A Cold Copper Moon (The Cooper Series Book 3)

by Richard Conrath

  “How was your trip from Key West, Commander?” asked Wong.

  “I’ve had better, Sir, the weather slowed us. Captain Welder sends his best.” Turning to me she added, “And to you, Mr. Cooper,” the trace of a smile crossing her lips. She must have known.

  Welder had bailed me out twice before. The first time Richie, Louise, Huck, and I were pursuing smugglers through the Ten Thousand Islands. The second time was in international waters about twenty miles from the coast of Cuba. Chasing bad guys again.

  “Third time’s a charm—I hope,” I said.

  She smiled. She knew.

  Wong jumped in. “Commander Sykes, this is Cooper.” She was still smiling when she held out her hand. “Frances,” she said.

  “So, what have we got here, Sir,” Sykes said, turning back to Wong.

  The fog was dense now, but the rain had stopped. Wong was staring out at the sea toward the Zhi Zhu Nu.

  “We can’t go into Cuban waters. Need President’s okay to do that,” he said, still staring at the sea as though he were studying it—the waves, the rain and the fog—all working together to make his job more difficult.

  “Like the Bay of Pigs,” I said.

  “No shit,” whispered Richie from behind. Louise must have poked him in the ribs because I heard a grunt.

  “My idea,” said Wong, “you guys can do what we can’t,” turning slightly in my direction. “You do a little reconnaissance—I stay here and wait,” he turned fully around now, “for your call.” He paused while he had my attention. “Some danger for you and your crew,” he warned.

  “Understood,” I said, looking around at Louise, who was next to me (she nodded), and Richie who was leaning against the top rail, watching us (he nodded as well) and then at Huck who was minding the wheel, just listening, but then finally announcing, “We’ll ride with you, buckaroo.” It’s hard not to love him.

  And I thought of what I had just agreed to: putting the lives of my friends in jeopardy, not to mention my own. I wondered if I would ever live to find out about Maxie. But this was all about him anyway: finding missing people, like Jack; tracking kidnappers; and chasing people who make a living selling body parts. What a world. But that’s been my life. The good part is I’m hoping this job will help me track down my son, the bad part being that I’m afraid of what I’ll find if I ever do.

  “My informant (and I knew who that was) tells me there will be a transfer from the Zhi Zhu Nu tonight—to a smaller rig in the Ponce de Leon Bay area,” Wong continued. “My guess, this fog will give them the cover they needed.” He paused, staring at his feet. “The transfer could happen any time,” he added, breathing deeply, looking out at the cutter and the nasty seas beyond.

  “Your fast boat’s good for a chase,” I assured him.

  “Right,” said Wong. “But we don’t know when this is going to happen or precisely where. So...”

  “You’re suggesting we get things started early,” I said.

  “My thought,” said Wong. “Only thing...if you guys get caught with your hands up someone’s skirt, you’re on your...”

  “Whoa! Can’t you think of a better analogy?” interrupted Louise. She was standing by Huck at the wheel. “Up someone’s skirt? How about up your pants?” Talk about PC.

  “Oops, so sorry. Old Chinese saying,” Wong added quickly, using the cultural divide as an excuse.

  “Uh-huh. Like you’re old and you’re Chinese,” said Louise, getting him back. Wong looked uncomfortably at Sykes. She shrugged. But I could see a smile creep into the edges of her mouth.

  “I get it,” said Wong, obviously trying to end the conversation. Sykes was enjoying it.

  “Never insult white woman,” said Huck. “Old Indian saying.” Louise smacked him in the arm.

  In the meantime, the rain had started up again. At first, soft against the fog. Then harder.

  “Good luck,” Wong said. “Call me on the SAT when you get near the rig.”

  Then he, Sykes, and the two Guardsmen boarded the chase boat.

  I watched them fight off waves through the hundred yards to the cutter. I stayed in the rain long enough to feel the misery of it and wondered what the rest of this day would bring.

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  The Rain and the Fog

  Saturday Afternoon, December 10

  The fog was growing denser. Huck strained to see through it, fighting to control the boat in a sea made rough by the wind. I offered to take a turn at the wheel.

  “I can break this bronco, pardner,” Huck said, as the waves tried to tear the wheel from his hands.

  Richie was standing next to me in the helm.

  “You okay?” I said, turning to Richie. There was no blood in his cheeks.

  “Yeah, yeah. No problem.” He was not taking his eyes off the water. It roiled like a cauldron about to spill over.

  See, since Richie can’t swim, his nightmare is not about getting shot. It’s about drowning. But he’ll never admit it.

  “How do we you know where the hell we’re going?” said Richie to no one in particular.

  “The boat’s compass,” said Louise. She was leaning over the gunnels on starboard, probably looking for lights from the rig. “Too far away yet,” she added.

  We were headed south-southwest toward Havana. The Zhi Zhu Nu was about ten miles off shore, directly north of Havana.

  “Hang in there,” I yelled to Huck, as a wave suddenly swept through the helm.

  Richie didn’t say anything, but I knew he got religion when he was on the water.

  I figured we were only a couple of miles from the big rig so I told Huck to slow down. “We should see some lights soon,” I said, hoping for the best.

  But it was black on the water, and black in the sky and the rain kept coming. And waves were pounding the boat with more ferocity, and Richie was breathing hard against the wind and rain, and Louise—well she was being stoical through it all—and I, well I was with Maxie—as I always was when I had time to think. And that’s been my life, ever since...you know...

  It’s like someone picked up my watch and smashed it—and my life stopped there.

  At 9:45 a.m. Eight years ago. In Muskingum, Ohio…

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  The Go-Fast Boat

  The fog was thick on this Saturday afternoon, fourteen days before Christmas and we were soaked—but nobody wanted to go below to get out of the weather. We were all too tense.

  “We gotta be close,” Huck said, and he eased back on the throttle, bringing the Yamahas almost to idle. We had been searching for a little over half an hour for the rig.

  “There!” said Louise, almost whispering. Voices carry on the water. She was pointing to lights that barely penetrated the fog. It was thick and heavy, like in a late-night London back street.

  Huck eased the Canyon toward the lights. They couldn’t have been more than several hundred yards away. Slowly the rig emerged, its lights outlining it like the starry points of a constellation, in the fog, in the rain. Then the ladder appeared, fastened to the side of a massive support pontoon like a centipede on a flower stem. And right beneath the ladder and lashed to its lower rung was that very same go-fast boat, sitting there like a bad luck penny. Huck pulled in close. Tucked under the sleek prow of the boat were a number of plastic bundles, pushed in tightly against each other as if to make room for more to come. I stepped onto the boat, leaned into the prow, and pulled out one of the packages. It was shaped like a brick—only slightly thinner and wider, like a thick pancake—and white. It was packaged in a simple, crude Saran Wrap kind of covering. I handed the package to Louise. She flipped it over, inspected it, and nodded. “Yep, this looks like the real deal.” As she was speaking, I heard the clank of metal against metal above me.

  “Pull back,” I whispered to Huck, climbing back into the Canyon through the dive-door. “Quietly.”

  He did, backing the boat away from the ladder and into the open space beneath the rig, and sliding in be
hind a pontoon directly opposite the ladder. He kept the boat at idle, the noise from the motors covered by the wash of water against the rig’s supports. From behind the pontoon we watched as four men descended the ladder, each holding several bundles under his arm. The first man down climbed into the fast boat and grabbed the bundles from the man behind him. The next did the same. I was so intent on watching the exchange that I missed the last man on the ladder. He was staring our way.

  “Kan!” he yelled, pointing at us. One of the men in the boat picked up a rifle and fired, a shell hitting the pontoon. I ducked involuntarily and then looked up at the support to see if it was deflating. Apparently, they are sturdy little monsters.

  Huck fired back with his alligator rifle but it was like trying to shoot from a running horse with the waves breaking around the pontoons and rocking the Canyon violently back and forth.

  “Damn,” said Richie trying to get off a shot with his Browning.

  Then spray from a wave breaking over the pontoon washed over the Canyon, swamping it, the force of the water washing me across the deck and into Richie. We both slid into the boat’s hull.

  “Jeez,” Richie complained, “what a fuckin’ mess,” as he struggled to his feet. He was still hanging onto the Browning. He tried to dry the gun by rubbing it against his pants. That was useless. They were both completely soaked—gun and guy. He shrugged and gave it up. His baby—all wet.

  The fast boat had spun away from the rig and into open water, throwing up a tidal wave in its wake. So, all I could see was mist and rain, the sound of the motors the only sign that there was a boat out there.

  “Everybody okay?” I said, checking around. Huck nodded. He was still at the wheel.

  “I’m good,” Louise said, massaging her arm. “That console is damn hard!”

  “Do we follow?” Huck said.

  “No,” I said, and got on the SAT phone Jack had outfitted the Canyon with. It uses a system developed by Globalstar that routes phone calls from out-of-the way places—like this one—through a constellation of Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites that cover most of the Earth’s surface, including where we were. With very little delay in the voice transmission.

  “Yeah?” said Wong.

  “They’re on their way,” I said, “headed directly north. A go-fast boat. It’s loaded with product.”

  “You following?”

  “We’re going upstairs,” I said, assessing the ladder that disappeared at the top in the mist.

  “No way!” yelled Wong. “You don’t have...” and I ended the call.

  The phone went off again.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Before you do anything crazy, your wife...” he hesitated, “I mean, your former wife, has been trying to call you.”

  “Why’d she call you?” I said, growing concerned.

  “She didn’t.” He paused. “She called your buddy, DeFelice. He called me. She didn’t say what about. But said it’s urgent!” He caught his breath. “Now get back here. We’ll chase down the drug boat, nothing for you to do on that rig.”

  I stared at the phone...wondering...then looked at the ladder, no one coming down to check, and I knew we had to go up.

  “What?” asked Louise, wiping water from her face.

  “Jillie. She’s been trying to call me.”

  I wondered...and I thought about my dreams lately...and shook it all out of my head. “No, it’s not possible...”

  “What’s not possible?”

  “That it’s about Maxie.”

  “About Maxie?”

  “I’ve been having dreams again. I wonder—”

  “Coop,” she interrupted. “Don’t…” She looked at me sidewise.

  “I know. It’s crazy.”

  “It’s crazy.” But she put her arms around me, holding on tightly. “I understand,” she whispered.

  Huck and Richie stared like they didn’t want to interfere, but…

  Louise, pushed away, faced me directly, and said, “So, let’s do what we gotta do here and get the hell back to the cutter so you can make that call.”

  I heard an Amen from Richie.

  Chapter Ninety-Eight

  On Board the Zhi Zhu Nu

  Huck idled the Canyon back to the ladder. We secured it against the rising wash. There was no evidence that anyone had seen us, no sound of someone coming down the ladder, no sign of men looking over the gunnels, no shouts of alarm. There was a helicopter sitting on the deck, its blades jutting out over the edge of the helipad, turning slowly, powered by the wind and rain.

  I grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder and climbed, wondering if someone would pick us off when we cleared the hull and dropped to the deck. An easy shot.

  Louise was breathing hard behind me. The wind and rain penetrated the cage as we climbed onto the first platform. No movement anywhere on the rig. Even the drill was silent. Maybe Wong had it right, I thought. Maybe just a skeleton crew left behind.

  “You ready?” I whispered through the wind. Louise nodded. I began to climb again, the rungs of the ladder hard to grip. They were wet and cold. When we reached the last platform, we finally had a clear view of the copter.

  “I’m gonna take a closer look,” I said and began to climb the final fifteen feet to the top. I dropped onto a passageway. It was empty, but I heard voices, indistinct and distant in the darkness. The copter was just fifteen feet to my right, a large commercial helicopter, fire truck red and big enough to carry eight to ten passengers. An EC 155 Eurocopter. One of the most expensive on the market—probably ten million or more. Good money in the oil business I figured.

  The cabin door was open. I stepped under blades still moving in the wind and looked in. And there they were, neatly stacked under the seats of the passenger section, pressed bundles of white powder, the same size we saw in the go-fast boat, and room for more. I leaned in, knifed into a bundle, and fingered a sample onto my tongue. It numbed me within seconds. Bingo. I called the others up.

  “Shit we got here?” said Richie, noticing the open bag.

  “I sampled it. Want to try some?”

  “Hell no. I don’t do that shit.”

  “That one bag is about a million dollars, street value,” said Louise. Then, “Looks like they’re still busy,” and she was pointing to the open spaces under the seats.

  “My guess, too,” I said.

  The voices were closer. “How many do you think?” I said to no one in particular.

  “I’ll let you know,” said Huck. “Give me a boost,” he said, pointing to the wall of the rig that rose about ten feet over the deck.

  “You’re fuckin’ crazy,” said Richie, following Huck to the wall. “They’ll be here in minutes,” he warned. But he grabbed Huck’s foot anyway and hoisted him up against the wall, like a power lifter in the Olympics, until he was able to literally throw him onto the roof with a burst of energy that exploded like a cannon. Richie’s face was red when he turned and faced us. “Damn right,” he said.

  Huck was back in seventy-five seconds.

  “Five,” he whispered, holding up his hand. “They got bundles.” Huck looked over his shoulder as the voices grew louder. “Maybe two minutes. I’ll stay here.”

  Richie walked his alligator gun over to him. Then we split up. Richie crouched behind the oversized wheels of the helicopter; Louise climbed down the ladder, just far enough to be out of sight; I waited near the left corner of the building. The voices grew more distinct. And they were arguing.

  It was raining harder now and a mist was settling on the deck. An advantage for us.

  Four young Chinese men—three in loose black, karate style clothes, and a fourth, in jeans and a long shirt, rounded the corner, still arguing. I recognized the boyfriend, Lei Sun, immediately, and of course, Li Lang, the Dragon Head, wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. Each of the men was carrying a stack of stuff we saw in the fast boat and the copter. Product wrapped in plastic and ready for shipping. No one noticed me, even though
I had stepped out into the open. Maybe it was the rain and fog, maybe it was that they never expected anyone else to be there. Whatever. They were surprised—stunned—when I said, “Hey!” I followed that up with “We got you surrounded.”

  But the woman yelled, “Shoot him!” And that did it because the guy closest to me dropped his stuff, pulled a gun and fired. He missed. Shot too fast. Unlucky, because Huck shot him in the head. And blood spattered on his black shirt, red on black, just like a checkerboard, and he was thrown into the two men next to him who immediately dropped what they were carrying and threw up their hands, screaming indecipherable things. Again, the woman screamed, “Kill him!” looking around for someone to do it. But the two guys with their hands up sure weren’t going to do it, because they looked up and saw Huck on top of the building with his big gun pointed at them, and they saw Richie emerge from behind the helicopter with his Browning, and they saw Louise swing up from the ladder leveling her Glock. The man in the jeans had thrown up his hands also, so the only person who was still fighting was the woman. And she was all alone now.

  “Li Lang,” I said, stepping toward her, and she spat at me. But the wind stopped it mid-air. I moved in closer. “You’ve been a very bad girl,” I chided, and she tried to spit again. But I shut her mouth by grasping her head with one hand and her jaw with the other, leveraging her mouth open by forcing her cheeks into her teeth with my thumb and forefinger and pushing her up against the hull with my body. Then, I leaned into her face and yelled over the wind and the rain, my voice rising with the intensity of the storm, “Your Uncle Wong is very angry with you. And so am I!”

  I pushed off, the back of her head striking the metal frame of the hull. “Shoot him? Really?” Then, “And don’t try to spit again, or I’ll reach into your filthy little mouth and pull your tongue out.” And she tried to look really pissed off. But her eyes worried. She knew I was serious.