Off the Chart (6 page)

For the next ten days, they followed the ship's progress on the laptop.

After taking on 840,000 barrels of North Slope crude, the
Rainmaker
departed from Berth 5 of the Alyeska Marine Terminal across the bay from Valdez, Alaska, on a blustery afternoon. All eleven of the
Rainmaker
's tanks were full and she rode low and slow in the heavy seas of the northern Pacific. The ship was owned by TransOcean Shipping Lines, an American corporation based in San Francisco, although for tax purposes the
Rainmaker
was registered in Panama and flew the Panamanian flag of convenience. For the first few hundred miles the ship was battered by gales. She took eight days to steam down the coast of California and around the Baja Peninsula and across the eastern Pacific to the Panama Canal. For their purposes, the canal was an ideal choke point, funneling a huge percentage of the hemisphere's traffic through a narrow band of sea.

When the tanker passed through the Miraflores Lock on the Pacific side at four-thirty in the afternoon, the ship's image was captured by a Web camera and a few seconds later the image was broadcast on the Internet Web site operated by the Panama Canal Authority. The Web camera was updated every few seconds and showed the constant stream of ships through the first Pacific lock. Sal monitored the Web site to double-check the data coming from the FROM system.

“Headed our way,” Sal said. “Right on schedule.”

With Anne looking over his shoulder, Sal sat at their tiny desk and tapped out the code to slip into the FROM. From this point on, they'd camp inside the Web site for the moment-by-moment updates on the ship's position.

“Shit,” Sal said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Daniel set aside the Mac-10 he was cleaning and came over.

“What?”

“There's a lag,” Sal said. “Look.”

Anne and Daniel leaned close to the computer. The stream of data that had always flowed smoothly across the screen, updated every two or three seconds, had slowed to a crawl.

“What is that?”

“I don't know,” Sal said. “But it's not right.”

“Have they fingered us? They know we're inside?”

“Could be the satellite. Some kind of weather interference. But it's never been this slow.”

As they watched, the screen blinked as if the laptop were losing power; then the stream of numbers and coded letters resumed its normal flow.

Daniel stepped back.

“A hiccup in the transmission,” Daniel said. “Nothing to worry about. A thunderstorm over the Pacific. Lightning in Guam. No big deal.”

“Yeah,” Sal said. “Could be.”

Anne said, “They could do that, know we're watching? Figure our location?”

“If they had reason to be suspicious, yeah, top security people might be able to discover we've hacked the site,” Sal said. “But track us back here? Not unless they've got the Pentagon in on it, a supercomputer doing the work. Not some piddling corporate security system. Or it could be the mercs.”

Daniel shook his head at Sal, but Anne said, “Mercs? What's that?”

Turning away from her, Daniel said, “Mercenaries. Hired guns.”

“First I've heard of that,” she said.

“There've been a couple of cases,” said Daniel. “Both times in the China Sea. A gang of ex-soldiers hired by the shipping companies.”

“And what? They arrested some pirates?”

“Took them out is more like it,” Sal said.

“Took them out? Murdered them?”

Daniel flashed a look at Sal and said to Anne, “The details are sketchy.”

“But they're out there,” Anne said. “And that's who this is?”

“It's the weather,” Sal said. “Just some damn lightning storm.”

They watched for a while longer as the data scrolled at a steady pace.

Daniel tapped Sal on the shoulder and asked him to step outside. Sal rose, took another look at the screen, then shrugged and left. Daniel shut the door behind him.

“Anne,” he said. “I think you should stay ashore for this one.”

His eyes showed her nothing. A depthless smile.

“What? You're having a premonition? This computer thing?”

“Just do me this favor, one time. Okay?”

“We don't need to hit it at all,” she said. “There's nothing special about this one. Something doesn't feel right, let's bail.”

Daniel came over to her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“You won't do this for me? Just this once. Stay home.”

“What's going on? You're phasing me out? I'm supposed to start training to be the happy homemaker?”

He drew his hands away as if they'd been stung. She hadn't meant to lash out like that. But she couldn't bring herself to apologize. He had a different look. Unsure, lost. It unnerved her, seeing him like that. The ground beneath her growing unsteady.

He swept both hands back through his glossy hair and turned his eyes to a window in the cabin.

“If I died,” he said, “or we got separated, what would you do, Anne?”

“You're not going to die.”

He turned to her then, his eyes as harsh as she'd ever seen them.

“I asked you what you'd do.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'd probably go home.”

“Back to Key Largo.”

“Yes.”

“Back to your brother and your boyfriend?”

His blue eyes were full of twisting light.

“You asked me a question, Daniel, I'm trying to be honest. I'd go home, try to resume my life. There is no boyfriend. And I have no desire to see Vic.”

“Key Largo,” he said. “Okay, that's good. Something ever happens, I'll find you there. That's where I'll come.”

“Daniel? What's wrong? What's going on?”

He stared at her for several moments, then said, “I'm sorry, Anne. I'm tensed up, that's all. I'm sorry I bullied you. Forgive me.”

“Of course,” she said. “Of course.”

But when he came to her and held her, for the first time since they'd met, the fusion of their bodies, that disappearance of their separate selves she'd come to expect and depend on, did not occur.

On that steamy April afternoon, the
Rainmaker
passed through the Pedro Miguel Locks, Gatun Lake, and finally the Gatun Locks, then out of the Panama Canal and into the Caribbean Sea, where she went north on her last leg, following the busiest of several shipping lanes that would take her through the Yucatán Straits, up into the Gulf, then into the Mississippi, headed to the Marathon Oil refinery in Garyville, Louisiana, which was midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. She carried a crew of fourteen.

Using two of the fishing boats from the Gray Ghost Lodge, Daniel and Anne and their crew shoved off three hours after the
Rainmaker
passed through the last lock of the Panama Canal. Earlier in the day, Marty Messina had set up the rendezvous with two small tankers based in Barranquilla, providing them a GPS location out in the Colombian Basin where they would converge near dawn tomorrow to off-load the crude before scuttling the ship.

Their crew was a mixed lot. Five former Sandinista guerrillas, well-armed, quiet men who doubled as Gray Ghost fishing guides in the winter. And there were Pedro and Manuel Cruz, two Cuban brothers from Miami who'd assisted Daniel with various rip-offs at the Port of Miami before he strayed from the family business. Two others had peeled off from Vincent Salbone's Miami crew: Sal Gardino, the young computer guy, and Marty Messina.

Two hours after departing the Gray Ghost, they spotted the oil tanker a mile to the east, and for the next hour Daniel in the lead boat and Anne Bonny following with Sal Gardino and three of the Nicaraguans shadowed the
Rainmaker
as it moved north a hundred miles off the Central American coast. At that distance in their high-powered craft, they could seize the ship, tie up the crew, take her to the designated meeting spot, off-load the crude, and still be back in the maze of estuaries of the Barra de Colorado by the day after tomorrow. Long enough for a watchful owner to become alarmed at losing touch with one of his vessels, but too quick to send help.

When the sea was clear in every direction, Daniel signaled, and the boats came along opposite sides of the
Rainmaker.
Hull to hull with the tanker, the men readied the grappling hooks. That part hadn't changed in hundreds of years, same four-pronged steel hooks.
Only difference was that theirs were coated with a rubberized layer to soften the
clang
when they caught the rail.

In recent years, as piracy had boomed, shipping companies had begun to install laser devices that sensed boarders climbing over the side. Alarms sounded, decks were flooded with light, and usually the pirates fled. If they didn't, the tanker's crew was usually ready with powered-up fire hoses to blow them back over the side.

But Sal Gardino had researched the
Rainmaker
's specs and her recent maintenance history and was certain she wasn't equipped with alarms. Once aboard, Sal would only have to locate and disable the FROM system and the ship would simply vanish from computer screens.

At Daniel's signal, the hooks were heaved and they caught to the rails of the big ship and the rope ladders uncoiled beneath them. The
Rainmaker
was a midsize tanker, just under a thousand feet long and 166 feet wide. At that hour of night, with most sailors customarily spending their free time in quarters and only a skeleton crew working the bridge, it was highly unlikely a boarder would encounter one of the tanker's crewmen when coming over the side.

But this night was different from any before.

Anne Bonny was halfway up the ladder, Pedro, one of the Nicaraguans, and Sal Gardino ahead of her, when she heard the first sharp pops. Her breath seized in her lungs and her hands fumbled for a grip.

She'd practiced with the Mac-10 at the Gray Ghost Lodge target range and recognized the quick burst. And those first few shots were answered by a duller noise, the suppressed puffs of what surely were silenced weapons.

At the railing, Pedro hesitated, gripping the rope with one hand while he struggled to unsling the AK-40 from his back. Then there was another round of firing, this one longer. Panicked shouts from the deck, and the metallic chime of slugs flattening against the ship's iron sides. She heard Daniel's voice, strangely calm, commanding Marty Messina to take cover.

“Move!” Anne shouted. “They're in trouble. Move, goddamn it!”

Raising up, Pedro lifted one foot to the lowest rail, and a half-second later the small man was kicked backward by a burst of fire.
He shrieked and somersaulted, the heel of his boot clipping Anne Bonny on the shoulder as he pitched into the sea. For a half-second she lost her grip, burned her hand on the rope as she fought to regain her hold, and scrambled up the rope ladder and wrestled past Sal Gardino, who was paralyzed and gibbering to himself. A techno geek, rendered useless by the first sounds of a gunfight.

On the top rung of the rope ladder, Anne Bonny paused and found her breath. Head down, crouched below the gunwale, she gripped her Mac-10, formed a quick image of her next move, then sprang up and tumbled over the rail, ducking a shoulder, slamming into the rough pebbled deck, and rolling once, twice, a third time until she came to rest against an iron wall.

She was dizzy and nauseous and for a moment thought she'd been hit by one of the slugs strafing the deck. She closed her eyes and scanned her body but sensed no numbness, no hot prickling. Just a throb in her shoulder where she'd slammed the steel deck.

She sat up, pressed her back flat against the wall, and was fumbling with the Mac-10, trying to find the right grip, when she made out the shadow of a man moving to the rail. Then saw the bright flashes as he unleashed on Sal and the rest of her crew following her up the ladder.

The man got off a dozen rounds before Anne Bonny could raise her weapon. Sal screamed and one of the Nicaraguans cursed in Spanish and went silent. Anne Bonny aimed at the center of the body armor sheathing the man's back and curled her finger against the cool metal and the tall man bucked forward and tumbled over the side.

She blew out a breath, but before she could move again, dozens of spotlights bathed the deck in staggering brightness and in the same instant the
whup
and blare of a helicopter sounded from the north.

“Stay down, Anne. Stay down!”

All around her, automatic weapons erupted, the raw thuds and clangs of bullets slamming the ship's tough hide.

Daniel's voice had come from her right, roughly fifty feet away. She rose from her crouch and craned around the edge of the wall, which she could see in the blue-white glare was not a wall at all but a yellow cargo container emblazoned with the logo of the Maersk shipping line.

“Anne, flat on the deck! Stay down.”

A staccato chain of blasts cut him off. Louder ones answered back and a dozen more of the muffled shots replied. Then it was silent. To the north she saw the helicopter searchlight prowling the dark waters on the starboard side of the ship. Again and again, a large-caliber machine gun unloaded on men in the water. One of their speedboats exploded, the fireball blooming against the black sky.