Ashes of Victory

— 12 —

Javier Ibarra appreciated the mild sea and clear weather of the unseasonably warm and breezy October day. It made for a smooth start of his new contract.

Sitting at the helm of the seventy-eight-foot-long vessel, he idled the twin Cummins diesels, while his veteran crew of three worked the furling main, genoa, and mizzen sails, which blossomed and snapped as they caught the westerly winds.

Shipbuilder to the rich and famous for more than a century, Cheoy Lee Shipyards were renowned for their quality motorsailers. They had the range and seakeeping ability to make extended journeys with little or no support. And Ibarra’s Erasmus was no exception. But more important to the master smuggler was the spacious yacht’s ability to haul secret cargo.

He felt the familiar tug as the 145,000-pound yacht accelerated to twenty-one knots under the power of 2,300 square feet of sails, its hull slicing through gentle waves.

Ibarra shut off the diesels and left the generator running to power the vessel’s navigation systems as well as its array of creature comforts, including the climate-controlled bridge, cabins, and its well-stocked galley and main salon amidships. An electric cable also ran into the battery compartment of a twenty-three-foot Vantage Boston Whaler secured to the forward deck, next its hoisting crane, keeping it fully charged in case of an emergency. Most transoceanic luxury yacht crews settled for traditional lifeboats, but Ibarra could never contemplate launching into the North Atlantic without at least some semblance of a backup that could go a few hundred miles between its integrated and auxiliary gas tanks.

His deckhands would soon be gambling their wages playing Podrida, a popular Spanish card game, watching satellite TV, and deep-sea fishing for giant tuna to prepare Marmitako, a Basque stew made of tuna, potatoes, and onions, as well as fish croquettes, to accompany their Spanish bean stew. His men worked hard, but they also liked to play hard and eat well. Bystanders along passing vessels, including those of the US Navy and Coast Guard, would never dream that the well-tanned men fishing for sport aboard the classically beautiful motorsailer could be carrying such deadly cargo.

They also would not believe that the easygoing, handsome, and charming Spaniard with the short, dark hair and golden skin was capable of the violence he’d committed in order to earn the trust of Omar Al Saud.

The only son of a fisherman in the coastal town of Bilbao, deep in Spain’s Basque region along its northern coast, Ibarra had grown up among the sailors and merchants who worked the gritty factories, shipyards, and wharfs of the rugged autonomous community. He had begun accompanying his father on day trips at the age of nine, and by his seventeenth birthday, he knew every aspect of the business. It was heaven, until the day his dad had gotten caught in a North Atlantic gale and never came home. Ibarra would have been with him but had stayed home with the flu.

Crushed at the loss but hopelessly in love with the sea, he found work wherever he could aboard coasters and river vessels and eventually joined a crusty and aging privateer named Arturo Girón, who took the young sailor under his wing. Girón taught him the extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the sea that successful drug smugglers must possess, especially of coastal areas and riverbanks.

For nearly a decade, Ibarra had worked in Girón’s “import/export” business. A quick learner and attentive student, he had risen fast in the ranks of Girón’s smuggling operation, becoming known to buyers and sellers as both a shrewd businessman and a man of his word. He did not double-cross his partners, and they did not double-cross him.

Ibarra soon became Girón’s best smuggler, running drugs for nearly a decade while profiting immensely. Along the way, he became proficient with firearms and used them, especially on his trips to Turkey, Colombia, Mexico, Morocco, Russia, and Myanmar, the latter being the world’s second-largest opium producer. He finally went out on his own after his mentor’s death — six years gone now — taking over some of his routes, as well as Girón’s prized vessel, Santo Erasmus, named after one of the four people considered a patron saint of sailors. He also grew Girón’s old network of corrupt government officials significantly. It now numbered in the hundreds and included high-ranking officials from several governments, including Russia’s.

It was through his government contacts in Saint Petersburg that he had met key officials of JSC Rosoboronexport, the official state agency for Russia’s export and import of military arms. For Ibarra, it had opened an entirely new branch of business: black-market arms dealing. With a total global market value of around $60 billion a year, it had immediately captured the smuggler’s attention. Taking advantage of his established routes and customers, he was able to enter this lucrative business sector, which now represented nearly half of his operation. His successful gun runs into troubled regions in South Asia and the Mideast had earned him a reputation that caught the attention of Omar Al Saud.

Ibarra gazed at the sunlight playing across the water and reflecting off the motorsailer’s burnished stainless steel railings and cleats. He drew in the refreshing salty air. The stimulating scent rekindled his keen sense of adventure on the high seas. Using his custom-made sails most of the time, he could easily cross to the east coast of Venezuela, the western coast of Africa, or even the port city of Istanbul. Upon arrival, he would have plenty of fuel for the twin Cummins 220 hp diesels to navigate the intricate waterways of rivers and bays to reach his delivery zones.

Ibarra smiled as Mario Mendoza, his first mate, stepped in the cockpit. His bronze skin was shiny with perspiration, and rivulets of sweat ran from his short, blond hair down the side of his face.

“All done out there, Javi,” Mendoza said, removing his mirror-tint sunglasses and revealing a pair of hazel eyes. He opened the small fridge under the console, snagged a bottle of water, and asked, “¿Quieres agua fria?” Want a cold water?

“No, gracias,” Ibarra replied as the tall native of San Sebastian, a Basque coastal town near the border with France, and former warrant officer in the Spanish Navy, sat on the long bench in front of the helm. Mendoza was as comfortable rigging a sail, repairing ropes, or navigating the motorsailer as he was handling one of the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns stocked in a secret compartment beneath the main salon — along with heavier hardware. “Could you program the route?” he added.

“Por supuesto,” Mendoza replied. Of course.

Ibarra enabled the autopilot while Mendoza entered a course that would take Erasmus across the Atlantic to the shores of Virginia and into Chesapeake Bay, taking in at the Leeward Municipal Marina on picturesque Newport News in six days’ time. Just as ordered by Omar Al Saud…