never squealed on them to the admiral.
They threw their luggage in the trunk and climbed inside the tired Escort. Gunn snaked around the cars waiting outside the terminal and turned on the road leading from the airport to the main dock. They drove along the big bay of Bluefields that was surrounded by wide beaches. The Escondido River delta split off into several channels that ran around the city and then through the Straits of Bluffs to the sea. The lagoon, inlets and harbor were crowded with deserted and silent fishing boats.
'It looks as if the entire fishing fleet is in town,' observed Pitt.
'Thanks to the brown crud, fishing has come to a standstill,' replied Gunn. 'The shrimp and lobster are dying off and the fish have migrated to safer waters. International fishing fleets like the commercial vessels from Texas have moved to more productive waters.'
'The local economy must be down the sewer,' said Giordino, slouched comfortably in the backseat.
'It's a disaster. Everyone living in the lowlands in some way depends on the sea for their livelihood. No fish, no money. And that's only half the misery. Like clockwork, Bluefields and the surrounding shoreline are struck by major hurricanes every ten years. Hurricane Joan destroyed the harbor in nineteen eighty-eight and what was rebuilt was wiped out by Hurricane Lizzie. But unless the brown crud dissipates or is neutralized, a lot of people are going to starve.' He paused. 'Things were bad enough before the storm. Unemployment was sixty percent. Now it's closer to ninety. Next to Haiti, the west coast of Nicaragua is the poorest stepchild of the Western Hemisphere. Before I forget, have you guys eaten?'
'We're good,' answered Giordino. 'We had a light dinner at the airport in Managua.'
Pitt smiled. 'You forgot the two rounds of tequila.'
'I didn't forget.'
The Escort rolled through the primitive city, bouncing in potholes that looked deep enough to strike water. The architecture on the crumbling buildings that seemed little more than derelicts was a style of mixed English and French. At one time they had been painted in bright colors, but none had seen a paintbrush in decades.
'You weren't kidding when you said the economy was a disaster,' said Pitt.
'Much of the poverty is inspired by a complete lack of infrastructure, and local leaders who just don't get it,' Gunn lectured. 'Girls with no options go into prostitution as young as fourteen, while boys sell cocaine. None can afford electricity, so they hook wires from the hovels up to streetlights. There are no sewage facilities, and yet the governor took the entire yearly budget and used it to build a palace because she thought it was more important to put on a good face for visiting dignitaries. There is a big drug industry here, but none of the locals are getting rich off the smuggling that takes place mostly offshore or in secluded coves.'
Gunn drove into the commercial dock area at El Bluff, the entrance of the lagoon and across the bay from Bluefields. The stench of the harbor was overpowering. Refuse, oil and sewage mingled together in the filthy water. They passed ships unloading at the docks that looked as though they might crumble and fall into the dirty water any minute. The roofs on most of the warehouses looked as if they had been torn away. Pitt noticed that one containership was unloading large crates with farm machinery stenciled on their wooden sides. The huge, immaculate, shiny semitrucks and — trailers being loaded with the cargo seemed out of place in such a sleazy background. The name of the ship, just visible under the ship's work lights, read:
He could only wonder what was inside the cases labeled FARM MACHINERY.
'This is their port facility?' asked Giordino incredulously.
'All that's left after Lizzie got through with it,' answered Gunn.
Four hundred yards later the Escort rolled onto an old wooden wharf crowded with darkened and forlorn fishing boats. Gunn braked to a stop at the only one whose lights illuminated its decks. The boat appeared to have seen better days. Under the yellow glow, her black paint looked faded. Rust streaks ran from the deck and hull hardware. Fishing gear lay carelessly cluttered around the work deck. To a passerby on the dock, she looked uncompromisingly utilitarian, another fishing boat in a world full of fishing boats, with the same character as the vessels anchored and moored around her.
As Pitt's eyes swept the beamy vessel from stem to stern, where the Nicaraguan flag hung limp with its twin horizontal blue stripes bordering one of white, he reached inside his shirt and felt the small folded silk bundle, reassuring himself it was still there.
He turned slightly and glanced briefly sideways at a lavender-colored pickup truck that was parked in the shadows of a nearby warehouse. It was not empty. He could see a dark shape behind the wheel and the red glow of a cigarette through the rain-streaked windshield.
Finally, he turned back to the boat. 'So this is
'Not much to look at, is she?' Gunn said, as he opened the trunk and helped retrieve the bags. 'But she's powered by twin thousand-horsepower diesels and carries scientific gear most chemical labs would die for.'
'There's a switch,' said Pitt.
Gunn looked at him. 'How so?'
'This has to be the only vessel in the NUMA fleet that isn't painted turquoise.'
'I'm familiar with the smaller Neptune class of NUMA survey ships,' said Giordino. 'She's also built like an armored car and comfortably stable in heavy seas.' He hesitated and looked up and down the wharf at the other fishing boats. 'Nice job of disguise. Except for her larger deckhouse, which you can't reduce with a stage set, she fits right in.'
'How old is she?' Pitt asked.
'Six months,' answered Gunn.
'How did our engineers make her look so… so used?'
'Special effects,' Gunn replied, laughing. 'The shabby paint and rust are specially formulated to give that appearance.'
Pitt leaped from the dock onto the deck and turned as Giordino passed over their luggage and duffel bag. The sound of feet thumping on the deck alerted a man and a woman, who appeared from the rear door of the deckhouse. The man, in his early fifties with a neatly trimmed gray beard and bushy eyebrows, stepped under the deck light. His head was shaven and gleamed with sweat. He wasn't much taller than Giordino and he stood with slightly hunched shoulders.
The other crew member was nearly six feet tall and willowy, with the anorexic figure of a fashion model. The blond hair, radiant and thick, splashed around her shoulders. Her face was tanned with high cheekbones and when she smiled a greeting she displayed a fine set of white teeth. Like most women who worked in the outdoors, she wore her hair tied back and little makeup, which did not distract from her overall attractiveness. At least not in Pitt's mind. He noted that she did adhere to certain feminine traits of beauty. She painted her toenails.
Both man and woman were dressed in native cotton shirts with vertical stripes over khaki shorts. The man wore sneakers that looked like they had been shot full of holes, while the woman's feet were slipped into wide- strapped sandals.
Gunn made the introductions. 'Dr. Renee Ford, our resident fishery's biologist, and Dr. Patrick Dodge, NUMA's leading marine geochemist. I believe you know Dirk Pitt, special projects director, and Al Giordino, marine engineer.'
'We've never worked on the same project together,' said Renee in a husky voice only a few decibels above a whisper. 'But we've sat together in conferences on several occasions.'
'Likewise,' said Dodge, as he shook hands.
Pitt was tempted to ask if Ford and Dodge shared a garage, but held back from making a bad joke. 'Good to see you again.'
'I trust we'll have a happy ship.' Giordino flashed one of his congenial grins.
'Why wouldn't we?' Renee asked sweetly.
Giordino did not reply. It was another of the rare times he was at a loss for a comeback.
Pitt stood for several moments, listening to the water slapping against the wharf pilings. Not a soul could be seen. The wharf looked deserted. Almost, but not quite.
He dropped down to his cabin in the stern, removed a small black case from his suitcase and eased back up the stairway onto the side of the deck opposite the wharf. Using the deckhouse as a cover, he opened the case and removed what looked like a video camera. He switched on its transformer and it gave off a muted high-pitched
