Just at that instant Stone’s voice came out of a radio clipped to Cabrillo’s belt.
“Mr. Cabrillo, Mr. Hanley,” he said, “there’s something you need to see.”
The two men walked down the hallway out through the main salon, then onto the rear deck and across to the Oregon. They quickly walked down the hall to the control room.
Cabrillo opened the door. Stone pointed to a monitor on the wall.
“I thought it was a dead baby whale,” he said, “until it flipped over and I saw a face.”
Just then another body surfaced.
“Have Reyes and Kasim fish them out,” Cabrillo said to Hanley, “I’m going back across.”
Cabrillo left the control room and stepped across to the Akbar. Seng was in the main salon when Cabrillo entered. “Meadows thinks that the object was only in here,” Seng said. “He’s looking through the rest of the ship, but so far it’s clean of radiation.”
Cabrillo nodded.
“Ross has found blood in the pilothouse and staterooms as well as in and around the main salon and passageways. The captain was on duty, the posted guards and the rest were sleeping. That would be my guess.”
Cabrillo nodded again.
“Whoever hit them, boss,” Seng said, “came in hard and fast.”
“I’m going to the pilothouse,” Cabrillo said, walking away.
Once there he examined the ship’s log. The last entry was only two hours old and it stated nothing out of the ordinary. Whoever the visitors were, they’d come unannounced.
After leaving the pilothouse, Cabrillo was walking down the hall when his radio was called.
“Mr. Cabrillo,” Huxley’s voice said, “come to the sick bay at once.”
Cabrillo made his way through the Akbarand back across to the Oregononce again.
Reyes and Kasim were out on the deck with boat hooks in their hands. They were pushing a body toward a lowered net hung from a cable attached to a derrick. Cabrillo made his way inside and headed down the passageway to the sick bay and opened the door.
Ackerman was lying on an exam table covered by electric warming blankets.
“He’s been trying to talk,” Huxley said. “I wrote it all down, but it was mostly gibberish until a few minutes ago.”
“What then?” Cabrillo asked, staring down at Ackerman, whose eyes had started to flutter. One eye cracked open just a touch.
“He started talking about the ghost,” she said, “not aghost, theGhost, as if it were a nickname.”
Just then Ackerman spoke again. “I should have never trusted the Ghost,” he said in a voice growing weaker by the word. “He bought and paid for the un…ivers…ity.”
Ackerman started convulsing. His body began to shake like a dog exiting the water.
“Mom,” he said weakly.
And then he died.
No matter how much Huxley shocked him, his heart would not start again. It was just after midnight when she pronounced him dead. Cabrillo carefully reached up and closed Ackerman’s eyes, then covered him with a blanket.
“You did the best you could,” he said to Huxley.
Then he left the sick bay and walked down the Oregon’s passageway.
Ackerman’s words were still ringing in his head.
Walking onto the stern of the ship, he found Hanley staring over a trio of bodies. Hanley was holding an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch computer picture in his hand.
“I enhanced the photograph with a computer to distort the face in order to account for the swelling,” he said as soon as Cabrillo walked closer.
Cabrillo took the photograph from Hanley, bent down next to the body, and held it to the face. He stared at the face of the corpse and then the photograph.
“Al-Khalifa,” he said slowly.
“He must have been weighed down and tossed overboard,” Hanley noted. “The only thing was that the killers didn’t know that the bottom of the ocean around here is littered with geothermal vents. The hot water caused the bodies to quickly bloat and overcome the weight. If it weren’t for that, we’d have never found them.”
“Have you ID’d the others?” Cabrillo asked.
“I haven’t found any records yet,” Hanley said, “plus there are more surfacing as we speak. Probably just Al-Khalifa’s minions.”
“Not minions,” Cabrillo said, “madmen.”
“Now the question is…” Hanley said.
“Who is crazy enough,” Cabrillo said, “to steal from other crazies.”
22
LANGSTON OVERHOLT IVwas sitting in his office, bouncing a red rubber ball off a wooden paddle. The telephone receiver was cradled to his ear. The time was barely 8 A.M. but he’d already been at work for more than two hours.
“I left a pair of my engineers on board,” Cabrillo said to Overholt. “We’re claiming salvage rights.”
“Nice prize,” Overholt said.
“I’m sure we can use it somehow,” Cabrillo agreed.
“What’s your current location?” Overholt asked.
“We are north of Iceland heading east. We’re trying to track the bugs on the meteorite. Whoever killed Al-Khalifa and stole the meteorite must be aboard another ship.”
“You’re sure the body you recovered is Al-Khalifa?” Overholt asked.
“We’re faxing you fingerprints and digital photographs of the corpse,” Cabrillo said, “so your people can make a positive identification. But I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”
“After you woke me up this morning, I ordered some of my men to try to check out the ID on the passenger aboard the Eurocopter. We got nothing. I’m sending a team to Greenland to recover the bodies, then hopefully we’ll know more.”
“Sorry about the midnight call, but I thought you should receive the news as soon as possible.”
“No problem, I probably got more sleep than you.”
“I managed to grab a few hours once we left the Akbar,” Cabrillo admitted.
“What’s your gut feeling, old friend?” Overholt asked. “If Al-Khalifa is dead, then the threat of the dirty bomb seems diminished. The meteorite is radioactive, but without a catalyst the danger is a lot less.”
“True,” Cabrillo said slowly, “but the missing Ukrainian nuclear bomb is still out there somewhere, and we don’t know that several of Al-Khalifa’s own people didn’t kill him and will now try to mount the mission themselves.”
“That would explain a lot,” Overholt said, “like how the killers accessed the Akbarso easily.”
“If it wasn’t some of Al-Khalifa’s own people, then we have another group to contend with. If that’s the case, we should be wary. Whoever made the assault on the Akbarwere highly trained and as deadly as vipers.”
“Another terrorist group?”
“I doubt it,” Cabrillo said. “The operation had none of the earmarks of religious fanatics. It was more like a military operation. No emotion or fuss—just a surgical and flawless elimination of the opposition.”
“I’ll dig around,” Overholt said, “and see what I can find out.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Good thing you managed to bug the meteorite,” Overholt added.
“The only card up our sleeve,” Cabrillo agreed.
“Anything else?”
“Just before he died, the archaeologist started talking about the Ghost,” Cabrillo said, “as if he were a man and not a disembodied apparition.”
“I’m on it,” Overholt said.
“This is turning into an episode of Scooby-Doo,” Cabrillo said. “Find out who the Ghost is and we solve the caper.”
“I don’t seem to remember a Scooby-Dooepisode dealing with nuclear weapons,” Overholt said.