by Rob Jones
“Then let me take the map and you have the statue,” shrugged Gomez. “The map is what’s important to my employer. If you stay in here, Vazquez will kill you, for certain.”
After a short discussion, Kirsten made the call. “All right, I can agree to that. We get the statue and you take the map.”
Gomez laughed. “Then you are a thief after all, unless you are going to leave the ten million dollars behind when you take the statue?”
“Wait a minute,” Hunter said. “No one said anything about stealing artifacts from Cuban relic smugglers. I work for UNESCO!”
“Can we just hurry the hell up?” Kirsten snapped at Gomez. “His men could come back any second.”
“Maybe,” Gomez said. “But not the two I just knocked out in the corridor outside this room. Where do you think we got the gun from?”
“Well played,” Hunter said, turning to Kirsten. “I’m starting to like this guy already.”
“Sure, but how are we getting off this damn ship even if we get the statue?” Kirsten asked. “I counted at least half a dozen lifeboats! If we take one and try and head back to the coast they’ll be swarming all over us in seconds in the other boats.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Gomez said. “But that’s a chance we’ll have to take.” He took the keys from the desk and opened both cells. “We must work faster than this if we are to make this work.”
“Then we’ll start in the grand dining room,” Hunter said. “That’s where His Nibs was when he had the statue and map last.”
“A good plan,” Gabriela said.
They ran along the corridor and took the stairs up to the top deck. Being on a cruise ship with so few people on board was an eerie experience, but it made reaching the dining room without being seen much easier. Inside, Hunter scanned the room but saw no sign of the statue or the map. Vazquez’s ten thousand dollar dinner was gone and the table cleared of all the golden plates and cutlery.
“Damn it,” Kirsten said. “He’s somewhere else on the ship.”
“And so are the goodies,” Hunter said.
Gabriela said, “So where do we start?”
“The ship’s too big to search,” said Gomez. “Believe me, I’ve done my research. We need to find someone and persuade them to tell us.”
“Too late, scum.”
They turned and saw two men moving toward them with pistols.
Kirsten arched an eyebrow. “Looks like our departure from the brig has been noted.”
“Put your hands up and shut up,” one of the men snarled. “And get out into the corridor.”
Hunter led the way, arms raised. He was surprised to see how close the men with the guns were letting them get as they approached the door. When he was at the right distance, he and Gomez shared a look. Both men knew what the other was thinking.
Hunter moved first, piling his shoulder into the first man and bringing his hands down in one fluid movement. The man tried to fire but Hunter knocked the gun from his hand, powered a jab into his jaw and decked him. As his victim crashed into the floor, he turned to see Gomez lashing out with his gnarled fists at the other man. He caught the side of his face, breaking his jaw and blasting him back onto the dining table.
He struggled to get up, but Gomez grabbed hold of him and with two big bunches of his shirt in his fists, he propelled him down the length of the polished table. He flew off the end and smashed headfirst into Vazquez’s golden throne.
As he staggered to his feet, Gomez was there to help him up. Taking hold of another two big fistfuls of his shirt, he spun him around and wrapped his arms around his neck until he had him in a dangerous bearhug. Squeezing his throat until the man started croaking, he leaned in close to his ear and said, “Where did Vazquez take the statue and the map?”
The Havana gangster was out of his depth. He struggled and squirmed in Gomez’s muscly arms, desperately trying to pull them away from his neck as his face turned purple. “I don’t know…”
Gomez strengthened his grip. “I’ll keep squeezing till your eyes pop out, you dog. Where are they?”
“All right,” he gasped. “He had Davila put them in the ship’s safe.”
“And where is that?”
“On this deck at the bow, in Señor Vazquez’s private penthouse suite.”
“And where the hell is that?”
The man slipped into unconsciousness and slumped to the floor. “Sorry,” Gomez said. “Guess I don’t know my own strength.”
“We can ask directions along the way,” Hunter said. “Let’s move.”
They left the dining room and jogged silently through the ship toward the bow, peering into rooms along the way in the hope of finding someone. When they reached the top deck and were approaching the bridge, their luck changed.
“There!” Gabriela said. “One of the ship’s crew.”
Up ahead, a man in a smart suit was holding some freshly pressed and folded towels and walking with purpose along the starboard deck. They ducked inside one of the cabins until he passed, and then Hunter threw his arm out, grabbed his neck and yanked him inside the room.
Throwing him up against the wall, Hunter said, “Easy way or hard way?”
Gabriela saw the confusion on his face and repeated the question in Spanish. “He says easy way.”
“Where is Vazquez’s penthouse suite?”
The man rattled off the directions and then Hunter gave him a look of apology. “Buenos noches, amigo.”
The punch was enough to knock him out in one clean blow. Hunter dragged him over to the bed and stretched him out with his head beneath the pillows. “Let’s get going.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The walk-in strongroom vault in Vazquez’s study was a monster of steel and iron favored by art collectors and bullion dealers. Manufactured by SafeGuard, the vault was impossible to break open unless you had the combination. As Gabriela watched Gomez fumble with the dial combination lock, she prayed the intel the unconsciousness crewman lying on the floor had supplied was good. When she heard a metallic clunk and the door clicked open half an inch, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Gomez looked amazed. “It worked.”
“But this guy’s going to have a headache when he wakes up,” Kirsten said, nudging the crewman with the toe of her shoe.
“Hurry up, Ric,” Gabriela said. She was at the study door with Hunter, keeping watch down the corridor. “We haven’t got long.”
“Sure thing. I’m going in.”
Gomez went inside the vault and gazed around at the shelves. Each of them was stuffed full of files, folders and various ancient artifacts but no sign of what they wanted. He blew out a breath, and almost forgetting to breathe, he started searching. The heavy silence of the strongroom’s interior felt almost like a weight on his shoulders as he began rifling through box files and drawers. Getting inside this place was one thing, but making a proper search of it was an altogether different kettle of fish.
“There must be thousands of documents in here. Are we all cool out there?”
“Keep going,” she whispered. “We’re still okay.”
Hunter called over. “You making any progress?”
“Not yet. It’s all just regular banking stuff, loans, maybe a quarter of a million in US dollars. Not what I want.”
“It’s a sodding statue eight inches high!” Hunter said.
“You’re forgetting about the map, Dr Hunter,” said Gabriela. “We need the map, too.”
“I’m doing my best,” Gomez called back. “Being in this safe isn’t exactly what I dreamed of as a child.”
Kirsten sighed. “And standing in here with all these weird sculptures is not what I want either. There’s only so many naked stone butts you can see before – wait. I hear something.”
Gomez stopped and peered around the vault door. “What do you hear?”
“I thought I heard something but it was nothing. Get back in there and find it!”
Gomez was already back in the vault a
nd going through the files on the one remaining shelf he hadn’t yet searched. Rushing was a temptation, but overlooking the map in haste wouldn’t help anyone. “I need another couple of minutes.”
His hands worked fast, slipping in and out of the folders, leafing through files and thumbing through endless documents. Even looking for stacks of fifty dollar bills would be easier than this. The problem with a map was how easily it could be tucked inside a pile of other papers. Sifting through the last few box files, he finally found a map and punched the air.
“Yes!”
“You found it?”
“I think so.” His heart pounded in his chest until he took a closer look. “No, wait.”
“What’s the problem?”
“No Nazi stamp, plus wrong era and wrong location. I have to keep looking.”
“Good, because I don’t think we’ve got much longer.”
Another half-minute passed, then he stepped out of the vault holding a rolled-up map in his hand and wearing a big grin on his unshaven face. “Got it.”
Gabriela pulled her head back out of the gap in the door and turned back to face him. “You’re certain?”
“I said I had it, didn’t I?”
Hunter stepped over. “And the statue?”
“There’s a floor safe,” Gomez said, sighing heavily and swearing in Spanish. “I can do this, wait.”
“We can’t do much else, pal,” Hunter said.
Gomez dropped to his belly and squished something against the safe’s hinges.
“Wait, what is that?” Hunter said. “Are you carrying C4?”
“One of life’s staples,” Gomez said. “Everyone back.”
He closed the strongroom door and they all felt a deep thud as the explosives detonated inside. A wisp of smoke drifted through the crack in the door but Gomez was through it like a ferret. They all waited a long, tense ten seconds before Gomez spoke from inside the strongroom. “All right, we have the statue.” He stepped back into the study and threw the statue at Kirsten. The map was already stuffed inside his belt.
She caught it in one hand and smiled. “Mine all mine.”
“We need to get out of here, Ric,” Gabriela said. “That explosion will have everyone up here in seconds.”
They slipped out of the study and made their way along the carpeted corridor. “This place gives me the creeps. Let’s go faster,” Gabriela said nervously.
“We have what we came for, Gabby,” Gomez said. “Just relax.”
“Relax? We just broke into Raul Vazquez’s private study and stole something from his strongroom. We’re talking about a man who had one of his debtors decapitated after defaulting on a thousand dollar loan. What do you think he would do to us if his men caught us in here?”
“Why don’t we ask him, thieving scum?”
They froze. Up ahead, Diego Canosa stepped into the corridor. He was holding a compact machine pistol, a weapon ludicrously overpowered for such a small space, and looking at them with a shit-eating grin on his pock-marked face. “I’m sure he will be very impressed when I tell him I have caught the thieves.”
He took the statue and the map and shouted at them. “Now get your hands up and get moving!”
He marched them out onto the deck and up the next set of metal steps where Mario Davila was walking in their direction. When he saw them, he smiled. “You have done well, Diego. Señor Vazquez will be pleased.” He looked at the prisoners’ faces. When his eyes fell on Gabriela, they lingered there. Stepping closer, he ran his forefinger through the hair tumbling down from her fringe. “What have we here?”
She flinched and Gomez raised his fist.
Canosa swung the gun right up into his face. “Tut tut, big man. Step away or eat lead.”
Gomez bristled and lowered his hand, taking a step back.
“So what do we do with them, boss?” Canosa pushed the muzzle of his gun into Gabriela’s temple, forcing her head over to one side. “You want me to do this one right here?”
“I think not,” Davila said.
“Then what?”
“I’m surprised you don’t recognize her, Diego. She is Gabriela Batista, the daughter of Esteban Batista.”
Canosa’s face changed shape, from angry killer to shocked apprentice. “Not the judge in Señor Vazquez’s trial?”
Davila grinned and lifted Maria’s long brown hair away from her face to see her better. “Yes my friend, the very same. Something tells me we stand a much better chance at getting Señor Vazquez the favorable verdict he so richly deserves if he has the judge’s daughter locked away some place safe.”
The two men shared a belly laugh, then Davila spoke. “I know the boss will want to speak with the people who tried to break into his ship and steal his property.”
“How nice of him,” Gomez said.
Davila smirked. “And if you beg him, he will kill you quickly with a bullet to the head. If you do not beg him, he will turn your last few days in this world into indescribable agony. I have seen this more times than I can remember. Do not test him.”
“He certainly was a real charmer when I met him earlier,” Hunter said.
“He’s the most dangerous psychopath in Cuba,” Gabriela said, finding some courage. “He has killed hundreds of men and women who have crossed him and yet the only crime we can nail him on is simple fraud.”
“And thanks to you turning up, he’ll get away with that, too.”
They walked them to the foredeck where Vazquez was smoking a cigar and counting the stars. When he turned and smiled, it was as if they were old friends. “Hello, amigos!”
“We caught them, sir,” Davila said. “They had broken into your safe and stolen the statue and the map, just as you said they would.”
Vazquez sighed. “I’m very disappointed in you, Dr Anderson. An academic with such eminent credentials stooping so low.” He turned to Gomez and Gabriela. “Tell me, do you know this scum?”
Kirsten bristled at the question. “No, of course not. Who do you think I am?”
Davila glared at her for a moment and then turned to face the thieves. “It was a bad idea coming here and trying to steal from us.”
“Yes, it was,” Vazquez said.
“What should I do with them?”
“Take them away,” Vazquez said. “Tonight we leave for Key West and when we’re out in the deep water shoot the thieves and throw them to the sharks. Hunter and Anderson will accompany us into the jungle and help us find whatever has piqued Oskar Rorschach’s interest so much.”
“That’s plain old-fashioned murder,” Hunter said.
“And who will pursue such a thing? Out here on the mare liberum or free seas, the captain of his vessel is judge, jury and executioner. The UN convention on the Law of the Seas declares that no state may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty. In other words, you are mine.”
“That’s not true at all,” Kirsten said. “If you’re in international waters then you’re ruled by the laws of the country where the ship is registered.”
Vazquez laughed. “Yes, Liberia, one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Judges there are very happy to accept bribes, Dr Anderson, and I am more than happy to bribe them. There will be no blowback from any murders on this ship.”
“You son of a bitch, Vazquez!” Kirsten said, struggling in Davila’s grip.
Hunter looked at her, shocked by the sudden outburst from the mild-mannered academic he had come to know over the last couple of days. “You’re not going to get away with this, Vazquez,” he said calmly. “Not one of you.”
“I’ve heard it all before,” Vazquez said, taking the statue and the map from Davila. “Mario, you take the professors back to the brig. Canosa, kill the two thieves. I am bored of them now.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hunter felt the barrel of Davila’s machine pistol between his shoulder blades as the Havana thug marched him back down the stairs. Kirsten was just a step ahead of him, and both the
ir hands were raised in the air.
“I thought you were supposed to be some sort of Indiana Jones character?” she said.
“Hey,” he said. “I have no control over your lurid fantasies, Dr Anderson.”
“Please, give me a break. This is a complete boondoggle and I need to think.”
“You brought it up.”
“I’m just looking at you and wondering how we could have been taken hostage twice in one night.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let me think about it for a second. Oh yeah, these guys have machine pistols and we’re armed with nothing but our wits.”
“If we’re talking about your wits, then heaven help us.”
“I’m just saying use your loaf for a second.”
“Huh?”
“Loaf of bread, head.”
“You talk funny,” she said.
“I talk funny?” he said. “What the hell does boondoggle mean?”
Her lips tightened. “We’re a great team divided by a common language, right?”
“We’re a team?” he asked. “I’m appalled.”
“You two shut up,” Davila shouted. “I’m sick of listening to your crap.”
“Did you hear what he just said?” Kirsten said, stopping and fixing her eyes on Hunter. “He said you should shut up. I think so, too.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Get moving and go down the damn stairs!” Davila said.
Hunter saw the look in Kirsten’s eyes and knew what she was doing. He turned to Davila and gave him a man-to-man smile as he blocked his view of her. “Would you let your woman talk to you like this?”
“What?”
“Like this,” he said, and ducked.
Kirsten’s fist appeared out of nowhere and landed with a smack in the center of Davila’s face. The strike was hard enough to fracture his nose and tip him back on his heels. As he fumbled back on the steps, Hunter piled his fist onto the exact same place, knocking him clean out.
“Good work, Dr Anderson.”
“Your woman? You think I’m your woman?”