Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [129]
“I’m not pulling in to any—”
“No, sir. We will meet at sea. Fair enough?”
“I’ll be traveling a long way—”
“I understand that, sir.”
“—with a lot of money. I trust I won’t be disappointed.”
“You will not, I promise you. Until then.”
“By the time we get there, it will be right around the first of May,” Flacco said. “Even out where he wants to meet, the sea’ll be sweet and calm. Like glass, especially at first light. Anyway, as calm as it ever gets off Oregon; that is one bad coastline, hombre.”
“That’s more than three weeks,” I said. “It’ll take that long?”
“I’m giving us a little margin, just in case of weather, but that’s about right. We looked his ship over, and she’s like new. Perfect. We can carry about thirty-five hundred gallons, cruise around twenty-two knots, and we’re working with a range of maybe four thousand miles. So figure Galveston to Progreso to Panama, maybe a week. Then we go through the Canal to Cabo San Lucas.…”
I gave him a “What?” look.
“That is the tip of Baja, hombre. Me and Gordito, we know it well, don’t we, compadre?”
Gordo just smiled.
“Our next leg is into Dago, then up to San Francisco. Got to allow, oh, two weeks max for that one. Finally, we lay in once we get near the Oregon border. From there, we can hit any spot he picks in two, three hours max.”
“I thought the Panama Canal was only for commercial ships.”
“No way. You pay the freight, they let you ride. We lock it from port to port—Cristobal going in, and we exit at Balboa. Whole trip takes maybe nine, ten hours; nothing to it.”
“How much is the toll?”
“Depends on the size of the ship. The one we got, under five grand, my best guess.”
“And you just drive up and pay the toll, like going over a bridge?”
“No,” Gordo answered. “It is not like that at all, my friend.” He used his fingers to tick off requirements he’d obviously memorized. “We have to radio prior to arrival—ninety-six, seventy-two, forty-eight, and twenty-four hours in front. We make contact on VHF Channel 12, then they find us a working channel to finish up. Then everyone on board needs ID; it’s called a Landing Card. You get those when you hit the first pier. After you pay them.”
“Damn.”
“Oh, there’s more,” he went on. “They’ll want a Quarantine Declaration and one for any cargo, too. A crew-and-passenger list. Lots of stuff. And they can inspect you at any time. So we also need an International Tonnage Certificate with all its calculation sheets attached, Lines Plans for the Offset Tables, mucho paper, man. I don’t know if all that’s on board. It should be—that beauty’s an oceangoer, no question. But they’ll do all the measuring and stuff right there if we want. So long as we—”
“—pay for it,” I finished for him.
“You got it. And when it comes to paper, Gem …”
She nodded. “We have all gone through the Canal before,” she said. “It is no problem.”
It took a half-line in under eight hours.
“You still want to walk that path with me?” I asked him. “Yes.”
“Ever been on a boat?”
“I was a Marine,” he said, as if that answered the question.
I gave him the meet-point in Galveston. “Bring your tools,” I told him. “There’s something we’re going to need to fix.”
“Can you make one, Mole?”
“It would depend on whether the contact point is organic or inorganic.”
“Huh?”
“Wood is organic. Metal or plastic is inorganic.”
“Ah. I don’t know.”
“I would have to make two, then. The simple one is a penetrator. The other would require either a magnet or suction of some sort. How long would it have to remain in place?”
“An hour?”
“Exposed to the elements?”
“Hell, yes. Probably get blasted with salt water all the time.”
“The miniaturization is very simple. But given your limited options for a propellant, and the need for accuracy, both devices would have to be the same external configuration.”
“I guess so.”
“My man can do it,” Michelle said, confidence radiating off her gorgeous face.
The Mole blushed. But he didn’t deny