Operation Caribe (26 page)

The shadow on his cabin door turned out to be a man in full combat array, soaking wet from top to bottom and holding a huge weapon.

“What is this?” the captain demanded. “Who are you?”

But the captain immediately knew the answer when he saw the patch on the man’s shoulder. It showed a U.S. flag and an eagle sitting atop an anchor.

The captain’s heart sank. “Navy SEALs?” he gasped.

“That’s right,” the man with the gun said. “Now hit the deck, both of you.”

Crash was the third man into the captain’s cabin after Commander Beaux and Ghost. Monkey and Smash were outside, looking in the portholes and making sure none of the other crew interfered. Once again, Crash was working the video camera.

He couldn’t believe they were actually on the LNG ship. They had come up in back of it during one of the rainsqualls, invisible on radar and to the naked eye as well. Exiting the
Sea Shadow
by the top hatch, they hooked on to the tanker’s rear railing and climbed up even as the rain soaked them. Then they quickly skirted the bridge and found the captain’s cabin.

Commander Beaux had suspected the LNG carrier as being up to no good after carefully going over every ship transiting through the trouble zone. But though Beaux’s intuition appeared to be correct, the Iranians were apparently up to something other than pulling off a massive sea hijacking. Still, it had been another seamless operation by the 616.

Beaux now went through the stack of morphine bricks, breaking off a piece and placing it on his tongue.

“Figures,” he said, his image and words being picked up by the video camera. “These mooks think it’s easy cash taking this junk into our country. They’re giving the Mexican and Chinese cartels a run for their money”

What happened next Crash found very interesting. Had this been a Whiskey operation, he could see anything happening to this ship, from the crew being beaten, to the ship being sunk. That’s just how things went with Whiskey.

But Crash was sure Commander Beaux knew better. Such things would only interfere with their main mission of finding the phantom pirates before disaster hit. So in Crash’s eyes, Beaux did the most professional thing he could do.

He asked Crash to follow him as he picked up with ease the 100-pound bag containing the morphine bricks. Beaux carried it out of the cabin and out onto the deck, where Monkey and Smash were now holding the rest of the crew. Crash set up the video shot, and with a mighty heave, Beaux tossed the bag over the side. At least $100 million in dope now belonged to the sea.

Then they returned to the cabin and, camera still running, Commander Beaux picked the captain up off the deck.

“You’re a very lucky man,” Beaux growled at him. “I could have you and your men locked up for the rest of your lives. But there are more important things happening right now—so I’ll just leave you at the mercy of the people you were supposed to deliver that junk to.”

At that point, Commander Beaux had the rest of 616 search the ship for weapons. They found a few handguns and some ammunition, which also went over the side. Then he and the SEAL team ran back to the ship’s stern, intent on leaving the way they came.

They went down the access rope one at a time. Commander Beaux and Crash brought up the rear, covering their egress. Waiting their turn to climb back down to the
Sea Shadow
, Commander Beaux asked Crash: “So, how does it feel being a ghost?”

“Feels good,” Crash replied truthfully. “They say you can’t go home again. But I’ve just done that—or at least temporarily.”

“Why temporarily?” Beaux asked him.

“Because I’m an old man by your standards,” Crash replied. “Plus, I was drummed out of the military to the point where they won’t even let my ex-CO step foot on U.S. soil again. There’s no way the Navy would let me back in.”

Beaux slapped him on the back.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “I admire what you guys have done in this sea security business. Give me details on how you pulled off your missions, and when this is over, I’ll put in a good word for you to get back in to the SEALs.”

Crash nearly fell off the railing to the water below.

“Really?” he asked.

Beaux nodded. “Really.”

24

On the
Dustboat

NOLAN WONDERED IF he needed some suntan lotion.

He was stretched out on a beach chair atop the
Dustboat
’s bridge roof, the sun beating down on him mercilessly. He had his shades on, and a wet cloth was covering his head. But he could still feel his skin getting a little burned—and this was a good thing.

He believed the last of the methoxsalen injected into him for the Shanghai adventure was finally leaving his system. The diluted nitric wash had already faded away. So if he
was
getting a sunburn, that might mean he was on his way back to being just another pale white guy again—at least on the outside.

It was almost 3
P.M.
They’d been cruising around the astonishingly clear waters of the outer Abaco island chain since before 10
A.M.
Ramon, their stoned informant, was in the ship’s control room below, studying maps, looking at GPS readouts and having intense discussions with the Senegals—who he was convinced were from Jamaica, despite their repeated denials. This was all in an effort to find the island he believed the missing woodcutters were actually taken to, maybe by pirates, maybe by a UFO.

But at the moment, Nolan really didn’t care. The sun felt warm and healing. The flashbacks of Shanghai were finally dissolving, along with his fake stitches, and all thoughts of the weird events from the night before. He’d spotted a number of U.S. military aircraft flying off in the distance. Navy P-3 Orions and Air Force C-130s, they seemed to be doing crisscrossing patterns as part of the overall search for the phantom pirates, he guessed. So at least
someone
was doing something constructive. But if, as Batman believed, Whiskey had been sent out here on a fool’s mission, then for $5 million, fools they would be.

He just wished they’d brought some Coppertone.

*   *   *

THERE WERE VERY few islands in the Bahamas that had anything taller than palm or black mangrove trees growing on them.

A few, though, were dotted with the
juniperus barbadensis,
a type of conifer, or the
ficus aurea
, better known as the strangler fig. Both trees could grow to substantial size.

By Ramon’s distorted thinking, the native Bahamian women who’d lost their menfolk had probably gotten the name of the work island wrong. That’s why the cops had found a cay with no trees on it. Only islands where
juniperus barbadensis
or
ficus aurea
grew would be logical places for anyone wanting to cut down a “forest of trees.” And Ramon was sure he knew of just such an island close by North Gin Cay. It all sounded good—but they’d been going around in circles ever since he’d come aboard.

Nolan could hear everything being said on the bridge right below him—and Ramon truly was trying to find the island he had in mind. But he kept saying that he was lacking in “inspiration,” as he called it, and that was making the search more difficult.

Half asleep and pleasantly disengaged, Nolan wasn’t sure just what Ramon meant until one of the Senegals finally poked his head up over the roof and, in a slightly exasperated voice, told Nolan,
“Son inspiration est l’herbe.”

His inspiration is in the herb.

Without moving an inch, Nolan replied:
“Informer l’homme Chauve-souris.”

Tell the Batman.

Within a few minutes, Batman had passed a little inspiration on to Ramon. Ramon lit it up, indulged in it, and instantly had them going at full speed toward the northeast.

*   *   *

NOT TEN MINUTES later, they were approaching an isolated cay at the end of the outer Abaco chain.

It
was
an odd-looking place, flat, oval-shaped and maybe a half-mile around. There were no buildings or any other sign of habitation on it. A huge lake in the middle was fed by a long channel running through it from the sea. The lake was 100 yards wide at some points, narrower at others, and was roughly rectangular in shape. Judging from its blue water, it ran fairly deep.

The island was also home to some “blue holes,” the underwater cave systems found on many Bahamian islands. And just as Ramon had said, the place was thick with patches of tall overhanging trees that didn’t seem particularly Bahamian. There were so many of them, they practically hid the lake from view in some places

Appropriately, the island’s name was Big Hole Cay.

*   *   *

THEY LOWERED A boat, and Nolan, Batman and Ramon motored toward shore.

The closer they got to the island, the more deserted and lifeless it seemed. So when they finally arrived on the beach, they were surprised to discover a lot of tools scattered about the sand. There were some axes and saws and ropes, and dozens of shovels, rusting in the sun.

“Looks like the equipment made it here,” Batman said. “But was anything ever done with it?”

It was hard to tell. They could see no felled trees, no stumps, no piles of sawdust. And no evidence that any wood had left the island.

“This is a good sign,” Ramon told them. “There is supposedly a creature that lives on islands such as this. It’s called a chickcarnie. It has three toes, red eyes and the body of a bird. Anyone who disturbs its nest gets very fucked up, as in nothing is left of them but a few bones.”

“Charming,” Nolan said.

They left Ramon with the boat and walked deeper into the forest. That’s when they came upon something very odd.

The channel that fed the island’s big lake had a fairly narrow opening coming in from the sea. On reaching its banks, Nolan and Batman discovered what looked to be a recent effort to widen this opening. On both sides, they could see substantial portions of sand, mud and vegetation had been freshly removed, enlarging the relatively slight gap from about fifty feet to 100 feet or more.

It was only a small area where this work had been done, maybe 200 feet along each bank until the channel widened out on its own before emptying into the big, tree-shrouded lake. But it must have been arduous work for whoever did the labor, because all of it would have had to have been done by hand.

So, had the missing woodcutters actually been hired to widen this channel’s opening? Was that the reason for all the rusty shovels?

“This channel’s mouth was already fifty feet wide,” Nolan said, looking at a year-old Google photo of the place. “Why would anyone want it to be a hundred feet across? No one’s building anything here. This place is about as isolated as you can get. It’s hardly been touched by civilization at all.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Batman agreed. “There’s more water than land here—plus before you built anything, you’d have to cut down all these freaking trees.”

They walked back to the beach to find Ramon lighting up again.

Batman peeled off ten fifty-dollar bills for him.

“We
did
see something weird out there,” Batman told him. “We’re just not sure whether it means anything or not. I mean, let’s face it: those woodcutters could be over on South Beach right now, paying for the boom-boom. Or maybe they’re sleeping with the fishes. Or living on Mars. Who knows? It’s strange.”

Ramon took the bills, counted them out, and then put them in his pocket.

“Like I tell you, mon, lots of things are like that out here,” he said after blowing out a lung full of smoke. “Some things more stranger than others.”

“Like what?” Nolan asked him. He couldn’t resist.

Ramon pushed back his dreadlocks and said, “Like that submarine I found.”

25

SEAL TEAM 616—plus one—had spent most of the daylight hours on a remote island at the end of the southern Exuma chain, not far from Cat Cay.

They had dashed here under the protection of the rainsqualls after completing the
Persian Breeze
boarding. The perfect hiding spot for the
Sea Shadow
, the team had told Crash they’d used this place frequently during past ops in the Bahamas. The island held a sheltered inlet on its eastern side with lots of strangler figs on every bank. These overhanging trees provided enough camouflage to cover the stealth boat.

Crash slept on the beach throughout the afternoon, exhausted after his recent adventures. The other team members napped as well, a typical upside-down day for them. The men of Team 616 were primarily creatures of the night; there was no doubt about that now. They moved silently, through the shadows, atop the waves, just another weird thing cruising around in the Bermuda Triangle these days.

It wasn’t until the sun started to go down that the crew returned to the IX-529 and prepared to take to the seas again.

In the ship’s control room, Commander Beaux unfurled a set of plans on the lighted table. They looked like designs for a skyscraper; in fact, Crash had to use the video camera’s wide-angle lens to capture it all. Only then did he realize he was looking at the drawings from the wrong angle. Once he scanned the designs horizontally, it dawned on him that he was looking at the schematics for a cruise ship. A gigantic one.

“This is an
actual
ship?” Crash asked.

He could see hundreds of cabins, restaurants, swimming pools, typical features of modern cruise liners. But this ship also had things like a pool where people could surf, a twelve-story rock-climbing wall, art galleries, movie theaters, huge casinos, a concert hall, even its own symphony orchestra.

“It’s called the
Queen of the Seas
,” Commander Beaux said. “It just started cruising the Caribbean a few months ago. It can hold almost 4,500 passengers, and there’s about the same number of crew.”

Crash was astonished the ship was so big.

“Bigger than the
Titanic
,” Ghost said.

Crash laughed. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.”

“You’ll get a chance to judge for yourself,” Commander Beaux told him. “We all will.”