Fanning a hand below him as a signal for Bones to board, he dropped onto the deck of Mizuhi’s ship without a sound.
Chapter 26
Maddock tapped Bones’ shoulder and pointed to a pair of lifeboats held up sideways, the bottoms facing out toward the ship’s work area. They padded over to them, their bare feet soundless on the ship’s surfaced deck. They slid behind one of the boats so that they wouldn’t be seen while they worked out a plan.
“Now what?” Bones squinted out at the peek-a-boo view of floodlit work deck they had from behind the lifeboat.
“Only saw three guys out there,” Maddock said, cocking his head toward the deck. “Which means there must be some action going on inside. They may be interrogating Spinney and Carlson somewhere in there.”
Bones’ eyes widened at the implication. “Would Mizuhi torture them to get information about what had happened to the artifacts recovered from the plane? Seems extreme.”
“Who can say? They’ve taken Spinney and Carlson this far.”
“Our objective now is to make contact with our support,” Bones reminded.
Maddock nodded. “I say we scout the ship for a sat-phone, which probably involves breaching the radio room. Then, once we make contact, we do what we can for Spinney and Carlson while we wait for pickup.”
Bones nodded, his expression grim. Maddock read his thoughts. The radio room on almost all ships was basically part of the bridge. It would not be unoccupied. He glanced down at the dive knife strapped to his calf. They were woefully under-armed.
“Maybe we should try to blend in instead of fight our way in.”
“How?” Bones asked. “Don’t say we’re gonna knock ‘em out and take their uniforms, okay, because you don’t look anything like a Japanese guy.”
“Unfortunately, what I had in mind is a little more problematic than that, but it might work.”
Bones sighed heavily. “You and your ‘just might work,’ schemes.” He shook his head. “Okay. Lay it on me.”
“I don’t really like it either, but our situation is SNAFU, wouldn’t you say?” Maddock said, using the military acronym used informally to denote iffy situations.
Bones nodded. “Out with it, Maddock. I don’t want to go missing along with Amelia Earhart if you get my drift.”
“Okay. There are three guys over there. Two of them are brothers.”
Bones peeked out at the men gathered next to the covered bundle. His face took on a confused look. “Two of them do look the same, but how do you know? And why the hell does it matter, Maddock?”
“Bear with me. I know they’re brothers because when we were hiding in the bushes while they took Spinney and Carlson, I saw Tomoaki call a bunch of his men out by name when he was assigning tasks to them. He called out a bunch of different names and then when he got to those two, he said the same name twice. It was in Japanese, yeah, but I’m sure they’re last names.”
“So those two have the same last name and so they must be brothers, is that it?”
“And they look an awful lot alike.”
Bones stared at his friend for a moment before responding. “Maddock, are you going insane in the membrane? How does this help us? We take out the other guy, and then what happens with the brothers?”
Maddock’s tone of voice was matter-of-fact. “We overpower the brothers, tie one of them up, and tell the other one that unless he brings us back a satellite-phone in ten minutes without letting anybody know what’s going on, we’re going to kill his brother.”
Bones rubbed one of his eyes while he contemplated this. After a few seconds he still had said nothing.
“You’re speechless?” Maddock knew it was beyond rare for the outgoing Indian to have nothing to say.
But then Bones looked up and said, “What if you’re wrong and they’re not really brothers? No offense, but your Japanese is probably not what it should be.”
“Are you saying I’m not a cunning linguist?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Even if they’re not actually brothers, the plan could still work just based on friendship and camaraderie. Not wanting to get their fellow crewman killed.”
Bones looked up for a moment. “I doubt that’d work if the shoe was on the other foot and it was us over there.” He nodded toward the deck. Maddock shook his head and then Bones spoke again.
“We better get going before those guys go somewhere else or more people come out.”
By this point in their careers together, Maddock had a lot of respect for Bones, respect born of a slew of close calls and hairy situations the world over, and that respect just crept up another notch. He was asking a lot with this plan, and not a lot of guys, even SEALs, would go along so willingly with something that could turn sour in so many ways.
“Right.” Maddock snapped to attention, realizing that it was game on. Bones was one hundred percent correct: the situation was fluid and they needed to do this fast, before it changed.
Maddock crept to the edge of the lifeboat and peered out on the work deck. One of the men — one of the brothers, he told himself — was hunched over the tarp, either tying or untying it by the looks of things. The other two men appeared to be arguing, gesticulating as they stood and talked.
Knives drawn, the two SEALs belly-crawled out from under the lifeboat onto the deck. Maddock pointed to the left side of the tarp, then tapped his chest, then pointed to the right and tapped Bones. They would split up, going around opposite ends of the covered equipment, meeting in the middle at their targets.
Maddock had the simpler, more direct route, but also the more open one. Bones had farther to go and would have to step over obstacles — piles of electrical cables and rope on deck, head-high spools of chain and 55-gallon steel fuel drums, but these things would also provide him with some cover.
They heard the voices of the three Mizuhi employees burst into laughter. Over what, they didn’t know, but they were glad they were distracted, at least for the moment. Maddock gave Bones the signal and they set out on their respective routes.
Bones had just slid into position behind the drums when he heard the metallic clang of a door slamming shut from somewhere above, up in the superstructure. He froze in place, noting that their targets did not stop talking. He looked over to make eye contact with Maddock but he had no line of sight. Maddock was still hunkered down behind the left end of the tarp bundle as far as he knew. Looking up, he watched a hard-hatted crew member pass along a walkway without looking down until he rounded the corner and kept going toward the front of the ship.
Bones saw one of the brothers showing some kind of electronic device to the other two, and as they leaned in to look at it the naval warrior dashed to the right-side end of the covered object. He knelt, trying to keep his breathing shallow and quiet while he looked up at the walkway where the other crewman had appeared. He didn’t like this vantage point. If anyone were to walk around that corner up there, he was in direct line-of-sight.
Bones lowered his head to the deck before peeking around the corner to get a fix on the targets. If they happened to be glancing his way he needed as low a profile as possible. In the past he’d worked with small dental style mirrors for the purpose of seeing around corners, and he wished he had one now, but he would have to make do. Thrusting his head out just enough to see beyond the tarp, he saw the three men standing about twenty feet from him, a little closer to Maddock’s end. And there was Maddock, crouched and ready, already making his move, prowling toward the men.