22

TWO MILES OFFSHORE, ON BOARD FREIGHTER MOKAME

"I can hear their engine," Yussuf said.

"Yes," AMI said. "Captain?"

The blood had flowed freely from the scalp wound where Akil had struck him, and it had dried to his face in a half-mask that made him look like the Phantom of the Opera. The little finger on his left hand stuck out at an unnatural angle, and he was careful to hold it out of the way. He sounded resigned. "I say nothing. I do not respond to calls. I do not slow down."

"Correct," Akil said. "Yussuf, get our men up on deck."

"Yes, Isa," Yussuf said, and left. Shortly they heard footsteps coming aft and climbing the stairs to the deck.

The migrants said and did nothing, watching them pass with fear or apathy on their faces. Most of them spoke little English, and they'd probably spent everything they had on passage to the United States. They would do nothing, take no action that might delay or deny that goal.

The engine of the small boat neared. Akil could barely discern the outline of the hull against the sea. It was so dark he couldn't see where the sea ended and the sky began, but for the stars, which were many and beautiful. He thought of Adara. He thought of Zahirah.

The small boat hailed them on the marine band. "Unknown freight, unknown freighter, this is the United States Coast Guard. You are inside a closed area, I say again you are inside a closed area. You must turn around, I say again you must turn around immediately. Please respond."

"Don't answer," Akil said.

He remembered very clearly the story Adam Bayzani had told him about what it was like on a small boat at night. They were in constant communication with their ship, both the bridge and the combat center, and they were equipped with their own surface radar unit. The ship had infrared radar that Bayzani had spoken of admiringly, but not on the small boat. The cutter had night-vision goggles, which the small boat might or might not have on board as well.

These last two items of information were why Akil's men had jackets on over their weapons. If the Coast Guard did manage to get a close look at who was on deck of the little Haitian freighter in the dark, he didn't want his people to stand out any more than absolutely necessary. Or not immediately. It was also why he had instructed Yussuf and Yaqub to select recruits who looked more African than Asian. They would appear like every other Haitian migrant on board, at least at first.

The small boat came nearer and nearer. When Akil judged it near enough, he said, "Cut off the engines."

"They'll know we-"

Akil shot the captain in the back of the head. He had a silencer fitted to the muzzle of his pistol and the shot made a muted burping sound. The captain's forehead burst and splattered blood and brains all over the steering wheel and the control console. Akil wiped away some of the mess to take the boat out of gear. He had watched the captain very carefully for the last part of the journey.

He left the engine idling and went to join his men on deck. "Did you immobilize the rest of the crew?"

"Yes," Yussuf said. "They're tied up in our stateroom. There are only six of them, and I think four of them were only guards. None of them protested when they saw the guns." A trace of self-satisfaction colored the words. Yussuf was discovering the power that came with a weapon.

Akil nodded. "Good work." He was watching the shadow that was the small boat. It made a wide circle around the Mokame and took up position off their port side. A powerful spotlight came on and flooded the stern of the freighter with light. Akil's men put on a good show, putting up their hands to shade their faces and blinking in the bright light. They were lost in the sea of migrants surrounding them, all doing the same thing as they muttered incomprehensibly among themselves.

The loud hail came a moment later. "Unknown freighter, unknown freighter, this is the United States Coast Guard. You are inside a security zone closed to all unauthorized vessel traffic, I say again, you are inside a security zone closed to all unauthorized vessel traffic. You must depart this area at once. Please reply."

"Remember," Akil said, "we need the uniforms."

HAITI

They had crawled slowly and painstakingly through every waterfront dive and backwoods bar in the greater Port-au-Prince area. In the past week Patrick had drunk more alcohol-most of it, he was certain, distilled in someone's backyard from whatever fruit they had hanging from the handiest trees-than during the rest of his life combined. His liver was protesting, he was experiencing shortness of breath, and he fancied that his heart had picked up an irregular beat somewhere between the harbor saloon where a massive black man had offered him his sister and he had been almost too terrified to refuse, and the one-room juke joint where a three-piece band was sawing away at some of the best blues he'd ever heard in his life.

A week. Seven days. If it came down to that, 168 hours. He looked down at his suit, spattered with the remnants of seven days' worth of meals featuring fresh conch, fried plantains, and sweet potato cake. No, he was no field agent, he thought sadly.

At seven days, even Patrick, who had pursued every lead Akil had left him with bulldog persistence, was ready to throw in the towel.

And then, a miracle occurred.

One of the men working with him found an informant, a man who ran a ferry out of Port-au-Prince. He had lately taken on board five men, passengers who didn't strike him as tourists, and let them off at a marina some miles down the coast. How many? He scratched his scrofulous chin and couldn't say. Patrick's man held up a twenty-dollar bill and asked if that would improve his memory. It would, and it did.

So Patrick and the dozen other agents who had flooded into Haiti clandestinely boarded the little ferry, after the unloveliest captain Patrick had ever seen held each of them up for the twenty-dollar fare, informed them it only paid one way, and cast off.

The little ferry couldn't have been forty feet long and her unprepossessing exterior did not lend Patrick any confidence that she wouldn't sink before she got off the dock. But she did chug determinedly out of the harbor and down the coast, which cast off civilization far too rapidly for Patrick's tastes, shedding houses for jungle as if someone had thrown a switch. He felt like Lord Jim going up into the heart of darkness.

He repeated this to one of the agents. "I think that was Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, sir," this young man said, an ardent Conrad fan. "Lord Jim is another novel entirely." "Whatever," Patrick said.

They arrived at the marina shortly thereafter. They went ashore and split up, half knocking on doors in one direction and half in the other. They met back at the marina two hours later. "If Isa was here, nobody's talking," one agent said. It was hot and they were to a man sweating profusely. Patrick actually had his suit jacket off and was fanning himself vigorously with a large leaf he hoped wasn't poisonous to the touch.

Discouraged, he said what they were all thinking. "Well, it was a long shot. We should probably pack it in and head for the barn."

Just then the young agent with the Conrad fetish showed up. He had a child in tow who looked about ten, with bright dark eyes, skin the color of a raven's wing, and a close-cropped cap of tight black curls. His blue-checked short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts were shabby but clean and neat. He wasn't shy, looking them over with the eye of an expert who makes his living by judging a likely mark.

"He says he knows of the men we're looking for," the agent said. Patrick looked at the kid, who met his gaze fearlessly. "Does he speak