“Whadda ya know,” —Joe leaned back in his chair— “I had no idea.”
“Not many do,” Chris continued. “This is where we believe the true story breaks from recorded history. We believe they murdered Christopher Columbus and left his body behind. They replaced him with an imposter and returned to Spain to receive the glory.”
“Who did they replace him with?” Joe asked. “I mean, wouldn’t they realize this was a different man?”
“The voyage at sea and in the so-called new world took several years,” Chris said, shrugging. “With his clothes and mannerisms, it’s definitely possible. Take a look at the painting called The return of Christopher Columbus; his audience before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella by Eugène Delacroix. It doesn’t look like the joyous return of Christopher Columbus. In fact, several people in the painting look confused and are whispering. Even Ferdinand and Isabella don’t look like they are welcoming the explorer back home. Check it out sometime and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Incredible,” Joe breathed.
“So, who took his place?” Troy asked.
“We believe it was Vicente,” —Chris took on a serious tone— “and they paid another sailor to stand in for him when they left so many at Hispaniola. And that’s when the Columbus name began to fall into disrepute.”
“And the wreck could provide evidence as to what really happened?” Joe asked.
“Perhaps,” Chris said, and nodded. “A remote possibility, but we will take that chance.”
“And the Pinzóns don’t want that,” Troy added.
“Exactly.”
Lisa Carlson knocked lightly on the door. Joe Bond walked over and opened it. The crime lab intern had a stack of DVDs in her hand.
“I can’t crack this,” she said as she gave the disks to Joe, “s’gotta be government encryption. Better than anything I can throw at it.”
“Thanks for trying, Lisa.” Joe took them and ushered her out.
Chris Collins held out his hand. “I believe those belong to us.”
Joe handed them to the Deputy Director of C.I.A.
“What I’m about to say is classified, and if you ever revealed it,” —Chris looked at both Joe and Troy in turn— “it would be grounds for the C.I.A. to detain you indefinitely. Am I clear?”
Joe nodded his assent.
“Oh yeah,” Troy said when Joe elbowed him, “you bet.”
“Good. Natasha had started a program on her own, designated codename: Stingray,” Chris said, tapping the case of the DVD on top, “with the help of a Cuban refugee to collect intel and deliver it to us. In return, we granted the man amnesty in the United States. Hector Martinez was his name, I believe? He would collect the intel on discs we sent him and drop them at the Wyatt 1 oil rig for her to pick up. The entire operation happened in international waters… except for the drop. She couldn’t touch the DVDs until they were passed on to a third party within the coastal United States Waters or it would be considered espionage.”
“So, that’s why Hector’s G.P.S. showed trips to the Wyatt 1.” Joe looked toward his whiteboard with all the arrows and lines connecting details from the case.
“You have his G.P.S.?” Chris asked.
Joe nodded.
“Of course, this is a federal case now so—”
“I know, I know,” —Joe held up his hand and waved toward the box of evidence— “it’s all yours.”
“Thank you for your cooperation.”
“So, now can we go find my brother and Megan?” Troy stood up and stretched.
“Let me make a call, Mr. Bodean,” said Chris Collins. “May I use your office for a moment, Joe?”
“Of course.” He stood and touched Troy’s elbow. “Let’s go get my cruiser ready.”
They left Chris talking into his cellphone in low hushed tones.
“Can you believe all that?” Troy asked Joe.
“Pretty incredible,” Joe said.
As they hurried toward the door, the woman at the front desk called to them. “Detective Bond,” she said, waving a piece of paper at him, “I have a message for you from one…” She looked down at the note, “… George Wyatt.”
They both stopped dead in their tracks.
“It came in last night, but you weren’t in yet.”
“What’s it say, Wanda?”
“Something about him seeing a strange boat out on the water last night after midnight,” she read, “heading out for Fort Jefferson.”
“Dangit,” Troy said, “that’s where he took ‘em when I was out last night.”
“Let’s go.” Joe turned and ran for the door.
“Hey, wait, Mr. Bodean!” called Wanda, “dontchu want your things?”
He looked back at her. She was holding a plastic admissions bag with his wallet, keys and watch in her left hand, and in her right she held his Outback Tea Stained straw cowboy hat.
He grabbed it and threw it on his head. “Much obliged, ma’am,” he said, and ran out the police station door.
40
Smoke Signals
Megan Simons shivered with fear and cold. She was damp from the boat ride with Vince and the musty air inside the fort. There were no windows, and now that the sun had set there was no light. R.B. was still unconscious in the darkness of the next cell. Her mind screamed with fear, but she knew if she gave into the terror she would be like all those bimbos in the horror movies. No, she would maintain her composure and think. There had to be a way to get out of here.
Her first problem was the tape binding her hands to the cell’s bars. She pulled furiously against it, but she well knew the incredible strength of the magical silver tape. Her wrists burned as she felt it cut into her skin. Okay, what now? Inventory.
She was sitting in an empty stone prison cell wearing a t-shirt and shorts. She didn’t have anything in her pockets; Vince had emptied them. Nothing. She had nothing. The fear began to creep back into her mind. Vince was going to come back and kill them and there was nothing she could do about it.
She kicked the bar and her sandal flew off and skittered across the floor. Pain flared into her toe and she wondered if she had broken it.
“Ow, shit, shit, shit,” she said, exhaling sharply.
She couldn’t even reach her hands down to rub the pain away. She gently rubbed her toes against her leg, though, and the pain eventually subsided. The toe didn’t feel broken after all, but now she had one shoe off and one shoe on. She eased her heel down against the back of the other sandal to slide it off. Might as well take it off too.
The cell was nearly pitch black, with only the glow of a distant emergency light trickling into the darkness, but she saw the glint. The clasp on her sandal caught just enough light to throw the faintest shimmer. Maybe…
She raised her foot toward her head (thank goodness for all that hot yoga) and pulled the sandal off with her mouth. She was able to tilt her head back enough so she could grasp the shoe in her hands. She unfastened the strap and felt the edge of the clasp, not very sharp, but it might do the trick. Though duct tape has extreme strength when pulled against, if you tear it from the side, it can rip easily.
She couldn’t see the tape well, but she guessed there were about five loops of the stuff around her wrists. Holding the shoe in her right hand and twisting her wrists allowed her to barely touch the edge of the tape between her hands. She started sawing back and forth. At first, it seemed hopeless; the clasp merely bent. But finally the edge found purchase and made a small tear in the side of one layer of the tape.
A sheen of sweat began to form as she sawed furiously back and forth with the tiny piece of metal. Her fingers became slick with sweat and just as she thought she was making good progress, the sandal jumped out of her hand and toppled end over end through the bars and landed four feet away.
“Ahhh, noooo,” she wailed.
In a fit of fear and anger, she wrenched her hands back and forth as hard as she could, but the tape didn’t budge. Tears began stre
aming down her face and she slumped down, realizing there was no escape. The ancient prison wing of Fort Jefferson and the wonders of modern duct tape had them trapped.
Natasha Wainwright brushed the sand from her knees as she rose from her crouching position under the small copse of trees just above the sandy beach of Fort Jefferson. The man in the boat, whoever he was, had dragged two people into the fort and had just left without them. She had recognized R.B. and the girl who’d been on Troy’s boat when they had been shot at, sinking her own boat in the process.
In the craziness of the two boats going down, she’d gotten tangled in one of the bow lines of Troy’s boat and it had dragged her down with its sinking bulk. The rope was caught hard around her ankle, and with the weight of the boat holding it steady, she couldn’t free herself. Rather than try to fight against the weight, she guessed her best bet was to hold her breath, save her energy, and wait until it hit the bottom, thus giving the rope some slack.
It took forever. The cabin of the boat was still holding some air, slowing its descent, but it was a long way down. Even with her expanded lungs from all the triathlon training, she knew she wouldn’t have enough air left to make it back to the surface. Troy’s boat, marked Wyatt Knott on the stern, settled slowly, crunching into the reef at the bottom of the gulf. The line around her ankle went slack and an idea suddenly occurred to her. The cabin of the boat had plenty of air trapped inside. She swam down under the capsized boat and made her way into the cabin in virtually one hundred percent blackness. No visibility.
She burst up and into a pocket of air, gasped, and took several deep breaths. Debris from the wreck bobbed around her, bumping into her from all sides. She used her arms to sweep a protective shield around her and thankfully bumped up against what felt like a flashlight. She felt around the barrel and clicked a button on the side. Dim light filled the cabin and shocked her vision. The light flickered and threatened to go out, so she clicked it off to conserve the probably nearly-dead battery.
As she treaded water, she began to think about what had just happened. They had been fired upon directly over the site of Troy’s find and over the site of her drone crash. The perpetrator could be anyone; foreign national after the drone, shipwreck hunters after Troy’s gold, drug runners thinking her coast guard boat was after them. She was literally and figuratively in the dark. And that’s when something bumped against the window of the cabin.
She froze. Slowly pointing the light in the direction of the bump, she clicked it on. A massive gray shape was easing by the windows of the cabin. She immediately clicked the light off, praying the shark hadn’t seen the light. It bumped a few more times, probably just investigating the wreckage. It never threatened her, but just seemed to be hanging out. Perfect, she thought.
The shark bumped again and the boat lurched and settled into the sand. Air bubbles rushed out of some newly exposed opening, shrinking Natasha’s current air pocket to the size of a basketball. Her heart raced and she clicked on the light. The black eyes of the shark were staring directly at her through a window right next to her face. She shrieked, shutting the light off and slamming her hand over her mouth. The shark went into a frenzy of slamming into the window. Each time it hit the boat, more bubbles escaped from the cabin, but the air pocket held. For what seemed like an eternity—maybe six or seven hours—it went on this way until Natasha heard the low rumble of an approaching boat.
Shit, she thought, can’t get to the surface in time to catch a ride. The boat seemed to hover nearby for a few minutes, then the roar started again and she heard it move away. Well, that was it, my rescuers have disappeared into the distance and I’m going to be eaten by a shark. She waited for the shark to bump again, figuring one good shove would push the remaining air out of the cabin and she’d be forced to evacuate, but it never came. She strained to keep as still and quiet as possible. Nothing.
Here goes nothing, she thought and inhaled deeply and clicked on the light, ready to extinguish it if she saw the shark. No sign of it. She peered from window to window looking for the grey hulk. It was gone, or at least beyond her line of sight. It made sense; the boat probably spooked it.
She took a good look around, planning her escape. The hatch was hanging open, floating lazily back and forth under her. She could stick her head out, see if the coast was clear, and then make for the surface. Once she was out, she’d be a sitting duck, nothing more than shark bait. In her mind, the theme from Jaws began to rumble as she drifted over to float above the hatch. She took a deep breath and went under.
A few minutes later, she broke through the surface with no interference from the shark… yet. Pieces of drifting wood still littered the surface. The sky to the north was black and foreboding. The storm had passed over. Good grief, she thought, how long was I under there? More than six or seven hours for sure. Funny how time flies when you’re having fun.
A large section of wood, maybe a section of flooring with green AstroTurf glued to it, drifted nearby and she swam over to it. It was big enough to roll herself up on and despite the warning alarms clanging inside her head, she fell asleep.
Waking sometime the next day, she assessed her situation and determined the best direction to swim. With nothing but blue water all around, she made a judgment based on the sun and the current and started off. After hours of kicking, paddling and resting, kicking, paddling and resting, finally—amazingly—Fort Jefferson came into sight.
It was off to her left in the distance… if she hadn’t been close enough to catch sight of it, she would’ve been paddling out into the Atlantic Ocean and would’ve surely been lost at sea. She raced against darkness to get to the sandy shore of the fort before night obscured it again. She had crawled ashore at dusk, and with no energy left to get inside, she passed out again on the beach. She awoke to the sound of a boat coming ashore nearby and watched as a man dragged R.B. and the girl from Troy’s boat into the fort. Not long after, she watched him get back into his boat alone.
She padded into the Fort and down the long stone hallways to her office. She drank three bottled waters and stripped out of her damp, crusty clothes. Replacing them with a new uniform and feeling wind-burned and achy, she set out into the fort to find the two people the man had apparently dropped off here. As she passed by James Howard’s office she jumped. Crime scene tape crisscrossed his door. No one was inside. She realized with a start that she’d watched the whole scene of this kidnapping unfold with no sign of James.
She passed the room by… that mystery would have to be solved later. There were two people stashed somewhere in the fort and she needed to find them—or their bodies—quickly. If I were hiding people here, she thought to herself, where would I put them?
After a second, she jogged down the corridor leading to the prison wing.
Vince Pinzioni knocked on the door at the Dolphin Research Center on Grassy Key. The door was a non-tourist type with an industrial lock and keypad. He knocked again and saw a young girl look through the glass.
“We’re closed.” Her voice was muffled and she shrugged as if to indicate she was sorry.
“Yeah, yeah,” Vince said and smiled his biggest smile. “I know, I’m a friend, though. Megan and R.B. sent me.”
A look of confusion came over her face and she clicked the button to buzz the door open. Vince shoved his way in quickly, grabbed her around the neck and one hand covering her mouth.
“Anybody else in here?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head.
“Okay, then,” he said, “we’re gonna do this nice ‘n slow. I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth and you’re gonna take me to my stuff.”
Her eyes narrowed, clearly not understanding what he meant. He eased his hand away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Listen, um—”
“Chelsea.”
“Listen, Chelsea,” —he tightened his grip on her neck— “your friends, R.B. and Megan, brought some things up her
e the other day. Things that don’t belong to them. I want them back.”
Chelsea’s eyes flicked toward the lab. “In there.”
“That’s real good.” Vince eased his grip. “Let’s go in there and see what we got.”
Ryan Bodean opened his eyes, but pain shot into his temple and he closed them quickly. The pain did not go away. He heard himself groan.
“Oh, thank God!” came a voice nearby. “Are you okay?”
His head was so fuzzy he couldn’t tell if it was a woman’s voice or a man’s. He didn’t know if he knew the speaker or not. Everything felt like it was being strained through a bunch of cotton balls.
“I… I don’t… ” he started.
Words were hard. The voice was chattering at him a mile a minute, but he still couldn’t understand her. Her? It dawned on him that he could tell it was a woman.
“R.B.,” she said at the end of a long and rambling rant, “how are we going to get out of here?”
His head slowly began to clear. He opened his eyes and all was dark. “Where are we getting out of exactly?” he asked the voice.
“Fort Jefferson,” Megan spoke rapidly. “Vince kidnapped us and brought us here. He didn’t kill us, though. I’m not sure why. Just tied us up and…”
Her voice faded into the background. Megan. Her name was Megan. Bits and pieces of their situation began to come back to him.
“Okay, okay,” he pleaded, “just give me a second. Head still spinning.”
“Oh, God,” she said, “are you okay?”
“I think so,” he said, “just need a minute.”
He heard her sniff, probably crying. He decided to pretend confidence to keep her from falling apart.
“Listen,” he said calmly, “give me a sec to clear my head and we’ll figure this thing out.”
The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Page 39