Why did he always have to help move it? Why did he always have to touch it? It would be easier to stomach if he didn't have to actually touch it; if he was never personally responsible for moving anything even one inch. He suddenly had the urge to wash his hands.
Just a few inches below him was the surface of the water. It might as well have been the top of a mountain. Wyatt was sitting a mile above the next solid surface. Beyond that black barrier laid the last frontier: the unknown, the undiscovered. Sure, he had seen it on sonar readings from a hundred feet above the waterline, but sitting here on the edge made it seem much larger, much bigger, much more overwhelming.
He toyed with the idea of jumping in; of feeling the warm water engulf him and hold him and try to keep him forever, the way it kept so many other things forever. He would have no more stress, no more fear, no more worry. And no more guilt. It would be just him and the deep blue sea until the last breath left his lungs and he followed his drill shaft to the bottom, a drill shaft that to this day had remained as dry as the Sahara, as dry as his bank accounts were becoming. Maybe in his last moments of consciousness, he would get to see for himself what he had seen only on a computer screen.
The faint sound of a twin-turbo propeller speedboat in the distance caught his attention. He sat and listened as the sound grew louder and louder. When it sounded near enough, he produced the high-intensity LED light from his pocket and began to flash it in the appropriate pattern. He heard the sound of the engines change and he knew the boat's pilot had seen the signal. He wiped away the tears he hadn’t realized had crept into his eyes.
Within minutes, Hector Martinez was slowly moving his boat into position between the pylons. He was careful to keep all lights off, save for a dim few that wouldn't be visible from a distance.
“Señor Wyatt, cómo estás, mi amigo?” Hector said with a grin.
“Hello Hector.” Wyatt was beyond feigning any pleasure at seeing him.
“I did not think I would beat the hurricane this week, no?”
“You did, though. How much do you have this week?”
“Two hundred kilos, give or take a few.” Saying give or take a few was Hector’s way of offering to lose a kilo or two to Wyatt. For a price, of course.
For a split second, George Wyatt wavered at the possibility. Damn, the money would really help. If he wasn’t up to his ass in this deal with the government, he might be swayed. Suddenly, it registered how much Hector had said he was delivering.
“Two hundred kilos? Where the hell am I supposed to hide more than four hundred pounds of cocaine until the pickup? You never said it would be that much.”
“And I never said it wouldn’t, Señor Wyatt,” Hector said in a quiet, serious tone. “Are you rejecting the delivery?” Hector placed his right hand flat on the front of his shirt, just above the beltline. Wyatt knew there was probably a gun underneath.
Wyatt also knew Hector was all business now. Rejecting the delivery was as close to legalese as this illegal business got. If Wyatt said yes, there would be immediate repercussions from all fronts, assuming Hector didn't just shoot him out of principle. All anyone would find would be a few drops of blood on the catwalk, if that.
“No Hector, I'm just saying—”
“Good. Now, we get this unloaded.”
On the storage deck of the Wyatt 1, George Wyatt and Hector Martinez carried the last of the cocaine from the freight elevator to a never-used closet in the corner of a never-used room. He replaced the dusty boxes that had been stacked there in such a way that no one would see anything unless they really went prowling around. It was bad enough to move it, but this time Wyatt had to store the stuff, perhaps for days or more. This deal just keeps getting worse, he thought.
“Where is Stingray?” Hector asked.
Stingray was the name of the contact that usually showed up the same time as Hector to make the exchange. Fitting, Wyatt thought, since Stingrays are poisonous.
“Beats me. All I know is that your other pickup is delayed. Stingray is delayed, and I'm supposed to store this shit until God-knows-when. They don’t tell me anything else. I don’t know when my rig became everyone's freakin’ illegal trading post!” Wyatt realized his voice had grown almost to a scream by the end of the sentence.
Hector remained silent. He waited for the oil rig financier to calm down. “Sounds like they tell you even less than they tell me,” Hector said with a lopsided grin.
Back down at the waterline, it was time to finish business and send Hector on his way. He had already been here a good ten times longer than he usually was, and that was about nine times longer than Wyatt could tolerate him.
“This is for you,” Hector said, turning to Wyatt with a large, locked, nondescript briefcase. “Two thousand per kilo, yes?”
“That's the deal.” Wyatt said, taking the briefcase. He knew the briefcase contained nothing but one hundred dollar bills, bound in ten thousand dollar stacks.
“And this is for Stingray,” Hector said, handing Wyatt a stack of sealed DVDs, each one with a sequential date from the last week written on the face.
Wyatt slid the DVDs into the briefcase. It was as if a great weight was lifted from his shoulders. He knew the payment for this trade would be coming and he could keep the rig running for at least one more month.
“And when she arrives,” Hector added as he stepped into the boat and started the ignition sequence, “tell her that Hector says hello and that my sister had her baby.”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said, waving Hector goodbye not a moment too soon. Funny, he thought, that issues like family and children still pervade this business, where it seems like all morality has long since vanished. He again wondered about his own morality. We each of us have our price, he thought.
Two days later, Wyatt found himself sitting on the same catwalk with the same flashlight drinking coffee from the same mug. Only yesterday, he had finally met Hector's drug-running guy and had to help him load the cocaine into his shrimping boat for the ride to dry American soil. Dammit, he’d had to help carry it to the boat again. What the hell was that all about? He idly thought to himself that it was just a way of getting blood on his hands too.
The rough, utilitarian growl of Stingray's boat was unmistakable in the distance. Coast Guard boats always sounded that way. The shady government contact called Stingray deftly maneuvered the boat between the pylons and tied it to the catwalk. The engines kept running, and no one came off the boat.
“Sorry I'm late. Something came up. A surprise development sort of thing,” echoed the voice from the boat.
She always wore a black hoody with a red bandana tied around her face. Only her eyes showed in the narrow slit. Secrecy. Always. He didn’t know who she was and he liked it that way; one more level of self-preservation in the plausible deniability.
“That’s fine,” Wyatt said. He handed over the stack of DVDs, along with a portable hard drive bearing the unmistakable logo of Wyatt Oil Company. “These are for you.”
The DVDs he supposed were some classified info from a deep cover contact in Cuba, and the portable hard drive a detailed analysis of a particular set of coordinates Stingray had given him. He’d taken the time, as he usually did, to copy the DVDs to his rig’s computer… as a precaution. If anything ever went down, he’d at least have some bargaining chips.
“Wonderful,” came the response. “I’ll be sure and send another memo to my friend at the IRS. Keep this up and they will owe you money.”
Wyatt forced a chuckle though he didn’t feel like laughing. He wouldn’t be in this damn below-board business if it weren’t for the IRS, the same IRS that would never see a dime of the money he was getting from Hector Martinez. He was a sliver away from shutting down the rig until Stingray had come along with this undercover deal. It still made him sick to his stomach that he was involved in this, but if it bought him more time to strike oil, he might be able to do away with all this crap. All this cloak and dagger certainly didn’t make him feel
at all like James Bond.
“Are you getting ready for Daniel?”
“Eh, I think it’s going to pass east of us, and bang up around Destin.”
“Perhaps. Be careful, though, we have a lot riding on this rig.”
“Obviously,” Wyatt said, glancing at the portable hard drive.
“See you next week, assuming you’re still here?”
“Of course. What choice do I have?”
“Not much, Mr. Wyatt, not much at all.”
He stood drinking his now cold coffee as the grumbling boat disappeared into the night.
He looked down at the water again and back at the long flight of stairs leading up to the Wyatt 1. He looked back at the water. And then back to the stairs. And then back to the water.
With a sigh, he took a deep breath and put his foot on the first step back toward the top.
13
Fanning Detritus
Ryan Bodean, or R.B. to his friends, was washing Gidget, the Tortuga Adventures seaplane, when he saw the green Honda pull into the parking lot.
Seaplane was actually a misnomer. Gidget wasn’t the kind of behemoth whose belly sat in the water like Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. She was actually a Cessna Caravan with the landing gear replaced by pontoons. Much to R.B.’s annoyance, Troy said it looked like a Ford Expedition with huge tires and a lift kit… with one engine… one big ass engine.
She was sparkling white (when Troy remembered to wash her) with a broad orange stripe from nose to tail and a bright yellow cowl. Gidget was a beautiful plane.
As Troy exited the car, R.B. immediately knew something was up by the ear-to-ear grin he was sporting.
“Oh God,” he said as he rolled his eyes, “what is it this time?”
“I found it,” Troy said.
R.B. stepped down from the ladder he had propped up next to the plane. He wiped his hands on his blue coveralls and held one out to the girl who had stepped out of the passenger seat.
“Hi, I’m Ryan,” he said, smiling, “but you can call me R.B.”
“Pleasure to meet you, R.B.” She returned his smile. “I’m Megan.”
“Likewise.”
Troy put his hand on R.B.’s shoulder. “It’s out there; we found the wreck. She saw it with her own eyes.”
“Well, I saw something,” Megan chimed in.
Troy led them into the Tortuga Adventures sales trailer. He pointed roughly to the site of the wreck on the map hanging on the wall. “It’s just off the coral reef, here.”
R.B. nodded. “Okay, so… now what?”
Megan leaned forward. “We need to go back. We need to dive the site again with a proper boat and a team we can trust.”
“What kind of boat are we talking about here?”
“Well, something with a large platform deck and maybe a crane or heavy winch of some kind,” she said.
R.B. scratched his head thoughtfully for a moment. “We’re gonna need clearance for this kind of thing. The feds are gonna want to know everything about what you’re doing out there.”
“Can’t do that,” Troy said with a shake of his head, “not just yet anyway. Somehow, we have to get around that… at least for the first dive. I want to lay claim to this before anyone else knows it’s there.”
“Well, that’s the real trick, isn’t it?” R.B. picked up the ancient looking rotary dial phone on the desk. He rolled off a quick series of numbers and waited until the man answered. “George, old buddy, old pal,” —he winked at Troy and Megan— “whaddaya know? How’s the oil diggin’ business going?”
Megan motioned to the crumpled remains of the data recorder from the magnetometer. “Now, about that computer?”
“Sure, in my office.” Troy led her into the back office of the sales trailer.
She wasn’t too surprised to see random stacks of paper, half-empty beer bottles and crumpled candy bar wrappers strewn about his desk. He opened the semi-rusted filing cabinet behind him and pulled out a relatively new looking laptop.
Seeing her obvious surprise at his computer, Troy winked. “Won it in a card game.”
“Ahhh,” Megan said, nodding, “of course.”
She booted up the computer and waited for a moment. She unwound a USB cable and connected the two devices, then opened a browser and downloaded a program from the dolphin center’s website.
“You mind?” she asked.
“Not at all.” Troy looked at her blankly.
When the load was finished she double clicked and waited for the installer to complete the magnetometer program. Idly, she began cleaning his desk. She shuffled some papers into stacks and clinked a few beer bottles into the trash can beside his desk. As she did, she noticed a few more beer bottles rolling around under her chair. She opened a manila folder and began filing some of the papers into a somewhat ordered system. She found more beer bottles stuffed into the back of his file drawer.
She held one up and rolled her eyes at Troy.
“You really shouldn’t drink so much, you know,” she said, only half joking.
Troy shrugged his shoulders and flopped down onto the mid-eighties, deco-design recliner sofa with cup holders that he’d rescued from a nearby dumpster.
“I’m a pirate,” he said, “and pirates drink.”
She dunked the bottle into the trash. “Yeah, and the average life expectancy of a pirate was about thirty-five, which puts you well beyond your golden years, Mr. Bodean.”
“Look, I don’t really drink that much,” he protested weakly, “I just have a sip now and again to take the edge off.”
She opened the other file drawer and pulled out a half empty bottle of tequila. Shooting him a more serious look, she plopped it into his trash can as well.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa now,” he said and jumped up from the couch.
He pulled the bottle from the trash and shook it around.
“You can’t just toss Jose out like that,” he said through a grin, but it slowly dissipated when he realized she wasn’t joking.
With a great struggle, he let the bottle fall heavily back into the can.
She smiled and looked back at the computer screen.
The charting program had pulled up a graph-like grid and had begun to plot points out in what appeared to be a completely random order. To Troy, it looked like a seismograph gone haywire.
As the screen began to fill with more and more points, Megan’s jaw dropped slightly and then continued to drop even more.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Troy looked at her and then back to the screen. “What? What is it?” He gazed at the computer, clearly puzzled.
“It’s everywhere,” she said, pointing at the screen.
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” she said, and traced her finger from dot to dot, “each one of these is a hit.”
He grabbed her arm and gently shook her.
“A hit? What does that mean? English please.”
She snapped out of it a bit. “A hit means we found something; something that doesn’t belong on the ocean floor. It’s even more than I originally thought.”
Troy looked back at the darkening cluster of dots. There had to be over a hundred now. It dawned on him what he was looking at… the fan-shaped scattered remains of a shipwreck.
Suddenly R.B. jerked open Troy’s office door. “C’mon let’s fire up Gidget.”
“Why, what’s up? Where’re we going?” Troy asked.
“We gotta go see a man about a boat.”
14
Stingray
Natasha Wainwright sipped a cup of steaming hot Cuban coffee and tapped out a few notes on her laptop. The clicking of the keys echoed softly down the halls of historic Fort Jefferson, her current assigned location.
The weather had been getting rougher the last few days and the tourist flights had all been cancelled, so she had a lot of free time to catch up on her real mission.
For all anyone else knew, she was a new park ranger stationed in K
ey West, but in reality, she was under cover for the C.I.A. Two weeks prior to her assignment here, a classified unmanned recon drone had gone down in the Gulf of Mexico. It was being sent on test missions over Cuba and a glitch or something in its computer systems had flown it straight down into the water. If the plane survived the impact, the data on board wouldn’t be serious enough to warrant a national security emergency, but tensions with the new Cuban regime would escalate exponentially.
In a rush, her boss at the agency had pulled some strings and placed her at the island fort to begin the staging process for recovering the spy plane. So far, she’d been unable to locate the crash site; she thought it ironic that a reconnaissance plane hadn’t been fitted with a locator beacon.
She’d been studying the maps and ocean current forecasts and had come up with about a square mile area she felt pretty sure would turn up the sunken plane. Unfortunately, that was still like trying to find a needle in a haystack the size of a football field, with the added bonus of the needle moving around with the currents every day.
Natasha stood up from the desk and walked over to a nearby window. The lightest mist of rain was dripping down the glass. Three days. That was her best guess as to how long she had to recover the plane before the hurricane hit.
She felt pretty confident she could find and raise the plane, or worst-case scenario, destroy it. Just recently, she discovered that her old friend Troy Bodean had been flying around a lot out there. Rumor had it that he’d found something… something he thought was an old shipwreck from the sixteen hundreds.
She glanced back at her desk to the silver aluminum briefcase next to the computer and wondered how much it would take to buy off Troy, or better yet, hire him to help. The second offer would be harder for him to swallow, as he would have to relocate and most likely would be under government surveillance for several years afterward. But he wasn’t exactly raking in the dough with his crappy little tourist flights.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 35