Coincidence - Alan May [64]
Rob, a fifteen-year veteran of the Washington, D.C. office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, had been afraid he’d reached a dead end on this one. He shook his head in disbelief as he listened to Jim’s account of a “possible drug heist” in Colombia—an account that dovetailed perfectly with the apparently unsolvable heist that his contacts in Cali had enlisted his help on. Everything fit: the timing, the location, the twenty bales of coke. And now, Jim was saying, he knew the location of the cocaine, and, even better, that of the guys who had stolen it.
“If this bosun fellow on the stolen ship is right that the bales are fifty pounds apiece, we’re talking about a street value of more than a hundred million dollars—U.S.,” Jim said. “Quite a haul, eh?”
Quite a haul, indeed, and quite a dangerous situation for those hostages. A floating schoolhouse, Jim had said; could there be any worse scenario? And seven of the students were American. Rob took off his glasses and shut his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. It would take everything he had to avert disaster with this one.
Half a minute later, the glasses were back in place and he was all business again.
Jim Oliver was equally amazed that Rob knew the other half of his story, the part he knew nothing about. He’d figured that Rob, with his DEA contacts worldwide, would be a good ally; that’s why he’d called him, but he sure hadn’t expected this. Rob described the hell that had broken out the week before when the guards transporting the cocaine had not reported in on schedule.
“Caused a huge ruckus in Cali, as you can imagine,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of heads are gonna roll on account of it. But the strangest thing was that there was no trace of the trucks or the guards either; it’s like they just evaporated. Our best guess here is that the guards themselves staged the heist, but how they disposed of the trucks if they made their getaway on your stolen boat, I don’t know. How many hijackers are there, anyway?”
Six, Jim told him, one with a gunshot wound to the leg.
Rob nodded. There had been six guards. That would explain their disappearance, all right, but what the devil had they done with the three trucks?
And if all six had been working together, how the devil had one of them ended up with a bullet hole in his leg?
24
Dave Cameron stood on deck with his lesson planner in his hand. Leafing through page after page devoted to the history and ecology of Easter Island—Rapa Nui, in the native language—he stopped suddenly and stared intently at page forty-two, a detailed account of the Moai, the famed giant statues, some with long ears, some with short, erected so mysteriously centuries ago by the primitive inhabitants of the island.
Although anyone looking at him would have assumed he was thoroughly engrossed in his studies, he was in fact keeping one eye on the transom of the Coincidence, hoping to get a sign from Mac that he was all right. Dave had noticed immediately that the miniblinds on the towed boat had been shut, which Mac surely would have done, but had seen no sign of the bosun. Which of course was what was supposed to happen. The fewer signs of life over there, the better. And yet Dave couldn’t shake the feeling that something could be disastrously wrong.
Suppose the hijackers were not being entirely honest with them? Why would anyone expect hijackers to be honest? Suppose there were not six hijackers, but seven, and one had stayed behind on the Coincidence to guard the cocaine and to thwart any attempt at funny business by the Inspiration crew? And, supposing that were the case, would Mac be more useful to them dead or alive?
Dave turned to the next page of his planning book, the one that dealt with Easter Island as an exemplar of ecological disaster, with strong and frightening