Crude Carrier (19 page)

“Already do it. My room, everybody's. They look in, come in and look around, say it's inspection for cleanliness.” He snorted. “Cleanliness! Mr. Pressler, he wears gun and makes inspection hisself. But it's okay now. You come.” He glanced down Raiford's filthy and oil-stained clothes. “I'll bring clean clothes from your cabin. You take a shower in the crew's head—no one's there now, yes?”

“A shower? Oh, man, let's do it!”

XXVI

The earliest flight Stanley Mack could get—a 5:15
A.M.
from Kennedy—landed at Gatwick in midafternoon. Julie glimpsed the man fidgeting in the line among other aliens who waited to get their passports stamped for entry. Finally, a customs agent processed Mack's passport and he hurried toward her, talking even before they shook hands. “I made some calls from the airplane to Marine Carriers. Told Mr. Mohler a little about it. He notified the London office that we're on our way. They're sending a car to pick us up and Mohler said the London office will stay open until we get there.” He glanced up at the electric message board, but neither his nor Julie's name flashed across it. “Let me get some money changed.”

Another queue, this one shorter and faster, then out to the covered sidewalk that fronted a busy pick-up zone. At the far end and weaving among clusters of newly arrived travelers and their luggage, a liveried driver held up a hand-lettered card that said “Marine Carriers.” He chanted anxiously, “Mr. Mack? Mr. Stanley Mack, please? Mr. Mack?”

“Here!”

Julie and Mack chased after the booted legs and piled into the limousine's backseat as the driver hastily thudded Mack's scarred suitcase into the boot. When the vehicle cleared the access roads and began to pick up speed on the express highway north, Stan sagged wearily against the seat. “Christ, I didn't think I'd make it. I've been running since I got your call last night. This morning, I mean.” The gray-faced man fumbled in the small refrigerator for a bottle of lime-flavored soda water. “I'm getting too old for this.” He drank deeply and sighed again, tired eyes watching but not seeing the soggy black trees glide swiftly past. “All right, let me tell you what I've found out. First, there's no such vessel registered with any nation—flag of convenience or otherwise. No such vessel listed in the ship directories. None covered by any of the maritime insurers. The
Stormy Petrol
seems to be a pirate ship.”

Mack's information filled in one of the suspicions given birth by the e-mail Julie had received. And she provided additional information uncovered by Audrey Bennett: “Olivia Minkey—she's the widow of the captain of the
Golden Dawn
—bought a very nice finca in Rio. For cash. She also paid cash for her new furnishings, hired a household staff, stocked up supplies, bought a new Mercedes, new clothes. All cash.”

“More than her husband's life insurance can account for?” asked Mack.

Julie smiled. “His policy, taken out six weeks before the
Golden Dawn
was lost, paid one hundred fifty thousand pounds. Audrey's contact in Rio estimates her expenses so far at around three hundred thousand dollars. That doesn't leave her much to live on unless she has a lot of other income.” Julie added, “But then she also has a new bank account in the Bahamas. Couldn't get access to that, though. And the household staff say she's expecting her husband to join her in Rio in a few weeks.”

“Her husband? But …” The weariness disappeared and Mack's eyes looked alert. “That's our pirate ship—the
Golden Dawn
!”

Julie nodded. “The widow is not a widow. Her husband's now the pirate captain of the
Stormy Petrol
.”

Mack closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “It fits, by God. It fits!” Then, “Anything new from the
Aurora
?”

“Not yet.”

“I've been worried about that.” His closed eyes frowned. “Wasn't much else to occupy my mind on the flight and I was too wired to sleep. But maybe there's something we can do from this end. New York promised that London will fully and promptly cooperate. Whatever we need, it's ours.”

“What can we do and how fast?”

The bloodshot eyes opened to study Julie's taut expression. “Yeah: what and how soon—that's what I've been worrying about.”

XXVII

It was eleven forty-five. Raiford had heard nothing of a helicopter's pending arrival. Peeking through the closed drapes of Woody's window onto the gallery, he could see only two portholes of gray sky. The distant horizon that occasionally rose up into the holes showed that the sea, too, was gray. The monsoon had died out, the
Aurora
had dropped below the southern trades and their generally fair seas, and now it was well into the colder waters near the South African cape. Overcast and windy, but not—he fervently hoped—enough to keep the helicopter from making its flight. Because he was definitely not going back down into that cramped and stifling roach hotel.

A soft scratching on the door and Raiford cracked it open to show a very nervous Woody. “You ready now, Mr. Raifah? Go aft. Charley waits for you at the stack-housing ladder.”

The gallery curved with the ship's hull and Raiford strode quickly past the windows of the crew's quarters to the ladder aft. As he neared it, Charley's grinning face popped down from the overhead hatch. “This way—hurry, sah!”

Raiford, camera strap around his wrist, followed the sprinting man across the main deck and through the entry to the stack housing. There, Charley motioned for silence and disappeared up another ladder. Then an arm beckoned and Raiford went up to find a small corridor flanked by locked doors. Metal plates identified the ship's store, two double-locked reefers, and the laundry facility. Charley fitted a key into a door that said
POOL MAINTENANCE
and fumbled with the lock. It seemed to take a long time, and Raiford was increasingly aware of voices floating up from the main deck, of sounds of life from the bridge forward. Finally the door clicked open.

“Okay, sah! When helicopter comes, you can run forward from here, yes? And I find for you a hiding spot.” Charley pointed to the bulge of the swimming pool tank that pressed through the ceiling almost to the floor. “You go under there, okay?”

“I can't fit under there, Charley. I'm too big!”

The man looked up and down Raiford's torso. “Too big, yes.” He scratched at his cropped black hair. “Okay—stay here. If somebody comes, then you get a lot smaller real fast, yes? Go under there.”

“I guess it could happen.”

The room was close and narrow, filled by the belly of the metal pool, and had no portholes. The water pump and filter assembly crowded one corner, and in another a cabinet held plastic buckets of pool chemicals and a few maintenance tools. The only sounds were the whine of the water pump and, beneath that, the ship's forced air system. Deepest of all, the flue going up the neighboring stack gave off a visceral rumble, its hot exhaust used to warm the swimming pool's water. This seldom-used space did not have a Tannoy, so Raiford could not hear the ship's bell, the noon announcements of distance traveled in the last twenty-four hours, or any special duty assignments or pages from the bridge. He did near the metallic scrape of a key in the door and moved quickly behind it as it opened.

“Mr. Raifah—Mr. … Aii!” Charley gaped over his shoulder at the big shape poised for attack. “It's me!”

“Has it come?”

“Tannoy says ten minutes. Comes at thirteen twenty. We go now.”

Raiford could hear the ship's speaker echo in the passageway, “All hands stand clear the forward deck. Helicopter arriving in five minutes. All hands stand clear the forward deck.”

This time Charley led down an internal ladder into the engine decks, then forward through the boiler room and past the ship's generators. At another ladder, Charley went up cautiously. Once more the arm beckoned and Raiford followed to the corridor that ran past the crew's galley on the main deck.

Ears alert, they waited for the sound of the helicopter's popping exhaust. Raiford wasn't certain just what he'd tell the pilot when he sprinted down the long deck and tumbled aboard the chopper. But the pilot should be expecting him. The mail, a case of new movies, and Pierce were coming aboard; going out would be the mail, the old movies, and, Raiford fervently hoped, Pierce's temporary replacement. The catch would be when Pressler began shooting. He would have to wait until the helicopter cleared the ship—a stray bullet, a crash aboard ship, any spark near the oil manifold­ could set the
Aurora
ablaze. But Raiford had no doubt that Pressler would shoot if he could—the helicopter and all aboard it were far less valuable than the stolen oil, and a helicopter crash at sea was not uncommon. Raiford would have to make the pilot understand that danger, and do it the moment he was aboard.

Still no sound of airborne engines.

“Charley, you go on back to work. You don't have to wait here with me.”

“It's okay.”

“No, it's not okay. If the first mate sees you with me, you're in big trouble. Go on, now—I can handle it from here.”

“Okay—I go. Thank you, Mr. Raifah, yes? Good luck, yes?”

“Thanks, Charley. And keep your head down.”

The grinning man disappeared. Raiford listened tensely at the doorway and searched the sky.

Until he heard a shout, “There he is!”

Shockley, standing in the doorway at the other end of the corridor, shouted again to someone aft. “Starboard side, main deck. It's him!”

Raiford, stuffing the camera safely inside his shirt, sprinted for the stairway only to see the startled face of a sailor below him who yelled something in Chinese. An instant later, the chief steward and the Korean, Yun Hyon, ran toward the foot of the stairs. Raiford turned upstairs, his long legs taking three steps at a time. Up past the junior officers' level and still up. How he'd manage to get down when the chopper came, he wasn't sure. But he was damned certain he heard the thud of a dozen feet after him and the savagely happy bellow of Pressler, “Get the barstid! Get him, goddamn your eyes—get him!”

Raiford burst through the double doors of the navigation bridge and into the shocked faces of the radioman, the duty helmsman, and Captain Boggs, who, without a word, lunged at Raiford. Twisting away from the captain's flailing arm, Raiford chopped his hand into the man's neck. The captain grunted and fell to a knee, clutching his throat. The radioman, shaking his head no, backed up with his hands raised in surrender and stumbled over the helmsman who tried to hold the wheel steady even as he cowered against the bridge's console.

Raiford's eye lit on the emergency cabinet mounted on the aft bulkhead and he dug his fingers under the metal lip of its locked door. Straining until his shirt seam crackled across his shoulders, he peeled back its metal door and grabbed the Very pistol and a box of shells and sprinted for the ladder up the mast. He was halfway up to the radar scanner when Pressler, pistol in hand, ran onto the open deck below.

“Raiford, goddamn you!”

The first mate leveled his weapon and it popped twice. The puffs of smoke blew quickly away in the strong wind. Raiford heard one bullet sizzle hotly somewhere near his left ear as he flung himself up the last few rungs and onto the small platform high above the bridge. Swiveling open the flare gun, he clicked it shut and quickly fired a round high into the gray sky. Its trail arced up and up to burst in a bright pink flare that smoked and danced as it drifted back toward the gray and wind-chopped ocean.

“Won't do you any good, Raiford. The helicopter's not coming—there is no helicopter!” Another shot punctuated the mate's triumphant yell. “A trick to smoke you out, you barstid!”

“You hear me, Pressler? You hear me?”

“Say what you want to now, damn your eyes, because you are a dead man. I swear by God almighty you are already dead!”

“If I'm dead, you will be too, Pressler. I'll shoot this flare at the oil manifold. I'll send this bucket up like a firecracker!”

The empty whistle of the wind told Raiford that the man heard his threat.

“I've got nothing to lose, Pressler. I'll take you with me!”

“Goddamn—!” Another shot smacked into the metal of the platform and ricocheted off somewhere with a nasal scream.

“Hold it, Pressler—wait!” Shockley's voice cut through the wind. Raiford eased to the edge of the platform and peeked over. The second mate leaned out of the doorway to the flying bridge. “Wait, damn it—he'll do it. He'll kill us all!”

“That bloody flare gun won't—”

“It might! For God's sake, Pressler, he could spark the hose connections. It's too big a chance.” The voice dropped and Shockley, glancing up at the crow's nest, gestured something. Raiford heard the angry snarl of vague, wind-tossed voices. Then Pressler strode to the weather door of the bridge and out of sight. Shockley, shoulders sagging with the weight of his dangling arms, stared up at Raiford. A moment later, a half-dozen men were herded by a screaming Pressler onto the open bridge.

“Up! Goddamn you—get up that ladder and bring him down now!”

The crewmen hung back. Pressler's wide fist grabbed Yun Hyon's neck and drove him like a rag doll to the ladder rungs. “Up!” Pressler waved the pistol. “If he shows his goddamn face, I'll kill him! Up, damn you!”

A few seconds later, Raiford felt the mast quiver as feet climbed slowly. It was stupid of Pressler. Raiford waited. Three fingers of a hand gingerly grasped the edge of the hatchway. Raiford waited. Then the other hand felt for a grip. Raiford waited. Two, three breaths—even Pressler stopped shouting. Then the mast quivered again as Yun lunged upward through the hole in the floor of the crow's nest and Raiford kicked out. His heel caught the side of the man's head to smack it hard against the steel rim of the hatchway, and then Raiford's heel smashed down on the slipping, straining fingers until they yanked out of sight. Raiford felt snagging tingles as the man plummeted along the mast, and then he heard the thud of flesh hitting steel below.

“Send up another one, Pressler!”

No answer.

Raiford scooted to the platform edge and peered cautiously over. Four sailors were dragging Yun's broken body into the navigation bridge. Pressler, pistol at his thigh, looked up.

“All right, you barstid. You stay there. You can't come down or I'll kill you. You stay up there and rot, goddamn your soul. You'll beg me to shoot you, goddamn you. There'll be no water, there'll be no food, damn you—you'll beg me to put you out of your misery!”