of Nolan was actually hoping they wouldn’t find the remains of the ship on the beach. It was pretzel logic, but if the ship was not here, then that meant it was still out there, somewhere. If it had been broken already, then the contents and the pirates would be scattered by now.
Besides, if they didn’t find evidence of the missing vessel here, they could leave quickly, dump Emma Simms, and resume the search somewhere else.
* * *
NOLAN WAS CERTAIN the recon mission was a bust when he returned to the water’s edge and saw the other search parties all heading in his direction.
Each group reported the same thing: not even the barest clue of the Pacific Star had been found.
So much for Plan B.
Now they had to return to the RIB and get out of there. But when Nolan turned around to tell this to Emma Simms, she was nowhere to be seen.
“Where the fuck did she go?” he bellowed through his oxygen mask.
They fanned out immediately and began looking for her.
All kinds of thoughts were going through Nolan’s mind now, not the least of which was that she could still get them all killed. But then after running about 100 feet back into the canyon of broken ships, he suddenly found her.
She was standing at the back of a severed stern they’d missed somehow, looking at the name painted below the intact railing.
She saw him coming and simply pointed up.
Nolan adjusted his nightscope and read the name.
Pacific Star …
She handed him her camera.
“Make sure you get my good side,” she said.
10
SHADEY HADARI WAS Gottabang’s Master Cutter.
He’d been employed at the breaking yard since it opened nearly twenty years before. This was substantial longevity as the Gottabang operation averaged one death, and usually a dozen mangling injuries, per day. Due to its outrageously hazardous working conditions, people looked up to Hadari as a sort of holy man, simply because he’d lasted so long at the most dangerous job in the world.
All these years of work had taken a toll on him, though. He was missing his left arm up to the elbow. He had just two fingers and a thumb on his right hand. His right foot was devoid of toes; his left ear was gone, as was all his hair, including his eyebrows and eyelashes. He had exactly two teeth left in his mouth.
He needed the help of a cane to walk and an ancient hearing aid to carry on a conversation. Though he was just thirty-eight years old, he looked twice that age at least.
He resided in a shack that was close to the beach and set away from the shantytowns where the rest of the cutting crews lived. Though built like the others, of wood and leftover ship paneling, the shack’s location was considered a perk, the only reward for Hadari’s long service to the multimillionaires who owned the ship-breaking operation. Its location was ideal only because most of the toxic smoke that rose from the beach did not usually blow in his direction.
Still, Hadari rarely slept, so numerous were his ailments. That’s why he was wide awake when Benja, his second cousin’s half-nephew, came to his shack in the dead of night asking if they could talk.
Benja was just twenty years old, but he, too, was covered with scars and bubbled skin, the result of coming in contact with so many harmful chemicals. He’d worked at Gottabang just six years, but in the day-to-day operations, he was considered a senior man as well.
Hadari motioned him inside, indicating he should close the rickety door behind him so no rats would get in.
“Visitors are here to talk to you,” Benja told Hadari. “They are looking for a missing ship.”
Hadari did not understand. Visitors? No one ever visited Gottabang.
“I found them, or I should say they found me, down at the water’s edge,” Benja went on nervously. “They want to know about a certain ship that came here to be chopped. I told them you were the wisest man on the beach. That if anyone knew, you would.”
But Hadari still didn’t understand. He’d been hit on the head by various objects so many times over the years, some things just didn’t register. He was still stumped by Benja’s news that visitors had come to the beach.
“I don’t want to talk to anyone,” he finally replied, his voice raspy and barely above a whisper. “If they are looking for a ship, let them float around in the bay, searching