Clive Cussler - Skeleton Coast

9

SLOANEMacintyre wore a baseball cap to tame her hair against the twenty-knot wind generated by the fishing boat’s forward speed. Her eyes were protected by a pair of wraparound Oakley’s on a gaily colored cord and what skin lay exposed to the sun was slathered with SPF 30. She had on a pair of khaki shorts and a loose bush shirt festooned with pockets. On her feet she wore canvas boat shoes. The glint of a gold anklet shone in the sun.

Every time she was on the water she felt like a teen again, working her father’s charter boat off Florida’s east coast. There had been a few bad incidences when she’d taken over for her ailing father with drunken fishermen more interested in catching her than billfish or snapper, but all in all it was the greatest time of her life. The salty tang of sea air seemed to calm her very soul while the isolation of being on a hard-charging boat helped her focus her mind.

The charter boat captain, a jovial Namibian, sensed in her a kindred spirit and when she glanced at him he threw her a knowing smile. Sloane returned it. With the twin Cummins diesels bellowing under the transom it was nearly impossible to speak, so he stood from his chair and gestured for Sloane to take the controls. Her smile turned into a grin. The captain tapped the compass to indicate their heading and stepped from the wheel. Sloane slid into his position and rested her hands lightly on the worn wheel.

He stood by her side for a couple of minutes, checking that their wake continued in a straight line.

Satisfied that he was right about his passenger being able to handle the forty-six-foot cruiser, he slid down the short ladder; nodded at Tony Reardon, who was slouched in the fighting chair; and went to use the head.

Sloane would have given up on their search if those men hadn’t come after her the previous night. Their actions convinced her she was on the right track to find the HMSRove . Why else try to scare her off?

She hadn’t told Tony about the attack, but first thing this morning she’d phoned her boss and laid out the whole story. While concerned for her safety, he gave her permission to extend their stay another day so they could investigate the section of sea where Papa Heinrick had seen his giant metal snakes.

She knew she was being reckless. Any sane person would have heeded the warning and left the country on the first plane out, but that wasn’t in her nature. In all her life she had never left a task unfinished. No matter how bad a book was, she’d read it to the last word. No matter how difficult a crossword, she’d work it to the last clue. No matter how difficult the job, she would see it through to the end. It was this dogged tenacity that probably kept her in doomed relationships long after she should have ended them, but it also gave her the strength to face whoever was trying to prevent her from finding her ship.

Sloane had been cautious when hiring the charter, making sure the captain wasn’t one they had spoken to when she and Tony were putting together their map. Leaving their hotel, they had blended in with a large group of tourists who were headed to the waterfront for a charter fishing trip of their own and on the bus she made certain that no one was following them. Had she seen anything suspicious she would have called off the whole thing, but no one paid their vehicle any attention.

It was only when they were several miles from shore that Sloane told the captain where she really wanted to go. He’d told her that the section of the sea where she wanted to fish was devoid of any marine life but since she was paying he hadn’t put up much of an argument.

That had been six uneventful hours earlier, and every mile they put behind them without incident allowed Sloane to relax that little bit more. The men who had chased her must have assumed she had taken their warning to heart and given up.

The seas were building slightly with a wind out of the south. The beamy boat rode them well, rolling to starboard with each swell and returning to an even keel smartly. The captain returned from below and stood a little behind Sloane, letting her maintain the helm. He reached for a pair of binoculars from under a bench seat and scanned the horizon. He handed them to her and pointed a bit south of due west.

Sloane adjusted the binoculars to fit her face and brought them to her eyes. A big ship coasted on the horizon, a single-funneled freighter that appeared to be heading toward Walvis Bay. At this extreme range it was impossible to see any detail other than get a vague sense of her dark hull and a small forest of booms and derricks on both her fore and aft decks.

“I never see a ship like that out here before,” the charter captain said. “Only ships come to Walvis are coasters or the cruise ships. Fishermen are all closer to shore and tankers rounding the Cape run four or five hundred miles further out.”

The world’s oceans are divided into sea lanes that were almost as clearly marked as interstate highways.

With deadlines always tight and the price of keeping a vessel at sea running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a day for supertankers, ships invariably followed the straightest line between destinations, rarely varying a mile or two. So while some parts of the ocean teemed with marine traffic, other regions never saw a single ship in a year. The charter boat was in such a dead zone—far enough from the coast to avoid regional freighters supplying Walvis Bay but well inside established routes used for rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

“There’s something else odd,” Sloane said. “There’s no smoke coming from her funnel. Do you think she’s a derelict? Maybe she was caught in a storm and the crew had to abandon her.”

Tony came up the ladder. Sloane was pondering the presence of the mystery ship and the fate of her crew and didn’t hear him so when he touched her shoulder she started.

“Sorry,” he said. “Look behind us. There’s another boat coming this way.”

Sloane whirled so fast that her hands on the wheel caused the boat to lurch to port. It was notoriously hard to judge distances at sea but she knew the boat driving hard for them could not be more than a couple of miles astern and for it to catch up to them it was running faster than the charter boat. She tossed the binoculars at the captain and eased the chrome throttle handles until they hit their stops.

“What’s going on?” Tony shouted, leaning forward as the boat picked up speed.

The captain had sensed Sloane’s fear and for the moment said nothing as he scoped the approaching craft with the binoculars.

“Do you recognize it?” Sloane asked him.

“Yes. She comes into Walvis every month or so. A yacht. Maybe fifty feet long. I do not know her name or her owner.”

“Can you see anyone?”

“There are men on the upper bridge. White men.”

“I demand to know what is going on!” Tony roared, his face flushing.

Again Sloane ignored him. Without having to see them, she knew who was in the boat behind them. She gently eased the wheel and started racing for the distant freighter, praying that her pursuers would back off if there were witnesses. Out on the open ocean she was sure they’d be killed, the fishing boat scuttled. She pressed more firmly on the throttles but the diesels were already giving her everything they had. Her lips worked as she silently prayed that she was wrong about the freighter being abandoned. If it was, they’d be dead as soon as the yacht caught up.

Tony grabbed her arm, his eyes blazing. “Damn it, Sloane, what is this all about? Who are those people?”

“I think they’re the same men who chased me back to the hotel last night.”

“Chased you? What do you mean, chased you?”

“What I said,” she snapped. “I was chased back to the hotel by two men. One of them had a gun. They warned me to leave the country.”