Buzzard Bay (38 page)

“Have you heard from Henekie in the last hour?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” he answered. “He will bring the boat in for you at dark.”

“So his plan to inject his goodies into their fuel supply was successful?” El Presidente asked.

“He just told us everything was going as planned,” the lieutenant told him.

“Have a car brought around for me in one hour,” El Presidente told him. He had some things to discuss with Lena now that she was their person here. Besides, she was to be his alibi for the night. He wanted to be seen going into her place in the daylight and not coming out till the next morning. This was all part of Henekie’s plan; no one would ever know he was close to Bertrand’s ship that night.

Lena was indeed everything Henekie said she would be, El Presidente thought on meeting her. I’ll be spending a lot of time here after this is over. Business came first, however. As soon as he arrived at Lena’s, he began briefing her as to what would be required of her. He gave her a list of people who would become expendable in the next while.

“You will be responsible for seeing that this is carried out,” he told her, waiting to see if she blanched at the assignment. She showed no emotion whatsoever, reading over the list noting that most of them were Waddell’s old cronies.

“To us,” El Presidente held up his glass.

Lena touched her glass to his, giving the Colombian her most seductive smile. “There’s something you can do for me. I see you have a small money laundering business here. Quinn drew up some papers we would like you to sign. Quinn and I will guarantee you to double your money in one year if you sign over half of the business to us.”

Immediately, El Presidente’s hackles were raised. He didn’t like overly ambitious women, but what the hell, he didn’t need to deal with this right now.

“Sure,” he said, “I can do that.” He quickly signed the papers and headed for the guesthouse from where he and his men took the passage down to the old warehouse to wait for Henekie. When he returned, he’d put this Lena on her back and show her you don’t make deals with El Presidente, you do as you’re told. Henekie would have to learn the same thing, but that would all happen when he came back as king of the Caribbean.

It wasn’t long after dark that the huge door opened and Henekie’s powerboat entered the building. El Presidente felt relieved when he saw it was a large boat; in fact, it hardly made it through the door. He stepped into the boat immediately as it docked and shook hands with Henekie.

“I want to show you something before we go.” El Presidente beckoned with his finger for Henekie to follow him onto the dock. El Presidente unlocked a box mounted in the wall and pushed a button, almost immediately there was the unmistakable sound of rushing water and the speed boat began to drop. once the boat was completely below the dock, El Presidente pushed another button and the dock began to move until it completely closed over where the boat had been.

“Not only does it hide your boat, there’s living quarters under there,” El Presidente told him. “It all works on water pressure from the many caverns underground here. We think it was built by hand for the slave traders. I’ve modernized it but you have to admit it’s an incredible feat of engineering.” El Presidente opened the dock and floated the boat back up to their level.

They then went down with the boat into the underground cavern. Here he showed Henekie the way to a set of stairs. “These run all the way up to the guest house.” El presidente told him. “On the inside of these stairs where you see the wooden cribbing is a shaft that has a lift to haul stuff up and down. From the top it looks like it might be an old well so anyone nosing around will not be able to detect anything. I’m showing you this because it’s a perfect way to get people or other things in or out of Nassau which in the future may be useful to you.”

Henekie was fascinated With the place but it put him on over load and he had to get back to the job at hand, this was no time to get distracted. Both men were decidedly nervous, which was to be suspected, everything was on the line.

“Are we ready?” Henekie asked.

“Like they say in the States, ‘Let’s rock and roll’,” El Presidente smiled.

As soon as the boat was fueled, the doors opened and under the cover of darkness idled its way out of the harbor. About ten minutes out, the boat shuddered coming to life as its powerful engines opened soon, leaving Nassau a speck behind them. Henekie and El Presidente huddled in the small cabin going over their plan.

“Our ship is here right now,” Henekie pointed at the map. “It will take us approximately two hours to catch her.”

“Won’t they see her on radar?” El Presidente asked.

“Yes, but she’s in one of the shipping lanes. They’ll think nothing of it. By the time Bertrand’s radar goes down, she’ll be in position to jam everything going in and out. Now there’s two other ships in the same area,” explained Henekie. “Only the one,” he pointed to the map again, “may be close enough to notice anything. She’s an old plugger, very slow. I doubt if she’ll bother to investigate. Even if she did, it should be all over by the time she arrives on the scene.”

“Our jamming system will prevent any radio contact with this ship, won’t it?” El Presidente asked.

“Oh yes,” Henekie answered. “This system is sophisticated enough to stop all the frequencies that would get help to Bertrand in time.”

“He’ll be able to broadcast on some of the higher frequencies. The CIA kind of screwed that up themselves. A lot of these frequencies were being used for, shall we say, illegal activities.”

El Presidente chuckled at Henekie’s insinuations.

“The CIA and others began monitoring these frequencies,” Henekie went on explaining. “Now they’re filled with jargon and coded messages. By the time Bertrand’s message is ciphered out, we’ll be long gone.”

El Presidente looked at his watch. “Two hours, that means we’ll rendezvous with our ship shortly after eleven o’clock.”

“That’s right,” Henekie answered.

El Presidente rapped his fingers on the table nervously. “I thought you told me your chemicals were unpredictable, aren’t you cutting it a little close?”

“At first, this was a real problem for me,” Henekie conceded. “Then my engineer explained to me that they had improved these chemicals considerably since I was involved with them. The only obstacle in my way was in my original plan. The chemicals were to be put into the fuel truck on its way to the barge. I realized there were too many variables if I did this; variations in heat, an unpredictable time of actual delivery to Bertrand’s ship, just to name a few. These chemicals are very volatile and susceptible to any change in their environment. This left me with no option but to have the chemicals installed as the fuel was pumped onto the ship itself.”

El Presidente sat stunned, spellbound, listening to Henekie, “How in hell did you do that?”

Henekie shook his head, “Actually, it was easy once I figured it out, and I let them do it.”

El Presidente asked incredulously, “You got them to do it?”

“Oh, unwittingly of course,” Henekie responded. “I first checked the fuel filter on the barge to see what it was. Then I acquired one the same. I phoned the fuel company pretending to represent the ship and demanded a new fuel filter be installed on the barge before they would accept any more fuel. As I told you, I caught a ride with the fuel truck driver one day before. He had told me how they refueled and roughly how much fuel the ship held. So it was no problem knowing the quantity to put in the filter. On the day they delivered the fuel, I again asked the driver for a ride. The filter was on the seat beside him. I simply exchanged my filter for his. When we got down to the barge, I got out and walked away. I heard the driver tell Bertrand’s men guarding the barge that he was going to change the filter. They told him to begin fueling the barge; they would look after it. So now the chemical won’t get mixed with the diesel fuel until it is actually pumped into the ship directly. Under these conditions, the chemical is quite predictable. We should begin seeing results around midnight, give or take a few minutes.”

“If this chemical will blow up Bertrand’s ship, why did you need the missile launchers?” El Presidente asked. Technology still baffled him and usually left it to others. In this case, however, he was too close to the action not to know what was going on.

“The chemical won’t necessarily blow Bertrand out of the water. Theoretically, the chemical will not explode but combust. What happens is the chemical mixes with the diesel fuel and begins to gel. This will plug the filter to their engines causing them to stop. The lights on board will go out, and auxiliary lighting will come back. This will be our signal to move in. All the equipment on board, including their radar and big guns, are hydraulically driven and will get so hot they can’t be run manually.The auxiliary engine will run only minutes, and then its fuel lines will also be plugged. This will leave them with only their batteries, but all their power will be required to run the radio and emergency lighting. They will be virtually dead in the water. The engineers will immediately go to work replacing the filter and when they do, the chemicals will release deadly gas. I’ve been around it only in the open air,” Henekie told him.

“In the confined area of the engine room, it will kill them instantly. They will have to seal off the engine room. The chemical will continue to build pressure in the fuel tank. It will soon blow the tank, but this is where it is unpredictable. The tank may just blow apart doing no immediate damage to the hull itself, or it might just blow everything to smithereens. If it only breaks the tank, the diesel fuel will flood the engine room. The chemical will combust causing a massive fire. It won’t be long till Bertrand feels a living hell under his feet.”

El Presidente liked this idea; a smile came to his face. “This will take a little longer than if the ship blew up, but I will enjoy it a lot more.”

“We still have only so much time,” Henekie warned him. “Two hours maximum and we have to be out of here.”

“That’s why the missile,” El Presidente confirmed.

“Yes, the fire will be below deck. It will give off lots of smoke but not visible fire that will attract attention. One of the launchers is mounted up-front on this boat, but you’ll be pleased to see what we have in store for you on the freighter. It is designed to breach the hull, causing a big, loud explosion. Once the hull is breached, it won’t take long before they will try to abandon the ship. Their machine guns will still be dangerous, but we can stay out of range and just circle with powerboats making sure no one escapes.”

The driver called down to say that their ship was in sight.

“Time has flown, Henekie,” El Presidente said to him.

“Enjoy yourself,” Henekie slapped him on the back, “champagne’s on board. I’ll be back to pick you up after our hunting is done.”

A large loading ramp hung off the side of the ship with stairs running up to the deck. The powerboat’s driver was able to pull up beside this while they were still on the move. Two men were standing out on the deck and pulled El Presidente and his lieutenant aboard, and then the powerboat pulled away and kept abreast of the ship waiting for their signal to move in. At five minutes after midnight, Henekie began to sweat.

He knew the chemicals would not be exactly reliable, but waiting was the hardest part of any operation. They had been ready for a long time now, El Presidente would be getting impatient. The minutes ticked by; maybe the chemicals were not working. All these thoughts were going through his mind.

“Almost twelve-thirty,” his throat was getting tight. Suddenly, Bertrand’s ship disappeared then appeared again, much dimmer. Henekie felt an immediate exhilaration.

“Let’s go,” he told the driver. They turned away from El Presidente’s ship and closed in on Bertrand.

Ansly decided to stay up until Green was aboard. He was sitting in his office when the lights went out and the auxiliary cut in. He was immediately on the phone to the bridge inquiring as to the problem. The bridge told him they were in contact with the engine room, and they were looking for the problem. Ansly was still on the phone when the auxiliary lights went out, leaving only the low-voltage emergency lighting. A sense of fear went up Ansly’s spine; for the first time, he felt something was not right. Get a message out to the base for help, he told the bridge and tell the men to get to their stations until we find out what’s going on. He left his office and went up to the bridge.

“Anything new?” he asked his captain.

“There doesn’t seem to be any answer from the engine room. I sent Lieutenant Gerard down to investigate,” he added.

Ansly looked out over the ocean until he came to El Presidente’s ship. “What’s that?” he asked.

“It showed up on radar about noon today,” the captain told him. “We took it for a freighter. He was following the shipping lane until now,” he pointed as the ship seemed to be coming toward them.

The radio operator burst onto the bridge, “Sir, all channels seem to be jammed, there’s no communication in or out.”

Ansly began to realize their predicament. “Bring the guns to bear on that ship,” he told the captain.

“We can’t turn the guns sir, the men say there is hot hydralic oil shooting out evereywhere.”

The phone rang; Ansly picked it up. “The engineer and two of his men are dead in the engine room,” he recognized the second mates voice. “The engine room is filled with gas. We are getting some gas masks and going in, but I doubt it will do us any good. We can’t even see in there.”

“Stay out of there,” Ansly told him. “Seal it off and come up to the bridge.” Ansly looked at the captain; his face was ashen in the dim light.

“At least we are well armed,” Ansly reassured him. “They’ll have one hell of a time taking this ship.” He had no sooner said this than they felt the deck shake beneath their feet as a rumble shook her from stern to stern.

Ansly grabbed the phone, “What’s going on down there?” There was no answer. Another seaman on the bridge was sent to find out what he could, but the black smoke billowing up around them confirmed their worst fears.