To board a ship on the open ocean is never easy, even if the water is only a few feet deep. Slaton did his homework. None of the local fishermen knew about a missing man, but they conceded that if he was from Villa Grande they might not know about it. Slaton found out as much as possible about the derelict ship before pulling anchor in Palawan. Esperanza was a World War II–vintage minesweeper, and had been gifted to the Philippines by the U.S. Navy decades earlier. She’d been run aground intentionally in 1999, an ungainly attempt by the government to establish sovereignty over a long-ignored coral atoll.
For years after her grounding, the Philippine Navy did their best to keep the ship in one piece. Steel plates were welded to the deck, lumber used to reinforce catwalks, and at one point someone had installed a generator and window-unit air conditioners, no doubt to shore up the morale of the heat-stricken Philippine Marine contingent who kept watch. The government had thrown in the towel just over a year ago, evacuating their disintegrating outpost, but rumors persisted that smugglers had taken over Esperanza in the interim.
Slaton made his approach to Esperanza using their inflatable dinghy, a twelve-foot runabout with an outboard motor that would best thirty knots on a calm sea. Windsom remained ten miles east, anchored in the lee of a so-far-unclaimed cay.
Slaton traversed the reef at idle, and saw no signs of habitation in the distant hulk. Indeed, in the gathering dusk Esperanza cast something of an apocalyptic image. Her hull rested askew on Midnight Reef, ten feet of water on the port side, and the starboard waterline fast against coral formations that were exposed at low tide.
A local news article Slaton had seen maintained that the only inhabitable parts of her structure were a few rooms in the aft superstructure—the bridge, a mess room, and a handful of crew cabins that had been more or less kept up. The Navy had reinforced the ship’s port side, starboard being largely unapproachable owing to the shallow reef and heavier seas beyond. On the port beam was a fixed deck ladder reaching ten meters down to the waterline. Slaton saw no fishing dory lashed to the ladder, which was the only functional entrance.
He had surveyed the ship using binoculars from two miles away, and now did it again at a mile. He saw no lights, no laundry pinned on rails, no bags of stinking trash thrown out on deck. Notably, there was also no flag, Philippine or otherwise, flapping from the crooked yardarm.
There was no sign of life at all.
He could think of no stealthy way to approach such a target. Slaton kept scuba gear on Windsom, but the currents around the reef were unpredictable, meaning he would have had to drive within half a mile to even consider a swim. On a featureless ocean, that was tantamount to ringing the doorbell. He’d also concluded that waiting until nightfall could prove a disadvantage—he had no night-vision gear, and any drug smugglers on board probably would.
He steered north, along the reef that abutted the ship’s starboard side. Breaking waves warned of treacherous shallows, but Slaton could see deeper channels in the reef, evidenced by smooth countercurrents. His inflatable drew only twelve inches of water, less with the engine raised. That was another method he’d used in the past—lift the engine, and a team of commandos paddling in unison could close quickly in virtual silence. As it was, with the wind and currents against him, trying to paddle the last two hundred meters solo would be little more than an endless cardio workout. He decided to use the engine until the last minute, keeping the throttle to a minimum and hoping the breeze would drive the sound out to sea. In the end, Slaton saw but one certainty: If anyone remotely competent was on board the ship, they were going to see him coming. But that wasn’t all bad. A naked approach at dusk was obvious, but also unthreatening. It was his best chance to get close. Assuming he could manage that, whatever odds he was up against would begin to swing.
As he came nearer, Slaton got the impression that the ship’s hull was more rust than steel. Her bow was noticeably high on the reef, and what remained of her superstructure was in various stages of decay: listing aerials and davits, deck rails broken, and cables hanging into the sea like vines off a storm-ravaged tree. The hull looked paper thin, spars and bulkheads showing through like ribs on an underfed dog; any load at all in her holds would surely cause seams to burst. The bow gun emplacement held the remains of a 40mm Bofors. Once meant to intimidate, the gun now resembled something from a long-abandoned museum, its barrel pointed skyward in a final salute.
Twenty meters away, the breeze dropped sharply in the lee of the ship’s hull. He killed the motor and reached for the paddle. He was wearing old work clothes—a tattered pair of pants and a sleeveless shirt stained by mortar—reasoning that an approach to Esperanza in a black wetsuit and camo would be needlessly hostile. By the same logic, he’d brought the smallest weapons from the minor arsenal he kept under lock and key on Windsom—a reliable Beretta 9mm holstered beneath his shirttail, and a Glock 26 on his right ankle. Two spare magazines weighed down his left hip pocket, ready for a left-handed grab and reload, and a flashlight big enough to double as a truncheon filled the back pocket on his nonshooting side. With his hardware reasonably concealed, he might appear harmless on first glance—and anyone Slaton deemed threatening wouldn’t get more than one glance.
The starboard hull loomed high as he approached, the lowest deck rail five meters above his head. Slaton’s dodgy intelligence, a blend of old news articles, hearsay, and local rumors, had so far been spot-on—the starboard side of the ship gave no access to the upper deck. But he did see one possibility. Just beneath the wing of the bridge was a section of hull so rusted it was falling into the sea, and he noted a series of jagged holes that might be used as footholds. He paddled silently closer, his eyes and ears alert. He heard only water lapping against steel and the cry of a distant gull.
He lashed the dinghy by its painter to the base of a broken fitting. Slaton gauged the climb up close and thought it might work. Having brought a rope just in case, he looped it over a shoulder before beginning upward. In less than a minute he was on deck. He secured the rope, which had climbing loops at regular intervals, and fed it down to the dinghy. Ready for a quick departure.
There was still no sign of life, but caution got the better of him. Slaton pulled the Beretta from his waistband as he moved aft. He was on the main deck now, and above him were two upper levels, the highest having once been the bridge—it was rimmed with windows, and catwalks overlooked every part of the ship, the obvious high ground for anyone playing defense.
He stepped carefully, the wisdom of which was proved when one foot began sinking into a rusted section of floor. The problem area was the size of an oven door, and he shifted his weight and leapt silently over it. He immediately rounded a corner and was faced with a larger failed section that could only be traversed using a two-by-six plank someone had left in place. The plank took him to the base of the superstructure, and Slaton led with the Beretta through a doorless passageway. He cleared a room where two tattered hammocks were strung between bulkheads and the lone window was nothing more than a web of shattered safety glass. He saw an old generator, mooring lines, and a windlass under repair. The stench was heavy, fetid and rotting, and he quickly climbed a ladder toward the second of the three levels.
The instant his eyes reached the middle floor, he paused and scanned the room at ankle level before exposing himself further. He saw nothing worrisome and kept rising. As soon as he cleared the top step, Slaton sensed movement to one side. He whipped the barrel of his gun instinctively, and when the sight settled he saw a wary tiger-striped cat behind it. He lowered the Beretta. The cat looked healthy and plump, and under its front paw was a small dead rat. Slaton half turned to take in the rest of the room, and when he did the cat bolted, taking its kill and disappearing through some unseen passageway.
The light outside was growing dim, and he pulled out his flashlight to inspect a mess hall that hadn’t been used as intended for nearly twenty years. He saw an old steel sink, and a makeshift kitchen consisting of a propane stove and a tiny refrigerator. There was no food in sight, but on a table in the center he saw the scattered excrement of some manner of vermin. There were also discarded sheets of plastic, a container of Ziploc bags, and a mechanical scale that could have been taken from a grocery store deli. Trash littered the floor, along with a dusting of what looked like ground tea leaves. He decided smugglers might have replaced the Philippine Navy after all.
He moved toward the stairs that led to the bridge, and was nearly there when a clatter came from above. Slaton trained his weapon on the metal staircase. The cat? he wondered. No, the cat would be finishing its dinner.
His senses shot to another level, grasping for any sound or motion. All too late, he recognized his error. He’d been too predictable, coming straight up the only staircase. He turned and saw a shadow in the stairwell he’d just risen through. The next thing he saw was the barrel of a machine pistol rising upward.