Deep Shadow

by Nick Sullivan

  Darcy looked at him, handing the camera back to Emily as he held the Navy reservist’s gaze. “Is that an official inquiry?” When Rick didn’t respond, Darcy continued. “If it is, then perhaps we should return to shore. But, I’m guessing what you’re up to is somewhat unofficial, or Martin wouldn’t have asked for me. You’re military, yes?”

  Rick nodded. “US Navy. Reserve. And no, that was not an official question. That being said, you’ll forgive me for wanting to be sure we haven’t hired a cartel man to look for a cartel sub.”

  “I do not work for the cartel. I have worked with them, or rather, some of their transport people. It is hard not to be involved with them, in my line of work.”

  “And what line of work is that?”

  Darcy smiled. “More questions. In the interest of putting you at ease, I have never trafficked drugs.”

  Boone stepped in. “Martin vouches for you, and given his opinion on drug dealers, I’m guessing he wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t one of the good guys.”

  Darcy looked at Boone. “Good… bad… these words don’t mean very much. But I have never brought harm to anyone, if that helps your conscience.”

  Conditions off the Willemstoren Lighthouse were not as calm as the day before, but since they had the boat they could avoid the rough entry of a shore dive. On the other hand, there was no mooring on this site, and Boone suspected the current would be stronger today.

  “I think we have to do a drift dive,” he said. “Everyone okay with that?”

  Drift diving was a method where the divers entered the water at one point, traveled with the current, and then exited at another location. This was usually done in areas of strong current or from a boat when there was no mooring. The divers simply went with the flow and the boat followed them above, picking them up when they surfaced as a group.

  “Rick and I did a lot of that in Cozumel and again in Palau,” Ron said. “But then I had a rough time equalizing and got a barotrauma in my ear. I got to stay on the boat and watch Rick’s bubbles while he had all the fun. It was actually pretty cool—the captain put me up on the bow and I guided him.”

  “I have to follow your bubbles?” Darcy asked.

  “Well, I’ll have a safety sausage,” Boone said, referring to the brightly colored, inflatable tube many divemasters carried. Filled with the diver’s air, it floated on the surface and allowed a boat to know where the divers were while at depth.

  “Ah, yes, I know what that is. I’ve chartered for divers before, just never done no drift dive. I’ll use the flybridge helm.”

  “Tell you what,” Ron said. “I’ll stay up top, give Darcy here a hand and help keep an eye on you guys.”

  “You’re gonna miss the sub, little brother,” Rick teased.

  Ron smiled and shook his head. “No way it’s still there.”

  “Not likely, no,” Boone said, “but I’m hoping we’ll find something.”

  Twenty minutes later, Boone, Emily, and Rick drifted down toward the reef. The westerly current had picked up so they had to kick a bit to make headway. A steady tank bang drew his attention; Emily was rapping her carabiner to her tank and once she had Boone’s eye she pointed down into the reef below her neon green fins, signaling Drum and miming taking a picture. Boone looked at the coral and recognized it as the patch of reef that she’d been mask-down in when he spotted the submarine. He quickly oriented himself, swam to a spot just off the reef, and gestured for Rick to join him. Boone pointed out into the blue, aiming for a spot to the right where he’d first seen the submarine. He then swept his finger slowly to the left, slanting downward as he did so, simulating the sub’s diving move to the east.

  Rick nodded, then motioned for Boone to Watch me, pointing two fingers to his own mask before tapping his chest. He swam out into the blue before looking back, and raising a hand in an interrogative OK sign. Boone motioned for him to go out a bit further and Rick did so, looking back as he went until Boone signaled Stop. Rick had brought a wrist mounted compass on his left arm and now stretched his right arm out to the east, looking back for guidance. Boone had him make a couple adjustments and the Claassen brother oriented his compass with his arm, pausing to make a couple notes on a slate he carried. Satisfied, he checked his air pressure and pulsed a hand in the direction the sub had taken, finishing with a questioning OK?

  He wants us to follow in the sub’s wake for a bit, Boone thought. He could hear the boat above and could just make her out on the surface to the west. He looked back to Emily and she gave an affirmative sign, which he repeated to Rick. They would be swimming against the current but since they had a boat above, they could afford to burn some bubbles. Boone paused to unroll the little orange tube of his “safety sausage” and removed his regulator, sending a stream of compressed air into it before unspooling the line and letting it shoot up to the surface.

  The three divers swam to the east, slowly dropping in depth, leveling off at about eighty feet. All three scanned the bottom, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Apart from a hawksbill turtle and a school of ocean triggerfish, nothing drew their eye. The sandy bottom far below contained no sleeping submarines. At a thousand psi, Rick signaled they should make their way back up. They did so, continuing to the west, the boat above following their bubbles and the inflated orange tube.

  “Well, that was a bust,” Emily said, as she climbed the transom ladder Darcy had hooked into the edge of the swim platform. The Yachty McYachtface was not a dive boat, but the ladder was sturdy and Emily came aboard with little difficulty, though she took the hand Boone offered.

  “Let’s be honest, we didn’t exactly expect to find anything but we had to try,” Boone said, looking over at Rick, who was unclipping his slate from his BCD. Boone joined him while Emily got out of her gear. “You got the bearing, I take it?”

  “Hope so… let’s have a word with our captain, see if he’s got any ideas.”

  “I always have ideas,” Darcy said, joining them aft. He’d left the Beneteau idling, having moved some distance from shore. “What do you have here…” Darcy took the slate. “Not due east, uh?”

  Boone frowned. “I thought it was going east.”

  “It’s natural to simplify things to east west, north south, especially if you’re on a reef that runs parallel to shore.” Darcy looked toward the horizon off the port side. “East south east. Huh… I got an idea.” He headed forward to the cockpit. Throttling up from idle, he spun the boat to port, ramping up the knots. “You boys are paying, you up for a little adventure?”

  “You think you know where it is?” Boone asked.

  “Where it ‘is’? No idea. Where it might have gone, yes… I have a hunch.”

  “Then let’s do it!” Emily said.

  Darcy kept his eyes on the sea ahead but pointed back at her. “This lady has a spark! I’m going to take that as a yes. There’s a little island on that bearing. Isla Aves de Sotavento. It’s in Venezuelan waters. Uninhabited except for a little Coast Guard contingent on the western tip. Just a lighthouse and a few shacks. A couple spots where fishermen camp are further along the southern shore.”

  “You seem to know this place pretty well,” Rick said.

  Darcy grinned and this time Boone was sure—the man had a tiny gold filling in the shape of a heart, smack dab in the middle of one of his front teeth. “Bonaire has very strict laws about collecting lobster and conch. Sometimes, people with money want to eat fresh lobster and conch. This island… plenty of both.”

  “This sucker can move!” Ron said, looking ahead as they tore through the ocean. He pointed at the speedometer. “Thirty knots? This boat didn’t strike me as the speedy type.”

  “And she wasn’t, when I got her.”

  “How fast can she go?” Ron asked.

  “Faster than this,” Darcy looked at him over the tops of his polarized sunglasses. “But if I’m
showing you that, it means something’s gone wrong… so just enjoy the thirty.”

  “How’s your range?” Boone asked. A boat that could top thirty knots tended to lose out on range, but from what he knew about Darcy’s business, he figured the man needed some legs.

  “At thirty knots I can only squeeze about two hundred fifty miles out of her, but if I keep her to twenty-two I can go three hundred thirty miles with the standard tanks—and if I need to I can double that with auxiliary fuel bladders. I’ve got one installed today, so no worries.” He took his wallet out of his pocket and leaned over, pressing a panel on the side of the console. A hidden compartment popped open and he exchanged his wallet for a different one within. Tucking it into his back pocket, he crouched and dug further into the hidey hole. “Who likes to climb?”

  Emily nudged Boone. “That’d be you, Monkey Man.” Boone had done a little rock climbing on a limestone cliff face when he’d taken Emily for a picnic in Washington-Slagbaai.

  Darcy came back up, holding out a cloth bundle of yellow, blue and red. “Time to ditch the Dutch. Up top, near the radar. Take down the Bonaire one, too. The halyard pulley is rusted so you’ll have to shinny up the mast.”

  Boone took the Venezuelan flag and went aft, taking the steps to the flybridge. Overhead, a small radar rotated and just aft of it the Dutch and Bonairean flags flew. For a time, the Dutch islands of the Caribbean were part of the Netherlands Antilles, comprised of the ABC islands in the south and the SSS islands (Sint Maarten, Saba, and Statia) in the north. Though the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved in 2010, Bonaire retained the status of a “special municipality” of the Netherlands. Boone climbed up the mast and made the switch. Returning to the lower helm, he handed the flags to the captain.

  “Well, boys and girl,” Darcy said, tucking the flags into the compartment and flipping it closed with a foot, “let’s go see what there is to see.”

  Ana Muñoz drank greedily from the water bottle the Filipino terrorist had brought her, clutching it between her cuffed hands. The corrugated steel walls of the little shed radiated heat and the interior was stifling. Several times she’d felt like she was about to pass out. And that is something I must not do, Ana thought. The obese terrorist who had been assigned to guard her would doubtless seize upon such an opportunity. The man’s eyes radiated an animal lust, and though the terrorist leader had made promises regarding her treatment, he was off somewhere on her cartel’s submarine and she doubted this “Moussa” had either the self-control or honor to uphold that promise.

  She noted the movement of shadows at the base of the door. Moussa was just outside, having resumed his post once the Filipino delivered the water. She quietly moved to the corner of the shed to the right of the door and put her eye to a tiny shaft of light, a nail hole that had lost its nail. Less than a hundred feet away to the west stood a concrete building. That is where they are holding father. She had watched the comings and goings of the terrorists and was quite certain he was inside. What’s more, that building sported a tall radio mast. They’re using him to trick cartel assets into assisting them in their plans. If she angled her eye to the side, she could just make out a little dock to the north and the bow of the stolen patrol boat. She was fairly sure there were a total of five terrorists on the island. There were usually two in the concrete building with her father, one up top in the lighthouse—she’d heard him calling down to the men below—another was usually near the boat… and then there was Moussa.

  An approaching rush of sound startled her. It came from behind, to the east. Rain. A tropical shower. In moments the rain reached the shed roof. She had anticipated this—had felt the change in pressure and had smelled the ozone tang in the hot air. And right on cue, she heard the padlock being manipulated. There had been an earlier rain shortly after they had arrived, and Moussa had sought shelter then. He had sought something else, too, but her screams had brought the others and Moussa had been duly chastised. Now, however… Ana upended the remainder of her water bottle across her chest, soaking the thin cloth of her tank top.

  Moussa’s nose-breathing heralded his entrance as the door cracked open and he slipped inside. He was immediately greeted by the sight of Ana Muñoz, her shapely form clearly visible through her thin, wet top. Staring at the young Latina beauty, Moussa’s eyes bugged out of his head before shifting this way and that in their orbits.

  The stupid beast is trying to figure out how to get what he wants without me screaming, she thought. And since she didn’t want his solution to involve the butt of his rifle to her head, she spoke. “Just get it over with,” she said, radiating resignation. She spoke in Spanish—she knew the brute was from one of those North African Spanish enclave cities. Letting her posture sag, Ana turned toward the back wall and leaned against the crates stacked there… along with the pipe she’d pulled off the non-functional utility sink, hidden in a gap in the crates. She closed her eyes.

  She heard the sound of his Kalashnikov being leaned against the door and the rustle of his belt buckle and pants being hastily undone. She smelled the rank odor of his sweat soaked body. She felt his hands on the waistband of her shorts. Then she moved.

  She felt the cold rusting metal of the pipe in her handcuffed grip. She saw the look of surprise in Moussa’s eyes as she spun around. She heard the metallic thud as the pipe smashed against the side of the man’s skull.

  Moussa crumpled to the ground with a groan and Ana froze, listening intently. Nothing. The tropical shower continued to patter against the metal roof. But it won’t last long. Showers in the arid Leeward Antilles were over quickly more often than not, and she needed the cover. She set the pipe down and quickly checked the terrorist’s pockets, hoping that the keys to her cuffs would be there. No luck. She wasn’t surprised. The other terrorists didn’t seem to trust Moussa and she suspected the leader held the handcuff keys. She grabbed the man’s AK-103 and opened the door a crack. No sign of anyone. Moving swiftly and crouching low, she slid through the door and around the back of the shed, heading toward the mangroves and a brackish lagoon behind the lighthouse complex. She moved as quickly as her bare feet would allow—the terrorists had taken her shoes.

  Ana Muñoz knew this island—not well, but she had been here on cartel business on several occasions. Far from the pampered daughter of a rich cartel boss, Ana was practically the second-in-command of her father’s division of the Cartel of the Suns. Her two elder brothers had both met untimely ends, one at the tip of a bullet, the other at the tip of a heroin needle. She had stepped up, applying her nimble intellect to the variety of tasks her father had tossed her way. There was little doubt in her mind that much of his success in recent years could be laid at her very capable feet. Those feet now sloshed through a stretch of shallow, briny water, tinged red with algae and tiny shrimp. Ahead was a stretch of mangroves. She needed to reach those, then follow them along the southern coast. She knew of a couple campsites that illegal fishermen used when poaching conch and lobster. They were just off a beach on the south shore, about a mile away—an easy trek, if she wasn’t stumbling through mangroves, trying to stay hidden from terrorists. Still, if there was someone there, she could commandeer their boat and go for help.

  Reaching the gnarled roots of a mangrove tree, Ana paused to breathe, checking the stolen assault rifle. The safety was on and she quickly remedied that. The handcuffs were problematic, but by propping the handguard in the crook of her elbow and aiming across her body, she felt certain she could hit what she aimed at, if it was close. If any of those terrorist pigs found her, she’d be happy to provide them with the martyrdom they seemed to crave.

  A sudden squall pattered against the cockpit windshield as the Yachty McYachtface alternately knifed and bounced through the chop. Infrequent at these latitudes, this sort of pop-up precipitation was usually short-lived.

  “How much farther?” Boone asked. He had to raise his voice, battling the engine and the rain.


  “Should be able to see the lighthouse any minute,” Darcy said. “See?” He pointed at the GPS screen that showed a chunk of white pixels at the edge, representing a small island. “Here, take the wheel a second.”

  Boone took over as Darcy crouched and popped the housing on the GPS, then detached one of the leads to the battery. The screen went black. Darcy stood back up and Boone relinquished the wheel. “Uh… why did you do that?”

  “We are technically trespassing in Venezuelan waters. Yes, I’ve got the little flag, and I know about half the men in the Venezuelan Coast Guard, but just in case we get stopped by some ‘Boy Scout’, I’ve now got a malfunctioning GPS. Very easy to get lost out on the open ocean.”

  “You do this a lot, don’t you?” asked Rick, who had sidled up behind them. “And I don’t mean poaching the occasional lobster.”

  “Well, since you are now participating in an illegal venture, paid for with your money, I feel I can tell you a bit more.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Pretty lady!”

  Emily looked up from the conversation she was having with Ron, first pointing at herself … and then pointing at Ron questioningly—he gave her a playful shove. She came forward. “Yes, oh captain my captain?”

  “Boone here says you’re the best skipper at your dive op.”

  She looked sidelong at Boone, a smile quirking her lips. “Does he, now?”

  “Take the wheel, miss. Show me what you got, while I set this suspicious Navy-man straight.”

  Emily settled in at the wheel as Darcy headed back to the little galley and grabbed a pineapple soda out of the mini-fridge. He popped the top and took a long swallow before setting it to the side. He tapped his chest with a finger. “I’m what you call an independent maritime contractor.”

  “You’re a smuggler,” Rick said.

  Darcy shrugged. “Sometimes. Transporting goods or ‘smuggling’ those same goods, it all depends on the local laws.”