The Devil on Chardonnay (18 page)

Though his abdomen was ridged with muscle, it was thick.  His legs, neglected by a fitness routine focused only on the more fashionable upper body, were too small to carry a large frame with power.  The way to beat Wolf was to stay at a distance and beat his snarling face to a pulp with a longer reach.  The way to lose was to get caught close by those overdeveloped arms and crushed.  Wolf charged.

Trapped, Boyd put everything into a straight right aimed at Wolf’s chin.  Wolf slipped it to a glancing blow and his momentum carried him onto Boyd on top of the sail.  As the arms closed around him, Boyd hooked a leg around and over Wolf’s and pushed Wolf’s head and body toward the mainmast.  Twisting, they fell onto the deck with Boyd on top.  He flexed his knee and butted it repeatedly into Wolf’s groin.  Wolf screamed in rage and pain and released him.  They rolled apart.

Circling, Boyd was able to flick out a half dozen jabs smacking Wolf in the face.  It felt good.  Wolf began to block them, learning Boyd’s style quickly.  Then he ducked under one, and an uppercut lifted Boyd off his feet and caught his tongue between his teeth.  Blood cascaded down the front of Boyd’s chest.  Infuriated, Boyd stepped back when most men would have run or attacked.

Wolf crouched.  Breathing hard, he came in swinging.  Boyd endured some more shots to the face to concentrate on body blows.  Wolf was very solid.  They were ineffective.

Boyd backed quickly to get out of the clinch.  They reached midship as Candido Mendes came up the crew’s ladder in the rear.  Wolf risked a roundhouse right and received a crushing two punch combination counter that sent blood spraying across the deck to the cowering Mikki.  That slowed him down momentarily, and a right cross staggered him.  A mighty body blow, delivered without restraint and with no resistance by the stunned bodyguard, took his wind.  He dropped to the deck on his knees.

The glint of steel in the moonlight would have been missed by a man rushing in for the kill, made primitive by adrenalin or vulnerable by hatred.  Boyd saw it.  Saw it flick from the boot and prepare to gut the attacker.  Saw it as a coolly premeditated intent to kill.

“You son of a bitch!” Boyd roared as he led with his foot, smashing the knife and the wrist that held it onto the deck.  Now, he was mad, madder than he’d ever been in all the fights he’d had.  Now he felt the rage that would have made him vulnerable to the blade a moment before. 

This was battlefield rage.  It transcended the fear and excitement of the usual bar fight.  This is what had driven the men of the Dark Ages with broadswords and axes to pound at an opponent until he weakened, and then hew and bash until brains and limbs covered the field.  This rage demanded satisfaction.

Eyes blazing, Boyd crouched and swung at Wolf, trying to rise, holding his broken right arm with the left.  He quickly jerked backward but caught the next blow straight on the chin.  He staggered backward toward the side, and Boyd grabbed him by the throat and groin, lifted him to chest height and threw him over the rail.

Wolf disappeared into the darkness without a sound.  Chardonnay hit a swell and there was a rush as foam and spray flew from the bow.

Boyd found a life preserver which he threw over the side, running aft, looking into the black water for Wolf.  At the stern, he dove in.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

The Pentagon

The telephone in Joe Smith’s bedroom at Fort Detrick rang at 0446 hours.

 Joe answered it sleepily, looking at the clock, rubbing his mostly bald head. 

“Joe, wake up.  Joe, it’s Bob Ferguson, General Ferguson at the Pentagon.”

“Uh.  Yes, sir.”

“You awake?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.  I just got word we’re on the schedule to brief the tank at 0930 hours this morning.”

“Yes sir.  What’s the tank?”

“That’s the conference room where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet.”

**********

Called from a small waiting room, they were ushered into a luxurious but small conference room in the depths of the Pentagon.  Joe couldn’t have found his way there again if he’d had a map.  There were only a dozen people in the room, and they all had stars, except for Joe, and one colonel who acted as the moderator. 

“We have Major General Ferguson of the USSTRATCOM Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction regarding a new biological threat.” 

The colonel stepped back allowing Ferguson to take the podium.

“Sirs, the World Health Organization notified us in January of an outbreak of filovirus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Fifty people died.  A viral researcher on leave from the Pasteur Institute in Paris got to the outbreak before the authorities and collected blood containing live virus.  Subsequent events have shown that researcher isolated a rare virus, Ebola, and replicated it.  He died on a remote island in the Indian Ocean while testing a vaccine on live monkeys.  We traced the money paid to the researcher to Charleston, South Carolina, and believe a Dr. Lymon Byxbe and his company, BioVet Tech Corporation, are involved, though we don’t have hard evidence linking them with the money or the virus.   Based on information collected on that island by Colonel Joe Smith, USAMRIID’s resident expert on Ebola, the CDC in Atlanta felt strongly we might be facing a dangerous outbreak here in the United States and recommended an immediate seizure of the property and quarantine of the contents.  That was done yesterday and was reported by the local television stations in Charleston last night.  BioVet Tech was essentially empty. Nothing was found that could immediately be identified as virus or vaccine, though the CDC took a lot of samples and is evaluating them.  Dr. Byxbe was gone also.”

They sat like stones, no facial expressions, no questions, no notes taken.  They dealt with “might, maybe, and possible” every day. 

Joe had brought all his slides and submitted them to the staff an hour ago to be scanned and uploaded in case he needed them for questions.  He hoped there wouldn’t be any.  He had downed three cups of coffee rushing down from Frederick, Md., and now he needed to pee. 

“We believe a European bank, Meilland Freres, based in Luxembourg, was the source of the money, and a principal of that bank left Charleston four days ago in a sailing yacht bound for Europe.  She met with Dr. Byxbe the night before she left Charleston.  She may have the virus or the vaccine.  We have an undercover team on board that yacht.  It will be in Bermuda tomorrow.”

“You don’t really have anything at this point,” a skeptical Chief of Staff of the Army said.  “I heard ‘we think’ quite a bit in your statement.”

“Yes, sir, that is true,” Ferguson admitted. 

“Is it that easy to just whip up a vaccine?”  the Chief of Naval Operations asked, then added, “You hear about that taking years.  Would it work?”

Ferguson looked at Joe. “Gentlemen, Colonel Joe Smith, USAMRIID.”  He stepped back from the podium.

“Safely, in this period of time, with the equipment they had on that island, no,” Joe said, standing.  “But it is beginning to look like the researcher had extreme confidence in his ability. He tried a simple technique, and his preliminary notes indicate it did work.  We think he stripped the protein coat off the virus, attached some of it to a messenger RNA segment that could take that bit of protein into living cells and force those cells to manufacture some more of that same protein.  When released into the bloodstream of a living primate, the primate would recognize that protein as foreign and begin to produce antibodies to it.  With his preliminary success, it would still take years of study in tissue culture, monkeys and, finally, humans before it could be called a vaccine.”

“Sounds like a crackpot on a wild goose chase,” another flag officer added.

“Yes, sir, as far as the vaccine is concerned,” Joe said.  “But, I saw firsthand on that island what Ebola can do if it gets loose, and someone has a bunch of it.”

“Someone has already spent more than $5 million on this project,” Ferguson said, returning to the podium to stand by Joe.  “It’s like plutonium. You can make a bomb with it if you know how, or you can poison a bunch of people if you can’t make a bomb.” 

Joe waited a few seconds and, when there were no more questions, returned to his seat.  Ferguson said, “The State Department has notified the government of Bermuda, and they will board the vessel with a customs inspection, a very detailed customs inspection.  The Justice Department tells me we have enough evidence to seize the ship and any cargo on board if they find anything.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Bermuda

The Jewish exile from Israel/Judah began in 597 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar sacked the First Temple and scattered the Jews.  The Second Temple was sacked by the Romans in AD 70  and, again, the Jews were scattered. And finally in AD 135, the Roman Emperor Hadrian plowed the city under and changed the name to Syria Palestine and forbade Jews to live there.  Scattered to the four corners of the world, the Jews became permanent outsiders wherever they lived.  Prevented from the usual occupations and aided by their stubborn insularity, they became money lenders and merchants in diamonds and gold.  Always at the mercy of the mob, Jews perfected the hiding and transfer of wealth across borders and around the world. 

*********

The customs inspector approached Chardonnay in a launch with two armed police officers and a dog trained to detect drugs and explosives.  He’d been warned that contraband of a biologic nature might be on board and was notified by the captain that a medical emergency necessitated that several people be transported to the hospital.  Warily, he climbed the steps to the deck where he encountered a large man with a swollen, puffy face and both arms in slings, and another man horribly disfigured with gaping facial lacerations and missing teeth. 

Mikki leaned against the rail as the customs inspector carefully searched Wolf, Donn, Pamela and Boyd before allowing them to board the launch and head to the hospital.  She remained calm, aloof, as the crew was searched and took another launch to the Harbor Master’s office to make their report on the incident that had occurred in international waters. 

Chardonnay looked like a rich man’s toy, a sailing cruiser in classic form.  In reality, Chardonnay had been conceived, designed and built from the keel up to smuggle gold, diamonds, currency, antiquities, art and people.  She had hidden and transferred the fortunes of desperate and dishonest people for more than a century.  Even with his dog, this customs inspector wasn’t going to find what Mikki was carrying for her grandfather.  She’d played this game before, and though it wasn’t as much fun as other games she played, she was good at it. 

“Sir, did you wish to inspect?”  She asked innocently, holding up a ring of keys.

From bow to stern he opened every drawer, went through every suitcase, and tapped walls and floors looking for secret compartments. His dog sniffed everywhere, eventually growing bored and taking a nap while the inspector opened bottles and jars.  Nothing. 

But, Ebola was there.  Hidden in a compartment in the keel beneath the diesel engine, it was secure, secure as the diamonds her great-grandfather had smuggled from Africa to defy the diamond cartel; the gold, art and currency as Jews fled the Third Reich; she had transported radios for the resistance; spies for the Allies; antiquities leaving Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union; and lately, currency leaving China.  There is always a need to move wealth on the sly. 

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Dark Water

Boyd had hit the water off-balance and the blow to his side and the cold of the water disoriented him.  Still underwater, he opened his eyes and swiveled his head a complete turn before seeing the glow of the moon in the foam left by the ship’s passing.  He kicked in that direction and broke the surface.  Gasping for breath from the cold and exertion, he looked about.  Chardonnay was already 100 yards away and only the top half of her mast was visible in the swells of the open Atlantic.  He heard the engine start.

The enormity of his risk in jumping in to save Wolf now became evident.  Dark closed in like velvet as a swell blocked the moon.  There was no sound.

A swell lifted Boyd and a beacon flashed only a dozen feet away.  He swam toward it.  Candido had thrown a flag float over just as Boyd had hit the water.  It actuated immediately and its strobe and 10-foot-high flag gave a comforting center of activity to approach.  A life jacket was attached. 

“Wolf!”  Boyd shouted into the vastness of the North Atlantic.

There was no response.

The next swell lifted Boyd and quickly he scanned 180 degrees behind him.   With the next swell he scanned toward the moon.  The third swell he looked back again, and this time he saw a smaller beacon several dozen yards away.  It was the self-actuating beacon on the life jacket Boyd had thrown to Wolf.

Donning the life vest attached to the flag float, Boyd swam awkwardly toward the other beacon.  As he approached he could see Wolf’s head bobbing, barely above the water.

“Boyd?”  The wheezing desperation in Wolf’s voice dispelled any lingering doubts that he might try to even the score out here in the water.  He had found the jacket but had been unable to get it on.

“Hey, man.  I lost it back there,” Boyd said apologetically as he slipped Wolf’s broken right arm into the jacket.  Wolf cried out in pain as he attempted to lift the other arm and slide the jacket onto his back.  There was a resistance in the left shoulder he’d not felt with the right.  Persisting in spite of the discomfort to Wolf, he got it on and fastened in front.

“Danke,”  Wolf said weakly.

Sails furled, Chardonnay approached from the north under diesel power.  Candido was rigged in a life jacket with a lifeline.  Neville was at the wheel.  Mikki and Pamela held extra jackets.  Donn was not in sight.  As the ship pulled closer, she turned into the wind, toward the west, and the engine changed to a higher idle speed as Neville shifted to neutral.

Boyd grabbed the thrown line and attached it to his waist, then looped it around Wolf, who could barely keep his head out of the water.  They were pulled slowly toward the stern and the transom boarding platform there.