Page 38

CHAPTER 37

THE SUN WAS high and hot over the Indian Ocean. The Prizrak was moving south at a leisurely ten knots. No particular destination. Cal Savage’s standing orders were to keep moving, avoid shipping lanes, and always stick to international waters. He left the rest to his able navigators.

Savage was lying in a lounge chair on the balcony outside his private cabin, bare-chested, slathered in white sunscreen. He picked at an assortment of grapes and dates from a silver tray and sipped from a tall tumbler of iced tea.

“Captain!” A crew member was shouting up from the main deck. Savage slipped off his sunglasses and peered down through the railing. The young man was holding up a sat phone.

Savage waved the kid up the metal stairway to his perch. He reached out and grabbed the device, then spoke curtly into the mouthpiece. “What?” The young man backed himself against the railing, hands clasped behind him.

Savage held the phone tight to his ear. He stood up abruptly as he took in the report from his spies.

Aaron Vail was dead. Shark attack.

“Okay,” the captain said evenly. “Then where the hell is Doc Savage?”

Missing, came the reply. No obvious remains. Location unknown.

“Sonofabitch!”

Savage grabbed the food tray and whipped it off the balcony, barely missing the young man’s head. Loose grapes and dates plopped into the ocean below. The tray hit a swell and sank out of sight.

The call disconnected.

Savage clenched his teeth. He gripped the sat phone so tight his knuckles seemed to bulge. Then he drew his arm back and heaved it into the water, too.

The young man grabbed the railing behind his back, clearly worried that he would be next. If there’s one thing the crew had learned while serving on the Prizrak , it was that the captain did not react well to bad news.