"Uh, I don't know, Captain. I passed on the message as soon as I got it."
"All right, Combat, captain out."
"Combat out."
Myers's voice echoed over the ship. "Set starboard side boat launch detail, set starboard side boat launch detail."
There was a wave of protest from the deck. "What?" "What'd they say?" "Are they kidding?" "Is this a joke?"
The XO had followed Cal inside. "I've got this, Captain."
"Nonsense, XO, I'll take it. You go keep our guests happy."
Good thing it was dark on the bridge so Cal couldn't see Taffy's expression.
Not that Boat Deck Captain Smith needed any help from Cal to get Mun 1 launched. He did not turn on the spotlight mounted on the edge of the starboard wing because it would have ruined everyone's night vision. Smith and Seaman Orozco had the davit engaged and the orange, rigid-hulled inflatable out of the cradle and snugged up against the boat deck a couple of minutes later. They were manned and ready to go in five minutes. Cal 's radio crackled into life. "Captain, boat deck."
"Boat deck, captain, go ahead."
"Permission to launch the starboard side boat, Captain?"
"Stand by one. Coxswain, captain."
"Captain, coxswain."
Two decks below the coxswain looked up but in the dark Cal couldn't see who it was. "Who's talking?"
"BM2 Hendricks, sir."
"Did you run a GAR?" This was an assessment by which crew readiness was calculated, run prior to an operation, especially one this unexpected.
"We're in the green, sir, total fourteen. High in crew fitness because we're all in tourist mode instead of being focused on the job, and another high in environment because we're fumbling around in the dark. The rest are all twos and threes. We know how to do this. We're ready."
"Who's on the crew?"
"Myself, Garon, Velasquez, Garza, and Clark."
Velasquez was one of their Spanish-speaking interpreters, breaking in Garza on the job. Good move, there was a strong chance that whatever this boat was, it would have no English speakers on board. "Thanks, Coxswain. Boat deck, Captain."
"Captain, boat deck."
"Permission to load, lower, and launch the starboard side boat, aye."
"Aye aye. Load, lower, and launch!" Smith's bellow was audible to everyone on the starboard bridge wing. "Boat moving!"
"Where are they going?"
Cal looked around to see the Munros leaning over the rail next to him to peer interestedly into the dark. "We have a contact on the radar where it shouldn't be, inside the area closed during launch."
"My goodness," Doreen said. They heard the smack of the small boat's hull on the water. "Who is it?"
"We don't know yet. Probably the usual idiot joyrider." He bent his head back. "Lookout?"
A head poked over the side of the deck over the bridge. "Yes, Captain?"
"Do you have a pair of those night-vision binoculars?"
"Sure thing, Captain." The head vanished and Cal went over the ladder up to the lookout. A moment later Seaman Critchfield handed the binoculars down to him.
"Thanks, Seaman."
"You're welcome, Captain. Uh, what's going on?"
"There's a contact bearing 090 relative, and heading west."
"That would be into the area closed during launch, sir?"
"It would. Keep an eye out."
"Keeping an eye out, aye sir."
22
TWO MILES OFFSHORE, ON BOARD FREIGHTER MOKAME
"I can hear their engine," Yussuf said.
"Yes," AMI said. "Captain?"
The blood had flowed freely from the scalp wound where Akil had struck him, and it had dried to his face in a half-mask that made him look like the Phantom of the Opera. The little finger on his left hand stuck out at an unnatural angle, and he was careful to hold it out of the way. He sounded resigned. "I say nothing. I do not respond to calls. I do not slow down."
"Correct," Akil said. "Yussuf, get our men up on deck."
"Yes, Isa," Yussuf said, and left. Shortly they heard footsteps coming aft and climbing the stairs to the deck.
The migrants said and did nothing, watching them pass with fear or apathy on their faces. Most of them spoke little English, and they'd probably spent everything they had on passage to the United States. They would do nothing, take no action that might delay or deny that goal.
The engine of the small boat neared. Akil could barely discern the outline of the hull against the sea. It was so dark he couldn't see where the sea ended and the sky began, but for the stars, which were many and beautiful. He thought of Adara. He thought of Zahirah.
The small boat hailed them on the marine band. "Unknown freight, unknown freighter, this is the United States Coast Guard. You are inside a closed area, I say again you are inside a closed area. You must turn around, I say again you must turn around immediately. Please respond."
"Don't answer," Akil said.
He remembered very clearly the story Adam Bayzani had told him about what it was like on a small boat at night. They were in constant communication with their ship, both the bridge and the combat center, and they were equipped with their own surface radar unit. The ship had infrared radar that Bayzani had spoken of admiringly, but not on the small boat. The cutter had night-vision goggles, which the small boat might or might not have on board as well.
These last two items of information were why Akil's men had jackets on over their weapons. If the Coast Guard did manage to get a close look at who was on deck of the little Haitian freighter in the dark, he didn't want his people to stand out any more than absolutely necessary. Or not immediately. It was also why he had instructed Yussuf and Yaqub to select recruits who looked more African than Asian. They would appear like every other Haitian migrant on board, at least at first.
The small boat came nearer and nearer. When Akil judged it near enough, he said, "Cut off the engines."
"They'll know we-"
Akil shot the captain in the back of the head. He had a silencer fitted to the muzzle of his pistol and the shot made a muted burping sound. The captain's forehead burst and splattered blood and brains all over the steering wheel and the control console. Akil wiped away some of the mess to take the boat out of gear. He had watched the captain very carefully for the last part of the journey.
He left the engine idling and went to join his men on deck. "Did you immobilize the rest of the crew?"
"Yes," Yussuf said. "They're tied up in our stateroom. There are only six of them, and I think four of them were only guards. None of them protested when they saw the guns." A trace of self-satisfaction colored the words. Yussuf was discovering the power that came with a weapon.
Akil nodded. "Good work." He was watching the shadow that was the small boat. It made a wide circle around the Mokame and took up position off their port side. A powerful spotlight came on and flooded the stern of the freighter with light. Akil's men put on a good show, putting up their hands to shade their faces and blinking in the bright light. They were lost in the sea of migrants surrounding them, all doing the same thing as they muttered incomprehensibly among themselves.
The loud hail came a moment later. "Unknown freighter, unknown freighter, this is the United States Coast Guard. You are inside a security zone closed to all unauthorized vessel traffic, I say again, you are inside a security zone closed to all unauthorized vessel traffic. You must depart this area at once. Please reply."
"Remember," Akil said, "we need the uniforms."
HAITI
They had crawled slowly and painstakingly through every waterfront dive and backwoods bar in the greater Port-au-Prince area. In the past week Patrick had drunk more alcohol-most of it, he was certain, distilled in someone's backyard from whatever fruit they had hanging from the handiest trees-than during the rest of his life combined. His liver was protesting, he was experiencing shortness of breath, and he fancied that his heart had picked up an irregular beat somewhere between the harbo
r saloon where a massive black man had offered him his sister and he had been almost too terrified to refuse, and the one-room juke joint where a three-piece band was sawing away at some of the best blues he'd ever heard in his life.
A week. Seven days. If it came down to that, 168 hours. He looked down at his suit, spattered with the remnants of seven days' worth of meals featuring fresh conch, fried plantains, and sweet potato cake. No, he was no field agent, he thought sadly.
At seven days, even Patrick, who had pursued every lead Akil had left him with bulldog persistence, was ready to throw in the towel.
And then, a miracle occurred.
One of the men working with him found an informant, a man who ran a ferry out of Port-au-Prince. He had lately taken on board five men, passengers who didn't strike him as tourists, and let them off at a marina some miles down the coast. How many? He scratched his scrofulous chin and couldn't say. Patrick's man held up a twenty-dollar bill and asked if that would improve his memory. It would, and it did.
So Patrick and the dozen other agents who had flooded into Haiti clandestinely boarded the little ferry, after the unloveliest captain Patrick had ever seen held each of them up for the twenty-dollar fare, informed them it only paid one way, and cast off.
The little ferry couldn't have been forty feet long and her unprepossessing exterior did not lend Patrick any confidence that she wouldn't sink before she got off the dock. But she did chug determinedly out of the harbor and down the coast, which cast off civilization far too rapidly for Patrick's tastes, shedding houses for jungle as if someone had thrown a switch. He felt like Lord Jim going up into the heart of darkness.
He repeated this to one of the agents. "I think that was Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, sir," this young man said, an ardent Conrad fan. "Lord Jim is another novel entirely." "Whatever," Patrick said.
They arrived at the marina shortly thereafter. They went ashore and split up, half knocking on doors in one direction and half in the other. They met back at the marina two hours later. "If Isa was here, nobody's talking," one agent said. It was hot and they were to a man sweating profusely. Patrick actually had his suit jacket off and was fanning himself vigorously with a large leaf he hoped wasn't poisonous to the touch.
Discouraged, he said what they were all thinking. "Well, it was a long shot. We should probably pack it in and head for the barn."
Just then the young agent with the Conrad fetish showed up. He had a child in tow who looked about ten, with bright dark eyes, skin the color of a raven's wing, and a close-cropped cap of tight black curls. His blue-checked short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts were shabby but clean and neat. He wasn't shy, looking them over with the eye of an expert who makes his living by judging a likely mark.
"He says he knows of the men we're looking for," the agent said. Patrick looked at the kid, who met his gaze fearlessly. "Does he speak
English?"
"Yes, he speaks English," the kid shot back. He had a thick accent but he was perfectly understandable.
"You got a name?"
"They call me Ti-Malice." Pleasantries concluded, Ti-Malice came right to the point. "You want to know about the strangers who were here."
"Yes. Ivar gave you a description."
"Yes."
"And they looked like that?"
"Yes, they looked like that," the kid said, aping his deliberate speech. "How much you gonna pay me to tell you where they went?"
"How much you gonna want for the information?" Patrick said.
They haggled back and forth for a few minutes before settling on twenty American dollars, which seemed to be the going rate for anything that could be bought. Patrick hoped the bean counters never questioned this particular informant fee on his expense sheet.
"Some they come by the ferry, which you know," Ti-Malice said. "Some they come by seaplane, which you don't. One, he come by car, through the jungle. He the leader."
"How do you know that?"
Ti-Malice looked at him with contempt. "They come to him with questions, he give them answers. When they leave, he get on the boat first. He the leader."
"How many of them were there?"
"Ten."
"When did they leave?"
Ti-Malice shrugged. "Six days ago, maybe?"
"What kind of a boat did they leave on?"
"Sailboat." But Ti-Malice's eyes slid away from Patrick's.
It was too blatant to be anything but intentional. Patrick sighed and got out another twenty-dollar bill. He held it out of the kid's reach. "Okay, Ti-Malice, what's the rest of it?"
"They not the only people on board this sailboat," Ti-Malice said.
"ISA'S ON A BOAT SMUGGLING MIGRANTS INTO THE U.S.?" THE AGENT with the Conrad fetish said over the roar of the seaplane's engine as they took off from the tiny harbor. "What's that about?"
Patrick frowned through the windshield. There was something he was
missing, some link in Isa's recent series of activities that he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Why would Isa go to all the trouble of infiltrating a boatload of Haitian migrants inbound for America? Look at how he had waltzed in and out of New York and Florida. He'd been in Florida for six months without anyone spotting him. Why go to all the trouble and expense and endure the discomfort of a smelly cruise on what sounded like a marginally seaworthy vessel?
He worried at the problem all the way back to Miami, in the throes of July Fourth celebrations that in Miami seemed to require much shooting off of guns into the sky. Traffic was slow coming in from the airport, and it was nine o'clock before the taxi dropped him off at his hotel.
He was still worrying when he unlocked the door to his hotel room.
Melanie was waiting for him.
His mouth dropped. "Melanie?"
"Hello, Patrick," she said. She walked toward him in the pencil skirt and slender heels she always wore, today topped by a thin, powder blue sweater with a scoop neck that hinted at cleavage. She was suddenly closer to him than she'd ever been before, and this time there was no desk between them. He backed up, only to hit the door. He dropped his bag. "What are you doing here?" he said weakly.
"I thought I could help," she said. "Here, let me get your coat."
Firm hands turned him around and lifted his coat from his shoulders. "My, you need a shower," she said. "Or do you prefer a bath?"
His tongue tied itself in knots for a moment. "Sh-sh-shower," he managed to say.
She gave him a sweet smile. "I showered when I got here-I hope you don't mind-but there are clean towels left."
"I, uh, okay," Patrick said, and fled.
When he came out, slightly pink from the scrubbing he had given himself, and the belt of the terry-cloth robe knotted very tightly around his waist, she was sitting next to a table set with Caesar salad, a crusty loaf of bread, and a bottle of chardonnay, which she'd already poured into two glasses.
He sat down in the chair opposite her with a thump, his legs oddly incapable of holding him up any longer. He stared at her. "Melanie, what are you doing here?"
She waved her hand at a briefcase sitting on the desk across the room. "There was some paperwork I thought I'd better deliver in person." She dimpled delightfully. "And I've never been to Miami."
He knew he was being seduced, probably at Kallendorf's instigation, and he couldn't do a thing to stop it. When they finished eating and she took his hand and led him to the bed, he did not resist.
"That was wonderful, Melanie," he said later, and kissed her in gratitude. "Thank you."
She smiled and held her hand to his cheek. "You're very sweet, Patrick. I've wanted this for a long time."
He couldn't tell if it was a lie or the truth, but he didn't really care. He sighed and reached for the robe discarded on the floor. "I'd better take a look at what you brought."
"It's a report from Mr. Rincon. He faxed it to the office this morning."
He forgot the robe and trotted over to the briefcase naked, riffling throug
h the paperwork to find the report with the institute's deliberately vague logo, a quill pen crossed with a broadsword and the words littera scripta manet written beneath in a discreet little font. It was only when you looked more closely that you saw that the pen was larger than the broadsword and in a fair way to eclipsing it altogether.
"Mrs. Mansour was right, he is Pakistani," he said, reading rapidly. "Akil Vihari, brother of-holy shit."
"It's an awful story, isn't it," she said gravely. "Yes, I read it when it came in. I know I wasn't supposed to, Patrick, but I couldn't resist."
"I remember reading about this," Patrick said, unheeding. "It was something of a cause celebre, especially when her brother disappeared and Amnesty International and the rest of them figured he'd gone for revenge against the tribesmen and they'd killed him. It was in Time, it was on the Nightly News and BBC."
There was a picture of Adara, the one taken for her identity card. It was blurry but it looked familiar. It took him a minute before he made the connection.
"She looks like Zahirah Mansour." He thought of what they had found in the backseat of that car and felt a little sick.
She dozed off while he skimmed through the rest of the report. No wonder, he thought, looking at her slumbering form, lovingly outlined by the sheet. It was after eleven. She must be exhausted.
He'd be happy to crawl in beside her but he felt restless. The television was on. He skimmed the news channels. Nothing new; a bombing in Baghdad and another on the West Bank, a small plane crash in Alaska that everyone had walked away from, a mudslide in California and a tornado in Kansas. NASA was about to launch another space shuttle, and among the crew there was a relative of a World War II hero after whom someone had named a ship, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. There was a clip of her parents on the cutter, standing next to the captain, a fit, handsome man in his midforties who looked as if he wished he were anywhere else but there. Patrick wished he looked like him. Then maybe Melanie would have slept with him because she wanted to, not because Kallendorf did.
He clicked over to NTV for a little mindless entertainment, and watched as time-lapse photography darkened the sky over the agglomeration of ship and fuel tanks waiting next to the great steel Tinkertoy that held it upright until ignition. They were set to launch at midnight.
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