“I’m gonna go see what’s going on.”
“Hey,” R.B. said, and lay back down, “bring me a beer, will ya?”
Troy laughed as he forced his legs to pick him up. “You bet.”
Megan Simons was lying in George Wyatt’s bed. Her breathing was shallow and her skin was pale. Wyatt was sitting at his desk.
“You’ve all been out for about six hours now.”
Troy nodded toward Megan. “How is she?”
“She hasn’t come around yet,” he said. “I think she lost a lot of blood from that nasty cut.”
Troy knelt down beside the bed and touched her forehead. A bandage oozed over the cut she’d gotten from the exploding glass on the Wy Knott.
“She’s gonna need stitches and antibiotics, Troy.” George stood up. “We need to get all three of you to a hospital on the island.”
Troy nodded. “Thank you, Wyatt,” he said, his voice quivering.
“What for?”
“For coming out there to find us.”
George opened the door. “Find you?” he said, laughing. “I was just looking for my damn boat!”
Troy could hear his laughter echo down the steel hallways of the oil rig.
“I’m gonna fire up that plane of yours, and get you lazy bums back to the island,” he called.
29
Nice Nap
Troy Bodean stared blankly at the doctor who was explaining the micro-stitches in Megan Simons’ forehead. He was going on about how they weren’t really necessary, but that they would keep the scar fairly invisible. Troy didn’t care; he just wanted to make sure she was going to be fine.
“Yes, Mr. Bodean,” the doctor continued, “she’s going to be okay.”
He thanked the man and walked back into the hospital room where Megan was sleeping. She had an I.V. in her arm and her face was ashen. Her lips were cracked and glistened with lip balm. Her hair was freshly washed and still slightly wet. He sat down heavily in the vinyl visitor chair and watched her breathe, nearly in sync with the heart rate beeping lightly in the background.
Even in this disheveled state he was amazed he still found her incredibly beautiful.
Sunlight beamed through the sterile vertical blinds of the Lower Keys Medical Center. Hurricane Daniel had passed, but somehow he felt they were not out of the storm yet. He’d pretty much bet the farm on finding treasure in the sunken ship but all they really had to show for their struggle at sea were some rusty bits of junk. He wondered if it would even be worth enough to pay for Megan’s hospital bill. Probably not, he thought, I’m sure micro-stitches aren’t cheap.
Troy stood up and walked over to the bed. Tipping his hat back on his… Holy Moly, he thought as he realized the hat had survived the hurricane too. He brushed his fingers lightly over Megan’s cheek.
“Guess I’ll sell the scooter,” he mumbled aloud, “and the houseboat.”
To his surprise, Megan opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “You call that rusty bucket of bolts a houseboat?”
He was surprised again to feel tears begin streaming down his cheeks.
“I thought sailors didn’t cry,” she rasped through a laugh.
He smiled. “They don’t. I’m a pilot.”
She laughed again and began to cough. He handed her an impossibly small paper cup of tepid water. She drank it down quickly and he filled it up again from a nearby sink five times before she was satisfied.
She closed her eyes and was asleep again. He watched her for a while, but then fatigue caught up with him. He slumped into the cold hard chair and drifted off.
He woke to find the sun throwing long orange rays between the blinds. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“Nice nap?”
He looked up to find Megan sitting upright in bed. She looked pale but not as ashen as before; even her lips seemed to be less swollen and blistered.
“I got tired of waiting up on you!” he said, and stretched his arms out like a cat who’d just been roused from a warm spot in the sun.
He heaved himself up and felt the aches and pains of their ocean swim needle into his muscles. The stiff hospital guest chair probably hadn’t done much for him either.
Troy walked to her bedside and took her hand in his. For a few minutes, he couldn’t find the words to express what he’d been feeling.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he finally whispered.
Megan smiled. “Pfftt, you think a boat ride through shark infested waters, rogue waves and gale force winds are enough to get rid of me?”
He was suddenly choked up again and couldn’t speak.
“You won’t shake me that easily, Troy Bodean.”
He stared into her eyes and struggled to regain his composure. She pulled him down into a hug.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” she whispered into his ear.
Later in his life, when he looked back on this moment, he would tell the story of how he might not have pulled any gold or silver from the Gulf of Mexico, but that he’d found treasure just the same.
“What happened out there, Troy?” she asked. “I remember the explosion, but that’s about it.”
He told her what had transpired from the time she was unconscious until now.
“Natasha?”
He just shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Troy.”
After a long pause she added. “What was she doing there anyway?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know that.”
“R.B.?”
“Waiting for us back at my place to tell him what to do with the junk we brought up from the Muerta.”
“You mean the houseboat?” she said, winking at him.
“Very funny.”
“We can take it back up to the research center. I can probably get everything we need there to examine the pieces. It may not be much, but I bet we can find something a local museum might buy to put on display.”
“Sounds good, but the doc said you can’t leave ‘til tomorrow morning. He wants to make sure that cut doesn’t get infected.”
Megan looked exasperated, but soon relented. “Well, call him and tell him to go ahead and take all of it up to the center. It really needs to be soaked in salt water to keep it from decaying and falling apart on us.”
“Gotcha,” Troy said as he clicked open his phone.
He relayed the instructions to R.B. and sat back down in the chair. Megan then used his phone to call Chelsea, her assistant at the research center, and told her to prepare three large tubs of salt water for storing the artifacts. Troy almost laughed out loud when she said artifacts.
Megan smiled a sideways smile, and said, “You know, sometimes things might not look so good on the outside, but if you clean ‘em up and give ‘em a little attention… you might be surprised what you’ve found.”
“I should’ve known you were an optimist,” Troy said through a smirk.
“And you’re not?”
He began to refute her assessment but was startled to find he was beginning to feel a little better about what might lay ahead. In fact, he was anxious to get out of the hospital and start cleaning up their rusty finds.
“Maybe I am,” he said, winking, “maybe I am.”
Ryan Bodean, or R.B. as he was widely known on the island of Key West, rapped on the glass security door to the Dolphin Research Center. Good grief, he thought, annoyed at having to make the long drive up by himself. He was anxious to unload the unimpressive bounty and get back down to Duval Street for a well-deserved beer. After a long wait, the girl named Chelsea finally opened the door.
“Sorry, I was…”
He didn’t hear the rest of what she was saying. She was stunningly beautiful. She had deep black hair and the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. A few freckles dotted her nose, an occupational hazard from being in the sun, he guessed.
“Hi, I’m R.B., a… a friend of Megan’s and Troy’s,” he stammered.
She blushed slightly at his stare. “I know, I was expecting yo
u.”
“Well, I sure wasn’t expecting you… I mean, wait… I didn’t expect you to be so… crap, nevermind.”
She laughed. “C’mon, I think we should probably get that pile of junk into the salt water tubs.” She nodded toward his beat-up Chevy pick-up truck. “And then you can take me up to Woody’s for a beer.”
He was suddenly not so anxious to get back to Key West.
30
Needles And Pins
Joe Bond and Steve Haney pulled into the Sunset Marina for the third time in a week. It was the marina the Key West police department used for their own boat storage.
“Déjà vu all over again, eh,” Steve said as they exited the cruiser.
“Okay, now,” Joe warned him, “no coming down on the kid, agreed?”
Steve just shrugged an innocent shrug. He’d recently gotten a bit hot under the collar at the nonchalance of the hippie kid working the desk at the marina.
“I want to find Hector’s boat and get the inspection team on it.”
Joe walked up to the desk. “Hector Martinez? Which one is his?”
The kid never looked up from an old issue of the High Times. “Thirty-two.”
Steve glared but said nothing. Joe urged him on from behind. As they walked along the slips toward Hector’s boat, Steve slowed.
“What?” Joe asked, nearly bumping into him.
“Notice anything strange?”
Joe looked around at the boats, all of them hanging above the water on lifts—except for one.
“Well, I guess they pulled them all out because of the storm.”
“Which means that one,” —Steve pointed to the boat still sitting in the water— “came in after the storm hit.”
“Get the kid; find out who owns it.”
“Gladly.”
“Be nice,” Joe said over his shoulder.
He continued down to slip number thirty-two. The boat was hanging above the water, put up for the storm. Joe pulled the lever to lower it.
When it came to rest, he climbed aboard. He tried the key he’d found on Hector and sure enough, the boat fired up. He started the onboard G.P.S. unit and found that Hector had indeed been to Cuba and back a few times.
He continued to scroll through the locations and came to one he recognized immediately. Fort Jefferson.
“Now, what in the hell is Hector doing out there?”
He remembered Steve saying the man had begged not to be taken to an evil place and that the man at the fort had told him all about it. There was only one man stationed at Fort Jefferson. James Howard. Joe didn’t know James very well, but he hardly seemed the type to instill fear into Hector.
He poked around the boat and eventually found several bags of white powder beneath the rear seat; drugs, probably cocaine or heroin.
Joe Bond sat back in the captain’s chair of Hector’s boat. He struggled to put all of these seemingly random pieces into place. He took out a notepad and began scratching out a flow chart of pieces with lines between them representing any connection they may have.
Hector is running drugs; he’s stopped at Fort Jefferson. He cocked his head to the side in a moment of inspiration, clicked open his cellphone, and dialed Ashleigh at the C.I.A. on her secure line.
“Hello, Joe,” she answered.
“I need another favor,” he said, scribbling notes again.
“Okay, I’ll do my best.”
“Check these two names, please,” —he spelled each one out— “J-A-M-E-S H-O-W-A-R-D and N-A-T-A-S-H-A W-A-I-N-W-R-I-G-H-T.”
She repeated them back to him as she clicked on a computer keyboard. “Hmmm, that’s odd.”
“What is it?” Joe asked.
“Natasha is registered in the official dossier, but she has no assignments listed.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well… I don’t know,” she replied, “but James is listed as released. He doesn’t work for the C.I.A. anymore.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Joe mumbled.
“What did you want with them?”
“They both work at Fort Jefferson here in the Keys.”
Ashleigh paused for a second. “That’s odd… neither has any kind of listing for that job.”
Joe scratched the stubble on top of his head. “Looks like I need to make a trip out there to get some answers.”
“I’ll do some cross-referencing here and see what I can find out.” Ashleigh clicked some more keys. “But Joe… please be careful. According to what I see here, they’re both agents, or at least prior agents.”
“Will do,” he said, and scribbled C.I.A. next to their names on his notepad. “Thanks a million.”
He clicked his phone shut and looked at what he had written. Hector is running drugs; he’s stopped at Fort Jefferson. James Howard (former C.I.A.) and Natasha Wainwright (C.I.A.) are stationed at Fort Jefferson without the agency’s knowledge.
He tapped his pencil on the page. Someone is coming down on Hector for some reason and that someone is stationed at Fort Jefferson to keep an eye on him. But why?
“Yo Boss,” Steve yelled across the marina, “you gotta come check this out.”
Joe folded the notepad and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. He climbed out of Hector’s boat and walked a few slips down to where Steve was sitting in the mysteriously un-raised vessel. It was a much nicer boat, with a high fishing tower and a well-appointed cabin for sleeping underneath.
As Joe approached, Steve said, “It belongs to Vince Pinzioni; he is the current owner of Captain Tony’s.”
“Yeah, I know who he is,” Joe said as he climbed down into the cabin, “but what would he be doing out in that storm?”
“I dunno, but check this out.” Steve held up a plastic evidence bag. Inside was what looked to be a medicine vial similar to those used to fill hypodermic needles, three red feathered darts, and an air gun.
“What’s in the bottle?” Joe asked, taking the bag from Steve.
“No label.”
Joe rubbed his chin and looked up at his partner, “did you check the G.P.S.?”
Steve shook his head.
“Why not? Seems like standard operating procedure around this island these days.”
Steve shrugged as they made their way back to the upper deck. Joe clicked on the unit and, as he had done hundreds of times this week, he scrolled through the most recently logged destinations.
He clicked on the last one listed.
“Fort Jefferson?” Steve asked.
“Yeah,” Joe said as he stood up, “they’ve been getting a lot of visitors lately.”
“Huh?”
“And after we get this stuff to the lab,” —Joe shook the evidence bag with the air gun and darts— “we’re gonna pay them a visit to find out why.”
31
Troika Huge
Bill Bane coasted the newly purchased thirty-seven-meter ocean-going support tug to a smooth stop under the Wyatt 1. He didn’t ask questions about where his boss, George Wyatt, had gotten the three million to buy it, nor did he ask questions about how Warren International Ltd. had acquired such a boat so quickly. Through normal procedures, it could take anywhere from twelve months to two years to make such an acquisition.
He simply admired the boat, and took the helm. Bill was only too happy to be back from Key West, where they’d dropped off the three survivors of a shipwreck at the hands of Hurricane Daniel; Megan Simons, and Ryan and Troy Bodean. They had been aboard the original tug, the Wy Knott, investigating some sort of shipwreck Troy had discovered, when their tracking beacon suddenly stopped. The amazingly detailed sonar signature that the Wyatt 1’s sophisticated machinery had produced when they lost the beacon suggested a lightning strike or an onboard explosion.
They learned after rescuing the nearly drowned crew of three survivors that someone had been shooting at them and had ignited and exploded an onboard fuel tank that was almost empty.
Bill and Wyatt discovered them floating on rescued debris
from Troy’s Spanish Galleon, the Señora De La Muerta, and the Wy Knott was now on the seabed of the gulf with her.
Bill clapped Wyatt’s shoulder as they started to climb the steps up to the oil rig’s platform. “She’s a nice boat, boss.”
“Thanks, Bill,” Wyatt said, and stopped and looked back at the tug, “and fast as shit, too.”
Bill held out his meaty hand palm up, and said, “Watcha gone call this one?”
“The way things are going around here,” he said, smiling crookedly, “I may call her the Titanic II.”
“Naw,” —Bill shook his head— “I was thinkin’ something more like… the Wyatt Load.”
Wyatt chuckled. “Wyatt Load it is, my friend.”
Bill watched as his boss and friend stared back at the massive boat. He seemed quiet and even melancholy as they sailed back to the oil rig. It was the resignation of a man ready to throw in the towel.
“We pulled three people from the water today, boss,” Bill said quietly, “That’s gotta count for somethin’, don’t it?”
Wyatt turned toward him and nodded.
“Karma’s a strange thing,” Bill said, and held out a hand, “and today, we bought ourselves some good. The sun is shining, and soon it’s gonna shine on us, boss.”
“I sure hope so, Bill.”
They climbed the rest of the stairs in silence, the only sound the clanging of their footsteps on the steel stairs and the water slapping against the pylons far below.
When they finally opened the submarine style door and entered Gene’s control room, the hefty man was hunched over a sheaf of printouts with a magnifying glass. He didn’t look up.
“We’re back, Gene.”
He still didn’t look up.
“Gene, buddy… what’s up?” Bill asked a little louder.
Still no reply, as the man continued to study the papers, tracing a finger along them and muttering to himself.
Wyatt walked over and rapped his fist on the table in door-knocking urgency.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 42