A flash caught Kurt by surprise, momentarily blinding him through the binoculars. Immediately following it, Kurt saw debris flying in all directions and an expanding cloud.

“What in the world…”

A few seconds later the sound reached them. A single low boom, like a massive firework had gone off. When the view cleared, the speedboat was gone; obliterated in a single, thundering explosion.

KURT AUSTIN HAD BEEN in the communications room of the Argo for over an hour. The last forty minutes of that he’d been talking with NUMA’s director of operations, Dirk Pitt.

Kurt got along well with the Director, having known him when Pitt was still doing fieldwork for NUMA. Considering the kind of missions NUMA’s Special Operations Team often ended up taking on, it helped to have a boss who’d “been there and done that,” as Pitt had pretty much been everywhere and done everything.

Moving to the head office hadn’t dulled Pitt’s senses, even if it did place him in the crosscurrents of the political world.

As the Argo patrolled a wide circle near where the Kinjara Maru had gone down, Kurt explained what they knew and what they didn’t. Pitt asked questions. Some of which Kurt couldn’t answer.

“The strangest part,” he said, “is that they sank the ship deliberately instead of taking her for a prize. And they killed the crew. It was more like a terrorist action than a pirate raid.”

A flat-screen monitor on the wall displayed Pitt’s rugged features. He seemed to clench his jaw while thinking.

“And you never found a mother ship?” he asked.

“We did a fifty-mile leg in the direction they were heading,” Kurt said. “Then Captain Haynes took us on a dumbbell pattern south for five miles and back north for ten. Nothing on radar in any direction.”

“Maybe their course was a false track. To draw you off until they put some distance between you and them,” Pitt offered.

“We thought about that,” Kurt said, considering a conversation with the captain as the search began to look fruitless. “Or they might have even had enough gas on board to get back to the coast. A drum or two lashed to the boat could explain the explosion.”

“Still doesn’t explain what they were doing on that ship,” Pitt noted. “What about hostages?”

“Maybe,” Kurt said. “But we have the captain’s wife with us. They left her deliberately to hold us up. She said there was no one unusual on board. In fact, if anyone were to bring a ransom she seemed like the best candidate to me, but it wouldn’t be that much.”

On screen, Pitt looked away. He rubbed a hand over his chin for a second and then turned back to the screen.

“Any thoughts?” he asked finally.

Kurt offered a theory. “My dad and I did a lot of salvage work when I was younger,” he began. “Boats go down for plenty of reasons, but people send ’em down for only two. Insurance money or to hide something on board. One time we found a guy shot in the head but still strapped into the seat of his boat. Turned out his partner shot him and sunk the boat, hoping to cover it up. Didn’t count on the insurance company deciding they could salvage the wreck and get some money out of it.”

Pitt nodded. “You think this is the same kind of thing?”

“Kill the crew, sink the ship,” Kurt said. “Someone’s trying to keep something quiet.”

Pitt smiled. “This is why you make the big bucks, Kurt.”

“I get big bucks?” Kurt said, laughing. “I’d hate to see what you’re paying everybody else.”

“It’s a scandal,” Pitt said. “But it’s a heck of a lot more than the admiral paid me when I started.”

Kurt laughed at the thought. Pitt had told him once that his first month’s pay for NUMA wouldn’t cover a broken arm, even though he’d risked his life half a dozen times in that month. Then again, neither of them did it for the money.

Kurt continued. “Kristi Nordegrun, the woman who survived, said she didn’t know what happened, but the lights flickered and blew out, her head seemed to ring, and she lost her balance and consciousness. She believes it was at least eight hours before she woke up again. She still seems disoriented, she can’t walk without holding on to something.”

“What does that tell us?” Pitt asked.

“I don’t know,” Kurt said. “Maybe some kind of nerve agent or anesthetic gas was used. But it’s just one more thing that screams ‘more than pirates’ to me.”

Pitt took this in. “What do you want to do?”

“Go down there and poke around,” Kurt said, “see what they’re trying to hide from us.”

Pitt glanced over at a map on his wall. An old-fashioned pushpin marked the Argo’s location. “Unless I have you in the wrong spot, there’s three miles of water between you and the seafloor. You got any ROVs on board?”

“No,” Kurt said. “Nothing that can go that deep. But Joe’s got the Barracuda on Santa Maria. He could modify it, and we could be back here in a few days, a week at most.”

Pitt nodded as if he were considering the thought, but Kurt sensed it was more in admiration of his gung ho attitude than in granting permission for the excursion.

“You earned some R and R,” Pitt said. “Go on to the Azores. Contact me once you get there. In the meantime I’ll think about it.”

Kurt knew the tone in Pitt’s voice. He wasn’t a man to close off any possibilities, but he’d probably come up with his own idea long before Kurt called in.

“Will do,” Kurt said.

The screen went blank, Pitt’s face replaced by a NUMA logo.

In his heart, Kurt knew there was more to this incident than the obvious, but how much more was the question.

It could have been the “pirates” simply trying to cover their tracks. Maybe they’d taken cash or other valuables. Maybe they’d killed a few of the crew in the takeover and then decided to hide the incident by shooting the rest and scuttling the ship. But even that scenario left questions.

Why set the ship on fire? The smoke could and did give them away. It would have been easier to flood her and sink her without the explosions.

And what about the pirates themselves? Recent history had pirates all around the world, mostly locals from poor countries who saw the world’s wealth passing them by in great ships and decided to grab a share for themselves. But the few men Kurt had seen on the Kinjara Maru did not look like your typical pirates. More like mercenaries.

He looked over at the folding knife now lying on the table beside him, a unique-looking and lethal piece. He remembered it sticking in the chair. It seemed like a taunt, a calling card and a slap in the face all at the same time.

Kurt thought about the arrogance of the man’s words, and the voice itself. It hadn’t been the voice of some poverty-stricken West African pirate. And stranger still, Kurt had the oddest feeling that he’d heard that voice somewhere before.

THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA sits at the oceanic crossroads. But despite this position, it has always been more of a roadblock to trade than a thoroughfare. Its sheer size and inhospitable habitats — from desert sands in the Sahara to the dark impenetrable jungles across its vast central region — made it impossible to cross profitably.

In the past, ships that wished to swap oceans were forced to sail on a ten-thousand-mile journey that took them around South Africa, into some of the most treacherous waters in the world and past a point wistfully named the Cape of Good Hope, though its original name was the more accurate Cabo de Tormentas: Cape of Storms.

The completion of the Suez Canal made the journey unnecessary, but did little to bring Africa into the modern world. Quite the contrary. Now ships had only to cut the corner, slip through the Suez, and they were soon on their way to the Middle East and its oil fields, Asia and its factories, Australia and its mines.