Buried At Sea Read online

  "Yes, sir." The breakthrough would not only make more money for the McVays on the Internet than Bill Gates ever earned, but also win them a Nobel Prize for service to humanity. With that much at stake, the rules of engagement were no rules. If caught, deny.

  The McVays would get you out of it in due course. Do anything to get Sentinel back.

  "I would define an A-plus as securing Will Spark immediately!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Your uncle Andrew worked for me for many, many years—so many that I confess I came to take him for granted. What Andrew Nickels promised, Andrew Nickels delivered."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Andrew Nickels was a first-class facilitator. He was by my side through two corporations and the creation of the foundation. No problem was too big, no detail too small, no challenge too great."

  "Yes, sir."

  "He had high hopes for his protege—you, Andy. Now that he's gone, I'm left to hope that Andrew Nickels's sudden death hasn't torn too wide a breach in our lines."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You were, by all accounts, a fine soldier once. When your uncle asked me to intercede—what is it, now, four years ago—your commanding officer and right on up the Ranger chain of command all assured me you were an A-plus fighting man."

  McVay interrupted himself with a dry chuckle. Nickels scuffed his boot at a bloodstain the mate had left on the deck, still not sure where this was going.

  "Even the colonel praised you—in writing."

  "Yes, sir." Uncle Andrew had come up with the scheme to break the colonel's jaw, thereby allowing the army to discharge him for striking an officer rather than send the wrong message to Congress by court-martialing him for selling cocaine that his unit had seized fair and square from Colombian narcoterrorists.

  "Stesichorus may have convinced the Ancients not to bewail the dead, but I'm certain you agree that Washington Irving speaks to our hearts: 'The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every

  other wound we seek to heal . . . ; but this wound we con-skier it a duty to keep open. . . .

  ' I have not forgotten how your uncle died."

  "Neither have I, sir."

  "Then get cracking on that A-plus."

  J I M AWAKENED SWEATY and blurry-eyed after only

  an hour's sleep. It was stifling hot in the cabin. But it wasn't the heat that had jarred him into a murky awareness. Something was wrong. Something had changed. The familiar rush of water past the hull had ceased. In its absence he heard gear banging on deck; it sounded like somebody was clapping frying pans. He tried to stand. The boat rolled hard just as his feet hit the deck, and he flew across the cabin and smashed into the table.

  He dragged himself by the ceiling handholds to the companionway and up the steps. The water looked glassy. But under its smooth surface, a heavy swell surged, rising and falling, slick as the back of a whale. Without a breath of wind in the sails to stop the swell from rolling the boat, the mast was whipping across the sky and the boom jerked sullenly at its sheets. Pulleys—blocks, sorry, Will—were banging, a winch was rattling, and ropes slapped the sails.

  They had stopped dead. Becalmed.

  "Goddamned lousy timing," Will yelled from the mast.

  Jim turned around and saw Will at a halyard winch,

  cranking up the big, light air sail he called a blooper. The

  thin Dacron drooped from its halyard like panty hose hung from a shower rod.

  "What happened?"

  "We ran into the bloody Doldrums?'

  Will gazed despairingly at the useless sail. Then he turned his back on the sun and cast an anxious look west. The boat had drifted around so its stern was no longer facing the direction from which they had fled. "I hope to God they're not still following us."

  "What about the motor?"

  "There is no point wasting fuel," he answered slowly. "Not till we find out where the wind is. This calm could be ten miles wide or two hundred."

  "Can we check the weather?"

  "We'll see what comes in on the weather fax."

  "Can't we go on-line?"

  Will looked at his watch. "In a while," he said, still not moving.

  Jim clung to the steps, bracing against the swell. It was too hot to sleep below. The slack sails shook in their frames, left, right, left, right, with every roll of the boat. He could feel a queasy wave of seasickness rising again.

  Will walked heavily back to the cockpit, plodding like, an old man, teetering on the moving deck. His face was as slack as the sails, more deeply lined than usual, and he looked as if he had put on twenty years since last night. He slumped into a cockpit seat and stared.

  "I wish," he muttered. "I wish . . . Jim, do you ever ask yourself what you're doing with your life?"

  "What?"

  "Where it's going—what have you done?"

  "Sure. When I'm trying to decide what to do next—how long do these Doldrums last?"

  "Hours. Days. Weeks?'

  "Weeks?" Jim stared at the glassy water. Un-fucking believable. And they had to get through this before they even got started to goddamned Africa. "Look, Will, if 'they' are following we should use the motor, right? Keep ahead of them:'

  "We'd run out of fuel."

  "We should at least try the motor—do something to get away from them. . ."

  "Don't you ever look back? No, you're too young. What's to look back on? You've got your whole life ahead of you. Just you wait, it comes to all of us. You'll look back and say, Man, did I blow it. Look at the damage I caused. Why didn't I make something of myself, something real, instead of scrambling from scratch every morning I wake up?"

  Jim couldn't help but laugh. "What are you talking about, Will? You're rich. You've got a beautiful boat. You don't have to go to work every day. Most people would kill to have your life."

  "They're welcome to it. Body breaking down. Disks deteriorating. My neck hurts so much I can't sleep."

  "I told you, look down when you're spinning. When you look ahead, you squeeze those disks."

  "Yeah . ." he trailed off, morosely.

  Jim saw a little breeze riffle the water behind the boat. The sails filled, tentatively, and the boat began to move, but so slowly that she left no wake. Then a stronger gust fanned his face and she heeled a little, gathering way. On the road again, thought Jim. We're outta here. If the speed picked up a little more they would hear the water rushing again.

  A loud bang shattered the silence.

  Jim tried to look everywhere at once. It sounded like something had hit the boat or they'

  d run into something.

  Then he saw the jib collapsing onto the foredeck. Will's voice cut through his confusion.

  "Let's get that sail in before we run it over." He scampered lightly forward. Jim followed and helped gather and tie the cloth.

  "What happened?"

  "We popped the head stay," Will said calmly, hurrying back to the wheel and overriding the auto-helm to put the boat into a broad turn.

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means there's not much holding the mast. Maybe our timing isn't so bad after all; if it parted in a real wind, we'd have serious problems."

  "What do you mean, 'holding the mast'? It would fall overboard?"

  "On the cockpit, actually." Will smiled. "Which would be hell on the mast and make a mess of the teak, not to mention those of us it landed on. You want to jump below and bring me the red tool kit?"

  Jim scrambled down the companionway, pawed frantically through the tool locker, and ran back up with the red box.

  Will had completed the turn and what little wind there was blowing was now behind the boat. "All right, that'll take the pressure off. We're going to jury-rig a temporary stay with a halyard. Take the wheel. Just keep the wind behind us."

  The old man loped forward, released an idle halyard, and walked to the bow, where he threaded it through the bullnose hole in the center of the bow and clipped it onto a sturdy moorin
g cleat. Jim couldn't help but admire his ease: Will might be nuts, but when handling tools or cooking a meal or steering the sailboat through heavy seas he was always in the zone.

  Returning to the mast, Will cranked a winch until the halyard ran taut from the top of the mast to the front of the boat.

  "Okay, let's drop the main."

  They furled the mainsail and the boat started rolling again. "The halyard will act as a stay to hold the mast up until we replace the head stay. You want to learn how to crimp wire cable?"

  He opened the red box, which contained his rigging tools. "Flip a coin to see who goes up the mast."

  Jim lost. Will winched him skyward in a safety harness. It was sort of like a climbing wall. But height multiplied the boat's motion, until the mast was whipping him around like a yo-yo.

  Andy Nickels turned a slow, grim circle. I can smell that prick, he thought. I am so close.

  The catamaran had covered eighty miles in an hour, a distance that would have taken Will Spark all night. He must have come this way. He had to lower his sails to not be seen, and the east wind would not stop him from motoring east.

  But the equatorial ocean was closing in flat and empty everywhere Nickels looked, and shrinking smaller in the haze. The whitecaps had dissolved in the failing wind, so that the only change in the featureless glare was the relentless ascent of the sun. Had he guessed wrong? Should he have gone west? Or north? Or south?

  "How much fuel would he carry?"

  The captain answered. The fight was out of him. He would steer his ferry to Antarctica if Nickels told him to. "Hundred, hundred and fifty gallons."

  "More like seventy-five," Greg interrupted. Nickels nodded. He had recruited his chief bodyguard from the navy, so he ought to know about boats. "Range?"

  Greg said, "Modern fifty-foot sailboat, he's got a seventy-five-horse diesel. Burns a gallon an hour at eight knots. Depends on when he topped his tank up and how much he's burned for refrigeration, electricity, and hot water—four hundred and fifty to six hundred miles."

  "So he can't keep on motoring."

  "Two or three days he'll be running on empty. No electricity. No radar, no radio, no GPS. Blind, deaf, and lost." "Captain, what do you make of the weather?"

  "It looks like the Doldrums are spreading. If he's come this way he's lost his wind."

  "No shit. What about this haze?"

  "My guess, it'll get thicker?'

  Nickels stared at the radar. He picked up a two-way radio and spoke to the lookouts he'd posted atop the Barcelona's wheelhouse. "Report."

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing."

  "Captain! No way he got past here. Start another search pattern."

  It took what seemed like hours to get the crimp right. When Jim was done, Will lowered him from the masthead, then went up himself to check it.

  He came down, elated.

  "I just saw cat's-paws about a mile off and the haze is lifting. We've got some wind. Let'

  s get the sails up. Nice job on the crimp."

  But moments after they got under way, the wind died again. Will's spirit, which had risen while he made the repair, plummeted deeper than before.

  Jim brought his dumbbells up on deck and started doing reps. The spinning bikes were keeping his legs in shape, but he was losing definition in his arms and pecs.

  "Sometimes," Will said out of nowhere, picking up the old lament, "I feel so tired. Like I'

  ve used up my strength, and I'll never restore my energy."

  Jim pretended neutral sympathy while he curled the weights. For a personal trainer, listening to the road-nottaken lament went with the job. He could recite by heart the dirges of his middle-aged clients: the executive wished he had been a photographer; the lawyer wanted to make movies; the doctor should have served in an inner-city clinic; the Wall Street guy wished he had spent time with his children, or at least stayed in touch after the divorce.

  The only thing unusual about Will's lament was that Jim had never heard it before from Will. That was one of things Jim had liked about him, and a chief reason he'd agreed to go sailing. Now Will, too, was turning maudlin with regrets.

  "Don't waste it like I did."

  "Waste what, Will?" For some reason, when older rich men got regretful, they always warned him not to waste his talents. As if every young person had talents to waste. But Will surprised him.

  "Your good manners. Don't waste your good manners. I learned ease and polish to sell myself. My 'social skills' were like a sail catching whatever wind came along. I should have just enjoyed them."

  Suddenly, Will stood up, braced himself against the vicious roll by gripping the traveler sheets, and stared west.

  "What do you see?"

  "I'm not sure." He scoped the horizon with his binoculars. Then he passed them to Jim. "

  Your eyes are better. White on white—moving—almost dead astern."

  Jim swept the glasses clumsily over the horizon. The haze had lifted, but not by much.

  The rolling made it impossible to concentrate on a specific field; sky, horizon, and sea tumbled in the lenses.

  "I don't see anything. Why don't you try your radar?" "I told you. Our radar will give away our position."

  Jim shook his head, silently. If you wanted an answer, ask

  a paranoid.

  "Jim, I'm sorry I got you into this mess?'

  "Why don't we start the motor?"

  "Not yet. We need our fuel for the freezers and emergencies."

  "Maybe this is an emergency."

  "You ever just wish you could start over again?"

  Jim said, "I think we're ready for another spinning class. What do you say we hump the bikes up and do a hill climb?"

  But Will just shook his head and stared at the sea. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep. The wind died. The swells rolled the boat worse, even though the water surface was as still as glass. Jim felt like an ant trying to cross a bowl of Jell-O.

  Ten minutes before Jim's watch ended, Will was awake, alert, ready to take over, and Jim was struck by his ability to operate so efficiently on little more sleep than catnaps in the cockpit. But his spirit was bleaker than before.

  If I could only cheer him up, Jim thought, then maybe I could make him see sense. "I could use some exercise. Are you sure you don't want to spin?"

  "Positive. You want exercise, use the rowing machine." "What rowing machine?"

  Silently, communicating with impatient gestures, Will showed Jim how to unpack the yacht's rubber dinghy, inflate it, and boom it over the side. It bounced on the water like a toy. "Be my guest."

  Stepping off the yacht into a tiny rubber boat in the middle of the ocean seemed foolhardy. What if the wind suddenly sprang up and blew him away? What if night fell and he found himself all alone with a pair of oars in his hand and no food or water?

  "Are you coming?"

  "I'm on watch. I'll stay with the boat?'

  "Any advice?"

  "It's just like a rowing machine."

  "I've never seen a rowing machine jump around like that. Listen, I'm kind of new at this.

  I think I'd like a rope." "What for?"

  "To tie on. What if I drop an oar or something? How do I get back?"

  A faint smile lit Will's face. "I'll give you a threehundred-foot line—don't worry, you don't have to use the whole thing. Besides, we're not going anywhere anytime soon."

  Suddenly Barcelona's radar showed a target three miles north. "Go! Go!"

  The ferry closed in minutes.

  "Lookouts!"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?'

  ". . There!"

  Nickels saw it at the same time as Greg, glinting gray, low in the water. It looked like they had lowered their mast to make a smaller target.

  Captain Moser shouldered the helmsman aside, slowed the catamaran, and circled. But as they drew nearer, Andy Nickels saw that the boat had foundered or capsized. It was mostly underwater, just breaking the smooth surface as
it rose and fell on the swells.

  "Greg, send a diver. I want him alive!"

  But before Greg could move, Captain Moser said, "It's not a boat. It's a container."

  "What?"

  "A cargo container that fell off a freighter. It's half sunken. You see 'em all the time."

  Nickels studied the object through binoculars, bitterly disappointed, yet relieved that Will Spark hadn't drowned. The McVays needed him alive. He looked at the radar.

  "You can see a submerged container, but you can't see an entire sailboat?"

  Figuring that it was best not to rile the American by suggesting that for all they knew the sailboat was 150 miles in the opposite direction, the captain answered, "I've seen radar pick up a floating barrel. And I've seen it confuse a barge tow with a headland. It's not a perfect science."

  Nickels signaled the captain to resume the search pattern and the catamaran regained speed. But they were skimming the murky sea in an ever-contracting dome of visibility.

  And it would be night soon. A needle in a haystack. He was wasting time out here. There were better ways to track the bastard.

  "Captain, where's the nearest land with an airport?" "Cape Verde Islands."

  "Do it!"

  "Yes, sir!"

  Captain Moser punched the Portuguese islands' coordinates into the GPS. Barcelona could cover the thousand miles in fifteen hours. "I'll have you in Praia tomorrow morning." To the helmsman he said, "Come to zero-four zero:' and the helmsman banked her hard left before Andy Nickels changed his mind.

  Nickels left Greg in charge of the bridge and went down to the passenger cabin. Rage, he knew, was mangling his ability to think straight. So he began to walk in an endless circle.

  Round and round the bland, gray cabin he went, plodding angrily through the empty seats. He shouted out loud, cursed, and slammed his massive fists into the padded head-rests. A Caterpillar mechanic sacked out on a row of seats crawled in terror to the nearest door. Nickels began to move faster, rising onto the balls of his feet, shadowboxing now, throwing quick jabs and startling combinations. Gradually, he formed a plan.