formed the words the way Kelly had taught him. “Tell me, Sergeant. Does the name El Ky-yad-o mean anything to you?”

  Rivero’s eyes flashed. “El Callado?” He pulled his face into a smile, but his eyes weren’t smiling. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Why? What does it mean?”

  Rivero held his counterfeit smile and shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing? It has to mean something.”

  “Peasant superstition, Lieutenant.” The Colombian dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Nothing you Americanos would be-”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” Blake said. “What does it mean?”

  “Literally? The silent one.”

  Blake folded his arms and studied Rivero’s copper-colored face, wondering just what he had to work with here. The Colombian appeared to be somewhere close to his own age, maybe a few years older, but he had the telltale marks of one who had lived a hard life: a deep gouge above his left eye, a ragged scar down his right cheek, smaller scars on his hands. His black-onyx eyes were surrounded by laugh lines that Blake was sure were not from laughing. “Tell me everything you know about this ‘peasant superstition.’”

  Rivero rolled his coffee mug between scarred brown fingers and shrugged. “As you wish. I first heard the story from the peasant children in the village of Vicenzio, near the Colombian jungle, when I was a young muchacho.”