by Roland Smith
Marty, Luther, and Grace nodded, but Wolfe doubted their sincerity. He knew he would have to keep a close eye on them.
“Do you have a camera in here?” Marty asked.
“Yes, but it isn’t on.”
“So, you control them?” Luther asked.
Wolfe took his Gizmo out. “I’m the only one who has the on/off code.” He punched the code into the Gizmo. A video of them appeared on the small screen, and Luther waved at the camera. Wolfe reentered the code and the screen went blank.
“Al doesn’t have the code?” Marty asked.
“No,” Wolfe answered. “I wouldn’t give it to him.”
Marty had another question that he’d been dying to ask. “I thought you were broke,” he said. “And that this expedition was a way of making money so you could continue looking for my parents and search for cryptids. Having Al and his crew must be costing a fortune.”
“We’re not exactly broke,” Wolfe said. “But we do have a cash flow problem. Our money is tied up in research and development. Al and his security people are sort of on loan from the federal government. We don’t have money, but we are rich in technology. Ted is waiting for the patents on his inventions before he decides who to sell the technology to. He also wants to make sure they’ve been field-tested. That’s another reason for this trip.
“The government doesn’t want anyone else to get ahold of this technology, like the miniature cameras, the bot-fly, and some other things. They offered to have the Secret Service or the Department of Defense provide security. We compromised and hired Al Ikes. Ted and I have known him for …” He paused. “Well, for a long time. The government is footing the bill. This way, Al works for us and we don’t have the government breathing down our necks.”
“And you trust Al?” Luther asked.
“I’ve known him for years,” Wolfe answered. “He’s very good at what he does. And we are going to need him to help us deal with the Noah Blackwood problem.”
“What do you mean?” Grace asked.
Wolfe shrugged. “I don’t know what I mean. All I know is that once we figure out what Blackwood is up to, we’re going to have to get him to back off. Al is good at that sort of thing.”
“Can anyone use their Gizmo to access the cameras?” Luther asked.
“Not without the code,” Wolfe answered. “And no, I’m not going to give Marty the camera code for his Gizmo.”
“Of course not,” Luther said. “I was just asking how it worked.”
Marty glanced at Luther. He knew his friend well enough to know that he was not just asking how it worked. Luther was an expert computer hacker.
“What about Theo?” Marty asked, changing the subject.
“What about him?” Wolfe asked.
Marty pointed at the nearly inedible food congealing on their plates. “He can’t cook, for one thing.”
“I noticed,” Wolfe said. “Theo Sonborn is a little rough around the edges, but he’s a good guy. He’s been on Cryptos since the very beginning. Bertha will join us as soon as she and Phil get things squared away on the island. Just stay clear of the galley until she gets here.” Wolfe looked at his watch. “I better get up to the bridge.”
“Thank you for the party,” Grace said. “And the manuscript. I’ll cherish it … always.”
Wolfe smiled as he stood up from the table. “It wasn’t exactly the birthday party I had in mind, but I’m glad you like the manuscript. Oh — and I have another present for you, but it got delayed in shipment. I hope it arrives before we get to New Zealand.” He looked at Marty. “And your cake was delicious.” He then looked at Luther and said, “Your graphic novel was excellent. I just hope we don’t give you any more material for a second volume during this expedition.”
“It’s not likely that Noah Blackwood is going to be able to snatch Grace from the open sea,” Luther said.
“Which is exactly the reason for our abrupt departure,” Wolfe said. “But it would be a mistake to underestimate him. Noah Blackwood has a very long reach.”
“Tentacles,” Grace said.
“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. “But the giant squid’s tentacles would feel like velvet gloves compared to Noah’s. We need to stay out of his grasp.” He turned and walked out of the Captain’s Mess.
* * *
One of Noah Blackwood’s “tentacles” was lying on a sleeping bag inside a shipping container deep in the cargo hold of the Coelacanth. He had emptied the container’s contents and redistributed them into other containers, then rigged the door to close and lock from the inside in the unlikely event someone came down into the hold before they reached New Zealand. The container was a perfect hiding place. With its rank smell and noisy engines, the hold was far from comfortable, but it was better than some of the places Butch McCall had slept in during his rough life.
Since sneaking aboard he had made two trips up top, once to get a couple of cases of canned pork and beans, and again to retrieve a stolen Gizmo from one of Noah Blackwood’s spies. He needed the Gizmo to keep track of Wolfe and the kids — the only people on board who might recognize him on sight. Although he doubted that even they would recognize him now. He had lost at least fifty pounds making his way back to civilization from the depths of the Congo. Normally, he would have gained the weight back quickly, but Noah had told him, “Butch, you’re a shadow of your former self, and I need you to stay that way.”
When Butch emerged from Noah’s bathroom without his mustache, Noah had exclaimed, “You have teeth!” Then Noah introduced Butch to his personal makeup artist, who finished the job with a brown wig and a pair of glasses.
When Butch looked in the mirror, he barely recognized the man staring back at him.
“There’s nothing we can do about the tattoos and muscles on such short notice,” the makeup artist had said, pointing at Butch’s huge biceps. “They’re a dead giveaway. You’ll have to wear long baggy sleeves at all times.”
Butch had not seen any surveillance cameras when he was up top, but before he’d left the Ark, Noah had pulled up Albert Ikes’s dossier on his computer. Noah’s database on people was bigger than the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s — and he was right: Albert Ikes was ex-CIA.
“Twenty-year veteran,” Noah said. “Security and surveillance specialist. You’ll have to be careful. He’ll have cameras all over the ship, but he can’t watch everyone 24/7. I got another call during your makeover. Albert Ikes only brought two men with him on the Coelacanth. He left the others to guard Cryptos. You know how to play it.”
Butch knew exactly how to play it. During the day he would move around when everyone else was moving around. He would hide in the crowd. His new look gave him a scholarly appearance. He had stolen a lab coat and clipboard and would play the role of a research scientist. It would be easy to blend in with so many new people on board. At night he would return to the hold and sleep in his container.
Lying in the container brought back long-forgotten memories to the newly formed Butch McCall. It reminded him of the doghouse he had rigged for his pit bull, Dirk, when he was a kid. It was made out of a metal septic tank. (Dirk had eaten the two wooden doghouses Butch had built before coming up with the tank idea.)
It was Dirk who had first taught Butch how to hunt. He would climb out his bedroom window and he and Dirk would stalk neighborhood cats. The cats weren’t as easy to kill as one might think, but they were no match for Dirk — and eventually Butch, who taught himself to shoot a cat in the eye with his BB rifle from fifty feet away.
When Butch’s parents got drunk and fought, which was often, he would sometimes sleep with Dirk in the septic tank in the backyard to get away from the violence. Dirk had terrible breath and he snored, but it was preferable to being inside the house, where worse things awaited him when his parents were at each other.
After a couple of years of successful hunts, animal control got wind of Dirk’s taste for domestic cats and euthanized him. A week later, Butch, at the age of twelve, left home
and joined the circus, which eventually led him to Noah Blackwood.
Butch turned on the Gizmo. A schematic of the entire ship appeared on the screen, along with an array of tiny colored dots representing the locations of everyone on board. The only areas of the ship not specifically identified were the laboratories, which were instead designated by simple numbers, one through thirteen. Butch was certain that the dinosaur eggs, or perhaps by now the hatchlings, were hidden behind one of these doors. The lab doors could only be opened with an electronic key card and each door had a different card. He would first have to find out which lab held the eggs, then get ahold of a card to get inside — no easy task — but he had plenty of time to figure it out. There was nothing he could do with the eggs until he reached Kaikoura Canyon. Noah Blackwood’s ships, Endangered One and Endangered Too, were faster and would arrive several days ahead of the Coelacanth. As soon as the Coelacanth got to the canyon, or New Zealand — whichever came first — Butch would steal the eggs, kidnap Grace, and stash them all aboard the Endangered One or Too with Noah Blackwood.
His other mission was to make certain that Travis Wolfe and NZA failed to bring in a live giant squid. If they succeeded, he had to figure out a way to get the squid away from them. If that didn’t work, he was to kill the squid. Not only would this put NZA out of business, it would also ensure Travis Wolfe’s financial ruin. The thought brought a smile to Butch’s clean-shaven face.
He was amazed at the Gizmo’s capabilities, and this new version was even better than the one he had taken from Marty in the Congo. He could still feel the bump on his head where Marty had hit him with a log just before taking his Gizmo back, and the memory wiped the smile from his face. Noah had told him he was not to harm Grace in any way, but he had said nothing about Marty O’Hara.
Butch’s smile returned with the thought that tragic accidents at sea were common.
He clicked on Marty’s name and a moving gray dot appeared on the screen, sandwiched by Grace’s blue dot and Luther’s orange dot. His smile broadened as he imagined the look of shock on their faces if he were to step out in front of them and pull off his wig. He wouldn’t do that, of course. Butch was a lot of things, but he was not impulsive.
Butch McCall had the patience of a spider waiting for a fly.
* * *
Marty decided that pea green and fluorescent orange were not a good color combination, especially on the face and head of his friend Luther, who had been puking his guts out since their third night aboard the Coelacanth. They had encountered gale-force winds and sickeningly deep swells for over twelve hours, and the ship’s physician, Dr. Jones, said that Luther’s was the worst case of seasickness he had seen in thirty years. After two days and two nights of retching in their cabin, Luther had been moved to the infirmary so Dr. Jones could keep a closer eye on him and administer IV fluids to prevent dehydration. Wolfe offered to divert the ship to the nearest port and fly Luther back to Omega Prep, or home, but Luther stubbornly refused, insisting he would beat this thing and get his sea legs. Dr. Jones sided with Luther, but Marty suspected that the physician’s motivation was more personal than professional. Luther was the only patient in the infirmary. His presence gave Dr. Jones someone to play chess with, but even as sick as Luther was, Dr. Jones had yet to win a single match.
Marty was happy to have the retching Luther out of their cabin, but his friend’s absence meant he had to sleep there alone, haunted by thoughts of ghouls and ghosts. The rumors about the Coelacanth’s history of bad luck had been racing through the converted freighter like a virus, and they did nothing to ease Marty’s mind. Crew members complained of seeing apparitions at night, personal items being moved or missing altogether, strange knockings, screams, and whisperings. Luckily Marty had not experienced any of these strange occurrences — yet.
And then there were the accidents — nothing too serious, but over the past couple of days there had been a half dozen of them. A small fire in the galley, and another in a lab. One of the men in the engine room had slipped off a companionway (the rungs had been greased, and he’d broken his wrist). Bo had escaped from her cage the day before and it had taken them three hours to get her back inside. (While she was loose they bolted the infirmary from the inside so she couldn’t get her hands on Luther’s hair.) But the worst was the loss of the helicopter. The straps had come undone during a storm and it had tumbled into the ocean. These incidents had contributed to the “bad luck” rumors. By their ninth day at sea, it had gotten so bad that Wolfe called the crew into the mess hall for an early morning meeting.
Marty sat at a table in the back with a plate of semi-cooked scrambled eggs and a tray of yogurt and fruit for Grace, who had elected to skip the meeting and stay in her cabin with the illuminated manuscript.
“This ship is not haunted,” Wolfe began, a little testily. “Mass hysteria is more like it. And don’t be ashamed. We are all vulnerable to it. We’ve had rough seas, which has caused some of you discomfort. Combine that with lack of sleep and the ship’s tragic history, and we’re bound to have accidents.”
“What tragic history?” someone called out from the crowd.
Right, Marty thought. Like anyone in the room doesn’t know what happened to the previous crew. It was all everyone had been talking about since they left Cryptos.
“It happened ten years ago,” Wolfe began patiently. “Prior to eWolfe’s purchasing the ship, it was hijacked by pirates in the South China Sea. As you know, this is not that uncommon these days. The crew resisted. They were all killed and presumably tossed overboard. The freight was off-loaded and the ship was set adrift. The culprits were apprehended a year later and prosecuted. So, you see, the tragedy was caused by criminals — not ghosts.”
Marty didn’t blame him, but Wolfe had neglected to mention that the captain had been found in his bed minus his body, and that Wolfe had managed to get the ship on the cheap because there were no other bidders for the haunted vessel.
“And if you’re worried about the same fate befalling us, get it out of your minds,” Wolfe continued. “First, this is a research ship. We are not carrying freight of any value. Second, as you have probably noticed, we have a security force on board. These men are highly trained professionals. We have a contingency plan in place in the unlikely event that we are attacked.” He gave them a small smile. “In fact, I feel sorry for any pirate stupid enough to board the Coelacanth.”
No one laughed.
Again, Wolfe had left out a couple of important details, such as the two dinosaur eggs they were incubating in one of the labs, which were worth more than the cargo aboard a hundred ships. And that his daughter, Grace, was the granddaughter of Noah Blackwood, who would stop at nothing and spare no expense to get his hands on her and the eggs. And that the security force consisted of three people, one of whom wore three-piece suits and wing tips.
Wolfe dropped his smile. “Sometime this afternoon, we will be rendezvousing with a sailboat to take on supplies and four additional passengers.”
Marty knew two of the passengers — Bertha and Phil Bishop — but he didn’t know who the third and fourth were. He glanced over at Theo Sonborn, who was standing about twenty feet away. Theo showed no reaction.
“When the sailboat arrives, four of you are free to board her and leave the expedition,” Wolfe continued. “We will pay you for the time you’ve spent and buy you a plane ticket back to wherever you came from. If there are more than four of you wanting to get off, we’ll draw lots. Those who remain here on the Coelacanth will stop spreading rumors about ghosts, or bad-luck ships, or any other nonsense that might jeopardize this expedition. If I or Al hear another word about these preposterous things, I will put the perpetrator off this ship without pay or a plane ticket home. That’s my final word on this. The choice is entirely yours.”
Wolfe walked out of the mess hall.
Marty stayed behind, picking at the plate of gooey scrambled eggs, trying to gauge the reaction of the crew. About half of them didn
’t seem to know what Wolfe was talking about. The majority of these were researchers and scientific staff who were apparently oblivious to all the talk of ghosts and hauntings. The other half, mostly deckhands and galley staff, appeared to know exactly what Wolfe was talking about and left the mess hall talking to each other in quiet but urgent voices.
Wolfe had left out one last detail: The two fires, the greased companionway, and the lost chopper were not accidents. Marty had gotten quite good with the dragonspy over the past few days. Whenever he saw Wolfe and Al together on his Gizmo, he would join them with his little friend to eavesdrop.
“Arson and sabotage,” Al had told Wolfe the night before. “There’s no doubt about it. We have one or more people on board determined to scuttle this expedition. Those chopper straps were loosened. I checked them myself a couple of hours before the gale. These people are pros. And I have no idea who they are. They’ve even managed to find and take out several of the miniature cameras. We replaced some of them, but we no longer have full coverage. Ted didn’t give us enough spares.”
“Ted doesn’t have any spares,” Wolfe said. “We used the whole inventory to set up the surveillance on the ship.”
“One of the reasons I’m here is to make sure that the cameras and technology you and Ted have developed don’t get off the ship and into unauthorized hands,” Al said. “Noah Blackwood may not be the only person with spies on board. You might have corporate espionage operatives or foreign agents at work here. Ted’s inventions have military and intelligence agency uses. I wish I’d had those cameras when I was in the trade. They would have been very useful.”
“Are you saying cameras have been taken?” Wolfe asked.