Protocol 7 (27 page)

Close, Simon said to himself as he moved from one street to the next, following the route he had memorized hours before. So close. He knew the others were feeling more and more apprehensive—he couldn’t blame them—but Simon could feel no fear. His father was closer than ever, and the hope in him was almost overwhelming.

He knew that the others had their own reasons for being here: Hayden wanted his ship back; Andrew wanted to prove his tech; Sam was here to try and protect them all. But Simon had not forgotten the one and only reason he had set all of this into motion: to find his father. To save him. To bring him home safe.

Simon was the first to arrive at Doc A-67. The hollow sound of his boots on the wooden slats was far too loud to suit him; he felt like a giant tromping on a drum skin. His father’s journal was a constant weight against his heart. As he walked closer to the water’s edge, he noticed an old freighter looming out of the sea—a black-painted cargo vessel with two huge, dormant smokestacks, dark and silent since the vessel’s energy conversion. Until all this had begun, Simon had been unaware of how completely sea travel had changed in the last fifty years, with new propulsion systems and new fuel economies. Still, a seaworthy hull was a seaworthy hull, and every ship that could stay afloat was still working, one way or another, including this barnacle-encrusted behemoth buried in the fog. He strained to find its name and registry number painted on the bow, and almost gasped when he found it.

The S.S. Munro.

It was the ship they had been looking for—the one whose navigation system they had already hijacked, back when they were in Corsica.

Simon already knew how it was going to work out. It would not be pleasant for Donovan or his crew, but no one would die; if they were lucky, no one would even be hurt. That remained to be seen.

As he approached the large vessel he noticed a wide-bodied, broad-shouldered man in a seaman’s cap standing at the bottom of the gangway, smoking a twisted cheroot and staring into the fog. Simon recognized the iron-gray hair and the hands as gnarled and scarred as an old oak. Doug Donovan looked exactly like what Hayden had described: a once-retired ship’s captain who had spent most of his career at sea in the last century, and who had returned to the sea because it was where he belonged. A man who had managed to wrangle an incredibly important contract with the military and the UK because he was one of the best damn sailors still at sea, under any flag, and everyone knew it.

He turned and looked at Simon, his gray eyes glittering with amusement and curiosity.

“Well, hello mate,” he said, chewing on his cigar. He looked to one side and gave the choppy sea of Puerto Williams an assessing glare. “Almost didn’t make it, the southern seas are pretty rough. Swell was pounding the whole way through.”

Donovan pointed over Simon’s shoulder with his chin. “Look behind you.”

Simon turned to see almost his entire team walking down the dock toward them.

“Quite a group you got there,” Donovan allowed. “Though one did arrive a bit earlier—hours ago, in point of fact.” He chewed the cigar a bit more and squinted, deep in thought. “Quite a looker.”

“I hope you’re not referring to my buddy Max?”

Donovan pretended to scowl at him. “Don’t be cheeky, you know who I’m talkin’ about.” The team reached his side with Max slightly in the lead. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?” he said to Donovan, as if they were old friends. “Permission granted,” the captain said gruffly. “All’a you.”

They murmured greetings to Simon as they filed by, hefting their bags and crates of equipment as they went. Simon noticed how much more confident they all were, approaching and boarding the vessel as if they had done this before.

“Come on,” Donovan said, “Let’s get out of here, I have cargo that needs to be delivered.”

As Simon boarded the Munro and put his feet on the main deck for the first time, his eye tried to measure the breadth and depth of the boat. It didn’t seem nearly large enough to accommodate Spector VI.

Donovan knew what he was thinking. “It barely did the trick,” Donovan said, waving a gnarled hand at the huge doors set into the deck itself. “The whatever-it-is takes up the entire hull. Used the biggest damn crane I’ve ever seen, at a loading station no one’s ever seen before, just to get this bloody thing on board. Not nearly as heavy as I expected, but big, Simon. All of six feet clearance front and back, and a hair more than that left and right. Extremely tight fit.” He stopped at the base of a massive winch that was bolted directly to the superstructure of the boat with connectors as thick as his wrist. “My engineers tell me this here winching system will get that whatchamecallit out of here once it’s free from its wrapping—wherever or whenever that might be.” He scowled and almost bit his cheroot in half, then leaned forward and spoke in a mock-whisper, his rough voice dripping with sarcasm. “You can see, I assume, how much I enjoy being left in the dark.”

The Spector had been camouflaged in a sealed wrap when it was first placed into the vessel—Simon knew that much. No one had seen it “undressed” yet; not even Donovan had an idea of what it really looked like, nor was anyone supposed to. His orders had been simple: get it aboard, sail at best possible speed to a particular location, and wait. Nothing more, and don’t ask questions. Donovan hadn’t even been particularly surprised when the destination coordinates had changed completely and unexpectedly in mid-mission. That kind of evasive maneuver was fairly common during black ops; he’d been through it before. As far as Donovan was concerned, Simon and his team were military personnel—that’s what he’d been told. According to the coordinates and instructions he had received, the team was supposed to rendezvous here at Port Williams. And all had gone as instructed.

“I feel as if we’re the slaves who dragged that horse up to the gates of Troy,” Donovan said. “Some big damn piece of work, here for some big damn important reason.” He cocked an eye at Simon.

“One of these days,” he said, “Someone’s going to have to tell me what that thing is.”

“Oh, I think it’s better not to know too much sometimes,” Simon assured him. “But let’s just get to where we need to go and we’ll see.”

He looked at his watch as he spoke, and Donovan nodded in agreement. “I know. We have a three-hour window starting in about eight minutes. I need to get this thing moving.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Simon said.

“Don’t mention it. Your guys in the military pay me a good sum for this bloody job.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Simon turned away and asked for directions to the hull.

I wonder if you’d say that, he thought wordlessly as he moved below decks, if you knew what we were actually planning to do.

As Simon entered the main cabin, he noticed the team gathered around the table waiting for him. He could sense the hesitation and fear but was glad to see that everyone was there on time. Max was the last to walk in. He looked at his watch and smiled at Simon.

“I think this is the first time you’ve beat me.” He dropped his bags at the door and said, “Okay, we need some coffee.”

Simon noticed Nastasia in the corner, chatting away with Samantha and Hayden. Ryan greeted him with two mugs of coffee—one for Simon and the other for Max.

“Here you go. Just poured.”

Hayden looked back at Simon and said, “Nastasia tells us there’s a storm approaching. We need to go downstairs and power up the Spector.”

Donovan paused at the door long enough to scrape the room with his eyes. “Lines are free,” he said. “We’ll be on our way in a moment.” His gaze held Simon’s for a moment. “Hope she’s intact,” he said referring to the cargo, and then he was gone.

Max turned to Simon with a look of stunned surprise. “What?”

“He knows, Max. I think he knows something.”

“Andrew could have guided the ship remotely from here on in. There was no reason—”

“He could, but why? We have one of the best captains working for us, and he’s willing to help. That’s far better than a remote handheld console, calibrated by Andrew.”

The vessel’s engines rumbled like an awakening beast as the Munro pulled gently away from the dock, and Donovan guided her massive bulk through a maze of other vessels almost as if the fog wasn’t there at all.

Closer, Simon told himself. Closer.

He stood silently for a long time deep in thought, until Max put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Come on, we have to go over the gear and exercise one more time.”

They had started doing drills with the extreme weather gear that Nastasia had provided Simon in Santiago, but practice was important for them all—important for survival. He turned to call to the rest of them when Donovan suddenly appeared at the door again.

“Look smart,” he said. “The Chilean Port Authority is coming alongside.”

Simon turned quickly and peered out one of the cabin’s portholes. A sleek Coast Guard vessel with blinding lights was heading toward them at high speed, even as Donovan used the ship speakers to order his crew to the fishing equipment. He barked an order to the bridge as well, and the Munro immediately slowed in the water.

“You all stay here,” Max said to the rest of the team. They were standing together in the center of the room, looking wide-eyed and nervous. “Simon? Captain? Let’s see what this is about.”

As they moved down the corridor, Donovan noticed the pistol hidden behind Max’s back, held in an open holster and inches from his hand. “Hmph,” he said, catching the man’s attention. “Just so’s you know, there are a few more of those hereabouts. I’ll show you where I stash them.”

Max gave him a cold smirk.

The Coast Guard vessel closed the gap between them and pulled alongside. Donovan appeared topside just as the Guard’s spotlight cut through the lifting fog and illuminated a sharp-edged circle on the deck. At the same instant, the thin ribbons of a bright blue scanning laser blossomed from the Guard’s cutter and scanned the Munro’s hull, looking for data on the cargo as well as the identification tag embedded into the ship’s superstructure, along with its registration and shipping license—a mandatory series of serial numbers displayed for satellite and ocean-going recognition.

Simon stood out of sight, at the hatch that led below deck, and held his breath. He knew that the original ‘owners’ of the Munro and the Spector alike had prepared for this eventuality. There were scramblers, not unlike Andrew’s own, already mounted in the hold, set to broadcast false data about the cargo: all they would find were nets, trawling lines, and empty bins—the detritus of a fishing vessel that had just left port.

“Identify yourself,” said an almost mechanical voice from the cutter. It gave the same instruction in English, French, Portuguese, German, Chinese, until Donovan pushed the loudspeaker button on the ships console and said, “Fishing Vessel Kappa Alpha Theta Three One Niner Niner Four Alpha Sigma, designation Munro. Captain Dominic Donovan here.” As soon as he spoke English, the mechanical voice responded in kind. Simon had done his reading; he knew the code was a specific number given to certain ships, allowing them a short window of time to be in the open sea. The scarcity of sea bass and the decline of other species in the ocean had caused very strict regulations to be enforced, with precise limits on fishing times per vessel. And meanwhile, the Guard’s radar was being shown exactly what they expected to see: an empty hold with scattered fishing nets and gear.

“We have an eight-hour pass for commercial fishing,” Donovan said through the megaphone, trying to sound bored and slightly annoyed, just as a commercial fisherman stopped for inspection would sound.

“Noted,” the Guard voice said so quickly that Simon wondered if it was, in fact, an AI. Was the entire cutter being remotely guided? “Munro, your radar and navigational systems are shut down. Are you in need of assistance?”

“Damn it,” Simon muttered under his breath. The systems were down to avoid showing any electronic signature at all, even less than Andrew’s scrambler would show. They hadn’t considered that the absence of the signature during visual contact would make them more noticeable.

But Donovan was a quick thinker. “You notice the lousy catch hereabouts?” he said, letting some anger into his voice. “Soon as I have a decent haul, I’ll have the money to repair and upgrade all that fancy tech, but until then—this is what I got to work with.”

“Regulations strongly suggest electronic augmentation even on retrofitted—”

“I know what ‘regulations strongly suggest,’ thank you. I also know it’s not required, and I promise you I can navigate with a handheld and stick to the eight-hour window without assistance. We will be perfectly safe.” The captain took his finger off the loudspeaker button and Simon held his breath. The Guard could order them back to port for any damn thing they wanted. If the AI had any reservations…

“Window is reduced to six hours due to incoming inclement weather conditions,” the accent-less voice said.

“Fine,” Captain Donovan said, obviously anxious to end the conversation. “Six-hour window acknowledged. Clear to sail?”

Without another word the lights from the Port Authority cutter snapped off, and the boat roared to life and veered away into the disappearing fog at breakneck speed.

The captain watched it go for a moment, and then released a huge sigh of relief to match Simon’s own. Then he spun on his heel and bellowed, “Current heading, full speed ahead! Full throttle!”

The Munro boomed and surged into the open ocean, spray pouring over the bow as it crashed through the rising swell.

Simon backed down the stairs and Donovan joined him. “All right then,” he said, “we’re heading south toward Antarctica now. We’re already running silent, and we’ll be in international waters in four minutes or less. A set of slightly more precise coordinates would be appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Simon told him. “In the meantime…full speed ahead.”

Donovan snorted. “As if I had a choice.”

* * *

Simon’s team assembled in the hull of the ship—a surprisingly huge space from top to bottom and side to side, filled almost entirely by the bulbous, dead-black mass of the Spector VI, wrapped in a radar-invisible, non-metallic, sound-absorbing neo-fabric that defied scans of any kind. The inside of the ship looked nothing like its aged exterior. The hull itself was scrupulously cleaned and recently repainted; Donovan ran a tight ship, and there wasn’t an oil stain or a misplaced bolt anywhere in sight.