Линкольн Чайлд - Crooked River

Coldmoon stepped over and picked up the captain’s firearm, which had been lying on the deck — a crappy old German Luger — and covered the stunned crew with both weapons. Nobody besides the captain seemed to be armed.

“On the floor,” Coldmoon said. “All of you: facedown, arms extended.”

They stood stupefied, doing nothing.

Pendergast twisted the barrel of the gun in the captain’s ear. “Tell them.”

The captain said something and they quickly complied. Now what? Coldmoon wondered. Call in backup? They were still outnumbered and God knew how many armed men there might be elsewhere on the ship.

Pendergast spoke to the captain in a mild voice. “Are you ready to take us to that container now?”

The captain nodded.

“Good. Tell your crew to stay put. All of them. Anyone seen moving anywhere, at any time, will be considered a lethal threat and will therefore be shot. Make the announcement.”

He released the man. The captain pulled down a mike from the console and made the announcement — at least, Coldmoon hoped it was the correct announcement.

“And now, Captain Oliynyk, lead the way. Slow and easy. Agent Coldmoon, keep an eye out for snipers.”

The captain shuffled through the door of the bridge and headed down the companionway, Pendergast and Coldmoon following. They came out on deck and the captain led them toward the bow of the ship, along the outside rail next to stacks of containers. At the bow, there was a large cleared area with some cranes. The bright blue container sat there, all by itself.

Pendergast inspected the welded steel lockbox at the container’s door. “Open it, Captain, if you please.”

“It is empty. Nothing in there.”

“Open it.”

“I don’t have key. I must call for key.”

“Then call for the key. Make sure only one deckhand brings it, and that he comes unarmed — otherwise an unfortunate event might take place.”

“Yeah,” added Coldmoon. “Like you getting shot.” He gestured with both the Browning and the Luger, wanting to make sure the captain understood.

The captain removed a portable walkie-talkie and spoke into it. They waited. After five minutes a man arrived and handed the captain a key. He unlocked the padlock and pulled open the door of the reefer.

“See?” the captain said. “Nothing.”

The container was indeed empty. A terrible stench of rotten fish wafted out.

Pendergast sniffed a few times, an expression of disgust on his face. He turned to the captain. “You go in first, Captain, and stand in the back. We will follow.”

The captain stepped inside and moved to the rear. Pendergast and Coldmoon trailed behind, the latter gagging at the nasty, stifling atmosphere. The container was filthy, splattered with sticky brown stuff on the walls and floor. God, did it stink. Coldmoon, who wasn’t fond of fish to begin with, felt he was going to puke.

Pendergast slipped a small penlight from his pocket and shone it around, then bent down and examined the foul matter. He removed a small evidence collection kit, along with some minuscule test tubes with stopper-swabs. He swabbed here and there, took some samples, and sealed them up.

“Let us go outside, Agent Coldmoon,” said Pendergast, sniffing again, his brow furrowed in displeasure. “You stay in the rear, Captain, until we’re out, and then you may emerge.”

They exited, the captain following, sweat pouring down his face. Coldmoon gulped the sultry air, feeling his nausea recede.

Pendergast was examining one of the test tubes. Suddenly, he turned to the captain with a pained expression on his face. “Captain, how could you? What a tragedy!”

The captain stared at Pendergast, uncomprehending.

“How many pounds were in here? Five hundred? A thousand? Good heavens! To think, to just think , of the waste!”

Pendergast swung toward Coldmoon, face stricken, dropping the evidence collection kit in his agitation. “Agent Coldmoon, what we had here were not human feet. Rather, this was the transportation of cargo in direct violation of U.S. sanctions.”

“What cargo?”

“If I’m not mistaken, this container was filled with tins of the finest Iranian imperial gold caviar, dumped into the sea in a moment of panic. My God, I could weep !”

Gladstone had been surprised when Agent Pendergast dropped by the lab unannounced, with an official partner no less. At least this new guy looked like an FBI agent. Pendergast had introduced them with the sort of formality reserved for a duke and duchess, and now they had all crowded into her cramped lab, watching while Lam ran the latest simulation. They had already racked up close to nine grand in computing time on the Q machine, but Pendergast hadn’t batted an eye when he heard the figure.

When the simulation was finished, Gladstone explained its failure. “The only conclusion we can draw is that there’s a gap in our data.”

“What sort of gap?” Pendergast asked.

“I wish I knew. We’re missing an input. To figure out what it is, I’d like to do what we call a ‘rubber ducky’ test in the area where we have the thinnest data sets.”

“Which is?”

“The northern part of the Florida Gulf Coast. We drop about twenty-five floating buoys, each fitted with a small GPS transmitter and battery, in calculated locations, and then track them. I think with that data we could plug the gap.”

“Very good.” Pendergast seemed unfazed, but Agent Coldmoon was giving her the hairy eyeball.

“Rubber ducky?” he asked, his voice laden with skepticism.

Lam burst into a cackle of laughter, abruptly silenced by a glare from Gladstone.

“It’s just our term for floating sensor buoys. They’re yellow. The cost is a hundred dollars per buoy, plus fuel for the boat. We’ve already got the buoys — we keep a stock on hand — and I’d like to drop them tomorrow. Wallace has determined the locations necessary to maximize our data collection. Wallace? Please show Agent Pendergast what I’m talking about.”

Lam tapped away on a keyboard and a chart of the Gulf Coast popped up. “There are eddies and currents all through here,” he said, “especially at the mouths of rivers and inlets. That’s where we lack high-resolution data. So we drop them in a line here, another line here, and then here. Here, too. Oh... and here .” He smiled, immensely pleased with himself. “Five locations, five buoys.”

She glanced over at the agent named Coldmoon, who was peering at the dotted lines on the screen. “Any questions?”

Coldmoon shook his head. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“I really believe this will fill in the missing pieces,” said Gladstone, trying to muster as much confidence as she could. “Anyway,” she went on hastily, “we’ll be doing the buoy drop tomorrow. No reason to delay.”

“I should like to join you,” said Pendergast, “if it isn’t too much trouble.”

This brought Gladstone up short. She didn’t like having landlubbers on her boat. They were always underfoot, never knew what to do, and they tended to ask a lot of dumb questions and then puke everywhere. But she could hardly say no. “If you wish. We leave early — like at five AM. It’s going to be a long day. And the forecast is for a rough sea.”

The briefest of pauses before Pendergast answered. “That will not be a problem.”

“Well, okay. But wear foul weather gear. And bring Dramamine.”

She heard Pendergast’s phone vibrate. He extracted it from his pocket and, excusing himself, stepped outside. She could hear his low voice speaking beyond the door.

“Agent Coldmoon, will you be coming, too?” she asked.