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“Permission to board granted,” he said, waving them on.
Everything was all set up, the rods and reels, the charts. Even fishing licenses for all of them had been provided in case there was some kind of problem.
Vida stayed with Scanlon up in the flying bridge as they cast off. The American completely ignored her as he piloted the boat, humming to himself as he checked his charts and the compass on the computer in front of him. She wondered how many runs like this he had done for the cartel. This wasn’t his first. She was sure of that.
They met other sportfishers as they headed for the mouth of the marina. One of them, carrying a party of what looked like female college-volleyball players, hailed Scanlon with a horn blast. Scanlon honked back twice, laughing merrily.
“Enjoying yourself?” Vida said coldly.
“Siempre,” Scanlon told her with a wink. “Always.”
That makes one of us, Vida thought, grasping the cool railing of the bobbing ship and trying to keep down the churning contents of her stomach.
CHAPTER 41
SCANLON CUT THE ENGINES when they were eleven miles out. He went down and started setting the baits on the sea rods and parceling them out to the men.
“That won’t be necessary,” Vida told him, still up on the flying bridge.
“No?” Scanlon said skeptically, looking up at her. “Coast Guard has drones now, sweetie. Attached to them are cameras that can see through your pants and count the dimples on your ass from five miles up. What do you imagine the Coasties are going to think if they see your buddies here, out on this fishing boat, standing around?”
“Fine,” Vida said, checking her watch. She went back to scanning the horizon with her
binoculars.
“You’re sure we’re in the right place?” she said.
“As if my life depended on it,” the captain said as he showed Eduardo how to cast.
The ship came into view from the south a little over an hour later. It was huge, a Handymax-class oil tanker, its rust-streaked black hull two football fields long from stem to stern. There wasn’t anyone visible on its deck. It was flying a Guatemalan flag.
This is it, Vida thought. It has to be.
She thought the ship would stop, but it didn’t even slow as it passed, about a hundred yards from the starboard side of the fishing boat. She craned her neck up at the deck.
Shouldn’t there be someone up there? Or is this the right ship?
The ship passed on. As the fishing boat bobbed in the tanker’s swell, Vida scanned the choppy surface to see if something had been tossed from the opposite side. But there was nothing.
Scanlon was opening the cooler on the deck below when she placed the barrel of the Walther to the leathery back of his red, sun-beaten neck.
“What is this?” she said. “Where is it? You brought us to the wrong place.”
Scanlon, unfazed by the gun, cracked his can of Bud as he slowly turned around. “Why would I bring you to the wrong place?”
“To double-cross us,” Vida said. “We weren’t given the coordinates. Only you were. You bring us here, to some bullshit point, then send another boat to the correct spot to grab the shipment for yourself.”
Scanlon laughed and swigged his beer.
“Lady, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Listen, Perrine and I go way, way back. We got drunk together in Paris at a NATO thing back when I was a SEAL. Ask around. Your buddies on the ship got spooked or tipped off or something, OK? I’ve been doing this shit for twenty years. It happens all the time. We go back to shore. You call your people. You’ll be —”
“Ahhh!” someone yelled behind him.
The men were crowded at the back of the boat, yelling at one another.
“What happened?” Vida asked, rushing up.
“Eduardo!” one of them said. “He was sitting there a second ago, and then I don’t know what happened. It seemed like something pulled him into the water!”
