Gregg Loomis - Gates Of Hades

Which this wasn't.

More like sulfur, maybe struck matches. Although it was unlikely, the smell was strongest near what looked like a small rock garden in one corner, round white stones surrounded by a pair of very ugly plants. Why would a fishing trawler carry rocks and spindly plants? Maybe the captain wanted it there. Whatever, the stones and plants were not the problem at hand.

Nothing else caught his attention, nothing that might indicate how or why these men were dead and the ship left abandoned.

The question brought on a queasiness worse than he had felt when he saw the bodies. It was as if the killer or killers had wanted the ship and its macabre cargo to be found, wanted to make sure the world noted his or their handiwork.

A message of some sort?

If so, sending the distress signal and leaving the boarding ladder made a certain sick sense.

Very sick.

Even so, that didn't answer other questions, like how had eight seamen been overcome with not even a struggle? He saw no defensive wounds.

Any way he looked at it, the problem would not be Rumpmiller's for long-no longer than it took to radio Dutch Harbor.

Atlanta Journal Constitution,

August 16

MEN STABBED IN NATIONAL FOREST

Chattahoochee National Park, Tallulah Falls, GA:

The bodies of six employees of the Georgia Timber Company were found stabbed to death at a logging site near this mountain resort area yesterday. Police have not released names pending notification of family.

The exact cause of death has not yet been formally determined by the Raburn County Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles Walker, but he speculates some sort ofchemical inhalation played a part, although the actual cause of death appeared to be stab wounds.

"There was no sign of a struggle," Dr. Walker was quoted as saying, "and I can't imagine six healthy lumberjacks standing by while being attacked. Something disabled them."

Georgia Timber has come under criticism from a number of environmental groups in the last year for its cutting of trees in national forests. Company spokespersons declined comment but referred to a previous statement: "Georgia Timber won the bidding competition with the federal government for limited cutting in the Chattahoochee National Forest, and the taxpayers will benefit from careful and responsible removal of replaceable hardwoods."

Princess Juliana International Airport

Philipsburg, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

December 20

Williford Watkins liked Americans. Were it not for Americans, he would have to live solely on what he got for working in the tower at the island's airport, a salary that never would have paid for the used twenty-eight-foot sport fisherman in which he took American tourists diving, snorkeling, and fishing for as much as a thousand dollars a day. His job, the one in the tower, consisted of eight tedious hours five days a week, doing little more than making sure the runway was clear of aircraft and telling the Air France or Lufthansa pilots, "Cleared to land."

The boring nature of his job was why he let his curiosity take hold when that particular Gulfstream IV landed. According to the routing slip Williford picked up from the rack, the plane was Swiss, but the numbers painted on the tail were unlike any Swiss registration he had ever seen.

Since his shift was over, or near enough by island standards, he walked downstairs and over to the customs and immigration section of the terminal. He had a charter at the dock at Marigot, over on the French side of the island, but the fish weren't going anywhere and the anglers could wait. This was, after all, the Caribbean, where time was approximate at best.

The two pilots from the Gulfstream were filing their general declarations, the papers every country of entry required that listed passengers, cargo, and point of departure. His curiosity stirred once again when he noted there was only one passenger, a swarthy man with angry eyes. The dark man glared at Williford's dreadlocks and Bob Marley T-shirt. Williford smiled at him, just the way the tourism bureau said to do to all white folks. The dark man turned away.

That was unusual, too. Most mon come to St. Maarten, they be happy, not angry. The charter could wait a little longer.

Williford went outside into the brilliant sunshine of another day in paradise. His sunglasses, cooled by the aggressive air-conditioning inside, fogged over in the humid heat. The parking lot where he had left the Samurai he had bought with the money from his American charter customers was to his right. He turned left toward the flight operations building.

After exchanging some good-natured insults with the men in the single room, he found a copy of World Aircraft Registrations, thumbed through the country-by-country directory, and turned to Switzerland. He had been right: the Gulfstream's registration was not listed. Putting the heavy volume on a table, he tried the directory by registration letters. Fortunately, the United States was the only nation that had so many aircraft it used numbers instead of letters.

It took him only a few minutes to find out that the Gulfstream, or at least its numbers, were Syrian.

Williford checked his watch. His charter customers weren't going to be happy, but he couldn't quit now. Crossing the room, he picked up a telephone connected to the small air-traffic control center located in the base of the tower he had just left.

"Freddy," he said when a familiar voice came on the line, "th' Gulfstream you mons worked a few minutes ago; where it come from?"

What he heard made his curiosity sit up and take notice. The plane had been handed off from San Juan Center, the air-traffic control facility for high-altitude traffic in this part of the Caribbean, but it had not been handed off in sequence from London to Greenland to New York to Miami centers, the normal sequence for flights from Europe. Instead, it had commenced, the transatlantic part of its journey with Tenerife Center in the Canary Islands. Williford wasn't sure what part of the Caribbean those islands occupied, but he did know something was crazy as a marlin with its bill stuck in a boat hull.

There was something he had read in the men's room while he was taking a break a few weeks ago, something about the Americans wanting to know about suspicious flights. He supposed they wanted to further their endless (and, in Williford's opinion, hopeless) effort against the drugs that journeyed northbound in volumes unequaled by tropical fruit. Maybe if he called the Americans, they could somehow send him charter business six months from now, in the summer, when things got slack.

He dialed the number of Miami Center.

The next morning, Williford figured the Americans had sent at least one charter, lack of summer notwithstanding. Except the four men who knocked on his door at sunup were already sweating in suits and ties.

"Can't go now, mon," Williford said. "Can't go till afta work."

One of the men gave him a smile with no humor in it. "We'll only be a minute, Mr. Watkins. You'll be on your way in no time. We need your help."

From the looks of them, four large men whose wilting suits did little to conceal muscle, they didn't need help from anyone. They also didn't look like the kind who would go away just to make sure a man got to work on time.

Williford really hadn't intended for them to come into his two-room cottage, not till his wife, Caroline, could get the place cleaned up a little, but they pushed right past him into the half of the house that served as a living room.

One of the men was carrying a book of photos. He sat in Williford's easy chair, the only upholstered one in the house, and opened the book. "We'd like you to take a look…"

Caroline emerged from behind the sheet that divided off the bedroom and gave Williford a look that could have burned a hole in the linen before she left without a word on her way to her job at Mullet Bay, one of the resorts along the beach. She didn't like to have company in the house before she was dressed.