Devil's Gate Read online

  The ship was going down.

  He looked aft. The fantail had risen up like the Titanic, the bow was beginning to plunge.

  Grabbing the woman’s good arm, he began to swim, pulling her along. When the ship went down, it would create a massive wave of suction dragging everything within a hundred-foot radius down with it. Both of them would be long drowned before it released their bodies back to the surface.

  It was hopeless, but he swam hard anyway. And then the fast boat from the Argo suddenly raced in. It slid to a stop beside them.

  The men rapidly hauled the woman in, literally yanking her out of the water, as Kurt pulled himself over the side. The engines roared again.

  Kurt fell into the back of the boat. Looking up he saw the “castle”—the five-story structure that housed the crew’s quarters and the bridge and the antenna masts—plunging toward them at a forty-five-degree angle, like a building falling out of the sky.

  The fast boat leapt forward like a stallion as the pilot slammed the throttle home. Right out into daylight.

  The castle crashed into the water no more than twenty feet behind them. A surge of foam hurled them along and then spat them out like a surfer ejecting from a massive breaker.

  Seconds later the Kinjara Maru was gone.

  As they sped away, heavy rumbling sounds rose up from the depths, along with surges of air and debris.

  Kurt looked at the woman. She was covered in soot and oil, her shoulder was either broken or separated, her wrists were gashed by the wire that had cut into them, and her eyes were swollen and almost as red as the blood that soaked her clothes. Using her less injured hand, she placed pressure on the gash on her other wrist.

  “We have a doctor aboard the ship,” Kurt said. “He’ll tend to your injuries as soon as we board.”

  She nodded. At least she was alive.

  “To the Argo?” the helmsman asked.

  Kurt nodded. “Unless you have somewhere else in mind?”

  The helmsman shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, and pointed the boat toward the Argo.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, they were back on board the Argo. While the ship’s doctor tended to the young woman and the away team stowed the fast boat, Kurt stepped onto the bridge.

  The ship was already accelerating and changing course.

  “You look like hell,” Captain Haynes said. “Why aren’t you in sick bay?”

  “Because I’m not sick,” Kurt replied.

  The captain eyed Kurt strangely and then looked past him. “Somebody get this man a towel. He’s dripping all over my bridge.”

  An ensign tossed him a towel, which Kurt used to dry his face and hair. “Can we catch them?” he asked.

  Haynes glanced at the radar screen. “They’re faster than us, doing forty knots. But a little boat like that didn’t bring these boys all the way from Africa. I’ll bet you a steak dinner they’re heading for a mother ship somewhere.”

  Kurt nodded. Pirates had become more sophisticated in recent years. While most still operated from little hamlets along the coasts of poor Third World nations, some had larger vessels that took them out to sea. Mother ships, disguised as old freighters and such.

  They hid their tricked-out speedboats inside and often used semi-legitimate voyages to disguise their true purpose. Kurt had heard from one authority that the pirates would be easy to catch if someone would just look for the freighters that constantly dropped off cargo without ever picking any up. But then the buyers were too smart to ask where goods came from when they were getting such great deals.

  “Anything on radar?” Kurt asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Haynes said.

  As dry as he was going to get, Kurt tossed the towel and picked up the captain’s binoculars, gazing out toward the target.

  The fleeing boat itself was hard to see, but the long white wake it left was a giant arrow pointing right to it. They were five miles off, and putting the Argo farther behind, but it would take hours for them to escape radar range, and by that time . . .

  A flash caught Kurt by surprise, momentarily blinding him through the binoculars. Immediately following it, Kurt saw debris flying in all directions and an expanding cloud.

  “What in the world . . .”

  A few seconds later the sound reached them. A single low boom, like a massive firework had gone off. When the view cleared, the speedboat was gone; obliterated in a single, thundering explosion.

  7

  KURT AUSTIN HAD BEEN in the communications room of the Argo for over an hour. The last forty minutes of that he’d been talking with NUMA’s director of operations, Dirk Pitt.

  Kurt got along well with the Director, having known him when Pitt was still doing fieldwork for NUMA. Considering the kind of missions NUMA’s Special Operations Team often ended up taking on, it helped to have a boss who’d “been there and done that,” as Pitt had pretty much been everywhere and done everything.

  Moving to the head office hadn’t dulled Pitt’s senses, even if it did place him in the crosscurrents of the political world.

  As the Argo patrolled a wide circle near where the Kinjara Maru had gone down, Kurt explained what they knew and what they didn’t. Pitt asked questions. Some of which Kurt couldn’t answer.

  “The strangest part,” he said, “is that they sank the ship deliberately instead of taking her for a prize. And they killed the crew. It was more like a terrorist action than a pirate raid.”

  A flat-screen monitor on the wall displayed Pitt’s rugged features. He seemed to clench his jaw while thinking.

  “And you never found a mother ship?” he asked.

  “We did a fifty-mile leg in the direction they were heading,” Kurt said. “Then Captain Haynes took us on a dumbbell pattern south for five miles and back north for ten. Nothing on radar in any direction.”

  “Maybe their course was a false track. To draw you off until they put some distance between you and them,” Pitt offered.

  “We thought about that,” Kurt said, considering a conversation with the captain as the search began to look fruitless. “Or they might have even had enough gas on board to get back to the coast. A drum or two lashed to the boat could explain the explosion.”

  “Still doesn’t explain what they were doing on that ship,” Pitt noted. “What about hostages?”

  “Maybe,” Kurt said. “But we have the captain’s wife with us. They left her deliberately to hold us up. She said there was no one unusual on board. In fact, if anyone were to bring a ransom she seemed like the best candidate to me, but it wouldn’t be that much.”

  On screen, Pitt looked away. He rubbed a hand over his chin for a second and then turned back to the screen.

  “Any thoughts?” he asked finally.

  Kurt offered a theory. “My dad and I did a lot of salvage work when I was younger,” he began. “Boats go down for plenty of reasons, but people send ’em down for only two. Insurance money or to hide something on board. One time we found a guy shot in the head but still strapped into the seat of his boat. Turned out his partner shot him and sunk the boat, hoping to cover it up. Didn’t count on the insurance company deciding they could salvage the wreck and get some money out of it.”

  Pitt nodded. “You think this is the same kind of thing?”

  “Kill the crew, sink the ship,” Kurt said. “Someone’s trying to keep something quiet.”

  Pitt smiled. “This is why you make the big bucks, Kurt.”

  “I get big bucks?” Kurt said, laughing. “I’d hate to see what you’re paying everybody else.”

  “It’s a scandal,” Pitt said. “But it’s a heck of a lot more than the admiral paid me when I started.”

  Kurt laughed at the thought. Pitt had told him once that his first month’s pay for NUMA wouldn’t cover a broken arm, even though he’d risked his life half a dozen times in that month. Then again, neither of them did it for the money.

  Kurt continued. “Kristi Nordegrun, the woman who survived, said she didn’t know what
happened, but the lights flickered and blew out, her head seemed to ring, and she lost her balance and consciousness. She believes it was at least eight hours before she woke up again. She still seems disoriented, she can’t walk without holding on to something.”

  “What does that tell us?” Pitt asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kurt said. “Maybe some kind of nerve agent or anesthetic gas was used. But it’s just one more thing that screams ‘more than pirates’ to me.”

  Pitt took this in. “What do you want to do?”

  “Go down there and poke around,” Kurt said, “see what they’re trying to hide from us.”

  Pitt glanced over at a map on his wall. An old-fashioned pushpin marked the Argo’s location. “Unless I have you in the wrong spot, there’s three miles of water between you and the seafloor. You got any ROVs on board?”

  “No,” Kurt said. “Nothing that can go that deep. But Joe’s got the Barracuda on Santa Maria. He could modify it, and we could be back here in a few days, a week at most.”

  Pitt nodded as if he were considering the thought, but Kurt sensed it was more in admiration of his gung ho attitude than in granting permission for the excursion.

  “You earned some R and R,” Pitt said. “Go on to the Azores. Contact me once you get there. In the meantime I’ll think about it.”

  Kurt knew the tone in Pitt’s voice. He wasn’t a man to close off any possibilities, but he’d probably come up with his own idea long before Kurt called in.

  “Will do,” Kurt said.

  The screen went blank, Pitt’s face replaced by a NUMA logo.

  In his heart, Kurt knew there was more to this incident than the obvious, but how much more was the question.

  It could have been the “pirates” simply trying to cover their tracks. Maybe they’d taken cash or other valuables. Maybe they’d killed a few of the crew in the takeover and then decided to hide the incident by shooting the rest and scuttling the ship. But even that scenario left questions.

  Why set the ship on fire? The smoke could and did give them away. It would have been easier to flood her and sink her without the explosions.

  And what about the pirates themselves? Recent history had pirates all around the world, mostly locals from poor countries who saw the world’s wealth passing them by in great ships and decided to grab a share for themselves. But the few men Kurt had seen on the Kinjara Maru did not look like your typical pirates. More like mercenaries.

  He looked over at the folding knife now lying on the table beside him, a unique-looking and lethal piece. He remembered it sticking in the chair. It seemed like a taunt, a calling card and a slap in the face all at the same time.

  Kurt thought about the arrogance of the man’s words, and the voice itself. It hadn’t been the voice of some poverty-stricken West African pirate. And stranger still, Kurt had the oddest feeling that he’d heard that voice somewhere before.

  8

  THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA sits at the oceanic crossroads. But despite this position, it has always been more of a roadblock to trade than a thoroughfare. Its sheer size and inhospitable habitats—from desert sands in the Sahara to the dark impenetrable jungles across its vast central region—made it impossible to cross profitably.

  In the past, ships that wished to swap oceans were forced to sail on a ten-thousand-mile journey that took them around South Africa, into some of the most treacherous waters in the world and past a point wistfully named the Cape of Good Hope, though its original name was the more accurate Cabo de Tormentas: Cape of Storms.

  The completion of the Suez Canal made the journey unnecessary, but did little to bring Africa into the modern world. Quite the contrary. Now ships had only to cut the corner, slip through the Suez, and they were soon on their way to the Middle East and its oil fields, Asia and its factories, Australia and its mines.

  As world commerce boomed, Africa rotted like vegetables left unclaimed on the dock beneath the withering sun.

  Inland could be found genocide, starvation, and disease, while along the African coasts lie some of the most lawless places in the world. Somalia is for all intents and purposes a land of anarchy; the Sudan is little better. Less well known but almost as forlorn are the West African countries of the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

  Liberia’s troubles were well chronicled, as leader after leader fell amid scandal and corruption, and the country lurched toward anarchy and mayhem. The Ivory Coast was much the same.

  And for much of its history, Sierra Leone had fared even worse. Not too long ago, the country had been considered a more dangerous place than Afghanistan and had a lower standard of living than Haiti and Ethiopia. In fact, Sierra Leone had once been so weak that a small group of South African mercenaries had all but taken it over.

  The group, operating under the “invite” of the existing regime and calling themselves “Executive Outcomes,” routed a much larger group of rebels who threatened to take over the mines. The nation’s only real source of wealth at the time.

  The mercenaries then proceeded to protect and control these assets, quadrupling production and taking a large cut for themselves in the process.

  Into this world of instability came Djemma Garand. A native of Sierra Leone but trained by these South African mercenaries, Djemma rose to power in Sierra Leone’s military, making important friends and ensuring that his units were trained, disciplined, and ready.

  It took decades, but eventually the opportunity presented itself, and Djemma took power in a bloodless coup. In the years since, he had consolidated his position, raised the nation’s standard of living, and earned the grudging approval of the West. At least his regime was stable, even if it wasn’t democratic.

  As if to show their approval they’d even stopped asking about the welfare and whereabouts of Nathaniel Garand, Djemma’s brother and a robust voice for democracy, who had been rotting in one of the country’s prisons for the last three years.

  Djemma considered imprisoning his own brother both his darkest moment and also his finest. Personally, it sickened him, but the moment he’d given the order any fears he’d had about his own ability to do what was necessary for his country vanished. Places like Sierra Leone were not ready for democracy, but with a strong, unquestioned hand they might rise to that point someday.

  Standing on the marble floors of his palace, Djemma looked like any other African dictator. He wore a military uniform with a pound of medals dangling from his chest. He shielded his eyes with expensive sunglasses and carried a riding crop, which he liked to slam on flat surfaces when he felt his point was being taken too lightly.

  He’d seen the movie Patton several times and admired the general’s way. He also found it interesting that Patton considered himself a reincarnation of the African Hannibal. For Hannibal’s legend and his exploits held special interest to Djemma Garand.

  In many ways the Carthaginian general was the last African to shake the world with his sword. He went over the Alps with an army and his elephants, ravaging the Roman Empire on its home soil for years, defeating legion after legion, and failing to bring it down only because he had no siege engines with which to attack the capital of Rome.

  Since then, amid wars and coups and everything else that occurred on the African continent, the rest of the world only watched with disinterest. They worried about the flow of minerals and oil and precious metals, but even a temporary stoppage or civil war or more starvation had little effect on them.

  After a little saber rattling, new dictators would eagerly agree to the same terms as the old. Most for them, and a few pennies for the poor. As long as business was conducted this way, what did the world have to worry about?

  Seeing this, living it, breathing it, Djemma Garand intended his rule to be something more. Though he traveled in an armored Rolls-Royce, flanked by Humvees with machine guns, Djemma vowed to be more than a despot. He desired a legacy that would leave his people better off for all eternity.

  But to do that would
mean more than changing his country; it would require changing Sierra Leone’s place in the world. And to do that he needed a weapon that could reach beyond African shores and shake that world, a modern version of Hannibal’s elephants.

  And that weapon was almost in his grasp.

  Taking a seat behind an imposing mahogany desk, Djemma carefully placed his sunglasses on one corner and waited for the phone to buzz. Finally, a light illuminated.

  Gently, without any rush, he lifted the receiver.

  “Andras,” he said quietly. “You’d better have good news.”

  “Some,” the salty voice replied.

  “That is not the kind of answer I expect from you,” Djemma said. “Explain.”

  “Your weapon didn’t work as advertised,” Andras said. “Oh, it damaged the ship all right, but it did no better than last time. Took out the navigation and most of the controls, but she kept steaming under partial power, and half the crew survived, those trapped deep inside. This device of yours is not doing what you expect.”

  Djemma did not like the sound of that. Little else could so easily send him into a rage as to hear that his project, his own Weapon of Mass Destruction, had yet again failed to perform up to standards.

  He covered the phone, snapped his fingers at an aide, and scribbled a name on a piece of paper.

  “Bring him to me,” he said, handing the scrap to the aide.

  “How many of the crew lived?” he asked, returning his attention to the call.

  “About half,” Andras said.

  “I trust they no longer survive.”

  “No,” Andras said. “They’re gone.”

  A slight hesitation in Andras’s voice concerned Djemma, but he pressed forward. “What about the cargo?”

  “Off-loaded and on its way to you,” Andras insisted.

  “And the ship?”

  “Rusting on the bottom.”

  “Then what is it you’re not telling me?” Djemma said, growing tired of having to pry information from his most highly paid asset.