“Nasty day for a cruise,” she said.
“Indeed.”
She scanned him for signs of incipient seasickness but didn’t see any. His face was as impassive and cool as ever, impossible to read. Usually they turned white before they puked, but he was already about as white as you could get.
“We’ll be reaching the first drop point in about fifteen minutes. It’s the inlet between Boca Grande and Cayo Costa. The second drop is off Manasota Key and the third and fourth off the Venice Inlet. The fifth is a bit farther out to sea and about ten miles north. It’s pretty much a straight shot up the coast.”
“Thank you for the explanation.” Pendergast didn’t offer to help and she wouldn’t have wanted him to anyway. In these rough seas, a man overboard wasn’t out of the question. The storm causing them was way out in the gulf and heading toward the delta. They were getting the fringes of it, nothing her boat couldn’t handle, and nothing that was forecast to get any worse. Just your usual rough day at sea—or so she hoped.
It wasn’t long before Gladstone noticed a boat on the radar, about five nautical miles back. It had been there almost since they passed Sanibel Light and it seemed to be pacing them. She enlarged the radar field and made a mental note of the other vessels in the vicinity, their positions and headings. There weren’t nearly as many as usual—the nasty weather had kept the pleasure boaters in port. These were working boats. Her eye drifted back to the green blob five miles behind, going the same speed and heading as the Leucothea. She glanced back but could not make out the boat among the swells and whitecaps, spray and mist.
Pendergast had been quiet, but now he spoke. “It seems we are being followed.”
“You mean that boat at one eighty about five miles back? I noticed it, too. Could be a coincidence.”
“Shall we perform a little test?” he murmured.
“How so?”
“Alter your course by ninety degrees.”
“Not a bad idea.” She turned the helm and brought the boat around in a wide arc to a new heading of 270 degrees.
“Hey,” said Lam, calling in through the open wheelhouse door. He had been back in the stern area, preparing the first drop. “What’s with the course alteration? We should be heading north.”
“Just a little experiment,” said Gladstone.
She watched the little green blob, Pendergast at her side. After a minute or two, it altered course to track them.
“Son of a bitch,” Gladstone said.
“Does that vessel have AIS?” Pendergast asked.
She was surprised he knew about the Automatic Identification System carried by most boats. “No.”
“Are you using AIS?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. Glancing back, she could see that Lam, bundled up in a slicker, his red sneakers replaced by oversize green rubber boots, was fully occupied setting up his drift buoys. “Agent Pendergast, would you be willing to go aft with those binoculars and tell me what you see? Keep a hand on the grab rails—the sea’s pretty rough.”
“Certainly.”
Pendergast exited the wheelhouse and went to the stern, raising the binoculars. She could see his bright yellow form trying to peer through the spray and wind.
She now altered course back to the original heading—and noted the other vessel soon followed suit.
Pendergast returned, shedding water. “I couldn’t make it out, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, visibility sucks.” Who the hell would be following her, and why?
“Would it make sense for you to turn off your own AIS?” said Pendergast.
“I could do that, but it wouldn’t make any difference—that boat’s already locked in on us with radar. What I’m going to do instead is call the bastard on VHF.”
“Excellent idea.”
Gladstone pulled down her mike. Channel 16 was quiet, so she pressed the transmit button. “Unknown vessel, unknown vessel, this is Leucothea, over.”
There was no response. She waited two minutes and tried again. Still no response.
“Didn’t the vessel receive your message?” Pendergast asked.
“She damn well did, she’s required by law to have the VHF tuned to channel 16. She’s just not answering.” Now Gladstone was seriously pissed off. No AIS and ignoring a call—that was not right. But they were nearing the first drop point and she had to turn her attention to that.
“Wallace, how are you doing back there?” she called through the open door.
“Ready to roll.”
“On my signal.”
He picked up a plastic basket of the buoys and carried them back to the transom. Gladstone throttled down to seven knots. The slackening of speed, she noticed, was soon matched by the following vessel.
Keeping an eye on the chartplotter, she held up her hand, then brought it down. She saw Lam toss the first buoy overboard. In another five hundred feet, she signaled the second drop. In five minutes, all buoys earmarked for the first drop were away.
He came back in, grinning. He used a towel hanging on a hook to dry his face and hands, and then checked an iPad mounted on a side console. “All buoys broadcasting their positions.”
Gladstone throttled up. “On to Manasota Key.”
The boat accelerated. She watched the following boat to see what she’d do. But that boat was now doing something different. Instead of pursuing, it was accelerating to where they had just dropped the buoys. The green blob approached the first drop point and slowed, then circled and stopped. She couldn’t believe it—what were they doing?
“What the fuck!” Lam cried, staring at the radar. “That boat’s picking up our buoy!”
Gladstone watched as the green blur of the boat on her radar merged with the GPS location being broadcast by one of the buoys. She throttled back down and grabbed the mike. “Unknown vessel, unknown vessel picking up our buoy, this is Leucothea, over.”
Still no answer.
“Unknown vessel, this is Leucothea, get your hands off our gear or we’re reporting you to the Coast Guard.”
Still no answer. But now the boat was moving toward the second buoy in the drop.
“Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is R/V Leucothea, over.”
She waited. No response. “Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is R/V Leucothea, position 26.68 north, 82.34 west, please respond, over.”
This was crazy. The Coast Guard monitored channel 16 twenty-four/seven and had surely picked up her call. Why the hell weren’t they answering? She checked to see if there was a problem with the radio and confirmed it was indeed broadcasting at twenty-five watts.
“The boat’s picked up two buoys,” Lam said. “And now…looks like it’s accelerating toward us.”
Gladstone stared at the radar. Lam was right: the boat was really coming at them, now moving close to thirty knots. She looked at Pendergast. “I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I can’t outrun that sucker.”
Pendergast said, “Allow the boat to approach us.”
“But they might be dangerous—drug dealers or criminals. I can’t understand why the Coast Guard isn’t responding to our call.”
“Perhaps because that boat is the Coast Guard.”
“What? Why the hell would they interfere with my work? I’ve got permits up the wazoo!”
“If I were you, I would have those permits at the ready.”
Gladstone waited. She kept the throttle down, the Leucothea making only enough headway to keep her bow to the seas. As the green dot approached, she began to hear the distant throb of an engine, and then the vessel’s shape materialized out of the mist and drizzle—the unmistakable form of an RB-M Coast Guard patrol boat, with a Day-Glo orange hull and a 50-caliber machine gun mounted in the front.
“Christ, it is the Coast Guard!” She pulled down the mike again. “Hey, Coast Guard patrol, this is Leucothea. What’s the matter—you guys deaf? Over.”
The vessel slowed about a hundred feet out and a loudspeaker blared. “We are drawing alongsid
e. We are drawing alongside. Bring your vessel to a halt and prepare for boarding.”
Gladstone yelled into the mike. “Coast Guard, in case you haven’t noticed, the sea is a little rough for coming alongside, over.”
Finally a voice came over the VHF. “Leucothea, this is Coast Guard RB-M 5794. Move to channel nine, over.”
Gladstone furiously punched in the channel. “Hey, what the hell are you guys doing, picking up my buoys? I’m a research vessel! And this is no sea for a safe boarding!”
“Repeat: we are coming along your port side and will board, out.”
She clicked off the transmission. “Assholes. Wallace, toss out the fenders on the port side. This is messed up—we’ve got a six-foot swell running!” She turned to Pendergast. “You’re FBI. What are you going to do?”
Pendergast returned her look. “Cooperate.”
“Jeez, thanks a lot.”
She brought the boat to a halt. With no headway, it began getting pushed all over the place by the sea. The Coast Guard boat now came up alongside, and a crew member tossed over a couple of lines, which Lam cleated down before racing into the hold, apparently to hide. The two boats were now tethered, heaving up and down, the inflatable gunwale of the Coast Guard boat smacking hard on their hull with each swell. The man directing the operation came out of the wheelhouse dressed in foul-weather gear, but she could see the lieutenant’s bars on his sleeve. Two sailors helped him over the side and onto the deck of the Leucothea, then followed.
“Lieutenant Duran, United States Coast Guard,” he bellowed. He was a big man, not fat but broad and solid, with a brushy mustache and icy blue eyes. The two other men came up behind him. “This is a Coast Guard boarding. Please remain in place while the vessel is searched.”
“Hey, don’t you guys need a warrant?” Gladstone asked.
“Title fourteen, section eighty-nine of the United States Code authorizes the U.S. Coast Guard to board vessels subject to the jurisdiction of the United States anytime, anyplace upon the high seas and upon any waterway over which the United States has authority, to make inquiries, examinations, inspections, searches, seizures, and arrests,” said the lieutenant in a booming voice.
“Really? Jesus Christ.”
The two men began searching the boat, rummaging through the bin of undropped buoys, opening the hatches, shining lights into the bilges, flipping cushions, opening gear lockers, throwing stuff around.
“Be careful in there!” She looked at Pendergast. “Aren’t you going to show your badge?”
“They know very well who I am,” he said. His face seemed even paler than usual.
Duran came back. “Okay, let’s see your captain’s license and registration papers.”
Gladstone opened a compartment next to the helm and shoved them at him. He took them, examined them, and handed them back. “Research permits?”
She gave those to him as well. He flipped through them, not even bothering to make a show of reading. He tossed them back at her and turned to his men. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Just a moment,” said Pendergast quietly.
Duran turned and jutted his chin at Pendergast. “What?”
“May we know the reason for this search?”
Duran grinned. “Well, we saw shit tossed in the water, so we decided to check it out. Might have been garbage, drugs, sewage discharge—who knows? You got a problem with that, pal?”
Pendergast didn’t reply.
The man’s arrogant, smirking gaze rested a while longer on him; then he turned to Gladstone. “Looks like everything’s in order. We’ll leave your buoys on the deck. Uh, looks like one of them got a bit dinged up when we ran it over.” A bigger grin. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
The man went out onto the deck with his two companions and they climbed back to their boat. Gladstone was sorry to see that none of them got thrown into the drink by the swell.
“Cast off!” Duran called.
Gladstone cast off and the Coast Guard boat revved its engine and swung away.
As Lam cautiously emerged from below, Gladstone turned to Pendergast. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Harassment,” said Pendergast.
“How come you didn’t pull rank on those assholes?”
“A wise man once said, ‘Engage the enemy on your terms, not on his.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“They wanted to provoke me at sea, where they have almost unlimited power—and I have next to none.”
“So you’re going to, ah, wait to engage them on land?”
“That same wise man said, ‘Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.’” And with this, the pale agent smiled in a ghastly way and his eyes glittered like broken glass.
34
AT THE MOUNTAIN PASS above San Miguel Acatán, Agent Coldmoon looked through the grimy window of the bus down into the valley. It was, he had to admit, a spectacular view—the snowcapped peaks of mountain ranges all around, the valley blanketed in clouds, the patchwork fields on the hills above.
There were two ways for an FBI agent to conduct an investigation in a Central American country. One was to go through official channels, using the Central American Intelligence Program, the CAIP, run out of Quantico and the State Department, which would have taken days if not weeks to set up, involving official visits with partnering government officials in Guatemala, paperwork up the wazoo, visas, dinners, photo ops, and so on. The other was to do what he had done and just go on a tourist visa. He would find what he wanted and then, if necessary, on his return, retroactively jump through all the hoops.
Staring down into that mist-shrouded mountain valley, he felt he’d arrived at the end of the earth. Soon the bus crept down the switchbacks, grinding gears, and went below the level of the clouds into a misty dreamscape. It wasn’t long before they entered the town. Small pastel-colored farmhouses with tin roofs clung in clusters to the steep hills, among green patchwork fields and tattered strings of rising haze, above a roaring torrent in the ravine below. The bus came to a halt at the main square in town, fronted on one side with a whitewashed church and on the other with some tin-roofed government buildings and a small outdoor market where livestock and vegetables were being sold.
He stepped off with his backpack into the square and looked around. San Miguel Acatán was impoverished but still retained a sturdy dignity. It was easy to see why people might leave and head off to America. God, but what a journey that must be, he thought, looking at the endless sea of mountains stretching northward to the Mexican frontier.
He could see that everyone in the square and the little market had noted his presence and was watching him, not in an obvious way, but slyly, out of the corners of their eyes. There was a wariness here at the presence of a stranger. Although his skin was the same color as theirs, he was acutely aware of his towering height, lean physique, and craggy appearance, so different from the small stature and rounded physique of the local Maya population.
He had done what preparation he could. While there were no landline phones in San Miguel, there was, amazingly, cell phone service, and he had managed to get a list of phone numbers of twelve inhabitants in the town by the last name of Ixquiac. The name was pronounced “Ish-kee-ack,” he reminded himself. According to the cell phone company’s records, they all paid through P.O. box addresses. So he would have to find them by asking around.
He had also worked up a cover story. He knew that as soon as a stranger started going around a small, isolated town like this, asking questions, the whole place would go from wary curiosity to high alert.
Crossing the little square, with its collection of trees with whitewashed trunks, he entered the market. He went up to a woman selling guinea pigs in little wire cages, smiled, held out his hand, and introduced himself in Spanish, quickly removing one of the business cards he had printed up the evening before.
“I am Señor Lunafría,” he s
aid, “attorney-at-law.”
Upon hearing this, the woman shut down, her face hardening into a mask of suspicion.
“I’m looking for Señorita Ramona Osorio Ixquiac.”
He was gratified to see a flicker of recognition in the woman’s face at the name. “What do you want with her?”
“I have important news.”
The woman looked at him a long time, with an impassive face—so long that he began to feel uncomfortable. Maybe this wasn’t the best way to go.
Coldmoon leaned forward and lowered his voice. “If not her, is there an Ixquiac family member here that I can speak to? It’s a confidential matter.”
At this the woman turned and called out to a nearby seller, saying something in an Indian language. The other woman’s eyes widened and she left her stall and came over. She stared at Coldmoon.
“I am Ramona Osorio Ixquiac. What’s this all about?”
Coldmoon thought fast, stunned at how quickly he’d succeeded in finding an Ixquiac. If this was Ramona, then the foot must belong to her sister Martina. He said, “I am here about your sister, Señorita Martina.”
At this her eyes widened. “My sister? Oh, thank God, we haven’t heard from her in so long! Come, please come, to my house and tell me all about her, where she is, what she’s doing in America!” Her eyes shone with mixed excitement and apprehension and Coldmoon’s heart fell at what he would have to tell her. But maybe not everything—not just yet.
Ramona’s house stood at the edge of the ravine leading down to a river. The house was surrounded by several small, terraced kitchen gardens. The mist was continuing to lift and now a streak of sunlight pierced the cloud cover, making a bright moving spot on a distant hillside.
The house was built of pale-blue-washed cinder blocks and neat as a pin, down to checked curtains and a clay jug of flowers on the kitchen table.
“Please be at home,” said Ramona, offering him a seat.
Coldmoon sat and the woman busied herself with a pot of coffee simmering on a woodstove. She poured two mugs and brought them over with a bowl of sugar and a jug of cream.
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