Steady As She Goes: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 21)

by Wayne Stinnett

  All the information Ross was compiling was compared to AIS locations, shipping manifests, and schedules. This was performed by technicians in the op center, as well as analysts on Bimini and in New York. The Automatic Identification System reported commercial ships’ locations, courses, speed, and a few details about the ships. More and more boats of all sizes also used AIS.

  Finding the right set of connections between increased drug activity at home with the timing of a ship leaving the two countries whose coasts we searched would eventually indicate what ships were likely suspects to be carrying the drugs. Even if the drugs weren’t discovered and confiscated, the increased presence on the streets of American cities was a good indication of when big shipments arrived and where the drugs were distributed.

  Additional data and information such as this were analyzed by both computers and humans, searching for any anomaly or consistency that would tie one particular ship, out of the tens of thousands arriving in hundreds of American ports, to the big cocaine deliveries.

  Where the coke came from was easy. Colombia and Venezuela produced most of the world’s cocaine, and users in the U.S. consumed more of it than anywhere else. Just in the United States, over 130 billion dollars’ worth of cocaine is consumed each year— about the same as new car sales.

  Sniff…another SUV up the nose.

  But the Coast Guard and DEA were over-taxed, undermanned, and underfunded. Richard Nixon had first coined the phrase “war on drugs,” and since the 1960s, billions had been spent trying to stem the tide. But when hundreds of billions in profit were at stake, the cartels spent more.

  At noon, Matt returned to relieve me for lunch. After I’d eaten, I went back to the bridge and he turned in for the day. Later, once I went off duty and before going to bed, I’d come back up to allow him to get lunch. Sometimes Val or one of the other senior crew would fill in, controlling the ship while either Matt or I took a break from the boredom and just walked around Ambrosia’s decks.

  We alternated our schedule every week, moving forward six hours, so no crewman stood the same monotonous duty each night. The switch was always during my watch, so I was the only one pulling a double on the bridge. The rest of the crew worked four hours on and eight off.

  In the early afternoon, I turned the conn over to the helm and took a stroll around the boat’s vast decks. At 199 feet in length and having a thirty-two-foot beam, one lap around was nearly a tenth of a mile.

  Alone on the foredeck, I looked out over the water around us. The sea state seemed agitated, but it was nothing to Ambrosia. Aside from the wind and the sound of the bow wave, movement was barely noticeable. She was a big boat, with an aluminum hull and superstructure to keep weight down, but she still displaced over 450 tons.

  The sky was clear, save for a few scattered clouds off to the south, where I could just make out the foothills of the Venezuelan Andes rising above Puerto Cumarebo. Off to port lay the Dutch island of Curaçao, with a few puffy white clouds floating above it.

  As I started to turn aft, something ahead caught my eye. I stopped and watched but saw nothing for a moment. Then it appeared again; something on the water, just to the right of our course and a good mile away. Each second brought it closer.

  Still a half mile away, I recognized what it was.

  I turned and raced back along the side deck, taking the steps to the main deck two at a time. Entering the hatch, I went up another set of inside steps to the bridge.

  “Reverse engines!” I ordered, grabbing up the binoculars.

  “Reverse engines, aye!” the helmsman repeated.

  The boat began to slow as I scanned the water ahead of us.

  “Ahead slow, helm. Right ten degrees.”

  He again repeated my commands and Ambrosia crept forward, turning slightly. Through the binos, I found the object, dead ahead, just four hundred yards.

  “Steady as she goes, helm.”

  Axel centered the wheel. “Steady ahead. What is it, Captain?”

  “Small craft dead ahead,” I said. “At least five people aboard. It’s not moving.”

  Savannah was suddenly beside me. “What are they doing way out here?”

  “All stop,” I ordered, then turned to my wife. “I don’t know, but we’re stopping to check it out.”

  I took one last look to see which way we and the small boat were drifting, then pushed the intercom button. “Security to the port side aft.”

  I went down the spiral ladderwell to the main deck and hurried aft, Savannah following close behind me. When I came out onto the fantail, two armed men, both dressed in black, stood waiting.

  “Sorry if I woke you, Travis,” I said to the taller of the two.

  Travis Stockwell was older than me, but not by a lot. The skin of his face looked like old leather—tanned, with deep lines. He still wore a regulation crew cut, but it was nearly completely white now. The colonel’s years meant nothing where his physique was concerned. He worked out daily and hard. I knew, because we often worked out together.

  “Not a problem,” he growled. “Whatta you got?”

  “A small boat with at least five people aboard.” I moved over to the docking controls at the port rail, just ahead of the steps down to the big work deck mounted to the stern.

  I plucked the mic from its holder and pushed the button, speaking into it. “Captain has the conn.”

  The controls here were simple and didn’t involve the main engines, just the bow and stern thrusters, and a comparatively small, auxiliary electric motor for maneuvering. We were still drifting toward the boat, now just a few hundred feet ahead of the bow.

  The boat was small, less than fifteen feet and crudely built. The rough chop was threatening to swamp it, given the number of people aboard. It had a small outboard, but it wasn’t running.

  I moved the joystick forward and a little to the right, bringing Ambrosia broadside to the little boat. I continued to maneuver her so the big steel platform was close to the boat.

  I pushed the button for the bridge again. “You have the conn, Axel. All stop.”

  “Aye, captain,” Axel replied.

  “Let’s go see who they are,” I said to Stockwell.

  We went down the steps to the platform, where a crewman stood ready with a line in his hand. I gave him a nod and the line uncoiled perfectly as it sailed through the air to the outstretched arms of a man kneeling in the bow of the little boat.

  A few minutes later, we had the boat, really no more than a homemade raft, tied up to the platform.

  “Who are you?” I asked the man who’d caught the line.

  His blank expression caused Savannah to repeat my question in Spanish.

  “Mi nombre es Marcos Santiago,” he said. “Me llevo a mi familia a Curaçao, lejos de Venezuela.”

  “Venezuelan refugees,” Savannah said. “They want to go to Curaçao.”

  The political climate in Venezuela had been getting bad for some time. There was corruption from the top of the nation’s leadership down to the lowest police officer. Outlaws and drug cartels ran the country. The cartel leaders lived in opulent luxury, as did the politicos who accepted their bribes. Those who hadn’t, wound up dead or in the same situation as most of the country’s inhabitants—impoverished.

  Venezuela had once been where refugees from other Latin American countries escaped to. But now it was estimated that nearly half a million Venezuelans lived abroad, having fled their homeland with little more than the shirts on their backs.

  We got the people aboard and moved them up to the cockpit. There were seven of them. Marcos Santiago did speak a little English; he’d only been surprised when I’d spoken it earlier—he’d thought we were a Venezuelan ship.

  With him were his wife, Mayra, and their three daughters, a son-in-law, and a grandson, who was about Alberto’s age.

  Mayra explained that she and Marcos had worked in hospitality, managing a five-star resort in Maracaibo. Their dau
ghters had also worked with them at the resort. The daughters were all in their early twenties, I guessed, beautiful and intelligent.

  “Please,” Mayra said, once we were all seated at the table in the covered cockpit, “do not return us to Venezuela. We will be killed if we return.”

  “Why were you going to Curaçao?” I asked her.

  “To be free from the carteles,” she said. “They came for our children.”

  “Don’t you know what has been happening to your people who go to Curaçao?” Savannah asked. “They are jailed or forced into hiding.”

  She looked at her husband and spoke in rapid-fire Spanish.

  Marcos turned toward me, his eyes blinking. “I not know.”

  “Estás a salvo aquí con nosotros,” I said, realizing that the majority of the Spanish I could speak were words of comfort.

  “Where will you take us?” Mayra asked. “To America?”

  “For now,” I offered, “you are guests aboard Ambrosia. You can eat and rest. We are not bound for anywhere at the moment, though. So, we will have plenty of time to decide where you want to go.”

  “We want to go to America,” she said. “Marcos thought he could get us there from Curaçao. Por favor, señor. We have money.”

  For someone in their situation, admitting they had money was a great sign of trust.

  “Hold onto your money,” I told her. “You are our guests, mi invitada.”

  “Hello,” Alberto said from behind me.

  I turned and motioned him over. He came and stood between me and Savannah, our dogs sitting behind him.

  “This is our son, Alberto,” I explained.

  More rapid-fire Spanish was exchanged, mostly between Alberto and the Santiagos’ grandson.

  “I know boats,” the boy’s father told me. “I have worked on marine engines.” He looked at his wife and in-laws. “We will all work. We seek refuge, but we are not mendigos—beggars.”

  He’d been quiet for the most part and when he spoke, he had little accent. Offering to work seemed to be a natural thing for him. I remembered Pap telling me that any time I saw a man struggling to do something, I should pitch in and help. We weren’t struggling, but he was offering. I liked the young man.

  “Crew accommodations aren’t much aboard Ambrosia,” I said. “The crew doubles up, two beds in each cabin.” Then I turned to Savannah. “Do we have three adjoining cabins?”

  “Three, yes,” she replied. “But only two are adjoining.”

  The two boys had moved around to the side of the table, where they were talking quietly in Spanish, Alberto introducing his new friend to Finn and Woden.

  “We can sleep anywhere,” one of the two unmarried daughters said.

  The three sisters looked nothing alike but seemed to be almost the same age. The one who’d spoken had black hair, light brown eyes, and was slim, almost waifish, whereas the third sister had a more voluptuous figure and auburn hair.

  She spoke with barely a trace of an accent, as well. “Yes, Crystal and I shared an apartment before things turned bad last year.”

  The married sister also spoke with only a slight accent. She had long, wavy black hair and eyes as dark as obsidian.

  “Please, Capitan, if we are returned to our country, we will be killed,” Marcos said in halting English. Then he looked sadly at his three daughters. “Or worse.”

  “We won’t take you back,” I said. “If that’s what you want. Our home port is Bimini, in the Bahamas. In two weeks, we’ll return there for routine maintenance. You’re welcome to stay with us until we get there.”

  “Graçias, Capitan,” Marcos said, relief evident in his eyes. “What Ricardo said is true. We can work. Before becoming manager at Mayacoba, I was the cocinero… how you say? The main cook.”

  I looked up to where Val stood behind the couple.

  “Grady would relish having help in the galley,” she said.

  Grady Lawson was the ship’s cook. He’d only been a part of the crew for a little over a year and his assistant in the kitchen had left shortly after he’d come aboard.

  “Will you show them to their quarters, Val?” I asked, then turned to Mayra. “And would you and Marcos join us for dinner in our quarters? And please bring Fernando. Alberto has nobody close to his age to talk with.”

  She smiled feebly and nodded.

  “Good,” I said and stood up. “Yeoman McLarin will show you to where you will be staying. She can also show you where the laundry is. Get settled in and feel free to look around the ship. But the bridge deck is for crew members only.”

  Val led the family through the big doors into the salon, and I turned to Stockwell. “What do you think, Colonel?”

  His steely, blue-gray eyes cut to the retreating family. “I don’t know, Jesse. We’ve never had guests aboard. They seem genuinely afraid to go back.”

  My relationship with Travis Stockwell stretched back to long before either of us had ever heard of Ambrosia. We chewed some of the same sand in the Middle East, me as a Marine scout/sniper, and he as an Army infantry officer. Later, he took over as assistant deputy director of Homeland Security, overseeing Deuce Livingston’s hand-picked team.

  The fact that I was in command of Ambrosia made no difference to the colonel. He was the head of security for all of Armstrong’s assets. Ambrosia was just where he controlled things. I didn’t second-guess his deployment of security teams, and he didn’t question my orders on the bridge.

  We were co-workers and also friends.

  “And his comment, ‘or worse’?” I asked.

  He looked at me, and his eyes turned cold. “I agree with Jack. There have been abductions all over South America. Hundreds have disappeared, mostly young women. It’s assumed the men are used as forced labor somewhere and the women as…” He glanced at Savannah, then back at me. “Well, you know.”

  “Sex slaves,” Savannah said. “No need to couch the truth, Travis. Flo and I have come close to being a part of it on more than one occasion.”

  His face maintained its usual impassiveness as he looked into my wife’s eyes. “But you survived,” he finally said.

  “And those who wanted to take us didn’t always fare so well.”

  One of Stockwell’s eyebrows moved slightly, almost imperceptibly, as he appraised Savannah again.

  “Yes, ma’am,” was his only reply, before turning to the other security man and nodding his head toward the salon.

  The two men disappeared, headed back to their quarters. Stockwell and his security team weren’t needed often on Ambrosia. But there were five of them and one was on duty at all times, with the other three within seconds of being ready to turn out in the event of an emergency.

  Stockwell’s office and his team’s quarters were in the forward-most part of the boat, as was the armory and gym. That part of the boat was accessible only through a locked hatch at the end of the forward passageway, where most of the crew stayed. The security team could also deploy through a deck hatch in the middle of the foredeck.

  “Alberto and I will go and check on our guests,” Savannah said.

  I turned and started to go back up to the bridge.

  “Excuse me, Captain,” one of the deckhands said. “What should we do with their boat?”

  “Did they get all their belongings off it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We should just sink it,” I said, then reconsidered. “But pull the outboard and gas tank and take them to Heitor. Then see if you can stow the boat in the garage.”

  That evening, when Matt relieved me on the bridge, I told him about our passengers.

  “I don’t see what else ye could’ve done,” he said. “From the description of their boat, it’s not likely they’d have made it, yeah?”

  “Taking them to Curaçao was out of the question,” I said. “As is returning them to their homeland.”

  “Aye, Cap’n. If the cartel pillocks wanted the girls, their
fate would be far worse than death.”

  “Pillocks?”

  “Oye,” he replied. “A pillock is what you might call someone who’s not all that bright.”

  “You expand my vocabulary every day, Matt. I’ll be in my quarters if you need me. See you at twenty-three-hundred.”

  As I headed for the interior passageway, the sonarman announced the eighty-third contact of the day.

  “You’re grilling,” Savannah announced as I entered our cabin.

  “I am?”

  “Yes. Those people looked famished. I have six big rib eyes marinating, and the potatoes have been in the oven for half an hour.”

  “Then I’d better get a move on,” I said, tossing my cover on the coffee table.

  Alberto was on the terrace with Finn and Woden. His back was to me with his nose in a book. The two dogs were looking up at him, as if expecting him to give them a treat or something.

  I opened the hatch quietly, but the dogs heard me and looked my way. Alberto was reading aloud and after a moment, I recognized the prose.

  “The Old Man and the Sea?” I asked, stepping out onto the terrace.

  Alberto jumped slightly. “They like me to read to them.”

  “I wasn’t aware Finn and Woden were such fans of the classics.”

  “It’s a good story,” Alberto said. “You have read it?”

  “Quite a few times.” I opened the small gear locker at the side of the terrace and removed a stained Rusty Anchor grilling apron, slipping it over my head. “The first time, I was about your age.”

  Alberto looked down at the book. “It’s that old?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Hemingway wrote that ten years before I was born.”

  “Wow,” he said, softly, then looked up as I tied the apron in place around my waist. “Are you grilling tonight?”

  “Yes. The admiral wants beef.”

  He grinned. “She’s not really an admiral. You just call her that.”

  “We’re having guests for dinner,” I said. “Marcos and Mayra will be joining us. How about you go get them? I don’t think they know where we live.”