A few minutes later, he projected a clip from one of the locks. It showed, in grainy black-and-white footage, a midsized freighter waiting for the lock to flood. An edelweiss flower clearly showed on its funnel.

Dirk looked at the image with a sense of hope. “Look at her Plimsoll mark. She’s riding high in the water. Her holds must be empty.”

“You’re right,” Gunn said. “If she hijacked the Adelaide, she didn’t transfer the cargo aboard.”

Yaeger pulled up a profile of the Salzburg. “The Adelaide is a hundred feet longer. They’d have to leave a large chunk of her cargo behind if they ransacked and sank her.”

“The rare earth ore she was carrying was too valuable for that,” Gunn said. “No, she must still be afloat. I’m starting to believe she was taken to a place where her cargo could be off-loaded.”

“But where?” Summer asked. “You checked all the major ports.”

“She could easily slip into a private facility without our knowledge.”

“There’s another possibility,” Dirk said, rising from his chair. “The wreck we ran across in Madagascar, the Norseman. She had had her identity scrubbed from the hull. What if they did the same with the Adelaide only they passed her off for another vessel?”

Yaeger and Gunn both nodded, and Dirk began gathering up his things. When he began moving toward the door, Summer called out to him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Panama. And you’re coming with me.”

“Panama?”

“Sure. If the Salzburg is behind the Adelaide’s disappearance, then someone at Habsburg Industries has to know something about it.”

“Maybe, but we don’t know anything about Habsburg Industries or even where they’re located.”

“That’s true,” Dirk replied, shooting Gunn and Yaeger an expectant look. “But we will by the time we get there.”

Chapter 56

56

THE BULLWHIP CRACKED, AND EVERY MAN WITHIN earshot flinched, fearing the lick of its knotted tip. Occasionally Johansson would show compassion and simply snap it in the air for effect. But most of the time he directed the whip to the bare skin of a forced laborer, eliciting an agonized cry.

There were nearly seventy of them, slaves culled from the hijacked ships carrying rare earth. Now they were the ones carrying the rare earth, hauling the stolen ore to various extraction centers hidden in the jungle. Weakened by a regimen of hard labor and a subsistence diet, the men were quickly reduced to haggard zombies. The arriving captives from the Adelaide were shocked at the sight of them, in their ragged, soiled clothes, staring impassively at the new arrivals.

Pitt and Giordino took one look at the men and knew there would be no benefit in delaying an escape.

“I’m not impressed by the long-term medical coverage offered here,” Giordino muttered as they were divided into work teams to off-load the Adelaide’s cargo.