The Skeleton Coast Contract, page 12
I was astonished that he could read so much into the signal and pleased too, because it fitted an idea I had.
“Look, mynheer,” said. “Could you contact a clandestine station down the coast, on c.w.? It is small but will be standing by.”
The operator nodded, shoved his wheeled chair across the radio shack with one leg and, when I gave him the frequency and call letters, flipped more switches and began to rap deftly on his radio-telegraph key. He repeated the call letters twice, waited and listened, and flicked on the speaker overhead.
A fast Morse run, sent by a less sure fist than his, rashed through the speaker, then went off the air abruptly. The Dutch operator clacked his key off and cut the switches; wheeled around to face the captain and me, taking off his headset.
“Your Lüderitz contact, sir. He acknowledged, but when I asked if he was standing by, ready to receive and transmit, he said he would monitor us. But please do not call him unless it was absolutely necessary. Whoever was sending has a very nervous fist and went off without repeating his station signal.”
“Thank you,” I said. And, turning to the captain, “Sir, could I send Hans here a bottle of Bols. He’s been very helpful.”
The weather-beaten captain, bulky in his pea jacket and short-brimmed cap with faded braid, nodded without enthusiasm. “You could, yes. But this whole radio shack is a camouflaged bar. Hans has more liquor hidden in here than I have in the whole Ship’s Stores.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and as we turned out of the radio room the one-legged operator winked at me.
I went below to my cabin and had several drinks with Alan. He left to return to the radio room. Elbe was putting out to international waters, and as I flipped off the light over my bunk her high bow was pitching. I slept for several hours before Blanchard awakened me, and we went down the companionway and up to the radio shack again. The tug was hove to, pitching on the dark water.
It was less than five minutes before two A.M., local South-West African time. The radio operator was not in his shack, but the tiny bedroom next to it was lighted. I called and we were invited in. Hans had another wheeled chair in the smaller room, and Blanchard and I edged in and sank down gingerly on the edge of his bunk. The captain had been right; the radio operator had an electric heater going and a bar wide open.
The bar was chain-lowered across from his bunk, and held every conceivable type of mixer, blender, and ice-grinder. Set into the metal bulkhead wall were shelves that held bottles from every port in the world. The one-legged operator mixed us two Bloody Marys, about half a pint each, featuring fresh lime juice, Russian vodka, and a sprinkling of paprika.
When we had tasted them and nodded enthusiastically, Hans flipped his mobile chair around and went speeding past us into the radio room. There was no obstructing bulkhead to stop him. Alan and I sat where we were, crowded together in the little bedroom cabin, and listened to the Voice of America come on the air. Peking had charged, through the New Chinese News Agency, that another U.S. espionage drone plane had been shot down over Urumchi, and that another Chinese merchant vessel had been hit in Haiphong, with a loss of forty-eight lives…
Blanchard sipped his Bloody Mary and glanced at me. I didn’t glance back. Then, toward the tail end of the news broadcast, a line was dropped in: Elements of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Rear Admiral Kenneth Overby commanding, are holding exercises off the southern Angolan coast.…
I finished my Bloody Mary. Heard the Voice of America go to a soothing announcement of some sort, and an obviously distrait young lady began faulting herself because poor Billy Joe had thrown something off the Tala-hatchie Bridge. Frigging shame, I thought. First they heaved a foetus into the stream, and the poor fellow finally became so perplexed that he threw himself after it…
“Hans?” I called.
“Ya?”
“See if you can wake up that Lüderitz station. And don’t let them slip off the air on you. This is the message: Is Durnburg still missing?”
“Okay.” Blanchard and I heard his chair squeal across the narrow radio room, and the key begin chattering. Hans had not turned on the overhead receiver, so Alan and I sipped our fiery drinks and waited.
The Dutch operator stopped sending with a flourish and was silent. After a few minutes he rapped at his telegraphic key again and began to type rapidly on the machine beside his console. Then he rapped off on the key. I heard the sheet of paper being ripped out of his typewriter, and he came wheeling in to hand it to me.
DURNBURG MISSING, UNREPORTED FOR SEVENTEEN HOURS. THREE PLANELOADS OFFICIALS AND SECURITY OFFICERS ALREADY ARRIVED HERE AND LUDERITZ ROADS AND HARBOR BLOCKADED. CURFEW GENERAL POPULATION IMPOSED AND SOUTH AFRICAN TROOPS BEING FLOWN IN. ALL NATIVES CONFINED TO COMPOUNDS. SAME REGULATIONS WILL SOON APPLY TO ORANJEMUND, WALVIS BAY, AND SWAKOPMUND. TWENTY-EIGHT SOUTH AFRICAN AIR FORCE PLANES HAVE ARRIVED AND WILL BEGIN PATROLLING ENTIRE SKELETON COAST AT FIRST LIGHT. NO MORE TRANSMISSIONS FROM THIS STATION FOR INDEFINITE PERIOD PLEASE DO NOT CALL AGAIN.
I finished my drink and put the tankard on Hans’ narrow bar shelf. “All right, now we need a radiotelephone communication. To the flagship of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Saratoga, somewhere out beyond us in the Atlantic.”
Hans took the frequency, adjusted his dials, and called me. I moved into the radio room and took the hand microphone from him.
“Hello, Saratoga,” I said. “This is Blackjack. Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Blackjack,” said the speaker. “Say on.”
“I need to speak to Overby,” I said, and there was a short, astonished pause. You do not wake admirals up at that time of night. Always it was the same. Exasperated, I repeated, “This is Blackjack calling Overby. Please respond.”
Reluctantly the voice said they were sending a messenger for Admiral Overby.
Hans had mixed three more of the lethal Bloody Marys. I thanked him for mine and put it down on the edge of the console. The radio operator motioned at the speaker overhead, asking in pantomime if he should cut it out. I nodded and he plugged in a headset and settled it over my ears.
“Overby here,” said a crisp voice.
“Sir, the bird we are seeking has flown offshore but not far. His burden is transmitting on our plants, without his knowledge. Presumably he will attempt to transfer the prize to a vessel beyond the international limit. We believe the Consolidated diamond-dredging ship Durnburg has been hijacked and that the prize is aboard. If I give you the frequency on which the bird is located, can you deploy your elements to prevent it from breaking out to sea? In a cordon?”
“It’s a big ocean, mister,” came the answer. “I’ll have to have a lot more definite information before I can move my ships.”
“Understandable, sir. But will you first ask all your radar units to see if they have a stable signal on one-two-seven-five crystal?”
“Right.” He clicked off, and I had a sip of the fresh Bloody Mary. The Dutch radio operator had wheeled his seat up next to me, and Blanchard was leaning against the outside bulkhead door. The tug pitched in the open sea.
My earphones crackled again. “Overby to Blackjack. All my fleet units report a steady signal on this frequency. We place it about a hundred and twenty miles below you. It seems to be a mechanical transmission. Overby out.”
“Right,” I said. “Can you confine this signal? Putting your units down the coast and radaring anything that looks like a transfer ship?”
“No, sir, I can’t,” snapped the admiral. “I cannot commit anything under my command into South African coastal waters. Neither can I stop and interrogate every filthy Durban freighter that might be chugging toward Liverpool. But I can keep monitoring the frequency and cordoning the coast. And will inform you if the signal seems to shift. Over.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “We are tracking now and hope to close on it. Would it change things if we could prove hijacking and piracy on the high seas?”
“Of course,” said Admiral Overby, and his carrier wave snapped off abruptly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The diamond-mining ship Durnburg was a huge, seagoing barge. She was high-sided, self-powered, and 980 feet long, the only craft of her kind in the world. Twin-sterned, she had quarters for five hundred workers at one end and officers’ quarters at the other. Because she habitually worked off beaches with waves fifteen to twenty-five feet high breaking on them, Dumburg had eight extendable legs similar to the ones on ocean drilling rigs, and a like number of anchors. From her belly a two-footwide rubber hose vacuumed the sea bottom, spewing the debris it found onto conveyor systems that fed filter screens.
Her last working station, from which she was now missing, had been outside Marais Bay. The mining ship did not have enough power to be navigating off the Skeleton Coast at night, and I was convinced that she had been seized and that the stolen ton of diamonds was aboard her. But how were the stones to be taken off? Rendezvous at sea? I didn’t think Durnburg could survive that.
One thing was clear. Whatever was planned had to be done quickly, or the South African Government would have the whole coast bristling with naval vessels. I asked Captain Brinker to track toward the signal we were getting from the diamond tins at flank speed, and almost immediately the big tug quickened in the water. Blacked-out, she went heeling around to the south, her high sheer smashing through black waves.
I stood for an hour on the port bridge, leaning on the spray-dampened rail and watching the heaving sea. There was a moon, but its pale radiance got through the broken overcast only fitfully. Inside the dimly lighted wheelhouse the captain was standing rooted behind the helmsman and the big spoked wheel. The Dutch skipper was not a fearful man, but he was aware of the folly involved in driving so hard through unfamiliar waters while showing no running lights.
Four hours later I was in the galley sipping hot coffee, when Alan Blanchard came dropping down the iron stairway. “Sparks says we’re right on top of this signal, Pappy. He can’t get a fix, of course, but figures we’re only a few miles off the transmitters.”
“Okay. Go tell the captain, please. Ask him to reduce speed sharply but keep tracking. Then come down to my cabin, okay?”
Blanchard nodded and went swarming back up the ladder. His broad face was quickened, as it always was when he smelled danger. Well, he was about to get a bellyfull of it. When he entered my cabin, I was already in the heavy black rubber suit with the built-in flippers. The rancher-playboy threw up his hands and said, “Bless Patty! Not in this goddamned freezing water?”
“Too true,” I said. “Get into yours and come back. We’ll have a belt before we go up to the wheelhouse.”
While he was gone I drew a sketch of Durnburg, stressing the placement of its anchors and sea legs, both extended and drawn up into the ship. Alan came back down the corridor, flippers slapping at the metal floor, and we had the drink and stood staring at each other like deformed seals with human heads. As we went into the corridor, holding our rubber head coverings and faceplates, Elbe hove to. Still making way but not under power. And as we ducked into the wheelhouse her engines reversed and stopped her, pitching in the water.
“She’s dead ahead, mister,” said Captain Brinker. “About a quarter of a mile away. I can’t make her out too well, even with the night glasses, but she must be the mining ship. I never saw a conformation like hers in all the years I have spent at sea.”
“One of a kind, Captain. Can we go into the chart room?” He nodded and followed me into the small, lighted cubicle. I put my sketch of Durnburg on the glass over the charts and maps, and jabbed at it with the pencil on the string. Explaining that Blanchard and I wanted to swim to the huge barge with light lines, then hook up two of Elbe’s towing lines. When the main lines were secured, I wanted him to haul Durnburg onto a remote stretch of beach. Here, above Lüderitz. Could he do it?
“You secure the lines, mister,” said the Dutch skipper slowly, “and I can take her into New York or Port of London. But that’s a bit of work you’ve cut out for you and your friend. We can string a communications wire with the light line, but securing even a simple grapnel hook under these conditions, underwater, is a rough operation.”
“I understand that,” I said. “Show me where they ought to go.”
The Dutchman studied the sketch. When he asked if it mattered whether Durnburg was damaged by the towing process, I said no. He pointed at two of the telescoped sea legs. Not the two at the near end but the next pair, on opposite sides.
“You must not secure the hooks too low,” he cautioned, “or I will pull those legs out when I take a strain. Up here, so, as near the plating as possible.”
I nodded, and in half an hour Blanchard and I jumped into the heaving black water from the starboard side of the tug, abaft its beam. The light lines were hooked to loops in the back of our rubber suits. On the way down to the water, I waved a black-gloved hand to Alan and eased into a comfortable kicking crawl-stroke about ten feet below the surface. That proved not deep enough, since wave motion was still reaching me, so I lowered another ten feet and went hitch-kicking on.
After surfacing twice to orient myself, I went back down and finally passed under Durnburg’s flat bottom. The mining barge was pitching and heaving because she had not been built for open seas. Without the high sides she would have been shipping tons of water. Gliding back toward the twin screws, I surfaced beside them and found Blanchard clinging to one of the propeller shafts.
I stayed several feet away from him, and we checked our light lines to be sure they had not become fouled. Then, when I pointed toward the starboard side, Alan nodded and went planing toward port. When I had located the second telescoped sea leg, I braced myself around it and activated the throat mike by pressing on it through the rubber covering.
“Number One,” I said. “In place.”
“Take your line in, please,” answered the Dutch-accented voice, and I hauled away at the nylon strand. For what seemed an eternity I kept reeling it in, pausing once to ask, “Is Number Two in place?”
“Yes,” answered Elbe.
The line grew progressively heavier, and my arms were aching and I was sweating under the tight rubber suit when a two-foot-long steel grapnel hook attached to a thick hawser reeled into my hands. Unhooking the knife at my waist, I slashed the light line free from it and snapped the hook around the steel sea leg, where its housing entered the hull of Durnburg. It should have helped me to know that the progress of the heavier line had been assisted all the way by surface flotation buoys, but it didn’t. My shoulders felt like I had hauled the heavy bastard all the way from China.
“One secured,” I said into the mike. “What about Two?”
“On and standing by two hundred yards from Durnburg,” reported the tug. “Please rendezvous with him, standing well away from the tow lines.”
I dropped down twenty feet, and began easing my arm muscles by stroking away from the mining barge. When I was at what I judged to be two hundred yards from Durnburg, I surfaced and flashed the wrist light built into my suit in a 180-degree arc. Bobbing on the surface, I could see nothing for a few minutes, and then Alan’s light answered. Not more than forty feet away. When I motioned, he followed me out of the path of the tow lines, and I reported to the tug that we were standing by.
The water where we had been rippled; the small plastic buoys bobbed. The tug was tightening her lines. They broke surface, then took a strain to test the security of the hooks. Alan and I watched them quiver above the surface, going from Elbe in tandem, around the near stem of the mining craft.
“Lines secure,” reported Elbe. “Shall we commence towing?”
“Yes,” I said, depressing the throat mike. As we watched, the hawsers whipped smoothly tight, with the little buoys dangling free of the waves, and we could hear the full-throated roar of the tug’s enormous power plant. Durnburg began to move, following the Dutch tug, and lights flashed on all over her deck. Because of the high sides, we could not see what was happening aboard her, but we could hear the twin screws come to life. They began thrashing wildly, to no effect.
Hauling even a craft of such unusual build was no problem for Elbe. Both vessels were increasing speed, warping toward the distant beach. More lights flashed on board Durnburg, and as I was about to signal Blanchard to swim back toward the tug a strange aircraft dropped out of the night sky and landed on Durnburg’s deck. We had not heard it approach because of the tug’s roaring power plant.
The plane was Huru’s German-built VTOL; it came hovering down slowly. The six-bladed rotors thrashed behind each jet-engine mounting, and the plane dropped out of sight behind the barge’s high sides.
Elbe called me, the operator’s voice tinny inside my rubber headgear. “A plane just landed on Durnburg. Advise.”
“Continue towing,” I said, and motioned to Alan. Pointing toward the mining ship. He nodded and submerged, and in a few minutes I was back clinging to the telescoped sea leg, where I had secured the hook. Blanchard wasn’t in sight, and I hoped he hadn’t gotten fouled in the barge’s propellers; they were still threshing wildly and ineffectually. I depressed the mike button and asked for Alan to join me on the port side. He came gliding over and surfaced beside me.
Our rubber-encased heads were less than two feet apart, but I couldn’t talk to him. So I fed the message back to Elbe for relay. Saying that an attempt would soon be made to cut the towing lines, and that probably the diamond tins were being loaded into the VTOL aircraft. Both of us had to get aboard Durnburg. I would try to stop the loading of the diamonds, and Blanchard was to keep anybody from cutting the tow lines.
We bobbed faceplate to faceplate as I waited until the message had been relayed. When he nodded, I kicked under the water, swam back to the waist of the mining ship, and found the break in the high side where the gangplank was lowered. Heaving up along the folded metal stairs, I got to her deck and crouched in the shadowed companionway.
