A quick upload before work. It's shorter than the others but it seemed a good place to leave it. And the plot thickens.
Enjoy and please review.
Chapter Four
"What have you got?"
Mike's fast words sliced through the office's silent hard work and left Raffy alone in the middle like a lame duck.
"Uh, NAVCOM got back to us about the boat," he explained unsurely. "Matches a cabin cruiser stolen in Port Douglas two days ago. Actually, I think it was boat-jacked. A middle-aged couple was thrown overboard in their pajamas. For the record, what do you call a hijacking if it happens on the drink? Ship-jacking? Ark-abducting? Pirating?"
Mike was unimpressed. "Commandeering. Nautical term." He turned back to Kate and Murphy. "I think we're dealing with pro's."
Raffy stepped into the fold cautiously. The loop wasn't something he wanted to be left out of. "I agree," he said, his intimidating personality swooping over any uncertainty.
Mike gave him a short glare and turned back to the other faces at the round table. "Well, if you were going to hire anybody to do this, it would be professionals."
"How?" Kate pondered aloud. "How would somebody in Donaldson's position find people like this?"
"Seriously?" Raffy put in. "You could almost look them up in the Yellow Pages."
"It still doesn't answer the why," Murphy argued. "You heard what Donaldson said. And what Xiao said. They were going to sign the deal. And then there's money."
Raffy obviously agreed with the Federal Agent. "We have no motive."
"We're almost twenty-four hours into this case," Kate stipulated.
"Yeah and we've got nothing," Mike responded. "No. Thing."
Swain took the hallways of the small building at a desperate run. Leaving the ship's buffer alone on the bridge and on watch, he took a taxi from the port and raced into the town of Nhulunbuy on his XO's orders. An urgent message had been sent to the ship, care of RO and his more secure channels, and their paranoid divisional officer preferred to have it hand-delivered when news broke that it was direct from Beijing.
"You have something for us, sailor?" Murphy asked immediately, looking up from the table as Swain entered their situation room.
"He has something for me, Murphy," Raffy clarified, sitting behind his own, personal MacBook Pro. It was the only computer in the room. "What have you got, Swaino?"
"A message from RO." He handed the glued envelope over to his superior, who tore it open ecstatically.
"What is it, X?" Kate asked from her not-so-subtle irate conversation with Mike Flynn.
"New demands," he replied with a confused look. "Someone doesn't want him to sign the deal."
"What?" Confusion had moved around the room and settled on Mike.
"Xiao is flying to Cairns," Raffy continued, "and sending us the ransom tape."
"At least he didn't delete it this time," Murphy put in as though it was a major plus.
"Rewind," Mike said emphatically. "The kidnappers don't want Xiao to sign the deal. What's with the money?"
"Communication," Raffy answered. "It's a method of establishing contact. They get to see if Xiao's willing to play ball and, if so, his game plan. Such as whether or not he'll contact the police, how long he'll take to pay."
"We have a new motive," Murphy added.
"So it is about the mining deal." Kate looked a little apologetically at Mike. He was on the right track after all, but she was still sure that he had the wrong suspect. "But Gareth Donaldson wants the deal signed."
"He says he wants the deal signed," Mike spelled out.
"You don't believe him?" Kate said angrily. They were going to start that 'discussion' again.
Raffy stepped in at the right time. "For what it's worth, I agree with Lieutenant Commander McGregor."
Mike held back his scoff.
"You do?" Kate was remotely surprised.
"Yes," Raffy said with indignation. "His performance pay will skyrocket. Not to mention his stock options. This deal is a good thing for his company. They have a huge debt."
"Well…"Murphy began. "Who doesn't want this deal signed?"
"It has a fairly neutral response here in Arnhem Land," Kate answered. "I spoke to a representative this morning and I quote, 'Mine'll still be there. That's not going change. Nothing's going change for us.' There'll still get a cut of the profits and the other handsome benefits that OZ-AL have provided the indigenous communities here as settlement."
"But in and out of the political sphere, there's been vocal opposition," Raffy added. "From Melbourne to Canberra to Sydney. And for a number of reasons. National identity is one, I guess. You could probably blame that for the Chinalco deal falling through."
"Blame?" Mike questioned with a slightly amused look.
"The Greens," Kate put in over Mike's protectionist politics. "They've vocally opposed this deal from the start, haven't they?"
"Yes, they have," Raffy responded. "So have OZ-AL's investors. They don't want their shares flying offshore."
"Are you saying that we've gone from having no viable suspects to hundreds?" Murphy put in.
"And that's just in this country," Raffy answered with a smile.
"Either way, it doesn't help us find Edison," Swain inserted. The group of four looked up at him unexpectedly. He had not joined the table or the conversation. "We have to find the boat that picked up the ransom."
"I might be able to help with that," Murphy told them. "We searched through all of the boats in all of the marinas and docks in the Gove Peninsula, right?"
"Right," Mike responded.
"What have we got west of the Peninsula?"
Kate immediately understood where this was going. She should have considered it, but they were focused on the OZ-AL mine and didn't think outside the box. It was time for that now. "There are islands to the north. A bay and Gunyangara in the west. Inlets, estuaries, a number of smaller isles."
"If they were going into the bush," Mike said skeptically.
"But if they're just waiting for this deal to go offline," Raffy began, "they may not have any reason to come back to mainland."
"Okay, so what does this mean?" Murphy asked expectantly.
Kate was still glaring at the map of Arnhem Land and the Northern Territory. "We're going back on to the Hammersley. We have work to do."
