“I can’t promise anything.” She sounded monotone and unyielding.
He heard the alert beep over the phone, meaning she’d gotten the file. Her quick change to the straight and narrow tone left him convinced she was going to stonewall him. He pictured Ashleigh sitting at her desk looking at his mystery man’s profile on her computer. He knew she couldn’t give up anything too sensitive. Another dead end. He heard a click and a sharp sudden hiss of static.
“Give me your cell number,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”
He told her his number and they said their goodbyes.
“That was weird,” he muttered as he hung up the receiver.
A quick rap on his opaque glass door barely preceded Steve Haney rushing into his office.
“Hey, Steve,” he said sarcastically, “open the door, c’mon in.”
The big man blinked once, didn’t say anything, and turned around and walked back out. He closed the door behind him, knocked on the glass and waited. Joe laughed.
“I was just kidding, Steve, get in here.”
“Now that we’ve dispensed with the pleasantries, take a look at this.”
Steve unfolded a map of the Florida Keys and surrounding waterways. To the west of the islands there were ten small red dots in various locations. They were fairly spread out with no semblance of any pattern.
“Lisa made us a map of the coordinates she found stored in the G.P.S. unit,” Steve explained, “so I got us a boat ready if ya wanna take a trip.”
“In this weather?” Joe stood up and put his hands on his hips. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Steve said, “but if we wanna find anything out there, we gotta do it before the storm.”
Two minutes down the road, they were soon inside the marina bait and tackle shop watching boats being lifted out of the water.
“Sorry, fellas,” said a grungy kid with dreadlocks behind the counter while shaking his head, “just got the orders from the feds, no more boats in the water.”
“But this is a homicide investigation!” Steve was yelling over the counter.
“Dude, I’m really sorry, wish I could help,” —the kid was holding his hands in the air— “but if I let anyone go out there, I could get locked up. It’s a felony, ya know.”
Steve reached into his back pocket and whipped open his badge. He nearly shoved it into the poor kid’s face.
“Do you see this?” he asked. “We are the police, and we’re the ones who decide who gets arrested and who doesn’t.”
Joe pushed his arm in front of Steve and dragged him back a step.
“Easy, Steve,” he said calmly, “it’s not his fault. It’s no big deal; we’ll just have to wait until the storm passes.”
“But it’s gonna be swept away by then,” he pleaded, with beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead, “we have to get out there today.”
“Hey, we’ve been working on this for a year;” Joe said quietly, “so another week and a storm isn’t going to bury it any more than it is already.”
Steve’s shoulders slumped and he sighed heavily. “You’re right, you’re right.” He slipped his wallet back into his pocket.
He turned to the kid who still had his hands in the air.
“I’m really sorry,” —Steve held out his hand— “I’m just a little tense these days.”
The kid reached out and shook his hand quickly.
“No problem, bro.” He put his other hand down. “I just got a job to do and all, ya know?”
“Yeah.” Steve turned to walk out of the marina shop. “Hopefully in a week I’ll be able to do mine.”
They both quickly jumped into the cruiser to avoid being soaked by the rain. Joe didn’t start the car immediately. Instead he just looked at Steve. “What the heck was all that in there?” he asked.
Steve clicked his seatbelt on and shook his head. “I dunno,” he said with a pained frown on his face, “I just thought we were so close. I mean, breaking a case like this can do a lot for a guy’s career.”
“Hey, take it easy, big guy.” Joe clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I see Lieutenant Detective in your future, but it takes more than one break to prove yourself.”
“I know that,” —the window next to Steve was beginning to fog up from the heat he was generating— “I just got a little worked up with that punk in there.”
“No worries, my friend.” Joe booted up the hybrid cruiser.” He probably had it coming anyway.”
He was about to pull out when his cellphone vibrated. He opened it to see a voicemail from an anonymous number. He dialed in and waited for the message.
“Hey, Joe, it’s me, Ashleigh,” she said in a hushed tone. “We’ve got to talk. Please call me later.” She repeated her number twice and then paused. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but your man here is buried deep. Something really big is going on around him.”
20
Cut The Rope
Troy Clint Bodean couldn’t keep himself from grinning like a Cheshire cat, even through his goggles and regulator mouthpiece. As Megan began to pull pieces out of the basket, the importance of the find hit him.
After just seconds of sifting through the sand on the gulf’s floor, they had found hundreds of obvious shipwrecked objects: pottery shards, intricately carved pieces of eating vessels and gourds, carpentry tools, copper bindings and stray pieces of timber that the ship’s partial burial had protected. There were several bowling ball sized objects that were unrecognizable under a sheath of coral; Troy had hefted two of them into the basket with considerable effort.
“I think I even saw a piece of a gun!” Troy exclaimed, pulling his goggles up onto his forehead, “and that big dark shape is definitely a cannon. We gotta get that thing up!”
Megan was dumbfounded at their findings. The pottery alone could help them determine if this was their ship or not, but the number of plates and drinking cups they had pilfered into the basket surprised her.
“This is kinda odd,” she said, turning one heavily corroded cup over into her hands.
“What’s that?” Troy asked.
“Well, the Muerta is basically a casket ship.”
“And?”
“What did they need with all this?” she said, holding up a plain drinking cup.
“Well, the crew’s gotta eat and drink, right?
“Yeah, but…”
She was interrupted by the sound of another boat motoring into view. Troy immediately recognized the government vessel.
“Dangit, it’s the feds,” he muttered, and quickly began placing items back into the basket. “How in the hell’d they find us?”
He stood up and faced the approaching boat, but motioned R.B. to step closer to him. It was moving slowly toward them and Troy felt it best that they keep this find to themselves as long as possible.
“As quickly and nonchalantly as you can, strap a buoy to this thing and get it back into the water on the other side of the boat,” Troy spoke quietly.
“Got it, bro.”
R.B. was just shoving the basket overboard when the boat pulled alongside. Through the sheeting rain, Troy finally recognized their guest.
“Natasha,” he said as she handed him a rope and climbed aboard the Wy Knott, “what brings you out on such a rough night?”
“I might ask you the same.” She adjusted her own poncho and threw her hands up to her hips. “What in God’s name are you doing out here in this weather, and on George Wyatt’s boat?”
How does she know George? Troy wondered to himself? A question best saved for later. He paused for a second and she didn’t seem inclined to fill the silence.
“Let’s go inside,” he said, and motioned toward the ship’s cockpit. “I can explain everything.”
Before they heard the report from the rifle, Troy heard a whiz just over their heads and saw the boards splinter near the roofline of the cabin.
“Down!” was all he had time to yell as he gr
abbed Megan by her neck and shoved her toward the cockpit floor.
Natasha was already diving for cover.
“Get your ass in here!” Troy yelled to R.B.
He crouched and ran for cover as fast as he could, expecting the next shot to explode somewhere into his body. But it never came. R.B. rushed in and slammed the door behind them. Troy killed all the lights and crawled over to the ship’s throttle. Natasha peered through the glass toward the black water where the shot had come from, but saw nothing.
“Everybody, hang tight,” —Troy reached up to the control panel— “I’m gonna get us out of here.”
“Wait,” Natasha yelled, “my boat is still tied on.”
“We have to cut it loose.”
“It’s a government boat,” she protested, “I can’t just leave it out here.”
“Look, darlin’, it’s you or the boat.” Troy had his hand on the throttle.
Natasha stared hard at him but remained quiet.
“I’ll cut the rope,” R.B. said, pulling out a knife strapped to his thigh.
Troy nodded. “Careful.”
“Always.”
R.B. opened the door and army-crawled his way back out onto the boat’s rear deck. Rain pelted his cheeks and forehead and he could feel his heart pounding under the tight wetsuit. As he reached out to cut the mooring rope, another shot whizzed above his head. It pinged off something metallic and he jerked his head around to see what had been hit. A shower of sparks flew off a red, rusted fifty-gallon drum. Under the coating of corrosion, he could just make out the universal triangle symbol for highly flammable contents.
“Shit!” He turned back to the rope and began sawing furiously.
The strong rope barely yielded a few strands, and he cursed his prone position. He just couldn’t get enough leverage to cut it from underneath. He sheathed the knife and decided he would just unwind the rope, but he knew he’d have to stand up to do it.
He took in a deep breath and jumped up as fast as he could. He never got close to the loop holding the two boats together. In seemingly slow motion, he heard the whiz of the third shot and a metallic ping before he was blinded by the explosion.
He threw his hands over his face and was hurled into the water.
Part II
Discover
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
-Andrew Gide
21
Rough Riders
Gene Henry spewed a mouthful of coffee as the alarm blared from his computer. He’d been tracking the progress of the Wy Knott out into the gulf, taking sonar readings with the engine noise. The resolution gradually got better as the boat neared the shallow reef waters. But the beacon had suddenly gone offline and the alarm had sounded. Gene instinctively grabbed the CB radio.
“Wy Knott, this is Wyatt 1, what’s your status?”
Nothing but static. He repeated this a couple of times, but got no response.
“Dammit, Troy what the hell have you—?” Gene stopped mid-sentence as, one line at a time, one of his computer monitors began producing an amazingly sharp picture of the gulf floor where the beacon last placed the boat.
Panic began to creep into his mind as he studied the picture. The resolution was so good he could see sharp curves and twists in the coral and a trail of scattered rocks or something on the gulf floor. To produce this kind of view, he’d need sound that bordered on thunder, or maybe…
He grabbed the telephone and rang George Wyatt.
“Do you know what time it is?” the oil rigger croaked in a sleepy fog.
“Sorry, George, but you need to see this.”
Minutes later he was staring at the computer screen.
“Yeah um… that’s great, Gene, but couldn’t this have waited till morning?”
Gene clicked back to images from several minutes ago.
“Look,” he pointed to the screen, “this is the resolution I was getting before the beacon went out… and this…” He clicked forward. “This is after.”
The difference was like looking at an old black and white tintype exposure from the civil war compared to a high definition digital camera picture from today; striking, to say the least.
“Well, that’s probably lightning or something, eh?” Wyatt said.
That’s when it hit him.
“What did you say about the beacon?”
Gene turned to look up at him.
“It went dead just before I got that last image.”
“Went dead?” Wyatt demanded. “What the hell do you mean it went dead?”
Wyatt grabbed the radio, but Gene stopped him.
“I tried that, no response.”
“Oh, my God.” Wyatt looked out the window in the darkness. “We have to get out there.”
Suddenly, Bill Bane was standing in the doorway yawning. “That’d be great, boss,” he said as he moved into the room, “but we got no boat, remember.”
“Shit,” Wyatt said, turning to look back at the monitors.
His eye caught some motion on one of the security cameras scanning under the oil rig. He pointed to it.
“No, but we do have a plane.”
Gene looked at the seaplane jostling about in the waves tied to the lower deck. “Now, who in the heck’s gonna fly that piece of junk?”
“Gene, you know I can fly.”
“But you’re not instrument rated,” he protested, “and its pitch black out there and storming.”
“I don’t see that we have much choice.”
He looked at Bill, who nodded at him.
“Bill and I will go,” he said. “You keep your eye on us, and we’ll keep her low under the weather; if anything happens, radio the coast guard and tell them where we’re located.”
“No!” Gene stood up. “This is crazy. This is a very bad idea. I knew we shouldn’t have let them go out, and I’m not going to let you go out there searching for them.”
Wyatt put his hands-on Gene’s shoulders. “I can’t just leave them out there. It may be nothing; maybe the lightning that gave you the picture struck the boat and shorted everything out, including the beacon.”
Gene’s tight-lipped scowl relaxed. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. “It’s probably nothing. But let’s wait till dawn. It’ll be light in about two hours.”
“That’s a good idea, boss,” Bill said to Wyatt.
“Two hours? In this storm?” Wyatt raised his voice. “We may never find them!”
“If they are out there without power, we won’t be able to see ‘em anyway,” Bill said.
“Dammit,” Wyatt finally said, nodding, “you’re probably right.”
He looked out the window at the wild waves and sheets of rain pelting the deck in huge swaths of water. Dangerous weather to be out in.
“Tell you what, Gene; you check that plane to see how much fuel we have. Bill, you and I should get diving gear ready just in case they are in the water… hopefully, they’ll be able to float for a while.”
“Let’s just hope they ain’t in the water.”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said and shrugged.
It seemed like forever before dawn crept in light gray over the oil rig. The three of them stood by the seaplane. The weather was harsh, and the wind had picked up to thirty miles an hour. Staying balanced on the catwalks below the rig was a constant white-knuckled battle.
“Make sure you’ve idled out well beyond the pylons before you take off,” —Gene pointed out to the gulf— “don’t want to get blown back into us.”
“Roger that,” Wyatt said, and gave him a thumbs-up.
“I’ll keep an eye on you guys and the weather. If that storm gets anywhere near you, turn north and just get the hell out of there.”
“Gotcha.”
George Wyatt and Bill Bane climbed into the small plane. Gene untied them and they taxied out into the buffeting waves. They watched as Gene began the long walk up in the driving rain back to his control
room.
The wind shook them around violently and the ever-strengthening waves threatened to turn them over.
“Let’s get this thing in the air, boss,” Bill shouted over the noise.
The plane picked up slowly in the rough chop and Wyatt wondered if they’d ever get enough speed to lift off. But finally, they limped into the air.
“Gene, you got us?” he called into the radio.
“I gotcha,” he radioed back. “Rough ride ahead, so make it quick.”
Gene gave them the G.P.S. coordinates of the last beacon ping and they headed east. Wyatt kept the plane as low as he could stand, about a hundred feet off the water. He figured if they went down, at least it wouldn’t be too far to fall.
He looked over at Bill. It would’ve been slightly comical to see the big black man shaking so badly, if he hadn’t been scared to death himself.
“Don’t worry, Bill,” he said, clapping his shoulder, “we’re gonna be alright.”
“Whatever you say, Boss,” he said, then grinned a tight smile. “Whatever you say.”
22
Ahab’s Cellphone
When he finally rolled his way back to the surface, R.B. could taste the coppery blood in his mouth, his ears still ringing violently from the blast. He looked around to see the Wy Knott sink into the water. He thought for a moment that Natasha’s government boat might break free and remain afloat. But the blast had torn through the side of it as well and soon it was taking on water. Within ten minutes, both boats were headed to the bottom.
He knew it must be getting near dawn, but with the storm right on top of them, it was still pitch black.
“Troy!!” he yelled into the violent wind. “Megan!!”
No reply.
He swam as hard as he could in the churning waves toward the smoldering pieces floating and flipping on the surface. He frantically pushed through the rubble. His breath became shallow and panic began to drip into his mind. There was no sign of anyone else alive.
The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Page 31