Off the Chart. James Hall

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      ‘The sophisticated end,’ Anne said.

      ‘The safe end,’ said Daniel. ‘The smart end.’

      When Daniel hit a target, they usually outnumbered the crew, storming the ship in the dark, half from port, half from starboard, taking the bridge first, subduing the captain. Screaming, threatening, bashing defiant crew members with the butts of the Mac-10s, the AK-47s. In those four weeks they’d clubbed a few to their knees, left some heroes bleeding and broken, but nothing worse. Since she’d joined Daniel and his men, they’d taken everything from eighty thousand gallons of flaxseed oil to fourteen hundred new Toyota ATVs and a container ship full of refrigerators and microwaves, and in all that time they’d not fired a shot. The ships were never armed; the men were sailors, not fighters. Not a single chase at sea, not even a close call.

      Once they disabled the FROM, they handed off the ship, then one of Daniel’s Latin American accomplices piloted the vessel to a friendly port in Colombia or Venezuela, where the goods were unloaded. What happened to the vessel after that was up to his business partners. Sometimes they simply walked away from the unloaded vessel after pocketing their profit. Other times they turned the stolen craft into a phantom ship. Repainted and reflagged it, picked up another load from a legitimate shipping company, sailed away, and promptly docked at a nearby port where they unloaded the goods. Two loads with one ship.

      But Daniel wanted no stake in all that. Hit and run, that was his game. Skim the cream, leave the awkward problem of disposing of the cargo and the ships to others. Even with the camouflage of new papers and new paint, phantom ships were relatively easy targets for the Coast Guard or foreign navy patrols. For Daniel it simply wasn’t worth the risk of being caught aboard a stolen transport ship just to pilfer one bonus load of olive oil.

      It was during the first week in April while their group relaxed at the Gray Ghost Lodge that one afternoon Daniel handed Anne Bonny the latest stack of FROM printouts. In the next two weeks there were fifty-seven ships on their way toward the Caribbean Sea, most of them passing within a hundred miles of their location.

      ‘It’s time you chose,’ he said. ‘You know what we’re looking for.’

      ‘I thought we didn’t hit ships in this part of the Gulf?’

      ‘Just this once,’ he said. ‘It couldn’t hurt.’

      ‘Well, I’m not ready to pick the ship.’

      ‘Oh, you’re ready.’

      Daniel had already shown her the access codes to break into the FROM site, made her practice the steps till she could slip inside in less than ten minutes. Treating her with respect, a business partner on equal footing with him, not simply his lover. So Anne took the stack of papers and went out to the tiki hut beside the lagoon and for an hour she studied the printouts.

      ‘The Rainmaker,’ she told Daniel later in their cabin.

      ‘And why that one?’

      ‘I liked the name.’

      Sal Gardino and Marty Messina looked on in silence.

      ‘You like the name. Oh, come on, Anne. Be serious.’

      ‘Four or five of these meet our conditions,’ she said. ‘Cargo’s roughly equivalent in value, all headed through the Yucatán Channel to New Orleans or Galveston, an easy shot from here, all with about the same number of crew, so everything being equal, I picked a name I liked. The Rainmaker, like some old Indian chief chanting for the skies to open up. The end of a long drought.’

      Sal Gardino smiled, but Marty Messina, who’d been standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, grimaced and stalked away.

      Marty was a beefy man in his late thirties who only a few months before had been released from prison after serving a six-year term for running drugs for Daniel. Before Marty went to trial, the DEA offered him full immunity, witness protection, a lifetime pension, if he’d inform on the Salbones. But he hung tough, served his time, and came home to Miami expecting, by God, to be Daniel’s chief lieutenant, a role Anne was already filling.

      From their first meeting, when he realized the situation, Marty was bitterly polite, all smiles, ‘yes, ma’am, no, ma’am,’ but he was a lousy actor. He damn well wanted to claim his rightful place. To appease Marty, Daniel had assigned Messina the role of maintaining their foreign contacts and cultivating new ones. Though it was a crucial part of the operation, Marty didn’t seem particularly satisfied.

      Daniel studied the data on the Rainmaker, humming to himself.

      ‘She’s a quick study,’ said Sal.

      ‘Crude oil,’ Daniel said. ‘We’ll have to find a buyer right away.’

      ‘Guy in Buenos Aires,’ said Sal. ‘With the new refinery. Or the Texan.’

      ‘You want to make the call, Anne? Negotiate the numbers?’

      ‘That’s Marty’s job.’

      ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Marty, have him look around, see who’s thirsty. We’ll have to off-load at sea.’

      ‘Still, it should be easier to get rid of than that damn flaxseed oil.’

      He paged through the printouts a moment more, then smiled at her.

      ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’s the one. Excellent choice, Anne. The Rainmaker. Now, you know how it’s done. If something ever happens to me.’

      Daniel smiled, but there was a shadow lurking in the depths of his blue eyes as if he’d sensed already what no one else had, the gleaming missile on its downward arc.

      ‘Oh, come on,’ Anne said. ‘This is safer than waitressing. Restaurant work, there’s a truly perilous career. Never know what dangerous characters you’re going to run across.’

      Sal Gardino stood up, nodded his approval, and left.

      ‘One more year,’ Daniel said when Sal was gone. ‘Six months if we’re lucky. Then we call it a day.’

      ‘You’re worried about something?’

      ‘Not worried, no. It’s just that my perspective on risk and danger has changed lately. Having someone I care about.’

      ‘If you’re really worried, we could stop now.’

      ‘Do you want that, Anne?’

      ‘What do you want?’

      He looked at her for a moment, then turned back to the stack of papers.

      ‘Six more months, we’ll never have to dirty our hands again.’

      ‘And then?’

      ‘And then we can retire to this lovely spot.’

      ‘Live in the jungle.’

      ‘Build your dream house, a tropical bungalow, whatever you want. It’s perfect here. Wild parrots, fantastic fishing. Like the Keys, only more pristine. Not to mention СКАЧАТЬ