Once he had the money and drugs, he would then run offshore, meet the freighter, and board her.
But he couldn’t do that until the American pilot had left the vessel. Harris said that on a standard freighter run, a pilot disembarked a foreign vessel approximately an hour or so after passing beneath the Skyway-probably around nine P.M. in this case.
“Our pilots disembark just past Palantine Shoals at sea buoys number nine and ten,” he said. “That’s six miles offshore.”
Standard procedure, he explained, was for a freighter or tanker to slow to about ten knots as the pilot organization’s 60-foot aluminum Brocraft transport, Tampa, approached from astern. With neither vessel stopping, the pilot then climbed down the outside hull of the freighter via a rope ladder like the one I’d seen hanging off Repatriate. Once aboard the transport vessel, Tampa, he’d be taken to the pilot quarters on Egmont Key, where there was plenty of hot coffee, food, plus a shower and his bunk waiting.
Harris pointed out that, because the transfer area is six miles offshore, there’s only another six miles to go to international waters. Most freighters run at between twelve and fifteen knots. So add another half-hour, he said. Total time to exit U.S. boundaries: four hours. Plus, add another fifteen to thirty minutes for Lourdes and the freighter to rendezvous, and for him to board.
By our calculations, Repatriate may have crossed into international waters at around ten P.M.
“We’re headed to the six-mile rendezvous point now,” Harris told me. “The sea buoys. Who knows? Maybe they got delayed. Maybe the perpetrator-Lourdes is his name?-maybe he had trouble finding the freighter. It’s a big ocean out here. Even if everything went perfectly for the asshole, we’re not far behind, Doc. We’ll find ’em.”
I said, “What do you think the chances are that they left the pilot ladder hanging?”
Mentally, I was already considering options, moving through the freighter, imagining what it would be like, seeing the ship’s layout, searching for my son.
Harris said, “Lourdes had to get aboard somehow, didn’t he? If the ladder’s not there, we can throw your anchor over her stern like a grappling hook, and you can climb aboard that way. But, Doc?” He said it like a question, then waited, wanting my full attention.
I could see only half of his face in the moonlight. His hair was combed back by the wind. “Yeah?”
“You’re going to be dealing with a guy who just picked up a half-million in cash, and a shit-hole crew who’d cut a man’s throat for a hundred bucks. We pilots know that vessel, and it’s about as nasty as they come. Same with her female skipper. She’s about the size of a middle guard, and she’d probably enjoy cutting you herself. You need to watch your six.”
Watch your six: Watch your tail.
I said, “Did you say you were carrying a weapon?”
“I’ve got a Glock nine millimeter,” he said. “But I won’t be carrying it once I give it to you.”
We left the marker buoys 9 and 10 flashing astern, and continued planing hard west, straight out to sea, where stars seemed to be rising slowly out of the horizon as we left the mainland behind.
We saw the lights of several commercial vessels. Had I been alone, I would have had to I.D. them visually, one by one. But not with Harris aboard. He knew the designs too well, even by silhouette. There was a late moon burning.
Finally, at a little less than twenty miles offshore, we spotted three separate ships, all steaming in a direction that looked to be southwest, but separated by miles. They weren’t running together.
Looking at them, Harris said, “The one most outward bound is a container ship-probably one of Evergreen’s vessels. The next is a tanker, the kind that carries liquids. The closest one, though, that’s a fertilizer freighter. That could be our boat.”
I had the Glock in my hands, trying to familiarize myself with the minor differences between it and my old Sig Sauer.
I said, “Run me up close. If it’s the one we’re looking for, dump me. Then drop way back-way the hell out of small arms range. I’ll use a light to signal you when I get things secured. Or I’ll just turn the boat around.”
He was looking at his Rolex: 11:35 P.M.
“You’d better make it fast. Unless I miss my guess, Coast Guard choppers are going to be on station out here fairly soon. They’ll be making sweeps; shining big bright lights…”
He let the sentence trail off, his mind suddenly on something else, before bellowing, “Holy shittin’ hell!”
He turned the wheel of my skiff so sharply, the gun nearly flew out of my hands.
Behind us, rocking in our wake, was the unmistakable profile of a Boston Whaler.
It was abandoned and adrift, its running lights off.
THIRTY-FIVE
Harris swept far astern of the freighter, then banked toward it so that we approached directly from behind. Our lights were switched off, and we were flying over low swells glazed in moonlight, running even faster than before.
He’d jotted down some data on all four vessels that were transiting that night, and he’d already told me what he knew about the phosphate freighter. She was many decades old, a Panama Canal-friendly commercial boat built in the yards of Boizenburg, Germany, but had had many owners. She was 375 feet long, with a beam of 50 feet-a small boat by industry standards.
As we neared the freighter, the big white letters on her stern grew larger and larger- Repatriate -and I could see her shape clearly.
The forward three-quarters of her deck showed no superstructure, and her lines curved gracefully upward toward the pitched bow. Far toward the back of the ship, though, there was an industrial-looking multistory building-probably five levels, all of them showing lighted windows. It was the ship’s “house,” in maritime terms.
The house was built so far back that the vessel looked out of balance. Looked as if it might tilt bow-upward and continue under way, headed for the stars. Because of the sweeping bow, with the house built as far aft as it was, it looked a little like the common depiction of an ark.
“Did you see it?” Harris yelled at me when we’d settled in behind the freighter. He had to yell. We were plowing at exactly her slow, diesel speed, directly astern, and only a couple of boat lengths away because we wanted to be hidden in her lee. Our data said that she was driven by a 1,000-horsepower Bergin diesel. The noise of her engine and prop was deafening.
I’d seen it. I knew what he was talking about. As we dolphined in over the ship’s wash, I’d seen a ribbon of white hanging from the port side: a pilot’s boarding ladder.
I told him, “Jump her wake and run me alongside, Harris. I’m cutting you loose.”
I checked my watch: nearly midnight. I checked to make certain that my glasses were tied securely around my neck with fishing line. I checked the weapon’s clip once again.
I was ready.
To have Harris at the wheel was such extraordinary good luck that it caused me to think of the tiny blind man at the trailer park who’d said that I had years of good luck ahead of me. But then… he’d also said that I might lose a child.
Hanging tight as Harris porpoised over the ship’s rolling wash, I reminded myself that I don’t believe in luck, good or bad, for the same reason that I don’t believe in fortune-tellers.
The pilot’s ladder was portside. It was a heavy, commercial-weight ladder of rope and wood that hung down near the “27” on the ship’s draft markings.
Running alongside the freighter in the moonlight, Harris put the bow of my skiff almost against the hull of Repatriate, matching her speed, nose right beneath the ladder, before he called to me, “Step up on the casting deck when you’re ready!”
I was standing in front of the console, holding on to a mooring line for stability. I continued to hold the line as I reached high, took a ladder rung in my right hand, and then lifted myself free of the deck of the skiff. My feet found the rungs below, and I scampered halfway up the freighter’s hull before turning to see Harris peel away in my skiff: dark hull throwing a silver wake.