Repairman Jack [09]-Infernal (18 page)

“I don’t get it, Tom. This treasure map thing… where’s it going?”

“Nowhere at the moment. But someday I’m going to dive that wreck and find the Lilitongue of Gefreda.”

“When? I thought you were going to disappear.”

He shrugged. “Maybe someday I’ll sneak back.”

Yeah, right.

“Speaking of disappearing, it’s no easy thing these days. You’ll need help.”

“Like who?”

“Me. I can put you in touch with folks who can fit you for a new identity.”

Tom looked touched. Maybe even a tad guilty.

“You’d do that for me?”

“Yeah,” he said, but knew he was really doing it for Dad.

Afiaza Harbor—Tenerife
March 14, 1598

Brother Francisco Mendes smelled the rot, heard the scuttling of the rats as he picked his way through the oaken beams, braces, and knees of the
Sombra’s
midship cargo hold. Had this been a galleon, the hold would have been crowded with rows of cannon and bins of shot and powder. Not so an unarmed merchant
nao
.

Francisco had suspected that the ship was running light, and indeed it was. As much as he had wanted to, no opportunity to inspect the hold had presented itself until now.

He had guided the
Sombra
along the first leg of the established merchant route: out from Cadiz into the Atlantic, past Gibraltar, then hugging the African coast, keeping land always in sight. The planned route led south to Cape Verde, where they would turn due west and head for the Caribbean.

But Francisco had seen to it that Captain Gutierrez fell sick as they approached the Canary Islands. The first mate, a wisp of a man named Adolpho Torres, had argued for a return to Cadiz but the captain had forbidden it. A matter of pride.

Francisco had guided the
Sombra
to Afiaza Harbor on Tenerife where they had anchored and had the captain taken ashore for treatment.

And now, here in the hold, his suspicions were confirmed.
Sombra
was indeed running light. He’d found bolts of fabric, worked iron, samples from many of Spain’s manufacturing sectors… but only samples.

Why? Merchant ships unfailingly set sail with their holds packed floor to ceiling, leaving no space, no matter how small, empty. That was why their crews usually slept on the deck. They slept on the
Sombra’s
deck too. Not because of lack of space below, but by captain’s orders.

Yet to Francisco even this half-empty hold seemed too crowded, the air too thick. He felt his throat closing.

He forced himself forward. He had a description of the relic—or rather its container—but so far had had no luck finding it. He wanted to locate it before the ship got under way again. Moving belowdecks with a lamp held high was difficult enough on a docked ship. But once at sea the pitching and rolling might cause him to drop the lamp. The greatest threat to a ship—greater even than running into one of England’s race-built galleons—was fire. Once they put to sea again he would need another pair of hands to help him. Those would be Eusebio’s, but Francisco could not risk anyone learning of their connection. Not yet, at least.

Eusebio had been conducting his own clandestine searches, taking turns with Francisco while the ship was in port. But it would not be there much longer.

His search so far—nearly an hour—had yielded nothing. Could the cardinal have been wrong? Was the relic on another ship, perhaps?

But then, as he lifted a bolt of dark blue fabric, he spied a small chest tucked into the forward port corner. It perfectly fit the description: small, almost square, with teak sides and brass fittings.

The Lilitongue of Gefreda… what was it? What was its dark power?

Better not to know.

And now, God forgive him, he must take the next steps in the plan.

“Senor Mendes?”

Francisco started at the sound of his name and dropped the fabric. He turned and found one of the crew hanging from the rope ladder to the deck.

“Yes? What is it?”

“Senor—I mean, Captain Torres wishes to see you immediately.”

“Captain Torres?”

“I am afraid so, senor.”

Eusebio had told him that the crew did not like the first mate. But from the sound of it, he was now in charge. Francisco hoped that Captain Gutierrez had not died. He had grown to like the man during the short time he had known him. He had intended to give the captain only enough poison to make him sick. He prayed he had not miscalculated the dose.

With uncertainty gnawing at his viscera, Francisco climbed the ladder and headed for the officers’ quarters.

He found Torres standing in the middle of the captain’s cabin. Everything about the man was thin: thin physique, thin lips, thin face, thin hair.

“I was informed that you were in the hold. What were you doing down here?”

“Simply checking the cargo to make sure none of it has shifted.”

“Such is not the navigator’s concern.”

“You are correct, sir. But since navigation is dependent on the helm, and since shifting affects the helm, and since my services are hardly needed while at anchor, I thought I might take a look. I must say, I am puzzled.”

“Why is that?”

“There is so little cargo.”

Torres smiled. “I said as much to Captain Gutierrez, and he told me the holds will be bursting at the seams on the trip home.”

Francisco could imagine only one reason for that: Someone was paying mightily for the relic.

How could that little chest hold something of such value?

Torres sniffed. “But be that as it may, the captain is too sick to continue and has relinquished command to me.”

“Then he is alive?”

Torres nodded. “Just barely. He almost died, but now he appears to be recovering. But it will be at least a week before he is on his feet. He wished me to complete the voyage.”

Francisco breathed a sigh of relief. Gutierrez, at least, would be spared.

“I will aid you in any way that I can, Captain. In fact, I know a route that will help us make up much of the time we have lost here in port.”

Torres’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”

“Yes. Instead of waiting until Cape Verde to begin our westward tack, we head west from here.”

“But we’re too far north. That will land us in the English colonies.”

“Yes, if we hold too long to a westward course. But two hundred leagues before we reach land we will find a swift, southward flowing current that we can ride all the way to the Caribbean Sea.”

Torres frowned. “I have never heard of such a current.”

“I have—from sailors who had to sail that route to escape the English. But more than the current, the winds have a southerly flow there. We will be riding the current and running before the wind. We will have an excellent chance of making up the days we have lost here. We might even arrive in Cartagena on schedule.”

“No.” Torres shook his head. “I cannot risk it. Better to be late than not reach port at all.”

“But—”

He raised a hand. “Enough. I have spoken. I will hear no more of this.”

Francisco swallowed his anger and forced a smile. “You are the captain of this vessel. I will do as you command.”

“Excellent, Mendes.”

“And now, in celebration, may I pour you a little of the captain’s sherry?”

Torres glanced around. “I’m not sure I should—”

“You
are
the captain, are you not?”

Before Torres could protest again, Francisco had the captain’s Murano glass decanter in hand and was filling a goblet for Torres. He put a few drops for himself into a second goblet, then handed the first to the captain.

“To the success of our voyage.”

As Torres quaffed, Francisco tilted his glass but did not drink.

“Why so little for you? You do not care for spirits?”

“Oh, I care for them very much. A little too much, perhaps.”

Torres laughed. “All the more for the rest of us!”

Francisco smiled. “Indeed you are right. Here, let me pour you a little more.”

Francisco nodded as he watched Torres drain his second glass.

Soon… very soon they would begin their westward tack. And their destination would not be the Caribbean, but a place known to the seafaring world as the Isle of Devils.

Once there he prayed he had the courage to perform the duty he had been charged with.

MONDAY

Jack awoke in the dark not knowing where he was or why the room was rocking or where the hell that awful noise reverberating through his skull was coming from.

He hit his head as he sat up.

“What the—?”

And then he realized where he was.

Tom’s boat.

Okay. That explained everything but the noise… a booming moan… like a foghorn…

Or another ship!

Jack lurched to his feet, trying to remember where the steps up to the deck were… left or right? He guessed left, found them, and started up.

What was he worried about? He and Tom had split the nighttime steering chores into two six-hour shifts. Jack had taken the first. Talk about boring—the boat drove itself, leaving him nothing to do but make sure none of the equipment failed. He’d caught himself dozing off a couple of times.

Finally his six hours—seeming like twelve or more—were up. He’d yanked Tom out of his bunk and sent him topside.

Tom would be up there now. Even if he’d dozed off at some point, that horn would have awakened him.

Jack reached the deck. At last—light. Not much. The cockpit’s instruments and running lights didn’t cast much of a glow, but enough to see what was what.

The first thing Jack noticed was the unmanned helm. He did a slow turn, checking the deck chairs, expecting to find Tom slumped in one, but they were empty.

Jack was the only one here.

His gut tightened. Where was Tom? Had he fallen over—

Another booming honk—louder than ever—shook the boat. Jack turned toward the bow./p›

“Oh, shit!”

Ahead and to his left—port, north, whatever—a looming supertanker, a mile long if it was a foot, lit up like some bioluminescent behemoth, plowed through the black water on a collision course. Obviously the
Sahbon
had shown up on the tanker’s radar or whatever it was ships used to detect each other, and it was sending out a warning that Jack read loud and clear:

Yo, pip-squeak! No way I can stop or turn, so it’s up to you.

The tanker’s prow plowed along less than a hundred yards ahead at eleven o’clock, with the
Sahbon
aimed like an arrow across its path.

Jack had a flash vision of the collision, the
Sahbon
reduced to kindling while the tanker barely noticed the impact—a fly glancing off an elephant’s thigh.

Panic hurled Jack to the cockpit, where he grabbed the wheel and—

Which way to turn? Left? Right?

He chose left. Or port. Whatever. If he couldn’t completely avoid contact with the tanker, at least he might escape with a glancing blow. He spun the wheel as fast and as far as it would go. Holding on as the deck tilted under him, he found the throttle and hauled back on it, reducing the power but not fully cutting it—no power would mean no control.

The
Sahbon
was slow to respond, but it came around. It would miss the prow, but a long, long span of reinforced steel remained to be dealt with.

Just then the
Sahbon
hit the tanker’s bow wave square on, lifting the front half of the hull clear of the water as it came over the top. The boat angled downward, plowing deep into the water behind the wave and killing most of its momentum.

Jack yanked the throttle back to idle and looked at the knobby expanse of riveted steel sliding by.

Close… too goddamn close.

Above he saw half a dozen figures backlit by the wash from the tanker’s superstructure lights, standing along the rail, looking at him. One of them gave him the single-digit salute.

Jack waved. We deserve that, he thought.

No, wait… not we…

A noise behind him. He turned to see a bleary-eyed Tom emerging from below.

“I just got tossed out of my bunk. What the fuck’s going on, Jack? What are you
doing
up here?”

Jack wanted to kill him—flatten his nose, knock out a few teeth, and toss him overboard—but he limited himself to grabbing Tom by the scruff of the neck and yanking him around to face the tanker.

“Avoiding a collision with
that!”