Deep Blue

by Randy Wayne White

  “I warned Figgy about that.”

  “He didn’t hit him hard.”

  “That little bastard.” Ford started to get up.

  “Don’t get mad. It was more of a soft whack on the butt. Not that I approve.” The woman started to explain she’d reprimanded the Cuban, but her Spanish was poor. Then she suddenly went silent and her face paled.

  Ford followed her gaze to the galley and the windows over the sink. “What’s wrong?”

  “I . . . I thought I saw someone . . . something.” After a moment, still staring, she added, “Probably a bird or . . . just a reflection.”

  Ford gauged the change in her voice, her sudden paleness and a slackening of facial muscularity. All signaled fear. He switched off the lamp next to the reading chair and got up. “I think I’ll get that beer. Want anything?”

  “Is there someone else in the house?”

  “Just us. What did you see?”

  “Nothing—probably just a weird reflection. Really. It was there and gone,” she said, but her voice was tight.

  No doubt now. Ava was afraid.

  He went into the galley, switched off the wall light, and stood at the windows, which were dark but for moonlight and the marina’s glow beyond the mangroves. After a quiet minute, he turned. “Whatever you saw, the way this house is built—it’s just a wooden platform on stilts—we would have felt the vibration if someone was walking around out there.”

  He remembered something else. “And the dog would have made a weird grunting sound—almost a growl. Turn on the light and see for yourself. I’ll bet he’s still asleep.”

  Ava remained seated, a huddled silhouette, so he found the wall switch and saw that she wasn’t crying, exactly, but upset. “My god,” she said. “What’s wrong with me?” She sniffed as if it were nothing. “Just give me a minute.”

  He placed a hand on her shoulder. “What did you see?”

  She managed to reply, “You wouldn’t understand,” then withdrew into a troubled silence.

  Ford waited, never sure what to do in these situations, while he looked from window to window. Unlikely that a woman who had triumphed over the rigors of vet school was also a spooky neurotic prone to hallucinations.

  He believed that until she finally said, “It’s happened before. Just now in the window, I saw the man who nearly killed me a long time ago.”

  “Killed you?”

  “Close enough—like a flashback. That’s the way it’s described. I’ve been off the meds so long, I didn’t think it would ever happen again. Doc”—she patted his hand—“can we keep this between ourselves?”

  “How many years ago?”

  “Him? Fifteen, almost sixteen. Did you hear me? I want to be able to come back to this place without dragging my past with me. Understand?”

  Tomlinson’s better equipped to handle this—that’s what he was thinking, but said, “It will never leave the room. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Weird it would happen tonight,” Ava said. She gave another optimistic sniff. “His face was so different this time. All bandaged up like he’d been in an accident—probably wishful thinking on my part, huh?” Mild laughter.

  Ford’s focus sharpened. “His face was bandaged. Are you saying he did or didn’t resemble the man who—”

  “No, that guy who attacked me was huge, an animal. The last time a flashback hit me like this was years ago. But it was always him, not some face wrapped like a mummy. That’s an improvement, at least.”

  Ford looked at the retriever who, aside from an occasional tail thump, was asleep, then looked to the screen door, the lab and an empty computer desk beyond.

  “I don’t think you’re imagining things,” he said.

  “But you said—”

  He got up. “Don’t worry, you’re safe. And there’s nothing wrong with your mind.”

  Ava’s expression read What in the world are you talking about?

  “I should have thought of this when you came in. Would you mind turning off your cell phone? And what about a laptop or any other electronics in your purse?”

  She had an iPad and was switching that off, too, as he slid past the bedroom curtain to a window that confirmed he was right. Hurrying toward the gate, closer to the mangroves than the house, was a man with gauze or a hood for a head and something in his hand—a knife, maybe.

  At least, it appeared to be a knife.

  The moon wasn’t bright and the man was gone by the time Ford switched on the dock lights. Either way, the situation required caution. Hidden atop the wardrobe was a twenty-round magazine. It snapped cleanly into the Sig P226 kept beneath the mattress.

  “Stay,” Ford said to the dog, not Ava, and went out the door after what might be one of Julian’s tricks, or the terrorist David Cashmere.

  Máximo, as he was known to ISIS operatives.

  Because on the phone his pal had said, “Get your butt over here,” Tomlinson bid adieu to the ladies on Tiger Lilly and jogged to the lab, where he found Ford searching the mangroves with a flashlight.

  “Ava’s in the house,” he said. “Stay with her or take her to your boat, or something.”

  “What’s going on, man?”

  “Oh—and turn off your cell phone.” Ford dropped down from the boardwalk, poked around in the trees looking for something, then came out, saying, “I saw a guy out here. She did, too, but the house didn’t vibrate like it does when someone’s on the deck, and the dog didn’t growl. No footprints either, even in this muck. What’s that tell you?”

  Tomlinson felt for the joint behind his ear, asking, “Is that a gun in your back pocket?”

  “What we saw could have been a projected image,” Ford explained. “A hologram, maybe, but flatter, like an old movie on a screen. I find that hard to believe, so stay here for a sec and watch to see if you see any anything flying around.”

  “Stay with Pete, you mean. Ava told me how you came up with the name, and I totally approve.”

  The biologist said, “I won’t be long,” and took off through the mangroves toward the marina. A few minutes later, he returned via the parking lot.

  “No footprints, nothing,” he said, “but I still think it was a man. Either way, they’re trying to spook me into leading them to the drones. It’s a gambit: scare a person, he’ll go directly to whatever it is that needs protecting. What I think is, we should load my boat and dive the Blue Hole tonight. Or”—he thought about it for a moment—“maybe tomorrow night. Leave a couple hours after sunset. It depends. There’s someone I need to talk to.”

  No one could yank the blinders off a mellow Yuletide buzz like his pal the biologist, but this was a genuinely crazed proposal. “Check me if I’m wrong,” Tomlinson replied, “but if it’s dark—and it is dark—how will we know the hole is blue, or even if it’s a hole, until the sun’s up”—he eyed his very cool Bathys Hawaii watch—“which is exactly in eight to ten hours.”

  The instant those words were out of his mouth, he regretted it because he knew what was coming.

  “How stoned are you?” Ford asked.

  Tomlinson hated that question.

  “On the Budweiser scale? I’d say about a four. That’s how many Clydesdales it would take to drag my ass out there to a hundred feet of water, where we can’t see diddly-squat unless that shark waits to shit me out after breakfast. Hermano, tell me you’re not serious.”

  Asking Marion Ford if he was serious was comparable to asking a bear if it enjoyed the woods. There was not an ounce of levity when the man responded, “I need to have a word with Vargas. You’re going to look after Ava, right?”

  “Love to,” Tomlinson said, but in an airy way that warned his pal he was pissed and about to get serious. “There’re a couple things I’d like to clear up first. No, I’ll summarize: drop the cloak-and-dagger bullshit and tell me what’s going
on. Usually, you avoid that Brazilian like the plague. Now you want to consult with him. And your chasing around after goddamn holograms?”

  Ford stared for a moment. “It’s more than just Vargas. What’s your problem?”

  It was rare for the biologist to draw upon his limited sensory powers, but when he did, he was often dead-on. “I stopped at the farm an hour ago,” Tomlinson said. “Now I know why you asked for the address. Would you mind explaining why you drained the cistern?”

  “What?”

  His pal was genuinely surprised, which surprised Tomlinson. “Yeah . . . all the water’s gone. I don’t know how many hundreds of gallons, but it would’ve taken a hell of a big pump. On the bottom, mud and limbs, some raccoon bones. They left that crap and piped the water toward my garden, which flooded my chili peppers and didn’t do my basil any good either.”

  “We need to talk,” Ford said and started to add something but was interrupted by a clattering noise coming from his house. Ava was outside on the upper deck, watching them. “That’s my printer,” he said. “Shit.” But soon refocused. “You’re right. I owe you an explanation, plus I need your help. But, for now, keep an eye on Ava, okay?”

  Tomlinson felt better after that; a little pissy, true, but maintained his warrior attitude regarding parties and his duty to women.

  He escorted Ava to the marina. On the way, he did some mild probing to see if she was in a drop-the-soap mood, and it was okay when she told him, “That was a onetime thing, sweetie. But we can still hang out.”

  They did after he’d smoked a jay, beautifully rolled, all sprinkled with crystals from his kef box. His Bic made the joint glitter like a tiara.

  Mostly, they kibitzed with JoAnn and Rhonda, aboard Tiger Lilly, and a few other gentle souls who were oblivious to the strange goings-on down the shoreline at Doc’s place. Lights popped off and on beneath the stilthouse; mangroves flared, at one point, with what appeared to be welding sparks. Or . . . was the biologist experimenting with some hellish new tactical device designed to foil the devil’s work?

  It wouldn’t be the first time.

  The doobie crystals were doing their magic. Tomlinson’s consciousness opened to every sinister detail and all of the irony implied. Gradually, a key truth was made known to him: in this quiet little marina, where nothing was out of the ordinary, there was no such thing as odd behavior.

  Evidence flowed over him, but only him. At one point, Mack strolled past carrying the little Cuban girl, Sabina, who was asleep, and remarked, “Sometimes, I miss the old days. There was more, I don’t know . . . excitement, don’t you think?”

  Excitement? Dear Geezus, clearly the portly old Kiwi didn’t notice the laser beam stabbing at the stars above Ford’s house. Too late to point and say, “Tell that to Darth Vader,” plus it was bad form to narc out a buddy.

  By then, the laser was back in its sheath, replaced by the rumble of twin giant outboards, then more mysterious lights from the biologist’s mad laboratory.

  No one noticed. Not one freakin’ word did they say.

  There were moments when Tomlinson had to hunker within his head and ask a poignant question: When, exactly, had his life spun out of control?

  No . . . control was an ancillary issue. The question was: when had his life been swept into the orbit of Dinkin’s Bay, a potent gravitational system that tolerated all but whiners and the mundane yet still cracked wise about his “hippie-dippie” spirituality?

  The hypocrisy irritated the hell out of him. Nothing, including three stints in an insane asylum with shock treatments for lunch, had prepared him for the unrealities of this island enclave.

  But . . . on the other hand, Dinkin’s Bay was a fun little place, and he could have done a lot worse.

  Ava leaned a shoulder against him. “What do you think of him?”

  The Brazilian approached from the direction of the mangroves, looking starched but carefree in appearance, like an ad for rayon slacks.

  “Are you asking as a woman or for my professional opinion?”

  The poor girl was still jittery from whatever had happened at the lab. “Both. I don’t know, he seems interesting, but men are usually better judges when it comes to men.”

  “Got a pheromone wallop, did you?” Tomlinson gave that some thought. “My initial reaction is to say Doc wouldn’t hang with a guy who’s a poisonous scalp hunter and asshole. After review, however, I’ll edit that down a bit. Vargas is a dangerous, egocentric prick. Stay away at all costs.”

  The woman asked, “Really?” as if more interested than before.

  Amazing.

  “I hate to say it, Ava, but you’d fit right in here.”

  “Really?” This was said with the same perky naïveté. “I think so, too.”

  As a Ph.D. and a Rienzi Zen master, he was obligated to give the woman’s delusions a quick once-over. “Tell me something. Folks here don’t strike you as . . . oh, say, as fucked-up and crazy as a gaggle of loons? No need to rush to judgment. Let your thoughts settle and percolate a bit.”

  Ava took that entirely wrong as well. “You’re hilarious,” she said, then beheld the docks, where the drunken minions included blue-collar rednecks, rich righties, and socialite pinkos, who voted the straight ticket but hedged on taxes. “You’re right,” she said finally. “I’ve never met nicer people anywhere.”

  Okeydokey.

  Clearly, the woman’s behavior required monitoring.

  Tomlinson stayed at her side until she finally tired, which was around eleven, then hopped on his bike and followed her rental car two miles to her condo and safely inside. When he returned, the good news was, the lights in Ford’s lab were off.

  Thank the Good Lord. It meant the biologist had suffered a tight sphincter lapse and changed his plans. They wouldn’t dive the Captiva Blue Hole until they could actually see the goddamn shark before it ate them.

  The best news was this: he could get some sleep.

  Nope. Not so fast. As he closed the parking lot gate, Ford appeared, with Pete trotting along at his side.

  “I want to show you something,” the biologist said. Then had to ask that same tiresome damn question: “How stoned are you?”

  • • •

  On the dissecting table was NOAA’s big-picture nautical chart of Florida, Cuba, and the Caribbean. Ford had used a draftsman’s compass to create circles that radiated out from Sanibel Island.

  “If Julian sets foot on American soil, he’ll be arrested. Well . . . could be. Same with his father, who, presumably, is still in a hospital somewhere. Is your offer still good to see the address?”

  “It was some ritzy cosmetic surgery and rehab place in Mexico. Sure. I’ve got no loyalties to those two.”

  “If you’re right, it means they’re working with someone,” Ford said. “No way do I believe they’re launching drones from more than three hundred miles away. What do you think?”

  He had already explained he’d used the cistern to test the Brazilian, and also as a ploy for whoever might be eavesdropping from some satellite high in the sky.

  Clearly, someone was.

  “I think twenty miles is a stretch,” Tomlinson replied. “More like ten. Depends on the technology and the operator.”

  “Risk sneaking his personal drones into Florida?” Ford could accept that but didn’t like it. “He could bribe someone in the Bahamas or Cuba to let him do anything. Even Julian doesn’t want to screw with U.S. Customs agents.”

  He touched a finger below Cuba, where the chart ended. “For someone on the run, the easiest countries to buy passports and a new identity are the island nations way down in the Caribbean. Dominica or Saint Kitts. Antigua, you can buy what they call a Golden Passport for a quarter million. Antigua’s closer, but still a thousand miles.”

  “You’re hung up on the land-based thing,” Tomlinson said. “Think about
it—if you were a billionaire in trouble with the law, you’re not going to let yourself be cornered on some third-world island where the cops can be bribed.”

  “He’s operating from a boat?” Ford had considered that, but hadn’t factored in the money’s no object part. “I see what you’re saying. Not just any boat—an oceangoing, transatlantic type equipped with all his electronic toys. Julian could be somewhere in the Gulf right now—”

  “Think even bigger,” Tomlinson said, “and richer.” He hunkered over the chart and decided he needed a beer but came back with a Diet Coke instead. This signaled he was serious, so Ford placed a legal pad on the table, grabbed a folder of documents fresh from the printer, and left his friend alone to work it through.

  On the legal pad were four circles. Each contained a name: Julian, Winslow, KAT, Cashmere. Those circles were joined by lines that branched to a dozen smaller circles, some of which contained question marks, others that bore names such as Freeport, Bahamas; Havana; and Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Beneath several were dates and sometimes key words such as Double agent . . . Psychotic . . . Chinese funding?

  After a glance, Tomlinson said to Ford, who was going out the door, “Jesus Christ, I’m glad you didn’t spring this on me out of the blue. How many hours before the Chicoms drop a nuke on Dinkin’s Bay?”

  The biologist laughed, but not much. “It gets worse,” he said and gestured with the folder. “I’ll show you when I get back.”

  The screen door banged closed. Tomlinson sat in the silence of aquarium aerators while the tide tugged at pilings beneath the floor. He rolled his shoulders, then concentrated on his breathing. All part of a sensory warm-up ceremony. He was, after all, a pro at this sort of thing.

  It was true.

  Years ago, he’d dodged military service by qualifying for a bureaucratic clusterfest that attempted to harness the sensory powers of mankind. Remote viewing, the suits in uniforms called it, because terms such as ESP, astral projection, and psychometry were just too damn freaky for suits to grasp—even though the Russians had proven such powers exist.

  Star Gate, the program was called. Each morning, at zero eight hundred, they had met in a dun-colored building that matched the dreary Maryland sky.