Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

She scanned the big cargo ship through the binoculars and her heart sank. The vessel was in poor repair. Her hull was painted in myriad dark shades and looked like it had been patched with steel plates a dozen times over. She saw no one walking the decks or manning the bridge and while it looked like foam creamed off her bows as if she were making way it couldn’t be possible because there was no smoke from her stack.

“Do you have a radio?” Sloane asked the captain.

“It is below,” he replied. “But doesn’t have enough range to reach Walvis if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Sloane pointed to the freighter over the bow. “I want to alert them what’s happening so they can lower a boarding ladder.”

The captain glanced over his shoulder at the fast-approaching yacht. “It will be close.”

Sloane slid down the steep steps using just her hands, and ran into the cabin. The radio was an old transceiver bolted to the low ceiling. She powered it up and worked the knob to channel 16, the international distress band.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the fishing vessel Pinguin calling the freighter en route to Walvis Bay. We are being chased by pirates, please respond.”

A burst of static filled the cabin.

Sloane adjusted the radio dial and thumbed the microphone. “This is the Pinguin calling unidentified freighter en route to Walvis. We need assistance. Please respond.”

Again she heard static, but thought she caught the ghost of a voice in the white noise. Despite the boat’s violent pitching, Sloane’s fingers were as delicate as a surgeon’s as she moved the dial in fractional increments.

A voice suddenly boomed from the speaker. “You should have listened to me last night and left Namibia.” Through the distortion Sloane was still able to recognize the voice from the previous night and her blood went cold.

Sloane mashed the microphone. “Leave us alone and we will return to shore,” she pleaded. “I will be on the first plane out. I promise.”

“That is no longer an option.”

She looked over the transom. The yacht had cut the distance to a couple hundred yards, close enough for her to see two of the men in the bridge holding rifles of some sort. The freighter was a mile or more away.

They weren’t going to make it.

“WHAT do you think, Chairman?” Hali Kasim asked from his seat at the communications station.

Cabrillo was leaning forward in his chair, an elbow on the arm of his chair, a hand cupping his unshaven chin. The forward display screen showed the view from the mast-mounted camera. The image from the gyro-stabilized video was rock solid and zoomed in on the two boats fast approaching the Oregon. The fishing boat was making a solid twenty knots while the motor yacht was easily closing in at thirty-five.

They’d been watching the two craft on radar for the better part of an hour and had given their presence a low priority since the waters off Namibia’s coast were known fishing grounds. It was only when the first boat, which they now knew was called Pinguin, German for penguin, altered course to intercept the Oregon that Cabrillo was called from his cabin where he was just about ready to hit the showers after an hour in the gym.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” Juan said at last. “Why would pirates use a million-dollar yacht to chase an old fishing boat a hundred and fifty miles offshore? S

omething’s hinky. Wepps, zoom in on that yacht. Let’s see who’s aboard her if you can.”

Mark Murphy wasn’t on duty, so the crewman manning the weapons station worked a joystick and trackball to bring up the image Cabrillo wanted. At such extreme zoom even the computer-assisted gyroscopes had a difficult time holding the picture steady. But it was good enough. Sunlight glinted off the expanse of sloping glass below the bridge but through the glare Juan could see four men on the sleek yacht’s bridge, and two of them held assault rifles. As they watched, one of them brought the weapon to his shoulder and fired a short burst.

Anticipating the coming order, the weapons officer panned back to show the fleeing Pinguin. It didn’t appear she had been hit but they could see a copper-haired woman crouched behind the flat transom cradling a shotgun.

“Wepps,” Cabrillo said sharply. “Spool up the Gatling but don’t lower the hull plate. Bring up a firing solution on that yacht and pop the starboard thirty calibers from their redoubts just in case.”

“Four men with automatic weapons against a woman with a shotgun,” Hali mused. “Won’t be much of a fight if we don’t do something.”

“I’m working on it,” Cabrillo said, then nodded to his communications specialist. “Patch me through to her.”

Kasim hit a button on one of his three keyboards. “You’re live.”

Cabrillo settled his lip mike. “Pinguin, Pinguin, Pinguin, this is the motor ship Oregon.” On the screen they could see the woman’s head whip around as she heard him over the radio.

She scrambled back inside the cabin and a moment later her breathless voice filled the operations center. “Oregon, oh, thank God. For a minute I thought you were a derelict ship.”

“Not far from the truth,” Linda Ross deadpanned. Though not on duty, Juan had asked the elfin Ross to join him in the op center on the off chance he would need her background in intelligence.

“Please state the nature of your emergency,” Juan requested, pretending they didn’t have a bird’s-eye view of what was happening. “You mentioned pirates.”