“Opened last year. Sanchez built it. The man’s a genius. He figured the marina would keep the federales busy watching his nighttime activities, and they’d be too distracted to pay attention to what he was doing during the day.” Hansen clenched a small cigar still in its plastic wrapper in the corner of his mouth. “Smart.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Bahmad said.
They lined up for their landing, the afternoon very bright now, and Hansen lowered the flaps and came in slightly crabbed because of a crosswind. He was a very good pilot. “Should I wait for you?”
Bahmad shook his head. “You might as well go back to California.”
“I hope you like fishing and drinking, ‘cause there’s not a hell of a lot more to do here yet.”
Customs was perfunctory; they didn’t even check his bags. Ten minutes after touching down he rode in an air conditioned shuttle over to the marina, where he was directed to Aphrodite near the end of B dock.
The boat was a black-hulled Cigarette of about fifty feet on the waterline. Long and low she looked very sleek. Bahmad knew something about this type of boat. He’d attended a meeting aboard one in Monaco about five years ago. Its low profile made it very difficult to detect by radar, its powerful engines could push it to speeds up to eighty knots if the sea conditions were correct, and if the engine compartment was properly insulated and the exhausts baffled and led below the waterline she could be extremely hard to detect even by infrared sensors. She could outrun just about anything that the Mexican or U.S. Coast Guards could put to sea.
According to the pilot Aphrodite was used almost exclusively for overnight and long weekend cruises that were arranged by Loves Unlimited, a swingers club from Los Angeles. In reality she was used to head off shore during the day and meet with another ship where she would take on several tons of heroin or cocaine. From there she would race north to the U.S. border, where she would drop the weighted containers about a mile or two off a deserted beach at a precise GPS location for later pickup.
A slender man wearing a baseball cap, brightly flowered Hawaiian shirt and white shorts stood on the foredeck coiling up a thick power cord. He looked up as Bahmad approached. His eyes were dark, and there was a five-or six-day growth of whiskers on his angular face.
“Captain Fernandez?” Bahmad asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m Gordon Guthrie. I believe that you are expecting me.”
“Come aboard,” the man said. He stowed the power cord in a locker, and directed Bahmad to the aft sun deck, then below through a smoked Lexan door.
Everything that Bahmad could see about the boat was first class, very expensively and professionally done. The hatches, the fittings, the ports, all of it was extremely heavy duty. If the entire boat had been custom built and outfitted this way, Bahmad thought, it would withstand a typhoon.
“He’s here,” the crewman said.
A huge, shirtless man with long black hair and a thick black beard, seated at the saloon table studying a chart, looked up. Thick black hair covered his chest, and lay in great patches on his shoulders and flanks. Even the backs of his hands were covered. He smiled, his teeth perfectly white.
“Senor Guthrie, here you are.” He extended a hand, but Bahmad ignored it, cocking his head to listen. He thought he heard someone pounding on something below decks. “Who else is aboard?” “Besides Antonio here, no one else except for Hernando, who takes care of the engines.” Fernandez’s eyes narrowed. “What were you expecting?”
“A larger crew.”
“We manage.”
Bahmad laid his bag down, opened his attache case, took out a Bank of Mexico, s.a. envelope and handed it to the captain. “I would like to hire you, your crew and this boat.”
“We are already yours,” Fernandez said. He opened the envelope and took out the bank draft. It took a moment for it to register and when it did he looked up surprised and very interested. “This is a lot of money.” “There will be a second draft for a further half million U.S. dollars when we’re finished.” Bahmad gave the captain a significant look. “Of course the exact nature of this transaction is strictly between us. It need never leave this boat.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Hijack a cargo ship.”
“What about the crew?”
“There are seventeen officers and men, but two of the officers are mine. Most of the remainder of the crew won’t know what’s happening.”
“Those that do?”
“We’ll kill them.”
Fernandez sat back. “What then?”
“You’ll get your second check and you can come back here or go wherever you would like to go.”
Fernandez looked at the bank draft again. “How do I know that this is legitimate?”
“Telephone the bank.”
Fernandez nodded. “I think I’ll do just that.” “Good. In the meantime I want to meet your other crew member, I want to see your radio equipment and I want something to eat. We have a busy night ahead of us.”
“This is unit two standing by on schedule. This is unit two standing by on schedule, over.” Green was on the radio telephone, obviously waiting for a reply. The crewman normally on the bridge with him had gone below to fetch more coffee. Green had spilled his on the deck. Captain Panagiotopolous had been on deck checking the helicopter. When he came back inside he spotted the crewman and asked why he wasn’t on the bridge. He stood now in the shadows of the chartroom just aft of the bridge, watching and listening.
“Unit one, this is unit two standing by on schedule, over.”
Green was not getting the reply he wanted, and he was becoming frustrated. Something made him turn around and he spotted the captain, his face falling almost comically.
“How long have you been standing there, sir?”
Panagiotopolous came out into the light. “Long enough to want to know what the hell you’re up to. What’s this unit one and unit two stuff?”
“It’s a company code. I was trying to contact my father.”
Panagiotopolous glanced at the SSB radio attached to the overhead. It wasn’t set to any of the company’s frequencies. “You’re lying, Green. Now I want to know what’s going on here!”
“It’s your off-watch,” Green snarled. “You should have stayed in your quarters instead of coming here.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol.
Panagiotopolous, surprisingly light on his feet, was across the bridge in two steps and he batted the gun out of Green’s hand. “You little shit. Pulling a gun on me.”
Green stepped back and tried to hit Panagiotopolous in the head with the radio telephone handset. But the captain had been in his share of barroom brawls during his long service as a merchant mariner, and he knew all the tricks. He ducked like a boxer, slipped the blow and shoved Green hard enough against the radar console that the breath was knocked out of the first officer. Nevertheless Green tried to fight back, but he was outweighed by at least seventy-five pounds. Panagiotopolous slammed him against the console again, this time knocking the fight out of him.
The portside door swung open and Schumatz came in. He looked from Green to the captain in surprise. “Do you need some help, Captain?”
“Green pulled a gun on me.”
Green tried to say something, but Schumatz was across the bridge in a few strides and he knocked the first officer to the floor. “I told you that I didn’t trust the sonofabitch.” He looked up. “What was the little pissant trying to do, sabotage the helicopter?”
“No. He was up here trying to call someone on the SSB.”
“My father,” Green croaked from where he was crouched on the floor still clutching the phone.
“That’ll be easy enough to check,” the captain said. “I’ll call the company.”
“It’s the middle of the night over there,” Schumatz pointed out. “Maybe we should wait until morning.”
Panagiotopolous turned back to Green. “Why did you pull a gun on me?”
Green looked away defiantly. The captain snatched the telephone from him.
