Wildfire (49 page)

"Oh, dear God, that's terrible," the old man sighed.

"Yes, it is," Crane agreed. "Especially since Mr. Bloom's 'accidental' death will undoubtedly be viewed by the law enforcement authorities with a considerable amount of suspicion."

"What do you mean, suspicion?" Sergio Paz-Rios, the fiery chairman of Amazon Global, demanded.

"He means that the only known link between Operation Counter Wrench and our committee is now severed," Nicholas Von Hagberg said in his characteristically cold and haughty manner.

"Which isn't necessarily a bad deal, when you think about it," Wilbur Lee Edgarton reminded.

"Hold on a second, Walter. You assured us yesterday that the FBI isn't even aware that our committee exists," Jonathan Chilmark pointed out.

"As of yesterday afternoon, that was true to the best of our knowledge." Crane nodded. "However, as of this morning, I can tell you that thirteen agents of an elite FBI hostage rescue team departed from Quantico, Virginia, en route to an unknown destination in the Bahamas. And I have some reason to believe that they landed on San Salvador."

There was dead silence around the room.

"But what would a hostage rescue team from the FBI possibly have to do with us?" Sam Tisbury asked reasonably. "We certainly don't have any hostages in this villa, or anywhere else, for that matter."

"As far as the FBI is concerned," Walter Crane said calmly, "the terms 'hostage recovery' and 'S.W.A.T.' are synonymous."

Sergio Paz-Rios muttered something in his Chilean dialect as an argument broke out between Jonathan Chilmark and Nicholas Von Hagberg.

"Gentlemen!" Walter Crane spoke sharply, raising his hand for silence.

In spite of the emotional turmoil that seemed to fill the room, all eyes turned in Crane's direction.

"Before you become overly alarmed," Crane said calmly, "I would repeat what I said yesterday. There is still no evidence that the FBI or any other law enforcement entity is aware that the ICER committee exists or that you are here on this island. As far as I am aware, Mr. Bloom was the only member of the committee under investigation.

"However," the legal investigator emphasized with a single raised forefinger, "the fact that the attentions of a thirteen-agent S.W.A.T. team, approximately seventy-five FBI and DEA agents of the Special Bahamas Task Force, FBI Agent A1 Grynard,
and
a covert team of Fish and Wildlife Service special agents, now seem to be focused in this isolated part of the world is certainly good reason to be
concerned."

"I think we should terminate this meeting and leave the Islands immediately," Jonathan Chilmark said.

"I agree," Wilbur Lee Edgarton nodded.

"But if they don't know ..." Harold Tisbury started to say when Nicholas Von Hagberg interrupted.

"I disagree, we should not run like terrified rabbits," Nicholas Von Hagberg said emphatically. "And besides, we
cannot
leave before we decide about the future of this committee."

"But if we don't leave right now, we may be trapped," Jonathan Chilmark protested.

"That's right." Sergio Paz-Rios nodded, his dark eyes widened with emotion. "Too many people have died already. The FBI will not be satisfied with just one of us. They will keep looking until they find us all. Killing Bloom was a stupid idea!" He glared accusingly at Von Hagberg.

"You think I had him killed?"

"Why not? It's obvious that you had others killed to free your precious Maas. Why should you stop there!?" Sergio Paz-Rios yelled, coming to his feet.

"You are an imbecile!" the Teutonic industrialist exploded, knocking aside a lamp as he too came up out of his chair, his face beet-red beneath his titanium-rimmed glasses.

Incredibly, before the two furious ICER committee members could take a swing at each other with their clenched fists, the sharp tinkling of a knife blade against a glass instinctively caught everyone's attention.

Walter Crane paused to make certain that he did, in fact, have everyone's attention. Then he set the glass and knife back down on the lamp table and continued. "Nicholas has a point," he said in an absolutely calm and controlled voice. "If you run now, you will attract attention."

"But—" Jonathan Chilmark started to protest again, but Crane shook him off.

"No, listen to me," he said firmly. "If a hunter has no idea where his prey is, the age-old tactic is to create a disturbance. Drum-beaters, a show of force, whatever. But the important thing to remember," he emphasized, "is that once the animal breaks cover, it is almost always doomed."

Crane allowed his gaze to pass slowly from face to face.

"If the arrival of the FBI team and the activities of the wildlife agents are just that, a show of force to cause one or more of you to run, when you can be assured that they are watching every possible means of leaving these islands."

The silence went on for almost thirty seconds.

"Then you are advising us to stay here, together, at the villa?"

"Or wherever it is that you are staying," Crane nodded. "What I'm advising you
not
to do is to get on board a boat or a plane and try to leave."

Sam Tisbury raised his hand hesitantly.

"Yes, Sam?"

"Walter, my son and I were planning on going out fishing this morning." Tisbury looked down at his watch. "In fact, he should be waiting for me down at the marina right now."

"Have you already chartered the boat?"

"Yes."

"Then I would strongly recommend that you go down to the marina right now and continue on as if none of this"—Crane waved his hand to indicate the general atmosphere of the room—"had ever happened."

"But he must come back, yes?" Nicholas Von Hagberg demanded.

"Oh, yes." Walter Crane nodded. "Under the circumstances, I think that would be highly advisable."

Crane waited until Sam Tisbury had departed and then turned his attention back to the assembled group.

"Gentlemen, I understand that breakfast will be available in the dining room. Perhaps all this will look better after we eat?"

Nodding in agreement, the emotionally exhausted ICER Committee members rose to their feet and followed their legal adviser into the dining room.

Where they found themselves staring into the cold blue eyes of Gerd Maas.

Chapter Thirty-three

With Larry Paxton at the helm, Mike Takahara at his side with the ship's manual and a copy of
The Yachtsman's Guide to the Bahamas,
and Henry Lightstone acting as lookout and general deckhand, it took the inexperienced crew of the
Lone Granger
three separate tries before they finally managed to snag the yacht's ninety-pound bow anchor, with some uncertain degree of permanence, to the relatively shallow ocean floor off the Hawk's Nest inlet at the tip of the Cat Island "boot."

Then, while Paxton and Takahara continued to consult on the bridge, Henry Lightstone tied one end of a fifty-foot line to one of the stern cleats, the other end to one of the ship's seventy-five-pound spare anchors, dropped the anchor into the water, and then dove overboard.

A little under a minute later, Lightstone's head popped up off the starboard side of the yacht.

"Are we hooked up?" Paxton yelled out the bridge window.

Lightstone extended his arms in an exaggerated palms-up shrug.

"I'm going to interpret that as a definite 'maybe,'" Paxton said. "What do you think?"

"Other than being extremely grateful that Halahan and Moore are waiting for us about ten miles away at Cutlass Bay, and not out here at the Hawk's Nest, you don't want to know what I think," Mike Takahara said seriously.

"That bad?"

The tech agent nodded.

"What's the worst that can happen?"

Mike Takahara gave Paxton a long look. "Offhand, I'd say the two most likely possibilities are that the anchors pull loose and the boat drifts out to sea, or the anchors pull loose and the boat breaks up on the reef."

Larry Paxton blinked.

"What the hell's the matter with 'the anchors
don't
pull loose, and the boat stays right where it is'?" he demanded.

"Yeah, I suppose that's always a possibility too," the tech agent conceded.

Larry Paxton was about to say something else when Henry Lightstone climbed up the outside ladder to the bridge, water still dripping from his bathing suit.

"So how are things looking up here?" he asked Takahara—who was busy doing something behind the control console panel—as he stripped out of his bathing suit and started to towel off.

"You don't want to be asking the prophet of doom a question like that," Paxton advised.

"Larry's starting to worry that we might not know what we're doing," Takahara explained, looking up from the console as he slipped something into his shirt pocket.

"He's right, we
don't
know what we're doing. But there's not much we can do to change that right now, so why worry about it?" Lightstone shrugged philosophically as he rummaged around in his equipment bag for a clean set of underwear, jeans, and a short-sleeved shirt.

"Exactly." The tech agent nodded.

"But as long as we're on the subject of not knowing what we're doing," Lightstone said as he got dressed, "you think next time we stop somewhere, we could just try motoring up to the dock? This business of dragging seventy-five-pound anchors around, looking for something to hook them to, is starting to get a little old. If we're going to keep this up, we need to get Stoner back into the game."

"I guess we could
try
coming in to the marina," Mike Takahara said dubiously, "but I'm not too sure how well that would work out."

"Oh, yeah, what's the problem?"

"Well, first of all, you
do
know we lost all our charts of Cat Island in the explosion, right?"

"Yeah, sure, but you guys managed to find this place okay with that yachtsman's guidebook."

"Yes, we did, but if you'll take a look at what it says here," Takahara said, pointing to the bottom of the line sketch titled Cat Island Harbours and Creeks.

"'Caution: Not for Navigating,'" Lightstone read out loud. He looked up at the team's tech agent. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

The tech agent nodded. "Pretty much. Actually, if you want to know the truth, the only reason Larry and I managed to find the Hawk's Nest marina is because we kept on heading south, parallel to the shoreline, and never lost sight of the island. Had to hit the end of it eventually."

"Ah."

"And there's one other problem with the docking idea," Mike Takahara went on. "First of all, you need to understand that, according to the ship's manual, the draft of the
Lone Granger
is exactly six and a half feet."

"What's that mean?" Larry Paxton asked.

"The draft is basically how much water you need so that the boat doesn't scrape on the bottom," Takahara explained. "Now if you'll look at the numbers here on this sketch, you can see—roughly—how deep the water is at the entrance to the Hawk's Nest marina."

"What's that, four to six fathoms?" Lightstone asked.

"No, four to six
feet . . .
plus you've got to add or subtract a couple, depending on whether the tide's coming in or going out."

"And just how are we supposed to know
that?"

"Well, as best I can figure out, we start with the Nassau tide tables at the back of the Guide, subtract twenty-five minutes for Cat Island time, add or subtract a half foot depending on how far the moon is from the earth—"

Henry Lightstone turned to Larry Paxton. "He's bull-shitting us, right?"

Paxton just rolled his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head, as if to say, "How the hell would I know?"

" — and then cross our fingers real tight," the tech agent went on, " 'cause if we guess wrong and the tide's going down instead of up, then we get to try to drag a hundred-ton boat off the rocks instead of a seventy-five-pound anchor."

"I think I just changed my outlook on anchor-dragging," Lightstone said. "Sorry I asked."

"That's pretty much the way I figured it too." The tech agent nodded. "Especially since I wasn't sure if Bobby had this thing fully insured."

"Knowing Bobby, I imagine he's got full coverage on this tub," Lightstone said. "But I don't think that's one of his big concerns right now. As I recall, the lease Larry signed says the federal government will cover any unusual wear and tear."

"You mean like if the anchors come loose and the boat breaks up on the reef?" Takahara asked, looking cheerfully over at Paxton.

"I guess. Sounds like unusual wear and tear to me." Lightstone shrugged. "And besides, if the government backs out on the deal, Bobby can always garnish Larry's paycheck for the next fifty, sixty years."

"Don't know what I'd do without you guys," Paxton muttered.

"Actually, from here, it doesn't look like you've been doing all
that
good
with
us," Lightstone said, gesturing with his head at the oversized cast on Paxton's left arm.

"Ain't that the truth." Paxton nodded, looking down at his badly scarred right arm and the huge cast on his left arm that he'd been forced to put into a sling because of the weight. And then: "Okay, everybody ready to load up?"

Mike Takahara pulled a dark blue backpack out of a storage cabinet, withdrew his 10mm Model 1076 double-action pistol, spare magazines, and agent credentials from his tool kit, and then accepted Lightstone's and Paxton's pistols, spare magazines, and credentials. He carefully wrapped the weapons, magazines, and badge cases in T-shirts and light windbreakers, and placed them in the backpack, along with his portable computer, a pack-set radio, a pair of binoculars, and some other electronic gear.

"So what's the plan?" the tech agent asked. "We hit the marina, maintain our cover by trying to keep Bobby's charter business alive for a few more months, and then track down our buddy Alfred Bloom?"

"Sounds good to me," Lightstone responded.

"I don't know," Paxton said uneasily. "I'm still not sure it's a good idea for all three of us to be going in and leaving the boat unattended."