“All right, then,” Rodney nodded, satisfied with her answer. “We’ve got the code to create the water effect, the ocean floor, and the aquatic life from our work on The Man from Atlantis. That’s a huge head start, but we’re still going to have to create the lighting effects and build the objects that are illuminated in the debris field and the parts of the rover, like the robot arm, that we’ll see from the camera. That will cost about five to seven hundred thousand dollars, but then you’re going to need a render farm on your boat.”
“What’s a render farm?” Nick asked.
“Basically fifty computers strung together to create a supercomputer capable of generating the interactive virtual world in real time,” Rodney said. “The good news is, you can buy the whole shebang pre-built in a shipping container, with cooling systems and everything, and have it delivered to your door wherever you are. There are a bunch of companies that do it. Figure another two hundred and fifty thousand for that.”
“We’ll need you on the boat with us, to run the show and make sure nothing goes wrong,” Kate said. “The drug lord we’re going after is a sadistic killer. If he discovers he’s being conned, he won’t hesitate to have his men butcher all of us in the most gruesome and painful way possible.”
“In other words,” Rodney said, “my life, and yours, could depend on how convincing my special effects are.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Kate said.
Rodney grinned. “Cool! How could a true special effects artist possibly resist a challenge like that?”
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Kate and Jake met Nick on the yacht in Marina del Rey to go over the fine points of the plan. Nick had set out a mountain of taco salad, a selection of cigars, and an ice-filled tub stocked with beer.
“I’ve found a hundred-and-fifty-foot cargo carrier in a boatyard in Lisbon,” Jake said, relaxing on the flybridge, a beer in one hand and a half-smoked Cohiba Behike in the other. “It was built in the 1980s and is currently registered in Sierra Leone, where there’s only one safety regulation I know of, and it’s more of a suggestion, really. They like the boat to be able to float. But no worries, it’s been refurbished from top to bottom. She has a working crane for the sub, a cargo hold big enough for your container full of computers, is loaded with all the latest electronics, and can hit a top speed of ten knots. It’s a steal at six hundred thousand dollars.”
“What’s the catch?” Kate asked.
“It’s literally a steal,” Jake said. “But nobody is looking for it anymore. The ship was hijacked in the South China Sea twenty years ago and has been repainted, renamed, and reflagged at least a dozen times since. I’ve dealt with this ship broker before on plenty of covert jobs. His word is good. We can leave the boat at the backwater wharf where it’s docked now while Tom does the remodel and builds the sub. Nobody will bother us there.”
“Perfect,” Nick said. “Go to Lisbon and make the deal. There’s a million dollars waiting for you in Barnaby Jones’s bank account at Barclays.”
“Who is Barnaby Jones?” Jake asked.
“You are,” Nick said. “I have a fake passport and credit cards for you in Barnaby’s name.”
“I like the way you operate.”
“Likewise,” Nick said.
Kate inwardly groaned and reached for corn chips. Their little bromance would have been unbearable if not for the food and beer.
“I’ll leave in two days,” Jake said. “I’d go sooner, but I’ve got my colonoscopy tomorrow, and at my age, you want to be sure there’s nothing in the chimney but soot.”
“I’d keep that information on a need-to-know basis,” Kate said. “And believe me, there’s nobody who does. I wish I didn’t.”
“Tom will fly out with you,” Nick said. “He’s never been overseas before, so you’ll have to hold his hand.”
“We have a movie tech genius,” Kate said to Jake. “His name is Rodney Smoot, and he’ll show up after his team in L.A. is done creating the effects. He’ll set up his render farm in the cargo hold. It will be up to you and your guys to get Tom and Rodney whatever materials they need and keep them both out of trouble while they work.”
“I’ve babysat dictators and defectors,” Jake said. “I think I can handle a treehouse builder and a guy who makes movies.”
“Who have you recruited to help out?” Kate asked.
“On deck, I’ve got Lou Ould-Abdallah, an ex–Somali pirate who did a few black ops jobs with me in the South China Sea. He goes by Billy Dee Snipes now.”
“ ‘Billy Dee Snipes’?” Kate said. “What kind of name is that?”
“One that’s easier to pronounce than Lou Ould-Abdallah,” Jake said. “He lives in a seniors-only condo complex in Las Vegas now and hangs out at Treasure Island Casino playing slots to remind himself of the good old days. For down below, I’ve got Barnacle Bob Baker, the best engineer on the high seas. He’s spent so much time in engine rooms that he can’t abide fresh air and sunshine. His hands only feel clean to him when they’re covered in grease and grime. Bob has been working on the ferry that runs between Dover and Calais because he needs to be in an engine room at sea. The monotony and the lack of risk is grinding him down. He’ll gladly do this just for the change of scenery.” Jake took a long drag on his cigar and let the smoke slowly curl out of his mouth. “If you’re going to convince a drug lord as smart, vicious, and untrusting as Lester Menendez that you’ve found sunken treasure, it’s going to take more than a survey boat, a robot sub, and some pretty pictures. The greedy bastard will want to take some coins off the ocean floor himself.”
“Of course he will,” Nick said.
“The coins can’t be all nice and shiny, either,” Jake said. “They’ll have to be caked in hard sediment like they’ve been down there for centuries.”
“That’s true,” Nick said.
“Where are you going to get coins like that?”
“We’re going to steal them.”
“That’s what I figured, knowing you,” Jake said. “But you’re taking a huge gamble with my daughter’s life that Menendez isn’t going to hear about the theft, recognize the stolen goods, and shoot you both in the face.”
“He’s more likely to cut off our limbs with a chainsaw,” Kate said. “And stuff us into an oil drum filled with acid.”
“I’d like to avoid that,” Nick said. “That’s why we’re going to steal some sunken treasure still covered with schmutz without anyone noticing it’s gone.”
“Do you know where and how you’re going to do that?”
“I do.”
Jake grinned, nodded to himself, and glanced over at Kate. “How did you ever catch this guy?”
“I conned him,” she said.
Nick relaxed back into his chair and studied Kate. He’d underestimated her when she was chasing him. Not something he’d ever do again. He’d known she was smart and tenacious. He hadn’t counted on her being devious as well. And he hadn’t anticipated the intensity of the attraction he felt for her.
“She’s devious,” Nick said. “It’s her best quality. It’s one of the few things we have in common.”
Jake reached for another cold beer. “She gets that from me.”
“I’m not devious,” Kate said. “I’m diligent and determined in my pursuit of justice.”
“There’s still one crucial aspect of this scheme that neither of you have talked about,” Jake said. “How you’re going to find Lester Menendez, a fugitive who has a new face, a new body, a new name, no fingerprints on file, and could be anywhere on earth. No law enforcement agencies have been able to find him.”
“That’s because they’ve been chasing Menendez instead of making him come to them,” Kate said.
“I don’t see how you can make Menendez come to you,” Jake said.
“It’s how I was caught,” Nick said, smiling at Kate, toasting her with his beer bottle.
In 1807 the Nuestra Señora de Santa Maria, laden with fifteen tons of gold from South Amer
ica, was on its way back to Spain when it sank in a fierce storm off the coast of Portugal. More than two hundred years later, a UK-based treasure hunting company, Global Marine Ventures, found the wreckage. They quietly salvaged five hundred thousand gold coins, worth a half billion dollars, over the course of three weeks. They didn’t announce their find until they’d taken the coins back to London in thousands of sealed plastic buckets full of water for preservation.
The Spanish government took the treasure hunters to court in the UK, claiming the coins were valuable cultural artifacts that belonged to Spain and had been stolen from the ocean floor. Global Marine Ventures argued that the sunken ship was in international waters outside of any country’s jurisdiction and that the treasure was fair game for anyone who found it.
The case stretched on for years, but the court ultimately agreed with Spain, and not only awarded the Spanish government all of the plunder, but also reimbursement of their legal costs, plus interest. The judgment sank Global Marine Ventures. The buckets of coins, still encrusted in sediment, were flown to the National Museum of Underwater Archeology in Cartagena, Spain, for restoration and eventual display.
Three months after the delivery of the coins to Spain, and five days after Nick, Kate, and Jake met on the yacht in Marina del Rey, Nick and Kate stood sipping coffee on the veranda of Nick’s south-facing fifth-floor suite at the NH Cartagena Hotel. Nick had been in the city for several days preparing for the theft of the coins. Kate had just arrived.
“Nice view,” Kate said, looking out at the harbor and the museum, a sleek atrium of stone, glass, and sharp angles.
Their hotel was on the edge of the old town, just north of the sea wall and the Paseo Alfonso XII roadway that went along the waterfront. Down below and straight ahead was a wide plaza and wharf leading to the cruise ship terminal, where an ocean liner was docked. The museum was on the east side of the plaza. A small shopping center and the yacht marina were to the west. Further south, Kate could see a lighthouse at the edge of the bay and, beyond that, the sun glistening off the swells of the Mediterranean.
Nick gestured to the museum. “That’s where our gold is. What you’re seeing is basically a large skylight. The bulk of the museum is underground to give the visitors the sensation of going underwater. That’s a plus for us.”
“How do you figure that?”
“The broad plaza between the museum to the east, the cruise ship dock to the south, and the shopping center to the west is a multilevel underground parking garage. The thing about underground garages is that they need lots of ventilation to prevent people from dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. They pump a lot of air in and out. So does the museum, because it’s almost entirely underground and there wouldn’t be enough fresh air circulating otherwise. The two networks of large air ducts run alongside each other to the surface.”
She could see where this line of thought was going. “We’re going to break into the museum tonight through the air ducts in the garage.”
“This afternoon,” Nick said.
Kate stared at him. “In broad daylight?”
“It’s the best way not to be noticed when we’re breaking in and leaving. There are people everywhere.”
“Not in the conservation lab grabbing handfuls of coins.”
“You’ll just have to make sure you’re not seen.”
“Me? Where are you going to be?”
“I’ll be in the ceiling duct holding the rope that you’ll be dangling from.”
She’d seen this plot before, and Tom Cruise had played her part. “You stole this whole operation from Mission Impossible.”
“Actually, they got the idea from Topkapi, which, I can tell you from personal experience, really works.”
“So you claim,” she said.
“You’ll find out for yourself in a couple hours.”
“Why can’t I be the one to hold the rope, and you get to be the dangler?”
“I’m the big strong man. If you held the rope you might drop me on my head.”
“It would be tempting.”
At noon Nick drove a panel van identical to the ones driven by city utility workers into the underground parking structure and went down to the lowest level, the fourth floor. There were almost no cars on this level, and the few that were parked looked as if they’d been there for days. A single surveillance camera was pointed at the elevator and stairwell. Nick parked the van in front of one of the large circular air vents, which was three feet in diameter and partially covered by a metal grate.
Nick and Kate were dressed as city utility workers in white jumpsuits, and wore work gloves, rock-climbing harnesses around their waists, and headbands with tiny headlights attached to them. Kate also wore a backpack containing a rope and pulleys, among other things.
They used the van for cover as they crouched in front of the vent and removed the metal grate. After the grate was removed, they opened the rear doors on the van and pulled out another backpack, and a large handheld masonry saw with vacuum dust control and a circular diamond blade the size of a serving plate. Nick attached the saw to an industrial extension cord and plugged the cord into a nearby outlet. He switched on his headlamp and climbed into the duct, pushing the knapsack with the saw on top of it ahead of them. Kate followed, pulling the grate back into place, crawling along behind Nick.
“How do you know where you’re going?” Kate asked Nick.
“I did some research, and I’ve got a sketch. It’s pretty straightforward.”
They went a few yards farther and reached a junction with another duct that went up to the vent in the plaza, four stories above their heads.
“X marks the spot,” Nick said.
He unzipped the knapsack, removed two respirator masks, goggles, and ear protectors, and handed one set to Kate. He took the saw, lifted it into the duct above his head, and stood. He checked his watch. Two minutes until showtime.
Willie Owens drove along the Cartagena waterfront on Paseo Alfonso XII in a rented Opel Corsa hatchback with the windows rolled down and the music on the radio cranked up as loud it could go.
She headed into the underground garage at the port plaza, stopped at the automated kiosk, and punched the button for a ticket. The gate arm went up. She made sure her seat belt was securely latched and then lifted her foot off the brake and let the car pick up speed as it went down the steep ramp.
The car sped on pure momentum across the first floor of the parking garage and rocketed onto the ramp down to the second level. As she rounded the tight curve without using her brakes, she purposely scraped the car along the wall, shearing off her driver’s side mirror and setting off a spray of sparks. The car continued to pick up speed, helped by a tap on the gas pedal.
She shot off the ramp like a batted pinball and grazed a row of parked cars on her driver’s side, ripping off fenders and shattering taillights. Car alarms shrieked in her destructive wake.
Willie wrenched the wheel sharply to the right to avoid the next ramp and drove down the next aisle, sideswiping another row of cars along her passenger side. She sheared off her remaining mirror and triggered more alarms before she finally turned the wheel hard to the left and intentionally slammed into the rear of an Audi. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, anticipating the impact. The airbag in her steering wheel burst in her face. She quickly pushed it away and decided that the little car she’d thought might be a hunk of junk was really a lot of fun to drive.
Willie was still extricating herself from the airbag when a security guard wrenched the driver’s door open and helped her out of the car. Two more guards arrived, all asking questions, shouting to be heard over the alarms and the music. They were able to turn off the radio, but the car alarms continued to blare, the sound echoing off the concrete walls.
One of the guards helped Willie walk up the ramp to the plaza, where an ambulance was pulling up, siren wailing.
“I’m okay,” Willie said, waving the ambulance attendants away. “I don?
??t need a doctor.”
“What happened?” the guard asked in halting English, holding her arm to keep her steady.
“The brakes on my rental car went out as I was going down the ramp. I tried to slow myself down by grazing the wall, but it didn’t do much good. It’s a good thing I signed up for the insurance.”
Nick began cutting into the duct the instant he heard the first car alarm. Over the next ten minutes, he cut an opening through the four inches of sheet metal and concrete that was large enough for him and Kate to climb through.
By the time the alarms were extinguished and the chaos in the garage had subsided, Nick and Kate had climbed into an adjoining duct, dropped into a cross duct, and were crawling over the museum ceiling. It was an antiquated system with larger ducts than would be used now, but even at that it was tight.
Nick stopped when he reached the air grate above the conservation room that contained the treasure from the Nuestra Señora de Santa Maria. He looked down through the vent, playing his flashlight beam over the rows of hundreds of sealed white plastic buckets full of gold coins.
Kate shrugged out of her backpack, removed a pulley and a battery-operated drill, and handed them to Nick, so he could secure the pulley to the floor of the duct. While he worked with the drill, Kate threaded a coil of rope through the loops in her harness.
“Done,” Nick said, discarding the drill.
“Me, too. I’m all looped up.”
Kate handed the end of the rope to Nick. He ran it through the pulley, back over his body, and attached it to his harness. He would use his weight to anchor the rope while she lowered herself down to the lab.
Nick removed the air grate, set it aside, and Kate maneuvered herself to the edge of the opening in the duct.
“Have you got a grip on the rope?” she asked.
“I’m ready when you are.”
Kate eased through the opening and realized she was loving this. Okay, so it was a little illegal, but she was taking steps to make the world a better place. That was why she’d joined the military. And that was why she’d gone to work for the FBI. It was because she wanted to make a difference.