Final Bearing Read online

"Bridge, Anchor. Did you say 'Let go the anchor?'"

  "Chief, let go the anchor now! I need to stop the ship!" Ward yelled, the urgency obvious in his voice.

  Ralston didn’t hesitate. He turned the gear to release the anchor brake.

  Nothing happened!

  He tried again. Still nothing.

  "Skipper, it's stuck. I can't get it to let go!"

  Ward heard the words and felt his stomach sink. They were rushing toward the pier now. He could see families smiling and waving, ready to greet loved ones onboard, still not realizing the boat was about to slam into the pier.

  "Sorensen. Drop every anchor you have on Cherry Two."

  The pilot looked at him, his eyes wide.

  "I can't. It’ll damage her screw."

  "I don't care if it rips her bottom out, drop those damn anchors!" Ward yelled back.

  The pilot reluctantly obeyed. Ward could see the tug captain shaking his head as he waved to deck hands down on the main deck. The two huge anchors dropped into the brown water, splashing it high up on the sides of the tug.

  Meanwhile, Chief Ralston beat on the recalcitrant anchor gear with the handle of a big wrench. Tears of frustration poured down his craggy, grease-streaked face.

  Damn gear! Maintain the son of a bitch for years, but when you need the piece of shit, it won't work.

  He took another swing of the wrench, this time with all the power he could muster.

  Bang!

  The brake sprang free and the windlass began spinning wildly. He could hear chain links clanging as they paid out from the chain locker below him.

  "Skipper, she’s loose! It's working! The anchor is dropped!"

  Just in time. The combined restraint of the electric outboard, the tug’s two anchors, and the sub's own obstinate anchor finally did their jobs. The boat eased up and gently kissed the inflatable camels alongside the pier in a near-perfect docking. None of the watching crowd noticed how close to disaster they had just come.

  Jonathan Ward finally breathed again as he wiped his brow. He ignored his shaking hands.

  Jesus, he thought, what else could possibly go wrong?

  Fore and aft, lines were being passed to the pier and the U.S. flag was shifted from its “underway” position on the bridge to the “in-port” position on the after part of the main deck. Ward scanned the pier, still looking for the beautiful, tall redhead who had met him at so many other homecomings. Thankfully, Ellen wasn't there.

  Good. This particular landfall was different from any other he had ever had, and frankly, he didn’t want to have to face her until he knew what the future held for them.

  As he scanned the other happy, smiling faces, Jon Ward spotted a very familiar one. The Commodore, Captain Desseaux, stood alone in a shadow, away from the others.

  And he definitely was not smiling.

  8

  Juan de Santiago stepped through the dark doorway. It led into the dilapidated, rusting, tin shed. The place looked like little more than a snake den, like any other abandoned plantation supply shed that the vines and weather were inevitably reclaiming. The leader of the revolution still wore a broad smile as he surveyed the place.

  This shanty had once been in the center of some of the fiercest skirmishes of the revolution. On many nights inside this very shed, he and his staff had planned by candlelight the next glorious battles they would wage for the liberation of their people. And the blood of many of de Santiago's most loyal fighters was mixed with the red clay that anchored the surrounding jungle.

  Now the fighting had moved far away from this sacred place. It was little more than a quiet, forgotten backwater. Not even the peasants came here anymore. They were afraid of the ghosts still left from long ago. Frightened away by the anguished cries that rang out at night. By the bouncing, peculiar lights that danced about in the dark, thick undergrowth. It was only the scream of a jaguar at night, the luminescence given off by rotting vegetation. The peasants had to wonder how so many could die so violently without there being some restless souls haunting this place. There were no crops grown here now. There was no longer any reason for the peasants to come here to this place. The ravenous jungle had long since swallowed the fields and the other buildings of the old hacienda that once thrived in this spot.

  And that was precisely the way Juan de Santiago wanted it. This wasting, unimpressive shack in the midst of a desolate jungle had a far more important role in the revolution he led.

  He passed through the doorway, leaving the shadowy jungle light and steamy heat behind him. He followed his guide down a staircase that had been hidden by a well-concealed trap door beneath the dirt of the shack's floor. The stairs led him downward into a truly amazing scene. The rough structure concealed a surprisingly modern chemical laboratory, glass and stainless steel gleaming in the fluorescent light. The cool, dry air in the big room sucked the moisture from de Santiago's clammy, sweat-soaked camouflage shirt. It was more than the chilly air conditioning that brought goose bumps to the leader's flesh. He had to pause for a moment for his eyes to adjust to the illumination, but he had not lost his smile.

  He surveyed with pride this huge room he had heard so much about. It was truly a wonder. The American spy satellites would never find this place. The nearest road was over five miles away, the jungle nearly impenetrable. It was hardly more than a rutted trail. The only reliable way in was by water, and that was a grueling trip up a swift-flowing river. All the supplies, every piece of equipment, had been carried in by boat. Then through the tangled rain forest on the backs of a few of the local peasants. They only moved on dark, cloudy nights. These men were intensely loyal to the revolution. And they were sworn to secrecy on the threat of death to their families.

  All precautions had been taken to assure the place would be nearly impossible to detect. The diesel generator that supplied the essential electricity was buried in the jungle a half-mile away. Even its exhaust pipe ended beneath the water of the river so the satellite infrared sensors would not be able to see its heat and raise suspicion.

  Building this lab had taken many months and much money, but it was key to de Santiago's plan. The design was ingenious. Two-feet-thick insulation was hidden below the rusting roof inside of the shed to further defeat the infrared sensors. Ventilation piping ran underground for several hundred yards before exiting. Ninety percent of the lab was underground, protected from any sensing devices de Santiago or any of his advisors could imagine. A government patrol that might stumble upon the abandoned hacienda would be very lucky to find the lab. If they did, a carefully designed protective system would assure their accidental discovery was a deadly one without doing serious damage to the wonder it was designed to defend.

  Jorge Ortiez labored up the steep stairs to greet his most important visitor and, after pausing a moment to catch his breath, led him back down.

  "El Jefe," the fat little man cried, still gasping for air. "It is a great honor to see you again. Senor Dura sends his apologies that he is not here to greet you himself. He was detained in Cartagena where he is supervising the delivery of supplies."

  De Santiago dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand.

  "It is of no concern. Duty always calls." Placing an arm around the shorter man's shoulder, the leader continued, his tone congenial. "Now, come Jorge. Show me around this wonderful laboratory you have built. And I especially want to see this 'new product' with my own eyes."

  A group of scientists, each clad in an immaculate white lab coat, waited nervously for them at the far end of the room. The antiseptic smell of the lab seemed cloying to de Santiago, almost too sweet after the dank, earthy scent of his beloved jungle. But he knew this sweet smell represented a crucial part of his plan and would ultimately lead to him finally regaining control of his own land. Or having that control returned to the people through him.

  The rows of stainless steel counter tops reached back into the distance. He could not imagine the purpose of the overflowing complex structures of glass tu
bing and odd-looking equipment. Colored liquids bubbled and dripped ominously in many of them, reminding him of some sorcerer's den where evil magic was being conjured. He knew, regardless of what spell the potions concocted here might cast on the unsuspecting for whom they were intended, they were ultimately for the good of the people here, his people.

  De Santiago greeted the cluster of scientists with hearty handshakes and slaps on their backs. They responded timidly. The leader's reputation had preceded him. They seemed far less comfortable with the man who paid them their substantial income than they might have been with their beakers and test tubes and analysis machines. He hardly knew the scientists. He had mostly seen their photos and learned their reputations from dossiers supplied by Dura and the others. These were some of the "hired guns" of the operation. Lured to this high mountain jungle and its secret lab with the promise of a chance at winning their own sweet revenge against the Americans. And, incidentally, the promise of great wealth in the process.

  De Santiago knew he could never truly accept them into his revolution. Each had his own agenda. They were merely tools of the struggle. Like his trucks or pack mules or weapons, to be used until they were no longer functional then discarded if they could not be recycled.

  The group represented a staggering accumulation of knowledge on a rather complicated subject: the microbiology of the interaction of dangerous drugs with the human body and the addiction process. Two of the men were graduates of the former Soviet Union's chemical warfare labs, men who still held the United States responsible for the breakup of their great nation into tiny squabbling fiefdoms.

  Three others gained much of their experience in Iraq's chemical warfare experiments prior to the Gulf War. Each had lost loved ones in the "surgical" bombing conducted by the Americans and had still been banished by Saddam as he sought to place blame for their country's ignoble defeat.

  The final scientist was a refugee from the American tobacco industry. He had no political axe to grind. He was simply in it for the money.

  All the men appeared to de Santiago to be weak, pasty-faced, bleary-eyed, unable or unwilling to hold his gaze or to adequately return his powerful handshake. They looked at the floor and mumbled to him in thick, heavy accents. Except for the American. De Santiago wondered if this one had not been conducting the experiments on himself. His eyes were watery and wild, his speech slurred, his hand damp and clammy when he shook it. But these men were not tucked away in this secret lab for their physical prowess or conversational abilities or even the soundness of their mental states. It was their brainpower he sought. With one exception, it appeared he had been getting his money's worth.

  Ortiez politely steered the great leader on past the clot of scientists and down a row of lab benches. He stopped at a peculiarly twisted piece of glass tubing. The fat little man had a stricken look on his face.

  "El Jefe, I am ashamed to report that this is our problem. Djenka, may his bones burn in hell, was working here." He pointed with a trembling finger to a tiny, intricate glass petcock that dripped a small amount of clear liquid into the mix. "This is a derivative of a hexanoic aldehyde. It was showing great promise in controlling the rate of addiction. Djenka was working on it before his cojones got the better of him and he left to find his puta."

  De Santiago looked at the maze of tubing and listened to the meaningless words. He smiled toward Ortiez and placed his hand gently on the man's shoulder. The little man jumped as if the leader had stabbed him with a knife.

  "Jorge, I am sure we didn't waste our time and money sending you to MIT. Just make it work. Salvage what you can from the bastard's work. I know you can do it. You have one month to do so, my friend."

  Ortiez stared at de Santiago's back as he quickly turned and strode away. The smile was still on the leader's face. A shiver of fear ran down the little man's spine.

  El Jefe did not brook failure. Especially on a project that was so crucial to his plans. Standing there trembling in the cool, dry air of the hidden laboratory, Jorge Ortiez had absolutely no idea how he was going to avoid it.

  "Come, Guzman," de Santiago shouted impatiently. "We have many miles to cover."

  The visit to the jungle laboratory had energized the leader. He was anxious to get back, to check on the progress of other aspects of the plan. His bodyguard appeared from the thick undergrowth around the shed and hustled to catch up to him. The two men headed down the narrow jungle path at a trot. The brutal mid-day sun was turning the humid jungle into a steaming caldron. Insects buzzed annoyingly about their faces. The rustling of the undergrowth warned of the passage of a tapir. They kept to the darkest shadows to avoid the heat. Tripping on ensnaring vines and rotting logs seemed inevitable to Guzman, but his boss kept the pace. He had no option but to follow.

  Rounding a sharp turn in the trail, the path dropped into the underbrush. The two of them followed it. They descended a slippery, muddy bank to an oxbow lake hidden by the dense growth and a canopy of vines and trees. Spectacular regalia lilies, Victoria amazonica, the world's largest water lily, covered the little lake with huge fragrant blooms.

  An unnamed, sluggish brown stream fed the lake and many more like it before it joined the great Rio Napo many miles downstream. Water from this lake then journeyed on to the Amazon before finally reaching the Atlantic. It flowed over two thousand miles.

  De Santiago told his men that a ripple on the lake's surface here, far up in the mountain jungles of Colombia, will lap up on the shores of Europe and Africa and North America. The imagery was lost on them.

  The small dugout canoe was tied where they had left it, hidden in the emergent grasses and reeds at the lakes edge. They carefully checked for signs that someone might have disturbed the boat. De Santiago jumped in front and Guzman carefully pushed off from the bank and hopped in back. Dipping their paddles in the tepid brown water, the pair moved out of the lake and into the center of the channel. The lethargic current flowed more swiftly. They pointed the nose of the dugout downstream.

  Juan de Santiago was reminded of many such trips he had made on this river during his boyhood. He enjoyed the quiet gurgling of the water slipping past the canoe. The welcome strain of his back muscles as he urged the boat along with his paddle. The many animals that came down to the bank to drink. Then there had been those times when his mission on this river was not so pleasurable. When he was stalking or fleeing the government troops. When the animals he watched for on the bank carried carbines and his death warrant.

  No time for those memories now. He would have time to savor them later, when the job was done.

  Toward mid-afternoon the pair passed the remains of a small, burned-out and abandoned village. Villages that had stood since the time of the Incas, that had withstood the assault of the conquistadors. De Santiago could remember several villages along this stretch of the river. Now they were all gone. Their residents having long since joined the other victims of the years of struggle, either in death or flight. They had finally fallen to their own traitorous countrymen, the henchmen of Guiterrez.

  Soon, soon, I will bring back all those who still live, return the land to its rightful owners. Just as I will chase El Presidente to hell, he thought.

  Down river they drifted. They used their paddles to keep the dugout in the middle of the stream and away from the overhanging tree limbs where snakes might drop into the boat with them, or, almost as bad, the spider monkeys could shit on them. They were moving fast enough that the breeze cooled them. They could still hear the birds singing in the jungle, the chatter of the monkeys playing amid the vines. De Santiago could make out the distinct calls of the orange-bellied euphonia and the white-collared swift in the cacophony of singing. Hummingbirds and flycatchers flitted about the trees. This jungle was the home of more bird species than anywhere else on earth, many not even named. He thought of all the times he had spent here with his father as the man pointed out each of them for his son, identifying them by song or by plumage.

  Peaceful times li
ke these were rare. De Santiago needed to get to the next inspection as quickly as he could. But he was hesitant to rush this particular part of the journey. The memories kept flooding back. He was thankful that they had no outboard motor, even if it was for a far more practical reason than merely to allow them to listen to the birds, the monkeys, the hissing of the dugout as it cut through the water. They had expended too much effort hiding the lab for it to be found out, only because the revolution's leader might be in a hurry. Natives used dugouts with paddles here. Outboards drew attention. Might as well enjoy the quiet and listen to the jungle sounds.

  They rounded a long sweeping bend in the river. De Santiago could just make out where the stream joined up with the Rio Napo a little farther down. Its broad brown mass stretched several hundred yards across to the verdant green bank on the other side. De Santiago relaxed. Even if someone spotted them now, he and Guzman were far enough from the lab that there would be no way for anyone to backtrack through the maze of jungle streams behind them and find it.

  There was a rustle from the left bank and several birds shot into the air, out over the broadening river. De Santiago felt the canoe rock as Guzman turned, looked in that direction, then froze. He eyed the shore, spying what caused his bodyguard's reaction. The rifle muzzles were already spitting fire. He rolled the dugout to dump them into the dark water. He saw the slugs drill deep into the canoe bottom, where only a moment before he was sitting. He heard more sizzle as they pimpled the surface of the water.

  He held his breath and went under briefly, then popped up again beside the canoe just as Guzman broke the surface next to him, spluttering. The dugout shielded them from view, but bits and pieces of it were flying off as a flurry of bullets found their mark. It was hardly armor.

  "You all right?" de Santiago shouted.

  "I'm afraid I am hit in the arm," Guzman answered, wincing. "But it is nothing."

  Blood darkened the river water next to him.