Read Online Hunting the Dragon by Peter Dixon - Free Book Online

antennae, then climbed into the lookout’s perch. In the crow’s nest he peered through the field glasses, scanning the horizon.
    He saw nothing but sea and sky. He knew that the radar turning above him would bring in a return farther than the human eye. He also knew that sometimes the eye could beat electronics. He lowered the binoculars and moved his head back and forth allowing his peripheral vision to come into play. At that moment he caught a high bright burst of sunlight reflecting off metal. He lifted the glasses and saw the departing shape of a light blue helicopter. With a cry of surprise he shouted, “Off the bow. Helicopter!”
    He leaped for a cable that ran from the mast’s crosstree to the deck and slid down to the bridge. Sarah glanced up at Benny, admiring his agility.
    Seconds later, Benny took the wheel and sent Salvador on a heading after the chopper.
    “What’s a helicopter doing this far out at sea?” she asked excitedly.
    “You’re going to college, you figure it out.”
    He was demanding that she use logic, and Sarah reasoned, “We’re about two hundred nautical miles from the nearest land, right?”
    “About…”
    “That’s a long way for a helicopter to be out at sea.”
    “Unless it’s on some sort of search and rescue flight, or a military helicopter.”
    “In that case it wouldn’t have flown off. So, let’s conclude it came from the ship we picked up on radar. Which means it’s a spotter chopper and it could have taken off from a tuna clipper.”
    The seaman at the radar called again. “That ship’s changing course, Benny…heading away from us.”
    “Damn, we’ve been spotted. Every time we get close, they send up a chopper and haul ass.”
    He picked up the glasses and studied the ocean again. Far off, where sea met sky, the faint outline of a vessel stood in sharp contrast on the knife-edged horizon. He immediately recognized her rakish bow and the tall steel mast thrusting upward from the aft deck. As he watched the escaping clipper his frustration erupted. “We gotta have a chopper if we’re ever going to nail that guy.”
    She was offended by his harsh tone and said, “Have you any idea what a helicopter, and paying a pilot, will cost?”
    “Fund-raising. That’s your job, remember? You wanted to see it all for yourself. Okay. When you go back, you tell those candy-ass environmental dilettantes what it’s like out here, and why we need a chopper.”
    He lowered the binoculars and glanced at Sarah. He realized his abrupt response had hurt her. He didn’t mean it. Her skin was too thin. With a grin to ease the tension, Benny said mischievously, “It doesn’t have to be a new one.”
    She accepted Benny’s peace offering and returned his smile.
    He lifted the glasses and studied the ship again. He knew her silhouette from past, fruitless chases that ended with the clipper vanishing into the vastness of the Pacific. Passing the binoculars to Sarah he said, “There she is.”
    “ Lucky Dragon ?”
    “And that’s the last you’ll see of her in these waters.”
    “Where’s Gandara heading?”
    “The clipper’s low in the water. That means her freezers are full and they’ll be unloading at the Samoa cannery. After that, he’ll head for the coast of Central America, probably Costa Rica. That’s his usual fishing grounds.”
    “And we can’t intercept him?”
    “Not at our speed, and maybe never in this part of the Pacific, now that he knows we’re after him. But off Costa Rica, he can be found. And one of these days, I will find him dead in the water with his net out, and believe me, I’ll sink his ass.”
    “Benny, there are laws.”
    “He’s a pirate…outside the law. In the old days they’d have blasted his ship out of the water, and hanged him.”
    “You’d really do it?”
    “There are greater laws, Sarah.”
    “That makes you a pirate, too. Have you thought about that?”
    As Arnold descended for the bridge heliport he suddenly aborted