Distant Echoes

by Colleen Coble

  Kaia hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe you’re right. But I sure don’t see how this is a good thing.” She knew things didn’t always work out. Even when her life went well, she waited for the other shoe to drop. And it always did. She wished she could be more like her brother. But his faith was way beyond hers. While she was a Christian too, her own faith was as weak as a newly hatched chick—her own fault, she knew. It had been weeks since she’d even been in services. Her research had consumed her attention lately.

  Bane grinned. “I see the resistance in your eyes, Kaia. I have a feeling you’re in for a major lesson of some kind this summer. Relax and enjoy the ride.”

  Easy for him to say. He didn’t have to kowtow to a certain navy commander. She sighed and went to do her duty.

  She rolled her window down and let the sea air in the truck as she drove out to Barking Sands. The SPs made her wait at the gate for Jesse. He looked frazzled when he appeared fifteen minutes later.

  “I really appreciate this,” he said again as she climbed into his Jeep Wrangler.

  He accelerated quickly and the momentum threw her back against the seat. “Where’s Heidi?”

  The Jeep rocketed around a corner, and Kaia grabbed the door for support. Jesse didn’t answer until his SUV slid to a stop in front of a building.

  Jesse killed the engine. “She’s here with Donna.”

  Kaia got out and followed him inside. She had to admit she was curious to see this Donna. Jesse led her down a long hallway clad with institutional tan tiles and painted a sickly green. He stepped into a room filled with banks of computers. The dizzying display of electronic equipment dazzled Kaia; then she saw Heidi seated beside a woman with red hair. Donna’s face brightened when she turned and caught sight of Jesse. The proprietary expression on her face deepened when her gaze wandered to Kaia.

  “Donna, this is Kaia Oana. She and her dolphin are going to help patrol the waters offshore.”

  Donna nodded coolly. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, her tone indicating anything but pleasure. Her eyes tilted upward at the ends in a way that made her appear exotic and interesting.

  “We’ve come to take Heidi off your hands,” Kaia said, glancing at the little girl who was engrossed in a computer game. “Ready to go meet the dolphins, Heidi?”

  Heidi dropped the mouse and sprang out of her chair. Donna’s face darkened. “Heidi and I have been having a good time, haven’t we, Heidi?” She put her hand on top of Heidi’s head.

  “Sure, but I want to see the dolphins!” Heidi slipped her hand into Kaia’s. “Can we go now?”

  Kaia didn’t want to be rude. “In a few minutes.”

  “You don’t know how much I appreciate your help,” Jesse said to Donna. He extended a hand to Donna.

  Donna’s dazzling display of teeth set Kaia on edge. If he wanted to flirt with the beautiful ensign, he could do it on his own time. She needed to get out on the water. Aware she was irritated with Jesse for no good reason, she took Heidi’s hand. “We’ll wait for you in the hall.”

  With the wind in her hair and the sun slanting over the cliffs of Na Pali, Kaia was in her element. This was the third day Heidi had gone out with her. Jesse had tried to call Kaia’s old nanny but hadn’t gotten an answer. Something would have to be done soon, however, since Kaia was about to start working nights. Not that she minded having Heidi along—the little girl’s pleasant chatter made the day go faster.

  She waved to her friend George Thompson in his Fathom Five Divers boat just outside the no-navigation area. Two other crew members, Mark Davy and Charlie Schmitt, sent piercing wolf whistles in her direction. She grinned and stuck out her tongue at them as she passed. She’d done her dive training with Fathom Five and still dove with them occasionally.

  Heidi wore a life vest and sat in the bow, a smile as big as Kipu Falls on her face. Her bear, Boo, had been all but forgotten under a deck chair. Nani raced along beside the boat. Kaia had hardly seen Jesse. From the grim expression on his face over the past couple of days, she knew things at the base weren’t going well. She’d offered to keep Heidi with her tonight to attend one of her grandfather’s lu´aus, and the relief on his face had spoken volumes.

  Her skin felt taut and windburned. They’d been out here since seven this morning, and it was already nearly six. Nani surfaced and leaped into the air. Kaia frowned. “The camera is missing.” She stood and scanned the waves for the buoyant device. “Nani keeps scraping it off.” She suppressed her disappointment. She’d thought Nani would love this new challenge, and she hated to admit the dolphin was failing her assignment so far.

  “There it is.” Heidi pointed at the bright yellow bit of plastic housing floating about fifteen feet from the boat.

  Kaia steered the boat toward the camera then cut the engine and fished it out of the waves. She whistled for Nani, and the dolphin zipped to the side of the Porpoise II then turned and raced away when she saw the camera in Kaia’s hand.

  Kaia pressed her lips together. “We might as well go in.”

  “I want to stay out here.” Heidi crossed her arms over her chest. “Can’t we work with DALE?”

  Kaia glanced at her watch. “For a few minutes. Then we have to go in.” She grabbed her knapsack and pulled out the communication device. When she dropped it in the water, Nani came back to the boat. Kaia began to input clicks and whistles into the machine. Nani pressed the wrong picture on the underwater screen three times.

  “She’s not cooperating,” Kaia said. She pulled the device out of the water. “We might as well go in. We’re not accomplishing anything.” Sometimes she wondered if she was ever going to get through to the dolphin in a way that really mattered. Nani rolled over by the boat, and Kaia managed to get the camera back on her.

  “You promised we could stay out awhile. It’s only been fifteen minutes.” Heidi’s lip trembled, and tears clung to her lashes. “All grownups break their promises.”

  Kaia bit her tongue and tried not to snap back. “You sound tired. I think you need a nap.”

  “I’m not!” Heidi rubbed the back of her hand against her eyes. “Naps are for babies. My mom doesn’t make me take a nap.”

  Kaia knew what the problem was. “You miss your mom, don’t you? Maybe we can call her when we get to shore.”

  Heidi picked up an oar and threw it overboard. “Stop talking about my mother!”

  Kaia wasn’t sure how to handle this acting out. Heidi had to be upset by her father’s abandonment and now by her mother’s absence. Poor kid. Kaia cut the engine, and the boat slewed sideways. She tossed the anchor overboard. “How about a swim before we go ashore?”

  Heidi looked at her uncertainly as if she had expected Kaia to be mad. “I’ll get the oar. Can I snorkel?”

  “We can both snorkel a little while.” Kaia waved to the navy boat that was monitoring Nani. She and Heidi adjusted their masks and pulled on their swim fins. “See you in the water.” Kaia rolled over the edge of the boat.

  Kaia’s disappointment in Nani’s performance today left her as she entered the world she loved best. Schools of Raccoon Butterfly fish surrounded her then darted away. She spotted several Orange Bandit surgeonfish, a small school of Hawaiian Cleaner wrasse, and a Hawaiian puffer. Her favorite, the Moorish Idol, swam by and disappeared behind a lava rock. The scores of brilliantly colored fish dazzled her eyes in a display of bright yellow, turquoise, and green.

  Heidi joined her and grabbed Nani’s dorsal fin. The dolphin pulled the little girl through a school of wrasse. Kaia wished she had her camera.

  A shadowy movement caught her eye, and she turned to see a scuba diver swimming toward her. Dressed in a black wet suit, the man paused when he saw them. Though she was sure he was merely out for a pleasure dive, her orders were to take pictures of any divers or anything unusual. Kaia motioned to Nani, and the dolphin swerved, dislodging Heidi’s grip on her dorsal fin. Her body in torpedo mode, Nani darted past Kaia toward the diver.

  Kaia pointed towa
rd the surface, and Heidi nodded and swam to the boat. Once Kaia saw that the little girl was safely aboard the boat, she turned to help Nani. The dolphin was swimming around the man. She could see the camera would get a good look at the diver. The man spotted the camera mounted on the dolphin and swam away.

  Maybe it was nothing. He might not have known he wasn’t allowed here, just offshore the naval base. Still, she wanted a look at his face in case the picture in Nani’s camera didn’t come out. Nani raced along beside her, and Kaia grabbed hold of the dolphin’s dorsal fin to let Nani drag her along faster.

  Descended from a line of pearl divers, Kaia could hold her breath for four minutes, a fact she hoped would allow her to get close enough before she had to surface. The man glanced back at them then stopped by a large pile of lava rock that had fallen into the sea.

  Kaia squinted through her mask. He had something in his hand. Her hold on Nani’s dorsal fin slackened as she realized the man had a dart gun. A dart zipped through the water by her head, and she let out a gurgle of bubbles. Nani paused at Kaia’s sound of distress, then shot forward and plowed her nostrum into the diver’s arm. The dart gun loosened from his fingers and drifted toward the bottom.

  He turned and swam away. Too shaken to go after him, Kaia signaled for the dolphin to come to her. Nani pulled her to the surface, and Kaia drew in a deep breath of air and looked around wildly for Heidi. Her breath eased when she saw the little girl still safely in the boat. She grasped the side and rested until her limbs stopped shaking.

  “Are you okay?” Heidi peered down at her.

  “I’m fine.” Kaia hauled herself aboard. Her legs felt like limp seaweed. She grabbed the ship-to-shore radio the navy had given her and told the sailor on the other end what had happened. He signaled to her from the boat and spoke reassurances to her through the radio, but she glared across the water at the sailors. Where had they been when she, Heidi, and Nani were in danger?

  Jesse had promised Nani would be perfectly safe. They’d both nearly been shot with the dart gun. Even worse, Heidi could have been hurt. That guy was no casual diver. She and the dolphin weren’t equipped to handle terrorists.

  She dangled her fingers over the side of the boat, and Nani came to her. The dolphin bumped against her hand then chattered, her bright eyes seeming to ask if Kaia was all right. Kaia smiled and patted Nani’s nostrum. “I’m okay,” she told the dolphin. Nani chattered again then plunged into the waves.

  Kaia sat back in her seat. “We’re going in,” she told Heidi. “The navy has the coordinates. They don’t need us to wait.” And even if they did, her priority was to get Heidi to safety. Kaia had no idea where the diver had gone. If he came back with some buddies, they would all be in danger.

  To be fair, she knew Jesse had thought of these daytime exercises merely as training for real detection that would go on at night. That intruder was brazen to be out here in the daylight. Kaia was sure Jesse never would have let the little girl come out here if he’d thought there was any danger.

  She kept an eye out for other boats as she turned on the engine and sped toward home. All she saw was a navy cruiser heading out to where she’d been anchored. They were unlikely to find anything. The diver was long gone, but maybe they could find the dart gun.

  Where had the man gone though? She’d seen no other boats around. They were only a hundred yards offshore, but he couldn’t have gone ashore on base. He would have been caught by the navy.

  Kaia looked up and down the stretch of Polihale Beach just north of Barking Sands. Nothing there. Na Pali stretched toward the sky just beyond the beach. The verdant green vegetation juxtaposed against the blue sky looked like a picture postcard, too beautiful to be real.

  She looked the other direction. Barking Sands gave way to several contract installations. There would be no reason for any of those companies to have divers out here, though she supposed the man could have made it to a safe stretch along there.

  She steered the boat toward her home dock of Echo Lagoon. It was dark by the time she and Heidi arrived, and she had to flip on her headlamps. A bonfire lit the beach outside her grandfather’s house, and she could hear the thump of drums and smell the aroma of roasting pig. The familiarity eased her tension. Safe harbor. Nothing could harm them here, not with her brothers about.

  Heidi bounced on the seat. “I forgot about the lu’au! Can we still go?”

  “If you promise to let me teach you to hula.”

  “It’s too girly.”

  Heidi was all tomboy. Kaia smiled. “You’ll be hooked before the night is out.”

  He watched the fish in his tank. Everything he’d ever wanted was close enough to smell and taste. His imminent success should taste like the sweetest pineapple his father had ever grown, but instead it was like mashed taro—much more bland than he’d imagined. Maybe because he had no one to share the joy with. At least that’s what he told himself. Believing that was better than backing out of what he had to do.

  He had no choice but to make the tally of lost lives huge. The failure had to be big—big enough to change the course of the trials. He glanced at the wall to the left. Awards his father had won surrounded a large portrait of his father. He stood and walked to the picture and stood staring into his father’s smiling eyes. “I’m doing this for you,” he said. “You’re going to be so proud of me.”

  He turned as his assistant came into the room. “What’s the status? It’s almost time.”

  His assistant didn’t meet his gaze. “Remember the dolphin that arrived when the boat exploded? Lieutenant Commander Matthews has hired the dolphin and her trainer to patrol the waters with a camera.”

  “So arm our divers with spearguns.” He shrugged. “One dolphin shouldn’t be hard to dispose of.” Nor would Jesse, for that matter. He examined the thought for a moment. Would there be a way to become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and have the revenge he desired?

  Five

  Kaia had left with Heidi by the time Jesse reached the site. He peered over the side of the patrol boat into the gloom of twilight. The scent of the sea, fresh and invigorating, filled his lungs. Lights twinkled along the shore and in the canopy of stars above his head. Waves ran to the beach and lapped against the sand in a sound that soothed him. He needed soothing after the diver incident.

  He had not anticipated an attack in the daylight. Could it be one of the “friendly” nations engaging in a bit of espionage, or was it the work of a terrorist group or some other rival nation? He was going to have to find out.

  So far there was no evidence to indicate the disastrous missile test had been anything but a computer glitch—a glitch Lawton said he’d fixed. Jesse wasn’t sure. It seemed too coincidental that there’d been a death, a test failure, and a break-in pertaining to the missile. His instincts said differently, but the navy didn’t listen to intuition. If he recommended delaying the test, Lawton would be howling for proof. And Jesse didn’t have a shred to offer.

  He didn’t care that much about the missile—the government was always working on something new—but the thought of civilians at risk bothered him. With sixty thousand residents and over a million visitors a year, there was a lot to worry about.

  It was his fault his niece had been out there. Jillian would kill him when she heard about it. He’d been a poor substitute parent these past days. He needed to get his act together. Now. He hadn’t even gotten hold of Kaia’s old nanny. That would have to be the first thing on his list tonight. Donna was a little overeager in her willingness to help, but he needed someone who did this for a living.

  “See anything?” he shouted to Ensign Masters.

  His aide shook his head. “I’ve got divers ready to go down. The dolphin’s camera only showed the diver’s backside.” He made a cutting motion across his throat to signal the sailor at the helm to stop the engine. The boat slowed, waves lapping against the hull. The gloom made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet down, in spite of the rising moon.
/>   “Send down the divers,” he told Masters.

  Masters nodded and gave the order. Three divers dressed in wet suits fell backward into the inky water. The salty spray hit Jesse in the face, but he barely noticed. He stared into the clear water, but the shadowy forms of the divers quickly disappeared from view. One diver carried a camera mounted on his suit, and Jesse watched the monitor. The halogen floodlight illuminated the blackness about thirty feet in front of the divers. Fish darted away from them as they swam. A dolphin moved in to bump against the lead diver’s hand.

  One diver moved to the seabed and picked up something. Jesse couldn’t tell what he’d found, but it obviously wasn’t a body. It seemed hours before one of the divers surfaced, but glancing at his watch, he realized it had been only half an hour.

  “No divers down here, sir,” the SEAL said, saying what Jesse already knew. “Nothing but the dolphin.”

  “Nani?” He was surprised the man recognized Nani.

  “It had a camera mounted on it.”

  He nodded. “She must have come back out. I wonder if Kaia knows.” Though Nani was free to come and go as she pleased, Jesse was astounded by the dolphin’s desire to be around people. Seaworthy Labs was doing some amazing work. He should stop over and meet the director, Duncan’s brother.

  A second SEAL surfaced. “Found the dart gun, sir.” He swam to the boat and handed it up to Jesse.

  At least they had that much. “Take me back to shore. I want at least six boats patrolling tonight,” he told the men. The engine roared to life, and the boat bounced along the waves, riding the swells with ease. He stepped to the bow and put his face to the wind. He inhaled the scent of the sea in the breeze. The ocean was as much a part of him as his type O blood. He felt keenly alive and alert, eager to get to the bottom of this problem.

  The boat docked, and he stepped off the deck onto the pier. Sailors milled around, and he spotted Lawton, who was headed toward him.

  “A patrol just found a body floating offshore,” his captain said. Lawton’s tanned face bore no expression other than grim determination. “A diver.”