It hadn’t taken them very long to grow apart after her transfer. They rarely if ever communicated, and even then it was short, one line e-mails. She had learned later that a completely random I.E.D. explosion had ruined his knee back in Afghanistan, ending his military career as an Apache pilot.
She did feel a little pity for him and thought she’d offer to buy his help with the wreck first. If that didn’t succeed the options grew very slim, but she had a job to do and she would do it… no matter what it cost. The agency would show great favor for her service.
Troy had told her he was flying today, but she supposed the coming weather would keep him grounded. She pulled her radio from her belt.
“James, is the boat still in the water?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so… why?”
“Thought I might make a quick trip into the gulf.”
“Okay, sure. Where are we going?”
Oops. She didn’t mean to make it an invite. “Oh, well, I figured I’d get some more readings for the weather service… you don’t have to go if you don’t want.”
“Nah, it’s cool. I got nothin’ better to do.”
Damn, she thought. She’d been hoping he’d be too happy getting stoned to want to go with her. She walked over to her desk and opened the center drawer. She pulled out a small black bottle and removed a little green pill. Carefully, she slipped the pill into her shirt pocket and replaced the bottle.
“How ‘bout a quick shot of that Patron before we head out?” she said into the radio.
“I’ll have it cooled before you get down here.”
She closed her laptop and poured the rest of her Cuban coffee down the drain. Damn, that stuff was strong. She unlocked and opened her footlocker and took out a large black duffle bag, shouldered it, relocked the box and headed for the door.
Her cellphone beeped.
-REPORT
Ugh, God. Now was not a good time. She clicked it open and tapped out a quick message.
-Checking site number one today. Have info and possible first contact with stingray.
Stingray was the codename for the downed drone plane. She liked the name and had used it as her own codename recently.
-What is status on the Cuban?
Dammit, she didn’t have time for this. She considered Hector Martinez as an annoying divergence from her real mission. She glanced over at the stack of DVDs on her desk next to her laptop. They were still unopened.
-Have made contact. Researching obtained materials now. Will report ASAP.
What the hell the US government was doing still watching Cuba was beyond her.
-Will expect your report on both situations at 0700.
She flipped her phone closed and quickly reopened it.
-Coming to the island today, would like to get together for lunch.
She hoped Troy would agree so she could get him out of the picture quickly. Three days wasn’t much time for this sort of thing.
-Sorry, busy today, how’s tomorrow?
Dammit, this was becoming much harder than she wanted.
-Ok, tomorrow. I’ll call you.
-You bet.
She closed the phone and once again hefted the duffle bag over her shoulder. As she approached James’ room, she could already hear the blaring of steel drum music and his screechy voice wailing above Bob Marley’s.
Good, he’d already started without her. She slid her bag off to the side before she entered and jerked open his door.
“Sorry I’m late!”
“Heyyyyy, where ya been?” he drawled, with his Patron tequila bottle in one hand and a shot glass in the other.
Several shots and one tiny green pill later, he was lying face down on the ground, out like a light. God, she wished everything was as easy as incapacitating this guy.
She turned to the door and heard her cellphone beep again.
“Crap, not again,” she muttered and yanked the phone from her pocket.
She opened it, but there was no message. She heard the beep again. It wasn’t her phone. The beep was coming from James’ pocket. Not a big deal; she was sure he had the same Government Issue sat phone.
She walked toward the door, but something made her pause. She turned back toward him. With a heave, she rolled him over and reached into his pocket. He groaned, but did not wake up; the green pill would have him out until morning.
She pulled out his phone and clicked it open. What she saw on the screen sent a chill up her spine. In digital green and gray she read the newest text message.
-REPORT
15
Location, Location, Location
Steve Haney handed his partner the Northstar 952DW Chartplotter. “He wasn’t very happy about giving that thing up.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?” Joe Bond replied as he took the black box. “Let’s get down to the lab and get that old data card put into this thing.” He picked up his file and the G.P.S. unit and led Steve down the hall to the crime lab. “Maybe I can finally tell Skipper what happened to his boys.”
“Ha, and maybe he’ll stop calling every day,” Steve said and chuckled.
“Not likely.”
Lisa Carlson, the FSU crime lab intern, was predictably hunched over a microscope as they entered through two stainless steel swinging doors. A cute girl, with strawberry blonde hair and freckles on her nose, she was peering through oversized brown-framed glasses. She had her hair pulled into a loose ponytail and under her lab coat she wore a shirt that said, Chemists do it Periodically on a Table.
She looked up and smiled. “Well, there’s good news and bad news… which do you want first.”
Joe shrugged. “Let’s have the bad news.”
She stood up and walked over to a flat screen monitor sitting on a countertop that was carefully and meticulously littered with evidence envelopes and slides of at least a dozen current investigations. She clicked her mouse and a grainy picture of a lifted fingerprint appeared on the screen.
“Apparently there wasn’t enough of a print here to match to anyone in the local database,” she said, and enlarged the print and circled three separate points with her cursor, “but with these particular areas we were able to exclude Captain Mark and both of the Johnson boys.”
Joe figured they must’ve appeared puzzled because she continued as if speaking to a third grader.
“Which means this print belongs to someone else.”
“Okay, sure, got that much,” Joe said, “but whose is it?”
“I sent the print to the C.I.A. and we’ll have something by tonight… if the print is in their database and if it’s complete enough to find a match.”
Steve had picked up and was peering at a spent bullet in a tiny Ziploc bag. “And the good news?” he asked.
Lisa snatched the bag from his fingers and placed it carefully back into its place on the countertop. “The good news,” she said, giving him a reprimanding look, “is that this still works as far as I can tell.”
She tapped a cardboard box on the counter and handed both Joe and Steve a pair of latex surgical gloves. “Put these on.”
As they pulled on their gloves, she opened the box and removed the newly discovered G.P.S. unit. She placed it on the counter and plugged it into a generic four-pronged power source.
“I opened it up and dried out the inside as well as I could, and it really wasn’t as bad as I thought,” she said. “I guess it is supposed to be water resistant to a certain degree. The manufacturer just didn’t expect it to stand up to complete underwater submersion.”
She pushed the power button and the screen blinked to life. A small readout slowly came into focus and a flashing dot appeared on a latitude and longitude grid, the bottom information line of which read 24.57 LAT by 81.68 LON, their current location. Suddenly, the screen shut off.
“Oh, and I forgot about that bad news,” she said somewhat smugly. “It only stays on for about ten seconds.”
“Nice!” Steve added sarcastically.
“It’s okay,” Joe said. “Think this might help?” he asked, and handed her the newly confiscated Northstar unit from Captain Mark’s fleet.
“Ahh, yes, that should do the trick.” She took the G.P.S. machine and quickly began disassembling it. “Gimme fifteen and I’ll have her up and running.”
Joe winked at her and patted Steve’s belly. “Tell you what, we’ll grab a quick bite and be back in an hour.”
“Mm hmm.” She was already engrossed in disconnecting and reconnecting internal wires and cards in the two units.
Ten minutes later, Steve was unsuccessfully wiping buffalo wing sauce from his face at the world-famous Hog’s Breath Saloon.
“You know what I just don’t get?” he said in between chewing and twisting and chewing a wing, “is why kill two boys, steal a G.P.S. unit, and then dump it into the ocean? I just don’t see the logic there.”
“Yeah, I know,” Joe said, and scratched his chin. “What’s on a G.P.S. unit that warrants a double homicide?”
“Treasure. Didn’t the report say that the boys had been bragging about finding something out there?”
“Still, no need to kill them, just steal the G.P.S. from their boat and go get it while they partied,” Joe said.
“Yeah.” Steve began chewing again.
They both sat in silence for a few minutes, trying to piece together the fragments of this strange case.
“Someone wanted that location evidence gone and no witnesses alive who could find it again,” Joe muttered. “It reeks of a cover-up.”
“Not a very good one though,” Steve said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, if you’re gonna sink the G.P.S.,” —he took a loud slurp of his diet soda— “why not sink the whole boat?”
“Good question… maybe the killer got caught in the act and had to cut and run?”
“I think the guy got what he wanted and didn’t really care about the rest. It’s like you said, he just got rid of anything that pointed to that particular location.”
“So, what the hell is out there?” Joe signaled the waitress for their check.
The attractive yet road-worn looking young girl came to their table. Joe thought she looked like Daisy Duke on crack.
“How you boys doin’?”
Steve put his arm around her waist. “Hey, Leela,” —he winked at Joe— “you gonna be in the homemade bikini contest tonight?”
“Nah, they cancelled it,” she said with an added shrug. “Guess with that damn storm comin’, ain’t nobody here to see it.”
“Awww, that’s too bad, huh Joe?”
“Yeah,” he said and rolled his eyes, gave her a twenty and stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Maybe next time, sweetie,” Steve said, and squeezed her as he got up.
“Alright, cut it out, you’re on duty.” Joe grabbed him and ushered him toward the door.
“Just playin’ around.” Steve waved back to the girl.
As they walked out to the curb of Duval Street, Joe’s phone beeped.
“Oops, it’s a voicemail from Lisa,” —he pushed one to access the message— “I didn’t even hear it ring.”
“Joe, it’s Lisa,” she said in a very excited tone. “I have your machine working, and I’ve downloaded all the data of the past ten trips and made a map for you. I also got a hit on the print from the C.I.A. database.” She paused for a second. “And get this… they have a record of the print…”
“She got a hit on the print,” he mouthed to Steve.
“… but the profile’s status is classified. Anyway, just thought you should know. See you back at the lab.”
“Classified?”
Joe deleted the message and closed his phone. “What the hell is going on here?”
16
A Living Thing
Hector carefully idled his boat forward until he felt it gently slow into the emerging beach. With no lights, the hard part was knowing when to slow down. As he approached, he thought he could hear the faint sound of another boat passing in the distance, but saw nothing. He wrote it off as paranoia. The night was overcast, making it darker than usual, not to mention that Hurricane Daniel was beginning to make a rough chop of the normally stagnant water.
He stepped out onto the soft sand and pulled his boat far enough on shore to keep it from drifting away. To his right, he could see the dim figure of his contact making his way along the narrow peninsula of sand that existed only at low tide. He could see dark circles under the man’s eyes; he was seriously stressed. His white t-shirt was rumpled and stained under his armpits and his gut heaved against the stretched cotton. A thin veil of sweat beaded on his cheeks. Hector had no idea who this man was or who he was working for, but he looked like he’d had a rough couple of nights.
“I hope this trip was worth it,” Hector said.
“It’s only ninety miles to that hellhole you call home. Here.”
His contact abruptly shoved a brown paper bag into his hands. Hector could feel the distinctive shape of bundled money inside. He opened it and flipped through the stacks to ensure the amount was somewhat correct. Not once had the money been short, but old habits die hard.
“Numbers, please,” demanded the man.
Hector returned to the boat, opened a small compartment under the dash, and retrieved a small note pad from inside. On the note pad were ten sets of coordinates. He didn't care what they meant or where in the gulf they were. All he knew was that this American wanted them, badly enough to share money, share information, and tell him to use any means necessary to get them. He ripped the sheet of paper out of the pad and handed it over.
“Are you sure these are correct? Are you absolutely sure?” the man demanded again.
“Yes, yes. I checked them twice,” Hector assured him.
“Where’s the unit now?”
“Somewhere down there with the fishes, I think,” the Cuban said with a toothy grin.
He neglected to tell his contact that he had forgotten to pull the data cards out until the moment he watched the G.P.S. unit sink into the blue. No worries, it wouldn’t matter at the bottom of the gulf. He didn’t like the tone this gringo was beginning to use, though, and he could feel his face reddening.
“Does anyone else know anything about this?”
“No, no, señor,” Hector said and shook his head, “nobody saw nothing and nobody knows nothing.”
Hector had been surprised to have recently stumbled onto three money making schemes in the gulf; one obtaining these numbers for his mysterious friend, one ferreting classified information out of Cuba for Stingray, and the third running his shipments of coke through the oil rig that Stingray had chosen for their meetings—with the help of her government friends on patrol in the gulf looking the other way. He had no idea they were related in any way. He was glad his business was over with this guy. He didn’t really like him, but tonight’s trade would be their last meeting. Adios Hibrido, he thought.
“You could have been more discreet in getting these numbers, you know. We didn’t discuss your methods because I didn’t think we needed to. You went too far.”
The man was now speaking down to him like he was a child.
“I did what I was hired to do. Don't worry about the details,” Hector said, his tone cold and unapologetic.
In his line of work, he often found customers to be lacking the backbone or stomach for the less palatable parts of the jobs. These American types were some of the worst. They always thought their money would insulate them from feeling any guilt, but it never did.
“You Americans are such hypocrites. You hate us for selling drugs, but you buy all we have. You want information, but you don't want to do what’s necessary to get it. You want to have it all effortlessly. Now, your hands are dirty too. You are one of us.”
“I think not.”
“Me emputa sa vaina! You think just because you pay someone to do your dirty work leaves you clean? The jefe is as guilty a
s the worker. You told me to do what was necessary, now you want to whine about it after you get what you wanted.”
“Murder of innocents was never part of the deal. You left a trail, a trail that cannot lead to us.”
“You came to me because of my reputation, not despite it. Whatever you think of me, look in the mirror.”
“You have no idea who you are talking to. Never mention those boys again, either. Ever. This ends here, you idiot. Do you understand? We’re done. Over. Fin. Get on your little boat and get your ass back to Cuba. If I ever see you again, I’ll make what you did to the Johnson boys look like a ride at Disneyworld.”
"You don’t give me orders, puto!” Hector placed his hand flat on the front of his shirt.
He didn’t feel threatened, but he did have a reputation and he had to uphold it. He knew this gesture was an obvious show that he had a gun tucked in his belt, and while he had never tried it with this guy, he seemed like he’d be easy to push around. Much to his surprise, his contact stepped three paces toward him. He didn’t even put his arms up. This guy was clenching his teeth, and he looked pissed.
“Now you look here, muchacho, I’ve had AK-47s put to my head by teenage freedom fighters in countries you’ve never heard of, on missions that never existed. Do you think I’m afraid of getting greased by a monkey like you?”
Oh, this one has an attitude, Hector thought. Some people do, until they see the gun. Hector reached under his shirt and retrieved his stainless steel 9mm semiautomatic and pointed it straight at the man, only three feet away, his arm fully extended.
“You should be afraid, gringo. I’m a bad man.”
Hector saw his contact twitch and heard a metallic thwwwp sound. In the blink of an eye, a blow to the top of Hector’s hand just behind the thumb dislodged the weapon. He pulled his clenched fist to his chest in agonizing pain. A second later the cold and unmistakably hard steel of a retractable ASP baton struck Hector in the right side of the head and put him to the ground, as he tried to comfort his bruised skull with his bruised hand. Another blow to his head and a firm push on his shoulder left him flat on his back, stunned, and still looking up at the dark sky. He felt the baton, now slick with his own blood, lay across this throat, with his contact’s foot slowly increasing the pressure on his larynx.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 36