Dark Path: A Ryan Weller Thriller

by Evan Graver

  “I’m going after him.” Ryan pulled on his mask, dive boots, and fins, then shrugged into the BCD.

  “Help him!” the woman shrieked.

  Emily jumped into action, grabbing the tank and aiding Ryan to stand. She steadied him as he stepped over the lifelines.

  Ryan turned to Emily. “The current will take us north as we come up. Watch for my surface marker buoy and then drop a weighted line for us to ascend along. I’ll give three jerks on the line to let you know I have it, then pull up the SMB.”

  “Okay.”

  He shoved the regulator into his mouth and took a giant stride off the side of Windseeker.

  Ryan splashed through the surface in a burst of bubbles. He had dumped the air from his BCD so he would drop like a stone. He took a moment to reach between his legs and fasten the BCD’s crotch strap, then he kicked furiously downward, chasing the sailboat in a head-down position.

  Beneath him, the sailboat arrowed stern-first into the dirt, throwing up a cloud of sediment. With a quick glance at his Shearwater dive computer, Ryan saw he was approaching one hundred feet in depth. Twenty minutes of dive time, his mind automatically told him. The sunken boat was still another fifty feet away and rested on its starboard side with its bow over the edge of a precipice that dropped thousands of feet down into darkness.

  At the recreational dive limit of one hundred and thirty feet, he had ten minutes of bottom time; at one fifty, he had less than five. The computer beeped as he approached the sailboat, letting him know he was surpassing the recreational limits and was now accumulating decompression time. He ignored it. If he could save a man, then the decompression obligation would be worth it.

  He noted the name Balance Sheet lettered across the stern in gold leaf, then pulled aside the nylon sailcloth and pushed through the cockpit door. Snapping on his dive light, he shined it around the cabin.

  Cushions and clothes floated in the confined space. Dishes, books, and other gear had fallen from the port side and lay strewn across the starboard settee, cabinets, and hull, making the place a snag hazard that threatened to trap Ryan. Nevertheless, he continued forward, ensuring he was neutrally buoyant. He couldn’t afford to bump the boat and send it sliding over the edge into the deep, where the weight of the water would crush to death both himself and the man he was trying to save.

  At the door to the V-berth, he poked his light inside and moved it around, seeing a tangle of sheets and clothes. The next thing he saw was the blood streaming from the man’s wounds, then a pair of thin legs, poking out of surf shorts. Moving the light upward, he saw the man was clutching a yellow waterproof box as a flotation device. His head was above the water in the space created by the trapped air.

  Ryan inhaled and his body moved up. His head broke the surface to see the man staring at him in wide-eyed disbelief.

  “We need to get out of here,” Ryan said. “Do you have any dive experience?”

  “Yeah. I’m Open Water certified,” the man said in a thick New Jersey accent.

  “Cool.” Ryan handed the man his primary regulator and then reached for his secondary reg, which hung from a necklace below his chin.

  “I can’t leave the box.”

  “What’s your name?” Ryan asked.

  “Paul.”

  “Okay, Paul, we don’t have enough air to worry about that. We need to go. Now.”

  “I have a scuba tank in the starboard bench of the cockpit.”

  “Great; we have some extra air for deco stops. Let’s go.”

  Hugging the box a little tighter, Paul said adamantly, “Not without this.”

  “Have it your way. See ya.” Ryan jerked the regulator from the man’s hand and turned to swim away. The man screamed for him to stop, letting go of the box and thrashing after the diver. Ryan rose back to the surface and handed the reg to him. With the seven-foot hose attached to the reg he’d given Paul, they didn’t need to swim side by side, and Ryan could lead the way with Paul following behind him.

  Once clear of the hull, Ryan opened the starboard bench seat and found the scuba tank, a jacket-style BCD, and a set of regulators. He dumped everything into the dirt beside Balance Sheet, fastened the tank to the BCD, and hooked the reg to the tank valve. Paul grabbed a mask and put it on while Ryan worked. When he had the kit together, Ryan helped Paul into the BCD, then gave him an okay sign. Paul returned the gesture, and Ryan indicated they were to head for the surface with a thumbs-up.

  They continued to use Ryan’s tank and regs as they ascended. Ryan knew his air consumption rate, and, for him, the tank would have lasted through most of his decompression stops, but he would need another tank to finish. With Paul breathing heavily on the octopus, the air in the tank was rapidly being depleted. Even with both tanks, they wouldn’t have enough air to complete their deco obligations.

  The normal ascent rate was no more than thirty feet in a minute, meaning that if a diver was ascending a line, he would place one hand just above the other to maintain that rate. Ryan understood that Paul would be nervous about spending so much time in the water and would want to get to the surface as soon as possible. He tapped his dive computer and held it so Paul could see. Paul nodded. Ryan pointed to the deco time, then at Paul, and flashed five fingers on his right hand, meaning Paul needed to do an additional five minutes.

  Paul’s eyes widened, and he shook his head vigorously. Ryan held up his fists side by side and acted like he was bending an invisible bar. Paul nodded. He would get bent if he shot to the surface.

  At seventy-five feet, Ryan forced them to stop. He tapped the computer and flashed five fingers. They would stay at the current depth for five minutes. Normally, it would be half the time at half the depth, but Ryan added a few minutes to compensate for Paul’s longer bottom time.

  Paul did not have thousands of dives under his belt like Ryan, and his neutral buoyancy was shit. He kept bobbing up and down, adding and removing air from his BCD. Ryan gave him a few silent pointers but eventually slapped his hand away from the inflator button. While they waited for the minutes to tick by, Ryan pulled the SMB from his BCD and attached a finger spool to it. With a small breath, he inflated the SMB, and they watched as it shot upward, unspooling line behind it. When the SMB reached the surface, Ryan tied the line to a bolt snap, clipped it to his BCD, and wrapped his free hand around the shoulder strap of Paul’s BCD.

  When they had depleted the air in Ryan’s tank, they changed to Paul’s, putting the new regulators in their mouths. The line to the SMB went taut and jerked hard several times. Ryan swiveled his body to look at the surface. There was a shadow above them, and he hoped it was Windseeker. He motioned for Paul to hold and let out some air from his BCD, compensating for Paul’s overinflation.

  As they watched, a weighted line dropped through the water column five feet in front of them. Ryan grabbed it and gave three jerks on the line. It stopped falling, and he figured Emily had tied it to a boat cleat.

  Ryan pulled his companion over to the ascent line. He unclipped the SMB and jerked it hard several times. Emily grabbed it and began pulling it up to the boat.

  With the ascent line, they didn’t have to worry about their buoyancy, allowing the boat above to do the work. Ryan guided Paul through the decompression stops. Emily dropped a fresh tank to them, knowing they would need more air, and at the last stop at ten feet, they took turns breathing one hundred percent oxygen to help clear the last of the built-up nitrogen from their body tissue. Ryan liked to keep a pony bottle of oxygen aboard his boat in case of emergencies and to help off-gas after long dives.

  As the two men made the final ascent and broke the surface, they saw the women leaning over the railing, staring at them.

  Ryan and Paul shed their BCDs and passed them to Emily before climbing up the boarding ladder. Paul sat wearily on the bench beside his wife. Ryan had looked at the older man’s wound while they were decompressing and had wrapped a piece of Paul’s shirt around it to stop the bleeding.

  “Emi
ly,” Ryan said, “grab the first aid kit, please.”

  He used his dive knife to slice the makeshift bandage away from Paul’s hand.

  “You’re lucky it didn’t hit any bones, or you’d be a lot worse off,” Ryan said as he applied a bandage to the deep cut on Paul’s palm.

  Paul leaned back against the rail, cradling his right arm against his chest. Ryan handed him four acetaminophen tablets and a bottle of water. While Paul washed down the pills, Ryan hauled in their ascent rope and stored their gear. He’d seen the bullet holes in the sunken boat and the shattered shotgun on the deck. Fortunately, the current had carried them a long way from the wreck site and hopefully even farther from the men who’d sunk her.

  When Windseeker was back on course with her sails trimmed, Ryan sat beside the rescued couple. He extended his hand to Paul. “I know we met earlier, but my name’s Ryan. That’s Emily, and we’re on our way to St. John.”

  “Thanks for coming to my rescue.” Paul shook his hand and then Emily’s. “This is my wife, Diane. We just left St. Thomas.”

  “What happened?” Emily asked. “Were you attacked by pirates?”

  Paul nodded. “I think so. It was one of those high-speed racing boats.”

  Diane’s shoulders shook as she spoke. “They just started shooting at us.”

  “You’re out of danger now,” Ryan said, “but you need to get that wound looked at.”

  “Yeah,” Paul agreed. “Can you take us to St. Thomas? I know a doctor there.”

  “Is it wise to go home?” Diane asked him.

  “Fuhgeddaboudit.” Paul waved his hand. “Those yutzes aren’t coming near us again. Me and Ryan will go up to the house and get some stuff. You girls’ll stay at the marina.”

  Ryan saw the look that Paul shot his wife. He took it to mean she should shut up and not talk in front of the strangers. That was fine with Ryan. The sooner he dropped them off, the sooner he and Emily could get to St. John, and whatever danger the stranded couple was in would be behind them.

  Paul turned to him with a smile. “Please, let us take you to dinner as a ‘thank you’ for saving us.”

  “Yeah, I think we can do that,” Ryan agreed.

  Paul smiled gregariously. Despite his problems and having to drag him out of a sunken sailboat, Ryan liked the man. Even his wife had a staunchness about her.

  Ryan moved behind the wheel. “What’s the closest marina to your house?”

  Paul got up and came over to look at the GPS plotter. “We can put you in at my old slip at American Yacht Harbor.”

  Ryan tapped it into the touch screen and hit the Go button. A white line populated over the blue ocean.

  “Might as well settle in,” Ryan said, checking the arrival time. “We have two and a half hours to get there.”

  “Once we’re abreast of Cabrita Point, it’s best to go in on the motor,” Paul advised. “It can get pretty crowded in there between the ferries and the fishing boats.”

  “Roger that,” Ryan replied.

  As they sailed, the rescued couple seemed to relax, but Ryan saw how Paul vigilantly scanned the horizon. Emily found a cover-up for Diane and fixed tea for the two women. They stayed in the cabin, chatting.

  “What do you do for work, Paul?” Ryan asked.

  “I’m an accountant. Me and Diane moved here about ten years ago.”

  “Are you retired?”

  “I still work a few days a week. What about you?”

  “Emily is an insurance investigator and I’m a commercial diver. We both took a sabbatical from our jobs. We’re on our way back to Florida.”

  “Is that where you live?”

  Ryan smiled. “I live wherever my boat is. Em has a place in Tampa.”

  “You make a nice couple,” Paul said.

  An hour from St. Thomas, Ryan used the Customs and Border Patrol’s ROAM app to notify them of Windseeker’s arrival. After putting his information into the app, he called the CBP office at the Port of St. Thomas, and the agent said to go straight to the docks at American Yacht Harbor.

  The low green hills of St. John slipped past as they entered Pillsbury Sound. Not much later, the green and red dirt hills of St. Thomas appeared. Ryan started the engine, and Paul helped Emily lower the mainsail and put the sail cover in place. Paul called American Yacht Harbor on the radio and explained that an accident had befallen his boat and that Windseeker would take her place in his slip. The harbormaster asked that Ryan and Emily have their paperwork ready.

  Paul guided Ryan into the slip and leaped onto the dock to secure the mooring lines to the dock cleats. The man might not have been a great scuba diver, but he was a more than capable sailor, and his fastidiousness showed when he coiled the ends of the spare dock line beside the cleat. The harbormaster greeted Paul with a handshake and looked over Ryan and Emily’s paperwork, scanning the pre-approved ROAM application number into his smart phone.

  “Ryan, do you have a shirt I can borrow?” Paul asked. “I want to go to our house and get us a change of clothes.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise, dear?” Diane asked.

  “It’s okay, Di. There’s nothin’ to worry about.”

  Ryan went below and pulled on a pair of khaki cargo shorts over clean underwear, slipped into a clean T-shirt, pocketed his wallet and CRKT tactical folding knife, then grabbed a light green guayabera shirt for Paul.

  Back on the dock, Paul shrugged on the shirt. He couldn’t button it over his stomach and left it open. The two men headed for the marina office to call a taxi.

  They rode across the island to the Langstons’ residence. Fifteen minutes later, both men got out of the cab after asking the driver to wait and they walked to the front door. Ryan grabbed Paul’s arm and pointed at the door frame where someone had forced the lock open and left the door ajar.

  Paul shoved the door open, standing right in front of it while Ryan stepped off to the side, invisible and protected behind the solid wall. When Paul stepped through the door and no one took a shot at him, Ryan followed.

  The place was a wreck. Someone had tipped over, ripped open, smashed, or otherwise destroyed everything in the place. Ignoring the disaster that was his home, Paul headed across the living room to a bedroom. Ryan followed cautiously. What were the odds that a man and his wife had their boat shot out from under them on the same day that someone had robbed them?

  “Is anything missing?” Ryan asked.

  “Not that I can tell,” Paul replied from the bedroom. “Give me two more minutes.”

  Ryan stepped over the piles of debris and walked to the sliding glass doors that overlooked the pool. They, too, were open.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Someone was watching them. He was sure of it.

  An icy coldness clutched at his chest at the thought of a sniper’s crosshairs centered there. He ventured no farther outside and instead returned to the safety of the house’s concrete block walls.

  “What the hell’s going on, Paul? Why are people shooting up your boat and ransacking your house?”

  “The wife and I had a little argument. That’s why the place is a mess,” Paul answered. He came out of the bedroom, carrying two bulging suitcases.

  Ryan looked past him and saw the open wall safe. “Uh-huh.” It was hard to tell how a person would act just by meeting them, but Ryan suspected Mrs. Langston would never destroy her own home in such a manner.

  “Let’s go. I’m starving,” Paul said, his New Jersey accent dropping the R and G in starving.

  Ryan stopped the older man before he could get to the front door. “Paul, I’ve made a good living out of helping people in trouble. Maybe I can help you.”

  “Fuhgeddaboudit, Ryan. This ain’t no big deal. Let’s go get the girls.” He patted his belly. “All this excitement’s worked up an appetite.”

  When all the signs pointed to trouble, there was no way Ryan could forget about it.

  Chapter Three

  Ryan and Paul exited the trashed house a
nd walked to the waiting taxi. Ryan carefully scanned his surroundings, looking for any signs of trouble. He wished he had his Walther in his back pocket, but, despite the USVI being a part of the United States, his gun rights didn’t extend beyond the mainland. He hadn’t declared them to Customs either, and it was a hefty fine and jail time for not doing so.

  As he climbed into the cab, he said to Paul, “Do you need to see a doctor about your hand?”

  “No. You did a good job patchin’ me up. Take us back to American Yacht, driver.”

  Ryan watched the scenery slip past, moving his head to get a glimpse out the rearview mirrors to determine if anyone was following them. Trees crowded both sides of the narrow, twisting road, making it impossible to tell if someone was tailing them. If whoever was after the Langstons was smart, they’d use multiple vehicles to follow them, swapping out at varying intervals. It was like playing defense in football, the cornerbacks, safeties, and linebackers trading off on the receivers before converging for a tackle.

  He glanced at Paul, who was staring out the side window. Maybe this man was used to people destroying his life. He seemed cool under pressure, and eating was usually the furthest thing from most people’s minds if they’d just been through a traumatic experience like being trapped in a sunken boat and then discovering that someone had robbed their house. Ryan knew something wasn’t right here, but if the guy wouldn’t accept his offer of help, Ryan wasn’t going to pry. He decided that, after dinner, he and Emily would put as much distance between themselves and the Langstons as possible, maybe even striking out for St. John this evening.

  Back at the docks, both couples showered in the marina’s private restrooms, changed into clean clothes, and walked to a steakhouse in the same building as the yacht club. Ryan ordered a New York strip steak with a baked potato and steamed vegetables. Emily gave him a strange look for ordering such an expensive meal, but Paul said it was all good because Ryan had saved his life and a hero deserved a steak dinner.