Cruz hurried to the side of the vessel and climbed down the rope ladder and dropped into the speedboat with Cheval and the others of the crew.
The motor started.
But before they pulled away, Cruz opened his palm and kissed the pads of his fingers. He then touched it to a rusty patch of hull and whispered, “This is for you, Roberto.”
CHAPTER 95
The cluster of passengers on the cruise ship’s forward deck was being photographed by Jim from New Jersey, as opposed to Jim from Cleveland or Jim from London (all right, the Brit preferred “James” but since he was on holiday, he was happy to play along with the others).
The group had become friendly in the days since the ocean liner left Hamilton, in Bermuda, and had spent the first tipsy cocktail hour noting coincidences of career and number of children…and given names.
Four Jims, two Sallys.
Jim from California was below, neither the patch nor Dramamine working well, and so he would not be included in the picture.
Jim from New Jersey lined everyone up against what he said was a gunwale, though nobody knew exactly what that was – he didn’t either – but it seemed very nautical and fun to say.
“Nobody sing the Titanic song.”
There’d been a lot of that, especially as the bars remained open late into the night, but the truth was that very few people, men or women, could bring off the treacly song like Celine Dion.
“Is that Florida?” somebody asked. One of the Sallys, Jim from New Jersey believed.
He saw a dim line on the horizon but that was probably just a layer of clouds.
“Not yet, I don’t think.”
“But what’s that? It’s a building.”
“Oh, that’s the oil rig. The first one in this part of the Atlantic. Didn’t you see the news? A year ago or so. They found some oil between Nassau and Florida.”
“They? Who’s they? Everybody always says ‘they.’ Are you going to take the picture? My margarita’s melting.”
“U.S. Petroleum. American Petroleum Drilling. I don’t remember.”
“I hate those things,” Sally from Chicago muttered. “Did you see the birds in the Gulf? All covered with oil. It was terrible. I cried.”
“And we couldn’t get good shrimp for months.”
The photog marshaled his subjects into line against the gunwale and tapped down on the Canon shutter.
Click, click, click, click, click…
Enough to make sure that there’d be no blinks.
The proof of vacation burned into a silicon chip, the tourists turned to gaze at the sea and conversation meandered to dinner and shopping in Miami and the Fontainebleau hotel and was Versace’s mansion still open to the public?
“I heard he had an eight person shower,” said Jim from London.
Claire disputed that.
“Holy shit,” Jim from New Jersey gasped.
“Honey!” chided his wife.
But the camera was up once more and by the time the sound of the explosion reached them, everyone had turned and was focused on the massive mushroom cloud rising perhaps a thousand feet in the air.
“Oh, Jesus. It’s the oil rig!”
“No, no!”
“Oh, my God. Somebody call somebody.”
Click, click, click, click…
CHAPTER 96
“What’s the damage assessment?”
Shreve Metzger, in blue jeans and a long sleeved white shirt that was partly untucked amidships, was leaning over a computer monitor, staring, staring at the smoke and haze hovering over the Caribbean Sea, a thousand miles away.
“Gone completely,” said a NIOS communications specialist at a control panel beside him, a young woman with hair pulled back in a bun that looked painfully tight. The comspec’s voice was unemotional.
The scene on the monitor revealed clearly that, no, there was nothing left, other than an oil slick, some debris.
And smoke. A lot of smoke.
Gone completely…
Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, along with Metzger and the comspec, were in the outer office of NIOS’s Ground Control Station trailer, on Rector Street in lower Manhattan. In the parking lot.
Rhyme squinted at the bits of wood and plastic and rocking sheen of oil, which had until thirty seconds ago been the 110 foot Dominican cargo ship that Robert Moreno’s friend, Henry Cross, aka Enrico Cruz, had guided toward the Miami Rover , the American Petroleum Drilling and Refining oil rig off the coast of Florida.
The comspec touched her earphones. “Reports of a second detonation, underwater, Director. About eight or nine hundred feet depth.”
A moment later, they could see on the high resolution monitor a slight bubbling up of the water on the surface. That was all. Rhyme supposed that however large the second bomb had been, intended to destroy the rig’s wellhead, he guessed, so much water had quite a mitigating effect.
Rhyme looked through the glass wall dividing the trailer in half: the Kill Room of the GCS. He noted in the dim light the man who had just caused the devastation – and saved the lives of the people on board the rig, as well as much of the east coast of Florida.
Oblivious to those observing him, Barry Shales was at the drone operations station. To Rhyme it seemed like a freestanding airplane cockpit. Shales was sitting forward, apparently quite relaxed, in a comfortable tan leather chair, facing five flat screen monitors.
The NIOS officer’s hands gripped joysticks, though he would occasionally twist or tap one of the other hundred or so knobs, dials, switches and computer keys.
Rhyme noted that somebody had affixed a seat belt to the chair. It dangled to the floor unlatched. A joke, surely.
Shales was alone in the dim room, which was soundproofed, it seemed, presumably so that he wouldn’t be distracted by noises from associates – or visitors like Rhyme and Sachs today. Delivering deadly messages from on high undoubtedly required supreme concentration.
The comspec, who also had a live link to the American Petroleum security people on board the oil rig, tapped buttons herself, asked some questions and announced to Metzger, Rhyme and Sachs, “Confirm no damage to Miami Rover or blowout preventer. No injuries, except a few earaches.”
Not unexpected when a massive fertilizer bomb detonates a half mile from you.
As he’d been reviewing the evidence a half hour ago, Rhyme had suddenly realized that some things didn’t add up. He’d made a half dozen calls and deduced that an attack might be imminent. He’d contacted Metzger. Feverish debate in Washington and at NIOS ensued. Scrambling air force fighters required too much authorization from the Pentagon on up; hours would be wasted getting the approval.
Metzger, of course, had a solution. He’d appealed to Barry Shales, who was en route to headquarters anyway to collect his personal belongings – Metzger explained that the pilot had decided to leave NIOS.
Given the horrific consequences if the pending attack was successful and the approaching deadline – a matter of minutes – the former air force officer had reluctantly agreed to help. He’d flown the drone from Homestead to a spot just over the cargo ship and hovered. The ship was apparently abandoned; they’d seen the crew get into a speedboat and flee. When the radio hails, ordering the cargo ship to come about, were ignored, Shales had launched a Hellfire, which struck the forward hold, where Rhyme speculated the fertilizer bomb had been placed.
Bull’s eye.
Shales was now turning the drone in a different direction and began following the small boat that contained the crew, who had abandoned the vessel twenty minutes earlier. Into view on the monitor came the black, long nosed speedboat, crashing over the waves away from the rig and the explosion.