by Chris Ryan
Paulo looked at it. 'They're there somewhere? That's a huge area. We can't search that in time.'
'How did you calculate this?' said Amber. 'Did you get a zero wrong?'
Hex had anticipated their comments. 'I memorized the grid reference where the mayday call was made. Here.' He pointed to a spot not far off the coast of Curaçao. 'But they won't be there now because they'll know the mayday call will have given away their position. So – it's been ninety minutes, and I reckon a boat like that has a maximum speed of thirty-two kph and a cruising speed of twenty-eight kph, so they'll be somewhere in this circle.'
'But it's too big,' said Alex.
Hex held a finger up. 'I haven't finished yet. There's a strong current, so that means if they go with the current it looks more like this.' He made the circle into an oval.
'That's even bigger,' said Li.
'Ah, but here's how we make it smaller,' said Hex. 'They won't be heading inland, so we can discount this area–' He shaded an area around Curaçao on the map. 'They won't be going towards Bonaire either, so we can discount that too.' He shaded another area. 'And here and here are international shipping lanes, so they'll be keeping away from those too.' He shaded more areas on the map. 'Which leaves us with . . .' He spread his hands like a magician presenting the climax of a trick. There were two main areas left, one small and one bigger – about twelve kilometres across. 'It's an educated guess but I've been through it all twice and it came out the same both times,' said Hex. 'If I was them, I'd go here somewhere.' He put his finger down decisively in the larger unshaded area.
Slowly, the others nodded.
'Sounds cool to me,' said Paulo.
Alex reached for a sandwich. 'We know what equipment we've got and we know where we're going. Let's make plans.'
18
BLACK GOLD
Hooded and masked, Li and Alex sped down into the water. On the surface, the Fathom Sprinter quickly became just a shadow in the distance. They were each holding onto a battery-operated sea scooter, a chunky propeller on handlebars capable of nearly 5 kph for an hour and a half. That was more than twice as fast as they could swim at top speed – but without the effort. Not only would it get them to their destination faster, it would save them air.
They streaked through the water, fins flowing like graceful fish, without even leaving bubbles. Instead of normal scuba gear Danny had given them closed rebreathers – sealed units that took the air they breathed out, removed the carbon dioxide and topped up the oxygen and other gases so that they could breathe it again. This meant that they could approach the yacht invisibly, without leaving a trail of bubbles to arouse suspicion. Additionally they had covered their wetsuit hoods in a blue version of disruption-pattern camouflage – made from a T-shirt.
They both kept a careful eye on the compasses on their dive computers, but they couldn't help delighting in being able to zip through the water so fast. Shoals of fish hanging like clouds below them went by in a flash. If normal dive-swimming was like taking a pleasant car trip through the water, this was like taking a bullet train. And because they weren't leaving bubbles, the wildlife wasn't scared away.
Alex had reservations about the rebreather. Although he knew it was quiet to the outside world, the sound of his breathing seemed deafening as it was all enclosed. If his mouthpiece fell out in the water, he couldn't put it back in because the substance in it that purified the air became poisonous when wet. So he and Li also carried tiny scuba tanks with about ten minutes' air supply, just in case. But there was no doubt the rebreather was the right kit for the job – it was silent, their supply would last much longer and they would be breathing less nitrogen. If they did have to go deep it would not be so risky.
In front of him, Li powered her scooter down to half speed. Alex did the same. They both checked their watches: twenty minutes had passed. By Hex's calculations they were in the zone where the yacht was likely to be. They were ten metres down; now they headed up two metres so that they could see the brilliant blue surface more easily. Everywhere were shades of blue – inky blue below, bright blue above, and blank, featureless blue all around. Alex got a sudden sense of panic. He had been in isolated places before but here he was in the most isolated place of all – the open ocean. He shook himself. No time for panic; they had to search. He turned on his back so that he was facing the surface.
Li seemed to feel the isolation too. She stuck close to him as they moved along slowly now, both on their backs so they could see what was above.
A huge jellyfish pulsed past them, opening and closing like a gigantic sun umbrella. Li had never seen such a big one. It wouldn't attack them; jellyfish just waited for prey to blunder into their tentacles, and long filaments trailed from its body, curling and drifting like a stream of vermicelli, spotted with rags of algae. In the sunlight from above it looked beautiful, like an organic comet with an endless tail.
Li suddenly saw the tail swish towards them. They were drifting into a current and in moments they could be entangled in the stinging cells. She clanged her torch on the metal box of her rebreather. Alex looked around in alarm and Li pointed. Dive! They flipped over, gunned their sea scooters and swooped downwards. The jellyfish swam over them, its tail floating out sideways.
Alex and Li slowed. The danger had passed. Alex flipped over on his back again, but Li simply pointed: in the empty water a shape was hanging, turning slowly in the current. It wasn't possible to tell exactly how big it was because the water gave no perspective. But it wasn't a shoal of fish. Was it another jellyfish? No, it didn't seem to be moving on its own – and it looked too solid.
They approached slowly, keeping their scooters idling in case they set up a current that drove the thing away. It drifted slowly, as if suspended from a mobile. At any moment they expected it to wake and flash off into the distance, but it didn't.
Then Alex began to get a bad feeling. It looked human.
Almost. But there was something odd where the head should be.
Li looked back at Alex, her dark eyes uncertain. They cut the scooter engines and drifted forwards.
A body, hanging in the water. A man's body with his head obscured behind a cloud. Li clutched Alex's arm. Blood.
Well-muscled, nearly two metres tall, the man was barefoot, dressed in a shirt, casual trousers and a diver's weight belt. That explained why he was this far down in the water instead of floating on the surface. The cloud around the head made it impossible to tell his age.
The same questions went through the two friends' minds. Were they too late? Had Bowman already been executed?
Alex waved his hand through the dark cloud, trying to clear it. A face loomed out of the gloomy water, leaking blood from an ugly wound in the cheek. The man had been shot. Probably executed.
Alex made himself look at the face.
And recognized it.
Not Bowman. It was the man his father had known from the Regiment. He scribbled a message on his slate for Li. Security chief. Not BB.
Li nodded.
The body rotated as though it was on a string. The two friends caught a glimpse of the back of the head, a big hole in the close-cropped hair, before the black cloud of blood masked it again. An exit wound. Alex analysed what he was seeing. It wasn't a professional job: most professionals aimed straight between the eyes; this was below the cheek. Professionals also tended to fire a second shot into the heart. But professional or not, it was effective. And it meant that at least one person on that boat had a gun.
Li wrote on her slate: Recent. Not eaten. Boat close.
Something moved at the edge of Li's vision. Her head whipped round and she saw a big white shape like a torpedo. The sea life had just got wind of the blood.
Alex saw her slate drop from her hand and swing on its lanyard. She gunned her scooter. Alex didn't hang around either. They streaked off through the water at full speed. As Alex glanced behind, he saw a shark cannon into the cloud of blood at the bodyguard's head. The cloud spread like sm
oke from a bonfire, as though to mask what went on next. He didn't want to see it anyway.
Li slowed and flipped over so that she was again travelling upside down, scanning the surface.
As their heart rates returned to normal, Alex felt a wave of cold anger. He remembered how the bodyguard had once come round to buy a bicycle that Alex had grown out of. It had been a very small bike and it had looked comical as the tall soldier had wheeled it away down the pavement. Alex remembered his name too – Ian Davidson. He had just been an ordinary guy with kids. And these greedy crooks had killed him.
Li stopped and pointed upwards.
There was a big black shape on the water – about fifty metres long. The right size for a big, expensive yacht.
They looked for the stern, then rose slowly until they were just below the surface. The propeller hung just above them, ticking over gently. The rudder, like a giant paddle under the boat, was turned hard to the left to keep the boat going in a wide circle for a few hours because out here the water was too deep for an anchor. Here was where the rebreathers – and the camouflage – came into their own, because they were very unlikely to be seen if anyone was on deck. There was a boarding platform jutting out like a shelf above the water line. An entry point. Some letters were visible, distorted to jumpy wiggles by the rippling water. Alex went as close to the surface as he dared and the letters became a name.
Black Gold.
They swam under the platform. It was about fifty centimetres above the water line, so they were able to surface. Alex unclipped two magnets from his BCD and fixed them a metre apart to the underside of the platform. The magnets had holes in the centre, like doughnuts, and were connected by a piece of nylon washing line a metre long. Alex pulled it taut.
While he was doing that, Li slipped off her BCD and rebreather. Alex then fastened them onto the washing line, taking care not to let the mouthpiece dip into the water. The plan was for Li to go aboard while Alex stayed below until she signalled, but if anything went wrong, she could jump in and recover her kit.
They'd rehearsed this routine before setting off, and now they ticked off the stages: rebreather off, rebreather stowed, mouthpiece protected. The next stage was for Li to stow her hood and mask. Underneath the hood her long hair had been piled on top of her head so that it hadn't got wet, which could arouse suspicion. She could feel Alex under the water at her feet, releasing the clips on her fins. He brought them up and hung them next to the other gear. Water slapped against the white hull as they worked and they could feel the thrum of the generator like a steady heartbeat deep in the boat. Li tucked her locket with its tracer – and a second tracer disc – securely down into her wetsuit, then unbuckled a rucksack from Alex's back and put it on. Ninety seconds after surfacing, she was ready.
Alex subsided into the water. As he went down, Li grasped the boarding platform and pulled herself up, her feet looking tiny without the fins. Then she was out of sight.
Alex stopped three metres below the surface. Here was where the wait began.
19
IN THE LION'S DEN
On the Fathom Sprinter, Hex sat up. 'I've got Li's trace. That means she's surfaced and is on the boat.'
'Good call, Hex,' said Paulo. 'You were right about where it was.'
Amber would have said something but her stomach was going through an uneasy patch. She sipped slowly at her umpteenth glass of rehydration mixture and tried her best to keep it down.
The atmosphere on the Fathom Sprinter had been tense ever since they'd watched Li and Alex plunge into the water and vanish below the surface. For a while the trace program on Hex's palmtop had shown only a blank screen. Now Li's trace had appeared, they breathed a little easier.
Amber put down her drink and leaned over the side. Hex winced. At any moment he expected the telltale sounds of retching. But Amber just stayed there quietly, looking at the sea.
'How are you doing?' Paulo asked her.
'Try not to be sick in the sea,' said Hex. 'It might attract sharks.'
Amber's voice came back sounding as though she was keeping her lips pressed together. 'Come here and I'll use your pockets, then.'
'Guess you won't be wanting a ride on one of these jet skis, then,' said Paulo, with a wicked grin.
On the back of the Sprinter they had two three-seater jet skis. Alex and Li seemed to have begged every favour possible from Danny. The thought of a jet ski bouncing through the waves made Amber grip the side of the boat hard.
Hex noticed and looked at Paulo, worried. 'Perhaps she shouldn't have come.'
'Yes I should,' growled a voice from the side of the boat. 'You keep watching that screen.'
Li crouched on the dive platform and unpacked the rucksack. Inside was an oilskin bag to keep the contents dry. She took out the black dress from the maid's outfit and put it on. The label said that it came from a big catering supplies company in Willemstad so it was probably the kind of thing worn by domestic staff generally. Her wetsuit was short-sleeved and cut off above the knees – the dress covered it nicely. The disguise that had worked for Amber should work for her too. She finished the outfit with a pair of black slip-on shoes and let her hair down so it hung loose. Lastly, she checked that she had the tracers around her neck.
She looked for the way up. There were three single-seater jet skis, a folded launch crane and— Ah. A white ladder.
She climbed the ladder and found herself on a big sun deck, with a wooden table and six white canvas chairs. Looking up, Li could see there was another deck above, with a large fringed umbrella visible. On the table in front of her was a chrome tray with three tall glasses containing a variety of half-finished concoctions – tomato juice, orange juice, mineral water. Li sloshed them all together into two glasses so that they looked like they were freshly made, then lifted the tray and set off. Now if anyone ran into her she would look as though she was fetching an order.
Directly ahead was a pair of double glass doors. She pushed them open with her backside. Inside was a saloon, air-conditioned and cool, decorated with honey-coloured wood panelling, white sheepskin rugs and a purple horseshoe-shaped sofa unit by a round table, where a man sat playing Patience. A harpoon gun lay beside him on the purple upholstery; a pistol was tucked into a holster over his shoulder. Was this the man who had executed the security chief?
The man looked up for a moment. His eyes crinkled as he saw Li and he gave her a smile that revealed bad teeth. For a second Li thought that he had seen her climb up from the dive platform. No – the ends of the sofa would have obscured his view. She hid her face in her hair and headed for the door that led away from the far corner. The man turned back to his cards.
The door led to a wood-panelled dining area. A big mahogany table was surrounded by chairs upholstered in the same purple as the sofa. It was empty. At the end of the dining room were two doors. One of them had a small porthole and she could see through to the galley, where the inky head of a Filipino chef was bent over a steaming pot.
The other door led into a corridor. Li crept along and into a tiny hallway with metal stairs and another door, which she opened gently. A cabin – one single bed and another bed on the wall above that could be pulled down. The sheets were rumpled and a few items of clothing lay strewn on the chairs. They looked like the whites the chef was wearing. This must be his cabin.
She came out again. The engine noise was louder in the hallway, suggesting that the stairs led down to the engines. She decided she'd investigate there if she didn't find Bowman elsewhere, but first she retraced her steps through the dining room and the saloon. The guard was still playing Patience. He looked up as she went past.
'Are you lost?' he said.
Li rattled off some words of Mandarin, hoping he wouldn't understand, or at least that he wouldn't realize it wasn't Filipino. He looked back at her and shrugged. But she had seen what she had been looking for – a set of steps leading down from the corner of the saloon, guarded by a brass rail. She pattered down, her tr
ay held high.
At the bottom there was a choice: right or left. Hearing a door open, she paused. A man in a cream-coloured linen shirt and white trousers came out and she recognized him immediately: Neil Hearst. The floor rocked slightly under her feet.
He saw her. 'I'll have those,' he said. 'Come this way.' He didn't look at her face at all, simply accepting her as part of the furniture.
She followed him into a little vestibule like the entrance to a hotel room, then the room opened out into a suite. It was in a terrible mess and it smelled stale. A double bed had been made roughly, another bunk had been pulled out of the wall and a sofa had also been used as a bed. Clothes and towels were strewn on the floor. It looked as if three people had been sleeping in that one room.
On the sofa was the man she was looking for: Bill Bowman.