A Five Year Plan

Chapter Twenty-two

At Quantico Kate had learned that the secret of escaping from handcuffs, as perfected by the likes of Houdini, was a simple one. You had the keys.

When keys or picks were not required you needed a spring-loaded cuff and a sharp tap in the right place. But mostly Houdini had a key up his ass or a tiny pick inserted in the thick skin on the soles of his feet. Even with a pick, Kate did not think she could have worked all the levers inside the tiny keyhole. That was the kind of skill for which you needed years of practice. Besides, she was particularly careful of her feet. She kept a piece of lava on the side of her bathtub at home, and regularly visited a chiropodist. Health and fitness were important to her. She did yoga to help her relax and keep her body supple. And periodically she was a vegetarian. Howard had said that it made her too thin, but then his idea of what a woman ought to look like was Anna Nicole Smith. It wasn’t as if Kate was flat-chested or anything. Just feminine. Finely boned. Not some fantasy fuck built by Goodyear. Once Howard had said that finely boned was just another way of saying scrawny. This was not long after she had confronted him with the evidence of his adultery. Why had he needed to have other women? Didn’t he find her attractive? Was there something wrong with the way she looked? It was her own fault for asking. She was slim. Graceful. Willowy. Rangy, even. The only time Kate felt scrawny was when Howard, looking for a quick fuck, tried to squeeze into the shower cabinet alongside her. The hell with him, the fat bastard. Slim and slender was what she was. But not so slim that the cuffs were about to be squeezed off like a tight bangle.

Once, when she was a kid back in T’ville, she had got her head stuck between some railings and her mother had called the fire department. For half an hour her older brother had teased her that they would have to cut through the railings with an oxyacetylene torch, which might also burn through her neck. But in the event, they had simply covered her head with thick industrial soap-liquid and slid her out. And now, sitting on the floor of the head, staring at the waste-pipe under the basin, she thought she might try something similar. In the closet were several bottles of shampoo and shower gel that Kate was able to pick up with her feet and then place in her manacled hands. It wasn’t long before her hands and wrists were covered in a thick oleaginous green treacle of mixed soaps. Kate’s hands weren’t much wider than her wrists; at least not when the metacarpal bones of the thumb and little finger were squeezed together; and Dave had been too ashamed of himself to have made the cuffs uncomfortably tight on her wrists. Behind the surgical tape stretched across her mouth, Kate cursed him and, determined to ignore the pain, began to pull at the glutinous cuffs as if her life depended upon it.

Dave threw the last bag of money onto the deck of the Britannia and returned to the Juarista to fetch the scuba equipment. Back on board the chosen getaway boat, he stripped and climbed into a wet-suit under Al’s grim and increasingly bleary gaze.

Al shook his head and shivering, said, ‘Rather you than me with that Lloyd Bridges shit.’ He looked circumspectly over the side of the boat and then spat into the water. ‘Water don’t look so clean.’

Dave thought of saying something about the bottle of vodka in Al’s hairy paw and a possible reaction with the two Scopoderm plasters he was still wearing on his forearms, but thought better of it. Al’s job was finished. From here on in, more or less everything was down to Dave.

‘What does that shit mean, anyway? Scuba. I never did know.’

‘Means Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus,’ Dave explained. ‘It’s an acronym.’ He hauled what looked like a life-vest made of black rubber over his head: attached to the front of the rubber were some tubes, a mouthpiece and a green cylinder about the size of a household fire extinguisher.

Al frowned. He said, ‘That’s it? That’s your tank? I got a bigger tank than that on my fuckin’ soda siphon.’

Dave nodded. ‘This is a Draeger closed-circuit system,’ he said. ‘A rebreather. It catches the exhaled breath, producing no bubbles. It’s comfortable and very light.’ He passed the straps under his crotch and then around his waist. ‘Pure oxygen, no mixture, makes it ideal for shallow work. And it’s very small, as you can see.’

Al looked over the side once again. He said, ‘How deep is it down there anyway?’

Dave was watching the sky. The sun was coming up now. They were running a little behind schedule but he was glad of that. He hadn’t particularly cared for the idea of making this dive in the water of the Duke’s floating harbor in darkness. He said, ‘Bout twenty feet,’ and tested the supply from the mouthpiece. He hoped twenty feet was right. Oxygen was toxic at anything below thirty-three feet.

‘Well,’ said Al, and took another drink. ‘Rather you than me. That’s all I can say.’

Dave spat into his face mask and rubbed the spittle around the glass. He laughed and said, ‘Al, I’m gonna take a wild guess here. You can’t swim, can you?’

‘Lots of people can’t swim.’

‘Sure. And lots of people drown every year.’

Al grinned back. ‘Not if they don’t ever go swimming. You ask me, it’s mostly people who can swim and who go swimming who get their asses drowned. Let me ask you a question. Which of the two of us is more likely to get himself drowned at this particular moment in time? You or me?’

‘You’ve got a point.’

‘Absolutamente. On account of you’re the dumb motherfucker who knows how to swim and how to use a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Right?’

‘Comforting thought,’ admitted Dave, and collected up his searchlight and his knife.

‘QED,’ shrugged Al.

Dave grinned. ‘QED?’

‘Yeah, that’s another of them acronomes. Means the kind of shit that speaks for itself.’

‘I know what it means,’ said Dave, retiring to the stern of the boat and climbing onto the ladder. ‘I just wondered if you knew what the letters stood for?’

‘Sure I do. I may not read books, but I ain’t exactly ignorant. Stands for Quite Easily Done. Just like the way even motherfuckers who know what the fuck they’re doin’ in the water and think maybe they’re James Bond or something, can get their land-dwelling selves as drowned as the lost city of Atlantis. You hear what I’m saying? Be careful down there. Your ass gets in a puddle of trouble, don’t expect me to jump in and help you out. And don’t expect no Pamela Anderson either. Only Baywatch round these parts is that fuckin’ clam on your wrist.’

Dave looked at his watch. ‘If I drown it’s yours.’

‘Yeah. Like I’m goin’ to come and get it. That thing waterproof?’

‘Of course. It’s a real tachymeter.’

‘You said it, guy. Tackiest lookin’ timepiece I ever saw.’ Al laughed. ‘Naw, you keep it. I got enough shit already.’

Still smiling, Dave slipped into the water. It was a lot colder than he had expected and he was glad for the wet-suit. He paused for a moment, glancing up at the high walls of the ship and the crowd of vessels around him. It wasn’t just the daylight he was glad of. It was the calmer sea too. Going into the Duke’s floating dock during that storm would have been a lot more dangerous. He switched on the flashlight, adjusted the mask on his face, secured the mouthpiece between his teeth, and then dropped beneath the oily surface.

As Dave swam down underneath the barnacled hull of the boat, a feeling of being enclosed threatened momentarily to give way to panic. It was like being back in Homestead again. Back in his cell, soaked in the cold sweat of his worst nightmare, drowning in the unfathomable depths of his five-year prison sentence. Steeling himself, Dave kicked out toward the underwater support welded to the Duke’s dock floor, to which the Britannia was securely lashed. He had only to cut through the ropes for the boat to float free from the plinth. But for Al’s ignorance of navigation and the workings of a modern motor yacht, this was the stage in the plan when Dave would have been most nervous of being double-crossed by his partner. For once the underwater line was cut, Al had only to let go the port lines mooring the Britannia fast to the Duke’s dock walls for the ship to float free. A quick burst of reverse engines and the boat would be out in the Atlantic on her own. Al’s lack of maritime knowledge had never seemed so reassuring as it did now.

Because the stern of the Duke was open to the ocean, there were fish swimming in the dock water. These were mostly mullet and grunt and he paid them little or no attention as he swam strongly underneath the yacht’s hull and caught hold of her screw. The rope itself was a thick one and he used his diving knife’s serrated edge to cut it. Even so, it was several minutes before the rope was finally severed and he was able to untie the end attached to the screw so that it wouldn’t foul the propeller when they were underway. Meanwhile the end tied to the floor support sank down in the water, startling a small school of mullet. Mistaking the rope for some kind of predator, an eel perhaps, the fish turned back on themselves and swam straight past Dave, missing his face by inches, almost as if they intended to use him as cover. He was still marvelling at their speed and beauty and congratulating himself on the ease with which he had completed his task when he saw the real reason for the sudden departure of the mullet. Not the rope at all, but the streamlined, silver-blue shape of a great barracuda. The fright of seeing it made him drop his flashlight.

Swift and powerful, with two well-separated dorsal fins, a jutting lower jaw and a large mouth with lots of sharp teeth, the six-foot barracuda was a fearsome fish and Dave knew its aggressive reputation well enough to be extremely wary of it. Barracudas were responsible for more attacks on Florida swimmers than sharks. And while they didn’t ever eat people, they were quite capable of inflicting the severest injuries. Instinctively Dave started to swim gently away, toward the bow of the Britannia and, curious, the big fish followed. Barracudas were reportedly attracted to shiny objects and Dave could not decide if the blade in his hand was a source of help or the cause of his continuing danger. He swam on his back, not wanting to take his eyes off the creature in case it decided to attack. It wasn’t that he thought the fish might kill him. But the razor-sharp teeth of some barracuda were impregnated with a toxic substance that could poison you. The last thing Dave needed in the middle of the Atlantic was a badly infected bite.

He swam deeper so as not to hit his head on the hulls or rudders of other boats. And the barracuda swam slowly after him, sometimes disappearing in the dark shadow of one boat, only to reappear in a brilliant flash of silver as it entered the sunlit water again. It was, Dave reflected as coolly as he was able, like being followed by a vicious and slightly cowardly dog that was only waiting the right opportunity, such as when his back was turned, to make an attack. And no matter how powerfully Dave kicked his way through the water, the barracuda maintained the same ten feet between them with an effortless flick of its stealth-shaped tail.

Dave risked a glance at his watch. Valuable minutes from an already tight schedule were ticking by. And finding that he had already swum the entire length of the Duke and was now right under the bows of the Jade at the front of the floating dock, he sensed that he would have to do something soon, or his small supply of oxygen would give out. Swimming into a pool of sunlight, Dave glanced up and saw the Jade’s bow ladder touching the water about ten feet above his head. Paddling into a more vertical position he saw the sun catch his wristwatch and, at the same time, the barracuda turn fractionally toward the small burst of reflected light. There was only thing for it. Reluctantly, Dave unbuckled the watch and transferred it to the hand still holding the knife. For a second or two he let the sun play on the collection of shiny metal in his hand. Only when he was quite sure that the barracuda was watching the two bright objects did he let them go. As they sank toward the floor of the dock, the barracuda flicked its tail and cruised down after them. The creature’s man-trap jaws opened and closed on the fish-scale silver of the watch’s metal bracelet.

Dave hardly hesitated. He kicked hard for the undulating surface and the ladder above his head.

Even as he reached and then caught the ladder he felt the great barracuda come up after him. Adrenalin shot through his heart and shoulder muscles, launching him up the ladder with such speed that he almost thought it was someone else’s arm hauling him out of the water. Inches under the bottom step of the ladder and the heel of Dave’s bare foot, the barracuda arced through the oily surface then disappeared into the shallow blue water below.

Dave plucked the rebreather mouthpiece away and gulped a deep, unsteady breath of the open morning air.

‘Holy shit,’ he gasped. ‘That was close.’

Now the fish was gone, so was the strength in his arms and it was a minute or two before he managed to climb up onto the Jade’s deck. Standing there, he took another deep breath and tried to gather himself. The next instant he heard a gunshot and something zipped over his head, ricocheting off the Duke’s forward bulkhead. He threw himself flat onto the deck, incredulous at this latest turn of lethal events.

‘Jesus. What now?’

Lying there, he tried to determine the direction the shot had come from. Who could have fired it? Had he and Al overlooked someone among the crew or the supernumos? Someone with a gun? Or had Kate simply escaped and armed herself with a gun he hadn’t known about? He raised his head a few inches to see if he could spot the gunman, then ducked again as another shot clanged into the radio mast above him. Why didn’t Al do something about it? Unless this was the double-cross he had feared.

He had to find out. He crawled toward the rail of the boat and shouted, ‘Hey Al, it’s me, Dave. Who the fuck is doing the shooting?’

There was a brief and, Dave thought, ominous silence. Then Al said, ‘Is that you, Dave?’

‘Of course it’s me, you idiot. Who the hell do you think it is?’

‘What the fuck are you doing down there? I thought you was some nosey parker not staying indoors like he was supposed to.’

Dave jumped to his feet. Angrily tearing off his rebreather, he started up and along the wall of the ship.

‘You could have killed me, you dumb fucker.’

Dave waited until he was back on board the Britannia before saying anything else. Al had put the gun in the galley, out of the way, so as not to irritate Dave any further. Otherwise, he was unapologetic.

‘The fuck I was supposed to know that was you?’

‘I told you not to drink on top of that medication, didn’t I? Jesus, you could have shot me.’

‘You go over the side of this boat and you surface at the other end of the fucking ship? What am I? A fucking telepath? Do I look like Mister Spock? Naturally I assumed this would be the boat you’d want to get back on, bein’ how it’s the one you got off of and how it’s supposed to be our getaway vehicle carrying millions of dollars in cash.’

Al pointed to the sports bags, stuffed with money, that now filled the boat’s lounge and covered the deck, as if Dave needed reminding. He said, ‘My drinking ain’t got nuthin’ to do with the way your sense of direction is so completely all over the place. With how you end up swimming from one end of this fuckin’ marina to the other.’ Al frowned and then nodded at Dave’s wrist. ‘Hey, your watch is gone. And there’s blood on your leg.’

Dave glanced down at his bleeding calf. He must have got scratched when he hauled himself up the ladder and out of harm’s sabre-toothed way.

‘The fuck happened down there anyway?’ asked Al.

Dave shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what had happened himself. He started to throw off the headlines securing the Britannia to the Duke’s port wall. ‘Fucking Jaws is what happened. There was a goddamn barracuda down there. At least six, seven feet long.’

Al looked impressed. ‘As big as my dick, huh? That’s some fuckin’ fish.’

‘Fish? That was a prehistoric monster. It was just teeth and fins. Scared the shit out of me. I’m lucky to be here with two arms and two legs.’ He threw off the springlines and then looked at his empty wrist. ‘It ate my watch. Can you believe that?’

‘Ain’t no accounting for taste.’

‘A $5,000 watch.’

‘You can buy seven of those when you get home. One for every day of the week.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. I can, can’t I?’ Dave waved Al toward the sternlines. ‘Cast off at the stern there, will ya? And let’s get outta here before something else happens.’

‘Told you that swimming was dangerous,’ chuckled Al. ‘That bitch in Jaws? The one who goes skinny-dipping at the start of the movie? Everyone knows her ass is heading for the shark’s dinner plate. Man, as soon as I saw that fuckin’ film I knew you’d never get my dick in salt water. What we saw in Costa Rica just put that in triplicate. The sea’s a bad neighborhood. It’s like Overtown at night, and you’re some dumb tourist drivin’ along in a big white rental with "Sucker" written on the rear window sticker. Radio on, splashin’ around, makin’ a lot of noise, havin’ a good time, not a care in the world. But just askin’ to get his ass chewed up by some nigger with a knife. Sharks? Barracudas? Same as.’

Kate could hardly believe it when, yelping with pain and her wrist as raw as a bad case of sunburn, she finally extracted her hand from the cuff. Tearing off the tape that covered her mouth she quickly drank a glass of water, then used the lavatory. She was just about to go up on deck when she heard the gunshots. The sound brought a bitter little smile to her sticky lips. They were still on board. And if they were still on board there was a chance that she could stop them. Stop him. She didn’t much care about the other guy. Or even the drugs. It was Dave she was after now.

She crawled upstairs and along to the wheelhouse only to find the radio handset gone. Collecting her binoculars from the control console, she knelt down by the window and searched the ship for some sign of Dave or his partner. Straight away she picked him out, walking quickly along the port wall toward the stern of the ship. He was wearing a wet-suit and he looked pissed, as if something hadn’t quite gone according to plan. Then she saw him climb on board the Britannia and start arguing with Al.

‘Bastard,’ she murmured. ‘Think you can screw me and my operation and get away with it.’

It was bad enough, she decided, to be a drug smuggler. But to steal someone else’s drugs was beneath contempt. Probably they had arranged some mid-Atlantic rendezvous. A large cargo vessel. Well, she could do something about that. If there was one radio working on the whole ship she could call the French Navy submarine. But the sub was probably already close to the planned underwater rendezvous with the Duke. With any luck it would see what was happening and move in to intercept the Britannia.

The very least she might do would be to slow the Britannia down. But without guns how was it to be done? Maybe she could ram Dave’s boat. Perhaps even sink him. And probably sink herself at the same time. Sinking Dave might have been less hazardous if there had been a boat with some sort of gun, like the 25-millimetre rapid fire guns aboard one of the Coast Guard patrol boats that Sam Brockman commanded. Not that he was any help to her now. Nor Kent Bowen. There was simply no time to crack the remainder of the combination to the safe on board the Juarista and get the handcuff keys to release the two of them. Bowen would probably be more of a hindrance anyway. The more she thought about it, the more she decided it was better Bowen stayed out of her way. Things couldn’t get any worse for her future with the Bureau than they already were. Finding the crew and releasing them looked like a better bet.

Kate crept up on deck, mounted the dock wall, and ran along to the accommodations block. Behind her she heard a sound that made her think she might have a little more time than she had expected. The Britannia seemed to be having trouble starting up its engines. They had just backfired and then died. The noise reminded her of Jellicoe’s two trophy cannons, and suddenly she thought she saw a way of getting back into the game. Hadn’t the captain boasted of firing those cannons once a year to commemorate Nelson’s birthday? Jellicoe’s eccentricity might provide her with just the edge she needed to stop Dave. Now, if she could only release him and his crew in time.

‘Why won’t she start?’ demanded Al.

Dave winced. ‘Damned if I know.’ He turned the ignition key again, listening carefully to the sound it made and then glanced at the fuel gauge. But for the needle registering full tanks, he might have said they were out of gas. Exasperated, Dave shook his head and tried again. Nothing.

‘Maybe a stray bullet hit something,’ suggested Al. ‘Forty-five caliber goes straight through people. Must have ended up somewhere.’

‘Maybe. I’m going below to take a look.’

‘Well hurry it up.’

The engine room was in the stern of the boat, separated from the full-width master suite where the two bodies lay by a well-insulated watertight bulkhead. Mercifully, Dave did not have to go through the stateroom to get in there. Just climb down a narrow stairwell and open a set of double doors. Once inside the engine room, he knelt by one of the boat’s two Detroit diesel engines. A cursory examination of the fuel line entering the engine revealed that it wasn’t receiving any fuel at all. Dave opened the tank and shone a flashlight inside. It was full of diesel.

‘There must be some kind of blockage in the fuel line,’ he said as Al appeared in the doorway. He checked the fuel line to the second engine and frowned. ‘Still, they can’t both be blocked. Fuel pump must have packed up.’

‘Shit.’ Al punched the bulkhead wall hard. ‘Shit.’

For a moment Dave was haunted by the recollection of something Kate had said at the party. Something about the impellers. If they packed up so did the pump and so did the diesel. Except that there were two engines, two fuel pumps, and two sets of impellers. What were the odds on both impellers packing up at the same time? Two of everything except fuel tanks. There was only one fuel tank. The problem had to be in there.

‘I guess we’d better get ourselves another boat,’ said Al. ‘And here was me thinking I was through fetching and carrying for the rest of my fuckin’ life.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Dave. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

He went back up on deck, returning moments later with a boat hook.

‘It’s a long shot,’ he explained, inserting the end of the pole into the tank and stirring it around. ‘But it could be...’ Immediately golden diesel filled both clear plastic fuel lines. Dave grinned. ‘Son of a bitch.’

‘What?’

‘There’s something stashed in the tanks. I can feel it on the end of this pole. Something soft and squishy. Not hard like the bottom of the tank. It feels like some kind of a rag. Or maybe a bag.’ Suddenly it dawned on him what it was he could feel on the end of the boat hook. ‘Of course. These tanks must be full of narcotics. That was why they were so nervous, Al. This was the boat the Feds were watching.’

‘I thought you said they were watching Captain Jellicoe?’

‘He must be in it too,’ Dave said, improvising. ‘More than likely one of the bags broke free during the storm and blocked the fuel outlet. Look, you’d better stay below deck with the hook in case it happens again. If the engine cuts out just stir it around in there. But not too hard. If the bag bursts the engine will get a hit of whatever shit it is. Coke probably. And that’ll be the whole engine OD’d. There ain’t no adrenalin shot to remedy that kind of trip.’

‘OK,’ said Al. ‘Now can we get the fuck out of here?’

‘We’re on our way.’

Kate had never been down to the Duke’s engine room, but she figured this was the best place to look for the workshop. Telling her where he had locked up the crew, Dave had saved her some time. If, as he’d said, the crew would be able to break out in only a couple of hours, then he might not have been all that careful about stopping someone from releasing them.

Even before she reached the bottom of the stairwell she heard someone hammering on a door. It had to be the ship’s crew. Presenting herself outside the workshop door, she picked up a spanner, hammered back, then yelled, ‘Captain Jellicoe? FBI. I’m going to try and break you out of there.’

She listened at the door for a second and heard Jellicoe’s voice. When he had finished speaking she threw away the spanner and, laughing, looked at the top and bottom of the steel door.

The door was only bolted.

Back in the Britannia’s wheelhouse, Dave turned the ignition. Immediately both engines roared into life. He started up the bow thruster, and, a minute or two later, they were bobbing around in the Grand Duke’s wake. He waited another few seconds to let the boat get slowly clear of the ship before engaging engines and steering them to the Duke’s starboard side. Then he set the course co-ordinates into the computer and began to radio his position on the agreed frequency. It was easier having Al off the bridge. Not having to explain every single thing he was doing: when they would reach the rendezvous point and shit like that.

As the engines picked up revs and the Britannia started to make speed, Dave glanced across at the Duke, thinking of the Carrera with Kate still aboard and bitterly regretting the way he had been obliged to leave her. So he was a little surprised to see her standing on the foredeck of the ship, alongside Captain Jellicoe and a couple of his officers and men. But he was even more surprised when he saw a cloud of smoke appear in front of one of Jellicoe’s brass cannons and heard a loud explosion, followed by the whistling roar of an overhead projectile.

Al came rushing up from the engine room as the cannonball landed harmlessly out to sea. He gasped, ‘Did you see that? Crazy motherfucker thinks he’s the Crimson fucking Pirate.’

Spinning the wheel in his hands, Dave turned the boat hard to starboard and opened the throttle to full revs, trying to put some distance between the boat and the ship’s cannon.

‘I think he sees himself more in some kind of law enforcement role,’ he yelled.

The cannon fired again. This time the shot came close enough to send a cloud of spray over the bow of the boat.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Al. ‘That one almost hit us.’

To his surprise Dave found himself laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Al.

‘They missed, didn’t they?’

‘One of those lead turds hits us, you won’t see any fuckin’ comedy in our situation. In case you’d forgotten, paper money ain’t waterproof.’

‘Chill out, Al. This isn’t the Nimitz shooting at your rich-as-fucking-Croesus ass. This is Horatio Lord Nelson gunning for you. This is history, man. Last people those guns fired at worked for Napoleon.’

But Al was looking anything but chilled.

‘I’ll fix those fuckers,’ he snarled and, climbing across some bags of money, he retrieved his submachine gun, racked and aimed it at the figures standing on the bow of the ship.

There was no time for Dave to say anything. The last thing he wanted was anyone else killed, least of all Kate. Not that Al would have been in the mood to listen. All Dave could do was spin the wheel hard to port and then hard back to starboard, sending Al reeling off balance from one side of the aft deck to the other, his nine-mill firing harmlessly into the air above them. When Al finally picked himself off the deck, the Duke was well out of range and the third cannon shot was sinking hopelessly short of the Britannia’s wide and creamy wake.

‘What the fuck did you want to do that for?’

‘Evasive action. A zigzag.’

‘I was going to shoot that son of a bitch English faggot.’

‘Now why would someone with all your obvious advantages want to do a thing like that? Man as wealthy as you are. Guns are no longer a solution. From now on, you want to make your point, you better get out your wallet, not a gun. And remember, it’s thickness that counts.’

Al grinned as it began to dawn on him that he was now possessed of an enormous fortune.

‘Shit, you’re right. I’m rich, aren’t I? Hell, maybe I’ll let my hair and fingernails grow real long and store my shit in little bottles like that other multi-millionaire guy. The one who invented Jane Russell’s tits.’

‘Howard Hughes.’

‘Right.’

‘Al, you can do all kinds of shit now you’re rich. But right now I need you back down below, ready to stir that fuel. You hear the engine miss any revs, then make with the teaspoon.’

‘Sure thing. How long before we make it to the pick-up?’

Dave glanced down at the console and pressed the Mark button on the computer’s GPS. On the screen the waypoint and the interface with the chart plotter appeared, and, above this information, an electronic map. The computer had already set up a range ring to give an indication of how close they were to their next waypoint.

‘We’ve got some cruising to do,’ said Dave. ‘Storm blew us well ahead of where we were supposed to be. Be about fifty minutes to an hour before we make the rendezvous point.’

‘Great,’ said Al, and went back inside. There was just enough time for him to have a crap and a beer before he came back up to murder Dave.

When the third and last cannonball had been fired and Jellicoe had finished swearing, Kate said they ought to go and see how Jock was getting on with the combination to the safe aboard the Juarista.

They found Bert Ross keying in combinations, watched by Jock.

‘I’ve just calculated how long this is going to take,’ said Jock. ‘The first number was nine. It takes about ten seconds to try each combination, starting with 9000, then 9001 and so on. That means if we end up checking every one of the 999 combinations, it will take us two hours and forty-six minutes.’

Kate punched the palm of her hand. ‘Shit. We need that radio room key,’ she said grimly.

‘Always supposing it is in there,’ said Jellicoe. ‘Always supposing that nine is the first of the four numbers on this bloody safe. It could be just a way of wasting our time. It could be he threw the key over the side.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Kate. ‘I know this guy and I don’t think he would do that. You’ll just have to accept my word on that. May I suggest you persevere with this safe.’

‘So what do we do in the meantime?’ asked Jock.

‘There’s only one thing we can do, and that’s get after them.’

‘Fifteen knots is our maximum speed,’ said Jellicoe. ‘They’re doing a lot more than that.’

‘No sir, I meant we should take one of the other boats.’

‘In the middle of the Atlantic?’

‘They did.’

‘Without a radio?’

‘Well the fact is, we’re not alone,’ explained Kate. ‘There’s a French submarine somewhere in the area. They were supposed to rendezvous with us around now. And there are two guys from the FBI and the United States Coast Guard, handcuffed in the head on my boat. As soon as you find the keys they can radio a message to the sub. There are special frequencies and code words to use. FBI stuff. Meanwhile the Duke can hold this position until we find our way back again.’

‘Supposing we do catch up with them,’ argued Jellicoe. ‘What then? They’re well armed.’

‘As I see it they have two choices,’ explained Kate. ‘They can make for the Azores and risk being found by local law-enforcement agencies. Or they can sail to a prearranged meeting point with another larger vessel. My guess is that’s what they’ll do. Transfer the cocaine on board, hide it among whatever cargo the other ship is carrying, and then sink the yacht they’re on now, to cover their tracks. If we can get into visual range when that happens, we can at least establish the identity of the other ship and have it boarded by the sub later on.’

Jellicoe nodded. ‘Right you are. Bert?’

‘9-0-2-3. Nah.’ He shook his head and sighing, looked up from the safe. ‘Yes, Jack.’

‘I want you to hand over the safe-cracking to Jock.’

‘Aye sir.’

Jock knelt down in the Juarista’s closet and began to key in the next combination of numbers. He said ‘9-0-2-4.’

‘Tell Frank to get his diving gear right away and meet us at the stern of the ship. Whatever boat is nearest the open sea, I want her unlashed in five minutes. As soon as you’ve got the keys out of the safe, you can sort out these other fellows from the FBI. And then get them on the radio.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

Kate had already left the Juarista and climbed up onto the starboard wall of the Duke. The Britannia, carrying Dave and the drugs, was already 500 yards to starboard and disappearing fast. She turned, looking for Jellicoe.

‘Come on,’ she yelled. ‘The bastard’s getting away.’