Sea of Fire by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin Page A

hull, and the body of a pirate against the bulkhead of the yacht. They were what had caused the breach. The crack was less than a meter long and was well above the waterline. But where it had hit was very inconvenient for the captain. Inconvenient and extremely dangerous. They had to stop and repair it. Fortunately, there had been no other ships in the area. That was one of the reasons Kannaday had selected this route in the first place.
    The Australian sea captain watched as the red-hulled cutter moved away slowly. The diesel-electric motors growled loudly as the 200-foot-long ship crawled forward under a perfect blue sky. The cutter was formerly owned by the Republic of Korea Navy, bought from the United States in 1950. Now it was the property of Mahathir bin Dahman of Malaysia, who used it as part of his global waste-disposal operation. The ship’s captain, Jaafar, had said that Dahman had been very concerned about the risks of a daylight pickup. Jaafar had assured him that it would be all right. Dahman decided to trust his man on the scene. Jaafar was right. Everything went well.
    Kannaday did not think that his own boss would be as understanding. It bothered Kannaday that he had to worry about that. The ship had a security officer for this. One who had been appointed by the boss himself.
    Kannaday turned from the deck and went below. He pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket. He lit it and took a few quick drags. The five security officers had gone down ahead of him. They were in the process of returning their automatic weapons to the gun racks. They were always on high alert during a transfer.
    The rest of the crew was going about their business of sailing the yacht back to Australia.
    The yacht belonged to Kannaday, and some members of the crew had been with him for nearly seven years. They were loyal, though not necessarily to him. They liked the untaxed money they made and the job was easy. Most of the time the Hosannah pretended to be conducting coastline tours or fishing runs. They wanted to be seen in as many places as possible. Crew members posed as paying customers. Between those essentially idle cruises, the crew were veterans of countless independent smuggling operations. They had transported people and goods all across the southern hemisphere, from Australia to South America.
    The security people did not work for him. They worked for John Hawke, who worked for Jervis Darling. A thick mist of distrust circulated between them and Kannaday’s veteran crew. Kannaday’s men had never had to defend their vessel and their cargo. But they could and would, if necessary. Hawke’s team had never sailed a yacht. Yet each team believed they could do the other’s job better. Seamen always felt that way. Unfortunately, what had happened the night before stoked the frustration in both camps. The seamen felt the security team should have seen the sampan coming before dark. They had radar and sonar, installed in the radio room by Darling’s technicians. Unfortunately, the sampan was so small it literally slipped under the radar. Kannaday’s crew felt that once the threat was identified, the security people should have anticipated that there might be explosives on board. They could have changed course to avoid the threat, as they always did before going to work exclusively for Darling. Unfortunately, the schedules of Darling and his partners did not allow time for flight. They were to load and off-load the materials as soon as possible.
    The miserable irony was that except for the explosion, everything had gone perfectly. The security system and defensive response had worked. An hour before they were supposed to meet Jaafar, the sophisticated marine radar had picked up a blip. Darling’s nephew Marcus had reported it to Kannaday, who had watched the seven-inch color monitor in the communications room. They had observed the sampan’s approach on the night-vision security camera attached to the mainmast.