Riley and Jack, on either side of him, looked at the ship’s layout.
“That’s where we’re going?” Jack asked.
“That’s right,” Hudgens said, putting the map back in his backpack.
“And how do you know?” Riley asked, amazed the outline existed. “Who gave you that information? Lippett?”
The ONI officer shook his head. “Zorrilla.”
Riley suddenly felt uneasy. “But . . . then you told him we were going to board the ship?” He pointed downward. “He knows we’re here?”
“Of course,” Hudgens’s teeth showed in the darkness. “He’s been working for us for months.”
“For us?” Jack asked incredulously. “But he wasn’t—”
“Later,” the commander interrupted, lifting his hand. “No time to explain now. Follow me.”
Without another word he started to run toward the end of the hall, using the flashlight to see like a blind man would his cane.
Following Hudgens’s silhouette, they went down two levels and covered the eighty yards separating them from the fore section. There they entered another passageway, wider and taller than the previous ones, with large gates on either side.
“This way,” Jack said, pointing to a large 3 painted in red on one of the gates on the port side. “Odd numbers,” he added.
A little farther up they found the entrance to Hold Seven, a steel door six feet tall and six feet wide with a large latch secured by a padlock.
“And now?” Riley asked, pulling on the lock to confirm its solidity.
“No problem,” Hudgens responded. Then he opened his backpack again and took out a pair of shears.
“Well then,” Jack said with surprise. “How much stuff do you have in there?”
“Only what I thought we might need,” he said, applying the shears to the lock shackle.
With a loud crack, the padlock went flying.
Hudgens wasted no time dropping the shears, opening the latch, and pushing the door wide to reveal a dark space.
Riley and Jack stood immobile while Hudgens bent down to put away the shears. Their nostrils were struck by a strong stench of dampness, rot, and decay. That compartment hadn’t been opened in a long time.
“I just had déjà vu,” Jack muttered uneasily, scrunching his nose in disgust. “A dark hold, a mysterious ship. Remind you of anything?”
Riley knew exactly what he was talking about. He’d just been feeling the same. “Let’s hope things go better this time.”
Jack sighed with resignation. “We’ll see,” he murmured to himself.
Hudgens got up, now with a flashlight in each hand. “Let’s go that way,” he said to Riley as he gave him one of the lights. Then he pointed back down the hallway where they’d come from and ordered Jack to cover their backs. “Stay there while we search the place.”
“It would be a pleasure,” Jack answered, happy not to have to go in. He took his pistol from its holster and stood guard in the hatchway while Riley and Hudgens entered the dark hold.
Carmen stepped down from the stage and gracefully walked between the tables, still singing. The guests listened to her on their feet, salto glasses in the air as they contemplated the woman who every once in a while, depending on the light, looked completely naked.
El se fue una tarde con rumbo ignorado
En el mismo barco que lo trajo a mí
Pero entre mis labios, se dejó olvidado
Un beso de amante, que yo le pedí
Errante lo busco por todos los puertos
A los marineros, pregunto por él
Y nadie me dice, si está vivo o muerto
Y sigo en mi duda buscándole fiel
Y voy sangrando lentamente
De mostrador en mostrador
Ante una copa de aguardiente
Donde se ahoga mi dolor
Carmen swayed suggestively. The group of sailors were barely able to contain their impulses to reach out and touch her.
The Germans were certainly less entranced than the Italians, but they still listened without blinking, apparently forgetting their intention to leave.
Carmen fluttered her lashes at Spetch in a way that would have caused any man with blood in his veins to crumble, and sang to him:
Mira su nombre de extranjero
Escrito aquí sobre mi piel
Si te lo encuentras, marinero
Dile que yo, muero por—
An explosion in the distance drowned out the last word of the line.
Carmen’s heart skipped a beat, and she was paralyzed as the band kept playing the melody.
The guests, however, seemed hypnotized by her, apparently not hearing the damped blast.
“Seems the storm’s getting closer,” someone murmured, looking at the sky.
Carmen tried hard to hide her fright and prepared to finish the song.
But she couldn’t.
This time two nearly simultaneous explosions caused alarm among the guests.
“That wasn’t thunder,” the governor said, approaching the low wall facing the bay.
Almost all the guests moved toward the railing, so fast that if they’d been on a boat it would have tipped over.
For a few never-ending seconds, sepulchral silence came over the recently festive rooftop. Even the musicians, instruments still in their hands, had joined the multitude trying to see through the thick darkness.
Then another explosion rang out.
“There!” someone called. “On the ship! The explosion was on the ship!”
“To the docks!” Captain Oliveda, the officer in charge of Santa Isabel’s garrison, shouted. “To the docks!”
Hudgens and Riley entered the storeroom, cutting through the darkness with their flashlights. Only the light glow of the emergency lights in the hallway eased the feeling of being immersed in rotting black paste. An intense odor stuck to the roofs of their mouths and seemed like it would never leave.
Hold Seven smelled like a cube of rotting garbage.
“What the hell is that smell?” Hudgens asked, covering his nose. “It’s disgusting.”
“Maybe a rat died,” Riley said halfheartedly, looking around with the help of the light. “See anything?”
“Boxes,” the commander answered, frustrated. “Dozens and dozens of damn boxes.”
Hold Seven of the Duchessa d’Aosta was packed with wooden boxes piled on top of each other haphazardly, the majority of them medium and small, but without markings or identification of any kind.
Riley bent down over one and easily removed the rotted top. He reached in and took out a large piece of fabric. Inside was a glass jar containing a brown tarantula the size of his hand. “I hate spiders,” he said, putting the jar on the floor.
He shone his flashlight into the box and found various other jars, each containing different species of arachnids and insects. Only in the bottom of the box did he find something different: a small dark wooden container. He opened it and found a small microscope wrapped in blue felt.
“What the hell is all this?” Riley said to himself.
“Seems like the equipment for a scientific expedition,” Hudgens answered as if the question had been directed at him, while he held an ape head submerged in formaldehyde.
“A Nazi scientific expedition,” Riley added. He’d found a well-worn copy of Mein Kampf next to the box.
“I can’t imagine why all this is so valuable to the Germans,” Hudgens wondered aloud, worried. “A bunch of dead animals.”
“There must be something else,” Riley said, setting the box aside and moving among the others.
Just then, three loud explosions shook the ship as if it had been hit by a gigantic hammer.
“What was that?” Jack asked from the door.
“And here come the English commandos,” Hudgens answered grimly. “They just blew up the ship’s mooring cables.”
Riley shone the flashlight left and right, trying to make out the huge quantity of boxes that filled
the thousand-square-foot hold.
“We have to hurry.”
What had only moments before been a distinguished gathering of the soldiers and socialites of Santa Isabel was now a mob running down Avenue General Mola amid shouts of alarm, waking the whole city as it passed.
At the tail end of the group was Carmen, running barefoot, with her shoes in her hands.
The few lanterns some had brought to the casino weren’t enough to see more than a handful of yards ahead, but as soon as they turned down Cuesta de las Fiebres, which led to the docks, they heard the voices of those who had arrived first.
“They’re not there!” someone shouted. “The ships aren’t there!”
“Il Duchessa!” an Italian voice called. “Dov’èil Duchessa?”
“Treachery! Treachery!”
Carmen, on the other hand, could only see the space where the Pingarrón should have been.
In despair she dropped her shoes and slowly fell to her knees.
They’d abandoned her.
Her irrational fear of minutes before had turned into a frightening reality.
They’d left without her.
Among the shouts and screams, the voice of Umberto Valle, the Italian captain, stood out. He had his fist raised to the dark sky, pathetically demanding explanations.
Then a light on the horizon illuminated the bay momentarily, showing dark silhouettes, like large, silent whales, slowly leaving the port.
“There they are!” Oliveda shouted. He turned to someone Carmen didn’t recognize and added at the top of his voice, “Go to the barracks and sound the alarm! Get all the cannons to Punta Fernanda and open fire on the ships! And someone connect the goddamn generator again!”
Those words triggered something in Carmen, as she stood separate from the small crowd around Oliveda and the governor.
She understood that the order to sink all the ships included the Pingarrón, which was probably one of the shadows they glimpsed before it disappeared in the night. She also understood that it wouldn’t be long before the little cargo ship with a colorful crew would be implicated.
It’d take them even less time to realize that one of the crew members was still among them.
Trying not to call attention, Carmen started to walk backward, distancing herself farther from the commotion. Being barefoot, her steps were silent on the street. She moved step by step until she felt she was far away enough to turn and run.
But as she did, she knocked into someone in the darkness.
“Einen Moment, Fräulein,” an icy German voice said while a pair of hands held her with overwhelming force. “Wohin so eilig?”
22
Using a pickax that he’d found in one of the boxes, Riley began a frenetic search. He broke all the wooden boxes he could, then looked briefly at the contents, which were inevitably examples of African flora and fauna. Many of the jars now lay in pieces on the floor, their specimens scattered in pools of formaldehyde.
“I hear voices!” Jack said from the entrance.
“God damn!” Hudgens shouted, throwing a handful of dried leaves. “There’s nothing but trash here!”
“We still have time!” Riley urged. “Keep looking!”
“Why?” Hudgens said in frustration. “We’ve clearly made a mistake. There’s only bugs and old clothes here.”
Riley strode over to Hudgens and stood in front of him. “We’ve got two minutes till the English come and kick our asses out of here,” he argued, pointing at the entrance. “Do you want to spend them arguing or trying to find what we can?”
The commander’s lips formed a thin line. He seemed to think for a moment before nodding. “Right,” he admitted. “I’m acting like a rookie.”
“Let’s keep going,” Riley said.
“But it’s impossible to search all the boxes,” Hudgens said, motioning around him.
“Why don’t you look at the biggest ones first,” Jack said behind them. “If they had to move it by boat, maybe it’s because it was big and heavy, don’t you think?”
Hudgens and Riley exchanged a look of understanding.
“Good Lord, he’s right,” the commander said.
Riley aimed his flashlight at the back of the room, where there seemed to be bigger boxes.
“Let’s go!” he said, heading for them with the pickax.
They quickly abandoned the smaller boxes and made their way to a corner with one significantly larger box. It was wrapped in a thick sheet of rubber on which someone had written VD in black.
“This!” Hudgens shouted triumphantly. “Must be this!”
Riley was already on top of it, cutting the cords and slashing the rubber with his pocketknife.
In a matter of seconds, the protective covering lay in tatters at the two Americans’ feet. In the light of their flashlights they saw a large container about nine feet long and five feet wide and tall. It was made of dark solid wood and reinforced with steel plates.
“It has a lock,” Hudgens said, pointing to a gap where a large key would go.
“Step back,” Riley said, taking out his Colt.
“Wait!” Hudgens said. “If you shoot they’ll know we’re here!”
“They already know we’re here,” Riley said and without hesitating pulled the trigger three times.
The roar of the shots rumbled in the room until Riley was almost deaf, but when his eyes refocused after the flash, he hit the chest hard with the pickax and the cover rose with a creak.
Spetch’s cold blue eyes shone in the darkness, fixing Carmen with an accusatory look while he gripped her with both arms. Spit flew from his mouth as he screamed, “Wo ist mein Boot?” Then he added, “Slut.”
Carmen was surprised to find that, having been discovered, she felt a sense of calm resignation. It was all over. When the German called her slut, she even smiled to herself, thinking how well she fit the description.
Spetch must have seen a shadow of that smile on her face, because he lost it and gave her a strong backhand that knocked her down.
Carmen sat up, furious. She could feel the metallic taste of blood in her mouth along with the burning on her cheek, which would end up turning into an ugly purple bruise. Her instinct was to rip out the Nazi’s eyes for laying a hand on her.
But when she looked, she realized several of the Italian sailors were looking back at her, troubled by the scene.
Carmen smiled again, this time consciously.
“Help!” she screamed, waving toward them. “Help me! He’s going to rape me!”
Half a dozen of the men ran in her direction, ready to rescue the damsel in distress from the grips of the violent German. If they’d thought about it for a second, what they were seeing wouldn’t make sense. But the alcohol in their blood, as well as adrenaline from the fury of having lost their own ship, inhibited their capacity for reason. Instead they focused their rage on that arrogant Nazi who had barely said a word to them in over a year.
Realizing what was about to happen, Spetch took out his Luger, ready to fire at the sailors if necessary. But before he could finish the movement, Carmen kicked him in the crotch. It didn’t land as hard as she’d hoped, but it was enough to make him lose a few precious seconds.
When Spetch went to raise his gun again, the Italians swarmed him like linebackers, making him drop the gun, which hit the ground with a metallic click.
“Halt! Halt!” Spetch shouted, but the mad sailors didn’t understand what he was saying and they sure as hell didn’t care.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Carmen stood up fast and ran without looking back. When she reached the promenade, she stopped, panting, leaning on her knees to catch her breath after the steep climb from the docks.
To her left was the city and the protective darkness of its lonely streets, where she could feel safe for at least a few hours. To her right the avenue stretched to the edge of the impenetrable jungle less than a half mile away.
“Fuck,” she said to herself, trying to find a way
out. “Think, Carmen. Think.”
Then she suddenly remembered Alex explaining at some point that Zorrilla was going to flee the island on his own using a fishing boat on Carboneras Beach.
The problem was that she was disoriented in the darkness and had no idea where that damn beach was. It could be anywhere on the island, and she couldn’t stop to ask directions.
But no, she thought, trying to calm herself down. It couldn’t be far, since Zorrilla didn’t want to call attention by getting in his car. It has to be close. To the east or west?
She looked in both directions.
“It has to be to the west,” she said to herself, deciding the Spaniard wouldn’t have made an escape plan that required him to go through the whole city.
So she took a deep breath, pulled her dress up above her knees, and not worrying about being barefoot, started out through the darkness in search of the unfamiliar beach where she might still be able to find Abelino Zorrilla. It was a remote possibility, but was also her only hope of not ending up in an African prison for the rest of her life.
Their flashlights shone in the box as soon as they removed the top, but what they saw couldn’t have been more unsettling.
“Another box?” Hudgens asked incredulously.
The iron chest was a little smaller than the wooden one containing it. Various braces and reinforcements gave it an exaggerated look of impenetrability, while the joints on the cover looked to have been soldered to form a tight seal.
“What the hell is this thing?” Riley muttered, running his flashlight along the surface of the inexplicable object.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Hudgens murmured.
“A safe.”
The commander turned to Riley. “I was gonna say a sarcophagus.”
The iron chest, if that’s indeed what it was, didn’t seem to have any means of being opened. Nor were there marks or symbols of any kind, not the slightest indication of whether it was upside down or right-side up.
Unable to resist, Riley touched the surreal polished surface.
Darkness: Captain Riley II (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 2) Page 16
