by Cap Daniels
By the time he had the chopper shut down, Clark had Javier’s hand and arm splinted and bandaged, and another healthy dose of morphine waiting to be administered.
In front of the injured man, I knelt in the sand with a twenty-pound anchor and short length of line in my hands. I tied the anchor to his left ankle. “Okay, Javi. I’m going to ask you some more questions, and you have two options. Number one, you can answer my questions quickly and honestly. If you do, that helicopter is your ride out of here. You’ll be taken someplace safe where a doctor will take care of your arm. Option number two is that you hesitate the least little bit or give me an answer I believe to be anything short of the absolute truth, and you and my anchor go for a swim. Do you understand?”
“Sí, yes, I understand.”
“Who do you work for?”
“His name is Domino. That’s all I know. He owns the boats, and he pays me in cash. I do what he says, and I don’t ask questions.”
“Very good, Javier. Now we’re getting somewhere. Who does Domino work for?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes full of timid fear.
“Okay, Javi. I believe you. What is Domino going to do when he discovers you and his boat are missing?”
He immediately cast his eyes to the ground. “He will believe I have stolen his boat and deserted him. He will find me, and he will kill me.”
“Look at me, Javier. I’m the man you need to worry about killing you right now. Which bridge?”
Confusion whirled in his labored eyes.
I lifted the anchor and held it above his bandaged hand. “Don’t mess with me, Javier. Which bridge is Domino planning to blow?”
“America.”
“The Bridge of the Americas, and not the Puente Centenario?” I tapped his hand with the shank of the anchor.
“Yes, yes, Bridge of the Americas. They are planting the other explosives under the Bridge of the Americas. Why would we want to blow the Puente Centenario? There’s nothing in the water there.”
His confusion gave me some measure of reassurance. If I believed him, we only had one bridge to protect.
“Where’s the other boat?”
“I think they are at the ferry dock, but I don’t know for sure.”
I turned to Clark. “Is there anything else?”
He shook his head and stuck the syringe of morphine in Javier’s thigh.
“Get him out of here, and get him some help, Leo.”
I untied the anchor from Javier’s ankle, and Clark pulled him to his feet and put him aboard the Huey. Leo took off and soon disappeared to the north.
The Pacific tide had turned and begun to fall, and my new boat would soon be high and dry if we didn’t get it off the beach.
I tossed my threatening anchor back into the RHIB, and Clark and I shoved the boat into the surf and climbed aboard. We motored around the north side of Bona and turned to the east. As we passed Taboga Island, the traffic jam of vessels waiting their turn to enter the canal came into sight. There must have been six dozen ships resting at anchor.
Clark slapped my shoulder and pointed to the southeast. I followed his finger into the distance, and we saw the AAS Pearl looming on the horizon. Even at that distance, the Pearl dwarfed the rest of the freighters in the area. She was a behemoth.
“How do you think our little devil’s doing on that beast?”
I laughed. “I suspect no one on that ship even knows he’s there yet.”
“You may be right,” Clark yelled over the roar of the engine. “I hope he’s okay.”
I pulled the throttle back and turned to Clark. “I need to tell you something else.”
Clark held on as we slowed, and the boat settled into the water from being up on plane. “What is it?”
“Remember when I told you Diablo told me to forget about the locks and protect the bridge?”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said.
“Well, that’s not all he said.”
Clark cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. It was obvious he thought I’d kept some piece of mission-critical information from him.
“He also said, ‘Archie would be proud of you.’”
“Yeah? Who’s Archie?”
“Archie is my dad, Clark.”
He bit at his lip and sat on the Hypalon tube beside the helm. “Damn, man. Do you think he knew your dad?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. How old do you think he is?”
“Who knows?” said Clark. “I’m sure he’s older than he looks, but he’s in too good of shape to be much older than me. He moves like he’s twenty-one. Stuff starts to hurt around thirty-five. When did . . .” He paused, obviously unsure how to finish the question.
“They were killed in December of eighty-nine,” I said.
He cast his eyes skyward, doing the math. “That was almost twelve years ago. Diablo could’ve been around back then, but I don’t know.”
“Why do you think he’d say that to me?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but you don’t need that in your head right now. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I know. I just thought I should tell you.”
He nodded. “I’m glad you did. Now, get your head in the game and let’s see if we can keep that big bridge in the air.”
I pushed the throttle to the stops, and the boat jumped out of the water and again settled into her pace atop the waves. I was tempted to turn out to sea to have a closer look at the enormous freighter, but I had to stay focused. I turned to the north and headed the boat across the Bahia de Panama and the southern end of the canal, but I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder at the Pearl.
Clark went to work setting up our dive gear while I headed for the ferry terminal, hoping to see the other explosives-laden workboat. I’d known the Panama Canal was busy, but I never imagined freighters would be lined up by the dozens waiting their turn. It was an impressive sight. I wondered if the Pearl would also wait in line, or if because of her size, she had some superior status within the system that granted her preferential treatment.
My stomach rumbled, and I thought about Diablo. Even though he was little more than half my size, he still had to eat. I wondered if he’d sniffed out a stowaway rat or two on the Pearl and made a meal of them. When all of this was over, I had every intention of getting the truth out of him. I had to know if he had known my father. I had to have some answers about what happened that night in December of eighty-nine. I deserved some answers . . . if there were any to be had.
The ferry terminal came into view, and I noticed the anchorage around it was bustling with cruisers and commercial boats. It was going to be a challenge to find the workboat, even if she was in the area.
“All right. The gear’s all set up. We’re ready to go,” Clark said as he joined me at the helm.
I pointed to an exposed sandbar just southeast of the ferry terminal. “Look. There’s a few boats tucked in behind that sandbar. That could be our guys.”
Clark pulled a pair of binoculars from his kit and scanned the area. “There are eight boats back there, and three of them look like they could be Domino’s crew. I say we come in from the southeast and do a drive-by.”
I kept the boat at full throttle and headed for the south end of the sandbar. The water was shallow, but we drew less than twelve inches when up on plane, and only about two feet when she was at rest. If the workboats could get in and out of there, we definitely could.
The sandbar and shallows appeared to be half a mile long. The speed and flexibility of our boat would gobble up that distance in less than forty seconds. We rounded the southern tip of the bar and turned northwest, paralleling the beach. The sandbar acted as a barrier island and broke waves before they reached the beach, making the water behind the bar as smooth as glass.
Clark lay on the bow with the binoculars pressed to his face. I squinted against the wind and sun and kept moving north. As we approached the three suspect boats, I slowed to idle speed and crept by, ma
king no wake. With “La Seguridad,” the Spanish equivalent of Safety, stenciled in bold white letters on our tubes, almost no one would question us poking around—except perhaps the local police. I’d been surprised how few official boats there seemed to be in the area.
The first vessel that came into view wasn’t a boat. It was a ship. It was over two hundred feet long and carried an unidentifiable collection of equipment. There were two submersible ROVs and a minisub in cradles on the deck and a helipad on the bow. The ship had a quasi-military look about it and displayed an American flag atop the Panamanian courtesy flag. Painted across the stern in bright white letters against the haze gray paint of the hull was R.V. Lori Danielle.
She wasn’t our target, so we moved on. The first two workboats were loaded with construction material—blocks, lumber, and paint—but the deck of the third was empty, just like Javier’s boat had been.
Clark glanced back at me from his position on the bow and nodded toward the empty deck of the third boat. I nodded once in silent acknowledgment and continued idling ever closer.
The door to the pilothouse was tied open with a greasy length of line, and puffs of white steam wafted through the door. Clark drew his pistol, tucked it between his leg and the tube of the boat, and motioned for me to get closer.
If this was the second explosives boat, the white steam represented an unexpected wrinkle in their plan. A broken-down boat could be a lucky break for the good guys.
A shirtless, dark-skinned man with a filthy rag in one hand and a wrench in the other, came stomping through the pilothouse door. He was cursing and wiping sweat from his brow.
I’d allowed us to drift a little closer to the boat than I’d planned, and the man looked up in surprise when he saw us so close to his stern. He didn’t reach for a gun or appear nervous. He just kept wiping his head with the rag.
In Spanish, I said, “Good morning. Do you need some help?”
The man shook his head. “No, I need a new wife! Mine poured diesel fuel instead of oil into the engine, and now I’m going to kill her.”
“I’m afraid we can’t help you with that, but good luck,” I said as we drifted by.
“Yeah, good luck. Ha! She’s the one who needs the good luck.” He headed back into the steam-filled pilothouse.
Clark laughed. “See, that’s why I never got married. I don’t need diesel fuel in my oil.”
“Something tells me that’s not our guy,” I said.
“Yeah, I think you’re on to something there.”
We continued north toward the ferry terminal, but no more boats matched the one we’d sent to the bottom. The anchorage north of the terminal was littered with cruisers of every description. There was even a sailing catamaran that looked remarkably like Aegis. I had to get a closer look at that one. We motored through the anchorage at just above idle speed to avoid casting a wake and disturbing the cruisers.
The catamaran was brilliant white and rigged nearly identically to Aegis. I admired her strong lines and stability in the water. She wasn’t moving an inch while some of the other smaller boats in the anchorage bobbed and swayed on their moorings.
Boats are unlike any other material object on Earth. They have a presence about them that is tough to describe, but the cat was a sleeping lioness, resting peacefully until it was time for her to prowl. If that one sailed anything like Aegis, she could prowl with the best of them. Seeing her gave me a small feeling of homesickness. I had a job to do, and I would fulfill my responsibilities, but I thought about Penny and Skipper back in St. Augustine. I missed them both, and the feeling surprised me. Missing Skipper made perfect sense. She’d been like a little sister to me for years, and having her back in my life was one of the greatest experiences I’d ever known. But Penny was a different story. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was missing her. She’d become a recent fixture in my life, but our relationship was unique. We were both strong, independent personalities, but for some reason, we seemed to need each other.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for a wife and a typical life, though there was nothing typical about Penny. She and I had agreed that we’d simply enjoy spending time together without expectations and without actually defining our relationship.
I glanced back into the cockpit of the catamaran, half expecting to see Penny and Skipper sitting on deck, having cocktails, and laughing over stories about me. They were thousands of miles away, but for some reason, they’d popped into my head when I should’ve been laser-focused on the task at hand.
I’d see them soon enough . . . I hoped.
16
He Lied
Clark pulled me from my daydream. “They’re not here,” he said.
I turned to take another look at the Pearl as she continued her approach toward the Bridge of the Americas and the first set of locks in the southern end of the Panama Canal.
“Do you know if she’ll go straight in, or will she have to wait like the others?” I said.
Clark was my senior by seven years, so for some reason, I thought he knew more about how the world worked than I did.
“How should I know?” he said. “You’re the smart one. I’m just here to keep you alive.”
“I thought I was the pretty one and you were the smart one.”
“Yeah, you just keep thinking that, and let me know how that works out for you, college boy.”
Clark had joined the army straight out of high school instead of heading off to college like I did. He liked to remind me that he was killing bad guys while I was playing baseball and chasing co-eds. He had a point, but he’d done his share of co-ed chasing himself, even if he hadn’t spent much time in the classroom.
“I think our timer starts ticking the instant she goes into the first lock,” I said. “The explosives intended for the lock are swimming with the fishes, so like Diablo said, we have to protect that bridge.”
Clark nodded in silent agreement.
We motored out of the anchorage and saw a pair of Panamanian National Maritime Service vessels racing south from beneath the bridge. The boats were larger, more intimidating versions of ours, and had mounted machine guns on their foredecks, and large, glass-enclosed pilothouses. I hoped they weren’t coming to intercept the pair of American operatives masquerading as safety officials on the Bahia de Panama.
The boats ran in a staggered formation with the lead boat ahead of the second one, and the trailing boat offset just outside the wake of the leader. They had to be making fifty knots or more. Running from them would be a futile effort, so I turned bow-on to what would’ve been their wake if they continued southward. I didn’t want to do anything that looked suspicious to the men on those boats.
The officers manning the machine guns on the foredeck were wearing helmets, goggles, and flack vests. As they flew past us, the gunner on the trailing vessel turned to face us. I wasn’t sure I liked the attention, but I was soon relieved when he raised one hand from the gun and waved. I returned the salute and pressed the throttle forward to maneuver across the three-foot wake headed our way.
Clark looked back over his shoulder. “That was close.”
“Yep, it sure was,” I said. “Hang on. We’re going to get rattled around a little.”
Clark pressed his foot against the front of the center console and wedged himself against the tube as the first wake met our bow. I’d brought the boat up to twenty knots before the wake arrived, and we pierced through it with no problems. I decided to have a little fun with the second wake and pushed the throttle to its stop. We quickly accelerated through forty knots and met the second wake with energy to burn. We left the surface of the water and sailed through the air. The boat never faltered, twisted, or misbehaved. She slid back into the water like a knife and retained every knot of speed she’d carried into the jump. I wanted to figure out a way to get the boat back to the States with me. I was starting to fall in love.
With speed still building, I turned us north and headed for the bridge. When I’d wat
ched the crew bagging the bricks of plastic explosive, they’d been near the eastern end of the bridge, so I decided to start our search there. We anchored in twenty feet of water north of the eastern piling.
The Bridge of the Americas is a beautiful bridge spanning the Panama Canal and connecting South America to North America. It has two major pilings situated a quarter mile apart on either side of the canal. The span clearance is just over two hundred feet at high tide. Explosives placed in large quantities and detonated on or near either of the pilings would be enough to, at best, render the bridge unsafe for traffic, or at worst, send the bridge crumbling into the canal. The number of explosives we’d discovered on the workboats was more than enough to do precisely that. The second boat was nowhere to be seen, so the explosives had most likely already been set. It was up to Clark and me to find them, disarm them, and get away. Each step relied on the previous one. First, we had to find them.
To the south, two patrol boats were taking positions on either side of the Pearl. Since her captain was a licensed Panama Canal Pilot, there would be no pilot boat—only the armed escorts. Clearly, she wasn’t going to be waiting in line. I couldn’t see the Miraflores Locks from our position, but I imagined the Pacific gates were open, awaiting the arrival of the Pearl.
We donned our dive gear, including a pair of LARS-V rebreathers, and rolled over the side. The water was murky with visibility of no more than three or four feet. Finding the explosives in good visibility would’ve been a challenge, but finding them in water that looked like mud was going to be almost impossible.
Clark and I met beneath the boat and descended together. When we hit the muddy bottom, we decided to split up and search separately. It would cut the search time in half and double the amount of ground we could cover. Although I couldn’t see him in the murk, he swam away to the southwest, and I started my search.
I was looking and feeling for any disturbance in the seafloor. If a team of divers had planted explosives, there would be some evidence of them disturbing the bottom. The longer I searched, the more frustrating my task became. The visibility was reduced to near zero as I swam to the west into deeper water. Using my torch made it worse. Like shining high-beam headlights into fog or snow, it turned the water in front of me into a wall of reflections off particulates. I stowed my useless torch and kept feeling my way through the mud.
