Clear and Present Danger

by Tom Clancy

  “You’re coming in too close,” he observed. “Bear off to port, Mister.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” O’Neil went back into the wheelhouse.

  Idiots, Wegener thought. You ought to have heard us by now. Well, they had a way to make sure of that. He poked his head into the wheelhouse: “Wake ’em up!”

  Halfway up Panache’s mast was a siren of the sort used on police cars and ambulances, but quite a bit larger. A moment later its whooping sound nearly made the captain jump. It did have the expected effect. Before Wegener had counted to three a head appeared out of the yacht’s wheelhouse. It wasn’t the owner. The yacht began a hard right turn.

  “You jackass!” the captain growled. “Close up tight!” he ordered next.

  The cutter turned to the right, as well. The yacht settled a bit at the stern as more power was applied, but the Rhodes didn’t have a prayer of outrunning Panache. In another two minutes the cutter was abeam of the yacht, which was still trying to turn. They were too close to use the Bofors. Wegener ordered the machine gun to fire across the Empire Builder’s bow.

  The .50-caliber crackled and thundered for a five-round burst. Even if they hadn’t seen the splashes, the noise was unmistakable. Wegener went inside to get the microphone for his ship’s loud-hailer.

  “This is the United States Coast Guard. Heave to immediately and prepare to be boarded!”

  You could almost see the indecision. The yacht came back left, but the speed didn’t change for a minute or two. Next a man appeared at the stern and ran up a flag—the Panamanian flag, Wegener saw with amusement. Next the radio would say that he didn’t have authority to board. His amusement stopped short of that point.

  “Empire Builder, this is the U.S. Coast Guard. You are a U.S.-flag ship, and we are going to board you. Heave to—now!”

  And she did. The yacht’s stern rose as engine power dropped off. The cutter had to back down hard to avoid surging past the Rhodes. Wegener went back outside and waved at the boat crew. When he had their attention, he mimicked pulling back the slide on an automatic pistol. That was his way of telling the crew to be careful. Riley patted his holster twice to let the captain know that the boat crew wasn’t stupid. The Zodiac was launched. The next call on the loud-hailer told the yacht’s crew to get into the open. Two people came out. Again, neither looked like the owner. The cutter’s machine gun was trained on them as steadily as the rolling allowed. This was the tense part. The only way Panache could protect the boat crew was to fire first, but that was something they couldn’t do. The Coast Guard hadn’t lost anyone that way yet, but it was only a matter of time, and waiting for it only made it worse.

  Wegener kept his glasses fixed on the two men while the Zodiac motored across. A lieutenant did the same next to the machine gun. Though no obvious weapons were visible, a pistol wasn’t that hard to hide under a loose shirt. Someone would have to be crazy to fight it out under these conditions, but the captain knew that the world was full of crazy people—he’d spent thirty years rescuing them. Now he arrested them, the ones whose craziness was more malignant than simple stupidity.

  O’Neil came to his side again. Panache was dead in the water, with her engines turning at idle, and with the seas now on the beam she took on a heavier but slower roll. Wegener looked aft to the machine gun again. The sailor had it aimed in about the right direction, but his thumbs were well off the firing switch, just the way they were supposed to be. He could hear the five empty cases rolling around on the deck. Wegener frowned for a moment. The empties were a safety hazard. He’d have someone rig a bag to catch them. The kid on the gun might stumble on one and shoot by mistake....

  He turned back. The Zodiac was at the yacht’s stern. Good. They were going aboard there. He watched Lieutenant Wilcox go aboard first, then wait for the rest. The coxswain pulled back when the last was aboard, then scooted forward to cover their advance. Wilcox went forward on the portside, with Obrecki backing him up, the shotgun pointed safely at the sky. Riley went inside with his backup. The lieutenant got to the two men in under a minute. It was odd to see them talking, but not to hear what they were saying....

  Somebody said something. Wilcox’s head turned quickly one way, then back the other. Obrecki stepped to the side and brought the shotgun down. Both men went down on their faces, dropping from view.

  “Looks like a bust, sir,” Ensign O’Neil noted. Wegener took one step into the wheelhouse.

  “Radio!” A crewman tossed him a Motorola portable. Wegener listened but didn’t make a call. Whatever his people had just found, he didn’t want to distract them. Obrecki stayed with the two men while Wilcox went inside the yacht. Riley had sure as hell found something. The shotgun was definitely aimed at them, and the tension in the boy’s arms radiated across the water to the cutter. The captain turned to the machine-gunner, whose weapon was still aimed at the yacht.

  “Safe that gun!”

  “Aye!” the sailor answered at once, and dropped his hands to point it at the sky. The officer next to him winced with embarrassment. Another lesson learned. A few words would accompany it in an hour or two. This had been a mistake with a gun.

  Wilcox reappeared a moment later, with Chief Riley behind him. The bosun handed over two pairs of handcuffs to the officer, who bent down to work them. They had to be the only two aboard; Riley holstered his pistol a moment later, and Obrecki’s shotgun went up to the sky again. Wegener thought he saw the youngster reset the safety. The farm boy knew his guns, all right, had learned to shoot the same way his skipper had. Why had he taken the safety off ... ? The radio crackled just as Wegener’s mind asked the question.

  “Captain, this is Wilcox.” The lieutenant stood to speak, and both men faced each other, a hundred yards apart.

  “I’m here.”

  “It’s a bad one, sir ... sir, there’s blood all over the place. One of ’em was scrubbing the salon down, but—it’s a real mess here, sir.”

  “Just the two of them?”

  “Affirmative. Only two people aboard. We’ve cuffed ’em both.”

  “Check again,” Wegener ordered. Wilcox read the captain’s mind: he stayed with the prisoners and let Chief Riley do the search. The bosun appeared three minutes later, shaking his head. His face looked pale through the binoculars, Wegener saw. What would make Bob Riley go pale?

  “Just these two, sir. No ID on them. I don’t think we want to do much of a search, I think—”

  “Correct. I’ll send you another man and leave you Obrecki. Can you get the yacht to port?”

  “Sure, Captain. We got plenty of fuel.”

  “There’s going to be a little blow tonight,” Wegener warned.

  “I checked the weather this morning. No sweat, sir.”

  “Okay, let me call this one in and get things organized. Stand by.”

  “Roger that. Sir, I recommend that you send the TV camera across for a permanent record to back up the stills.”

  “Okay, it’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  It took half an hour for the Coast Guard base to get the FBI and DEA agreed on things. While they waited for word, the Zodiac took another crewman over with a portable TV camera and tape recorder. One of the boarding party shot off sixty frames with a Polaroid camera, while the TV recorded everything on half-inch tape. The Coast Guardsmen restarted Empire Builder’s engines and headed northwest for Mobile, with the cutter holding station on her portside. It was finally decided that Wilcox and Obrecki could take the yacht back to Mobile, and that a helicopter would pick up the two “yachtsmen” that afternoon—weather permitting. It was a long way to the helicopter base. Panache was supposed to have her own helicopter, but the Coast Guard didn’t have the funding to buy enough. A third seaman was landed on the yacht, and it was time to bring the prisoners back to Panache.

  Chief Riley took the prisoners aft. Wegener watched the bosun fairly throw them into the Zodiac. Five minutes later it was hoisted aboard. The yacht headed northwest, and the cutter turned away to c
ontinue her patrol. The first man from the boarding party to reach the bridge was the seaman who’d worked the Polaroid. He handed over half a dozen of the color frames.

  “The chief collected some stuff for you to look at, Cap’n. It’s worse’n it looks here. Wait till you see the TV tape. It’s already set up for copying.”

  Wegener handed the photos back. “Okay—it all goes into the evidence locker. You join up with the others. Have Myers set up a new tape in the VCR, and I want you all to tell the camera what you saw. You know how it goes. Let’s make sure we get it all right.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Riley appeared a minute later. Robert Timothy Riley was a man in the traditional pattern of the chief boatswain’s mate. Six-two and over two hundred pounds, he had the hairy arms of a gorilla, the gut of a man who knew his way around a beer can, and the rumbling voice to outscream a winter gale. His oversized right hand grasped a couple of plastic food bags. His face showed that anger was now replacing the shock.

  “It’s a fuckin’ slaughterhouse, sir. Like somebody exploded a couple cans of brown paint—‘cept it ain’t paint. Jesus.” One bag came up. “The little one was cleaning up when we pulled ’em over. There’s a trash can in the saloon with maybe a half dozen cartridge cases. I pulled these two off the rug—just like they taught us, Cap’n. Picked ‘em up with my ball-point and shuffled ’em into the baggie. Two guns I left aboard. I bagged them, too. That ain’t the worst of it.”

  The next baggie contained a small, framed photograph. It had to be the yacht’s owner and his family. The baggie after that contained a ...

  “Found it under a table. Rape, too. She must’ve been havin’ her period, but they didn’t let that stop ‘em. Maybe just the wife. Maybe the little girl, too. In the galley there’s some butcher knives, all bloodied up. I figure they carved the bodies up and tossed ’em over the side. These four people are shark-shit now.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Twenty or so keys of white powder stowed in the crew’s quarters. Some marijuana, too, but that just looks like a personal stash.” Riley shrugged. “I didn’t even bother using the test kit, sir. Don’t matter. This is straight piracy-and-murder. I saw one bullet hole in the deck, a through-and-through. Red, I ain’t seen nothing like this in my whole life. Like something in a movie, but worse.” He let out a long breath. “You have to have been there, sir.”

  “What do we know about the prisoners?”

  “Nothing. They ain’t done nothing more’n grunt, leastways not when I was around. No ID on them, and I didn’t want to go messing around things looking for passports an’ stuff. Figured I’d leave that for the real cops. The wheelhouse is clean. So’s one of the heads. Mr. Wilcox won’t have much trouble taking her back, and I heard him tell Obrecki and Brown not to touch anything. Plenty of fuel aboard, he can run her at full speed. He’ll have her in Mobile ’fore midnight if the weather holds off. Nice boat.” Another shrug.

  “Bring ’em up here,” Wegener said after a moment.

  “Aye aye.” Riley went aft.

  Wegener filled his pipe, then had to remember where he’d left his matches. The world had changed while he’d been off doing other things, and Wegener didn’t like it. It was dangerous enough out here. Wind and wave were as deadly an enemy as man needed. The sea was always waiting for her chance. It didn’t matter how good you thought you were; you only had to forget once, just once, that you could never trust her. Wegener was a man who never forgot, and devoted his life to protecting those who had. Remembering that one hazard, and protecting those who forgot, had given him a full and satisfying life. He liked being the guardian angel in the snow-white boat. You were never lost if Red Wegener was around. You always had a chance, a good chance, that he could reach into the wet, stormy grave and pull you out with his bare hands ... but sharks were feasting on four people now. Wegener loved the sea for all her moods, but sharks were something to loathe, and the thought that they were now eating people that he might have saved ... four people who’d forgotten that not all sharks live in the sea, Wegener told himself. That’s what had changed. Piracy. He shook his head. That’s what you called it on the water. Piracy. Something that Errol Flynn had made movies about in Wegener’s boyhood. Something that had ended two centuries earlier. Piracy and murder, the part that the movies had usually left out. Piracy and murder and rape, each of them a capital offense in the old days....

  “Stand up straight!” Riley snarled. He had both by the arm. Both were still cuffed, and Riley’s hands kept them from straying. Chief Oreza had come along to keep an eye on things.

  Both were in their mid-twenties, both were thin. One was tall, about six feet, and arrogant, which struck the captain as odd. He had to know the trouble he was in, didn’t he? His dark eyes burned at Wegener, who regarded the younger man dispassionately from behind his pipe. There was something odd about his eyes, but Wegener didn’t know what it was.

  “What’s your name?” the captain asked. There was no reply. “You have to tell me your name,” Wegener pointed out quietly.

  Then something very unusual happened. The tall one spat on Wegener’s shirt. There was a strangely long fragment of time in which the captain refused to believe what had happened, his face not even showing surprise. Riley was the first to react to the blasphemy.

  “You son of a bitch!” The bosun lifted the prisoner up like a rag doll, spinning him in the air and smashing him down on the bridge rail. The young man landed on his belt, and for a second it seemed that he’d break in half. The air whooshed out of his mouth, and his legs kicked, trying to find the deck before he dropped into the water.

  “Christ, Bob!” Wegener managed to say as Riley picked him back up. The bosun spun him around, his left hand clamped on the man’s throat as he lifted him clear of the deck with one arm. “Put him down, Riley!”

  If nothing else, Riley had broken through the arrogance. For a moment there was genuine fear in those eyes as the prisoner fought for breath. Oreza had the other one on the deck already. Riley dropped his man beside him. The pirate—Wegener was already thinking of him in those terms—pitched forward until his forehead touched the deck. He gagged and struggled for breath while Chief Riley, just as pale, rediscovered his self-control.

  “Sorry, Captain. Guess I just lost it for a second.” The bosun made it clear that he was apologizing only for embarrassing his commanding officer.

  “Brig,” Wegener said. Riley led both aft.

  “Damn.” Oreza observed quietly. The quartermaster fished out his handkerchief and wiped his captain’s shirt. “Jesus, Red, what’s the world comin’ to?”

  “I don’t know, Portagee. I think we’re both too old to answer that one.” Wegener finally found his matches and managed to light his pipe. He stared out at the sea for several seconds before finding the right words. “When I joined up I got broke in by an old chief who told stories about Prohibition. Nothing nasty like this—he made it all sound like a great big game.”

  “Maybe people were more civilized back then,” Oreza thought.

  “More likely you couldn’t carry a million bucks’ worth of booze on a motorboat. Didn’t you ever watch ‘The Untouchables’? The gang wars they had back then were as nasty as the ones we read about now. Maybe worse. Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t join up to be a cop, Chief.”

  “Me neither, Cap’n.” Oreza grunted. “We went an’ got old, and the world went an’ changed on us. One thing I wish didn’t change, though.”

  “What’s that, Portagee?”

  The master chief quartermaster turned to look at his commanding officer. “Something I picked up at New London a few years back. I used to sit in on some classes when I had nothing better to do. In the old days when they caught a couple of pirates, they had the option of doing a court-martial on the spot and settlin’ things right then an’ there—and you know something? It worked.” Oreza grunted again. “I s’pose that’s why they stopped doin’ it that way.”

  “Give ‘em a fair tr
ial—then hang ’em?”

  “Hell, why not, sir?”

  “That’s not the way we do things anymore. We’re civilized now.”

  “Yeah, civilized.” Oreza opened the door to the wheelhouse. “I can tell. I seen the pictures.”

  Wegener smiled, then wondered why. His pipe had gone out. He wondered why he didn’t just quit entirely as he fished for his matches again, but the pipe was part of the image. The old man of the sea. He’d gotten old, all right, Wegener thought. A puff of wind caught the match as he tried to toss it, dropping it on the deck. How did you ever forget to check the wind? he asked himself as he bent down to retrieve it.

  There was a pack of cigarettes there, halfway out the scupper. Wegener was a fanatic on ship-cleanliness and was ready to snarl at whoever had tossed the empty pack when he realized that it hadn’t come from one of his crewmen. The name on the pack was “Calvert,” and that, he remembered vaguely, was a Latin American brand-name from a U.S. tobacco company. It was a hard pack, with a flip-top, and out of simple curiosity he opened it.

  They weren’t cigarettes. At least, they weren’t tobacco cigarettes. Wegener fished one out. They weren’t hand-rolled, but neither were they as neatly manufactured as something from a real American cancer factory. The captain smiled in spite of himself. Some clever entrepreneur had come up with a cute way of disguising—joints, wasn’t it?—as real cigarettes. Or maybe it was just more convenient to carry them this way. It must have pitched out of his shirt when Riley flipped him around, Wegener realized belatedly. He closed the pack and pocketed it. He’d turn it over to the evidence locker when he got a chance. Oreza returned.

  “Weather update. That squall line’ll be here no later’n twenty-one hundred. The squalls are upgraded some. We can expect gusts up to forty knots. Gonna be a fair blow, sir.”

  “Any problem for Wilcox and the yacht?” There was still time to recall him.