“Yeah, she was nice,” I said without looking up. “Wait until you see this Jane,” I began to tell her, my excitement bubbling over.
“Pretty big amount, isn’t it?” Jane said with a matter of fact tone.
“Pretty big?” I exclaimed. “It’s huge.” I paused for a second. “How did you know it was big?”
I looked at her as if I had a huge cartoon question mark over my head. Alex and Galveston each looked up, but stayed hunched over.
“I had a nice long talk with Maddie earlier, before I gave you the call. She revealed a lot of information on the nature of the job. She wanted to have an offer ready before she came in, so I gave her a little information about our past experiences,” Jane said. She checked her nails with feigned nonchalance.
“What exactly did you tell her, Jane?” I inquired.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I told her that we’ve done this type of job before, and we were capable of taking care of their problem. She inquired about what range our fees ran, so I told her that you guys usually don’t take a case of this magnitude and under this time frame for less than $50,000.”
All of our mouths went agape. I was shocked. I would have been happy to negotiate a price of $20,000 plus expenses. A few bucks more and I would have given up my right kidney.
“We talked for half an hour. Her company is in quite a bind. They have no other choice but to pay. I could tell by her voice that she had been given the go ahead to negotiate any price. I’m curious to know how much money they might lose if you guys don’t succeed.”
“Probably millions of dollars,” I said, still shocked.
“There you go,” she said with confidence. “That’s why they’re willing to pay. Now how much would we lose if you guys don’t succeed?”
I scanned the document until I had to turn the page. I finally got my answer buried in one of the paragraph. My heart went into my throat; “cost of all expenses,” it read. The document was negotiable, but the benefit of success was overpowering. If we failed, we would end up losing money, but if we succeeded, it would be a payday that was unimaginable.
I pointed at the number to enlighten Alex and Galveston.
“Ouch,” was their reply, almost in unison. “So we’ll watch our expenses, but we won’t fail,” said Galveston.
“So what do you guys think? Should we go for it?” I asked them both seriously. “This is a huge risk. It could put us out of business if it goes bad.”
“If we don’t take it, we’re right back to scraping by on little jobs. I’ve sort of grown fond of you two idiots,” Alex said slapping us on the back. “So, that being said, I’m in, if that’s the direction you guys want to go,” Alex announced. “It sounds kind of fun.”
“What do you think, Galveston?” I asked the clearly disheveled man.
“Taking risks is how we got in this business in the first place. I think we have to do it. Go big or go home, I always say.”
“I’ve never heard you say that,” I blurted.
“Me either,” Alex agreed.
“Rule 231, for your information,” he replied tartly. “Now, are we agreed on this or not?” Galveston had grown tired of our constant, witty repartee. “Let’s decide right now.”
We looked back and forth toward each other and nodded in unison. We were going for it and taking the chance. It was going to be interesting since we knew jack squat about ships. We would need a crash course in maritime activities.
“I think we need to thank Jane for her fabulous work.” I smiled widely at Jane and clapped my hands together.
“We may have you do all the negotiations from now on, Jane,” Galveston laughed. “Roger better get his act together to keep up with you.”
I deserved the needling, and a good part of me was jealous and envious that Jane had been so affective in negotiating our contract, all from her phone. She was beaming from ear to ear at her conquest. I couldn’t help but melt at the sight of her smile. I was very proud of her. Jane was the glue that held Alex, Galveston, and me together, and she had worked her magic once again.
As the dust settled from our big decision, I noticed Galveston sitting quietly, like a love sick puppy.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“She’s beautiful,” he said softly. “I think I’m in love.”
“No, you’re not in love,” I responded flatly.
“Yes, I think I am.”
“No, you really aren’t,” I said with emphasis.
“Yeah,” Galveston said, nodding his head.
“Nope.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, we can do this all day. You are not in love,” I said. As Galveston tried to respond again I held up my finger. “No, we’re not going there.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Alex interjected.
“I’m in love,” Galveston announced.
“Really? With Maddie?” Alex scrunched his face. “You sure?”
“Yeah. She’s beautiful, intelligent, and dynamic.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever described a woman as ‘dynamic’,” Alex said.
“She’s incredible,” Galveston reiterated.
“I think she thinks you’re a little strange,” I told Galveston.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You kind of freaked her out. You look like the strange guy on the corner that people cross the street to avoid,” I told him.
“No, I think we had a connection,” Galveston concluded.
“Yeah, a connection to a future restraining order,” Alex quipped.
I couldn‘t help but let out a huge laugh at that one.
Galveston pouted silently, stung by Alex’s barb.
“Can we get back to business?” I implored Galveston.
“Okay. Don’t mind me. I’ll just keep quiet from now on.” Galveston took on the tone of a martyr.
I had to roll my eyes. We had a gigantic amount of work ahead of us, plus I needed to call Maddie back to accept the job. And here we were, talking and wasting time on Galveston’s love life—again.
Jane just watched us with a smile. Our nice happy family was back together.
“You boys need to get going. I didn’t do all this work for you guys to fritter it away. Now everyone pull up your skirts and get to work.” She tried to sound forceful, but missed her mark.
“I bet you’ve been waiting to say that all day, haven’t you?” I asked with a smile plastered on my face.
“Yeah, I wanted to be involved in this bull session. Now get your asses to work.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we all said in unison.
“But first we need to clean up Galveston with a big, soapy brush,” Alex added.
“We’re not going to get anything done today, are we?” I appealed to Jane in an exasperated tone.
Jane poked Alex. “You look up what this company we’re working for does.” She then pulled Galveston by his shoulders from his chair. “You find out what it entails to find a ship at sea.” Then she turned her sights on me. “And you? Call Maddie Jenkins and get this contract finalized.”
I had trained her well, and none of us questioned her instructions. The truth was we all kind of liked this new, authoritative Jane, and we moved to do our appointed tasks. I felt a light smack as I attempted to throw out another smart remark to Galveston, causing me to push away a daydream of a pretty teacher, naughty student scenario from my mind. I then refocused on her previous order—call Maddie.
Back to work we went, happy to have a huge task at hand. In truth it would prove to be our most challenging job yet.
-Chapter 17-
I contacted Maddie Jenkins about the proposed contract just after four o’clock, once I had read through the entire document. It all seemed straightforward, but hastily written. Time was the enemy, to both OceanLogic and us.
Maddie faxed over some preliminary documents that showed the last location of the ship, background information on the crew, and information about t
he specifications of the Trusian.
None of us were very familiar with container vessels. We of course had seen them from a distance or in pictures, but none of us had ever been on one. I distributed the papers to Alex and Galveston according to the jobs Jane had given us.
I loved the ocean, but like Galveston and Alex, knew nothing of boating. Galveston and I were both experienced scuba divers, but had never been on a boat this size. We needed a crash course on the shipping industry. So I set forth to read everything I could find about sea shipping and container ships. In a way the water was all ready a little over our heads—pardon the pun.
Next, I perused a set of documents from Maddie detailing the Trusian. The Trusian was a Panamax vessel, the largest ship type able to get through the locks of the Panama Canal and a third generation cargo ship, built in the late 80’s. It was just over the length of three football fields and had a width of about one hundred feet. The superstructure, where the operations and living areas were located, had six decks with a bridge that overlooked the top of the containers. It had gone through a retrofit in the year 2000, where its navigation equipment and engines were overhauled, and extra support areas were added to allow a different variety of cargo to be carried. Due to the limits of the Panama Canal, it was actually a small ship by today’s standards. The ship’s today are in their fifth generation of size, having developed types such as Post-Panamax, Post-Panamax Plus, Suezmax, and Post-Suezmax, the latter being a ship that can’t fit through the larger Suez Canal, which runs by the Sinai peninsula in Egypt and connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The Trusian was still a huge ship and nothing to sneeze at.
I read on that the Trusian had arrived in Hong Kong from Singapore about four days ago. It had unloaded and had a few crew changes. The captain of the ship had been replaced for the voyage from Hong Kong to Los Angeles due to a personal problem. The unloading and loading of the cargo had gone without incident, per reports from the workers at the Hong Kong port, and there had been no problems with the ship, its crew, or the cargo.
The ship had made the necessary reports to the company’s dispatch after leaving Hong Kong. The ship’s transponder had shown the vessel on a steady course toward Los Angeles, with no deviations until the captain reported a malfunction of the transponder on the second night of the voyage. The crew had made hourly reports of the ship’s position to dispatch, but it was now clear that these were inaccurate.
As I began to formulate a timeline for the entire incident, Alex came into my office with Galveston at his heels. He wanted to update us on what he had learned about our client and the shipping company, Regentex. It was important that we all had the full picture on whom we were dealing with.
Alex explained that Regentex was a standard shipping company that owned a fleet of twelve container vessels and two natural gas tankers. It was a medium size company by maritime shipping standards. Regentex mainly operated in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans only; between Asia, North and South America, and Europe. Occasionally it would ship to the west coast of Africa, but did not operate around the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean Sea due to the high pirate activity and long sailing times associated with those routes. It had a shaky balance sheet even in today’s economical times, and had overextended itself trying to expand with the purchase of new vessels. Now Regentex was struggling to find the capital to operate these ships, and the global recession had stunted its ability to grow further.
Regentex had never had an incident relating to a hijacking in its history, and its safety record was excellent. The company had filed a few claims with its insurance broker over the years, but nothing had been out of the ordinary for this particular business sector. But according to Regentex’s latest balance sheet, they wouldn’t be able to survive a hit like this, insurance or not. Business wasn’t booming like before. People weren’t snapping up the cheap goods coming out of China, pennies were being pinched by companies who cut their regular shipping routines, and construction and manufacturing materials were in much less demand. Income for the company had decreased while the drive to expand during the boom times had left them with considerable debt. A loss of a ship this size would spell doom for Regentex. Even a loss of half of the ship might put them into bankruptcy.
“That’s about all I got for now,” Alex told us as he finished his quick report. “I’ll start looking into the top brass in the company, their histories, and if there is any connection to the ship.”
We had learned to never expect the obvious, no matter how clear it appeared. Knowing the background of Regentex and its players enabled us to form a clear picture of the circumstances behind the disappearance of this ship.
“What you got for us, Galveston?” I asked, crossing my fingers that he had done his work.
“As you know, I was threatened by Jane into finding out what it takes to locate a ship at sea, and unfortunately, it ain’t easy.” Galveston flicked through a few slightly crumpled pieces of paper in front of him. “Two of the most common ways of tracking a ship are with the AIS, the automatic identification system, and weather reports made by the vessel, which is voluntary. Some vessels make radio position reports, but that is rare at best.”
Galveston turned the page over and continued to read from his scribbled notes. “There are some companies that do satellite tracking but only after a problem occurs. Let’s say a boat towing a barge loses it in a storm; this company will try to figure out where the barge ends up using drift calculations, weather, currents, and the latest satellite pictures. I don’t know if they could find a ship under its own power, however.”
“So you’re telling us it’s difficult?” I posed the question like a dense student.
“It measures up to finding a needle in a haystack,” Galveston sighed. “We know the Trusian supposedly didn’t have an active AIS, and the position reports were obviously false, so it could be anywhere in the Pacific Ocean.”
“Ouch.” I replied. I hoped there was a quick satellite picture that we could access, but it wasn’t that easy. “What should we do?” I asked the group.
Quiet passed over the room as we mulled the question. This was a problem on a scale that we had never dealt with before. Galveston looked at me seriously, a look I hadn’t seen in many months.
“We need to approach this like any other investigation we’ve done before. We need to trace the steps and instead of finding where the ship is now, find out where it is going.”
I could tell from his words that he was thinking out of the box. We could spend an inordinate amount of time looking for a ship across thousands of square miles of ocean, or we could trace the steps leading up to its disappearance. The latter appeared the most realistic and reasonable.
“I think you’re going to need to do some magic with that computer of yours, Alex,” I told our resident electronics expert.
“Great. I knew you guys were going to make me work. I have a wine tasting tonight,” he replied sarcastically.
“I think you’ll survive,” Galveston said quickly, rolling his eyes. “Roger and I are going to do all the real work anyway.” He paused and put his finger to his chin as if he was formulating some great idea. “I think Maddie needs to come see us with all the information she has when the ship was docked in Hong Kong and before. That would be our best start.” Galveston smiled slyly.
“Uh-huh,” I replied with hesitance. “Unfortunately I agree with you. She needs to be involved in our investigation. She can get the information we need from Regentex.” I looked at Galveston again who smiled like a schoolboy who just pulled one over on the teacher.
I gazed over our group. How were three men and two women going to find a huge ship that was possibly being controlled by a group of pirates that had a brilliant plan in place? I became excited. Whoever was doing this had no idea who they were dealing with.
-Chapter 18-
Dimitri awoke with a start to the sound of an air horn blasting from outside his porthole window. He had been asleep for hours and struggled to
regain his senses. His leg was still tender, but doing much better after taking the pain killers the pirates had given him. Luckily the pills hadn’t proved to be something more deadly.
The air horn blasted again, and Dimitri pushed himself up to the window. The opaque covering over the porthole only let light in and completely obstructed his view to the outside. Dimitri needed to figure out how to remove the covering, but it was thick and secured with a strong adhesive. He began to scratch at an edge with his fingernail, trying to pry an area off, but wasn’t making any progress.
Dimitri got off the bed and searched the room for anything sharp that he could use as a tool. The room was completely empty of any objects, and the desk containing his belongings had been emptied. He sank heavily into the edge of the bed as an idea sprang into his head. Dimitri shifted onto the floor with a wince of pain and lay down on his back. He used his strong leg to push himself under the bed until he spotted what he was after. The bed had a flimsy mattress, but the frame itself was made up of springs that ran across the metal bed frame. He shoved himself farther under the bed until he could get his foot on the opposite side. He flexed at his hip with as much force as he could muster to loosen one of the springs tension. The bed creaked as he kept his leg flexed, and Dimitri used his hand to release one of the springs from its hole. It sprung violently as it came loose. He carefully released his leg and coerced the spring from its hole on the other end.
Dimitri threw the spring onto the bed and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He still couldn‘t put much weight through his injured leg, but was able to grapple his way back onto the bed. Dimitri hurriedly grabbed the end of the spring and pulled himself up to the window. Carefully he scraped at the edge of the round window with the sharp end of the spring. After a few minutes, he was rewarded with a slight view of water from the window.
Dimitri continued to work at the window covering. The opaque adhesive came off in clumps, and he set them off to the side to use them to replace the evidence of his work later.
Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 02 - Peeking Duck Page 8