Skeleton Coast - Cussler Clive - Страница 36

“What are you smiling at?” Juan asked.

“Just thinking you’re a man living in the wrong time.”

“How so?”

“Not only do you rescue damsels in distress, you also take up their causes.”

Cabrillo puffed out his chest and struck a heroic pose. “And now, fair lady, I gird myself for battle against metallic sea serpents.”

Sloane laughed. “May I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“If you weren’t the captain of theOregon what would you do?”

The question didn’t veer into any dangerous territory so Juan gave her an honest answer. “I think I’d be a paramedic.”

“Really? Not a doctor?”

“Most doctors I know treat patients like a commodity—something they have to work on if they want to get paid before returning to the golf course. And they’re backed by a huge staff of nurses and technicians and millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. But paramedics are different. They are out there working in pairs with just their wits and a minimum of gear. They have to make the first critical assessments and often perform the first life-saving acts. They’re there to tell you everything is going to be all right and make damn sure it is. And once you get the person to the hospital you simply fade away. No glory, no God complex, no ‘gee, doc, you saved my life.’ You just do your job and go on to the next.”

“I like that,” Sloane said after a beat. “And you’re right. My father cut his leg really badly on a charter once and we had to radio for an ambulance and I had to take the boat back in. I still remember it was Dr. Jankowski who stitched up the leg in the hospital but I have no idea of the name of the guy who first dressed the wound on the dock. Without him my dad would have probably bled out.”

“Unsung heroes,” Juan remarked quietly. “Those are the ones I like.” For a moment his mind flashed to the wall of stars in the entrance to CIA headquarters at Langley. Each one represented an agent who had been killed in the field. Of the eighty-three agents represented thirty-five remained nameless, still keeping the Company’s secrets long after their deaths. Unsung heroes, each and every one. “What about you?

What would you do if you weren’t a security specialist for a diamond company?”

She threw him a saucy grin. “Why, I’d be captain of theOregon .”

“Oh, Max would love that.”

“Max?”

“My chief engineer and first officer,” Juan said fondly. “Let’s just say Max put the rump in grumpy.”

“Sounds like I’d like him.”

“He’s a piece of work, my Mr. Hanley. In truth, I’ve never met a more loyal man or had a better friend.”

Sloane finished her coffee and handed the lid back to Juan. He screwed the cap back onto the thermos and checked the time. It was nearly midnight.

“I was thinking,” he said, “rather than tie up in Swakopmund at oh dark thirty and possibly arouse suspicion, why don’t we head south to where you met Papa Heinrick? That way we can catch him first thing in the morning before he goes out fishing. Do you think you could find his camp again?”

“No problem. Sandwich Bay is about twenty-five miles south of Swakopmund.”

Juan checked their GPS, estimated the new coordinates, and punched them into the automatic navigator.

Servos moved the wheel a few degrees to port.

A little over forty minutes later Africa emerged from the darkness with bluffs of sand shimmering in the moonlight and occasionally the brighter white of waves curling onto the beach. The long peninsula that protected Sandwich Bay was a quarter mile to their south.

“Nice bit of navigating,” Sloane said.

Juan tapped the GPS receiver with a knuckle. “Gladys here gets the credit. GPS has made lazy navigators of us all. I don’t think I could compute my position with a sextant and watch if my life depended on it.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

Juan backed off the throttle to reduce their wake as they entered the fragile ecosystem. They motored for twenty minutes until reaching the southernmost edge of the bay. Sloane panned the dense wall of reeds with a flashlight as they tracked along the shore looking for the cut in the grass that led to Papa Heinrick’s private little lagoon.

“There,” she said, pointing.

Juan slowed the boat to a crawl and edged its bow into the reeds. He kept a sharp eye on the depth gauge and constantly checked that floating chunks of vegetation didn’t foul the props. The lifeboat cut through the tall grass and the blades made a hissing sound as they scraped the hull and sides of the cabin.

They had covered seventy yards when Juan caught the scent of smoke. He raised his face and sniffed the air like a dog but couldn’t detect it again. Then it came back, stronger, the sooty smell of burning wood. He grabbed Sloane’s wrist so he could cover the lens of her flashlight with his hand.

Ahead he could see the orange glow of a fire, but not the contained fire pit Sloane had described. This was something altogether different.

“Damn.” He gunned the throttles and prayed the water maintained its depth as the boat leapt forward, knocking Sloane into his arms. He steadied her quickly and tried to peer through the curtain of grass that blocked their way.

They suddenly burst into the clearing that surrounded Papa Heinrick’s island. Juan glanced at the depth gauge. There was less than a foot of water under the keel. He jammed the throttles into full reverse, causing a torrent of water to erupt at the stern, and hit the release for the anchor. They hadn’t yet picked up a great deal of speed, so he managed to stop the lifeboat before she grounded.

He idled the engines and only then did he take in the scene around them. The shack perched at the center of the island was a pyre, with flames and embers leaping twenty feet from its thatch and driftwood roof. Papa Heinrick’s overturned fishing boat was also ablaze, but the craft was so waterlogged that the fire hadn’t really caught. Banks of thick white smoke coiled from under the skiff and wafted from the seams of its wooden hull.

Over the roar of the burning cabin Juan heard the unmistakable scream of a man in mortal agony.

“Oh, my God!” Sloane cried.

Cabrillo reacted instantly. He launched himself onto the roof of the lifeboat’s cabin and raced down its length. The cabin ended five feet shy of the boat’s sharp bow. Cabrillo measured his steps perfectly, jumping off with his artificial leg so his left foot landed on the aluminum railing that ringed the bows and then kicking off from that in a long graceful dive. He knifed into the water, kicking strongly, and came up swimming.

When his feet touched bottom he charged out of the water like a rampaging animal and ran up the beach. That was when he heard another sound, the deep bass rumble of a marine engine.

A white bow runner circled around the far side of the little isle and one of the two men in its open cockpit opened fire with an automatic weapon. Sprays of sand erupted all around Cabrillo as he dove for cover, his hand reaching instinctively for the small of his back. He hit the ground, rolled twice, and came up into a kneeling firing position, the Glock he’d stuck in his pants when he had gotten the Windbreakers held steady in a two-handed grip. The range was thirty yards and widening, and he was firing into the darkness while the gunman had Juan backlit by the burning hut.

Cabrillo didn’t even get a shot off before more autofire poured onto the island, forcing him to roll back into the lagoon. He drew a deep breath at the moment a round blasted into the beach inches from his head, forcing him to inhale the gritty sand.

Ducking underwater and fighting the uncontrollable urge to cough his lungs out, Juan swam about thirty feet, making sure his hands were in contact with the bottom so he didn’t reveal himself. He sensed through the water that the powerboat was coming around, hunting him. He approximated their location and swam a little further, gagging silently as his chest tried to convulse. When he thought he knew where they were he planted his feet firmly on the bottom and raised himself quickly, continuing to hold his breath for a fraction longer.