Sea of Fire

there had been no other ships in the area. That was one of the reasons Kannaday had selected this route in the first place.

The Australian sea captain watched as the red-hulled cutter moved away slowly. The diesel-electric motors growled loudly as the 200-foot-long ship crawled forward under a perfect blue sky. The cutter was formerly owned by the Republic of Korea Navy, bought from the United States in 1950. Now it was the property of Mahathir bin Dahman of Malaysia, who used it as part of his global waste-disposal operation. The ship's captain, Jaafar, had said that Dahman had been very concerned about the risks of a daylight pickup. Jaafar had assured him that it would be all right. Dahman decided to trust his man on the scene. Jaafar was right. Everything went well.

Kannaday did not think that his own boss would be as understanding. It bothered Kannaday that he had to worry about that. The ship had a security officer for this. One who had been appointed by the boss himself.

Kannaday turned from the deck and went below. He pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket. He lit it and took a few quick drags. The five security officers had gone down ahead of him. They were in the process of returning their automatic weapons to the gun racks. They were always on high alert during a transfer.

The rest of the crew was going about their business of sailing the yacht back to Australia.

The yacht belonged to Kannaday, and some members of the crew had been with him for nearly seven years. They were loyal, though not necessarily to him. They liked the untaxed money they made and the job was easy. Most of the time the Hosannah pretended to be conducting coastline tours or fishing runs. They wanted to be seen in as many places as possible. Crew members posed as paying customers. Between those essentially idle cruises, the crew were veterans of countless independent smuggling operations. They had transported people and goods all across the southern hemisphere, from Australia to South America.

The security people did not work for him. They worked for John Hawke, who worked for Jervis Darling. A thick mist of distrust circulated between them and Kannaday's veteran crew. Kannaday's men had never had to defend their vessel and their cargo. But they could and would, if necessary. Hawke's team had never sailed a yacht. Yet each team believed they could do the other's job better. Seamen always felt that way. Unfortunately, what had happened the night before stoked the frustration in both camps. The seamen felt the security team should have seen the sampan coming before dark. They had radar and sonar, installed in the radio room by Darling's technicians. Unfortunately, the sampan was so small it literally slipped under the radar. Kannaday's crew felt that once the threat was identified, the security people should have anticipated that there might be explosives on board. They could have changed course to avoid the threat, as they always did before going to work exclusively for Darling. Unfortunately, the schedules of Darling and his partners did not allow time for flight. They were to load and off-load the materials as soon as possible.

The miserable irony was that except for the explosion, everything had gone perfectly. The security system and defensive response had worked. An hour before they were supposed to meet Jaafar, the sophisticated marine radar had picked up a blip. Darling's nephew Marcus had reported it to Kannaday, who had watched the seven-inch color monitor in the communications room. They had observed the sampan's approach on the night-vision security camera attached to the mainmast. They decided that the crew were pirates preparing to board. A security team went on deck and took them out. So as not to hit fuel supplies or stockpiled ammunition, they aimed at the men, not at the sampan. Though they took precautions, a replay of the security video showed what had happened. Bullets struck explosives one of the pirates had been carrying. Perhaps the pirates had intended to try to cripple the yacht and forestall pursuit. In any case, the handheld explosive had blown up and damaged the yacht. There was no way to have seen that. No way to have anticipated it. And, unfortunately, no way to protect against it.

The yacht was divided into ten rooms. Six of those were for the crew, one was for munitions, one was for Kannaday, and one was for communications. The tenth room, the room that was damaged, was for their cargo. Kannaday walked down the carpeted central corridor to the room where repairs were still ongoing. Fortunately, all of the internal walls had held secure. Kannaday stopped beside thirty-one-year-old John Hawke, his security officer.

Hawke was a contrast to the tall, prematurely silver-haired Kannaday. The sinewy, five-foot-nine-inch Hawke was what the people of his native Cootamundra, South Australia, used to call a Mong — a mongrel, the son of a Canadian father and an Aborigine mother. However, no one who knew Hawke used the disparaging term. The taciturn sailor wore a wommera tucked in his sash belt. The traditional Dharuk weapon was a hooked wooden stick used for hurling darts with force and accuracy. The dart was placed in a hollowed end and then flung, like a jai alai ball. Kannaday had seen Hawke use the weapon on sea birds for practice. Their eyes were his favorite target. Their squawks were like sylvan music to him, producing the only smile Kannaday ever saw.

Hawke's own eyes were pale gray set in a face of dark rust. His hair was black and curly and worn in a shoulder-length ponytail. He moved with the steady, fluid grace of a man who had spent most of his life on a ship's deck. The oddest thing about him was that he was almost always whistling. Except for when he was on deck at night, he would whistle native melodies. No one ever asked him why, and no one asked him to stop. Not only was he a formidable presence, but he had been handpicked by Darling.

Right now Hawke was standing outside the cargo door. He was wearing a radio headset. He was speaking with the three crew members who were inside the room. Kannaday offered Hawke a drag from his cigarette. Hawke declined with a single shake of his head.

'How is it going?' Kannaday asked.

'Mr. Gibbons says they'll have the outer hull sufficiently repaired to get us safely to the cove,' Hawke told him.

'Good,' Kannaday replied. 'Thank the lads for me. I'm going to report to the chief.'

Hawke did not respond. Kannaday had not expected him to. If something did not need to be said or indicated, Hawke did nothing.

Kannaday moved past him down the corridor. He shouldered by the security personnel who were returning from the munitions room to their cabin. The lab had been made from the forward port-side guest cabin. The radio room was assembled in the rear starboard guest cabin. In the center of the yacht was the saloon. Walls had been erected in the center of the dining area. The security team slept in hammocks slung in the port-side section. Kannaday's crew slept in the starboard section. Kannaday's own cabin was astern. Except for transfer times or emergencies, the security team remained below. To all outward appearances, the Hosannah was simply a pleasure yacht on charter.

Kannaday knocked on the door of the communications shack. Without waiting for a reply, he slipped his large frame through the small doorway of the windowless cabin. The rush of air from the belowdecks ventilation duct filled the room. The vent was located port side of a crawl space that ran the length of the yacht. That was where emergency supplies were kept. It was also where nonlethal contraband such as drugs or political refugees were kept.

The green-haired communications officer looked up from his cot. Marcus Darling was the chief's twenty-five- year-old nephew. The heavyset young man had an advanced degree in electronics and the arrogance that comes from nepotism. Most of the time he lay here or on deck reading science fiction and fantasy novels or watching DVDs on his laptop. Occasionally, he took the flare guns from the compartment above his station and checked them. In case of an accident, he was in charge of all forms of rescue signaling. But what the kid really wanted to do was run one of the boss's movie-special-effects facilities in Europe or the United States. Uncle Jervis told him that after he put in a year on the yacht, he would send Marcus wherever he wanted to go.

Marcus was the one who had built the Hosannah's secure radio system three years before. At the time, the young man was still in college, and Jervis Darling was just beginning to plan this operation. Marcus had hacked a classified NATO web site to get a list of components the organization used in their field- communications setup. The heart of the system was a digital encryption module that could be interfaced with analog radios. Run through a personal computer, the DM continually modulated the frequencies while communicating the changes to a computer on the receiving end. It was virtually impossible to decrypt the communication without the computer software.

Marcus set aside the science fiction novel he was reading. He rose from the cot as Kannaday shut the door. The radio operator was on call all day, every day, and this was where he slept. The room was a tight squeeze with the radar equipment where the porthole used to be and the radio gear on the wall across from the cot. Kannaday backed against the door while Marcus moved toward the desk. It was actually a wide shelf built directly into the wall. The desk ran the length of the cabin. The young man eased into the canvas director's chair in front of the radio.