Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

Her name boomed and echoed, then faded. Silence once again filled the cell block. Merrick was certain that Daniel Singer had just claimed another victim.

13

“YOU can rest down below if you want,” Juan offered when Sloane yawned.

“No thanks, I’m fine,” she said and yawned again. “But I will take some more coffee.”

Cabrillo pulled the silver thermos from the holder at his knee and handed it across, his eyes automatically scanning the lifeboat’s rudimentary gauges. The engine was running fine and they had more than three quarters of a tank of fuel and only another hour to go to reach Walvis Bay.

When Max had called an hour after they departed the Oregon to tell him that George Adams’s helicopter reconnoiter of the area where the crazy old fisherman had seen his metal snakes had turned up nothing but glass-smooth empty ocean, Juan briefly considered simply returning Sloane to her hotel and catching a flight to Cape Town to rejoin his ship. It would have been the logical thing to do. But now, hours later and having a better sense of what made Sloane Macintyre tick, he was sure helping her was the right decision.

She was as driven as he was, someone who couldn’t leave a job half-finished and someone who didn’t back down from a challenge. There was something mysterious taking place in these waters and neither would be satisfied until they learned what it was, even if it had nothing to do with their respective jobs. He admired her curiosity and tenacity; two traits he also prized in himself.

Sloane poured some of the black coffee into the thermos lid, her body swaying to the rhythms of the waves passing under the hull so she didn’t spill a drop. Still wearing her shorts, Sloane had accepted Juan’s offer of a Windbreaker, one of the two safety orange nylon pullovers that he’d retrieved from a storage bin. He had his tied around his waist.

The vessel was stocked with enough provisions to last forty people for a week and a miniature desalinator to provide potable, albeit still a little salty, water. The bench seats inside the enclosed cabin looked like cracked vinyl, but were in fact soft kid leather that had been distressed to make it look shabby. A panel mounted on the ceiling could be lowered to reveal a thirty-inch plasma TV with an extensive DVD library and surround sound. It had been Max’s perverse idea to cue up the movie Titanic first if the crew ever actually had to man the lifeboats.

Every nook and cranny had been carefully designed to maximize the comfort and convenience of anyone forced into the boat. It was more like a luxury motor yacht than a life-saving vessel. She was also built for safety. When her hatches were sealed the boat could turn completely over and still right herself, and with three-point harnesses for every seat, the passengers wouldn’t be tossed around. And because she was owned by the Corporation there were a few tricks built into her that Juan had no intention of showing his guest.

There were two positions where the boat could be commanded: inside near the bow protected by the boat’s fiberglass and composite cabin, or on a slightly elevated platform at the stern where Juan and Sloane stood so they could enjoy the spectacular sunset earlier and now the star-smeared night sky. A small windscreen protected them from the worst of the salt air, but the cold waters of the Benguela Current flowing north from Antarctica had dropped the temperature into the sixties.

Sloane cradled the coffee in her hands and studied Cabrillo’s face in the muted glow of the dashboard lights. He was traditionally handsome, with strong, well-defined features and clear blue eyes. But it was what lay under the surface that really intrigued her. He had an easy command of his crew, a natural leadership that any woman would find attractive, but she also got the impression he was a loner. Not the walk into a post office and open fire with a rifle loner, or the geek living in cyberspace type, but someone comfortable in their own company, someone who knew exactly who he was, what he was capable of, and found what he saw to his liking.

She could tell he made decisions quickly and apparently never second-guessed himself. That level of confidence only came from being right more often than wrong. She wondered if he had military training and decided he did. She imagined he’d been in the Navy, an officer, but one who couldn’t put up with the incompetence of those above him so he quit. He had traded in the structured life of the armed forces to live like a drifter on the high seas, clinging to an old way of doing things because he was really born a couple of centuries too late. She could easily see him on the bridge of a clipper ship crossing the Pacific with a load of spices and silk.

“What are you smiling at?” Juan asked.

“Just thinking you’re a man living in the wrong time.”

“How so?”

“Not only do you rescue damsels in distress, you also take up their causes.”

Cabrillo puffed out his chest and struck a heroic pose. “And now, fair lady, I gird myself for battle against metallic sea serpents.”

Sloane laughed. “May I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“If you weren’t the captain of the Oregon what would you do?”

The question didn’t veer into any dangerous territory so Juan gave her an honest answer. “I think I’d be a paramedic.”

“Really? Not a doctor?”

“Most doctors I know treat patients like a commodity—something they have to work on if they want to get paid before returning to the golf course. And they’re backed by a huge staff of nurses and technicians and millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. But paramedics are different. They are out there working in pairs with just their wits and a minimum of gear. They have to make the first critical assessments and often perform the first life-saving acts. They’re there to tell you everything is going to be all right and make damn sure it is. And once you get the person to the hospital you simply fade away. No glory, no God complex, no ‘gee, doc, you saved my life.’ You just do your job and go on to the next.”

“I like that,” Sloane said after a beat. “And you’re right. My father cut his leg really badly on a charter once and we had to radio for an ambulance and I had to take the boat back in. I still remember it was Dr. Jankowski who stitched up the leg in the hospital but I have no idea of the name of the guy who first dressed the wound on the dock. Without him my dad would have probably bled out.”

“Unsung heroes,” Juan remarked quietly. “Those are the ones I like.” For a moment his mind flashed to the wall of stars in the entrance to CIA headquarters at Langley. Each one represented an agent who had been killed in the field. Of the eighty-three agents represented thirty-five remained nameless, still keeping the Company’s secrets long after their deaths. Unsung heroes, each and every one. “What about you? What would you do if you weren’t a security specialist for a diamond company?”

She threw him a saucy grin. “Why, I’d be captain of the Oregon.”

“Oh, Max would love that.”

“Max?”

“My chief engineer and first officer,” Juan said fondly. “Let’s just say Max put the rump in grumpy.”