by Ward Larsen
Something was bothering her.
They cleaned the table together while Davy pulled out his favorite pastime, a memory game involving paired tiles that could be turned over and matched. Fish, tigers, and elephants, all uncovered two at a time. “He’s getting good at that,” Slaton said. “He beat me this morning and I was trying.”
Christine barely smiled, and he gripped her arm until her eyes met his. She nodded, and chinned toward the cockpit outside. They went above, leaving Davy at the table hunting for a zebra. The deck was warm on his bare feet, and it struck Slaton that Windsom had become more of a home than he’d imagined it could be. They instinctively sought out shade, and ended facing one another near the helm.
“I met a woman at the playground today,” Christine said. “She was there with her little boy—he was about Davy’s age. I could see she was upset, and I tried to talk to her. Her English wasn’t very good, but we got by. Her husband is a fisherman and he’s disappeared. She said he rarely stays out overnight, but that he’s been gone for three days.”
“Where was he fishing?”
Christine told him.
Slaton knew the area. “Those are contested waters. Have been for a long time. Is anyone searching for him?”
“She reported it to the Coast Guard, but they won’t do anything—they’re too busy tracking Chinese ships out in the Spratlys. Some of the other fishermen went out to look for him, and one of them spotted his boat.”
“Drifting or anchored?”
“Neither. She was tied on to the Esperanza.”
Slaton straightened in his seat. He looked out over the tranquil waters. They’d been here over a month, long enough to know a little about the local situation. These island chains were ground zero in a far-reaching geopolitical struggle. China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines—all were laying claims as fast as they could to uninhabited cays and reefs, staking out territory using highly creative means. The simplest route was to pitch a few tents and assign a squad of soldiers to an uninhabited sandbar. China had taken things to a new level, dredging sand and destroying coral reefs to create islands that had never before existed, then populating them with buildings, runways, and troops. Other nations, having fewer resources to work with, had been driving derelict ships onto shoals as markers of sovereign territory. It worked pretty well until the boat began to disintegrate—as was the case with Esperanza.
“That old hulk?” he said. “It’s in pretty bad shape.”
She nodded. “Nobody wanted to go near it.”
“Why not? I know there used to be government soldiers on board, but they pulled out last year because she was falling apart.”
“The local rumor is that after the government abandoned ship, a band of smugglers took over—drugs or slavery, depending on who’s telling the story.”
“And they’re still there?”
“Nobody knows. That’s why none of the fishermen wanted to go near.”
Slaton looked west by northwest. “Thirty nautical?”
“Thirty-six,” she corrected.
“I hate to ask … but what do you want me to do about it?”
“What do we do about it.”
He gave her a stern glare. “Give me your take on this woman.”
“The wife?”
He nodded.
“She was upset. Her husband was missing, and she’s worried to death.”
Slaton sensed that his wife had been planning those words very carefully. “We’ve talked about this for the better part of a year,” he said. “I don’t get involved in anything unless it takes place far from where we are. You don’t ever get involved, because that brings Davy into the picture.”
“We’re just talking about a missing fisherman who—”
“Have you ever seen this woman before?” he cut in.
“No, but what difference does that make?”
“Did she give you her phone number, tell you where she lives?”
“She said something about Villa Grande.”
“Five miles away. I guess they don’t have playgrounds there.”
Her anger flashed. “You’re so paranoid!”
“You’re damned right I am! It’s the only reason I’m still alive. And that’s how we’ve agreed to live—a constant state of paranoia. My past has a way of catching up. The fact that we’ve gone a year without any problems doesn’t put us in the clear.”
“So what are you suggesting? That Hezbollah is here in Palawan? Tracking David Slaton, the legendary Israeli assassin, to the other side of the earth?”
He bit down on a reply, and silence ensued. Slaton forced a more conciliatory tone. “I don’t like the smell of this,” he said. “But if it’s important to you … I can take a look.”
“It’s important to the man’s wife and son. She’s worried her husband might have gone aboard and gotten hurt.”
Slaton was already having second thoughts. “If we do this, you and Davy don’t go anywhere near that ship.”
Christine didn’t argue.
“If I see anything I don’t like, I leave and we get out of here right away—open ocean.”
Slaton saw a half smile.
He didn’t return it.
FIVE
To board a ship on the open ocean is never easy, even if the water is only a few feet deep. Slaton did his homework. None of the local fishermen knew about a missing man, but they conceded that if he was from Villa Grande they might not know about it. Slaton found out as much as possible about the derelict ship before pulling anchor in Palawan. Esperanza was a World War II–vintage minesweeper, and had been gifted to the Philippines by the U.S. Navy decades earlier. She’d been run aground intentionally in 1999, an ungainly attempt by the government to establish sovereignty over a long-ignored coral atoll.
For years after her grounding, the Philippine Navy did their best to keep the ship in one piece. Steel plates were welded to the deck, lumber used to reinforce catwalks, and at one point someone had installed a generator and window-unit air conditioners, no doubt to shore up the morale of the heat-stricken Philippine Marine contingent who kept watch. The government had thrown in the towel just over a year ago, evacuating their disintegrating outpost, but rumors persisted that smugglers had taken over Esperanza in the interim.
Slaton made his approach to Esperanza using their inflatable dinghy, a twelve-foot runabout with an outboard motor that would best thirty knots on a calm sea. Windsom remained ten miles east, anchored in the lee of a so-far-unclaimed cay.
Slaton traversed the reef at idle, and saw no signs of habitation in the distant hulk. Indeed, in the gathering dusk Esperanza cast something of an apocalyptic image. Her hull rested askew on Midnight Reef, ten feet of water on the port side, and the starboard waterline fast against coral formations that were exposed at low tide.
A local news article Slaton had seen maintained that the only inhabitable parts of her structure were a few rooms in the aft superstructure—the bridge, a mess room, and a handful of crew cabins that had been more or less kept up. The Navy had reinforced the ship’s port side, starboard being largely unapproachable owing to the shallow reef and heavier seas beyond. On the port beam was a fixed deck ladder reaching ten meters down to the waterline. Slaton saw no fishing dory lashed to the ladder, which was the only functional entrance.
He had surveyed the ship using binoculars from two miles away, and now did it again at a mile. He saw no lights, no laundry pinned on rails, no bags of stinking trash thrown out on deck. Notably, there was also no flag, Philippine or otherwise, flapping from the crooked yardarm.
There was no sign of life at all.
He could think of no stealthy way to approach such a target. Slaton kept scuba gear on Windsom, but the currents around the reef were unpredictable, meaning he would have had to drive within half a mile to even consider a swim. On a featureless ocean, that was tantamount to ringing the doorbell. He’d also concluded that waiting until nightfall could prove a disadvantage—he had no
night-vision gear, and any drug smugglers on board probably would.
He steered north, along the reef that abutted the ship’s starboard side. Breaking waves warned of treacherous shallows, but Slaton could see deeper channels in the reef, evidenced by smooth countercurrents. His inflatable drew only twelve inches of water, less with the engine raised. That was another method he’d used in the past—lift the engine, and a team of commandos paddling in unison could close quickly in virtual silence. As it was, with the wind and currents against him, trying to paddle the last two hundred meters solo would be little more than an endless cardio workout. He decided to use the engine until the last minute, keeping the throttle to a minimum and hoping the breeze would drive the sound out to sea. In the end, Slaton saw but one certainty: If anyone remotely competent was on board the ship, they were going to see him coming. But that wasn’t all bad. A naked approach at dusk was obvious, but also unthreatening. It was his best chance to get close. Assuming he could manage that, whatever odds he was up against would begin to swing.
As he came nearer, Slaton got the impression that the ship’s hull was more rust than steel. Her bow was noticeably high on the reef, and what remained of her superstructure was in various stages of decay: listing aerials and davits, deck rails broken, and cables hanging into the sea like vines off a storm-ravaged tree. The hull looked paper thin, spars and bulkheads showing through like ribs on an underfed dog; any load at all in her holds would surely cause seams to burst. The bow gun emplacement held the remains of a 40mm Bofors. Once meant to intimidate, the gun now resembled something from a long-abandoned museum, its barrel pointed skyward in a final salute.
Twenty meters away, the breeze dropped sharply in the lee of the ship’s hull. He killed the motor and reached for the paddle. He was wearing old work clothes—a tattered pair of pants and a sleeveless shirt stained by mortar—reasoning that an approach to Esperanza in a black wetsuit and camo would be needlessly hostile. By the same logic, he’d brought the smallest weapons from the minor arsenal he kept under lock and key on Windsom—a reliable Beretta 9mm holstered beneath his shirttail, and a Glock 26 on his right ankle. Two spare magazines weighed down his left hip pocket, ready for a left-handed grab and reload, and a flashlight big enough to double as a truncheon filled the back pocket on his nonshooting side. With his hardware reasonably concealed, he might appear harmless on first glance—and anyone Slaton deemed threatening wouldn’t get more than one glance.
The starboard hull loomed high as he approached, the lowest deck rail five meters above his head. Slaton’s dodgy intelligence, a blend of old news articles, hearsay, and local rumors, had so far been spot-on—the starboard side of the ship gave no access to the upper deck. But he did see one possibility. Just beneath the wing of the bridge was a section of hull so rusted it was falling into the sea, and he noted a series of jagged holes that might be used as footholds. He paddled silently closer, his eyes and ears alert. He heard only water lapping against steel and the cry of a distant gull.
He lashed the dinghy by its painter to the base of a broken fitting. Slaton gauged the climb up close and thought it might work. Having brought a rope just in case, he looped it over a shoulder before beginning upward. In less than a minute he was on deck. He secured the rope, which had climbing loops at regular intervals, and fed it down to the dinghy. Ready for a quick departure.
There was still no sign of life, but caution got the better of him. Slaton pulled the Beretta from his waistband as he moved aft. He was on the main deck now, and above him were two upper levels, the highest having once been the bridge—it was rimmed with windows, and catwalks overlooked every part of the ship, the obvious high ground for anyone playing defense.
He stepped carefully, the wisdom of which was proved when one foot began sinking into a rusted section of floor. The problem area was the size of an oven door, and he shifted his weight and leapt silently over it. He immediately rounded a corner and was faced with a larger failed section that could only be traversed using a two-by-six plank someone had left in place. The plank took him to the base of the superstructure, and Slaton led with the Beretta through a doorless passageway. He cleared a room where two tattered hammocks were strung between bulkheads and the lone window was nothing more than a web of shattered safety glass. He saw an old generator, mooring lines, and a windlass under repair. The stench was heavy, fetid and rotting, and he quickly climbed a ladder toward the second of the three levels.
The instant his eyes reached the middle floor, he paused and scanned the room at ankle level before exposing himself further. He saw nothing worrisome and kept rising. As soon as he cleared the top step, Slaton sensed movement to one side. He whipped the barrel of his gun instinctively, and when the sight settled he saw a wary tiger-striped cat behind it. He lowered the Beretta. The cat looked healthy and plump, and under its front paw was a small dead rat. Slaton half turned to take in the rest of the room, and when he did the cat bolted, taking its kill and disappearing through some unseen passageway.
The light outside was growing dim, and he pulled out his flashlight to inspect a mess hall that hadn’t been used as intended for nearly twenty years. He saw an old steel sink, and a makeshift kitchen consisting of a propane stove and a tiny refrigerator. There was no food in sight, but on a table in the center he saw the scattered excrement of some manner of vermin. There were also discarded sheets of plastic, a container of Ziploc bags, and a mechanical scale that could have been taken from a grocery store deli. Trash littered the floor, along with a dusting of what looked like ground tea leaves. He decided smugglers might have replaced the Philippine Navy after all.
He moved toward the stairs that led to the bridge, and was nearly there when a clatter came from above. Slaton trained his weapon on the metal staircase. The cat? he wondered. No, the cat would be finishing its dinner.
His senses shot to another level, grasping for any sound or motion. All too late, he recognized his error. He’d been too predictable, coming straight up the only staircase. He turned and saw a shadow in the stairwell he’d just risen through. The next thing he saw was the barrel of a machine pistol rising upward.
SIX
Slaton threw himself against a wall as the weapon shattered the silence in full auto, rounds pinging into metal and ricocheting across the room. He felt a strike and a sting of pain in his left thigh. As soon as the burst ended, he curled his hand into the stairwell and fired three unsighted rounds down the path of the rising steps. He heard a thump and a clatter from below, one body and one gun hitting the deck in quick succession. If there was another threat, he knew where it would be.
He vaulted into the stairwell as shots came from above, reverberating like thunder between the gray-steel walls. Slaton returned fire upward this time, suppression to buy precious seconds. Reaching the main deck, he saw the man he’d just hit, unmoving and still. His machine pistol had tumbled toward the doorway that led outside. It would be a useful weapon in this kind of fight, but the idea was killed when a third figure appeared on the threshold. More rounds rained down from above.
Slaton lunged toward the only other way out of the room, firing four rounds as he leapt shoulder-first into the already-shattered window. The glass gave way and he tumbled onto the outer deck, landing in an awkward roll. He scanned for other attackers as he counted to three, then rose to the window frame, acquired the man just inside the doorway, and sent three rounds toward his head. He waited only long enough to see the man crumple as if his bones had disconnected.
He ducked back down, shouldered to the wall, and ran toward the starboard sidewall where his dinghy was tethered. The Beretta’s slide was back, confirming the count in his head—mag empty, no round in the chamber. He dug into his pocket for a spare, and had just reached the corner of the superstructure when two problems arose. A man appeared on the catwalk along the starboard side, his gun lifting toward Slaton. The greater problem was the magazine he pulled from his pocket—the frame was hopelessly bent and he felt the li
quid warmth of his own blood.
The sting in my thigh.
Slaton registered a noise from behind, and he saw a man straddling through the window with his gun leveled—no doubt the one who’d been above. That put the count at four, with two down. Manageable, except for the fact that Slaton was looking at a pair of gun barrels from different directions. The man at the window said something. His partner responded. Slaton could discern only that they were speaking French—not one of his better languages.
He stood still, a spent weapon in his hand. With two targets so widely spaced, Slaton knew he could never pull and load his final mag in time. Even if he tried, that one might also be damaged. He had only one remaining advantage.
He had been here before.
In the next two seconds he learned a great deal about the men facing him. Most important, he realized they were not assassins. It had nothing to do with the fact that their shooting had been ineffectual, or that their tactical approach had been flawed. He knew because of what they weren’t doing right now. Assassins never hesitated.
Never.
The men stared at him with a certain satisfaction—thoughts of payback for their two downed comrades, but also a bit of victory. They were soldiers, in some sense of the word, and so Slaton played along. Completely exposed, and with an unloaded weapon in his hand, he did what any vanquished combatant would do.
He surrendered.
The three men stood together at the corner of Esperanza’s superstructure, Slaton at the vertex of a right angle. He was fifteen feet from both men, but most critically, neither of them could see the other. Somewhere over his right shoulder, fifteen feet down, the dinghy bobbed lazily on its line. The man near the door was big, over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds. Geometry and numbers that were vital.