( 2011) Cry For Justice

by Ralph Zeta

  Although the headache and dizziness had subsided considerably, my energy reserves were dangerously low. After traversing a thorny hedgerow I crossed onto an expansive lawn fronting a big house. I continued to jog along the periphery of the lawn, intentionally remaining in the shadows to keep from worrying the neighbors into summoning the police.

  I heard the potent growl of marine outboard engines in the distance. The roar grew louder with every step I took. I came to the edge of the property, which backed onto a darkened lagoon. A long wooden pier jutted into the blue-blackness. This had to be the place. I saw navigation lights coming fast in the direction of the pier.

  The roaring engines cut off only to be reversed near their limit as the boat glided to a perfectly executed stop beside the pier. A large wave generated by the boat’s high speed maneuver almost washed over the dock. Behind the wheel was James, all right, He was piloting a thirty-five-foot black-on-black center-console boat with triple Mercury three-hundred horsepower outboard engines. The boat was painted in a sinister matte black and dark gray color scheme, a combo I knew to be the preference of law enforcement agencies as well as some military special-ops teams. James had certainly come through in grand form. It made me wonder who this guy really was. MI-6, maybe?

  “Hop on, mate!” James Burke barked at me. “Time’s a-wastin’!”

  “You’re not going,” I argued.

  “Nonsense! You don’t know these waters like I do. And you’re not familiar with all the toys on board this beauty. This doll’s equipped with a powerful radar and radar-jamming equipment.”

  I gave him a sideways glance.

  “Don’t ask,” he said. “This little wonder belongs to some chaps who shall ever remain nameless. I merely provide safekeeping. The point is, we can sneak up on anyone completely unnoticed. I can drop you as close as fifty feet from the target and stay in range, out of sight, and ready to assist.”

  “This is not your fight,” I retorted.

  “What?” James gave me an incredulous glare. “You afraid of putting me in harm’s way?” I may have touched a raw nerve.

  “Not at all,” I lied. “It’s just, this doesn’t concern you. Besides, you’re too...” I couldn’t say it.

  “Old for this shit?” he finished for me. “That is what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, let me tell you something, my dear still-wet-behind-the-ears chum... ,” James began. He touched a switch on the boat’s impressive control panel and entered a numeric code. First I heard a hissing sound, followed immediately by the whir of invisible motors and gears churning in the dark. Recessed panels located low on the port and starboard gunwales rolled down to reveal a cache of automatic weapons neatly stored inside the hollow walls. It was an almost obscene display.

  “I don’t need the likes of you telling me I’m too old or can’t take care of business,” James went on.

  The arsenal included six M-4 rifles, two M249 SAW light machine guns, a shoulder-mounted SMAW rocket launcher, three spear guns, and two XM25 grenade launchers.

  “While you were barely off your mum’s tit and still watching Sesame Street on the telly, I was out in the Falklands leading a squad of Royal Marine Scouts in a night assault. I could mention quite a few more such jaunts, but I’m afraid you don’t have the necessary clearance.” He was studying me, gauging my reaction.

  “Who are you again?” I asked.

  “Satisfied now, are we?” James asked, feigning a bored look. “Or do you require two forms of picture ID, too?”

  We shoved off, and the bow came about and rose toward the stars as the three roaring engines pressed us back in our seats, trusting the boat forward with an infernal force, churning a great, arcing rooster tail behind us as we made a sharp 180-degree turn. James expertly steered us around a rocky point without once pulling back on the triple throttle control, and the boat began to pound and jolt as we left the protected lagoon for the choppier waters of the Atlantic.

  “Better hang on tight, lad!” James yelled over the engine noise. “This won’t be a joyride!”

  After swinging ninety degrees onto the selected bearing, James Burke buried the throttle, and the engines’ roar became something resembling a high-pitched scream as the boat surged forward and high on its wake. We were soon clear of the choppy confluence where the shallow lagoon’s outflow met the Atlantic swells, and the boat’s jouncing and banging calmed down enough for me to have a look at the onboard instrument cluster. The radar sweep on one of the overhead monitors reported several dozen contacts scattered about, going various speeds and directions.

  I told James that I thought Baumann was making a run toward the Dominican Republic. That would put the Carpe Diem on a southeast course with an estimated heading of 125 degrees south. I glanced at the compass. We were already heading that way.

  “Concentrate on slow-moving contacts heading southeast ahead of our location,” James yelled into my ear. “That’s where we’ll find him.”

  Baumann had about an hour and a half’s head start. At a speed of five to six knots, he should be some twenty miles ahead of us. We were doing about fifty miles an hour, so if we had our bearings right, it wouldn’t be long now. I turned a knob on the radar panel and zoomed in on the swath of ocean where I expected to find Baumann. That was where we would focus our effort to locate the Carpe Diem.

  With the ocean swells growing steadily bigger the farther from land we got, the boat began to leap clear of the water, crashing back down with bone-jarring force that sent huge sprays of water high above the gunwales. The sheer force of each landing felt like some form of torture. It made my teeth grind hard against each other. My kidneys and liver felt as if they were being turned into mush and every hard landing compressed my spine with such force I swore, should I survive the night, it would shave off at least a couple of inches off my height.

  I glanced at James; he was comfortably seated in his nicely padded seat, seat belt snugged around his considerable girth, eyes peering into the dark ocean ahead. He extended his left arm and flicked off the running lights, then opened a drawer in the console. A moment later, he was cinching down the chinstrap on night vision headgear. Running completely dark like we were, you could certainly hear the boat approaching but no one could see us.

  The boat leaped higher than it had thus far. We floated improbably long in the air, and I felt my stomach churn with the sudden loss of gravity. With the churning props now completely exposed in the night air, the engine noise ramped up to a deafening high-pitched whine. The hull shuddered as it hit the ocean again at fifty miles an hour, sending torrents of water skyward and driving my chin into my upper chest. No doubt the integrity and seaworthiness of the boat’s hull was being tested well beyond what was reasonable, but the craft seemed built for this kind of punishment. It landed true every time, enveloped in surging dark watery cataracts, only to bound ahead with no letup, a dark and sinister force on a relentless quest.

  Rubbing my jaw to make sure it hadn’t come unhinged, I glanced at James. Beneath the black apparatus shielding his eyes, his lips creased into a wicked grin. The bastard was enjoying watching me wince with each landing.

  “What?” James screamed in my ear. I could barely understand him. “Too rough for you, old girl?”

  With the battering I was taking, all I could manage was a weak smile. James was certainly a surprise. I knew he was no pushover, but I had never suspected this side of him.

  James never slowed his insane pace. After twenty minutes of this soaring and crashing, my brain felt as if it wanted only to shut down and avoid any more buffeting. But I knew we had to press on. Baumann had an ample head start, but we were gaining on him with every passing second. In a boat like this, tricked out with the all the high-tech gadgetry it had on board and piloted by a nut-job like Burke, there was little chance Baumann would elude us. I glanced down at my radium-dial watch. At this rate, we would be in a position to intercept in mere minutes.

&n
bsp; I examined the radar screen once more. There were a few well-defined contacts now, all on similar headings and moving at a relatively slow pace except for one large contact further east. This contact was moving southeast at seventeen knots. Much too fast for a sailboat. There were no signs of a craft the size of Carpe Diem.

  We ran flat out for almost ten more minutes, and the battering brought my headache back with a vengeance. I gave James a hand signal to cut the engines. He eased off the throttle, and the roar of the engines subsided to an almost dull grumbling as the bow eased back down to parallel with the dark horizon. Suddenly, I could hear the ocean swells slapping against the fiberglass hull and, beneath that, the quiet gurgling of the engines. I studied the radar screen, searching for anything resembling our fleeing vessel.

  James pushed up his night-vision goggles. “Well?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He reached under the center console and brought out a silvery flask, unscrewed the top, and took a liberal sip. “Cheers!” he said, offering it to me. “Fifty-year scotch. Elixir of the gods. It’ll do you good.”

  I took a sip without giving it the savoring it deserved, and went back to the screen. Of the four slow-moving contacts, two had broken off and were now on a northerly bearing. Not what I expected Baumann to do. In that direction lay miles of dangerous shoals. If I were the one running, I would set a course closer to Freetown or Bannerman Town instead. That course avoided most of the hazards and opened up eventually to the Atlantic. I watched the two radar contacts sailing in a south by southeast course. They appeared to be about five miles apart and maintaining similar cruising speeds. The first contact looked about the right size, the second much larger than the Carpe Diem. I mentioned it to James. He flicked on his radar-jamming gear, turned the wheel, and accelerated to about twenty-five knots on a course slightly south of the two contacts. Our intention was get to a point ahead of the two contacts and come in somewhere between them. We would then sit still and invisible on the water and wait for the two craft to sail by as we checked them out with the night-vision gear.

  ***

  Arriving at the intercept point, we cut the engines and settled in for the short wait. Radar sweep reported the contacts still on course. My heart skipped a beat when I saw lights appear just north of our position. James produced a space-age looking monocular and handed it to me. I put it to my eye and peered into the darkness. Reddish LED displays on the heavy night-vision telescope’s visible screen displayed bearing, distance, and speed information. Behind the informational displays, the garish red profile of a large two-masted motorsailer hove into view. Perhaps 140 feet definitely not the Carpe Diem.

  I checked the radar screen once more. The second contact was still maintaining its course and would pass about six hundred yards south of our position. I settled in for the short wait. James scanned radio frequencies for chatter but found nothing useful.

  It did not take long for the second contact’s navigational lights to come into view. I aimed my scope at it, and again all sorts of unwanted data came alive and cluttered the edges of the image as the scope acquired the target. It was another large craft, a cruiser about 150 feet long, moving at a stately seven knots. Not what I had hoped for. I looked at James and shook my head, then went back to the radar screen. No other contacts in range.

  Where the hell was Baumann? He had to be nearby. I could almost feel him.

  Searching for a single sailboat in the open ocean, at night and running dark, presented a formidable challenge no matter how efficient the pursuit craft is or how sophisticated its onboard instrumentation may be. We had put ourselves in this precise spot on this vast expanse of ocean, fully expecting Baumann to choose the most direct escape route. Of course, he could have changed his mind and gone in a different direction. He had already shown that he was exceedingly sly and cunning. But was he too sly and cunning not to do the smart thing? I was about to find out.

  James and I peered into the vast darkness surrounding us, silently and methodically scanning for something that might well not even be there to find. The slimness of our chances dawned on me: two men in a small boat in the middle of a dark, vast ocean, completely out of options. Odds of finding Baumann this way were simply too staggering to be real. But I hadn’t the luxury of wallowing in despair. Mackenzie’s life was at stake. I had to find her.

  The second contact’s running lights were now much closer. Right on cue, the second contact would soon sail about four hundred yards south and west of our position. Radar data reported the slow-moving craft at twelve hundred yards and closing. For some reason the radar signature seemed larger than it had been just a couple of minutes ago. An anomaly, perhaps? I shared my concern with James.

  He shrugged and said, “I suppose we won’t know for sure unless we go have us a look.”

  I asked him to set a course that would bring us astern of the contact. He spun the wheel and the boat swung about, hitting a wave that sent sea spray onto my face. With the taste of brine came a shiver of anticipation, as if I somehow, something inside me, knew that the end was at hand.

  Twenty-nine

  The police and Coast Guard would most likely begin their search at dawn. If they sent any search planes out during the night, it would most likely be long-range aircraft out of Florida, which would take some time to get anywhere near our location. Once the sun was up, however, helicopters would set a course for the target area and begin a systematic grid search for the Stella Maris, aka Carpe Diem. My main concern was the fact that, by that time, Baumann could be in Cuba if he chose, which would place him well out of our reach.

  The night air was cool and heavy with moisture. A dark shroud had now covered the new moon, cloaking everything around us in a darker than usual gloom. We were taking big, rolling ocean swells on our starboard quarter, rising up the long side of the dark, watery hills and then riding down the opposite slope a bit faster as our bow bit into the trough only to rise again. The boat rode the swells with ease, the gurgle of its triple Mercury engines a continuous drone in the background.

  I told James to cut the engines for a moment. He pointed the bow at the oncoming waves and complied. I studied the radar screen. The cruiser was where it was supposed to be, just southwest of our position, about eight hundred yards away now, but its radar signature had changed yet again. I pointed this out to James and mentioned the shapeshifting signature.

  He studied the colorful image on the screen, and his round face split into a big smile. “Lad, I believe you may have just found our fleeing scumbag.”

  He flicked on the engines and turned the wheel, putting us on a course roughly perpendicular to the contact’s. I picked up the night-vision monocular and aimed it at distant running lights.

  “Search about sixty yards astern and to starboard of the cruiser,” James said. “See what lurks.”

  As I examined the reddish image of the cruiser something caught my eye. A dark shape directly behind the large cruiser seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. At first thinking I might have imagined it, I rechecked the settings to make sure the night-vision scope hadn’t produced a phantom image, and then took another look.

  “Anything? James queried.

  “Dunno yet,” I said.

  We crested another large swell, and I scoped the spot where I had seen the unexpected shape. There it was again, and this time the dark image appeared clear as day. I immediately recognized the odd sails, the rigging, the twin masts, and the generous beam of the Carpe Diem. I finally had him in my sights.

  In a brilliant maneuver, to be sure, Baumann had been shadowing the much larger, slow-going cruiser in an effort to avoid electronic detection. In fact, the setup was so perfect, I had to wonder if it had been planned this way. Was the large cruiser sailing just ahead of the Carpe Diem a mere happenstance... or were they an accomplice ready to assist if required? Before I made my move, I needed to be sure.

  I studied the cruiser through the night-vision scope. Nothing seemed out of place
. It looked like any other civilian pleasure craft making an ocean passage. Except for the running and cabin lights, the ship seemed almost devoid of life, which would be typical for this time of night. The owners or guests were likely in their staterooms, and the rest of the crew was off for the night. The name on the stern said this was the Perfect Illusion out of Tortola, British Virgin Islands. I shared my concerns with James, and in seconds he was on the satellite phone requesting a full check on the Perfect Illusion, civilian pleasure craft registered in Tortola, BVI.

  “We’ll know more in about two minutes,” he said, clicking off the sat phone.

  While waiting for the call, we crafted together a plan of action. If all checked out and the occupants of the cruiser turned out to be just victims of opportunity, we would power clear around the Carpe Diem to a point somewhere ahead of the slow-moving craft. I would enter the water, where I would wait for the sailboat to approach. James would stand invisibly by. The aim was to get me aboard the Carpe Diem unnoticed. Once on board, my first priority had to be Mackenzie’s safety. I would deal with the threats as they presented themselves. I would be at my most vulnerable while getting aboard. I didn’t know how many men Baumann had with him, but I hoped the element of surprise would be enough to carry the day.

  The sat phone buzzed. James’s contact reported the Perfect Illusion did check out. The boat had sailed out of the New York Yacht Club in Newport, Rhode Island, and was making its annual pilgrimage to its wintering grounds in the British Virgin Islands. Nothing to indicate it had any connection to Baumann.

  It was party time.

  James announced there were wet suits in the head shower area, just inside the boat’s large center console. I opened the door to the compartment, turned on a reddish overhead light, and found several neatly hanging black neoprene suits against the back wall.