by David Wood
Bones held Huntley’s gaze. “How about you let me talk to Maddock on the satphone. I’d like to get his input.”
Huntley gave an apologetic shrug. “Maddock’s using disposable burner phones. He has to initiate contact, and I don’t anticipate him doing that. But if he does call in again... Sure, I got no problem with that.”
The response came as no surprise and Bones didn’t bother arguing. “Fair enough. But we’ll hold off running the search grid until you get back.”
The spook’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because a hundred and fifty nautical miles is a lot farther than you think and the ocean is a really, really big place. We’ll anchor a few miles off shore and wait for you to come back with Maddock. Then we’ll figure out our next move.”
Huntley just shrugged.
The revelation buoyed their morale. They pulled in the Argo array and set course for Mar Del Plata. With the search on hold, they were able to adjust the duty roster for more rest periods, which generally improved the mood aboard ship, at least for the first couple days. But as the Besnard’s journey stretched out for the better part of a week, Bones’ discontent returned.
Part of the problem was simple boredom. The research vessel had a small collection of old movies on VHS tape and an even smaller library of paperback novels, and while most of the offerings were surprisingly in English, they only provided a day or two worth of diversion. After that, Bones felt like climbing the walls.
“If I’d wanted to spend all my time trapped on a ship,” he grumbled to Willis, “I’d have stayed in the Fleet.”
Willis could only offer a sympathetic shrug.
The tedium was exacerbated however by the even bigger problem of Huntley’s insistence that they have no contact with the outside world. Maddock did not call again, or if he did, Huntley chose to keep that news to himself. Bones didn’t buy Huntley’s claim that the communications blackout was a matter of OPSEC—operational security. It was far more likely that the spook was just dicking with them.
It was early evening when they came within sight of the Querandi lighthouse, just ten miles south of Villa Gessell. It was the second tallest lighthouse on the Atlantic coast of South America and an easy navigational marker. In the days before GPS, it would have been critically important for mariners. It wasn’t hard to imagine a flotilla of renegade U-boats using it as a reference point.
Huntley pointed out across the water at the lighthouse. The structure itself was indistinct against the background but the light continued to flash out its unique identifying signature—five pulses of white light, repeating every twenty-six seconds.
“Maddock will be waiting for us about six clicks south of the lighthouse,” he explained.
“That’s kind of vague,” complained Professor.
Huntley spread his hands. “What can I say? That’s where he told me to meet him.”
“That doesn’t sound like Maddock,” Bones put in. “He gets his tighty-whiteys in a bunch about little things like precise map coordinates.”
“I’m sure he has his reasons. He’s going to guide us in by flashlight. You just need to put us in the ballpark.”
Bones glanced over at his teammates. Though the silent exchange lasted only a second or two, it spoke volumes.
Huntley had been jerking them around for more than a week, so his uncooperativeness was hardly a surprise. Yet, this time felt different. Huntley wasn’t just inconveniencing them—he was withholding information critical to the success of the mission. And Bones wasn’t wrong about Maddock’s tendency to be a stickler for details.
Was Huntley lying to them about being in contact with Maddock? And if so, what was really waiting for them on that remote stretch of beach, six kilometers south of the lighthouse?
Guess we’re going to find out, Bones thought as he watched Professor help Lia climb into the Besnard’s launch.
The open motor launch afforded no protection from the wind blasting from out of the west. Conversation was all but impossible, so Professor simply pointed the prow toward the lighthouse, headlong into the teeth of the wind, and pushed the throttle as hard as he dared. Even so, it took more than an hour for them to get close enough to see the long white crest of breaking waves silhouetted against the black water. Beyond the breakers, a broad swath of golden sand was visible—not merely a beach, but an extensive dune formation that covered a seventy-mile long section of the Argentine coast. The Querandi lighthouse was situated roughly at the halfway point where the dunes were widest—nearly two miles across.
With the shore finally in sight, Professor turned the launch to the southwest, angling into the wind as they moved parallel along the coast, just beyond the breakers. The swells were gentle, no more than a foot or two, but the wind’s assault intensified. The temperature had dropped significantly, and the windchill sucked away even more warmth. He judged they were only making about four knots against headwind, and so didn’t start watching the shore for Maddock’s signal until nearly another hour had elapsed.
After about fifteen minutes of searching, a flash of white light shone out from just below the dunes. He pointed it out to Huntley, shouting, “There!”
Huntley nodded, and as he returned the signal with his own flashlight, Professor turned the boat toward shore and opened up the throttle. The small beacon swept back and forth across the water a few more times before finally coming to rest on the launch, and thereafter, it shone steadily on them, guiding them the rest of the way in.
It took another ten minutes of battling the wind before the little boat finally scuffed against the sandy bottom of the intertidal zone. Professor immediately jumped over the transom and dragged the craft toward the beach until it would go no further, whereupon he deployed the sand anchor—a long T-shaped metal rod tipped with a broad-bladed auger which could be screwed into the sand deep enough to keep the boat from being carried away with a change of tide. It was probably an unnecessary precaution since the tide was still going out and it would be another hour or two before incoming waves could lift the boat enough to float it again, but Professor, like most SEALs, was a believer in Murphy’s Law and the simpler axiom that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.
Huntley did not offer to help, but instead disembarked and headed toward the signal light without saying a word. Once the sand anchor was set and the boat secured to it, Professor helped Lia into the water, which occasionally reached knee height as waves rolled in, and together they made their way toward the rendezvous. He was both surprised and a little disappointed that Maddock did not rush out to welcome them.
Inexplicably, as they got closer, the beam of the flashlight shifted to shine directly in his face. He blinked and raised a hand to shield his face, but the damage to his nighttime vision was already done. “What the hell, Maddock?”
“Maddock couldn’t make it,” said Huntley.
Something about the spook’s tone sent a chill down Professor’s spine. He put a protective arm in front of Lia, guiding her back, but he knew it was too little, too late. “What’s going on, Huntley?”
“I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.” There was a brief pause, and when Huntley spoke again, his tone was lower, businesslike, and clearly not directed at Professor. “We’ll bring the girl along. We need to find out how much she actually knows.”
Professor squinted, trying to pierce the veil of darkness in order to see who Huntley was addressing.
“And the other one?”
This voice was male and heavily accented. Given their geographical location, he figured it was a safe bet that the man was a local.
“¿Quien es?” he asked in Spanish. Who are you?
“I do not speak Castellan,” the man replied haughtily, as if the very notion was deeply insulting. The additional comments allowed Professor to pin down the accent—a German accent. Professor’s sense of dread multiplied.
“Huntley, what the hell is going on here?” He asked again. He didn’t expect an answe
r, nor did he exactly need one. Whatever the spook was up to, it definitely wasn’t good, and it didn’t bode well for him and Lia. He was only asking to stall Huntley, postpone what he now suspected was inevitable. “Who are you really working for?” he asked, changing tactics a little. “Does the Russian mob pay better than Uncle Sam?”
“Ha,” snorted Huntley from out of the darkness. “Russians. Please. Just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Professor shrugged. “Can you blame me for not wanting to die in ignorance? Because that’s what’s going to happen, right? You’re going to kill me?” He turned his head to the shadowy form of the other man who had spoken earlier. “Or are you going to have your Nazi pal here do the deed.” He waited a beat to gauge the reaction. There was none, or at least, none that he could discern. “Looks like I got that one right. Only you don’t sound old enough to be first-gen Third Reich. I’m thinking third generation. Give me a name—I bet I’ve heard of your grandpa.”
“Ignore him,” said Huntley flatly. “He’s just stalling.”
“You’re right,” Professor went on. “What you should be asking yourself is, why? You really think we didn’t suspect you? Refusing to let us contact our chain of command, splitting us up like this? The way you kept throwing up roadblocks to keep us from moving the search forward, and then, after jerking us around for a week telling us to drop everything and come here? You don’t think we smelled a rat? We knew you were playing for the other side, even if we weren’t sure who that was. We took appropriate measures.”
Huntley stepped forward, into the light. His normally sardonic expression now possessed a hard edge. “Appropriate measures, huh?” He reached into a pocket and took out an oblong object. At first, Professor thought it was going to be a gun, but it turned out to be Huntley’s satellite phone. He flipped it open and started pushing the illuminated buttons. “You should have just taken the deal I offered you.” For a change, his tone sounded genuinely regretful. “You could have just walked away. This didn’t concern you. Too bad this is how it ends.” He pushed one final button and then pointed out toward the dark water. “Take a look.”
Professor turned despite himself. “What am I supposed to be—”
There was a bright flash out near the horizon. It might have been lightning, but Professor knew what it really was.
The Besnard had just blown up.
Huntley thumbed off the sat phone. “No answer. So much for your appropriate measures.”
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and turned to the other man. “Make him disappear.”
“So are you actually a Nazi?” Professor shouted after him. “Or is this just about finding the gold? I guess that flag-waving patriot thing was just schtick.”
Huntley did not answer, but the other man took a step forward into the light. In his right hand, he held a semi-automatic pistol. It was, Professor noted almost absently, a Walther P38 pistol, the service weapon of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. The barrel of the weapon came up until it seemed to be pointing right into his eyes.
Before Professor could even think about his options, hands clamped around his biceps holding him immobile. He started involuntarily, tried to turn and look at his captors, but then the light flashed in his face, blinding him again. An unseen foot struck the back of his knee, folding his legs into a kneeling position on the sand.
A scream tore through the night, reminding Professor that he was not the only one in jeopardy.
“Lia! Run!”
Something heavy crashed into the back of his head. There was another flash of light, then only darkness.
NINETEEN
Maddock caught the flash from out of the corner of his eye. He swung around, turning his gaze out toward the dark horizon.
“You saw it, too?” Leopov asked. “Was that lightning?”
Maddock shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
They both continued to stare out at the ocean but the flash did not come again. Behind them, the Querandi lighthouse continued to pulse its identifying beacon, but both sky and water remained an inky black. About twenty seconds later, a sound that might have been a short thunderclap was audible over the low rush of the incoming surf.
“Not lightning,” Maddock said gravely, and then clarified. “That was an explosion,”
“You mean like from a bomb?”
“No idea. But something just blew up out there.” He now looked around, uneasily. There was no reason to believe that the detonation had anything at all to do with them, but experience had taught him to be wary of dismissing anything as simply a coincidence. He and Leopov had both been on heightened alert since the encounter with the Russian mobsters at the Schliemann museum, now more than a week in the past, and what he had learned earlier in the day had only made him more vigilant.
After repeated futile attempts to call Maxie, Maddock took a chance and called direct to Maxie’s office. That was when he’d learned of the attack on his commanding officer, along with an unnamed female FBI agent. The very public attack was being attributed to gang violence. Both shooting victims had been transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Maxie had suffered only a flesh wound and would make a full recovery, but the prognosis for the FBI agent was less certain—she was still in the Intensive Care Unit.
Maddock had immediately ended the call, destroyed the phone, and then, for good measure, changed hotels. Even though he had played no part whatsoever in bringing Alexandra Vaccaro into the affair, Maddock nonetheless felt responsible for what had happened to her. The timing of the attack could not have been coincidental. Whomever had targeted Alex and Maxie had done so because of their involvement with the search for the final resting place of the Blutfahne, and clearly had been monitoring Maxie or Alex or both of them in hopes of learning more. If Telesh was behind it—a reasonable assumption—then he had demonstrated a surprisingly long reach, which meant there was almost nobody he and Leopov could confide in moving forward.
It also seemed, to Maddock at least, like a clear message that Villa Gessell was worth checking out.
Unburdened by Petrov, they moved swiftly through Germany and into France where they holed up for a couple days in order to regroup and make arrangements for the next phase of their journey. From there, they traveled separately and in disguise, leapfrogging across South America to Buenos Aires. They did not take the same flights or stay in the same hotels, but maintained contact with mobile phones which they switched out every time they entered a new country.
On the morning of their second day in Buenos Aires, about a week after escaping the Russians in Ankershagen, Maddock visited an Internet Café and bought an hour of computer time. He wasn’t quite sure how to begin looking for the Blood Flag, but he knew better than to simply blunder into Villa Gessell. He needed more information, and since he could no longer turn to Maxie or anyone else available through official channels, there was only one person he felt he could trust with the enquiry.
It took him a while to figure out how to access an Internet Relay Chat client. He would have definitely preferred a phone call or better yet, a face to face meeting, but the person he hoped would be at the other end of the text connection did his best work in front of a computer terminal. As soon as the chat client was open, a message appeared.
Maddock. I heard about your folks. I’m so sorry.
Maddock winced. With all that had been going on, he’d lost track of the mental box where he had compartmentalized his grief. Though well-intentioned, such condolences tore open a wound that, while nowhere near healed, had at least begun to scab over.
Thanks, Jimmy, he typed.
Jimmy was Jimmy Letson, an investigative journalist employed by the Washington Post and secretly one of the most talented computer hackers in the game. He also happened to be a former SEAL candidate—one of the more than two-thirds who “rang the bell,” voluntarily quitting the ordeal known as Hell Week. Washing out had not washed Jimmy out of Maddock’s life however. They had remained friends
through the years, and Maddock had often called upon him for help with particularly sticky research questions.
After what happened to Cmdr Maxwell, I was hoping you’d reach out to me.
You heard about that? Maddock’s understanding was that the attack was officially being passed off as gang violence.
A shootout in DC, involving a senior naval officer, practically on the doorstep of the Hoover Building? You think I wouldn’t know about that?
Maddock nodded to himself. Leave it to Jimmy to see through the BS.
I would have called... Or whatever this is... Sooner, but I thought I’d give your liver a break.
Jimmy usually took payment for research inquiries in cases of bourbon whiskey.
This one’s on the house. Jimmy typed. Call it me doing my patriotic duty.
Maddock raised an eyebrow at this. Like many journalists, Jimmy was a notorious cynic, particularly in matters involving politics and the military. Before he could think of a reply, Jimmy sent another message that clarified this seeming inconsistency.
I don’t buy the official story about gang violence. This was wetwork.
Wetwork—politically sanctioned assassination.
Maddock was trying to think of how to frame his affirmative reply when another message appeared in the chat box.
This was a contract job, and I’m 99.99% certain the CIA picked up the tab.
Maddock jolted in his chair as if he’d received an electric shock. And yet, even as part of his brain went into reflexive denial, another part saw the pattern all too clearly.
Telesh had been following Petrov in hopes that they would lead him to Lia—he didn’t know that she was actually with Bones, nor could he have known that they had contacted Alex Vaccaro.