We arrived in Panama again. With nothing else to do, we left the boat at a marina with high fences and security officers. We had earned a little shore time.
We were drawn to drinks like moths to a flame. There was alcohol to be had aboard the boat, but I think that all of us wanted some social drinking. At the tail end of summer, there were still parties to be had. College students celebrated in bars, having one last drink before heading back to class. Older couples could be seen occasionally, but mostly it was kids.
In some countries, walking around with an assault rifle hanging on your back is perfectly normal. Panama is not one of them. Nika had taken to carrying one of the AK-47s with her, but left it on the boat this time, somewhat reluctantly I thought.
At a drinking establishment, Nika grabbed Andy and pulled him over to a table. She said she was going to teach him how to really drink. I stayed at the bar, happy that the two of them were getting along. While the title of best friend was an intangible concept, I’d rather not have to pick and get one or the other mad at me. Jeeze, and I thought I had left this childish stuff in childhood.
When a man walked up to me, I was just starting to feel buzzed from the effect of a couple of drinks. He was dressed up in a lightweight suit for the warm Panamanian weather.
“You’re Sail Canvas, right?” he said. I turned to face him.
“Maybe.” I usually don’t like to play coy, but the intoxication and the memories of recent events changed things.
“My name’s Greg Silverstone. I work for James Herrington.”
“That supposed to mean something to me?” I was a little panicked that someone was able to find me so easily. I glanced over my shoulder to check on Nika and Andy, who were pounding shots of something.
“It should,” Silverstone continued. “If you’re willing to drop everything you have on Mr. Herrington, we’ll see to it that you get information that could be very valuable to you.”
“For example?” I said. His comment showed that he thought I was either working with the Serious Organized Crimes Agency or someone else that was a threat to Herrington. I didn’t correct him.
“We know that Mario Rossi sold you out to someone. We know who, and we know where he is now.”
“So do I,” I lied. I had suspected Rossi was crooked. I didn’t know, of course, who he had talked to, but I had a pretty good guess. Besides, how had Herrington’s man found me?
Silverstone was taken aback. He might not have fully believed that I already knew about Rossi, but the fact that I said so gave him pause.
I took another sip of my drink. “Anything else you’d like to discuss?”
“No.” He took out a business card and laid it on the bar. “But I’m available if you reconsider.” He walked away.
I went to join Nika and Andy. The three of us were mostly plastered by the end of the night. With all the people out there trying to kill us, it was completely irresponsible, but if it weren’t for times like that we would never get a chance to relax.
When we left, I was drunk but still probably the most sober of the three of us. Andy didn’t drink all that often and could barely walk.
Back on the boat, Nika and I helped him to his bed and rolled him facedown in case he threw up. I didn’t feel like I was in any danger of doing so myself, but I could tell I was heading for a hangover in the morning.
I unloaded the shotgun. Andy, figuring that if Nika had her AK, he should have a gun handy, too, had taken to keeping the weapon on a shelf above his computer equipment. I didn’t know what kind of drunk he might turn out to be, and didn’t want to take chances. I left a box of shells inside one of the equipment cabinets, figuring that he would find them eventually when he was sober.
I was disturbed by meeting Greg Silverstone, but since he had given me his card I doubted I was in any immediate danger of attack from Herrington’s people.
Al-Azhem’s people, on the other hand, worried me. If they were willing to invade my house in Norfolk and follow me all the way to Morocco, then I was definitely not safe in Panama. Still, this was a designated do-not-give-a-care day, so I went to sleep.
The satellite phone woke me in the morning. I found myself staring at Nika, who occupied the other side of the bed. We blinked at each other for a few seconds before she let me out to answer the phone.
“Is this a good time?” asked Hanley. “You sound like you went a couple of rounds with a truck and lost every one.”
I don’t know about the rest of me, but my head ached like that was true. “It’s nothing. What do you have for me?”
“Admiral Nevis told me what he asked you to do. How did that play out?”
“Tell him I’m sorry for embarrassing that submarine crew,” I replied.
“Right.” Switching to other news, he said, “You should probably know that he court date is approaching for James Herrington’s case.”
“A man talked to me last night. He suggested I stay away from that.” I gave him the information on Silverstone’s card to see if he would be able to track anything down.
“Anything else?”
“How’s that investigation of Mario Rossi I asked you to do?” I asked.
“Do you have any idea how many guys named Mario Rossi there are in the world?”
“That’s what I thought.” I other words, we still didn’t have anything on him.
“I’ve got a new job for you,” said Hanley.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Nauru.” He spelled it for me. “Look it up. I’ll call back in a few days with more.” He disconnected the call.
Nika was fully awake and had listened to my side of the conversation. She didn’t appear to have much hangover.
“Vodka is a very pure drink,” she said, as explanation.
“Why were we in bed together?” I asked. “I remember falling asleep alone.”
“It put me one room further from Andy,” she explained. “Apparently, he snores when drunk.”
We went to wake him up. There wasn’t any vomit on the bed, but he was in no mood to face the day. We got him out of bed and put a cup of coffee in his hand. Within minutes after he started his computer up, he got for us everything we needed to know about Nauru.
After waiting our turn to pass through the Panama Canal, we arrived in the Pacific Ocean. Due to the geography, the canal had been built in such a way that the Pacific entrance was actually farther east than the Atlantic entrance. It was still a lot faster than going down around Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of the continent.
I made sure to get animal crackers before we crossed the Pacific. West of Panama, there’s a whole lot of nothing for a couple of thousand miles. The Galapagos Islands, stretching out from the coast of South America, stay with you for a while, but after that it’s just open ocean.
We traveled in the Doldrums. It’s an old sailor term for the area around the equator, particularly in the Pacific. I’m no meteorologist, but something about the way the climate from the northern and southern hemispheres comes together over the equator causes the weather to do odd things. It can be very calm with almost no wind or it can violently storm, both of which are problems for older ships with sails.
Fortunately, we used diesel power. In fact, the engines made the trip without a single hiccup. It looked like we might have finally solved all the “new boat” problems.
When we neared American Samoa, intending to stop and refuel, Hanley called. It made me think again that he might have planted some kind of GPS tracker onboard.
“We’re conducting a field training exercise with the South Korean National Intelligence Service.” By we I assumed he meant the CIA. “Nauru has allowed us to use their island.”
I remembered what Andy had found about Nauru. At just eight square miles, it was the smallest island nation in the world and the third smallest country overall. It was located very near the equator, west of Kiribati, east of Micronesia, north of the Solomon Islands and south of the Marshalls. The nearest inhabited island was almost two hundred miles away.
“Why Nauru? And why the NIS?” I asked.
“We needed a place to go, and they had one. Don’t trouble yourself with other details.” I suspected that the reason was political, and a fair sum of money had probably changed hands.
“So once we get there, we’re meeting with the Koreans?”
“No, you’re meeting with me,” he corrected. “I’m running this myself.”
Well, that was surprising. I always figured Hanley was a desk jockey. Maybe it had something to do with visiting a tropical island.
“We’ve hired another group of mercenaries to act as the opposing force,” Hanley said. I didn’t like the feeling that he had just labeled me a mercenary, but I wasn’t able to think of a quick retort so I let him go on.
“They’ve worked for us before, and they’re very good. They can be trusted to keep things quiet so no one finds out about our training methods.”
I caught the subtle poke at me, but let it go. “Speaking of finding things out, did you track down that guy I met?”
“Greg Silverstone? He’s got ties to Herrington. We think he runs Herrington’s business interests in South America.”
“That’s it?”
“You met some random guy in a foreign country and you want me to get one of my people to dig up something on him in just a couple of days? I’d don’t get why you’re complaining. If you could have done it yourself, you’d have done it.”
“Forget it,” I said. “I’ll see you when we get to Nauru.” I hung up on him.
After a stopover to get fuel, we continued west. I got docking information from Hanley and pulled in with three other boats at the Nauru port. One looked like a fishing boat, but I thought that it had too many antennas on it to be what it seemed. It was flagged from South Korea.
The other two boats flew the United States ensign. One was a utility boat that was perhaps one hundred twenty feet long. Profit was the name painted on the stern. It looked to be in functioning shape, but needed some paint. The other was a World War Two-vintage Higgins torpedo boat that looked like it had been well taken care of. It was named Glory.
The Higgins was seventy-eight feet long, I remembered from a technical manual I had read once. They had seen extensive action during the war. They were fast and maneuverable and could be mounted with all kinds of weapons. Judging by the suspicious looking shapes wrapped in tarps on deck, it looked like this one had never been disarmed.
In comparison to the three other boats, and indeed, all the boats at the docks, Corsair looked about as expensive as all of them put together. It didn’t take long for word to spread among the locals that someone out of the ordinary had showed up. Groups of people came down to the water to have a look.
Hanley and three other men waited for us. One was Asian, with wise-looking eyes and a slight build. The other two were white and very large.
“Let me introduce Chang-he Soo of NIS, Mark Wilson: President of First Strike, and Vic Colton: Vice President.”
I guessed First Strike was the mercenary group. I hoof bumped with the three of them, Wilson put a little extra force into the gesture.
“What’s the plan?” I asked Hanley.
“Let’s go aboard your boat and discuss it.”
It made sense to keep away from the curious public, so I led them aboard. There was no way I was letting them see all of Corsair’s tricks, though, so I only took them as far as the bridge. Nika was there. I figured Andy was probably in the CIC.
Hanley began describing the exercise. First Strike would simulate an attack on the Nauru parliament house, and then escape in their boats. The Korean intelligence ship and our boat would cooperate to track them to South Korea. It would help the CIA and NIS develop plans to work together in the future.
I saw Wilson and Colton looking over the bridge electronics. Wilson’s face showed a trace of surprise when he spotted the CIWS controls. Chang-he Soo, too, kept his eyes moving around during the conversation. Despite the friendly cooperation, I suspected that everyone on the bridge was working for their own purposes.
With details finalized, Soo and the two men from First Strike went back to their own boats. We had a few hours before night fell so the operation could commence. To help communicate while we tracked the First Strike boats, the Koreans sent over a young man named Park to stay with us.
I showed him to the stateroom next to the one Hanley was staying in. Later on as it was getting dark, I went down to talk to Andy and found Park there, talking to Andy in Korean about video games. His grasp of the language didn’t seem as good as Japanese, but then he didn’t teach Korean.
“What can I do for you?” asked Andy as I came in.
“Just a suggestion for you to have some caffeine. It’s dark now, but if they’re smart they’ll wait until the middle of the night to get started.”
“Right,” he agreed. “You want some coffee, Park?”
I left and went to see if Nika was still sleeping. She had decided to take a nap in the evening to prepare. She agreed to watch the bridge while I slept.
Andy awoke me with the intercom at about four in the morning. A “bomb” had “exploded” at the parliament building. We waited and watched, expecting the First Strike team to come running back to their boats at any time. Instead, the two boats started their engines and got underway.
“Could they be back aboard already?” I radioed to the Korean boat.
“Impossible.” It sounded like Soo’s voice. “We have done surveillance and would have seen them.”
“We should probably get going and keep the boats in sight.”
Soo agreed and our respective vessels pulled away from the docks a few minutes later. The two First Strike boats were following the edge of the island, opposite of the direction that would have taken them towards Korea.
As we followed them around the island, radar showed the two boats meeting with another, smaller one. First Strike had planned the subterfuge all along and had a small boat waiting on the other side of the island to take them away. Pulling out from the docks early had given them a head start on us.
After picking up the small boat, Profit and Glory went to maximum speed and headed northwest. It seemed that we would be able to keep up with the slower utility boat, but the old torpedo boat was going to outrun us by quite a margin.
The Korean intelligence vessel was slower, and wouldn’t be able to participate in an actual chase. To make matters more difficult, Glory changed course to the west, while Profit went north, rather than take the direct course to Korea,.
Quickly coming up with a plan, Soo agreed to take his intel boat back to Korea as quickly as possible in hopes of intercepting either of the two First Strike boats before they got there. I would follow the slower Profit and hope that we could somehow find a way to track the speedy Glory.
At maximum speed, having enough fuel to make it to South Korea was uncertain. I figured the same was true of the First Strike boat we followed. I was fairly sure that the smaller Higgins boat wouldn’t be able to make the trip without refueling, so that gave us opportunities to find it.
The utility boat eventually did slow down to cruising speed, and we dutifully tracked it, watching for any tricks. It looked like it was going to be a long chase.
In the morning, Hanley woke up, surprised to be on the open sea. I explained the situation to him, and he contacted Soo to discuss it. We still had no idea where the torpedo boat had gone to, but everyone seemed confident that it was only a matter of time until it was found.
Hanley called a few people and arranged for a satellite feed to be downlinked to the CIC. He, Andy, Park and I crowded around the computer, which showed a live picture of the Pacific Ocean. I wasn’t exactly comfortable showing Park that we had that kind of capability, but Hanley seemed okay with it, and he was usually the security-conscious one.
There was a gap in the satellite coverage during the early morning, but by replaying some footage of the night before, and calculating the approximate direction the torpedo boat had traveled in, we were able to figure out where it should be. The trouble was, factoring in speed or course changes made it a big area to search.
In a few hours, Andy picked through the satellite imagery and managed to locate Glory. Hanley called someone else at the CIA and ordered them to keep a tab on it.
We called the Koreans and told them that we had found the boat. With the locations of both boats pinned down, it was only a matter of finishing the trip to Korea.
For the next few days, all we did was wait and watch. Our route took us through Micronesia and the Marianas. The spy satellites didn’t have continuous coverage, and we only got an overhead shot every so often. It wasn’t a problem, though, because once we knew the torpedo boat’s approximate course, picking it up again wasn’t a problem.
We kept the other First Strike boat on radar the whole way. The autopilot could be slaved to the radar to keep us at a certain following distance, which I used to keep us as far away as possible from the boat.
I didn’t know if they had radar detection equipment on board or if their radar could detect us as far away as we were. I guessed probably not on both counts.
Hanley didn’t seem to like being shipboard. He wasn’t getting seasick, but the longest distance you could walk on the boat—bow to stern—was only one hundred sixty feet, and I think he felt a little claustrophobic.
Park and Andy divided their attention between monitoring the First Strike boats and playing Starcraft. Apparently, it’s big in Korea. They looked like they were getting along well.
The job was easy, but with Park and Hanley aboard, Nika and I barely had to work at all. We had time to work on the small arms together. Nika knew all about AK-47s, but we used instruction manuals Andy downloaded for us for the RPGs. Most of the instructions were written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but I needed to practice my Russian anyway.
With its superior speed, the torpedo boat was going to reach the Korean port of Pusan before the NIS boat got there. We passed this information along and continued to follow the utility boat.
A few days later, we arrived in Pusan twenty miles behind Profit. The intelligence boat was there, but the torpedo boat was nowhere to be seen. Hanley had disabled the satellite feed when we got into port, so after we were refueled and resupplied, I asked Mark Wilson about it.
“I told them to go up north a ways to work on a contract,” he said. I figured that meant someone had hired First Strike, but it was a small job that didn’t require the whole crew.
Park was dismissed and Soo came aboard for the end of mission debriefing. Nika, Hanley, Wilson, three of his men, and myself were also present. Again, to keep them from seeing anything they shouldn’t, we stayed in the bridge.
We brought up chairs and coffee from the galley. Night had fallen by the time we were done with the debriefing. Wilson seemed surprised that we had been able to track his boats so easily. The operation had shown that the joint capabilities of the CIA and NIS were able to deal with small groups of fugitives, and it was declared a success.
After Soo left, Wilson and his men hung around. “This sounds like a complicated setup you have here. How many people are aboard to make this boat run?”
“Just three.”
He seemed impressed. “Do you mind if we take a look around?”
“Sorry. CIA secrets.”
“That’s too bad.” Wilson and his three companions got to their feet, each drawing a concealed handgun.
“First Strike could use a new boat,” Wilson said.
“I’ll say,” agreed one of his men.
“What the hell?” said Hanley. He took a step towards Wilson, who pressed his gun against Hanley’s chest. The agent stopped.
“Change of ownership,” said Wilson.
“Are you crazy?” said Hanley. “You can’t do this to me, I’m with the CIA!”
Wilson shrugged. “We’re holding the guns here, and we have backup waiting nearby. You don’t have much choice.” He looked at his men. “Take them outside.”
While Wilson’s head was turned, Hanley grabbed for the gun, twisting it downwards.
I heard two shots. Wilson just barely held onto the gun, but Hanley crumpled to the floor with wounds in his chest and thigh.
I almost made a move myself, but the man pointing a gun in my direction must have trusted Wilson to deal with Hanley, because he never shifted his eyes away from me.
Wilson took a second to recover from the attack. He straightened up, pointing his gun at Nika and I. “Outside, now!”
“Drop it, motherfucker!” screamed Andy from the stairs. Wilson turned towards the sound of his voice, gun coming up. The blast from the shotgun caught him square in the chest and he fell to the floor.
That hadn’t been part of First Strike’s plan, and the man holding a gun on me finally flinched. It was all the chance I needed and I tried to knock his weapon aside.
The gun had just barely shifted away from my face when he pulled the trigger. I’d never had a close up look at a pistol being fired, and it seemed to occur in slow motion. I threw a hoof into his face and flew into the air, kicking both rear legs at his chest.
In my peripheral vision, I saw Nika kick one of the chairs into the knee of the man closest to her. He doubled over in pain and she struck at his eyes with her fingers. The third man was just behind him, gun almost in position to fire.
I was on him in an instant, driving my hooves forward. Humans have nothing on ponies when it comes to punching. He went down.
Andy came in, shotgun at the ready. Nika kicked away the gun of the man she’d attacked. Andy covered him and the men I’d put down.
Nika went to check on Hanley. On her way past me, she looked at my face and seemed concerned. That’s when I started to feel the pain.
The side of my face felt like it was on fire. I wanted to touch it, but was afraid of what I’d find. I told Andy to get help.
He apparently knew the number for the Korean version of 911, because police cars and ambulances appeared quickly. I didn’t take my eyes off of the three men who were still alive until they were securely in handcuffs.
Wilson had probably died instantly. The shotgun had left a nearly fist-sized hole in his chest. Hanley had been hit in his upper chest, near the shoulder, and through the thick part of his thigh. He was conscious when they loaded him into the ambulance.
One of the policemen took the guns and bagged them as evidence. I made sure Andy told them we were working with the NIS. That appeared to raise some eyebrows, and shortly thereafter, Chang-he Soo came back.
A team from the NIS gradually replaced the police until the ship was locked down from prying eyes. I still wasn’t comfortable with foreign intelligence agents aboard, but I figured it was better than civilians.
I stepped out and went down to the deck for a breath of fresh air. Andy was out there, leaning over the railing.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” I stepped up next to him and caught a faint whiff of vomit. So that was it. I couldn’t blame him. That was not a pretty scene in the bridge. My hooves were shaking just thinking about it. I pressed them to the railing to stop it.
“So, did the First Strike guys just assume that Hanley was the third crew member you mentioned and not check to see if there was anyone else aboard?” he asked.
“Maybe. Either way, thanks for getting us out of that.”
We were silent for a few moments. Andy turned, looking at something. “What are they doing in the bridge?”
I turned, following his gaze. Someone was using disinfectant to clean blood off the inside of the windows.
I jumped back to the railing and threw up over the side.
After getting off the phone with Dr. Games, I called Soo and offered whatever help I could give. He told me that the utility boat had been seized by harbor police before it had made it to the open ocean. The crew played it smart, and claimed no knowledge of what Wilson and the other men had done. The boat was impounded, but there wasn’t enough evidence to hold the crew, and they were released. I hoped they weren’t feeling vengeful.
No one had seen the torpedo boat. Satellite photos showed that it had once been in the area, but after Hanley had disconnected the link, we had no way of tracking it. It may never have entered Pusan harbor at all.
There was a hospital not far from the docks at Pusan. I went with Andy to see Hanley. He talked us through the crowd of Korean doctors and nurses to arrive at Hanley’s door.
We then had to deal with CIA security, backed up by people from the NIS. Chang-he Soo almost had to come to the hospital to verify us, when Hanley woke up and told them to let us in. He didn’t look good, but he was alive.
“What happened to you?” he asked me.
When the gun had gone off near my face, the side of my head had been singed by the burning gunpowder. My ears were still ringing, too. It wasn’t pretty, but shouldn’t take too long to heal.
“I tried the same trick you did,” I told him. “I was a little more successful.”
“Was there anyone else hurt?”
“Wilson’s dead. The other three were arrested.”
Hanley nodded. “What happened to the rest?”
I told him the story about their run-in with the harbor patrol. He asked about the other boat. I said, “Still no sign of it. I think we should go looking for it before it comes looking for us.”
“I’ll pass that along. It’ll be up to your new case officer, Agent Jones.”
“Is this temporary, or are you going to be back?”
He shrugged. “Hard to say. The doctors tell me that I’ve got about a fifty percent chance of being able to walk. I don’t suppose that matters much, because I am not setting foot on your boat ever again. I’ll do all my work from a desk if I have to.”
We said goodbye to him and went back to the boat.