Running Dark

3

CAMERON SUMNER STOOD NEXT TO A LOUNGE CHAIR ON THE deck of the Kaiser Franz cruise liner and stared at the horizon, waiting. The chair was one in a long row of chairs, all occupied by passengers clad in swimsuits, baking in the sun. The woman to Sumner’s right, noticing his preoccupation with the horizon, did her best to capture his attention.

“I see you watch the ocean every day after your workout. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the woman, an American, said. Sumner eyed her. She wore a string bikini on a figure with full hips, fake breasts, and striking, artfully streaked hair. Her lips were painted a bright coral, and her forehead didn’t move when she spoke. Her husband, a good ol’ boy from Texas who owned a string of car dealerships, spent his days in the ship’s casino drinking gin and playing blackjack. His wife spent her days watching Sumner swim laps in the pool or run on the track. The woman’s question marked the first time she’d worked up enough nerve to speak to him.

“It is beautiful,” he said. He grabbed a towel and dried his dripping body, while the American woman looked at him with bright, avid eyes.

“So what brings you on a cruise ship alone?”

“I work for the company that owns the Kaiser Franz.” Sumner kept his answers short to discourage more conversation.

“How interesting.” The woman breathed the words.

Sumner did his best to contain his annoyance. His patience ran thin these days. He slipped on a pair of track pants, sank into a nearby lounge chair, and thought about Caldridge. He’d been having dreams of her, some so vivid that he thought he might be able to touch her, some so frightening that when he would reach her after a slow-motion chase, he would find himself to be too late and his anguish at her death would overwhelm him. He pulled up a mental picture of her: light brown hair a little past her shoulders, green eyes, a straight nose with no upturn, and a lithe, athletic runner’s body. He sighed and kept his eyes on the water.

The ship’s sundeck ran the width of the foredeck. In the center was the rectangular lap pool. Lounge chairs, each with a bright blue cushion, filled the rest of the available space. A small walkway ran along the railings. Sumner spent much of his time on the sundeck, because it allowed him to view both sides of the vessel.

The ship itself was smaller, more intimate, and much more luxurious than the larger cruise liners out of Miami. It boasted mahogany-paneled staterooms with flat-screen televisions, marble bathrooms, and thick Persian carpets. Each room had a private butler assigned to it. They’d embarked from Dubai, passed through the Arabian Sea, and were deep into the Indian Ocean on their way to the Seychelles Islands. It was ten in the morning. Only half the sundeck chairs were taken.

The woman shifted in her chair to lean toward him. Her blond, highlighted hair and overly manicured nails were the antithesis of what Sumner liked in a woman. He said nothing as he finished drying off. He grabbed a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and stretched out on the lounge chair, basking in the sun while he continued to keep watch.

“Are you working on this trip?” The woman interrupted his reverie. It was all Sumner could do not to sigh out loud.

“I’m headed to the Seychelles to check on our land-based operations.”

“How interesting,” the woman said again.

Sumner continued to scan the area, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. The ocean swelled in calm, regular waves. A waiter worked his way through the lounge chairs, handing out complimentary juices to the sunbathers. Another employee followed, offering a spritz of mineral water to cool them.

The German family walked along the deck rail toward Sumner. He felt a prickle of awareness shoot down his spine. Sumner worked for the Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency and had been hired out to the Kaiser Franz in response to a vague piece of intelligence suggesting that trouble sailed with the ship. The trouble was thought to be drug-related, but nothing in the communiqué detailed the precise nature of the problem. An assignment off the coast of Africa carried the added benefit of getting Sumner as far away from the Southern Hemisphere as possible. His last assignment had disrupted a major drug cartel in Colombia, and his employers feared retaliation.

Sumner reviewed the ship’s manifest and had settled on three potential groups of passengers as the ones he would watch: a Russian traveling with his mistress, a Frenchman traveling with two other businessmen, and this German family—two parents with their grown daughter. The father, a businessman in his late fifties, had the build of a steelworker. His large stomach hung over his expensive pants, throwing a shadow across his black loafers. His face bore the bright red hue of a man whose skin was unaccustomed to the outdoors. He held the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in his hands and looked surly.

His wife, also somewhat north of fifty, was as thin as he was wide. Her blond hair—her natural color and none of it highlighted—ended at her ears in a blunt cut. Her blue eyes and cool, superior attitude telegraphed that she was from Hamburg, where blond hair and cool eyes abounded. Her manner telegraphed her dislike for her husband.

The daughter, a shy beauty with blond hair and a fresh, almost translucent complexion, was twenty-four. Six years younger than Sumner and light-years more innocent, she, too, would cast glances at him whenever their paths crossed, but she hadn’t yet gotten up the courage to talk to him.

The father turned his head to gaze at the horizon. The woman next to Sumner was speaking again.

“Harry says we don’t need to travel anywhere, that there’s nothing to learn. But I think you should always see how the other half lives, don’t you?”

Sumner refrained from commenting on the fact that she was unlikely to see “the other half” while sailing on the sea in a yacht with massive suites and private butlers, but he assumed the woman meant well. Before Sumner could respond, Harry himself walked up to his wife.

“Whatcha doin’, sweetheart?” He boomed the question at his wife, towering over her in her lounge chair. He thrust his hand out at Sumner.

“Harry Block. Pleased to meet you.”

“Cameron Sumner.”

Sumner rose to shake Block’s hand. Based on his own six-foot-two-inch height and weight of 175, Sumner estimated that Block stood a full two inches taller and weighed an easy 300 pounds. He was built like a linebacker, with a doughy face, hair just starting to gray at the temples, and shrewd eyes, despite his easygoing exterior. Sumner watched Block size him up.

“No need to stand. Didn’t mean to bother you.” Block shook Sumner’s hand in a vise grip.

Sumner squeezed back. Block’s wife sat up.

“This is Harry, my husband, and I’m Cindy. Harry, hon, he works for Kaiser Franz.”

“You a cabin boy?” Block hollered at Sumner.

“Harry!” Cindy hit Block on the arm.

“What’s wrong with that? It’s honest enough work, ain’t it?” Block turned innocent eyes on Sumner. Sumner hid his amusement.

“I’m not a cabin boy, no,” he said.

The German family was upon them, walking along the rail. Sumner felt the father’s presence at his right, then behind him. He heard the wife speak to the daughter in German. Since Sumner spoke fluent German, eavesdropping came easy.

“Americans are so loud,” she said. Sumner kept his eyes on Block while he strained to hear the German girl’s response.

“But friendly, I think, Mother.” She spoke in low tones.

Don’t be fooled by Harry, Sumner thought.

The father stepped past him. Out of the corner of his eye, Sumner could see that he continued to stare at the ocean. Sumner redirected his attention to Block, who was speaking.

“What’s the point of all this ‘cultural differences’ mumbo jumbo? Folks from Africa to Mexico count their money the same as us, is what I say. So what do you do for Kaiser Franz?”

Sumner glanced back at the water. He saw the dot speeding toward them. He felt a surge of adrenaline that made his scalp tighten and his fingertips tingle.

He slipped a black T-shirt over his head. The dot grew larger every second. Soon it was joined by another. Sumner heard the distant roar of the cigarette boats’ engines. The craft hurtled toward them at an impressive speed.

“Block, get Cindy and the others off the deck. Tell the waiters to move everyone below.”

Block looked shocked. “What?”

“Mr. Block, do it. Now.”

“Well, I never been ordered around like that,” Block said.

Sumner didn’t stay to see if Block obeyed. He sprinted across the deck to the stairs that led to the bridge, clambered up them, and burst onto the small walkway that surrounded it just as Captain Joshua Wainwright stepped out.

“Pirates,” he said.

Sumner nodded. “Coming fast. Use the LRAD.”

Wainwright, a competent, friendly man in his early forties, snapped an order to his second-in-command. They pointed a large gun in the direction of the cigarette boats, now well within a mile of them.

“Hit it,” Wainwright said.

The Long Range Acoustic Device released a beam of high-pitched sound at the boats. Over 150 decibels of concentrated noise blasted through the air, like a sonic boom. Sumner winced as the sound assaulted his eardrums. He saw the driver of the lead cigarette boat clap a hand over one ear.

They continued to hurtle toward the Kaiser Franz.

“Again,” Wainwright said. He watched the cigarette boats through binoculars.

The LRAD blared again. When the sound faded, Sumner could hear the tourists screaming on the deck. Still the cigarette boats kept coming. Sumner grabbed a second set of binoculars. The pirates looked like Somalis, dark-skinned and thin. They stared at the cruise ship with undisguised greed in their eyes. He watched one of them hoist a large gun to his shoulder.

“They’ve got RPGs,” he said.

“What the hell is that?” Harry Block’s loud voice echoed on the bridge.

“Sir, you don’t belong here. Please get belowdecks.” Wainwright waved at an underling, who stepped up next to Block.

Block shook off the crew member’s grip on his arm like a horse shaking off a fly. “I said, what the hell are RPGs?”

Sumner lowered the binoculars to glance at Block. “Rocket-propelled grenades.”

“Holy shit,” Block said.