Rogue Angel 46: Treasure of Lima by Alex Archer

The plan was for him to call Captain Swanson two days before Richard and his team broke camp, so that the boat would be waiting by the time they needed it.”
    Annja knew that it was roughly a thirty-hour journey by boat from Puntarenas, where they were now and from where Richard’s expedition had set out, as well, to Cocos Island. Two days before breaking camp was more than enough time for the boat to arrive.
    “Was that call ever made?” she asked.
    Claire shook her head. “Richard only made a few calls from the island and all of them were either to our home number in Baltimore or to my cell phone.”
    “You know that for certain?”
    This time the other woman nodded. “I’m listed on the same account, so it was easy enough to check,” she explained. “The last call on record was the one he made to me prior to trying to excavate the chest they’d found.”
    In Annja’s view, it seemed likely that Dr. Knowles had suffered some kind of injury while the team was investigating the find, but it could be a simple matter of equipment failure.
    “Was there a backup plan in case the satellite phone was lost or damaged?”
    “Yes. Richard’s second in command, David Mathers, also had a satellite phone. I tried calling that line as well, but it goes straight to voice mail. I’ve left several messages and now all I get is a ‘mailbox full’ reply when I try to do so.”
    That didn’t bode well, Annja knew. The chance that both phones were malfunctioning at the same time were minimal, particularly since they were specifically designed to work anytime and anywhere, be it the backyard or from a remote corner of the world. Geographic interference was unlikely; Mount Yglesias was barely twenty-five hundred feet, after all.
    Something must have shown on her face because Claire said, “I know. It’s not a good sign, is it?”
    Annja tried to smile reassuringly. “We could come up with a thousand different scenarios and still not even come close to the truth, so speculating doesn’t do anyone any good. Try to relax. We’ll be there soon enough.”
    She just hoped they were in time to help.

7
    The boat left Puntarenas and took a little over thirty hours to reach Isla del Coco. The first part of the journey passed without incident. Annja spent several hours reviewing the topographical maps of the island, tracing the route Claire had indicated her husband had taken inland before vanishing and trying to anticipate the obstacles that they might face, in turn, when they followed suit.
    Thinking that perhaps Dr. Knowles had sought assistance from the Costa Rican park ranger that lived on the island year-round, Annja wandered back up to the bridge and asked permission to use the shortwave radio. Her earlier research had given her the ranger station’s frequency and call sign; it seemed only common sense to make use of them. If the ranger didn’t know Dr. Knowles’s current location, perhaps he could shed some light on what might have happened.
    Unfortunately, she was unable to raise the station.
    She had just replaced the microphone and was turning away from the radio station when her gaze fell across the radar plot. As if on cue, two blips suddenly appeared at the edge of the radar screen north of their position. Annja watched them and waited for the information from their transponders to come up on the screen, but it never did. The small boxes designed to display such information remained blank.
    Whoever they were, they were coming on fast.
    Annja glanced over and found the captain frowning at the screen in unconscious imitation of her own expression.
    “Trouble?” she asked.
    Vargas shook his head. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
    But his expression remained thoughtful and a few seconds later he ordered a slight course change to take them out of the path of the incoming vessels.
    No sooner had the Neptune’s Pride changed course, however, than the two blips on the radar screen changed course as well,