Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

by Christine Kling

  The closest port on the chart was Grand Bourg on Marie-Galante, now about fourteen miles distant, which was half the distance to the Surcouf dive location where Cole and Theo were headed. Given her current rate of speed and the need to feel her way into what looked like a very tricky night entrance, she figured she might make it by four or five in the morning. There was a good sized village there. She’d go ashore, find people, knock on doors, get herself out of the picture so Cole and Theo would have time to find what they were looking for by morning. She had a plan.

  Four hours later, with the sky starting to lighten in the east, Riley dropped her anchor inside the sea wall off the village of Grand Bourg. Her GPS had brought her through the narrow entrance into this quiet little harbor, and once her anchor was well set, she stood on deck and glanced around the waterfront. No sign of any new boats yet. She figured she had time to try Cole one last time before lowering her dinghy and heading in to the village. She ducked down the companionway and slid onto the chart table seat.

  She grabbed the single sideband radio mike and pushed the button to transmit. “Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is Bonefish.”

  She heard pops and crackles through the radio’s speaker, but nothing more. She twisted her fingers in the coiled microphone cord. There were many different frequencies to choose from and some worked better than others, depending on the location. They had chosen a frequency that was rarely used by sailors because they had wanted to be able to speak without fear of being overheard. Maybe there was a good reason nobody much used this frequency.

  She brought the microphone to her mouth, pressed the transmit button and tried them again. “Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is Bonefish.”

  In the distance, she heard the low rumble of a high performance engine running at idle. The noise grew louder.

  Riley jumped up from the navigation station and grabbed the knife from the scabbard that hung inside the companionway. Just as she reached the top step, she was thrown sideways when a large black racing boat came hard alongside, slamming into her hull with a loud crunch. She saw a man on the other boat, and he jumped, or was half-thrown, onto the foredeck of her boat. She struggled with her bulky foul weather gear to climb out of the cockpit when she heard a man shouting.

  “Goddammit, Pinky,” he said, “turn off the engines and tie her up. Can’t you do nothing right?”

  Standing on the foredeck of her boat wearing a one-piece full-body red racing suit was Spyder Brewster. He was pointing a gun at her midsection.

  “Hey bitch,” he shouted over the deep rumbling of the racing boat’s engines. “Wassup?”

  At the moment, the breeze had pinned the racing boat to the side of her boat. She knew they would soon swing apart. “Get off my boat!” She gestured with the knife toward the other boat.

  “You ain’t happy to see me? Drop that knife for your boy here. You and me, we gonna party.”

  The strangest looking man Riley had ever seen emerged from the powerboat’s cockpit in a matching red suit carrying a coil of black line. His hair looked like a cumulous cloud, and though he had a broad nose and African features, his face was white aside from freckles across his nose and a few patches of darker skin. He wobbled and held on to the windshield for support, and since he was upwind of her, she got a strong whiff of vomit as he steadied himself.

  “Dammit Pinky,” Spyder shouted. “Gimme that line. I told you to shut down the fuckin’ engines.”

  The odd man ignored Spyder, then knelt on the deck of the racing powerboat, and cinched the two boats together.

  Spyder waggled the gun in her direction. “Hey bitch, the knife. I said, drop it.”

  “I’m not dropping anything, you idiot.”

  The man jumped a step toward her and thrust the gun forward, holding it sideways like the gangsters in the movies and aiming it at the center of her forehead. “Don’t call me an idiot or I will fucking blow your head off,” he shouted.

  From where she was standing next to the cockpit dodger, she heard radio static, then a faint voice. “Bonefish, this is Shadow Chaser, do you read me?”

  Riley erupted with noise and Spyder staggered back a step. Waving the knife, she began shouting at both men to get the hell off her foredeck. She kept shouting even as Spyder grew red in the face. He screamed at her, “Drop the knife or I’ll shoot you, bitch!”

  At least they couldn’t hear the radio.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Aboard the Shadow Chaser

  March 31, 2008

  5:10 a.m.

  “We’ve been at this three hours now, Cap,” Theo said, his arms leaning on the bulwark at the stern of Shadow Chaser. The big trawler was operating on autopilot while the two men paced the deck. “We’ve covered more than a square mile with the magnetometer, and we haven’t even had any false readings. Maybe your man’s information wasn’t so good after all.”

  “This is the spot all right. I can feel it. It’s not like the guy had a hand-bearing compass when the sub sank under him. He was treading water and sighting positions off landmarks miles away on shore.”

  Theo looked up at the sky. Most of the stars had disappeared — only one bright planet remained visible. “Gonna be light, soon,” he said.

  “Yup,” Cole said. A thin band of gray had appeared on the eastern horizon. “I wish we’d hear something from Riley, though. I’m worried that the reason she’s not calling is because she can’t.”

  “That’s my captain – seeing trouble whether it’s there or not.”

  “This guy, this Diggory. Theo, he scares the shit out of me – you weren’t there in DC. This is real, Theo. Too real.”

  “Yeah, mon, I know. I saw the look on the man’s face when he took Riley at the Indian River. Man must have a heart of ice to lie to her like that.”

  “I never should have left her alone out there.”

  “Her choice, not yours, mon. Besides, you know how unreliable single sideband radio is when you’re this close. She could be calling but we can’t pick her up. With cloud cover like this, who knows what kind of skip we’re getting. Riley knows how to take care of herself. And we’ve got a submarine to locate.”

  Cole walked to the stern of the vessel and tested the tension on the tow cable that connected the sensor to the boat’s network of electronics. “Feels like the darn thing is fouled again,” he said. Cole began to haul in the cable hand over hand.

  They had great equipment, thanks to Theo. He had designed the proton sensor casing with sleek dolphin-like hydrodynamic fins, but the blasted thing still got fouled by this Sargasso weed. Cole had nicknamed the silver fish-shaped object “Flipper.”

  Floodlights lit the water behind the boat, and Flipper broke the surface skipping between two waves, its nose trailing a beard of yellow-green seaweed. Cole pulled it to the boat and shook off the debris. Then, he tossed the long silver magnetometer back into the water. “Okay, Flipper.” He waved both hands back over his shoulders then pointed out to sea mimicking the motions of a dolphin trainer. “Go get me a submarine, boy!”

  Theo fed out cable until the coil at his feet was gone. Then he walked over and picked up his tablet off the hatch cover that led down to the engine room. He tapped the screen a couple of times and the RPMs increased on Shadow Chaser’s engine.

  “We’re back in business,” he said.

  “The alarm’s set?”

  “You bet. We float over an old tuna fish can and this baby will chirp a little. But, if we pass over a hunk of iron the size of a submarine, this little magnet’s going to sing for papa.”

  Cole knew he should feel tired, but he was running on pure adrenaline. For more than half the night, they’d pounded their way through the heavy seas and thunderstorms off the east coast of Dominica, and he hadn’t slept. But at least he had been able to rest when Theo was on watch. Once they had arrived here at the coordinates that Henri had given them, they had set up their search grid, launched the towed proton magnetometer, and started the long slow tedious
business of searching the sea floor. The swells rocked and rolled Shadow Chaser even with the stabilizers. He thought of Riley out in those same seas in her much smaller boat, and once again he had to push down the fear that crawled up the back of his neck. He wished they’d hear from her.

  The best way to get his mind off his worries was to stay busy. Cole opened the deck box on the starboard side and lifted out a pair of scuba tanks, a buoyancy compensator, regulator, and mask and fins. He began prepping and testing his gear; he screwed the regulator onto the tanks, checked his gauges, and strapped the dual tanks to the BC.

  Theo crossed to another of the many large spools of thick black cable on the aft deck. He uncoiled enough to reach the center of the deck. Right after they arrived on site and started their search grid, he and Theo had used the big boat’s crane to hoist the Enigma out of the hold. The ROV rested in a cradle on its own pallet that they had strapped to the floor of the hold. Theo attached the cable ends to the little submersible and picked up his tablet again. He began a systems check.

  When both men were satisfied that their gear was ready, they leaned against the deck box, arms crossed, and watched the roiling water in their wake.

  Cole checked his watch. It read 6:40. The sun should be up, would be up if it weren’t for the huge thunderstorm rolling in from the east. The wind had gone light and shifted to westerly. The noise of the seas and wind subsided for a moment and he heard her.

  “Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is the Bonefish.”

  “Thank God,” Cole said and he started across the deck to the wheelhouse. He’d only traveled two steps when the alarm squealed.

  Theo whooped and Cole heard the engines idle down, then rumble in reverse as Theo tried to slow their forward motion.

  “You bring in Flipper,” Cole shouted. “I’ll drop the marker.”

  Cole ran to the starboard aft corner and lifted the coil of light line with a small anchor attached to one end and a white buoy on the other. “What’s our depth?” he yelled over the high pitched squeal from the magnetometer’s alarm.

  Theo was at the rail on the opposite side of the vessel, pulling in the cable for the Flipper, careful to keep it clear of the vessel’s propeller. “Fifty meters,” he said, his voice breathless from the effort of hauling in the cable as fast as he could.

  Cole stood up on the deck box and swung the grappling anchor back and heaved it out away from the big boat.

  Theo got the big silver cylinder over the bulwark, dried his hands on his pants, and lifted his laptop. Cole heard the engine shift into neutral as he fed the line out and the anchor sank toward the bottom. The line was one hundred meters long, but a tangle in it could put their marker under water. When he’d fed out all the line, he tossed the buoy into the water.

  “Hey Cap,” Theo shouted. “Go answer Riley and tell her the news. That was no soda can!”

  “Right!” Cole said. He ran to the wheelhouse and grabbed the mike for the SSB radio. Before he pushed the button on the side of the mike, he glanced up at the color sonar screen. He saw a deeply angled ledge and along the bottom of the screen he watched the number indicating their depth change with every flash — 62 meters, then 66 meters, 71 meters, 79 meters, 82 meters, and then the readings went blank as it moved past the 100 meter depth. Damn thing must be sitting on the edge of a cliff, Cole thought.

  “Bonefish, Bonefish, this is Shadow Chaser.” He bounced his right deck shoe on the wood floor boards. Come on, Riley. Wait until you hear this. Okay, okay, where was she? She was just calling them a few minutes ago. But oh, how things had changed in those few minutes. He couldn’t wait to give her the news. “Bonefish, Bonefish, this is Shadow Chaser,” he called again. I know you’re there, Riley. Answer me. He called a third time, but the only answer he got was silence.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Aboard the Bonefish

  March 31, 2008

  5:55 a.m.

  Riley could see Spyder didn’t really want to shoot. He wanted her to stop making noise. He had to know that the gun would wake up people in the village, including any Gendarmes, and he sure as hell wouldn’t want that. She felt confident she could handle the Brewster brothers alone — even if it was two against one.

  “I said drop the knife, bitch!” Spyder yelled.

  Riley hadn’t heard Cole’s voice on the radio for several long seconds. She hoped he had abandoned his attempt to reach her.

  “Okay, okay” she said. She rested one hand for balance on the dodger next to her and crouched. She set the knife down on the fiberglass deck, and then stood up again.

  “Now, turn around and git your ass into that cockpit. But remember, I’m right here with this gun pointed at your back. Don’t try nothing stupid.”

  Riley turned, her mind whirring. She would wait until they were below. It would muffle the noise, and she would have more options in that confined space she knew so well. She heard the two men talking in hushed voices behind her as she climbed down and sat on one of the seats.

  “Come on. I know you like to watch, Pinky.”

  She saw the black boot scrape across the teak-topped coaming as Spyder climbed into the cockpit. Then he sat and swung the gun toward her.

  “We ain’t got time for this, Spyder,” the chubby one said from outside the cockpit. He rocked from one foot to the other as he struggled with how to climb over the coaming and duck under the dodger and bimini.

  While he was dawdling, Riley took a closer look at the gun. It looked like a Ruger Mark II target pistol. Twenty-two caliber. One of her buddies used to bring one to the range at Quantico. She knew it well.

  “Fuck we ain’t.” Spyder slid down the seat opposite her to make room for his brother, and he smiled his brown, gap-tooth smile at her. “Git down here, bro. We gonna make this bitch tell us where the doc is. That’s all.”

  The chubby guy swung a leg into the cockpit, then hit his head on the stainless tubing as he tried to duck under the canvas. “Ow! Shit.” His other foot tripped on the winch, and he collapsed on the cockpit seat.

  Now she understood why Spyder had moved so far out of the way.

  The strange man acted as though nothing had happened. He sat up and ran his fingers through his white Afro. “I know you Spyder. That ain’t all you got in mind. Don’t screw this up.”

  Spyder laughed. “I’m gonna be screwing all right, bro.” He looked at her with eyes that shone and pulled down the zipper on the front of his jumpsuit revealing a café-au-lait-colored concave chest with a small scraggly patch of hair between his nipples. “We gonna have us a good time, eh bitch?”

  She let her eyes wander ever so slowly down the length of his body, then back up to his face. She held his gaze.

  He nodded, his eyes growing brighter. “You like what you see, don’t you? Pinky, get down there inside her boat. Keep an eye on her. I don’t trust her. You let me know if she tries to grab anything down there. She’s tricky.”

  The man called Pinky climbed down the steps into the main cabin and walked forward to the mast before he turned around.

  “Now it’s your turn,” Spyder said. He waved the gun toward the companionway. “I don’t want to shoot you before we had a chance to party, so you don’t try nothing, hear? I’m right here with this gun.”

  Even though it sickened her, Riley was prepared to use whatever tools were at her disposal to get rid of these two. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just take off this rain jacket,” she said. “It’s getting so hot.” She mirrored his action when she pulled down the zipper on her foul weather gear, then she pulled off the sleeves behind her back, thrusting her breasts toward him. She was braless under the damp teeshirt and Spyder wasn’t missing a minute of the show she was putting on for his benefit.

  “Hurry up,” he said, his voice growing hoarse. “Git down in the cabin.”

  She gave him time to watch her as she rose and stepped up into the companionway. Her khaki shorts weren’t all that short, but there was still plenty of leg showing. The m
ore she could arouse him, the less his brain would function. Because men always had a size advantage over her, she had learned to lull them into thinking her small stature meant she presented no threat.

  She bent over and peered down into the cabin, then looked back at Spyder over her shoulder. “You’re not going to hurt me are you?” she asked in a small voice.

  He sat up straighter and moved his torso toward her as he spoke. “I said git down there.”

  She hopped down to the top step, then held the edge of the hatch and swung down into the cabin.

  Pinky jumped back like he was afraid she was going to kick him in the nuts, and he almost tripped over the threshold of the doorway to her forward stateroom.

  She turned to face Spyder as he came down the steps. He had stripped out of the jumpsuit, and he was wearing threadbare jeans cut off at the knees.

  “I’ve been alone on this boat for a long time,” she said, her eyes wandering over his skinny bare chest. “I almost forgot what it was like to have men aboard.” She glanced over her shoulder at Pinky. He was standing directly behind her, watching.

  “Don’t pay him no mind,” Spyder said. “Pretend he ain’t there. It’s just you and me.”

  “And your gun,” she said.

  “What’s that line? You know, from that old movie?”

  She leaned back and looked down at the bulge in his jeans. “I can tell that’s not a gun in your pocket.” He smiled and she took a step toward him.

  “Hey, watch that,” Spyder said, lifting the gun and extending his arm. “Stay back.”

  She drew in her breath and froze. “It’s okay,” she said raising her hands in the air. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do,” she said, but she had closed the gap between them by one step.