over his hard, tanned body. From the looks of the pale scars marking his bronze skin, this wasn’t the first time he had put himself in danger and had paid a price for it.
Carina reached out to touch a circular scar on Austin’s prominent right bicep. She was about to ask if it were a gunshot wound, but, just then, the door opened and a slender, dark-complexioned man stepped into the sick bay.
Joe Zavala’s eyes widened in surprise, and then his lips turned up at the corners in his trademark half smile. He had heard that Austin was being treated for a wound. No one had told him about the lovely young woman who seemed to be caressing his friend’s arm.
“I stopped by to see how you were doing,” Zavala said. “From the looks of things, you’re doing pretty well.”
“Carina, this gentleman is Joe Zavala, my friend and colleague. We’re both with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Joe piloted the boat that brought me over to the ship. Don’t be alarmed by his piratical looks. He’s quite harmless.”
“Nice to meet you, Carina.” Zavala gestured at Austin’s bandage. “Are you okay? You both look a little banged-up.”
“Yes, we’re quite the couple.” Carina said. She blushed at the implication in her comment and removed her hand from Austin’s arm.
Austin went to her rescue and brought the conversation back to himself. “I’m a little stiff around the ribs. Bad bruising, and scrapes in a few other places.”
“Nothing a shot or two of tequila wouldn’t help,” Zavala said.
“I can see you are in good hands,” Carina said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go see how the crew is doing with my statue. Thanks again for all you have done.”
Zavala gazed at the door after it had closed behind Carina and let out a whooping laugh that was uncharacteristic of his usual quiet-spoken demeanor.
“Only Kurt Austin could find an angel like Miss Mechadi out here in the fogbound reaches of Iceberg Alley. And they call
Austin rolled his eyes. He slid off the table, pulled on a borrowed blue denim work shirt and buttoned up the front.
“Captain Dawe holding up okay?”
“He’s reached the end of his joke repertoire and has begun to recycle old ones.”
“Sorry about that, old pal.”
“He says he’ll stand by another day, but then he’s got to go chase Moby-Berg. So you’re not off the hook yet.”
“How’d you get aboard? Last I knew, the pilot’s ladder was cut.”
“They must have dug up a spare. You had a tough time climbing on board. What happened?”
“I’ll lay out the whole sordid tale over a cup of coffee.”
They headed for the mess hall, where they poured themselves steaming mugs of coffee and devoured a couple of tall pastrami sandwiches on pumpernickel. Starting with the close call boarding the
“Someone went through a lot of expense and trouble to steal this statue,” Zavala said, after pursing his lips in a low whistle.
“Seems that way. It takes money to buy helicopters and organization to mount a hijacking at sea. Not to mention the connections needed to put a couple of moles on board to welcome the hijackers.”
“They could have simply stolen the statue and run for it,” Zavala said. “Why destroy the ship and the oil rig?”
“By getting rid of the ship, they eliminate evidence and witnesses. The oil rig was simply a means to an end. It has a certain clinical neatness about it. The sea claims all.”
Zavala slowly shook his head. “What kind of a mind would think up a bloodthirsty scheme like that?”
“A very cold and calculating one,” Austin said. “The choppers must have come from an ocean launchpad. We’re within helicopter range of land, but the coast is pretty rugged. I can’t see them flying any great distance with a heavy weight hanging at the end of a rope.”
“A water-launched attack on a moving target makes the most sense,” Zavala agreed.
“Which means we may be wasting time,” Austin said. “They could still be in the area.”
“Unfortunately, there’s no air support on this ship,” Zavala said.
Austin cocked his head in thought. “I remember Captain Dawe saying that a helicopter was due back on the rig. Let’s go see if it’s arrived.”
He chugged down a painkiller with a final swallow of coffee and led the way out of the mess hall. Captain Lange welcomed them on the bridge. Austin borrowed a pair of binoculars and pointed them at the oil rig. He could see a helicopter on the oil platform.
“This is quite a vantage point, “Austin said. “Did you see what direction the hijackers flew in from?”
“Unfortunately, no. It happened very fast.” Lange’s face flushed with anger at the recollection.
“What do you know about the two Filipino crewmen who were working with the hijackers?” Austin said.
“They were vetted through the usual hiring practices,” Lange said. “There was nothing in their records to indicate that they were pirates.”
“It’s possible that the men who shipped on board weren’t the real owners of the papers,” Zavala said.
“What do you mean?”
“They either stole the papers from the real crewmen or killed to get them,” Zavala said.
“In which case, we can add two more murders to this gang’s list of crimes.” Austin said.
The captain swore softly in German. “You know, sometimes when you’re up here, guiding this big ship across the ocean, you feel like King Neptune.” He shook his jowls. “Then something like this happens and you see how impotent you really are. I would much rather deal with the sea than with monsters of my own species.”
Austin knew from experience exactly what the captain was talking about, but they would have to postpone their philosophical discussion to another time. “I wondered if you would mind getting in touch with the oil platform operators,” he said. He told the captain what he and Zavala had in mind.
Lange got on the radio immediately. The rig operators were hesitant to send the helicopter over at first but changed their mind when Lange said the request was coming from the man who had saved the platform and its crew from destruction.
Twenty minutes later, the helicopter lifted off from the rig and flew the short distance to the containership. The chopper touched down on the wide foredeck. Austin and Zavala ran under the still-spinning rotors. The aircraft was airborne a moment later. They had barely adjusted their intercoms when the pilot said, “Where to, gents?”
The hijackers had a big head start, which meant that it was unlikely they would be anywhere near the ship. Austin asked the pilot, whose name was Riley, to head in any direction for five miles, then go into a low-altitude expanding spiral with the ship at its center.
Riley gave him a thumbs-up and flew the helicopter due west at about a hundred miles an hour.
“What are we looking for?” Riley said.
“Anything big enough to hold two choppers,” Austin replied.
Riley gave another thumbs-up. “I got ya.”
Several minutes later he put the helicopter into a banking turn and made the first circle. The fog had cleared and visibility was two to three miles. They saw a handful of fishing boats and big chunks of ice, including one which might have been Moby-Berg. The only large ship was a freighter. Its deck was too small to hold two copters and was obstructed by cranes that would have made takeoff and landing impossible.
Austin asked the pilot to make two more circles. On the second circuit, they saw a big vessel silhouetted against the ocean sheen.
“Ore carrier,” said Zavala from the backseat.
The helicopter dropped to an altitude of a few hundred feet and paced the black-hulled ship. Rectangular hatch covers that covered ore-storage holds were evenly spaced on the long deck between the tall crew house at one end and the high, raised bow at the other.
“What do you think?” Austin asked the pilot.
