Dark Path: A Ryan Weller Thriller

by Evan Graver

  Ryan hung up, his mind racing through scenarios and trying to figure all the angles.

  When they returned to the dock, Ryan steered Paul toward Windseeker. After retrieving the money from the sailboat, Emily paid Stuart, and he handed her necklace back to her. Ryan took a quick shower and called Roland “Jinks” Jenkins. Ryan had met Jinks when Jinks had still been on active duty as a Navy SEAL. After his retirement, he’d agreed to head up Greg’s private military contracting company, Trident.

  The short Samoan answered with, “You’re like a bad penny, Weller; you keep turning up.”

  “Yeah, but you like shiny objects.”

  Jinks laughed.

  “What are the chances of you getting a strike team to St. Thomas by nine tomorrow night?” Ryan asked. “I’m in the middle of a hostage exchange.”

  “Now you’re speaking my language, but bad news, buddy—we’re tapped out.”

  “How about two guys? I can manage with just a sniper team.”

  “That, I can do, but your timing sucks.”

  “Doesn’t it always? If it makes you feel any better, this is interrupting my vacation.”

  Jinks snorted. “I’ll get two guys and a gear package to you by tomorrow night.”

  “Thanks, Jinks.”

  Ryan returned to the sailboat and found Emily and Paul sitting in the salon, drinking beer. “Okay, Paul, spill it,” he said. “Who’s the guy holding your wife hostage and what’s in the box?”

  “Can I get another beer?” Paul asked.

  Ryan retrieved three beers, handed them out, and collected his gun cleaning kit from the V-berth. He sat at the table and disassembled his Walther. “Now, what’s in the box that Soul Patch wants so badly?”

  Paul looked momentarily confused. “Oh, you mean, Terrence Joseph.”

  “Yes.” Ryan nodded.

  “Papers that can incriminate me and Terrence Joseph in criminal activity.”

  “What kind of criminal activity?” Ryan asked dubiously. He’d helped a lot of people over the years, but he always felt that if a person was a criminal, they would get what they deserved. Maybe that was why Ryan himself had spent six months in a Venezuelan prison. The universe had dished out punishment for all the hell he’d rained down on various factions during his lifetime.

  Paul toyed with the beer bottle for a moment, then said, “I’m a smurf.”

  “You don’t look blue,” Emily said with a giggle.

  “I’m not a cartoon smurf. My job is smurfing. I launder money through shell companies and offshore banks. Every day, I move a small amount of money through the accounts, nothing over the ten-thousand-dollar threshold set by the U.S. government so the deposits won’t attract attention. It’s all set up automatically, so all I have to do is babysit the payments. Once the money moves through one set of accounts, it goes into another and another, until the person who owns the money uses it to purchase hard assets.”

  “Let me guess,” Ryan said, running a bore brush through the barrel of his pistol, “you smurfed some money into your own account.”

  “To be fair, I’ve been doing it for years,” Paul said. “The amount of money that flows through the books is so large that I skimmed a little extra for myself. I created several dummy accounts, just like I normally would, siphoned off tiny amounts, and then I cooked the books to make it all look legit.”

  “Don’t you get paid a percentage?” Emily asked.

  “I do, but when the money is in the tens of millions, I figured I could skim a little extra off the top. It’s easy to do by stealing a few dollars here and a few dollars there. Nothing big.”

  “But it all adds up over time,” Ryan said.

  “Yes.”

  “How much?” Ryan asked.

  “Almost seventy million dollars,” Paul said.

  Ryan rolled his eyes. “And you stole it from Soul Patch?”

  “No, Terrence is just the middleman.”

  “So where did the money come from?”

  Paul Langston glanced around the cabin as if someone might overhear their conversation, then leaned toward Ryan and lowered his voice. “Venezuela.”

  Ryan ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He’d had enough of Venezuela for one lifetime. “Okay, Paul, tell us how Terrence fits into your scheme.”

  “Terrence is like a middle manager. He runs a local gang that does everything from snatching purses to running drugs.”

  “I think now might be a good time to turn a copy of your paperwork over to the police,” Emily said.

  Paul shook his head. “No. I have to save Diane.”

  “What was your plan for this incriminating evidence?” Ryan asked.

  The older man shrugged. “I thought it might buy me immunity if the police investigated, or maybe it would keep Terrence from doing something stupid.”

  “Like trying to kill you or kidnapping Diane?” Emily noted.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know him?” Ryan asked.

  “When Diane and I lived in New Jersey, I used to work for some Italians.”

  “The Mob?” Emily asked.

  Paul nodded. “After we moved here, I was looking for some clients to help offset some expenses, so my old contacts hooked me up with Joseph. He needed some money laundered and I helped him do it.”

  Ryan shook his head in disbelief as he disassembled the trigger assembly and pulled the Walther as far apart as he could. He needed to clean the saltwater from the weapon to keep it from corroding.

  “So, you kept a record of your activities?” Emily asked.

  “Yeah.” Paul nodded. “I kept a record of all the money I’d laundered for Joseph, figuring that if there was a RICO investigation, I could disclose the records and get immunity. Kinda like an insurance policy. You know?”

  “Did you keep a history of your withdrawals?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah, I did,” Paul said. “I thought I’d kept everything clean and neat. I still don’t know how Terrence figured out what I was doing. I never told anyone about that account, not even Diane.”

  “Where did you keep the records?” Ryan asked.

  “In my office, but when we took off, I put the most important ones in the box.”

  “He might have been monitoring your place with a bug or a keystroke logger,” Emily offered.

  “How are we gonna get Diane back?” Paul asked.

  “I’m working on that,” Ryan said. “By this time tomorrow, I should have help. Speaking of that, we need accommodations for the team.”

  “Youse can use my place,” Paul said.

  “No,” Ryan said. “If Joseph has people watching your place, I don’t want to tip them off that we have help.”

  Paul thought for a minute, then said, “I know a lady who runs a small bed and breakfast not far from here. Her house is on a cliff that overlooks Vessup Bay. You can see this marina from the back patio.”

  “That’ll work,” Ryan said. He sprayed the components before him with gun oil and then reassembled his pistol. When he put the slide on, he racked it back and forth a dozen times and dry-fired the gun. Satisfied the Walther was clean and ready for use, he washed the magazines, holster, and bullets in fresh water. He set the bullets aside and loaded brand-new hollow points into the mags. “Paul, after you call your friend about the house, you can take the V-berth. Try to get some sleep, and we’ll get a fresh start in the morning.”

  Paul made his phone call and told Ryan everything was set, then headed for the bunk.

  Emily took Ryan topside. “Do you think they’re watching our boat?”

  “Without a doubt,” Ryan replied.

  “I assume you have a plan.”

  “I need to collect some things that will make the dive easier and get my rebreather bottles filled, then I’ll get the box.”

  “You make it sound simple,” Emily said.

  “It should be, as long as Mr. Murphy doesn’t show up.”

  Chapter Five

  In the morning, Ryan was up ear
ly. Normally, if they were in a marina, he and Emily would go for a run, but today, he sipped coffee and waited for the scuba shop in the yacht club building to open. When it did, he asked about getting his rebreather bottles filled with trimix and oxygen. The owner told Ryan that he could accommodate the oxygen, but not the trimix. The best place to get trimix was at the University of the Virgin Islands.

  He called the university’s dive center and found they weren’t filling tanks because their shipment of helium had been delayed. They recommended a dive shop on St. Croix because it was one of the few technical diving centers in the area.

  Ryan purchased the other supplies he needed from the ship’s chandler at the marina, including a two-hundred-foot coil of line, a Danforth anchor, and a round rubber fender. When he had his gear together, he carried it to Capt. Stuart’s dock. Emily and Paul helped carry the dive gear and four spare aluminum tanks. If something went wrong with the rebreather, he would bail out to the other bottles.

  When everything was aboard the Prowler, Ryan stepped aboard and said, “First stop, Christiansted.”

  Stuart whistled and raised his eyebrows.

  “I need to refill my trimix tank at St. Croix Scuba. On the map, there’s a dock at the end of King Cross Street.”

  “More like pilings,” Stuart said. “The hurricane wiped out the docks, but I haven’t been there in a while.”

  “Just get us close and I’ll wade ashore if need be.”

  “Yes, sir.” Stuart started the whisper-quiet Suzukis and put the boat into drive. When they rounded Cabrita Point, he turned and followed the ferry route between St. Thomas and Great St. James Island. Stuart pointed out the Straggler Islands, keeping clear of the dive boats shepherding their divers around the coral reefs, and aimed south for St. Croix.

  The Prowler sliced through the water with ease, and they made the forty-mile crossing in just over an hour. Only a portion of the King Cross Street dock had been rebuilt, and old dock pilings jutted from the water like discarded toothpicks. Ryan tied off the Prowler, and he and Emily walked up the street to the dive shop. While they waited for the shop worker to fill the tank, Ryan spotted a wall-mounted display of lift bags and purchased two of the largest ones the shop had in stock.

  With the bottle full and his wallet lighter, Ryan and Emily headed back to the boat. He gave Stuart a slip of paper with the coordinates for Balance Sheet written on it. Stuart punched them into in the Prowler’s GPS plotter and drove to the fuel dock at St. Croix Marine Center to top off the fuel tanks. Once complete, they raced across the water toward the resting place of the Langstons’ sunken sailboat.

  As Stuart held station above the wreck, Ryan tied one end of his line to his new Danforth anchor and the other end to the big rubber fender. He checked the fish sonar and saw the wreck was almost directly beneath them. Ryan had Stuart back off the wreck, and he dropped the anchor overboard. At the one-hundred-foot mark on the line, he tied on two aluminum tanks with short whips and tossed the rubber fender overboard when the anchor hit the seafloor.

  Stuart spun the boat around to face into the current and dropped his own anchor rode. He backed down on the hook as Ryan donned his dive gear and his rEvo III rebreather.

  Sitting on the bench, ready to go into the water, Ryan looked up at Paul. The older man dropped his eyes to the deck and looked away. They were only here because he had gotten greedy, and he’d put a lot of lives in danger as a result, especially that of his wife.

  Ryan stood and stepped to the swim platform. Emily patted his shoulder after he’s washed the defogger from his mask and fitted it to his face. He turned to look at her. She kissed him and said, “Be safe down there.”

  He smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  After fixing his mouthpiece between his teeth and opening the breathing loop, he took a breath and pulled on his mask. With one last glance at Emily, he stepped off the back of the boat and swam to the fender.

  The slack rope hung in loops. Ryan pulled it taut against the anchor, then hauled himself down the line. Several minutes later, he was on the bottom. He checked his computers; one for his oxygen tank, one for the trimix tank, and a third to monitor depth and time. Everything looked good.

  Next, Ryan pulled the line through the anchor until it was tight against the fender overhead. After tying off the line, he surveyed the sunken sailboat. The visibility was decent, but he couldn’t see the bow nearly seventy-five feet away. He pictured how things had looked the last time he’d been here, and as he swam forward, he noticed the boat was teetering on the edge of the precipice. According to the nautical chart he had looked at last night, the cliff sloped to a ledge at a depth of six-hundred-and-fifty-feet, before dropping vertically for another two thousand feet.

  The box was in the V-berth, which meant Ryan had to traverse the full length of the cabin and be conscious of knocking anything askew that might cause the boat to slip over the edge. He had also prepared for this by factoring how the currents might have moved the boat since his visit yesterday.

  Swimming out over the abyss, he stared down for a moment. A memory of his very first dive popped into his mind. He’d been doing his open water checkout dives and had jumped off a boat into the Atlantic. As he’d floated on the surface, he’d gotten his first glimpse of the abyss, and his breath had caught in his throat in a moment of panic. Staring into the abyss now made him feel the same way.

  He looked at his computers again before pulling out the two lift bags he’d purchased at the dive store. After tying both to the port side bow cleat, he opened the valve on his bailout bottle and used the regulator to gush air into the lift bags. He flooded them until the relief valves popped open and the two bags lifted and stabilized the bow.

  Back at the stern, Ryan dropped his bailout bottle in the dirt. He glanced at the length of line laying slack on the ocean floor beside his buoy anchor and had an epiphany. Swimming over to the anchor, he dug the anchor flukes as deep into the mud as he could before he ran the rest of the line to the stern of Balance Sheet and tied it off to the prop shaft.

  Satisfied that the lift bags and the anchor line would hold the sailboat in place, Ryan swam around to face the open cockpit. The sail no longer blocked the entrance, and he swam freely through the cabin door. Once inside, he snapped on his light. Not much had changed. The contents of the boat’s cabinets and shelves were still scattered across the deck and bulkheads. He paused for a moment to sense what the sailboat was doing as a vibration ran through the hull. After a moment, he pushed forward.

  The yellow waterproof box floated against the ceiling where they’d left it. The pocket of air Paul had been breathing from had disappeared.

  Ryan grabbed the box and pulled it after him as he backed out of the V-berth. The rebreather hit the bulkhead and he squeezed himself down, but the buoyant box kept him from getting back through the door. He let go of the box, and it slammed up against the hull, sending a shiver through the boat. Despite the anchor and the lift bags, the hull seemed to tilt toward the depths. Slowly, it stabilized itself, and Ryan took a deep breath, thankful his rebreather didn’t dispense bubbles of spent oxygen that might cause the boat to move any further.

  He pulled himself into the V-berth and pushed the box down and out the door, then maneuvered himself back into the main salon. The fact that the box wanted to float was frustrating to Ryan, and it was a challenge to get it to the cabin door. He knew that once he got the storm case into the cockpit, he would have to let it shoot to the surface.

  Leaving the box just inside the companionway door, he rummaged through the cockpit bench storage areas and found a length of line. He swam over the stern and tied a loop around the line running between the prop and his buoy anchor, planning to send it up the anchor line. Back at the door, he tied the box to the line and pulled it into the cockpit. As he predicted, the box shot straight up when he let it go. When it reached the end of the line, there was an audible pop as the handle ripped off.

  Around his mouthpiece, Ryan muttered,
“Shit.”

  The box continued toward the surface at rocket-like speed while the handle and line gently floated down to drape across the hull and lifelines.

  He sliced the line tied to the prop shaft with his dive knife and after loosening the anchor flukes; he ascended the line. His total bottom time had been a little over fifteen minutes. Above, he heard a pair of engines start and a boat race away. He figured it was Stuart going to retrieve the box.

  Ryan shook his head. He should have made Paul swim for it.

  He concentrated on his computers and his ascent. The visibility had decreased around him as the current had picked up. What had been slack water was now tugging at his body as it rushed past.

  Above him, the boat returned to his ascent line. He looked up and saw the hull, dark in the fading light of the approaching storm. Ryan remembered seeing something about a tropical storm but had paid little attention as he focused on preparing for the retrieval of the case, mainly on account of the weather service saying it was at least a day out. As usual, they were wrong.

  The rebreather’s computers monitored his breathing and oxygen intake, automatically calculating the stops he would need to ensure he didn’t get decompression sickness. As he moved up the line, the computers pumped in more oxygen, continually adjusting the mixture of gas he breathed, and greatly reduced his decompression time.

  When he finally surfaced, Ryan saw the Prowler bobbing nearby. He held on to the fender buoy as the boat backed toward him; the waves washing over its swim platform., Emily helped Ryan over the gunwale and out of his rebreather while Stuart swung the boat bow around to face the waves.

  They pulled the ascent line in and recovered the stage bottles before they headed for the marina. Clouds darkened the southeastern horizon and lightning streaked the sky, followed by the low boom of thunder.

  Halfway across the bay, heavy sheets of rain began to fall, obscuring the landscape ahead. By the time Stuart pulled up to the dock, they were all wet and shivering. Stuart left his boat in the slip and headed for his truck. Emily and Paul carried their gear to Windseeker and changed into dry clothes after showering while Ryan made a quick dive near the gas dock.