Free Off the Chart by James W. Hall Page B

you’d do.”
    â€œOkay,” she said. “I’d probably go home.”
    â€œBack to Key Largo.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBack to your brother and your boyfriend?”
    His blue eyes were full of twisting light.
    â€œYou asked me a question, Daniel, I’m trying to be honest. I’d go home, try to resume my life. There is no boyfriend. And I have no desire to see Vic.”
    â€œKey Largo,” he said. “Okay, that’s good. Something ever happens, I’ll find you there. That’s where I’ll come.”
    â€œDaniel? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
    He stared at her for several moments, then said, “I’m sorry, Anne. I’m tensed up, that’s all. I’m sorry I bullied you. Forgive me.”
    â€œOf course,” she said. “Of course.”
    But when he came to her and held her, for the first time since they’d met, the fusion of their bodies, that disappearance of their separate selves she’d come to expect and depend on, did not occur.

    On that steamy April afternoon, the Rainmaker passed through the Pedro Miguel Locks, Gatun Lake, and finally the Gatun Locks, then out of the Panama Canal and into the Caribbean Sea, where she went north on her last leg, following the busiest of several shipping lanes that would take her through the Yucatán Straits, up into the Gulf, then into the Mississippi, headed to the Marathon Oil refinery in Garyville, Louisiana, which was midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. She carried a crew of fourteen.
    Using two of the fishing boats from the Gray Ghost Lodge, Daniel and Anne and their crew shoved off three hours after the Rainmaker passed through the last lock of the Panama Canal. Earlier in the day, Marty Messina had set up the rendezvous with two small tankers based in Barranquilla, providing them a GPS location out in the Colombian Basin where they would converge near dawn tomorrow to off-load the crude before scuttling the ship.
    Their crew was a mixed lot. Five former Sandinista guerrillas, well-armed, quiet men who doubled as Gray Ghost fishing guides in the winter. And there were Pedro and Manuel Cruz, two Cuban brothers from Miami who’d assisted Daniel with various rip-offs at the Port of Miami before he strayed from the family business. Two others had peeled off from Vincent Salbone’s Miami crew: Sal Gardino, the young computer guy, and Marty Messina.
    Two hours after departing the Gray Ghost, they spotted the oil tanker a mile to the east, and for the next hour Daniel in the lead boat and Anne Bonny following with Sal Gardino and three of the Nicaraguans shadowed the Rainmaker as it moved north a hundred miles off the Central American coast. At that distance in their high-powered craft, they could seize the ship, tie up the crew, take her to the designated meeting spot, off-load the crude, and still be back in the maze of estuaries of the Barra de Colorado by the day after tomorrow. Long enough for a watchful owner to become alarmed at losing touch with one of his vessels, but too quick to send help.
    When the sea was clear in every direction, Daniel signaled, and the boats came along opposite sides of the Rainmaker. Hull to hull with the tanker, the men readied the grappling hooks. That part hadn’t changed in hundreds of years, same four-pronged steel hooks.Only difference was that theirs were coated with a rubberized layer to soften the clang when they caught the rail.
    In recent years, as piracy had boomed, shipping companies had begun to install laser devices that sensed boarders climbing over the side. Alarms sounded, decks were flooded with light, and usually the pirates fled. If they didn’t, the tanker’s crew was usually ready with powered-up fire hoses to blow them back over the side.
    But Sal Gardino had researched the Rainmaker ’s specs and her recent maintenance history and was certain she wasn’t equipped with alarms. Once aboard,