Crude Carrier Read Online Free Page B

forget what happened to Bert. He was a good man.”
    Raiford nodded. “I’ll try to find out if there’s any connection.”
    â€œYou’re going to be pretty much on your own.”
    That had been his daughter’s comment, too, and he answered it the same way. “I’ve been there before.”
    If Raiford was going to be on his own, it would not be at busy Doha International Airport. Signs in English and Arabic advertised Marriott, Sheraton, Hertz, Alamo, and other familiar names and welcomed English-speaking travelers to the “Gateway to the Arabian Gulf.” Proof of a visa, crew status, and sufficient funds cleared him through immigration. A turbaned Sikh held a card with his name. With a “Welcome, sahib,” he carried Raiford’s bags to a Mercedes-Benz taxi. The temperature, Raiford read, was 40°C and humidity was at 24.1 percent. But the abstract numbers did not prepare him for the impact of the heat. Blinking against the glare, he settled into the air-conditioned taxi as it swung through the busy streets and past the soaring modern office towers of Doha into a countryside of flat, almost treeless sand and rock. To the nasal wails of Middle East music from a CD, the taxi lurched down a strip of glaring, heat-shimmered concrete. Some 40 kilometers later, instead of following the highway toward the commercial port of Mesaieed, the vehicle angled onto a bumpy tarmac road. “Landing boat come here—closer to ship.” A cluster of flat-roofed, concrete block buildings huddled under the sun. Beyond them stretched the silver gleam of the Persian Gulf. The national flag, maroon with a serrated white band, drooped on a flagpole.
    A guard wearing a checkered headdress and carrying an automatic weapon—it looked suspiciously like an Uzi—read over Raiford’s letter of appointment and studied his passport photograph. Then, expressionless, he raised the gate, let the taxi pull to the front of one of the squat buildings, and disappeared back into his air-conditioned sentry box.
    The driver lifted Raiford’s two canvas suitcases from the trunk. “Please to wait here for boat,” he said and held out a chit to be signed and a hand to be filled. As the taxi’s diesel engine pinged up mottled sand and wind-scoured rock, Raiford began to feel isolated.
    The sun pressed on his head and shoulders, but the sense of real heat came from the close, woolly air. It withered his nose and throat into scratchy flesh, and he could feel sweat running like ants down his back and under his arms. From the sand, additional pulses of heat rose up through his shoes to make him shift from one burning foot to the other.
    â€œHere, mate—come inside before you’re toast.” A bony splinter of man wearing a brightly flowered shirt opened the door of a long, almost windowless building and leaned out into the glare. “You’re the new man for the Aurora Victorious , right? I’ve called her for you. The launch’ll be here in a bit.”
    Raiford breathed with relief in the air-conditioned half-light of the large, barrackslike room.
    â€œBleedin’ hot, ’specially if you ain’t used to it. And this is the beginning of the cool season. This here’s the landing lounge—welcome to use it whenever you come through. No whiskey, though. Arabs don’t like it. Have to bring your own, and a lot of them likes that well enough. Been aboard the Victorious before?”
    â€œNo.” Raiford looked around the stark room with its low ceiling and gritty concrete floor spotted with old stains. A vacant bar held empty stools and a television set chattering in Arabic. Four men sat in beat-up lounge chairs reading or smoking and sipping coffee. They glanced at him without expression before turning back to their silence. Near a computer bearing a sign reading “2US$ per kilobyte,” a smeary chalkboard listed a dozen ships’