Read Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger for Free Online Page A

things.  While they waited for word, the Zodiac took another crewman over with a portable TV camera and tape recorder.  One of the boarding party shot off sixty frames with a Polaroid camera, while the TV recorded everything on half-inch tape.  The Coast Guardsmen restarted Empire Builder's engines and headed northwest for
    
    
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    , with the cutter holding station on her portside.  It was finally decided that Wilcox and Obrecki could take the yacht back to
    
    
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    , and that a helicopter would pick up the two “yachtsmen” that afternoon—weather permitting.  It was a long way to the helicopter base.  Panache was supposed to have her own helicopter, but the Coast Guard didn't have the funding to buy enough.  A third seaman was landed on the yacht, and it was time to bring the prisoners back to Panache.
    Chief Riley took the prisoners aft.  Wegener watched the bosun fairly throw them into the Zodiac.  Five minutes later it was hoisted aboard.  The yacht headed northwest, and the cutter turned away to continue her patrol.  The first man from the boarding party to reach the bridge was the seaman who'd worked the Polaroid.  He handed over half a dozen of the color frames.
    “The chief collected some stuff for you to look at, Cap'n.  It's worse'n it looks here.  Wait till you see the TV tape.  It's already set up for copying.”
    Wegener handed the photos back. “Okay—it all goes into the evidence locker.  You join up with the others.  Have Myers set up a new tape in the VCR, and I want you all to tell the camera what you saw.  You know how it goes.  Let's make sure we get it all right.”
    “Yes, sir!”
    Riley appeared a minute later.  Robert Timothy Riley was a man in the traditional pattern of the chief boatswain's mate.  Six-two and over two hundred pounds, he had the hairy arms of a gorilla, the gut of a man who knew his way around a beer can, and the rumbling voice to outscream a winter gale.  His oversized right hand grasped a couple of plastic food bags.  His face showed that anger was now replacing the shock.
    “It's a fuckin' slaughterhouse, sir.  Like somebody exploded a couple cans of brown paint—'cept it ain't paint.  Jesus.” One bag came up. “The little one was cleaning up when we pulled 'em over.  There's a trash can in the saloon with maybe a half dozen cartridge cases.  I pulled these two off the rug—just like they taught us, Cap'n.  Picked 'em up with my ball-point and shuffled 'em into the baggie.  Two guns I left aboard.  I bagged them, too.  That ain't the worst of it.”
    The next baggie contained a small, framed photograph.  It had to be the yacht's owner and his family.  The baggie after that contained a . . .
    “Found it under a table.  Rape, too.  She must've been havin' her period, but they didn't let that stop 'em.  Maybe just the wife.  Maybe the little girl, too.  In the galley there's some butcher knives, all bloodied up.  I figure they carved the bodies up and tossed 'em over the side.  These four people are shark-shit now.”
    “Drugs?”
    “Twenty or so keys of white powder stowed in the crew's quarters.  Some marijuana, too, but that just looks like a personal stash.” Riley shrugged. “I didn't even bother using the test kit, sir.  Don't matter.  This is straight piracy and murder.  I saw one bullet hole in the deck, a through-and-through.  Red, I ain't seen nothing like this in my whole life.  Like something in a movie, but worse.” He let out a long breath. “You have to have been there, sir.”
    “What do we know about the prisoners?”
    “Nothing.  They ain't done nothing more'n grunt, leastways not when I was around.  No ID on them, and I didn't want to go messing around things looking for passports an' stuff.  Figured I'd leave that for the real cops.  The wheelhouse is clean.  So's one of the heads.  Mr. Wilcox won't have much trouble taking her back, and I heard him tell Obrecki and