“That was just me on the phone. There is no one else here.”
“I think I should look around.”
Jorge opened his wallet and thumbed out five crisp American $100 bills. He folded them and slipped the silky bills into the shirt pocket of the corporal’s fatigues. “I think you have better things to do with your time.” He gently pushed the soldier back out the door, turned, and locked it. He left the corporal standing on the step, peering after him, fingers probing into his shirt pocket, and headed for the Command Center.
Halfway to the concrete-block building, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the corporal climbing into a Humvee that had pulled up, bristling with the rifles of the last squad of soldiers. The Humvee roared out of the compound gate and headed in a northerly direction, back to the base at Punta Arenas. When it was out of sight, Jorge threw the key to the bungalow into a thatch of coca bushes growing wild on the perimeter of the compound and started at a trot for the Command Center.
He walked through the splintered door frame and looked around. The floor was littered with radio logs, shell casings, the carcasses of several shot-up radio sets, upended furniture. At first glance, the building appeared to be deserted.
“Real nice friends you got there,” he heard a voice say from the rear of the building.
He looked back in the far corner and saw a dark figure wearing a cowboy hat slumped in a chair smoking a cigarette, his black cowboy boots perched on a table. He could see from the glow of the cigarette it was the American pilot, Michael Gaines.
“Where are the others?” Jorge said.
“Took ‘em.”
“Why didn’t they take you?”
“Played possum.” Gaines looked up from under his black Stetson hat with a grin. “Slipped away and hid out back in the jungle.”
“Are the helicopters okay?”
“Crazy bastards shot the tail rotor off one. The other one’s okay.”
“You’re sure?”
“It looks okay.” Gaines inhaled a drag from his cigarette and blew it out in a long stream. “What we could do, if you could help me get that Blackhawk started, we could take it and get the hell out of here before they come back.”
“Are any of these radios still working?”
“Looks like they missed a couple.”
“Can you operate these?”
“Sure.”
“See if you can find one that’s working and contact our spotter plane.”
“Why?”
“We still need to get aboard that ship.”
“Just you and me?” Gaines said. “Not likely.”
“It’s worth a bonus to me.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Something in the neighborhood of $500,000.”
Gaines grunted and nodded. “Nice neighborhood, but I don’t much like the idea of a one-way trip. What if that freighter ain’t there for us to land on? A half mil wouldn’t do me much good.”
“All right,” Jorge said. “I don’t have a lot of time to quibble. What do you say we make it an even million. I can have it transferred to any bank you say.”
Gaines looked at him for a long minute. “For that kind of money, I might be willing to take a risk.” He pulled a paper and pencil from his flight jacket and began scribbling. “Here’s the name of a bank in Killeen, Texas. It’s a joint account. If I don’t come back, my old lady will be covered. It’s tough to buy insurance in my line of work.”
Jorge picked up a phone to see if it was still working and dialed a number in New York. After two disconnects, he got through. He let the speaker verify who it was to Gaines, then read an authorizing code into the phone and ordered a $1-million wire transfer to the ABA number of the bank Gaines had given him, followed by the pilot’s name and account number. The transfer was to be delayed for twenty-four hours, but irrevocable after that. He hung up the phone. “It’s done.”
“Let’s go, Pancho,” Gaines said, coming to his feet.
“From here on out, it’s Mister Cordoba.” Jorge crushed the cigarette out with the scuffed toe of his shoe. “Get on that radio and find the exact location of the ship. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jorge walked quickly across the tarmac toward a flimsy- looking building at the opposite end of the runway, partially obscured by thick vegetation. It was a monstrous-looking production, half a city block long, thrown together with corrugated sheet metal siding and a roof of broken clay tile with vents every ten feet. Grimy windows, some broken, most cracked, canted out at five-foot intervals along the sides. The building was intended to be loosely constructed, designed to keep out the rain and still allow the chemical fumes that seeped from every pore to escape. It lay on the edge of thousands of acres of coca plants, under a cluster of overhanging trees. The trees were brown from the fumes drifting up through the roof.
He walked up the dirt path that led to the door and glanced at the lush dark green leaf of the plants that edged up to the building, growing in wild profusion. Jorge paused to look at a coca bush growing on the edge of the footpath. He had never seen one up close before. He plucked a leaf from it and stood there looking at its tiny green veins, marveling at its power. The little leaf contained only one-half of one percent of the drug, but it was the stuff of dreams, the source of great wealth and great power and great aspirations. He twirled it between his fingers and started to throw it away, then astonished himself by putting it in his mouth and chewing it. The mildly bitter taste flooded his mouth. He swallowed and felt an immediate sense of well-being. He plucked another and put it in his mouth, embarrassed to be standing there in the noonday sun, chewing coca leaves like a peasant.
He glanced around. This place showed how it all began. The humble leaves had been chewed by the Indians for centuries before the Europeans got involved. It had been his own ancestors who had exploited the coca leaf first. Suddenly feeling ashamed of his heritage, he spit the leaves out into the dust and looked around self-consciously.
He walked up to the lab building. The door was standing ajar. He pushed it open and walked carefully inside. The acrid stench of chemicals made his eyes water. No Fumar signs were posted conspicuously around. Rows of stainless-steel tanks for macerating coca leaves stood on both sides of the building, the waves of chemicals shimmering above them in the noonday heat. He grimaced at the chemical smell and glanced around at the vats. He had only a rudimentary knowledge of how the stuff was made. He knew the peasants picked the leaves by hand and carted them to a lab like this one where they were soaked in a mixture of chemicals to begin the process of extraction. Maceration, it was called. A real ollapodrida, a rotten stew.
He would need a gun when he boarded the ship. He glanced around. Everyone working here would have been armed. He emptied a row of cabinets along the wall and found nothing. He walked over to a metal shop desk, pulled the center drawer open and pawed through a sheaf of papers. His hand brushed against something cool and metallic. He reached under the stack and retrieved a pistol, a 9mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic with molded nylon grips. He ejected the clip. Fourteen shots in the magazine, one in the chamber. He cocked it, snapped the safety on and stuck it in his belt. Above the writing surface was a warren of cubbyholes. He pawed through them and found a package of cigarettes and a book of matches. He walked around behind a bale of coca leaves and spotted a large vat of kerosene.
He stood looking around at the filthy business he had sold his soul for and wondered if his parents were watching him now, could see him begin the process of avenging their humiliating deaths. Fighting down a lump in his throat, he lit the cigarette and took a deep drag that made the tip glow. He carefully folded the matchbook around it, leaving two inches of the cigarette exposed, and laid the homemade fuse on a stack of paper soaked in kerosene. It would take about ten minutes for the cigarette to burn its way down to the matches. He took a final look around, nodded to himself, and headed back to the Command Center.
Michael Gaines was lifting the head
phones off and walking toward the map table when Jorge walked in. Gaines bent over the table, studying the grease-pencil marks showing the location of the ship.
“Where is it?” Jorge asked.
Gaines pointed to a spot on the map west of the grease mark. “I make it about here. The pilot of the spotter plane is coming in. Low on fuel. I diverted him to Lima. Last sighting was about an hour ago. The ship was under way, heading west-”
“West? Why would it be heading west?”
“Beats hell out of me,” Gaines said.
“There’s nothing in that direction,” Jorge said. “If they wanted to reach land, why wouldn’t they steam toward the coast?”
Gaines shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Let me look at that map.” Jorge turned the light volume up behind the map and scanned the blue surface. “What’s this thing?” he asked, pointing to a speck on the chart.
“Some kind of land, I reckon,” Gaines said. “Probably just an atoll. A little island, made out of coral. There’s millions of them in the Pacific. They only plot the ones that stick up far enough to hang up a ship.”
Hang up a ship. The words jolted Jorge. Why would they be moving away from the coast toward something that could hang up a ship? If the American officer had been good enough to survive the storm, why wouldn’t he just head for the coast? Why would he be heading west? There was nothing out there but that tiny sliver of coral that could . . . He rocked back on his heels. “I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“That’s it,” Jorge said. “There’s only one reason he’d be heading west. The ship was damaged in the storm, and he’s trying to save it. He’s heading for the nearest land. He’s going to try to run it aground.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Gaines said.
Jorge rubbed his face in his hands. He had badly underestimated the young American officer. If he was successful in beaching the freighter, the ship would be confiscated by the Colombian Navy and it would be only a matter of time before Don Gallardo had it back. He had seen how successfully he had manipulated Admiral Cuartas. He had to stop it before it got there.
“What’s the range on the Blackhawks?”
“These here have been outfitted with ESSS.”
“Speak English.”
“External Stores Support System, it means they got extra fuel tanks, 230 gallons apiece.”
“Can we make it out there?”
Gaines looked at the chart. “They’re going away from us. It’ll be tight. Depends on whether we can catch them before they get too far out.”
“Let’s go,” Jorge said.
“Sure you know what you’re doing?” Gaines said. “We only got enough fuel for a one-way trip, barely that. If there’s nothing out there for us to land on, we’re in a lot of trouble.”
“Then we’ll have to get there while there’s still something to land on, won’t we?” Jorge said.
“Then what are we yammering for,” Gaines said, “Let’s do it.”
They walked up to the helicopters. Jorge watched Gaines check the extra fuel tanks mounted on the stub wings on each side of the fuselage and give the external systems a quick check.
“You’re going to have to play crew chief on this one,” Gaines said. “Stand out in front while I go through the start procedure. If you see the beginning of any fires, anything that looks funny, wave me the hell out of there.”
Jorge took a position in front of the helicopter and watched Gaines climb into the right seat and strap himself in. The pilot scanned the flight-control panels and pressed the start buttons. The turboshaft engines spun with a high-pitched whine and caught.
He braced himself against the downdraft from the four spinning rotors, checked the engines and fuselage for fires, then scrambled into the copilot’s left seat and watched the American go through the cockpit check. “How do you fly this thing?”
“Nothing to it,” Gaines said. “This here on the left is called the collective. It’s just the engine power control. The stick between my legs is called the cyclic, among other things. It’s the pitch and directional controls. That’s basically it. Like the foot-feed and steering wheel on a car.” Gaines glanced around the cockpit and nodded approvingly. “Nice ships, these Blackhawks. Got an auto-stabilization system that ties to the flight-control system. So smooth it don’t even need a vibration-suppression system like most other birds.”
“Skip the technobabble. What about those?” Jorge said, pointing down to the foot pedals.
“Don’t use them much. They’re handy for hovering and such, but we don’t really need them.”
“Can you fly it from here?”
“Either seat, it don’t matter.” Gaines looked at him. “What did you have in mind?”
“Nothing,” Jorge said. He looked at his watch impatiently. “How long does it take to warm up?”
“Not long,” Gaines said. “Good engines, these 701s.” He scanned the warning-enunciator lights on the cockpit instrumentation panel. One by one the lights turned green.
Jorge watched him intently. It was nothing like the single-engine Cessna he’d learned to fly in, but it didn’t look difficult. When the engines had warmed up, Gaines released the parking brake, pushed the cyclic forward, pulled up slightly on the collective to apply power, and taxied forward to an open spot on the runway. He glanced both ways, pulled up gently on the power control and pitched the stick forward. The heavy Blackhawk lifted off in a swirl of dust and leaves.
Jorge looked down on the shrinking compound, struck by how smooth the Blackhawk rode. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of fire. Gaines saw it at the same time. He banked the helicopter for a closer look. In the far corner of the compound, the fire was licking through the cracked tile roof of the processing lab. Gaines applied more power and the Blackhawk gained elevation as the lab building lifted up in a violent explosion that rocked the helicopter.
“Think we ought to turn back?” Gaines shouted into Jorge’s ear.
Jorge looked down on the spreading fire that was beginning to sweep the compound. A southerly breeze was pushing it toward the row of bungalows where Nita’s body lay. He looked at his watch. His homemade fuse had taken less than fifteen minutes to ignite. He unbuckled the crocodile strap of the Patek Philippe his godfather had given him, gripped the gold buckle between his thumb and forefinger and held it out the door at arm’s length, as though he were dropping a dirty sock down a laundry chute. Straining against his shoulder harness with the wind and smoke stinging his eyes, he released it and watched the custom-made timepiece flutter down into the blazing compound like a bird with a broken wing.
“It’s too late to turn back now.”
Blake knelt down over Frank Kozlewski’s body and gently lifted the chief’s head up out of the water. The old man’s face was slack, his eyes lifeless. A pink stain seeped into the water from a wound around his neck. A piece of shrapnel from the exploding boiler must have severed an artery.
He prayed that the chief had been killed instantly by the explosion. The thought that his old friend had bled to death down here alone was more than he could bear. He dragged the chief’s body over to the engine-room console and propped him up in a pointless attempt to keep his head out of the water. He looked at the rubbery face for a minute, fighting back tears, and smoothed the few strands of gray hair out of the old man’s eyes.
“You were right, old friend,” Blake said in a whisper. The tightness in his throat threatened to choke him. “We should have abandoned this hell ship. I’m sorry.”
He straightened himself and sloshed around the engine room, looking for Robertson and Tobin. The shoring was holding. The pumps were still running. He spotted the crumpled forms, half-floating in the swirling water like bags of refuse, and turned them over. Both dead of burns and asphyxiation.
He heard the number two boiler groan ominously. It was situated far enough from the number one boiler to withstand the blast, but it was making agonizing, tearing sounds.
It was only a matter of time before it went, too. He waded over and stood in front of it, hoping it would choose that moment to explode. It was pointless to go on. His marriage was over. His career was finished. If by some miracle he should survive, he knew he would be facing a general court-martial for the loss of almost the entire boarding party. He stood there for a minute, gazing into the boiler, mesmerized by the yellow-and-blue flame that danced tenuously through the viewing port.
The labored sound of the turbines, struggling to push the water-laden ship forward, pulled him back. He could feel the tug of the sea, dragging her down. He thought about Kelly and Maria alone on the bridge. He backed away and stepped up to the engine-room console. He looked down on the chief’s body for an instant. They had all died trying to save the ship. He would damn well get them to the island or die trying, too. Sick with grief and frustration, he wrenched the throttle valve open with such force that it twisted off in his hands, jamming the throttle in the full-ahead position. He glanced at the brittle valve in his hand. It was just as well. When the water got high enough, there would be no returning to the engine room.
He climbed the ladder into the brightness of the afternoon sun. A few black specks floated and dived gracefully against the western sky. Land birds. At least his navigation had been right. Before the explosion, the birds would have been a joyous sight. But the ship was wallowing ahead at 3 or 4 knots now. At that speed, the chances of reaching the island before she went down were slim.
If he had been alone, he would have taken his chances, but he owed it to Kelly and Maria to try to build a raft out of something. Something that would float without getting waterlogged. He remembered the fifty-five-gallon drums in the number three hold. If he could get the hatch cover off, he could carefully empty a few out, reseal them, hoist them up to the main deck and lash them together. That would keep them afloat indefinitely. If they could survive the exposure to the elements and the sharks long enough, they might have a chance.
He walked across the weather deck to the number three cargo hold, unlocked the pontoon hatch cover and rolled it back. The humid, rusty smell rose to greet him. He descended the ladder into the hold, half-expecting to find Sergeant Rivero’s body swinging by its ankles. He looked around cautiously. The closer they got to land, the bigger the danger that El Callado would emerge. He shuddered in the tomb-like air, remembering the cargo in the number three hold: sixty tons of chemicals, thirty tons of cocaine, $350 million in cash. People were coming to kill them for it.
Point of Honor Page 34
