Текст книги "Skeleton Coast"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

There were dozens of stars penciled in just off shore. Most were clustered around Walvis Bay but others were scattered up and down the coast.

“We have spoken to many other fishermen, asking them where they lose lines and nets. We think one of these places might be a sunken ship. Can you look at this and tell me if there are any they missed?”

Heinrick studied the chart intently, his eyes darting from one spot to the next, his fingers tracing the outline of the coast. He finally looked up at Sloane. She could see there was a kernel of madness behind them, as if his reality wasn’t quite her own. “I do not know this place.”

Confused Sloane placed her finger on Walvis Bay and said its name. Then she drew it southward and said, “Here we are at Sandwich Bay. She tapped her finger toward the top of the map. “And here’s Cape Cross.”

“I do not understand. Cape Cross is there.” Heinrick pointed emphatically northward. “It can not be here.” He touched the spot on the map.

Sloane realized that despite a lifetime at sea, Papa Heinrick had never seen a nautical chart. She groaned inwardly.

For the next two hours Sloane laboriously talked the old fisherman through the places where he had lost nets or had lines tangled. Because the desert continued under the ocean for hundreds of miles from the coast, anything that tore lines or ripped nets was either a rock outcropping or a shipwreck. Papa Heinrick would tell her that two days sailing southwest from Sandwich Bay was such a place, or five days northwest was another. Each one he described corresponded with the map she’d made over the past days talking to the commercial fishermen and day excursion captains at Walvis.

But there was one spot that only Papa Heinrick mentioned. It was nearly seventy miles out by Sloane’s estimation, well away from any other. In fact, none of the other captains had even mentioned fishing in the area. Papa Heinrick said that there was little out there to attract marine life and he’d only been there himself because a freak wind had pushed him off course.

Sloane circled the spot on her chart, noting the water depth was over a hundred and fifty feet, at the limit of her scuba abilities but still doable. However, it was too deep for even the clearest water to reveal the outline of a ship against the sandy bottom—even from the helicopter they planned to rent to investigate the other sites.

“You must not go there,” Papa Heinrick warned when he saw the far-off look in Sloane’s eyes.

His comment refocused her attention. “Why not?”

“The seas are alive with great metal snakes. It is bad magic, I think.”

“Metal snakes?” Tony scoffed.

The old man lunged to his feet, his expression fierce. “You doubt Papa Heinrick?” he thundered, spraying Reardon with clots of saliva. “There are dozens of them, a hundred feet long or more, twisting and thrashing on the water. One nearly sank my boat when it tried to eat me. Only I could have escaped its evil mouth, for I am the greatest sailor who has ever lived. You would have pissed yourself in fear and died crying like an infant.” He looked back at Sloane, the edge of madness in his eyes a bit more keen.

“Papa Heinrick has warned you. Go there and you will surely be eaten alive. Now leave me.” He settled back at his little smoke fire, rocking on his heels and muttering in a language Sloane didn’t know.

She thanked him for his help but he didn’t acknowledge her. She and Tony returned to their inflatable and slowly paddled out of Papa Heinrick’s isolated camp. When they emerged from the secret cleft in the reeds Tony exhaled a long breath. “That man’s utterly daft. Metal snakes?Pleeease .”

“ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.’ ”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s a line fromHamlet that means that the world is stranger than we can possibly imagine.”

“You don’t believe him, do you?”

“About giant metal snakes? No, but he saw something out there that scared him.”

“I bet it was a surfacing submarine. The South African Navy must have some that patrol these waters.”

“That could be it,” Sloane conceded. “And we have more than enough sites to investigate without looking for sea serpents or submarines. We’ll meet up with Luka this afternoon and figure out how we want to proceed.”

They were back in their rooms at the swanky Swakopmund Hotel just as the sun began to rise. Sloane took a long shower, washing sand and the clinging feel of salt from her skin. As much as she needed to shave her legs, she put off the chore and stood under the pounding spray, letting the hot water work at the knotted muscles of her shoulders and back.

After toweling off she slipped nude between the sheets of her bed. Her dreams were filled with the images of monstrous snakes fighting each other on the open ocean.

5

ASJuan Cabrillo jogged to the boat garage located just aft of the superstructure he listened to damage reports on his comm unit. The bilges were dry, which wasn’t a surprise. The riverbed was silty mud, nothing that could breach the hull. What he was worried about were the keel doors. At the bottom of the Oregon were two large doors that opened outward, creating a moon pool. From here the pair of submersibles the ship carried could be launched directly into the sea. Used mostly for covert insertions and extractions, one of the minisubs had a diving capability of a thousand feet and a manipulator arm, while the smaller minisub, a Discovery 1000, was limited to shallower water.

To his immense relief, a tech on duty at the moon pool reported the two doors hadn’t been damaged and the subs were safely stowed in their cradles.

Juan reached the boat garage at the ship’s waterline. The large space was lit by red battle lamps, giving it a ruddy cast, and it smelled of salt water and gasoline. The large door that opened along theOregon ’s flank was tightly sealed as crewmen prepared a black Zodiac inflatable. The big outboard on its transom could push the craft well past forty knots, though it also had a small electric motor for silent operations.

The garage also housed a deep-hulled SEAL assault boat capable of even greater speed and with the capacity to carry ten armed men.

Eddie and Linc reported in a moment later. It had been Eddie Seng who’d played the part of helmsmen when Linc was acting as captain. The two couldn’t have been more physically different. Linc’s body bulged with muscles hewn from hours of pumping iron in the ship’s weight room while Eddie was rapier lean, his physique the result of a lifetime of martial arts training.

They wore black combat fatigues, matching belts festooned with ammo pouches, knives, and various other gear. Each carried M-4A1 assault carbines, the Special Forces version of the M-16.

“What’s the op, boss?” Eddie asked.

“As you know, we’re grounded and we don’t have time to wait for the spring rains. You remember that dam we passed a couple miles back?”

“You want us to blow it?” Linc asked incredulously.

“No, no. Just get inside and open the floodgates. I doubt they have guards, but if they do, go nonlethal if you can.” Both men nodded. “You probably won’t be able to catch up with us once the water hits us so we’ll link up in Boma on the coast.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Linc breezed, fully confident in their ability to execute the mission.

Juan hit a wall mike. “Eric, I need to know when it’s clear to open the garage and launch a Zodiac.

Where are those patrol boats?”

“One’s standing off. I think to start in with the mortars again. The other just passed behind our stern and is coming up the port side.”

“Anything from the shore?”

“Infrared shows it’s clean, but you and I both know Abala won’t waste any time getting here.”

“Okay, thanks.” Juan nodded to a crewman to open the outer door. The stench and heat of the jungle rushed into the garage as the door slid upward. The air was so humid you could almost drink it. It was also tinged with the chemical stink of the smoke screen Max had laid over the ship. The river’s edge was dark and overhung with dense vegetation. Despite Eric’s assurance that the shore was clear, Juan could feel eyes on them.

Because theOregon rode so high in the water, the launch ramp was five feet above the river. Linc and Eddie shoved the boat down the slick ramp and dove after it when it hit the water. They emerged from the river and rolled over the craft’s soft side. Eddie secured their weapons while Linc engaged the electric motor. At slow speed and under the cover of darkness the Zodiac was all but invisible.

As they pulled away from theOregon , Linc had to zigzag around arcing jets of water from the fire cannons that were keeping the two helicopters from getting close. The choppers dove and buzzed but never got nearear than a hundred feet before one of the cannons fired a blasting stream of water that forced the pilots to bank away sharply.

Eddie could imagine the scene inside each of the helos as the rebels threatened the oil company pilots while at the same time knowing a direct hit from one of the fire hoses would drown the helicopter’s turbines and send it plummeting into the river.

They emerged from the smoke screen and saw that the two patrol boats were far enough away for Linc to switch to the Zodiac’s outboard. The big four-stroke was well muffled, but it still sounded a deep bass tone that rumbled across the water as he brought the nimble craft onto plane.

It was impossible to speak at forty knots, so they drove back upriver with their thoughts, both men keyed up on adrenaline and ready for anything. They didn’t hear the high keening of an approaching boat until it shot around a small island hugging the near shore.

Link whipped the Zodiac hard to starboard as the two boats nearly collided. He recognized the scared face of Colonel Abala’s aide at the same instant the rebel officer recognized him. Link twisted the throttle harder against its stop as the aide-de-camp whipped the boat around and started to chase them. The boat was sleek, with two outboards and a low hull designed to ride atop the water. There were four other men with him, all carrying AKs.

“You know him?” Eddie shouted.

“Yeah, he’s Abala’s right-hand man.”

The rebel boat began to gain on the Zodiac, a rooster tail of water jetting from its stern.

“Linc, if he’s got a radio, the jig’s going to be up.”

“Damn. I hadn’t thought about that. Any ideas?”

“Let him catch up,” Eddie said, and passed one of the M-4s to Lincoln.

“And don’t fire until I see the whites of their eyes?”

“Screw that. Take ’em the second they’re in range.”

“Okay, hold on.” Linc killed the throttles and as the Zodiac settled into the water he whipped it into a tight turn, its flat bottom skipping across the river like a stone. It came to a sudden stop, bobbing on waves of its own creation, but it was more than stable enough for Linc and Eddie.

They brought their weapons to their shoulders as the rebel’s boat bore down on them at fifty miles per hour. At two hundred yards they opened fire; AKs immediately winked back at them, but the rebels’ aim was off because the boat was going so fast. Tiny fountains of water shot into the air well ahead and to the left of the stationary Zodiac. The Corporation men had no such difficulty, and every second brought the boat closer and increased their accuracy.

Linc fired three round bursts that stitched the small windscreen and tore chunks of fiberglass from the boat’s bow. Eddie concentrated on the driver, calmly firing single shots until the man suddenly slumped.

The boat veered for a moment before another rebel got hold of the wheel while the other three continued to rip through magazine after magazine. One burst came close enough to singe the air around Eddie and Linc, but neither man ducked or even blinked. They methodically fired at the oncoming boat until only one rebel remained crouched behind the wheel, covered by the long bow.

Working in coordination, Eddie kept up a steady stream of fire as Linc moved back to the idling engine.

The rebel boat was no more than fifty yards away, charging straight at them like a shark coming in for the kill. It was obvious that its driver intended to ram them. Linc let him come.

When the speedboat was no more than twenty feet away he goosed the throttle and the Zodiac dashed under its high bows. Eddie already had a grenade in his hand, the pin pulled and the spoon long gone. He flipped it into the speedboat’s cockpit as it screamed by them, holding up five fingers then dropping them as the seconds ticked by. His last finger went down and the speedboat went up, the crump of the grenade followed almost immediately by the spectacular explosion of the boat’s fuel tanks. The hull cartwheeled across the water, chunks of fiberglass and the remains of its crew flying free amid the blazing rain of burning gasoline.

“Strike one right-hand man,” Linc said with satisfaction.

Five minutes later, the Zodiac coasted to a wooden jetty near the base of the Inga Dam. The massive structure loomed over them, a sculpted wall of ferro-concrete and steel holding back a huge reservoir above the Congo River. Because nearly all the electricity generated by the hydro-dam was used during the day in the mines of Shaba, formerly Katanga Province, there was just a trickle of water coming down the spillway. They dragged the boat well out of the river and secured it to a tree, not knowing how high the water would reach. They hefted their weapons for the long climb up a set of stairs built into the face of the dam.

Halfway up the stairs the quiet of the night was shattered by gunfire erupting from below them. Shrapnel, bits of concrete, and bullets whizzed all around them as they stood exposed on the steps. Both men dropped flat and immediately returned fire. Down below two native boats had pulled up to the jetty.

While rebels fired from the dock more began racing up the stairs.

“I guess Abala’s guy had a radio after all.” Eddie said, dropping his spent M-4 and drawing his Glock.

He fired rapidly as Linc hosed the dock with 5.56 mm rounds from his assault rifle.

The three rebels charging the stairs went down with double taps from Eddie’s pistol, their bodies tumbling off the steps in a tangle of limbs and blood. By the time he’d changed out magazines for his M-4, the fire from the dock had withered to a single AK-47 and Linc silenced this gun with a sustained burst that blew the rebel off the dock. The current took him almost immediately and he vanished down the river.

Above them an alarm horn had begun to sound.

“Let’s go,” Linc said, and the two men raced up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.

They reached the top of the dam. Beyond it was the large reservoir and at the far end of the structure was a squat building with light spilling from its windows.

“Control room?” Linc whispered.

“Has to be.” Eddie pulled his throat mike into position. “Chairman, its Eddie. Linc and I are on the dam and about to approach the control center.” There was no need to tell him their presence had already been detected.

“Copy that. Advise when you’re in position to open the gates.”

“Roger.”

Keeping low so they didn’t silhouette themselves against the starry sky, they raced silently across the top of the dam. To their left spread the reservoir, a calm lake bisected by a white slash of reflected moonlight. To their right was a hundred-foot drop to a jumble of boulders littering the base of the dam.

When they reached the blockhouse, a boxy one-story concrete building with a single door and a pair of windows, they could see that beyond it were the sluice gates and penstock that diverted water to the facility’s turbines that were housed in a long building at the bottom of the dam. There was only enough water passing through the channel to provide electricity to the town of Mabati.

With Linc on the other side, Eddie reached out and tried to open the blockhouse door. It was securely locked. Eddie motioned to the keyhole as if he had the key and cocked an eyebrow at Linc. Franklin Lincoln was the Corporation’s expert at lock picking and was rumored to have even broken into Juan’s gun safe on a bet from Linda Ross, but all he could do was shrug at his partner and pat his pockets. He’d forgotten to bring his picks.

Eddie rolled his eyes and reached into one of the pouches hanging from his belt. He molded a small amount of Semtex plastic explosives around the handle and inserted an electronic detonator. He and Linc moved a short way off.

Just before he keyed the detonator, a guard emerged from around the blockhouse. He wore a dark uniform and carried a flashlight and a pistol. Linc aimed instinctively and was an instant from firing before adjusting his site picture. He shot the pistol out of the guard’s hand. The man went down, screaming and clutching his arm to his chest. Linc ran over to him, pulling a pair of flex cuffs from his combat harness.

He checked the wound quickly, relieved that it was superficial, and bound the guard’s hands and feet.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said and rejoined Eddie.

Eddie fired off the charge. The explosion blew the handle apart and Linc threw open the door, Eddie covering him with his M-4.

The control room was brightly lit, an open space with banks of dials and levers along the walls and counters mounted with outdated computers. The three night operators immediately thrust their hands in the air when Linc and Eddie rushed into the room shouting for everyone to get down. They gestured with their rifles and the men sank to the concrete floor, their eyes wide with fear.

“Do as we say and no one gets hurt,” Eddie said, knowing how trite it sounded to the terrified workers.

Linc did a quick recon of the building, finding an empty conference room behind the control space and a closet-sized lavatory that was also empty except for a cockroach the size of his middle finger.

“Do any of you speak English?” Eddie asked as he cuffed the three Africans.

“I do,” one said, the tag on his blue jumpsuit showing his name was Kofi Baako.

“Okay, Kofi, like I said we’re not going to hurt you, but I want you to tell me how to open the emergency floodgates.”

“You will drain the reservoir!”

Eddie pointed at a multiline telephone; four of its five lights were blinking. “You’ve already contacted your superiors and I’m sure they’re sending additional people. The gates won’t be open for more than an hour. Now show me how to open them.”

Kofi Baako hesitated for another second, so Eddie yanked his pistol from its holster, making sure it was never pointed at the three men. His voice went from reasonable to savage. “You’ve got five seconds.”

“That panel there.” Baako nodded at the far wall. “The top five switches disengage the safety protocols.

The next five close the circuits to the gate motors and the bottom five open the gates themselves.”

“Can the gates be closed manually?”

“Yes, there is a room inside the dam with big hand cranks. They need two men to turn them.”

With Linc still at the front door watching for any more guards, Eddie flipped the switches in turn, watching the jeweled lights that were built into the control panel switch from red to green with each toggle thrown. Before he started on the last row he rested his throat mike against his neck. “Chairman, it’s me.

Be ready for it. I’m opening the gates now.”

“Not a minute too soon. Abala transferred the mortars from the Swift boats and has set them up on shore. A couple more rounds and they have us ranged.”

“Stand by for the big flush,” Eddie said and threw the last set of switches. With the last toggle in position a noise began to rise, low at first, but building to a rumble that shook the building. The gates were coming up and water was thundering down the face of the dam in a solid wall. It hit the bottom and exploded in a roiling cauldron that grew into a solid wave eight feet high that swept down the river, inundating the shoreline and ripping out trees and shrubs as it accelerated.

“That ought to do the trick,” Eddie said and emptied his clip into the control panel. The rounds punctured the thin metal and shredded the old electronics in a blaze of smoke and sparks.

“And that ought to buy us some time,” Linc added.

They left the technicians cuffed to a table and made their way back down the staircase. The sound and fury of the water pouring over the dam’s face was a palpable sensation while spray soaked their partially dry clothing.

By the time they reached the bottom and dragged the Zodiac to the river’s edge, the water had settled enough for them to launch the inflatable and start heading downstream for their rendezvous in Boma.

Back aboard theOregon , Juan was getting concerned. Abala had realized the Swift boats were too unstable for the mortars so he’d unloaded them and now his men were dialing in the range. The last explosive had hit less than twenty feet from the starboard rail.

To add to his problems, more and more native boats were arriving from upstream, loaded to the gunwales with rebels. While the water cannons were performing flawlessly, there were only four of them—and two were needed at all times to prevent the buzzing helicopters from getting close enough for the men aboard to jump down onto the freighter. Juan had called Hali Kasim back from the radar dome to coordinate communications so Linda Ross could lead Eddie’s shore operations fighters. Using only shotguns and pistols, they rushed to the side of the ship where Mark Murphy said a boat was getting too close. They fired down on the rebels while ducking blistering fire from both the shore and the pirogues.

“All right,” Hali exclaimed from the comm station. “My techs have the radar back.”

“Will you be able to see the wave?” Juan asked him.

“Sorry, Chairman, but with the bends in the river I won’t see it until it’s almost on top of us.”

“Anything’s better than nothing.”

Another mortar dropped near the ship, this time missing the port rail by inches. The rebels had them bracketed. The next rounds would fall with impunity all over theOregon and her decks were not nearly as heavily armored as her flanks.

“Damage control teams, get ready,” Juan said over the shipboard net. “We’re going to take some hits.”

“Holy God,” Hali shouted.

“What?”

“Brace yourselves!”

Juan hit the collision alarm as he saw the wave on both the radar screen in the corner of the big monitor as well as the feed from the stern cameras. The surge stretched from bank to bank. Rearing up more than ten feet and easily traveling at twenty knots, the roiling wall of water bore down on them relentlessly. One of the Swift boats tried to twist away and race ahead of the swell, but was caught midway through its turn. The wave hit the vessel broadside. The patrol craft flipped instantly, tossing men into the maelstrom where they were crushed by the rolling hull of their boat.

Pirogues simply vanished with nothing to mark their passing, and the rebels lining the shore taking potshots at theOregon fled for high ground as water washed away everything in its path.

Juan took his hands away from the controls a moment before the wave slammed into theOregon , flexed his fingers like a pianist about to perform an impossible overture, and lightly rested them back on the keys and joystick that would maneuver his ship.

He brought the unclogged drive tube up to twenty percent just as the swell lifted the stern of theOregon out of the mud. Like being caught in a tsunami the vessel lurched from a dead stop to twenty knots in an instant as a pair of mortar shells exploded in her wake, shots that would have blown through her rear cargo hatches and destroyed the Robinson R44 helicopter stored on a retractable elevator.

Juan scanned engine readouts, pump temperatures, speed over the bottom, speed through the water, and his position and course, his gaze darting from one screen to the next in an unending cycle. The ship was actually making only three knots through the water but was racing down the river at closer to twenty-five, borne onward by the tremendous pressure of water escaping over the Inga Dam.

“Max, tell me the instant that second tube clears,” he called out. “I don’t have enough steerage speed.”

He edged the throttle higher, fighting the current as it tried to slam theOregon into an island that had reared up in the middle of the channel. His fingers danced over his keyboard. He called up the bow and stern thrusters as needed to keep the ship straight and more or less centered as the dark jungle blurred passed.

They careened around a tight bend in the river, the flow pushing them hard for the opposite shore, where a small cargo ship that had been headed upriver had been pushed into the riverbank, its stern thrust far out into the Congo. Juan slammed on full power to the thrusters, laterally shoving theOregon as far to starboard as he could. The hull scraped against the coastal freighter with an ear-splitting shriek and then they were clear.

“That’s going to leave a mark,” Eric quipped even though he was awed by Juan’s handling of the vessel.

He knew he wouldn’t have made the turn and avoided the ship.

With the river boiling all around them they were swept further downstream, carried along like a leaf in a gutter, barely able to control their course until Juan could eke more power out of her engines. Time and again he had to fight the river to keep theOregon from grounding or plowing into the riverbank, each escape seemingly closer than the last. They did hit a shoal at one point, the ship decelerating hard as it gouged a furrow through the muddy riverbed. For a moment, Juan feared the freighter would grind to a halt again because the computer had shut off the pulse jet, but the current was strong enough to drag them over, and as soon as the bottom was free the ship picked up speed like a sprinter out of the blocks.

Despite the danger, or maybe because of it, Cabrillo found he was enjoying the challenge. It was a test of his skills and the capabilities of his ship against the vagaries of the raging flood—the epic struggle of man versus nature. He was the type of man who never backed away from anything because he knew his limitations and had yet to meet a situation he didn’t think he could handle. In others this trait would come off as cockiness. In Juan Cabrillo it was simply supreme confidence.

“Scouring action has cleared the second tube,” Max announced. “Just be gentle on her until I get a team into it to check for damage.”

Juan dialed up the second tube and immediately felt his ship respond. She was no longer sluggish coming about and he had to use the thrusters less and less. He checked their speed—twenty-eight knots over the bottom and eight through the water. He had more than enough speed to control the freighter, and now that they’d covered several miles the once-turbulent flow had started to even out. Colonel Abala’s forces were either dead on the river or left far behind and the two choppers he’d stolen had peeled off soon after the wave hit.

“Eric, I think you can take her from here on down to Boma.”

“Aye, Chairman,” Stone replied. “I have the helm.”

Juan sat back in his chair. Max Hanley placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hell of a piece of driving if I say so myself.”

“Thanks. Don’t think I want to do that again anytime soon.”

“I’d love to say we’re out of the woods, but we aren’t. Battery charge is down to thirty percent. Even with the current at our backs we’re going to run out of juice a good ten miles from the sea.”

“Do you have any faith in me at all?” Juan asked, pained. “Weren’t you here when Eric said mean high tide is in…” Juan checked his watch. “An hour and a half? Ocean’s going to run fifteen or twenty miles inland and turn the Congo brackish. Might be like running regular gasoline in a race car engine but there’s enough salinity to spool up the magnetohydrodynamics.”

Max cursed. “Why didn’t I think about that?”

“For the same reason I get paid more than you. I’m smarter, more clever by half, and much better looking.”

“And you wear your humility like a well-tailored suit.” Max then turned serious. “Soon as we get to Boma I’ll get some of my engineers into the tubes, but from what I could tell from the computer I think they’re okay. May not be at hundred percent, but my gut tells me they don’t need to be relined.”

Though he carried the title of president within the Corporation and was tasked with a lot of the day-to-day affairs of running a successful company, Max most enjoyed his role as theOregon ’s chief engineer, and her state-of-the-art engines were his pride and joy.

“Thank God.” Replacing the lining of the drive tubes was a multimillion-dollar job. “But I don’t want to be in Boma any longer than necessary. Once we pick up Linc and Eddie I want us in international waters just in case Minister Isaka can’t keep the heat off us for opening their dam,” Juan said.

“Good thinking. We can check the tubes in the open ocean about as easily as tied to a dock.”

“Anything else from the damage reports you’ve gotten?”

“Other than a broken X-ray machine down in medical and Maurice squawking about a whole lot of broken dishes and glassware, we came through okay.” Maurice was theOregon ’s chief steward, the only member of the crew older than Max. Better suited to the Victorian age, Maurice was also the only non-American aboard. He’d served in the British Navy, overseeing the mess on a number of flagships before being cashiered out because of his age. In his year with the Corporation he’d quickly become a crew favorite, throwing the perfect parties for everyone’s birthdays and knowing which delicacies they preferred from the ship’s highly trained cooking staff.

“Tell him to go easy on what he orders this time. When we lost all those dishes racing to save Eddie a few months back Maurice replaced them with Royal Doulton to the tune of six hundred dollars a place setting.”

Max arched an eyebrow. “Quibbling over a few pennies?”

“We lost forty-five thousand dollars’ worth of finger bowls and sorbet cups.”

“Okay, a couple of dimes, then. You forget that I’ve seen our latest balance sheets—we can afford it.”