The Minoan Cipher (A Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins Adventure Book 2) Page 7

  Leonidas experienced a moment of clarity. He cursed himself for the dumb stunt he just pulled. He’d wasted a damned missile that should have been used on the boat.

  Crap. Things cost a fortune. He reloaded the launcher and fired the third Spike into the hull, intending to send the boat to the bottom. Nothing happened except for a lot of smoke and fire. He picked up the last Spike, the one he’d been saving to use on Hawkins, and sent it off after the others.

  More smoke and flames. It seemed forever before the boat slowly listed at a forty-five degree angle. Water poured into the hull. The bow sank lower. The stern rose in the air at a sharp angle, as the boat slid into the sea leaving behind nothing more than foam and bubbles.

  Leonidas snatched up a pair of binoculars and surveyed the debris and oil slick created from ruptured fuel tanks. The thick cloud of smoke swirling above the water hampered visibility.

  Still no sign of Hawkins.

  He squinted at the sky. Sheets of ashy clouds were moving in to blot out the sun. The wind had freshened and was whipping the greasy waves into whitecaps. The job had taken longer than he expected. The dope was making him fidgety. With stiff winds and rain on its way, it was doubtful Hawkins would last the night after he came to the surface. Leonidas was eager to get paid. He was hungry and the high was wearing off. To him, all of these facts together made the job complete.

  Starting the engine, he set off for Cadiz at top speed. As he entered the harbor, he recited the alphabet. Then he counted to ten, putting an exaggerated crispness into his voice. Hardly any slurring. Not bad. All those acting lessons came in handy. He punched in a number on his phone.

  Salazar answered right away. “Go ahead,” said the unmistakable mellifluous voice.

  “It’s done.”

  “Details.”

  “The boat is at the bottom of the sea with everyone on it.”

  “You’re 100 percent certain of that? Everyone.”

  “There’s nothing left of the ship except for floating debris. Guess that seals our deal, Mr. Salazar.”

  “Not quite. You’ll be paid your fee as soon as the authorities confirm the loss of the boat and its passengers.”

  Salazar hung up. Leonidas held the phone to his ear and listened to the dial tone for a few seconds before he clicked off. He always stuck around after a hit, even when it was dangerous, to make sure his targets were dead. He hadn’t in this case and that nagged at him. Finally, looking forward to a nice evening of lust with Isabel, Leonidas shrugged his shoulders. He was 99 percent certain Hawkins was dead, and that would have to do, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something had gone horribly wrong.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Falstaff wasn’t designed to peel off like a fighter plane breaking out of attack formation. But that’s what Hawkins was asking it to do. He yanked the joystick over and gave the right vertical thruster all the power he could.

  The submersible rolled into a forty-five degree angle. Hawkins hoped the move would get them out of the way of the Sancho Panza, but the boat clipped Falstaff—a glancing blow, before continuing its plunge to the bottom.

  Falstaff bounced off the hull like a ping-pong ball off a paddle. Hawkins struggled to control the yaw. The vehicle rolled to the left, catapulting him out of the pilot’s seat. His shoulder slammed against the inside wall of the sphere. The submersible swung violently the other way. He was about to land on Kalliste, who’d been similarly tossed about. Swiveling his body to the side in an attempt to avoid crushing her, he was thrown against the sphere once again.

  Falstaff went into a tumbling free fall, rolled two more times then hit bottom. The soft sand absorbed some of the impact. The submersible bounced once more, then abruptly came to rest almost right-side-up against the hull of the ancient ship.

  Hawkins and Kalliste lay in a heap in the darkened globe. As soon as he caught his breath, he wiggled his fingers and toes, disentangled himself and called her name. She groaned in response.

  “Try to move,” he said.

  He heard a rustling, and mutterings that sounded more like anger than pain.

  “Everything works,” Kalliste said. “What about you?”

  “Shoulder got banged up. Nothing broken.”

  He groped under the pilot seat for a flashlight and switched it on, keeping the beam low to avoid blinding Kalliste. Her face was about a foot from his. She brushed the hair away from her eyes and looked around. “What the hell happened?”

  “The Sancho Panza sank and hit us on its way down.”

  She snapped out of her daze. “The shadow coming from above? My God! The captain and his son. Rodriguez. They must have been killed. How could this have happened?” She paused.

  “Those loud thuds we heard were explosions.”

  “The boat couldn’t—wait, did you say explosions?”

  “The ship must have been attacked. We can’t do anything about that. We have to help ourselves.”

  He cupped his hands around the light to minimize reflection and held it close to the cabin wall. After moving the light back and forth several times, he sat down again.

  “Remember that trouble we had finding the wreck? Well, it found us this time. We’re leaning up against the hull.”

  “Will we be able to get back to the surface?”

  “Looks that way. The lights in the control panel are glowing. We still have power. The fathometer dial shows us at two-hundred-forty-seven feet. Both lateral thrusters work. The one on the left side seems okay. The right must have been knocked off in the collision. Pumps that regulate the pontoons are in working order, though. I could eject water from them and give Falstaff the buoyancy needed to make the ascent, and then level off using the remaining thruster.”

  “But that presents another problem. We won’t have a support ship.”

  “Got that covered. Remember the fishing boats we passed on the way in? We’ll call for help.”

  He rummaged in a gear bag and pulled out what looked like a hand radio. The device would broadcast an SOS and their position. He handed the transmitter and flashlight to Kalliste and began to work the controls. The hum of the pontoon pumps was like music to his ears. Even more encouraging was the submersible’s slight rocking motion as it gained buoyancy and lifted off the bottom.

  Falstaff rose a few feet and came to a thumping stop under the ship’s overhang. Using alternate bursts from the lateral thrusters, he wriggled the submersible free. He ran the good thruster in reverse to balance off the loss of the other, and Falstaff began a wobbling ascent.

  “Hang in there. We’re going to be okay,” he said.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Kalliste said.

  She pointed the flashlight at their feet. The beam reflected off sparkling ripples. Hawkins leaned over and stuck his hand into frigid water that was only a couple of inches deep, but flowing in fast. He had designed Falstaff to be as watertight as humanly possible. His computations never took into account being T-boned by a salvage ship.

  “The impact must have cracked a seal,” he said.

  “What can we do?”

  “Keep moving. Try to stay ahead of the leak.”

  “I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but even if we get to the surface the submersible will sink under us.”

  “I’ll blow the pontoons. There should be enough buoyancy to keep us afloat until help arrives.”

  It would be a tight squeeze. The cold water was lapping at their shins by the time the fathometer marked them at the one-hundred-fifty-foot mark. He gritted his chattering teeth and kept his eyes glued to the dial.

  One hundred feet.

  Kalliste was using every ounce of stubbornness in her body, but the cold was eating away at her resolve. Hypothermia was setting in. Hawkins was shivering, and her teeth were clacking.

  “Matt, the water is at my knees.” Her voice held a panicked edge.

  “Promise me something, Kalliste.”

  “Yes. Anything,” she said through chattering lips.

&n
bsp; “That we’ll have dinner together back in Cadiz.”

  She turned to Hawkins in the pale light, incredulous at his calm grin even with the prospect of death staring him in the face.

  “I can’t believe I’m here with a crazy man. Yes, of course we’ll have dinner.” She brushed the hair out of her face again. “But I will have to look better than I look now.”

  Hawkins placed his arm around her shoulders.

  “You look like a Greek goddess.”

  “Oh!” she said.

  Her startled reaction had nothing to do with his attention. Falstaff had popped to the surface where it was lifted high by a swell and dropped back down between the angry waves.

  By then, the water was at waist-level.

  And all around them was darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hawkins had switched on the Mayday transmitter but he knew that help could be hours, possibly days, away.

  Falstaff bobbed in two-foot-high seas and the sphere was half-full of seawater causing a shift in the center of gravity. The submersible was inherently unstable on the surface because of the weight of the batteries behind the passenger space. The rocking motion created even more waves inside the sphere, making it look like wine being swished around in a glass.

  Seconds after the pontoons emptied, the submersible tilted over backwards. The control panel lights blinked out. The water was under their chins. The choices were stark.

  They could drown now, or crawl out of the submersible and drown in minutes. Hawkins figured he had been living on borrowed time since the explosion in Afghanistan that had nearly ended his life. But he felt bad for Kalliste, whose only offense against the sea was to uncover one of its long-held secrets.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

  “Out to where?” Kalliste said.

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  Doing his best to stand up in the small, curved space, Hawkins undid the clasps holding the hatch in place and boosted Kalliste through the opening. Crawling out beside her, they clung to the battery housing as the sea sloshed through the hatch opening and the submersible’s angle grew more pronounced.

  “I’m slipping off!” Kalliste shouted.

  Hawkins held onto the housing with one hand and reached down with the other. He could barely bend his cold fingers, but he managed to grab her wrist, stopping her descent into the ocean. The waves pulled at her feet. He didn’t have the strength to haul her back up onto the sphere. His arm was being yanked from its socket, but he ignored the pain and summoned his last reserve of strength.

  “Climb!” he yelled.

  “Wha—?”

  “Climb out of the water or we’re gonna have to postpone that dinner.”

  She managed a garbled reply. “You’re crazy!” Given the insanity of their situation he probably would have agreed. Especially after he heard a voice in the darkness shouting their names.

  “Matt! Kalliste!” They were suddenly bathed in light. The voice called out again. “Hold on! For God sakes, don’t let go!”

  The light become brighter as it moved closer and was within a couple of feet of the rolling sphere when Hawkins lost his hold on the housing. He and Kalliste slid off into the sea and went under the waves. Hawkins still had his fingers locked around Kalliste’s wrist in a death grip. Using a combination of kicks, and wild thrashing with his free arm, he got her back to the surface.

  The voice again. Nearer this time.

  “Swim! Swim!”

  Another voice joined in.

  “Over here! Come!”

  Kalliste started to slip below the surface. Hawkins grabbed her around the waist and flailed in a clumsy attempt to swim.

  Hands reached down, grabbed Kalliste under the arms and lifted her into the darkness behind the blinding light. He heard his name called again. He reached out. As he felt the strong grip around his wrists, Hawkins rose from the sea, his body slithering over a rubbery wet surface. There was the sound of a zipper being closed.

  Hawkins lay next to Kalliste inside an enclosed life raft. He wiped water from his eyes and in the light of an electric torch, the faces of Captain Santiago and his son Miguel came into focus.

  “You’re okay now,” the captain said.

  Kalliste accepted Miguel’s offer of a jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. The jacket was wet, but it at least offered some insulation.

  “How did you find us?” she said through clacking teeth.

  The captain said, “We are floating around inside the life raft when I hear voices. Someone talking about dinner. So I open the door and shine the light. There you are on the big bubble.”

  “I thought you had gone down with the boat,” Hawkins said.

  “Close,” Miguel said. Fear danced in his eyes.

  His father nodded. “We’d be dead if we were in the pilot house. Miguel called me down to the deck to help him. We launched the life raft before the Panza went down.”

  “What happened to Rodriguez?”

  “He disappeared,” the captain said. “One second he is running back and forth on the stern. The next, he is gone. Lots of blood.”

  Hawkins remembered the suspicious call Rodriguez had made before they were hit.

  “Too bad,” he said. “I would have liked to talk to him. I’m sorry for the loss of your boat, Captain.”

  “Thank you. As the great Cervantes said, ‘Those who play with cats must expect to be scratched.’ I have worked on the sea for many years without a scratch. It was inevitable that the ocean would show her claws one day.”

  “I turned on my Mayday broadcaster,” Hawkins said. “Help should be here in a while.”

  The son cocked his hand behind his ear. Audible above the slosh of waves against the raft was the low grumble of engines. Then the raft was bathed in the glare of a floodlight.

  A grin came to Santiago’s lips. “No, Mr. Hawkins,” he said. “Help is here now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Spanish Coast Guard cutter plucked the survivors from the life raft a few minutes later. The refugees from the Sancho Panza each enjoyed long, scalding showers before heating their insides with hot soup. Wearing jeans and shirts on loan from the friendly crew, they climbed into a shuttle van back in Cadiz. The vehicle drove the captain and his son home and dropped Matt and Kalliste at a hotel where she had reserved rooms for them to use as a base. They crawled into her king-size bed with their clothes on and slept soundly until they were awakened by the telephone.

  It was Captain Santiago calling. The cutter’s captain had radioed his superiors, reporting that a government official named Rodriguez was missing and presumed dead. A police officer named Garcia had called Santiago asking to speak with everyone who’d been on the boat. Santiago had suggested the hotel for the meeting.

  Kalliste had kept her suitcase in the room and had fresh clothes to change into. Hawkins had lost his bag when the salvage boat sank. He was still in his borrowed Coast Guard clothes and hadn’t shaved, when he and Kalliste joined the Santiago’s to, hopefully, find out more information about what on earth had happened the night before.

  Sergeant Garcia signaled with a wave of a hand for them to take their seats. The sergeant was a big man, with most of his bulk centered in his substantial girth, a product of too many stakeouts and not enough exercise. He was tall as well, more than six feet in height. Simply sitting at the table in the hotel conference room, he presented an imposing figure. He often used his formidable physique to intimidate those he interrogated. With others, he took the opposite tact, beguiling them with his sympathetic tone and large brown eyes. He wasn’t sure how he would proceed with this group.

  The father and son were Spaniards. They were respectful in answering his questions, although the older man’s deference seemed less than sincere. The American scientist had not been the timid academic Garcia expected. He was built like a longshoreman. His level gaze had an unnerving hardness that didn’t match the smile he wore on his unshaven
face.

  The Greek woman was attractively middle-aged. In another setting, he would have flirted as well as questioned her. But she had displayed a quick temper after he’d asked for her version of events the third time. It was a routine police procedure; have a witness repeat his or her story and look for discrepancies, but her patience had run out.

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “We have told you the story twice already.”

  “But you may have missed something.”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Sergeant Garcia, you have two…ears, and I think there is a brain resting somewhere between them, so you have heard what I have to say and presumably have understood me by now.”

  Garcia had been embarrassed since childhood by his prominent ears and wore his black hair long to disguise them. He wagged his forefinger at the Greek.

  “This is a serious matter.”

  Lowering her head like a charging bull, she wagged back.

  “Then I suggest you bring in someone who does not need stories repeated again and again like an idiot child.”

  Which was when Hawkins intervened. Speaking in a quiet voice, he said, “Excuse me, Sergeant Garcia. May I make a suggestion?”

  The raised fingers remained poised. Eyes were locked.

  “What sort of suggestion?”

  “We’ve gone through an exhausting ordeal and may not be as calm and patient as we normally would be. Maybe you could just ask questions about areas that concern you.”

  Garcia wasn’t about to yield. And neither was the stubborn Greek. Hawkins must have seen the need for dramatic intervention because he turned to the captain. “To quote the great Cervantes….” He raised his eyebrows as a cue.

  Captain Santiago smiled. Spreading his arms wide, he declared, “As the great Cervantes said, ‘honesty is the best policy.’ ”

  Kalliste and Garcia stared at the beatific smile on the captain’s face, then slowly lowered their fingers.