Dark Watch

as they drew nearer, he doused the red lights and opened the door just in time for the Zodiac to rocket up the ramp and come to a perfect stop. The doors were closing even before the pilot killed the engine.

Max Hanley was there to greet them. He handed his cell phone to Linda.

She peeled her watch cap from her head. “Ross here.”

“Linda, it’s Juan. What did you find?”

“She’s hauling a midsized product tanker, Chairman. I couldn’t tell her name.”

“Any sign of the crew?”

“No, sir. And since the hold was completely dark, my bet is they’re either dead or on one of the tugboats.”

Neither needed to say that the second option wasn’t likely.

“Okay, great job to all of you,” Cabrillo said. “Put yourself down for an extra ration of grog.”

“Actually, I’m going to avail myself of a couple shots of the Louis XIII brandy you keep in your cabin.”

“That is to be enjoyed in a warm snifter, not shot down like cheap tequila.”

“I’ll warm the shot glass,” Linda teased. “Here’s Max.” She handed back the phone and left the garage for a long shower, and yes, a snifter or two of Juan’s fifteen-hundred-dollar cognac.

“So what do you want us to do now?” Hanley asked.

“According to what Murph told me, the Maus is headed for Taiwan. Why don’t you get ahead of her and wait to see if she enters port? If she does, I’ll meet you there and we’ll play it by ear.”

“And if she changes course and heads someplace else?”

“Stay with her.”

“You realize she’s making about three knots. We could be shadowing her for a couple of weeks before she makes landfall.”

“I know. Can’t be helped, old boy. Think of yourself as one of the cops following OJ on his low-speed chase along the L.A. freeways.”

“Low speed? Hell, lobsters migrate faster than that damn drydock.” Max turned serious. “You do remember that the last ship taken from your Japanese friend’s fleet was a tanker. The, ah…”

“Toya Maru,” Juan provided.

“Right. Stands to reason that’s her in the Maus’s hold. Why not just contact the navy or Japan’s coast guard?”

“Oh, I’m certain it’s the Toya Maru. But this isn’t about one ship, and I doubt anyone on those tugboats can tell us much. The pirates are playing this too smart. You mark my words: About a day out of Taipei they’ll get orders to go someplace else. We take down the Maus now, we nab one vessel and a few low-level guys. We track her back to wherever they’re going to scrap the Toya or disguise her so they can use her themselves, we’ll have made a dent in their operation.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Max agreed. “We’ll play tortoise to their snail and see where this chase takes us.”

“I’m handing the phone over to Eddie. He has a list of things he’s going to need for his insertion into China. You can send someone to act as courier when you pass through the Korea Strait. The Robinson has more than enough range to make it to Pusan. From there, the courier can take a commercial flight to Singapore and meet up with Eddie at the airport.”

“Hold on, let me get a pen. And some paper. And my reading glasses.”

Five hundred miles north of where the Oregon steamed near the Maus, another drydock, her sister ship in fact, was just clearing the La Perouse Strait separating the northern tip of Japan from the Sakhalin Islands and entering the frigid waters of the Sea of Okhotsk. She, being towed by more powerful tugs than the Maus, was making six knots despite the fact that the ship hidden inside her hold was considerably larger than the tanker Linda had seen.

The seas were building around the vessels, high, rolling waves that alternately tightened and slackened the long towlines so one moment they were submerged and the next they were as taut as steel bars, bursting with water wrung out by tension. The tugs turned into the seas, shouldering aside the waves as they plowed northward, meeting the ocean as a ship should, nimble and responsive to her vagaries. The drydock played no such game. She took the waves square into her bow so explosions of white froth were flung almost to her top deck. Then she would throw off the water, slowly, ponderously, as though the sea was merely a distraction.

Like the Maus, the drydock’s holds were covered over, but in this vessel’s case, metal sheets had been laid over a steel framework and all the seams welded. The hold would have been virtually airtight except for several industrial ventilators mounted at the stern. These powerful machines drew in thousands of cubic feet of air per minute to circulate within the drydock’s hold. The outgoing air was fed through banks of chemical filters to disguise the raw stench emanating from belowdecks, a smell that hadn’t been found on the high seas for almost two hundred years.

Cabrillo was stuck in Tokyo until Mark Murphy came up with a lead, so he spent three days basically playing tourist in a city he’d never particularly enjoyed. He longed for the fresh air on an open sea, a horizon that seemed unreachable, and the peace that comes from standing on the fantail watching the wake curve into the distance. Instead he dealt with an impenetrable language, crowds that defied imagination, and constant staring by people who should be used to Westerners but acted as though they’d never seen one.

His feeling of impotence was further compounded by Eddie Seng’s mission. Eddie had left days earlier, rendezvoused with the courier in Singapore, and had already gone on into China itself. He’d phoned the Oregon upon his arrival in Shanghai but then ditched the phone. While cell phones were ubiquitous in the cities, he was going deep into the countryside. Not only would there be no cellular service, but if he were caught with a phone, it would likely arouse suspicion. He would be completely on his own in a country that had already issued his death sentence until he’d learned the circumstances behind the villagers being aboard the Kra.

Cabrillo felt his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket. He slid it free and opened the line as he continued strolling