KNIGHT'S REPORTS: 3 Book Set (12 page)

Chapter
21

Harbor of Fears & Wings of Hope

Poodoo’s FBI ID got us through the gate a
t the Napoleon Avenue Terminal, but we found both of their two berths empty.

As we pulled up, I stared out at the vacant pier. “Damn it! This must be the wrong place. Is there more than one Napoleon Avenue Terminal — like a Terminal 2?”

“This is the only one.”

“I don’t get it. Legba and DePue said it would be close to midnight before they could get the ship loaded and underway.” I looked at my watch, “It’s eight, now. That was no more than sixteen hours ago.”

“E Z, hon’,” Poodoo asked, “when did you hear the sheriff say that? According to what you and Zack told me after we pulled you two from the swamp, DePue’s been dead for over forty-eight hours.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “How long was I out? This is Tuesday, right?

“Chéri, you was as cold as ice for nearly twenty-four hours. You had the fever for another night and day. This is Thursday. You were in my bed for two days.

At first shocking, now it made sense. “It’s gone! They’ve already sailed!” I beat the steering wheel. “Have either of you heard of
any ships being sunk, specifically in the Sigsbee Deep area?”

“
Either
of us? E Z, you’re talking very strange. I think those drugs are still clouding your mind, some. We better go to the hospital.”

“No, I’m fine. “What about it — any ships being sunk?”

Zack answered, “I ain’t.”

Poodoo said, “No
chéri, but I don't know where this place is.”

“It’s off the continental shelf—deep water, over two miles deep. Legba said he’d have the container ship sunk there if he thought they were going to be found out.

Poodoo pointed. “There’s a light on in the terminal office over there.”

I drove to a small office building nearby and parked. The sign above the door read
Ports of the Greater Americas, LLC, New Orleans Office
.

We rushed inside and found an elderly man wearing a knit watch cap. He greeted us cordially. “Hi, folks. Can I help you?”

Poodoo showed him her FBI badge. The old man seemed mildly impressed.

I asked, “Was the Chinese container ship
Mazu
docked here?”

“Yep,” the old sailor said. “Shoved off four hours ago. Guess somebody vandalized the old iron tub. Put a couple bags of sand in the fuel tank. Sat here nearly two days while they worked on her and got the tank and fuel lines and filter cleaned up. They finally got her fixed up, and she headed for South America — Colombia, I believe.”

“Sigsbee Deep ...,” I asked him, “...you know where that is?”

“Yes, sir,” the old man said and moved to a nautical chart table in the center of the room. We followed.

“Here,” he said, his finger on the map. “About 150 miles out.”

“When’s the soonest a ship like the
Mazu
could make it to that point?”

“She’s an old rust bucket, but she can probably make better than thirty-two knots if you push her.” He looked over his reading glasses at Poodoo. “Thirty-six or seven miles per hour.” He rubbed his chin. “If they got those old engines bandaged up good enough, figure it might take an hour to get to open sea. Then she could make top speed and be over Sigsbee deep within a total of around five hours.”

I said, “She shoved off four hours ago? That means we’ve got less than an hour before they scuttle a ship with over 500 children aboard.”

The old man stepped back with his hand over his heart. “Holy shit!”

I turned to Poodoo. “Get on the phone. We need a fully fueled Coast Guard H-65 chopper out of the New Orleans Air Station to meet us here right away.”

She frowned, but took out her cell.

“You do any skydiving?” I asked her.

She smiled. “I took first place competing on the UTEP skydiving team when I was in college.”

I returned her smile. “University of Texas at El Paso? I should have figured.” I nodded. “Tell the Coasties we’ll need a couple of MC-4 or MC-5 parachutes, or something at least as maneuverable. Also, I want harnesses with single, center box quick releases — I want to be able to abandon our canopies fast and with one hand, midair if necessary. And make sure they’re fully armed, plus a couple of rescue divers and a sniper with a .50 caliber, aboard.”

I looked at my watch. “And they should have been here ten minutes ago if we had any chance of making it.”

After repeating my orders over the phone, Poodoo hung up and said, “Maybe there’ll be life boats.”

“Doubt it. They’re sinking the ship to kill the kids. They’ll leave them in the containers. They must be vented for them to breathe — so they’ll sink like lead, two-and-a-half miles to the bottom of the ocean.”

“No matter what we do, we’ll be too late?”

“It looks that way,” I told her. “But we have to try. Maybe we won’t save all the kids — maybe we’ll be able to somehow save a few. You can count on one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Along with the saving, there’ll be a lot of killing to do.”

Chapter
22

Trouble on the High Seas

The
MH-65C came in fast over our heads thirty minutes later. This pilot was a hot-dogger, perfect for our mission.

He swooped in and landed without preamble.

The prop wash from the big rotor kicked up dust, and the twin turbo engines were loud. Poodoo ran out to the chopper right away, not spending the time to tell Zack farewell.

I did, taking the big man’s hand and giving it a firm and sincere shake.

“You take good care, E Z boy,” Zack said, squinting from the wind. “An’ take care of Miss Poodoo, as well.”

“We’ll be okay, Zack. You be careful, yourself. Watch out for Marie, she’s still out there ... I don’t know how, but she somehow survived at the cabin. She was at your shop when I found you—blew more of that frickin’ magic dust in my face. I think she’s the one who torched it.”

“I know’d how an’ where Marie be. Don’t y’worry none ‘bout ol’ Black Zack o’tha’ damn Marie Paris Dumesnil de Glapion. I fix her wagon once b’fore, an’ I’ll fix it ‘gain.”

“No, Zack,” I told him. “You promise you’ll wait until I get back—promise?”

He nodded.

Poodoo stood waving next to the Coastie crew chief in front of the helicopter’s bay door.

“Now, go’n. Go save them kids!” He winked at me.

I patted my friend’s arm and left for the chopper.

In the air, I filled in Chief Petty Officer Gary Price, our Coast Guard crew chief, on what had happened and our plan. Poodoo must have had some pull at the bureau, because the Coastie crew chief was all ears and ready to do what we instructed.

“Have you got a fix on the
Mazu
?”

“Yes, sir,” CPO Price said. “She’s about a hundred miles out, heading one-seven-zero at around thirty-four knots.”

“Are any other ships or aircraft in the area?”

“A cruise ship; the
Maya Queen II
, coming in on an opposite heading. We asked them to assist. Their courses should intersect in about 90 minutes.”

“That’ll be too late, Chief. The
Mazu
will be at the bottom by then. But, if there are any bodies to recover, we’ll need that cruise ship. What about aircraft?”

“Fifteen minutes ago, two NOAA Hurricane Hunters spotted the
Mazu
on their return trip back to MacDill Air Base in Tampa. They reported she’s running
darken ship
—without navigation lights, or outside lights of any kind. We’ve asked those NOAA planes to go back, relocate the vessel and loiter out of eyesight until either we make visual contact or their fuel levels run critical.”

I asked, “Orion P-3s—
Miss
Piggie
and
Kermit
?” It was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s nicknames for this particular pair.

“Yes, sir.”

I had a really crazy idea. It must have been the drugs. “They have any special supplies or cargo aboard?”

“I’ll check.” He pressed a button on the side of his helmet.

Poodoo asked, “What’s that about?”

“I’m afraid we’re going to lose a bunch of children. I’m just trying to figure up our assets — what we could possibly have in our favor to turn this thing around.”

“You don’t think we’re going to make it in time?”

“They’re probably about thirty miles from deep water. That’ll take them maybe forty-five minutes if they’re running good. If they’re smart, they’ll be ready to scuttle the ship as soon as they go past the continental shelf. We’re a good fifty minutes behind them, and even a crew of monkeys could sink that ship before we get there. I’m sure they have all the explosive charges they need to do the job, and they’ll be ready to blow them immediately. Legba’s no idiot. This is his carefully thought out contingency plan — a cover-your-ass plan.”

Chapter
23

Balloon
Drop for the Kiddies

Coast Guard CPO Price came back to me. “Those two NOAA planes are returning from Low Level Jet Experiment studies in South America. They each have a case of weather balloons with individual helium canisters.”

“Perfect! How many to a case?”

“Twenty-four,” he said. “They’re five footers that expand to just under thirteen feet in diameter before they pop.”

I remembered the containers on the back of the semi-trucks at Legba’s cabin. They’d had ventilation holes cut around the bottoms and tops of each side. They’d sink quickly if those holes weren’t somehow sealed.

I calculated out loud, “The containers are the old twenty-foot long, eight-foot by eight-foot type. That’s a little less than 1300 cubic feet. The balloons will inflate to thirteen feet. A thirteen foot sphere would have nearly the same volume.”

“So what can we do?”

“I know it’s insane, but if they scuttle the ship before we can stop them, those kids are going to drown in the containers. Legba said there would be just over twenty children to a container, five-hundred kids—that’s around twenty-four or five containers. They’ll be locked. We won’t have the manpower to get them all opened very quickly.”

“So you gonna fly them off the ship in weather balloons?”

“No, but those balloons might keep the containers from sinking if we can figure out a way to get them attached.”

*   *   *

Poodoo and I had our parachutes on and were changed into black skydiving helmets, equipped with short range VOX radios.

I glanced at Poodoo when the crew chief tried to give me our emergency reserve chutes. “Save them for next time. We’re going to HALO from high enough that they won’t spot us, but low enough that we won’t need oxygen — let’s make it 15,000 feet. We’ll open at four hundred. If our mains don’t open, we’ll be too low to deploy reserves — won’t have time.”

Poodoo’s eyes narrowed like she’d just been hit on the back of the head. She’d been very cool and together through all of this, so far. But I thought this might be reaching way outside her comfort zone. I wanted to tell her to forget it — come in on the chopper after I’d secured the
Mazu’s
topside. But with so many potential adversaries, I’d need her. I just hoped her nerves of cold steel wouldn’t melt and get her and me into trouble.

The Coasties surprised me with some nice weaponry. We each got M5 tactical rifles with muzzle suppressors and three, thirty-round banana magazines.

“If the
Mazu
is running
darken ship,
it’d be nice to pop some flares in front of them. It’d give the crew a little night blindness and us a bit of advantage in return — we can use all the help we can get. How many flare guns do you have?”

CPO Price said, “Two single-shot pistols.”

“That’ll have to do.”

Price paused in thought. “Maybe not; we were given an antique flare gun a while back to donate to our museum in Massachusetts. I’m pretty sure we still have it aboard.”

“Great. Let’s see it.”

Price smiled at me. “We wanted to test fire it first — you know, make sure it was safe.”

“Make sure it was safe for a museum?”

His smile was like a child caught playing with matches. He turned and opened a chest-like locker, and then brought out the odd looking gun.

I was impressed. “A Manville?”

“A 1938, 37 mm Manville.”

“You’re kidding! Twelve shot, semi-automatic? You got enough rounds?”

“Yep, twelve shot and we have three dozen 37 mm flares.” Price handed it to me.

I inspected the old weapon. “It takes too long to load these things up for you to fire more than one magazine of twelve, and we’ll need all the actual firepower we can get—all available personnel behind the more deadly weapons pretty quickly. Your searchlight and twelve flares in the air will be sufficient, anyway ... if this thing even works.”

The flare gun was designed to be used with tear gas, high explosive anti-personnel, or flare rounds. With a circular, permanent magazine, it chambered each new round by spring action and had to be wound up before use.

CPO Price said, “If I have to be honest with you, this thing was donated to us over two years ago. We’ve had a hard time giving it up to the museum — keep conveniently forgetting. Every now and then on night maneuvers when no one’s looking, we go a ways off shore and fire off out-of-date flares. She works just fine. You know — those old flare rounds are unstable and could be dangerous in the wrong hands.” He was still smiling.

I smiled back. “And in your hands this little toy is a lot of fun, huh?”

“You got me.”

“Perfect,” I told him and handed the old flare gun back. “Load it, wind it up, and be ready to pump out rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger.”

I glanced through the big bay door window. The full moon shone on calm seas — an otherwise beautiful touch on what was sure to be at least a somewhat tragic night.

Within another forty minutes, the
Mazu
came into clear view on the horizon. The old container ship was easy to spot in the reflected moonlight, even without its lights and from 15,000 feet.

“Three minutes to drop,” the pilot announced over the headsets in our helmets.

CPO Price opened the starboard side sliding bay door.

Although noisy before, now voices were impossible to hear unless they came over our headsets.

“Okay, Chief, guys,” I said and huddled with Poodoo, the crew chief, his sniper and two machine gunners. “Here’s the plan. Stay level until you’re two miles downrange, then circle back.

“By then, we should have finished our HALO, landed and started our assault. As soon as you come around, tell the NOAA planes to do a low and slow run at the ship, stern to bow. In the meantime, you run a low and slow up to the bow and hover off the starboard side to distract the ship’s crew before the NOAA weather guys can get on scene. Be mindful of them — we certainly don’t want a midair collision.

“As soon as you’re hovering, give us a countdown from three so that we can shield our eyes and then light up the Mazu’s world with the flares. Empty all twelve cylinders as quickly as you can and use your search light to blind them, as well.

“Even though you’ll have the attention of any defensive measures those assholes have on the ship, tell the weather guys to be prepared for small arms fire, as well — I doubt if it will be more than a couple of assault rifles. On their first and only pass, they need to come in single file and close together.  Both planes must drop their balloons as close to the middle of the vessel as they can.

“Then we need you to support us and follow whatever return fire you receive. Take out any armed adversaries immediately, without prejudice, with your sniper and your two M-60s. We’ll work from stern to bow. I’d guess we’ve got around three dozen bad guys aboard, but we’ve got lots and lots of innocent children in those containers, as well. Be very discriminate, but shoot quickly and shoot to kill. Remember, these assholes are selling children as sex slaves, and sweatshop laborers. Take out any adult that isn’t us. We’ll keep our helmets on so we’re easy to spot.”

Poodoo asked, “Billy?”

“You’re right,” I said, and turned to CPO Price. “There’s a slim chance one of the hostages is a young US Marine. He’s probably been killed by now — before they even shoved off — but if he’s there, we don’t want him killed by friendly fire.”

The crew chief handed me another skydiver’s helmet. “This is the last one. It’s not radio equipped.”

I fastened the helmet to where a reserve chute would normally attach low on my chest.

The copilot came on the headset. He had his flight helmet’s night-vision binoculars down in front of his eyes. “She’s still moving, but looks like they’re preparing to set charges.”

I smiled. “We might make it, after all.”

The crew chief glanced out the open doorway. “We’re coming up to the DZ. There’s a
ten knot
surface wind from the south. That’ll make it tricky. We’ll send you off about fifteen hundred meters in front of the ship.”

“
Ten knots
? If that’s the case, make our drop five hundred meters out,” I said and looked at Poodoo. “We’ll have to open at around three hundred feet — you up for that?”

She nodded.

“Okay then,” I said, and raised my left wrist. I pulled the Velcro loose on the fabric covering a computer the size of a large wristwatch. “Set your auto activation device to open at 275 feet, just in case. We’ll need to come in quick — try to stay high, then drop fast onto the superstructure above the fantail. We don’t want to be seen or they’ll snipe us out of the air. We’ll be like hovering sea gulls to them with the ship going at over thirty knots.”

The pilot said, “They’re stopping.”

Fate kept dealing us in. I hoped our luck would hold. Nodding, I relayed some of my hope to Poodoo. “They must be over Sigsbee Deep. If they’re not a moving target, it should be easier to land safely. Just watch me and be ready to pop your harness just before your feet touch.”

“We’re over the drop zone in ...,” the crew chief said and looked at his watch, “Twenty ... nineteen ...”

I caught Poodoo’s attention. “Follow me,” I said, and I moved to the open doorway. I pulled her chin to look me eye-to-eye. “No hesitation. Open when I do. But if something goes wrong, you abort. Open as early as you can and make a sea landing as far from that ship as possible. Then flip on your rescue beacon.” I touched the small strobe attached to her harness at the shoulder. It contained electronics that would send a radio emergency distress signal when the strobe was activated. “These boys will pick you up PDQ. Understand?”

She gave me the A-Okay sign, her thumb and forefinger in a circle. I could tell she was anxious, maybe a little nervous — maybe a lot nervous. She was trembling.

I understood her apprehension. Although a seasoned jumper, this sort of night HALO jump was out of her league. But it wasn’t out of mine. Besides, I couldn’t afford to be nervous. At times like these, my mind worked like a computer on what must be done according to the information it was fed. I would not think of personal consequences but only of best results for the mission.

CPO Price continued, “... two ... one.”

Although with over a thousand jumps behind me, it was the first time in five years I’d departed from a perfectly good flying machine in midair.

I found it ... exhilarating!