Covenant Of The Flame

by David Morrell

  'What spot? What are you-?'

  'Where the bookcase was,' Craig said. 'Where the statue stood on the bookcase. The books were destroyed, as you'd expect. So was the bookcase. Just ashes. But the statue was made of marble, and marble doesn't burn. It might crack from heat, but. I kept looking. The statue couldn't have fallen through the concrete floor, and when it toppled from the bookcase, it couldn't have rolled very far. It's gone, Tess. The statue's gone! Whoever torched the apartment must have taken it when they left. I don't know what the hell's happening, but I want you to promise me. Swear it. Be careful!'

  SEVEN

  East of Maine. The North Atlantic.

  The United States Coast Guard cutter Sea Wolf, out of Portland, continued its speedy mission through a moderately choppy sea.

  Clouds obscured the moon and stars, intensifying the night, although even in daylight the Sea Wolfs destination was still too far away to have allowed for a visual identification. On the cutter's bridge, Captain Peter O'Malley could see his objective as a blip on the radar, however, and its implications made him frown.

  'Distance: fourteen thousand yards,' a crewman said. 'Looks like air reconnaissance was right, Captain. Its course is erratic. Minimal speed.'

  O'Malley nodded. Six hours earlier, a group of Air Force F-15 fighter pilots practising night maneuvers in a military corridor off the New England coast had noticed the blip on their radar screens. Its unusual behavior had prompted the flight group's leader to radio his commander at Loring Air Force Base near Limestone, Maine, and request permission to contact the vessel. Permission was granted, but all attempts to communicate with the vessel had failed.

  'Identify yourself.'

  No response.

  'Do you need assistance?'

  No response.

  After repeated efforts, the group's leader had requested further permission to change course and descend for a visual inspection. Again, permission was granted. After all, the vessel's radio silence combined with its puzzling, slow, random course and its proximity to United States waters justified concern. At a cautious distance, using intense-magnification night-vision apparatus, the flight group's leader determined that the vessel was a massive fishing trawler. English lettering on the stern indicated that the trawler's name was the Bronze Bell, its home port Pusan, South Korea. The English lettering wasn't unusual - many Oriental commercial ships used English identification symbols when operating in Western waters.

  What was unusual, indeed disturbing, however, was that in addition to its erratic sluggish approach toward US waters, the trawler displayed no lights, not even the mandatory signal lights that maritime law required during night voyages to prevent converging vessels from failing to see each other and colliding.

  The troubled commander at Loring Air Force Base insisted on confirmation. The equally troubled flight group leader repeated that the trawler was totally - 'I mean, absolutely'-dark. The situation became delicate, the potential for an international incident disturbing. A misjudgment could destroy careers.

  If the approaching foreign vessel had been military in nature, the United States military would have gone on alert. But since the vessel was civilian, it required a less severe response. The Air Force immediately contacted the Coast Guard, and since O'Malley's cutter was the nearest government vessel in the area, the Sea Wolf was at once dispatched to investigate.

  Now, five hours after having received his orders, O'Malley - a red-haired, twenty-year veteran with a home in Portland and a wife and daughter whom he loved very much - continued to frown at the blip on the radar screen.

  'That's it, Captain,' a crewman said. 'She just crossed the two-hundred mile boundary. She's in our waters.'

  'And drifting.' O'Malley sounded as if his best friend had died.

  'That's what it looks like, Captain.'

  'And still no response to our radio messages.'

  'Affirmative, Captain.'

  O'Malley sighed. 'Battle stations.'

  The crewman pressed the alarm. 'Aye, aye, Captain.' Through the cutter's hull, the alarm sounded muffled but effectively shrill. Below, it would be excruciating, the rest of the crew snapping into action. 'You think there'll be trouble?'

  'That's the problem, isn't it?' O'Malley said.

  'Excuse me, Captain?'

  'What should I think? Trouble? For sure. Obviously something's wrong. The question is whose trouble - ours or that trawler's? I guarantee this. My dear departed mother, God rest her soul, didn't raise her son to be a dummy.'

  'I second that opinion, Captain.'

  'Thank you, Lieutenant.' O'Malley allowed himself to grin despite his nervous preoccupation. 'And I promise you, I'll do everything in my power to insure that every mother's son in my command lives to see his family again.'

  'We already know that, Captain.'

  'I appreciate your confidence, but it won't get you a better rating on your duty report.'

  The lieutenant chuckled.

  'I want a boarding party,' O'Malley said.

  'Yes, Captain.'

  'Armed.'

  'Yes, Captain.'

  'Get the Zodiac ready.'

  'Aye, aye, Captain.'

  O'Malley continued to frown toward the radar. Thirty minutes later, the Sea Wolf's night-vision screen revealed the enormous South Korean trawler wallowing in waves a thousand yards ahead, its bulky outline made eerily green by the monitor.

  The lieutenant straightened, cocking his head. The Air Force wasn't exaggerating, sir. I've never seen a darker ship.'

  'I want every gun manned,' O'Malley said.

  'Aye, aye, Captain.'

  'Still no response to our radio messages?'

  'Afraid not, sir.'

  'Pull portside and hail them on the bullhorn.'

  O'Malley nervously waited as a communications officer crouched protectively beside a housing on the deck and blurted questions through the bullhorn.

  'Ahoy, Bronze Bell!'

  'Ahoy! Please, respond!

  'You have entered United States waters!'

  'Please, respond!

  'Ahoy, do you need assistance?'

  'Fuck it,' O'Malley said. 'Get a team in the Zodiac. Make sure they're fully armed, Berettas, M-sixteens, and for God's sake, make sure they're fully protected from our deck when they cross to the trawler. The fifty-caliber machineguns. The forty-millimeter cannons. The works.'

  'Aye, aye, Captain.'

  The Zodiac, a rubber outboard-motor-powered raft, sped toward the Bronze Bell, its seven-member team holding M-16s at the ready. In the dark, as they reached the trawler and threw grappling hooks connected to rope ladders over the trawler's side, O'Malley said a quiet prayer for their safety and mentally made the Sign of the Cross.

  The team shouldered their rifles, unholstered their pistols, jacked a round into each firing chamber, and clambered briskly up the rope ladders, disappearing over the side.

  O'Malley held his breath, regretting that his duty required him to remain aboard while these other men - good men, brave men -potentially risked their lives.

  Something was very wrong.

  'Captain?' The two-way radio beside O'Malley crackled.

  Picking it up, O'Malley answered, 'Reception is clear. Report.'

  'Sir, the deck is deserted.'

  'Understood. Remain on battle alert. Establish sentries,' O'Malley said. 'With caution, check the lower decks.'

  'Affirmative, Captain.'

  O'Malley waited the longest five minutes in his life.

  'Captain, there's still no sign of anyone.'

  'Keep checking.'

  'Affirmative, Captain.'

  O'Malley waited another tense five minutes.

  Flashlights wavered on the trawler's deck. Lights came on. The two-way radio crackled. 'Captain, we can't find anyone. The trawler appears to be completely deserted.'

  O'Malley knew the answer to his next question. The team would surely have reported the information. But he had to ask it anyhow. 'Did you find any
corpses?'

  'No one alive or dead, Captain. Unless they're hiding somewhere, the vessel's been abandoned. It's kind of spooky in a way, sir.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Well, Captain, the television's on in the crew's recreation area. There's a radio playing in their quarters. There's food on plates in the galley. Whatever it is happened, it must have been fast.'

  O'Malley frowned. 'What about damage to the trawler? Any evidence of a fire, any reason they might have abandoned ship?'

  'No, sir. No damage at all. And anyway, the lifeboats are still aboard.'

  Then what the hell happened? Where in God's name did they go? How? O'Malley nervously wondered but didn't allow his apprehension to affect the sound of his voice. 'Understood,' he said with authoritative calmness. The trawler's engines?'

  'Shut down, but we got them started again. No problem, Captain.'

  'Fuel?'

  'The tanks are half full.'

  'What about the shortwave radio?'

  'We found it turned off, but it's in working order, sir. If they wanted to, if there was trouble, they could have sent a Mayday alert.'

  'No one's reported hearing any. Keep checking.'

  'Aye, aye, Captain.'

  O'Malley set down the walkie-talkie. Pensive, he stared through the darkness toward the lights on the massive trawler. On occasion, he'd heard stories about vessels found abandoned at sea. The explanations were usually obvious: a rustbucket that an owner had scuttled in order to collect insurance but that had failed to sink as the owner intended, or a yacht that pirates had looted after killing the passengers (raping them as well, if there were females) and throwing the corpses overboard, or a fishing boat that drug smugglers had abandoned because they feared that the Drug Enforcement Agency suspected their cargo and was about to try to capture them.

  In previous centuries, O'Malley was aware, a crew would sometimes (though rarely) mutiny, execute their captain, toss him to the sharks, and use lifeboats to escape to a nearby coastline. Again from previous centuries, he knew about ships upon which a plague had broken out, one-by-one the corpses of victims hurled overboard until the last man alive, suffering from the hideous disease, had managed to complete a diary about the ordeal and then jumped into the ocean, preferring a quick, relatively painless death by drowning instead of a prolonged, agonizing one.

  Then too, O'Malley had heard legends about crewless ghost ships, The Flying Dutchman, for example, although in that case the captain was reputed to be still aboard, doomed to drift for all eternity because of a gamble that he'd lost with the Devil.

  The most famous abandoned ship was the Marie Celeste, a brigantine transporting commercial alcohol from New York to Italy, found crewless between the Azores and Portugal in 1872. But O'Malley had never understood why that ship acquired its mysterious reputation. After all, its sails had been damaged, its cabins soaked with water, its lifeboats missing. Obviously a severe storm had frightened the crew into thinking that the Marie Celeste was about to sink. They'd foolishly used the lifeboats to try to escape and been swallowed by the storm-churned sea.

  All easily explainable.

  But despite O'Malley's familiarity with these accounts, he'd never in all his lengthy varied experience in the Coast Guard actually ever come across an abandoned vessel. Certainly, he'd seen barges torn apart on reefs because of a storm, but they didn't fit in this category. A ship in calm open water, drifting without a crew for no apparent reason? O'Malley shook his head. He wasn't superstitious or fanciful. Although he felt a chill, he didn't believe in lost gambles with the Devil or visitors from outer space abducting humans or time warps or the Bermuda Triangle or any other of the ridiculous theories that the supermarket tabloids promoted. Something was terribly wrong here, yes, but its explanation would be logical, and by God, he intended to find out what that explanation was.

  He turned to a crewman. 'Contact headquarters in Portland. Tell them what we've got here. Ask them to send another cutter. Also ask for assistance from the local police, maybe the DEA and the FBI. Who knows how many other agencies will be involved by the time we sort this out? Also. I'm sure headquarters will think of this. they'd better notify the Bronze Bell's owner.'

  'Right away, Captain.'

  O'Malley brooded again toward the massive trawler. There were so many details to anticipate. He couldn't leave the Bronze Bell with his men on board her, but as soon as the other Coast Guard cutter arrived, either it or the Sea Wolf would begin a search for sailors in the water. At dawn, air reconnaissance would join in the search. Meanwhile the Bronze Bell would be escorted to Portland, where various investigators would be waiting.

  The two-way radio crackled. 'Still nothing, Captain. I mean we've looked everywhere, including the cargo hold. I'll tell you this. They sure had good luck fishing. The hold's almost full.'

  A thought abruptly occurred to O'Malley. 'Almost full? What were they using to fish?'

  'This big a catch, they had to use nets, sir.'

  'Yes, but what kind of nets?' O'Malley asked.

  'Oh, shit, sir, I think I see what you mean. Just a minute.'

  O'Malley waited. The minute stretched on and on.

  'Damn it, you were right, sir. The bastards were using drift nets.'

  Furious, O'Malley pressed his hands on a console with such force that his knuckles whitened. Drift nets? Sure. The Bronze Bell was owned by South Koreans. They, the Taiwanese, and the Japanese were notorious for sending trawlers into the North Atlantic's international waters, casting out drift nets made of nylon mesh that spread for dozens of miles behind each trawler. It had recently been estimated that as many as thirty thousand miles of these nets were in use in the North Atlantic, scooping up every living thing, in effect strip-mining the ocean. The nets were intended to be an efficient means of trapping enormous (unconscionable!) amounts of tuna and squid. The effect was to depopulate these species. Worse, the nets also caught dolphins, porpoises, turtles, and whales, creatures that needed to surface periodically in order to breathe but that couldn't when caught in the nets. Eventually, cruelly, they drowned, their carcasses discarded as commercially useless when the nets were reeled in. Thus those species, too, were depopulated.

  The bastards! O'Malley thought. The murderous bastards!

  He strained to keep rage from his voice as he spoke to the walkie-talkie. 'Is the net still in the water?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Then turn on the winches. Haul the damned thing in. We'll be taking the Bronze Bell to Portland. The weight of the drift net will hold her back.'

  'I'll give the order, sir.'

  O'Malley seethed, glowering at the trawler. Shit! Shit! Those fucking drift nets. Those irresponsible-!

  A voice blurted from the walkie-talkie, 'Oh, my God, Captain! Jesus! Oh, my-!' The man on the other end sounded as if he might vomit.

  'What's the matter? What's wrong?'

  'The drift net! We're hauling it in! You can't believe how much fish it-! Christ! And the dolphins! The porpoises! I've never seen so many! Dead! They're all dead! Tangled in the net! A fucking nightmare! The crew!'

  'What? Say again! The-?'

  'Crew! Twenty! Thirty! We're still counting! Oh, God in heaven! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! We've found the crew! They were tied to the net! They drowned the same way the dolphins and-!'

  The next sound from the walkie-talkie was unmistakable: anguished, guttural gagging, the Coast Guard officer throwing up.

  EIGHT

  Brooklyn.

  The sign on the stake outside St Thomas More grade school said CLOSED, NO TRESPASSING, PROPERTY OF F AND S REALTY. Stapled to the sign was a piece of paper, which in legal-looking fine print explained that this area had been rezoned for multiple-family dwellings. Another sign - this one on the school's front door - said, SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION, FUTURE SITE OF GRAND VIEW CONDOMINIUMS.

  The school, a three-story drab brick structure, had been built in 1910. Its wiring, plumbing, and heating systems were so in need of expensive
repairs that the local diocese, at the limit of its financial resources, had been forced to sell it and arrange for Catholic students in the neighborhood to attend the newer but already crowded St Andrew's school two miles away. Parents who in their youth had gone to St Thomas More and had sent their children there mourned its passing, but as the bishop had indicated in his letter - read by the local pastor to his parishioners during Sunday mass - the Church faced a looming monetary crisis. Regrettable sacrifices had to be made, not only here but in almost every diocese across the nation. Prayers and donations were required.