Buried At Sea (30 page)

"Nearby? How do they know where 'nearby' is?" "Simple. They plot our likely route from the point you let

that bloody freighter spot us. Knowing our course, the

weather, and a general idea of the boat's sailing qualities,

they could plot us pretty close to where we are right now. Then it's a simple matter to wait along that track and transmit a low-power distress signal on 2182 kHz—"

"Come on," Jim snorted in disbelief. "And hope we have our radio on? And hope no one else is so near they hear?"

"They would have heard me trying to get through the last three days. So they wait there until whoever else might overhear in this very empty area steams past, and when we blunder along they snatch us and sink our boat."

"Except we relayed the distress call to Ascension Island." Will shook his head. "Did we? I'm willing to believe that people who earned billions supplying the United States government with mil-spec electronics and spy satellites possess radios and electronic countermeasures that are sophisticated enough to block our miserable little hundred-fifty-watt SSB signal. And answer back pretending that they are Ascension Island."

"Maybe," said Jim. "But—"

"You are such an innocent!" Will roared at him, a roar that ended in a racking cough. " Think, Jim. Think. They're playing to win. And they hold all the cards."

"But what are we going to do? If those are real people drowning, and we're the only ones who are near, we're their only hope."

"I know that!" Will shot back. "That's why we're still sailing their way. But the problem is, if I'm right, if it's the McVays, then they're going to have absolutely top-notch radar good enough to pick up a speck of steel, like our winches or even the wire stays."

"They didn't have it on their ship when they tracked my heart-rate monitor."

"Maybe it wasn't their ship. Maybe it was borrowed. Maybe they didn't have time to set up. They've had plenty of time since Nigeria. But once they spot us, there is no way we can outrun them. So yes, those people are drowning if they're real. But if they're not . . . if they're a ruse . . . if they don't exist . .

"How close can we get before their radar might spot us?" Will shrugged. "Radar generally operates line-of-sight.

Thirty miles. But there's over-the-horizon radar that could boost it to forty, fifty miles. What are we making, eight knots?"

"Eight and a half?'

Will patted the teak table. "Hustle," he murmured, "you're a flier. . . ." Then he took the compass and drew a circle on the chart. "There's Pegasus in the middle." He drew an X. " Here we are on the edge." He drew a triangle to represent Hustle. Then he drew a second circle. "Here's their radar range. We have from here to here. . ." With the brass calipers he measured the distance between the two circles. "Twenty-five miles. Once we cross this line, they might see us. We've got three hours to decide who's who." Jim said, "I'll catch some sleep. But leave the radios on. Both of them. In case." Jim slept fitfully, yanked awake by sporadic bursts of static shattering the soft, empty hiss of the midocean radio spectrum. Suddenly he heard a man speaking clearly in English. He jumped to the radio. Will was there ahead of him. They listened intently. No connection. By a trick of atmospherics, a radio operator was transmitting from a freighter in the Caribbean, four thousand miles away.

Shortly before the deadline when they would enter the dangerous inner circle, Jim went up on deck and scanned the afternoon sky, hoping to see a rescue plane. But the sky was as empty as the sea. And the horizons, which stretched many miles distant in the clear, bright sunlight, remained deserted.

Will came on deck, pulling himself one-handed up the companionway, clearly distressed.

"Not a peep. Not from Pegasus. Not from any rescue ships. If only there were some way to make contact with ships in the area without tipping off our position. If it's them, they can track our radio signals."

"Sat phone?'

"Still not working?'

"Maybe you're right. Pegasus should have kept sending distress signals. Wouldn't they?"

"Unless their radio died. Or they already sank—it's astonishing how quickly a boat will go down sometimes. What's killing me is, what if they'

re real people in a raft? Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. E-mail! Jim, hop below. Send an e-mail with their last position."

"The sat phone isn't working."

"E-mail on the SSB. Flash a quicky before they can jam it."

"Who are you going to send it to?"

"Rafi."

One of his "cavemen."

"Rafi Sikim. Software guy."

"What are your cavemen going to do for you?"

"Give me a hand getting below. I'll show you?'

Jim half carried him down the companionway and eased him into the nav station, where Will sat at his laptop a moment, trying to catch his breath. Then he wrote Pegasus's call sign and last position and a note to his Indian engineer telling him to alert the Argentine, Brazilian, South African, and American navies and coast guards.

Jim, reading over his shoulder, asked, "How's he going to do that?"

"Rafi could hack his way into purgatory if he believed it existed. This report will be on twenty different admirals' desks in half an hour. If those people are real, there'll be aircraft bumping noses over them. If it's the McVays, they're going to set a new world's record for high-speed skedaddling: "

Jim stared at Will in open admiration. "You are one resourceful old—"

"Not old. Just sick."

"Then I suggest we stay right here and get rescued, too. You should be in intensive care."

"No."

That night, as they resumed their southwesterly course toward Rio de la Plata, the radios were alive with ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore in several languages. Will, cackling triumphantly, said, "The navies are on restricted frequencies, but there are four commercial ships heading that way, too. Someone will find them if they are real." Three days passed. But no raft was found and no boat reported lost. Jim reflected soberly on the fact that a naturally devious man like Will was better equipped than he to survive. Left to his own devices, Jim would have charged to the rescue and ended up sailing blithely, innocently, naively, and fatally into a trap.

ANDY NICKELS SAID, "One way or another Shannon Riley will lead us to Jim Leighton, and Jim Leighton will lead us to Will Spark."

"I am enormously pleased to hear that," said Lloyd McVay. "As there are more than a million Uruguayans in Montevideo and fully twelve million Argentines in Buenos Aires. Give or take countless slum dwellers in the villas miseria."

"We are very strong on the ground in BA," Nickels assured him. "And Montevideo. Army, cops, judges—anybody who can get the job done, they're ours."

"Embassies?"

"Both. But I'd rather use our own."

"Quite."

"What do you mean, 'one way or another'?" asked Val McVay.

"As you know, ma'am, we're watching the girl in Connecticut twenty-four-seven. One of several things will happen. They will talk on the telephone when the boat lands. I've got people on the phones for when he tells her where he is." He glanced at Lloyd McVay and added with unconcealed sarcasm, "Or Ms. McVay might still get lucky with that e-mail address she turned up."

Val ignored the jibe, saying only, "What if Shannon goes to him? They've been separated for three months now."

"Yes," said her father. "They might meet where Will Spark lands the boat."

"In which case," said Andy, "we will follow Shannon to Jim."

"What if neither of those things happens?" asked Val. "We can always take her hostage."

"Kidnap her?"

"Do you have a problem with that?" He glanced at Lloyd McVay, who was gazing out the window at a horse.

"I have a huge problem with that," Val shot back. "A million things can go wrong and then where are we? Your people are sitting in a Connecticut jail with a federal prosecutor telling them, 'The line forms here for those who get immunity for naming their employer.' "

Andy Nickels waited until Lloyd McVay faced him and answered, "I've got cutouts. No way it'll come back to us."

Lloyd McVay said, "Cutouts often put me in mind of Watergate, the Contras, and Iran. '

What tangled webs we weave . . . ' "

Val said, "My father's right. Get real, Andy. Just follow her. It can't be too hard to follow a girl in a wheelchair?' "Whatever you say, ma'am. You're the boss." After Nickels left, her father asked, "Do you find our hunter attractive?"

"It occurs to me," Val answered, "that hunters cannot be the brutes portrayed in the common imagination. They've got to be highly sensitive. If they're not sensitive to their surroundings and their prey, they'd never catch anything."

"So you find him attractive?"

"Why do you ask?" She was listening with half an ear when his question came out of left field and she paid it the minor attention it deserved. Her mind was on Will Spark. They had a strange affinity. Could she use that to find him?

"I ask because we'll be seeing quite a bit of Andy before this is over." She was thinking about how she and Will Spark had shared, independently, a similar concept of the Internet as an

active, omnipresent communication system, so much more than just a gigantic, passive file. The general thought was hardly unique to them; nor was their realization that it would make knowledge an active force. But their refinements of common knowledge had led straight to the brilliance of Sentinel. While others were predicting that refrigerators would order fresh milk from the grocery store, their stroke of genius was in choosing to use it to transform medicine.

"I said, we'll be seeing a lot of Andy."

"I heard you. But Mother always told me, 'Don't dip your pen in the company ink."

"Your mother was a prude."

"I didn't have the opportunity to know her as well as you," she replied icily. "But I don't like thinking of her that way."

"You weren't married to her."

"You were an excellent parent, Dad. For the kind of kid I was. But I'd like to think she would have been too, if you'd let her."

"If I had let her, you would be ordinary."

"I would never be ordinary."

"What does the doctor say?" Will called from his bunk. He had slept round the clock and Jim had rigged the last IV to keep him hydrated. His fever had risen; he was in great pain and profoundly weak.

-

"I couldn't get through."

"Well, did you—"

"Angela's e-mail account seems to be shut; And when I finally got the high-seas operator to put me through, her answering machine said she was away for a week."

"What's my temperature?"

"One hundred three."

Jim couldn't meet Will's desperate eye. They had tried every antibiotic in the wellstocked medicine locker—penicillin, erythromycin, Cipro. But the infection just wouldn't go away. They were out of options. Will knew it. His face hardened into bitter lines. It was way too late to try to sail back to Ascension Island. The Argentine capital was closer, but still a week away. They could try to contact a ship, if there were any nearby, but, as Angela had pointed out when Jim operated on Will, a freighter's sick bay wasn't likely to contain any more exotic antibiotics than Will carried.

"Shall we try to hail a ship?"

Will shook his head. "Aside from the risk of broadcasting our position to everybody with a set of ears on, even if we could rendezvous with a ship, what with the lousy seamanship on most ships and heavy seas there's a good chance I'd get killed in the transfer."

"So a ship doesn't improve your odds."

"So what are we saying?"

Jim shook his head.

"In other words, I'm dying?'

"In other words, I'll get you to Buenos Aires as fast as I can." Will cast a miserable look out the port. "If this wind holds. We're still in the variables."

"It's swinging west."

"Great. Then we'll butt heads with the westerlies." "I'll do what I can." To Jim's surprise, a warm smile softened Will's expression. "I know you will."

"I just wish I was a better sailor."

"Hey, listen, Jim. This whole mess is not your fault. You just had the bad luck to fall in with bad company. Don't start blaming yourself if I don't make it."

"You'll make it," Jim retorted automatically.

And Will shot back, "Absolutely."

But the next morning the wind failed them. It backed gently to the north and slowed. Hustle banged along in choppy seas, losing much of the time Jim had gained by driving her hard all night.

He had survived this much of the crossing thanks to Will's instructions, luck, reliable electronics, an excellent

boat, and decent weather. Now, when speed was everything, the variables had turned contrary.

Hoping for another change for the better, Jim did his rounds. The spinnaker pole had worked half out of its chocks on the foredeck. It seemed that if something could break on the boat it would, if it could work loose it would, and if it could chafe it would. With his rounds completed and the wind still dropping, Jim went below, yawning, scrambled some freeze-dried eggs, and brought them to Will.

The old man was awake and staring moodily out the port. "That smells good." The daylight fell on his face, which was pink with fever. Jim was shocked; the last time he had seen Will his skin was so dead white that he looked as if he had been bleached.

"You okay?"

"Head's spinning."

"Hungry?"

"Not really." Will took a tentative forkful. "You used olive oil. Very nice. I'll make a civilized man out of you yet—could I borrow your spare heart-rate monitor?"

"What for?"

He looked at Jim. His eyes glistened. "I just want to wear it. See how I'm doing."

"Sure."

Jim got it from his bag in the tiny forward cabin. "Still working." He helped Will strap the sensor around his chest. He had lost more weight. Like a fish skeleton, his ribs pressed against his flanks.

Will stared at the monitor for a while. Deeply concerned, Jim looked at the readout. The man's heart was racing as if he were climbing a hill.

Will asked, "Have you eaten?"