Terminal Justice Page 5

  Seaman First Class Bill Shank was as thin as Adizes was brawny, his rail-like frame covered in ebony skin, giving him the appearance of an anorexic teenager. In fact, the thirty-year-old was stronger than he appeared and quick. He possessed a lightning mind. The three men made the best possible team for special work like a rescue. They shared a mutual respect, but more important they shared trust. Rudy knew he would not have to nursemaid these men; they would do what needed to be done, and they would do it without hesitancy.

  Raising the handheld radio to his mouth, Rudy was about to ask that the Sea Maid turn a spotlight on the orange raft when the spotlight suddenly shone brightly. Looking over his shoulder, Rudy saw the powerful beam of the ship’s light piercing the ever-encroaching darkness. Rudy shook his head. Just once, he thought to himself, I would like to be a step ahead of the captain.

  The drone of the Zodiac’s powerful outboard motor diminished as Chief Adizes eased off the throttle and let the momentum of the boat carry it alongside the raft. Shank reached over the edge and pulled the raft close to the boat. Inside the raft were two African men dressed in casual slacks, white deck shoes, and off-the-rack T-shirts. The men were unmoving and apparently unconscious.

  “No uniforms,” Adizes said. “Must be off a pleasure craft.”

  “Most likely,” Rudy replied. “Mr. Shank, if you would please.”

  Shank immediately and deftly jumped from the Zodiac onto the raft. Placing two fingers over each man’s carotid artery, he felt for a pulse. “They’re alive, sir.” Feeling along the men’s arms and legs, Shank performed a quick examination. “I’m no doctor, sir, but I don’t see any blood and none of their bones seem broken. I wonder how long they’ve been out here?”

  “Not long,” Rudy said. “They’re clean-shaven, so they couldn’t have been out here more than a day.”

  “Then what’s wrong with them?” Shank asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rudy said. “You got any ideas, Chief?”

  The chief was leaning over the boat and holding the round raft in place with a viselike grip on the hold rope that circled the top of the float. “No sir, not a one. They’re not wet though, so they didn’t spend any time in the drink.”

  “See if you can rouse them,” Rudy commanded.

  Shank gently turned one of the men on his back and gently slapped him repeatedly on the cheek. “Hey, buddy, wake up. Come on, man, we’re here to help.” The man groaned but didn’t open his eyes.

  Rudy frowned. “All right, Mr. Shank, you stay in the raft. We’ll tie off and tow it back. We can take better care of them aboard ship than we can bobbing out here in the dark.” A moment later, the Zodiac was headed back to the Sea Maid with the raft and its puzzling occupants in tow.

  “Captain?”

  “Yes, Mr. Salizar, what is it.”

  “Mr. McGriff reports that all are aboard safely and the Zodiac is secured, sir.”

  “Very good.” Captain Adair nodded. “Helm!”

  “Helm, aye sir.”

  “Resume course, all ahead three-quarters.”

  “Aye, Captain, all ahead three-quarters.” A moment later, the low rhythmic hum of the ship’s engines reverberated throughout the freighter. Looking at his watch, Adair saw that only twenty-seven minutes had elapsed since the ship had stopped all engines. “It looks like we’ll be right on time, gentlemen. As always, right on schedule. In the meantime, I’ll see how our new arrivals are faring.”

  With purposeful strides the captain left the bridge, walked down the flight of stairs to the main deck, and quickly made his way to a circle of crew gathered around the two men who lay on the deck. The ring of sailors parted as the captain drew near.

  “We were just about to transfer them to the crew quarters, sir,” Rudy said. “I sent Mr. Shanks and Chief Adizes for stretchers.”

  “You said on the radio that they appear uninjured.”

  “Yes sir. We don’t know what’s wrong with them. We think that they may have been on a pleasure boat that went down. Many inexperienced sailors lose such crafts without so much as a radio cry for help.”

  “It still seems odd,” the captain said. “Maybe they’re in shock.”

  One of the men on the deck groaned and mumbled.

  “What’d he say?” the captain asked.

  Rudy leaned over the man and listened.

  “Dan … danger … talk to … captain … warn him … captain … danger.”

  A puzzled look crossed Rudy’s face. “He’s asking for you, sir. Something about danger.”

  “Danger, is it?” The captain looked at the gathering crowd around him. “Back to your stations, men!” The group scattered like mice. “Let’s see if we can learn what this danger is.” Adair crouched down and put his face close to the mumbling man. “I’m Captain Adair. Can you hear me?”

  “Danger, warning, captain,” the man spoke in English just above a whisper.

  “What danger,” Adair asked leaning closer to hear.

  “You … are … in … danger.”

  “From what, man?”

  Suddenly the man sat straight up, stood up, and faced the captain.

  “Easy there,” Rudy said. “I don’t think you should—”

  Rudy stopped midsentence as the other man quickly stood to his feet.

  “What is this?” Adair asked forcefully. “This had better not be some game.”

  “It’s not,” the man said as he reached down the front of his pants and pulled out a small pistol. The other man did the same. “No game at all.” The man rushed the captain and shoved the gun under his chin. “Be very still, Captain, be very still, or I will scatter your brains all over the deck. Do you understand?” Adair stared at the man through steely eyes and slowly nodded. “That’s wise, very wise.” The man’s words were heavy with accent.

  When Chief Adizes and Bill Shank rounded the corner with stretchers in hand, they froze for a moment and attempted to take in the situation. Before them, the two men they had pulled from the raft were holding guns on the captain and Rudy.

  “What the—” Adizes was cut off before he could swear.

  “Be quiet and come here, or I’ll blow a very big hole in your captain.”

  Adizes and Shank slowly set the stretchers down and walked toward the group. In a single motion the first man spun the captain around and placed the gun in his spine. The captain winced in pain. The second man did the same with Rudy, except he shoved his pistol in Rudy’s temple hard enough to force his head to one side.

  “Stand by the rail!” the man ordered. “Both of you, right now, by the rail.” Adizes and Shank complied. “Move over. I want you in front of me.” Again they complied.

  “Listen, mister,” the chief said. “I don’t know what this is about, but there’s no need to do anything stupid.”

  “You’re right. You don’t know what this is about, and you never will.” In a single fluid motion the man brought the gun from behind the captain and aimed it at Adizes. A moment later the echo of the gun’s report bounced off the bulkheads and out to sea. The second round was fired a split second later. Adizes and Shank flew backward against the white rail of the ship and then slumped to the deck dead, their uniforms marred by a circle of red emanating from their chests.

  “No!” Adair cried. “You cowardly—” He swallowed his next words when the still hot barrel of the revolver was pressed deeply into his cheek.

  “You were saying?”

  Adair said nothing. Rudy stared unbelievingly at the lifeless forms on the deck.

  “To the bridge, now,” the man shouted and shoved the captain toward the stairs. “Run, run, run.” The captain took off in a trot, keenly aware that the revolver was never more than a few inches from his back. He could hear the footsteps of Rudy and his captor behind him. Moments later the four men burst onto the bridge.

  “On the deck, everyone on the deck,” the man cried. The bridge crew—Salizar, the helmsmen, and a cabin boy who brought in fresh coffee—turned to see the
man behind the strange voice. “If I have to say it again, your captain will die.” The men instantly hit the floor. “You too,” the man said, shoving the captain down. “Face down and don’t move.”

  Stepping quickly over to the communications console, the gunman turned the knob that changed the frequency of the radio and picked up the microphone. “Mukatu here. Go.”

  “Received,” the radio crackled.

  “Mukatu? Is that your name?” the captain asked.

  “Those that love me call me Mukatu, and those that hate me call me sir.”

  “Well … sir,” the captain said, struggling to keep the anger he felt out of his voice. “I don’t know what you hope to achieve, but this ship carries only food and medicine for famine relief, and judging by your accent it may well be your people who need the help.”

  “I’ll worry about my people; you worry about keeping your mouth shut.”

  “If we could talk, we could work out something.”

  “No,” Mukatu said. “I’ll talk and you’ll listen. I have a task to do, and you’re going to help me do it. You will do so without question, comment, or hesitancy. If you disobey me, I will kill someone. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” the captain said quietly, “I just don’t understand …”

  Mukatu fired a shot.

  “My leg, my leg,” the cabin boy cried, “you shot my leg.” Mukatu brought his revolver up again and pointed it at the boy.

  “No,” the captain cried, “I’m sorry. Leave him alone; he’s only sixteen.”

  Mukatu grinned. “I said no questions, no comments, and no hesitancy. Do you understand now?” The captain nodded slowly. “Good.”

  A bell sounded. Mukatu stepped over to the captain’s chair and picked up a phonelike handset. “Yes.” There was silence on the end. “Talk to me.”

  “Who is this?” the disembodied voice asked.

  “This is the man who is going to kill your captain if you don’t start talking.”

  “I wanted to tell the captain something.”

  “If you’re wanting to inform him of the cabin cruiser that is pulling alongside, you’re too late,” Mukatu said bitterly. “But I do have some news for you. If anyone interferes with the men coming on board, I’ll shoot your captain in the head and drop him overboard. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir, I understand.” The voice was now shaky, which caused Mukatu to smile.

  “Good. Now run down to engineering and tell them to shut off all the engines.”

  “Shut them off?”

  “That’s right, sailor. Shut them off. I want this ship dead in the water. And one more thing. No one is to approach the bridge, unless he wants the death of the bridge crew on his hands. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Looking down at the captain of the boat, Mukatu laughed. The laugh was deep and guttural, demonic in timbre. “What a cosmopolitan group we have here today. A Panamanian-registered ship, crewed by Americans and leased by an American, sailing in African waters. Today Africa wins and you lose. You see, Captain, as you Americans say, ‘It’s time to rock and roll.’ ”

  Four hours later, Capt. Adrian “Lucky” Adair watched as the cabin cruiser made its way into the folds of darkness. He knew what would happen next because Mukatu had taken great pleasure in telling him. In fifteen minutes the ship would be shaken by the plastic explosives attached to the inside of its hull. The Indian Ocean would then fill the drifting freighter, sucking her down into its bleak depths. The crew would sink with her, not out of some ancient mariner duty, but because Mukatu had chained all twenty of them to the starboard rail.

  5

  THE PHONE’S HARSH RING REBOUNDED OFF THE white walls of the penthouse on the top floor of Barringston Tower. Through bleary eyes, A.J. looked at the clock by his bed. “Two in the morning?” he said groggily and then picked up the receiver. “Yes,” he croaked, “what is it?”

  “Sorry to wake you, A.J.,” the husky female voice said. “This is Eileen Corbin.”

  Eileen Corbin was head of communications. “Just a sec,” A.J. said as he cleared his throat. “Let me get my bearings.” He swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat up, taking a few deep breaths. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  “What? What’s happened?” A.J. stood up and began pacing beside the bed.

  “It’s the Sea Maid. She’s missing.”

  “What do you mean, missing? How can a whole ship be missing?”

  “She didn’t show up in Mombasa on schedule. Search teams were dispatched to her last-known location in the Mozambique Channel. So far they’ve found nothing. It’s believed that she may have sunk. Even the U.S. Navy has dispatched a ship.”

  “Sunk,” A.J. said, clearly agitated. “How? Storm? Collision?”

  “No storm and no collision, sir,” Eileen said evenly. “There was no Mayday either.”

  “Is there a chance she was commandeered?”

  “Unknown, but in that area anything is possible. One thing is certain: Something is very wrong. The Sea Maid is captained by Adrian Adair, and he’s never been late to port. The man’s legendary.”

  A.J. sighed. “You said she may have gone down.”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Eileen said. “The area has substantial ship traffic, and no ship has seen her since sundown.”

  “The search teams are still looking?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Keep me posted. I want reports as often as you can give them to me.”

  “Yes sir. We have a couple of small aircraft delivering food and supplies in the outlying areas of Ethiopia. Do you want me to redirect them to help in the search?”

  A.J. was silent for a moment as he thought the question over. “No, they’re needed where they are. Besides, I think they’re too far away to be of any good.”

  “Okay,” Eileen said, then asked, “Are you all right?”

  “As best as can be expected. Thanks for asking.”

  “I know you take these things personally.”

  “Am I that transparent, Eileen?”

  “On you it looks good,” Eileen replied. “Try to get some sleep, sir. I think you may need it.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for everything, Eileen.” A.J. hung up the phone and began to pace back and forth across his bedroom. His mind raced with the possibilities: ship failure, collision, modern-day pirates. There was too little information to satisfy him. For him, not knowing was worse than knowing. Somehow he felt, he knew, that something sinister had happened to the crew of the Sea Maid. If that was the case, then he would make the perpetrators pay for their deeds. Somehow, someway, they would pay.

  A.J. lay awake on his bed and gazed at the ceiling. He had been unable to fall back asleep after Eileen’s call, and now, in the predawn hours, his mind churned with the twin thoughts of Dr. Judith Rhodes and now the missing Sea Maid. The photo of Dr. Rhodes he had seen a few days ago showed her lifeless body, but what the photo could not show was her character and courage. Nor did it reveal the terror she must have felt. A.J.’s mind filled in those blanks. Those pictures were not eased by the addition of the missing ship.

  There would be no more sleep for him tonight. He needed to do something. He tried reading, watching television, and pacing around the penthouse, but nothing quieted his nerves. The harder he tried to relax, the more upset he became. The muscles in his neck tensed more and more. His stomach tightened and was beginning to ache. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said to himself. Looking at the alarm clock on the nightstand he saw that it was now 3:30. The sun wouldn’t be up for several more hours, but it didn’t matter; he decided to take his morning jog early.

  Physical activity had always been a stress releaser for A.J. He had been active in sports, playing volleyball and basketball for both his high school and college teams. He had excelled at both sports, for which he was ideally suited. Being tall and strong had certain advantages, but, at least
for him, they brought certain demands, not the least of which was the need for regular physical expression. Each morning at dawn, he would slip into his custom-fitted running suit and put in five miles. He wasn’t sure why, but he did his best thinking when he was sweating. He was happy with that connection.

  Fifteen minutes later A.J. exited the elevator that had conveyed him to the ground floor from the penthouse at the top of Barringston Tower. During the descent, he had begun his warmup stretches, working each muscle group. A few more minutes in the lobby and he’d be ready to take to the now empty downtown streets.

  The early morning August air was warm and felt good to A.J. as he relocked the lobby door and dropped the key into the zippered pocket of his jogging suit. Less than a minute later he was on the sidewalk in a full jog, his long legs spanning about one and a half times what a man of average height could cover. Overhead the ever-present marine layer of clouds blocked out the moon and stars. The streetlights cast their eerie yellow glow on the ground in identical circles of illumination. A.J. ran through the washes of light and the spaces of darkness that lay outside their penumbra. From light to dark to light to dark again until the alternating hues seemed to flicker like an old movie. Soon he fell into an almost hypnotic pace, hearing only his breathing and the repetitive thumping of his running shoes on the concrete. He saw little except the empty way in front of him.

  He blocked out the scenery that he had seen a hundred times before, choosing to focus on the murder of Dr. Rhodes. It ate at him like an ulcer. It wasn’t right for noble people to be killed while helping others. It was a heinous sin; a sin that must be avenged. A.J. was determined that atonement be made.

  A.J. ran and thought, and the more he thought of Judith Rhodes and the Sea Maid, the angrier he became. That anger fueled his movement. He ran harder, increasing his stride with each step until he could feel every muscle in his legs strain and pull like massive elastic bands. His breathing became noisy as he forced the air from his lungs in explosive exhalation and then inhaled deeply. The noise of his footfalls echoed off the surrounding buildings and storefronts.