Unlucky 13(40)

When Joe called back, I grabbed my cell, fumbled it, and recovered it just before it hit the floor.

“Talk to me,” I said tersely into the phone.

Joe said, “The first mate got out a distress call to the Coast Guard just before the radio room was breached. A man, self-identified as Jackhammer, warned that if anyone approached the ship, people would be shot. The crew is detained in the hold. Passengers have been rousted out of their cabins and corralled under guard to various lounges. There’s a Coast Guard vessel in contact with this Jackhammer. I guess some kind of negotiation is in progress.”

“That’s it?”

“No. That’s the good news. A passenger got out a phone call saying two passengers were dead, but they weren’t named. I’ll keep checking.”

I called Jacobi to tell him what I knew.

He said, “Brady will take care of Yuki. If you were a hostage, Boxer, who would you pick to break you out? Brady, right?”

That was true. But where was Brady?

I forwarded Yuki’s video to Jacobi, then sent it to Cindy and Claire, both of whom had e-mailed me after they’d caught bulletins about the FinStar on the news.

Cindy had uncut video, just in, of helicopters in the air above the beleaguered ship. It was a haunting fifteen seconds, during which time sections of the ship went dark until the entire ship had been blacked out. Then shots were fired into the air. A lot of shots. Long bursts of them. These hostage takers, whoever they were, had no shortage of ammunition.

I organized a conference call, and Cindy, Claire, and I gibbered anxiously, helplessly. We sounded panicky because we were in a three-alarm panic. We were all accustomed to making things happen, getting things done—but this time we had no moves, no action plan, nothing.

My skull felt as hollow as a drum, empty except for the bad thoughts ricocheting around inside. How could this be happening off the coast of Alaska? Where was Brady? Was Yuki okay? Was she still alive? Was Brady?

When I looked up, Conklin was watching me with a steady brown-eyed gaze.

He said, “Can we do anything to help them?”

“You know that we can’t do one damned thing.”

“Then we’ve got a meeting with Donna Timko.”

The name rang a distant bell.

“Who?”

“Timko. Donna. Head of product development. At Chuck’s,” my partner said distinctly. As if he were talking to a child.

“Right. When are we supposed to see her?”

“You told her ten-thirty.”

It was 10:15 right now.

“I called her. Told her an emergency came up,” Conklin said. “She said, ‘It’s your meeting.’”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s hit the road.”





CHAPTER 51


CONKLIN DROVE US northeast on Bryant Street toward the Bay Bridge and West Berkeley, a mixed-use residential/commercial area separated from the bay by the Eastshore Freeway.

As we drove, the car radio chattered, dispatch and squad cars urgently tracking the chase of a hit-and-run driver in the Financial District.

Conklin closely followed the chase and also negotiated traffic while I manhandled my phone. I jumped from news link to news link, cruising for information about the FinStar, a fully loaded floating ocean liner under siege.

I found snippets on YouTube—video clips like the one Yuki had sent, truncated and poorly shot, and also taped phone calls from terrified, clueless passengers who’d managed to get out calls before their phones were confiscated.

These postcards from the front were like random pieces of a table-size jigsaw puzzle, giving only ambiguous hints of the big picture.

And then there was breaking news from a passenger’s cell phone. A CPA from Tucson, Charles Stone, had hidden in a storage container on the sports deck. He called his brother in Wilmington, who taped the call.

Said Stone: “These guys spoke American English. Or I guess they could be Canadian. I don’t know. They’ve taken a bunch of hostages to the Pool Deck. I heard a burst of gunfire. Tell Mollie that I love her. I love you, too, bro.”

I looked up as Conklin was backing our Crown Vic into a spot between two vehicles parked in front of a modern two-story office building with clean lines and a stucco facade. I was so preoccupied with the thoughts of the passengers on the FinStar that I was almost surprised to see we were still in California.

We entered the building, which had high ceilings with exposed timbers and lots of windows letting in the bright morning light. The reception area was devoid of advertising posters and other incidentals, which told me that this was a practical workplace and that the staff here had no contact with consumers. We presented our badges to security at the desk and took an elevator up one floor.