Ghost Ship

TWELVE

Kurt returned to the Excelsior by way of the harbor. He got a good look at the Massif, taking pictures with the zoom lens on his 20-megapixel Canon DSLR.

She was too big for any of the marina slips, so she moored offshore. Her hull was dark blue, her superstructure white. Forward, she had a sharp V-shaped bow with a large slot for a heavy anchor that was currently deployed. Amidships were the usual pen decks, a high-mounted flybridge, with a helipad on the stern, upon which a sleek helicopter with a red logo sat. Forward of the helipad, waves of heat distorted the air as exhaust from the twin stacks vented. The stacks were angled like the tail fins of some hypersonic fighter plane and painted with the same logo as the helicopter.

“Smuggling business must be pretty good,” Kurt muttered to himself.

He sauntered down the waterfront, playing the tourist, taking pictures of other boats, even turning back toward Dubai and getting a few shots of the skyline. When he looked back to the Massif, a small launch was pulling up to her side. He took a dozen photos of the launch, catching Acosta boarding along with a blond woman. As she took off her sunglasses to clean one of the lenses, Kurt zoomed in and focused, snapping a clear shot. Even through the lens he couldn’t help but notice her dark, smoky eyes. As Kurt watched, Acosta took the mystery woman by the hand and walked toward the bow. Once they moved out of sight, Kurt turned his attention to the security team. Armed guards were easy to see patrolling the decks fore and aft. He saw video cameras in the upper superstructure. From there, he guessed, they could see the entire length of the upper decks and anything approaching from port or starboard. A pair of spotlights and twin radar domes sprouted from the bridge, most likely one for weather, the other for traffic.

All of which meant the ship would be damn-near impossible to approach while moving at sea. That left two options: come in from above or up from below. Kurt recalled parachuting onto a moving supertanker some years back. It had been a treacherous operation even though the vessel was the size of several football fields and moving slowly. He didn’t fancy the idea of trying the same thing on a yacht one-fifth the size and moving three times as fast.

His mind made up, Kurt left the harbor and continued back to the hotel, traveling on foot and fighting the strange sensation of being watched or followed the entire time. He changed course and stopped a few times, scanning the sea of faces around him, looking for anyone or anything suspicious. At one point, a male wearing a patterned dishdasha looked away and stepped into the crowd with haste.

Kurt stared, but the man didn’t reappear.

“Great,” he muttered.

Unhappy with the thought that his presence in Dubai might have been compromised, Kurt continued on to the hotel, occasionally checking behind him by looking in the reflections of the glass-walled stores along the boulevard. He caught glimpses of the man several times but pretended not to notice.

Finally back at the hotel, he crossed the lobby, took the elevator to the seventeenth floor, and waited around the corner.

Sure enough, the other elevator pinged moments later.

He heard the door slide open and someone walking his way. Hoping he wasn’t about to mug some tourist, Kurt waited for the man to round the corner and then lunged at him. It was the same man, in the same robe.

Kurt slammed a hand over the man’s mouth, shoved him against the wall, and then swung a fist toward the target’s solar plexus. To his surprise, the man reacted almost instantly, arching his body and twisting to the side.

Kurt caught him with only a glancing blow, his fist hammering abs that were hardened and ready to take the shot. The man knocked Kurt’s hand away and put his own hands up.

“Easy, Kurt. It’s me! Joe!”

There was a moment of incoherence as Kurt’s mind put two and two together, trying to reconcile his friend’s voice with the clothes he saw in front of him and the fact that Joe should have been at least seven thousand miles from there.

As if reading Kurt’s mind, Joe pulled off the gray-colored gutra that was covering half his face.

“What are you doing here?” Kurt asked.

“I came to help you.”

Kurt didn’t know whether to be happy or furious. He led Joe to his room and repeated the question.

“I’ve been following you,” Joe said. “You’re hard to track, you know that?”

“Not too hard, obviously. What’s with the disguise?”

“I didn’t want you to notice me.”

“In that case, your surveillance technique needs a little work,” Kurt said. “My advice: When the mark turns around and looks right at you, don’t duck out of the way.”

Joe smiled. “Duly noted.”

“Good,” Kurt said. “Now that we’ve got that straight, you’re getting on a plane and getting out of here. I appreciate the thought, but I’m not dragging you into this. This is my problem, not yours.”

“You can’t send me home,” Joe said.

“Why not? I’m your boss.”

“You’re on a leave of absence,” Joe reminded him. “Technically, you’re not anybody’s boss at the moment.”

“You’re still going home.”

Joe shook his head. “Sorry, amigo, no can do.”

He reached into a pocket, produced an envelope, and handed it over to Kurt with a hint of glee in his eyes.

As Kurt opened it, Joe flopped down on the couch, put his feet up, and placed his hands behind his head as if he were planning on staying a while.

Inside was a note in Dirk Pitt’s handwriting. It contained no orders, only a few brief words and a quote from Rudyard Kipling.

“What’s it say?” Joe asked. “I’ve been dying to read it.” Kurt considered what Dirk was trying to tell him. “It says I’m stuck with you. And lucky to have such good friends.” “Muy bueno,” Joe said. “Anything in there about a raise and my request for hazard pay?”

“Afraid not,” Kurt said, folding up the note and sliding it into his pocket. He looked over at Joe.

Despite his gruff tone, Kurt was glad to see his best friend.

Joe was the kind of friend who never wavered, never hedged his bets. He was all in at all times. Always there for those he cared about. Even if the task was going to be difficult, Kurt could count on Joe to go the distance.

Just as important, Joe was a mechanical genius. He built and maintained most of NUMA’s advanced submersibles, ROVs, and other exotic mechanical equipment. His work on cars was legendary: he’d made one fly and another swim. He’d even turned a golf cart into a five-hundred-horsepower drag racer. “Maybe you can be of assistance after all,” Kurt said. “I need to figure a way onto a yacht called the Massif. It’s moored in the harbor, guarded by twenty-four-hour security and filled with armed thugs. And I almost forgot, I have to do this all without disturbing a posh gathering of people who may or may not be hardened criminals.”

Joe looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. A look Kurt had gotten used to over the last months. But no more than ten seconds passed before Joe perked up.

“I suppose you can’t sneak on with the catering crew.” “Not unless I learn to speak Arabic in record time,” Kurt said. “Nor can I approach her on the surface. Or expect to get aboard while she’s moored. I think our best bet is from below while she’s moving.”

“You’ll need a submarine.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Kind of short notice,” Joe said. “Can’t exactly build one from scratch.”

“What about something I can ride?”

“A diver propulsion vehicle?”

Kurt nodded. “Can you build me something that will catch a yacht?”

“Sure,” Joe said. “But where do we get the parts?” “Funny you should ask,” Kurt grinned. “I have an idea.”

An hour later, while El Din was securing a fishing boat that would not draw much attention, Kurt and Joe were at the airport looking over a sprawling parking lot of dusty cars.

“I feel like I’ve died and gone to supercar heaven,” Joe said. “Or at least purgatory,” Kurt replied.

The cars in front of them were exotics. Hundreds of them. Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Bentleys. Ferraris were as plentiful as minivans at a kids’ soccer field. They were stored like one might expect to find lemons and junkers on an auction lot, parked so close the doors were touching. How long they’d been out there was anyone’s guess, but most were covered in so much sand and dust that the colors were hard to make out. The tires were flat on many of them, and all of them were baking in the sun.

“Somewhere a man named Enzo is crying,” Joe said. “Not to mention five brothers from Modena.”

“There are three other lots like this,” the salesman who’d taken them to see the display advised.

“Why?” Joe asked.

“Foreigners in debt leave them when they run off. There is no bankruptcy in Dubai. Prison and punishment are dealt out to those who cannot satisfy their debts.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “We’ll be sure to pay in advance.”

“That’s wise,” the man said. “What is it you need?”

“One of the rarest of the rare,” Kurt said. “The new sedan from Tesla.”

An hour later, their bank accounts fifty grand lighter, Kurt and Joe were taking the dusty Tesla apart in a garage provided by Mohammed El Din, who arrived that afternoon with a truckload of supplies from the nautical scrapyard. There were sections of fiberglass, a pair of wrecked Jet Skis, and the props from several high-powered outboard motors. Two of them looked hopelessly nicked-up, but the third was fairly clean.

“These will do,” Kurt said.

“For what?” El Din asked.

“You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see.”