“Right on target,” the captain said. “The rest is up to you, my friends.”
Hawkins said, “Thanks, Captain Santiago. We can start as soon as Dr. Kalchis gives the word.”
“We can start immediately as far as I’m concerned,” Kalliste said. “But we are guests in Spanish waters, and it is Senor Rodriguez, as his country’s official observer, who has the final say.”
Rodriguez had been standing behind the captain, a mug of coffee in his hand. He was a short, pudgy man with several receding chins and a completely bald head partially covered by an ill-fitting toupee. He was dressed in a shiny dark suit and tie. He smiled and in a soft voice, said, “I am here as a colleague who wishes to help, not hinder.” Setting the mug down, he pulled a notebook and pen out of his jacket pocket. “Since I am also the official government record keeper, could you tell me what your survey will entail?”
“Dr. Kalchis and I will dive together in the manned submersible, take a look at what’s on the bottom and try to confirm the initial Coast Guard assessment,” Hawkins said.
Rodriguez repeated what he had made clear a number of times since boarding the boat that morning. “My main job on this expedition is to guarantee that the wreck is not disturbed, and to make sure no artifacts are removed.”
Hawkins nodded. “We’ll hover at a safe distance. The only thing we plan on taking is video and photographs to study later.”
Rodriguez licked his lips. “It is my job to see that protocol is followed. If you don’t mind, I will have to make a call to ask for final permission.”
“We hope that will not take long,” Kalliste said. “Your government has given me permission for this survey. You must know, as a fellow archaeologist, that I would hardly risk damaging my reputation by allowing a physical inspection of an ancient site without first carefully mapping every detail.”
“I am aware of that, Dr. Kalchis, but I must follow my instructions to the letter.”
He jotted something down in his notebook and strolled off.
“Sanctimonious self-important little piglet,” Kalliste said. “It drives me crazy the way he wets his lips with his tongue. Ugh.”
Hawkins smiled, but his narrowed eyes watched Rodriguez go to the stern where he stopped to take out a phone and turned his back to them. Three tours of duty as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan had honed Hawkins’s observational skills. Something wasn’t quite right. The guy was as slippery as an eel. Hawkins knew a number of marine archaeologists and none of them dressed for a shipwreck survey in a suit. Even odder, Rodriguez had shown no interest in the potential archaeological importance of the shipwreck other than to say it could not be disturbed.
Hawkins gave a mental shrug. Maybe he was reading too much into his first impression. Then again, maybe not.
When Rodriguez returned, he paused for a second, obviously enjoying the drama, and dabbed his lips with his tongue before he announced:
“I have secured you permission to make your dive.”
“Very good,” Matt said. “Dr. Kalchis and I will discuss the launch and retrieval procedures with the captain and his son.”
After he was left alone, Rodriguez lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. He had to watch himself, but the job had been easier than he thought it would be. He had expected to have to use all his considerable experience as a con man. But these scientists were as gullible as the usual victims of his cons.
When he was working a scam, he dispensed with the toupee. He was aware that with his bald head, watery blue eyes, pink face, and negligible chins, he resembled a very large baby. He capitalized on his innocent appearance, offering free counsel to elderly women who willingly turned over their money for investments that never panned out. But he had made a big mistake recently, conning a frail widow who just happened to have been related to a mobster. Which is how he ended up on this junky old scow in the first place.
He had lost all her money gambling. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the mobster sent some thugs to break his legs, so he’d chosen to lay low in his apartment, but after a few days ventured out to buy cigarettes. As he walked back from the kiosk to his apartment he lit up a cigarette and didn’t see the limo until it was too late. The car pulled up to the sidewalk and two husky men muscled Rodriguez into the back seat where the mobster sat. As the limo pulled away from the curb with a screech of tires, Rodriquez knew his life was about to end. Unexpectedly, the mobster had put his arm around his shoulders.
“I’ve been looking for you, Rodriquez,” he said; his breath held a heavy dose of garlic.
“I can pay the old woman back. I just need more time.”
“Don’t worry about that. I need you to do a favor for a friend.”
He shoved a phone in Rodriquez’s face.
The man on the other end of the line had a job offer. Speaking in a smooth-toned voice, he said he wanted Rodriguez to impersonate an archaeology professor working for the government. The job would only take one day. In return, the man would pay him a large sum of money. Rodriguez had agreed. The widow could go to hell. He had already decided to use the money he made from the job to leave town in search of other fertile hunting grounds full of vulnerable women.
Now, as instructed, he had reported the ship’s discovery to his anonymous employer, who said, “Good. Tell them to dive.”
The voice clicked off. Rodriguez shrugged. He didn’t have the faintest clue what this crazy job was about. He didn’t care. He just wanted to get back to Cadiz, then leave town faster than a mobster could shoot.
Which might have come to pass, if not for one simple thing.
By making the phone call, he had just signed his own death warrant.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After Leonidas had followed the Sancho Panza to the wreck site, he moved to within two miles of the anchored boat, the maximum distance that would allow him to make his kill with ease and accuracy. He stood on the deck of the leased forty-three-foot Spanish-built Astrodona and studied the vessel through powerful binoculars.
He had removed his disguise. He knew that he now looked like a giant slug but there was no one to see the scar tissue that had replaced his face. He’d smoked a joint on the way out. High-octane weed. He stretched his lipless mouth in a ragged grin. With an eye patch, he thought, he’d fit right in with the fishy crew of Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
The Astrodona’s twin 330 horsepower Volvo Penta engines rumbling under his feet could kick the boat up to a maximum speed of 35 mph. He’d finish this job and be back in Cadiz in time for dinner. A Galician fish stew would be nice, paired with a 2005 Lusco wine. Isabel would be his dessert.
Opening a storage compartment, Leonidas lifted out the king-size backpack that he’d bought in a wilderness equipment supply shop. He set the bag down on the deck, unzipped the top and pulled out a narrow cylinder around two feet long and slightly more than two inches in diameter.
At one end of the cylinder was a set of fins; at the other end was the plastic housing protecting a camera lens. He placed the Spike missile on the deck and pulled out three more projectiles, which he laid beside the first. When he’d first been hired to deal with the survey ship he intended to plant timed explosives on board as he’d done with the earlier assignment. But Salazar had insisted that nothing be left to chance, so he’d acquired the four missiles from his armaments supplier in Amsterdam.