by Matt Lincoln
“Ah hell,” I groaned.
“What?” Holm asked from behind. He stooped into the dim interior and holstered his gun. “Well, damn.”
The cabin had been stripped of everything but the head to make room for an impressive number of cocaine bales and fuel cans for the trip. Gomez was slumped over on a simple bench in a small space next to the head. He’d sliced a hole into the top of the closest bale and apparently inhaled as much as he could before passing out. The left side of his face sagged, and his lips were purple. He had a pulse, but barely.
“He won’t make it to shore,” Holm grumbled. “This was intentional. I guess he didn’t want to face us.”
“So much for getting information out of him.” I had powder on my fingers from checking Gomez’s pulse, so I wiped them on his pant leg. “Even if he survives, he probably won’t be any use.” I stared at him a moment longer. “Still, there are worse ways to go. It’s gotta be better than eating a bullet.”
There was a medic on the other LRI. He saw to Gomez and the other two until the cutter caught up with us. The helo who had spotted the runners for us landed on the cutter to pick Gomez up before heading back to shore. Holm and I squeezed in with the medics.
“Are you sure you don’t want to ride with us?” the cutter’s first mate asked. “You’ll have some elbow room.”
I laughed from the helo’s door. “I’d love a few hours on deck, but we have to get back to our office and file reports.”
“Better thee than me,” the first mate said.
She shut the door and backed away as the helo took off. Thanks to the location of the takedown, we were close enough to Miami to head in that direction. The medics did what they could for Gomez while Holm and I watched. There was something brewing in the vacuum left by Cobra Jon’s absence, but without insiders, we had little direction.
As we flew into cell tower range, my phone vibrated several times. I had eleven texts and two voicemails from Mike Birch, a good friend to most of my team at MBLIS, that began shortly after we left to sea that morning. The first three set the tone.
Ethan, give me a call. It’s important.
Call me ASAP.
I need you to call.
The helicopter was too loud for me to hear voicemails, but I had a feeling they weren’t any less urgent. I texted him back.
What’s wrong?
Not two minutes later, I had a non-answer.
I’ll meet you at your office. ETA?
A chill settled in my gut. This wasn’t like our bar-owning, former military badass friend. I showed Holm the messages, and the corners of his eyes creased in worry. I texted back a best-guess as to time and then messaged our boss. Diane Ramsey’s response was as dumbfounded as we felt.
What the hell has he gotten into? she responded.
That’s what I wanted to know, too.
The Coast Guard helo took us to the top of Miami-Dade General Hospital. Gomez was still alive, but he was far from able to help. That suited me fine. I didn’t want to deal with him when there was something serious happening with Mike. One of our lab people, Bonnie, picked us up at the hospital’s main entrance.
“Diane said I’m to get you back to MBLIS first thing,” Bonnie said as we got into her car. “Did something big happen?”
“I don’t know.” I frowned as she pulled out of the parking lot. “I just know we have to get to the office, pronto.”
On the way there, I got another text from Diane.
Meet in my office. MB is here.
Minutes later, we walked off the elevator to our floor and straight to her office. Our usual routine was to clean up after a run like we had that morning, but that could wait. We went in and found Mike pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Holm closed the door behind us.
“Ethan, Robbie, I need your help.” Mike wasn’t one to waste time getting to his point.
“What’s going on?” I offered him a chair, but he waved it off. “You’re worrying me.”
“I’m worrying me,” Mike answered. He looked me hard in the eye. “I’m here to report a murder.”
“What?” Diane gaped at him. “Why didn’t you call the police?”
Mike shook his head. “It’s at sea. I found him in a wreck just west of Andros Island.”
I frowned. “That’s Bahaman jurisdiction. Why come to us?”
Mike gave each of us a measured look and resumed his pacing.
“I trust you, and I trust that you’ll do right by Howie,” he told us. “He was an old friend who got involved with some nasty people in Cuba.”
“Shit.” I dropped into a chair. “Cuba? That’s a hell of a thing.” I cocked an eyebrow. “And how did you find this death scene?”
“I did some digging in Havana.” He waved off the answer as if it wasn’t problematic. “Someone told me where to look, and I found him.”
“Who’s Howie?” Diane asked.
Mike stopped pacing. He closed his eyes and tilted his chin upwards.
“Howie Talmage,” he said. “We served together for years. Panama, the Gulf War, Bosnia. We also worked some Black Ops that you’ll never hear about.”
Considering what I knew about his past, I believed it.
“Why was he in Cuba?” Holm asked.
Mike finally took the chair I’d offered. “Nothing good. After he left service, he… Howie fell in with some bad crowds. Normal life wasn’t something he could handle after the things we saw and did. When someone offered to hire him for his skills, he bit.”
That was a story we heard more than I cared to think about. Combat and secret missions left memories that some people couldn’t deal with. When faced with ways to avoid dealing with the pain, it was a natural thing for more than a few people to jump all in on questionable jobs.
“What got him killed?” I asked in a soft tone. Mike clearly saw this guy as a brother.
“I don’t know.” Mike took a deep breath and let it out in a slow exhale. “He told me a while back that he had left the life and was in a small town with an apartment. Now, I don’t know if he was lying or if he got pulled back in. All I do know is that he did a lot of different jobs over the years. This one was out of Cuba.”
That certainly put the murder in our wheelhouse, but we’d need evidence to back that up.
“I hate to ask, but did you find your friend’s remains?” Diane asked from her desk, where she was taking notes. “We need something solid to go on.”
Mike nodded. He handed Diane a Micro SD card. “I got photos. That tattoo was unique to Howie. It’s him.”
Diane pulled up the photos on her laptop. The vessel looked to be a crab or shrimp boat, which meant it could’ve been carrying anything. We’d seen an influx of shrimp boats carrying all sorts of illegal cargo. The decline in shrimp fishing had led to a glut of the boats on the market.
When Diane got to the photo with Mike’s friend, there was no mistaking the tattoo on the bloated arm. Going by that photo, my best guess was that the boat couldn’t have gone down more than a week or two earlier. The wheelhouse looked to have prevented the larger scavengers from getting to the body. That was a good thing for our medical examiner, Ethel Dumas.
“How do you know this is murder?” I asked.
“Look at the bottom of the boat.” Mike took the laptop and scrolled through the images until he found the one he wanted. “Something blasted through the hole. They sank her.”
The hull was shattered at the keel and rent up the side so that the vessel was nearly shorn in half. It almost looked like a torpedo hit it, only a torpedo would have blown the entire thing to oblivion. The debris field spread outward from the boat’s husk.
“Something exploded inside the boat.” I moved to let Holm get a look. “It could’ve been planted with their cargo before they set out.”
“It was out of range of being triggered by remote unless there was another boat in the area with a radio control,” Mike suggested. “If it wasn’t that or a timer, someone
on board had to set it.”
“We can’t rule out catastrophic engine failure,” Diane pointed out. “Right now, all we can do is speculate.” She stood and brushed non-existent dust from her slacks. “Given that it’s suspicious, it involves an American citizen, and it’s outside of US waters, I’m giving a go to this investigation.”
I nodded and checked my phone. “We have two cases, but they’re slow burners. The Gomez thing can wait until he wakes up.”
“If he does.” Holm scoffed and shook his head. “He seems to think getting caught is worse than death. I want him to wake up and talk.”
“Time for that later.” I got to my feet and put a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “We’ll find who did this.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed with a rough swallow. Mike was one of the toughest guys I’d ever known, and I knew some tough dudes. We didn’t often talk about what had become such a legendary legacy that he changed his name after retirement. I had a feeling I was going to learn a hell of a lot more about our friend’s past. I hoped he was ready.
CHAPTER 3
“The thing with Cuba is that it’s going to be tricky to get in and out without raising more than a few eyebrows,” Diane reminded us as we cut through the waves on a MBLIS dive boat. She didn’t usually go on these missions, but due to the complexity of the situation, she was with us. “There’ll have to be something about the wreckage that provides a direct link to the island. Registration, papers, something.”
“I couldn’t see into the wheelhouse past Howie to tell, but there should be someone else in there or in the cabin,” Mike said. “Probably a Cuban national.”
“If they weren’t swept out,” Holm said with a frown. “I hope we get something that connects.”
At that point, Andros was a thin line ahead and to the left. Williams Island and Gold Cay weren’t quite visible yet, but they were ahead on GPS. We started getting into our dive gear. Mike insisted on going in with us, but I had reservations.
“You’re professional as hell, man, but this is personal for you.” I pulled on my flippers as Holm and a few others from our team also prepared.
“I’m going in,” Mike said.
From the grim set of his face, I saw that he was not going to be denied. I glanced at Diane, and she shrugged. Mike was a class unto himself, as he had the highest clearance a semi-retired man could possibly have, which always made me wonder how retired he was in the eyes of the government. He seemed to have string pulls in a lot of places.
Besides Mike, Holm, and me, we had a small team of forensics divers. Of our usual lab techs, Clyde was afraid of deep water, and Bonnie was a novice diver who wasn’t ready for this level of work. She was aboard the boat, though, ready to process any samples that we’d bring up.
With a nod to the others, I stepped off the boat and into the warm caress of the Caribbean water. Sunlight sparkled in ethereal patterns on the sea floor below. Even though I saw a lot of bad shit over the years, it always felt surreal that such beauty could hide scenes like the wreck that awaited us.
Mike’s photos had failed to convey the radius of the debris field that lay before us. I dropped to the sandy bottom and took a few photos with the camera I’d brought. A small object that stuck out of the sand next to a section of the boat’s hull caught my eye. As the others moved ahead to the boat, I went down and dusted it off. It was a spark plug, and not the kind used in a marine vessel.
A light flashed close to the wreckage. I looked up to find a diver waving me over. She hovered over the gaping hole and gestured for me to get a look.
I swam over and handed her the spark plug, and then she pointed into the black maw of the shrimper’s interior. It looked like the blast had come out of the hold. I shined my light into the space and then cut a sharp look to the diver. She made a gesture that seemed to say, “Hell if I know.” I looked back in.
A car chassis, now twisted and scored, lay at what was now the bottom of the boat. Underneath the chassis was a warped car hood and other panels. A familiar swooping fender stuck out from under what used to be cardboard boxes. These were the remains of a late 1950s Chevrolet. It suddenly made sense. Mike’s buddy was involved in smuggling cars from Cuba.
I pulled back from my view into the hold and looked around for Mike. Lights and activity up by the wheelhouse told me where to look. Sure enough, I found the man watching over the scene. The techs swam around to get photos from all angles and hadn’t yet gone into the wheelhouse. Mike, however, was still except for the slow kicking that kept him in place. I approached from his side, where he could see me. He wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to surprise from behind.
Mike turned to me. His eyes were red and tear-rimmed. Damn, this Howie really had been like a brother to Mike. Like Holm was for me. Buddies through battle and life. I gestured for Mike to return to the surface. He shook his head, but this time, I wasn’t taking “no” for an answer. I took him by the arm and started kicking upward. He didn’t resist.
When we broke the surface, Mike tore his mask off and spat the respirator out to get a few lungfuls of fresh air. I heard him mutter a string of curses before he pulled himself together.
“You’re not supposed to see me like this,” he grumbled as we swam toward the MBLIS boat.
“I’ve lost friends,” I reminded him. “And you know how it’d be if Robbie hadn’t survived that gutting a few months back.”
“Dammit, Ethan, Howie was one of the good guys.” Mike’s face darkened. “He was getting his life together. I’m telling you, I’m gonna find who pulled him into this and got him killed, and I will destroy them.”
“We’ll find these people,” I told him as we reached the boat. “You’re family, and nobody messes with family.”
Mike grabbed my shoulder and squeezed, and then he climbed aboard. When he was out of earshot, Diane crouched by the dive platform.
“That bad?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen Mike like this.”
Diane gave me a long look. “You’ve only known him for a year.” She glanced over her shoulder, but Mike wasn’t close enough to hear. “Remember that, Ethan. You know who he is, and you know that legends in our world have more skeletons than some graveyards.”
She got to her feet, and I pushed back from the boat.
“I’ll keep that in mind, boss.” I pulled my mask back over my face but stopped before putting in the respirator. “He’s a hell of a guy, but I’ll keep an eye on things.”
Diane nodded, and I dove back down to the wreckage. When I got back to the site, I found the forensics people opening the wheelhouse. Bubbles swirled as a diver pulled at the side door next to the blackened arm we saw in the photos. The door didn’t budge, and I headed in to help.
While the explosion hadn’t destroyed the front of the wheelhouse, the back had been utterly destroyed. The door was jammed along the edge nearest the back. A few hard tugs got it loose, and the other diver and I cranked it open. I shined my light down into the dim pilot area and found there was enough room to maneuver. With a nod from the forensics diver, I led the way in.
Mike’s friend floated to the left of the door with his legs wedged between a window and the instrument panel’s dash. Medium-length gray hair waved in my light as I passed through. Deeper in, to the starboard side, the back wall of the wheelhouse bulged in and cracked the wood paneling. The captain’s chair had been shoved forward.
A second body was pinned between the seat and the instrument panel. It was no wonder Mike hadn’t seen it on his initial dive, as Talmadge’s body floated directly over it. A radio mic hung across the man’s arm.
The victim had short black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. Skin-color was difficult to tell due to the water’s effect on the body and poor lighting, but given the story, I had to think this guy was Cubano. If so, we had the link we needed to get onto the island for our investigation. The car could’ve been enough, but the more evidence, the better.
After a qui
ck pass with my light, I left the wheelhouse to the forensics people. I found Holm in the hold, where he was helping to catalog vintage car parts, among other debris. He pointed to his watch and then the other divers. I flashed an “okay” sign at him. Everyone was getting near the end of the dive. The forensic divers would return later that day or the next with more equipment.
That was fine by me. After seeing the car and the two victims, I knew we had all we needed. We were going to Cuba.
By the next morning rolled around, however, my jets got some serious cooling. Our team met in the conference room for a case meeting, and we got hit by our first dose of reality.
“It’s going to be a few days before we get everything cleared for you to go to Cuba.” Diane’s announcement was a gut punch, and the others in the room seemed to feel it, as well. “You all know that relations between our countries are prickly.”
“‘Prickly’ is one way to put it,” Special Agent Lamarr Birn said. “I’m amazed they’re going for it.”
Diane cleared her throat. “Not everyone is going. The Cuban government is on board with Ethan, Robbie, and Tom. I just squeaked Birch in as a witness-slash-contact.”
Special Agent Sylvia crossed her arms, and her face darkened. Diane sent her an apologetic look.
“You know why they didn’t approve you,” Diane said in a soft voice.
Muñoz nodded. “My grandparents resisted the Revolution and fled to Miami.”
I felt for Muñoz. Her grandparents’ defection had impacted her life in ways most people wouldn’t guess, but that wasn’t my story to tell. It would’ve been nice, though, to see her get to meet extended family for the first time.
“Why isn’t Bonnie going?” Holm asked with a pointed look toward Rosa Bonci, known as ‘Bonnie’ among our staff. “She and Clyde work best together.”
Bonnie looked away, and Diane waved off Holm’s question.
“Those are the clearances we got,” Diane said. “Clyde, I mean Tom, is who got clearance. We have to play within their system, folks. If you want to find who killed Howie Talmadge, you’ll do just that.” She tapped at her laptop. “They’re going to assign you a liaison to ensure compliance. You know what that means.”