Deep Blue

by Randy Wayne White

  In the touristy village of Playa del Carmen, Vargas parked the motorcycle in an alley and left the key in the ignition. Only then did he remove the surgical gloves.

  The private airport was a few miles west. He took a cab and cleared Customs by slipping the agent two hundred-dollar bills he’d found in the sand. He’d already filed the FAA’s electronic EAPIS forms and a flight plan yesterday morning.

  “You are early, señor,” the agent said with a slight bow.

  The Brazilian was still ahead of schedule. It was five forty-five p.m., not dark, but soon would be.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “You are the only one here this late, and I would have been ready anyway. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Outside in the fading light, his plane had been washed, waxed, and was waiting on the tarmac. It was a six-seat Cessna Citation, with twin turbofan engines, that, on paper, was owned by a sham LLC in Lauderdale. Cruising speed, 550 mph; max range, 1,200 nautical miles. A fun little jet to fly on short hops, and it was only an hour to Naples, where he’d moored his yacht. There was an area of docks and restaurants there called Tin City. He would arrive in time for a fine dinner and, hopefully, find one of those attractive Naples beach condesas to help him celebrate his recent windfall.

  It was quite a haul for one day’s work, as his bank had confirmed by email. Julian had paid him $1.5 million for the location of the drones, and to orchestrate the murder of his father, Winslow Shepherd.

  Events hadn’t gone precisely as planned, but they never did. It wasn’t his fault the schedule had been moved up, or that a terrorist freak named Cashmere hadn’t appeared.

  Shooting the biologist, a last-minute bargain, had been billed to Shepherd. Julian, of course, had provided the money—another $500,000.

  Total: Two million U.S. dollars, transferred as euros. He had asked for four, but not bad.

  Vargas set his watch—a Breitling Aerospace—to Florida time, but he couldn’t leave yet. He strolled out on the tarmac. No one around. He noted a blue-and-white Maule not far from his Cessna, the little amphib moored with wheels down.

  Twenty minutes later, he was in the private lounge, filling out his preflight checklist, when the agent reappeared. “You asked to be notified, señor, if a taxi arrived. The car is waiting out front.”

  “How many passengers?”

  “The windows are tinted and it’s nearly dark, señor. It is a very nice taxi.”

  The Brazilian nodded at his briefcase in a meaningful way.

  The agent said, “Your belongings are safe,” and tapped his breast pocket. The folded hundreds were stashed there, yet the bulge suggested a wad of bills had been recently added.

  Vargas followed the man through a hall to the office, where glass doors were also tinted, the gated calle beyond. Outside was a yellow taxi with black windows. A lighted Virgin Mary statuette provided a hood ornament. A decal reading Me Paseo Con Dios covered the upper windshield with translucent blue.

  Translation: I Ride With God.

  “Yes, the car, very nice,” Vargas said and went out the door as the driver cranked the window down and called out in Spanish, “Do you desire a taxi, patrón?”

  Patrón is a term of respect that means boss.

  “I’d like to speak with your passenger.” Vargas leaned to the window and looked in the backseat. There was no one there. “Where is he? How many people did you bring?”

  The driver shrugged the way men do when they have been bribed not to talk.

  “I’m an idiota,” the Brazilian muttered and ran past the agent, through the office and down the hall, where the lounge door had not been closed, as he’d feared. He slowed and looked in. As he did, the door burst inward. The impact stumbled him forward, then two big hands latched on from behind, spun him, and slammed him hard against the wall.

  Vargas was looking into the puzzled eyes of the biologist, who said, “I could have broken an ankle, dumbass.”

  Vargas didn’t fight back. “And I could have shot you. It’s not like you gave me any advance warning. Get your hands off me. Now.”

  Ford applied a slight pressure to his throat. “Are you sure you missed intentionally?”

  Vargas glared and waited.

  “I need my phone,” Ford said. “Where is it? Or tell me the combination to your briefcase.” He released his grip and stepped away. “You didn’t hear what Shepherd said about a package delivered to Dinkin’s Bay? Explosives; some sort of improvised bomb. That’s what pisses me off more than anything. We should have warned them half an hour ago. Instead—”

  “I already did,” Vargas interrupted while straightening his collar.

  “You spoke to Mack?”

  “No one answered at the marina, so I called Sanibel police. Doc”—they stood nose to nose—“don’t ever touch me again.”

  Ford allowed the man some room. “How long ago?”

  “Just before your surprise appearance at the beach house. I’d been talking with Winslow. Do you understand the risk I was taking? I used a throwaway phone to call Sanibel, but, even so . . .” He looked around for his briefcase. “What did you do with it?”

  The case was beside a vinyl chair, an ashtray nearby, snacks and mini-bottles of liquor on the bar behind. Vargas inspected the leather for scratches, opened it, tossed Ford’s cell on the chair, and locked it again, his manner aloof.

  “What did Sanibel police say?”

  “What they always say. They’ll look into it.”

  Ford was tempted to slam him into another wall but said, “Come on, I’m sorry I roughed you up, but it’s been a tough day.”

  “Thanks to me, a profitable day as well,” Vargas countered. “Are you sure something else isn’t bothering you?”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll take a wild guess. Hannah, maybe?”

  “Only if you did something really stupid,” Ford replied.

  “Then I’m right.”

  “You’d better hope you’re wrong. Julian got ahold of a photo, a voyeur shot of her in the shower. I happen to know Hannah was aboard your boat one night while I was away. I swear to god, if you—”

  Vargas, unconcerned, said, “My computer system was never breached—remember?” He was scanning a weather report on his phone. “Ask Julian who the sick bastard was, but it wasn’t me. By the way”—he made eye contact—“the percentages have changed as of this instant. Instead of a sixty-forty split, it’s seventy-thirty, with my agent’s fee coming off your end. If you don’t like it, live with it. In this business, it’s not smart to accept money you haven’t earned.”

  The Brazilian checked his watch and hefted the briefcase, all packed and ready to go—until he saw Ford trying to use his phone. “I wouldn’t do that. The signal will ping the nearest tower. If someone checks, there are three good reasons back in Tulum you don’t want to be tied to Mexico. Maybe four. As I left, I noticed you had some car problems. Did you happen to run into a freak named Cashmere?”

  Ford motioned to the runway where the Cessna Citation sat, sleek and ready. “You don’t think that’s evidence enough?”

  “The flight plan I filed is perfectly legit. I’m here for two days of Christmas shopping. The Customs agent was kind enough to act as my surrogate buyer while I explored the local sights. No telling what he came back with, but I’m sure the gifts are tasteful. And legal. I didn’t sneak in under the radar. What about you . . . Doc?”

  Ford pocketed his phone for now. “Tell me how it went with Sanibel police.”

  The Brazilian went out the door onto the tarmac, then looked back. “Are you coming or not? I’ll give you a ride—that’s up to you—but I’m having dinner in Naples. I want time to clean up after we land.”

  Vargas didn’t say anything about Sanibel again until they were almost to the plane. “The woman I spoke to assumed I was the bomber—or a
crank—so I didn’t hear all she had to say before I splashed the phone.”

  “When you called the—”

  “Yes, the cops. I told her a package had been sent to the marina, general delivery, and I was certain it contained explosives. Enough to blow up a couple of buildings, but that was a guess— I didn’t say it was a guess, of course, or where I got the information. Winslow didn’t share many specifics, but he told me enough. He got on the subject by mentioning how lucky I was to have moved my boat because—”

  “What was in the package? If it was a simple mail bomb, it would have gone off the moment—”

  “I couldn’t ask, he’d have been suspicious,” Vargas said. “But he finally got around to it and said a music box of some type with a volume-sensitive detonator. A small package, I suppose, wrapped like a Christmas gift—it’s another guess I couldn’t admit. The woman cop seemed dubious, but I did hear a dispatcher in the background scramble a squad car or two. If there was a problem, I’m sure they’ve cleared the place by now.”

  Ford pictured the blasting cap with a mini-microphone attached—that damn ex-Chicagoan. He and Shepherd, both experienced bombers, had joined forces. “If the marina was still standing when the cops got there. Did she say anything else? Or don’t you give a damn?”

  Vargas remained aloof while he touched an electronic key. Lighting LEDs inside the Cessna flared on. The boarding door opened; steps descended with a hydraulic whine. “You’re going to use that phone anyway, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t take a chance Mack and the others don’t realize this isn’t just a bomb scare. Plus, my pilot pal’s not far from here and I have to let him know.”

  “The explosives are real,” the Brazilian said. “The music box was sent with a card signed Your Mysterious Santa or something similar. Cute, huh? Only Julian could have provided information that detailed. I didn’t mention Julian to the woman cop, of course. Julian Solo, the international criminal? She would have been convinced I’m nuts. But the card, yes. That’s what convinced me the explosives were real.”

  Ford suddenly felt optimistic. “If Tomlinson reads the card, he’ll know something’s wrong. It was the stupidest mistake they could have made. Julian, with all his high-tech bullshit, never figured it out—the Secret Santa thing. Tomlinson’s the one who’s been giving those hundred-dollar bills away. I’m sure of it. He’ll know it’s a setup.”

  Vargas, from inside the plane, looked down with an odd expression as the boarding steps retracted. “You think so, huh? Doc . . . Tomlinson didn’t give those hundred-dollar bills away. It was me,” he said, then pulled the hatch closed and sealed it.

  Ford was pondering, An international hit man who plays Secret Santa on his days off?

  Absurd.

  The truth would have to wait. He exchanged texts with Dan Futch, and was dialing Tomlinson for the third time when the Brazilian’s jet went airborne.

  Tomlinson’s karmic riddle: There are four passengers on an airplane. Only one is destined to die in a plane crash. So where are the three missing parachutes?

  He had created this modern Zen kōan to nudge his students toward enlightenment.

  His favorite answer: What is the sound of four asses puckering?

  A more thoughtful response was Karma can be a beauteous circle or a bitch with fangs, but Destiny is not carved in stone.

  In a perfect world, he might have been comforted by this concept when the explosion spewed him through the sub’s fuselage into the bowels of a late-afternoon sea.

  Instead, his last cognitive thought was Fuck me, Louie . . . this is gonna hurt.

  After that, the world turned weird and very, very blurry.

  Breathing seawater was better than breathing helium. Tomlinson became weightless as he tumbled toward the bottom . . . or tumbled somewhere. He wasn’t sufficiently conscious to decipher direction, or even open his eyes to the glare of celestial light.

  Light?

  The surface was up there somewhere! He began to claw his way toward it. For sustenance, he inhaled another watery breath.

  Light faded. Murk displaced all else even as helium buoyed him up into a golden field of wreckage that included a head of cabbage, Styrofoam, the listing tower of a periscope, and green, helpless bottles of Steinlager beer bobbing nearby. His drooping eyes struggled to assemble order from a tableau that was too damn strange to deal with.

  Vomiting, however, was familiar. The same with treading water. He had often done both while stoned or half asleep.

  Tomlinson felt sleepy now. He could have drifted off, no problem. That’s what he was doing, drifting into sleep, when an unseen force grabbed his hair from behind, yanked hard, and began to drag him across the surface. Painful . . . the sluggish lunging pace was nauseating, yet he didn’t have the strength to break free, so he lay back and vomited again.

  A voice hollered, “Hey . . . Hey! I need help. There’s a paddle over there. Swim to the paddle. There’s enough of your boat left to hold us both. Hurry. We have to get out of the water.”

  Tomlinson gagged and wedged an eyelid open. What he saw against the setting sun was a hallucination: Julian Solo, his shirt burned off, arms bloody, clung to the tip of the periscope not far away. The tower, which had been leaning, was gone and slowly pulling the periscope down with it.

  “Grab one of those beers,” Tomlinson croaked, “and breathe in some saltwater.”

  “Shut up . . . Shut up and look at me! There’s a paddle over there.” Julian pointed frantically. “Your boat’s still floating. Get the paddle and come get me. Please. My sub—my real sub—it’s on its way. You’ll love it, man. I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

  “Sure . . . Swim over and we’ll talk about it. You ever been to Maui?”

  Tomlinson’s voice was improving.

  “I can’t, you idiot. There’s a shark and I’m bleeding. Just a minute ago, I saw it over there.” More frantic pointing, which led Tomlinson’s eyes a few points south of the sun. He didn’t see a shark, but he did see a low-flying aircraft. It was close enough to reveal colors of orange and white, accompanied by a ceiling fan thrum.

  “That’s a Coast Guard chopper,” he called in reply. “Oh—I get it. You’re afraid they’re coming to arrest you.” Then he winced and said, “Shit, that hurts! Hey . . . let go of my hair.”

  A heavy tail smacked him in the face when he turned. It was like being hit with a bullwhip, but the blow levitated him into consciousness.

  It was the dog. The dog had towed him to the remains of Ford’s monster boat, which had overturned, but its unsinkable inflated tubes were still floating high.

  He flipped around, climbed onto one of the tubes, then tried to pull the dog up by the collar. “Damn it, Pete . . . cooperate.”

  The dog lunged away with a wild splash and swam toward Julian, who was wrapped around the periscope like a pole dancer at a strip joint. He was screaming, “It’s coming . . . It’s coming back!”

  After a moment to clear his head, Tomlinson called, “Pete doesn’t bite. Shallow up, man,” then checked on the chopper. It was cargo-sized, close enough that the propeller blast roiled the Gulf’s sunset colors with an escalating roar.

  Loud. It was difficult to hear Julian, who was pointing again, but not at the helicopter. “Do something. Watts, goddamn it . . . help me!”

  Tomlinson expected to see the missing crewman. Instead, a dorsal fin appeared from out of the sun, black and glistening against a blazing sky. The fin was cruising toward Julian, then angled abruptly toward the dog, which was okay. The massive wake and dorsal were familiar.

  “It’s not a shark,” Tomlinson hollered, “it’s a killer whale.” But just in case, he cupped his hands and added, “Pete . . . Hey, get your crazy butt back here.”

  The animal’s head pivoted in response, but he kept swimming. The dorsal fin, which had been zigzagging, increased speed o
n a straight line toward the dog.

  Tomlinson got to his feet, ignored the few barnacles on the hull, and triangulated the distance. The whale would intercept the dog before the dog got to Julian. Those three elements were separated by less than thirty yards.

  “It’s only a killer whale,” he shouted again.

  Julian suddenly went silent. The periscope had sunk from his grip, leaving him alone in the water. He looked blankly at Tomlinson for an instant and mouthed the words, Help me—or his plea was lost to the roar of the helicopter that passed low overhead.

  At the same instant, the dorsal fin sounded. A giant gray shadow lifted the dog from the water and spun him around. The dog responded by tilting his butt and diving after whatever had bumped him.

  “Pete. Pete, you dumbass!”

  There was nothing Tomlinson could do but watch from his elevated position as a giant shadow, pursued by the dog, made a graceful turn toward Julian.

  To the north, the chopper had also banked. A helmeted man appeared in the door, holding what might have been a rifle. Tomlinson looked up long enough to wave his arms in acknowledgment.

  When he turned back, Julian was gone. A second later, the dog surfaced. He spouted a geyser of water from his snout and began to swim a circular search pattern.

  Searching was pointless. Below, peering into the shaded depths, Tomlinson could see Julian rocketing downward, helpless against the languid strokes of a massive scimitar tail. In counter-sync, Julian’s porcelain face appeared, vanished, and reappeared; a descending beacon dwarfed by the gray tonnage of a predator that was not a whale.

  Hello, Dolly!

  The Coast Guard chopper zoomed in and hovered. The first thing Tomlinson said when he and the dog were aboard was “This is an emergency—I need to use a phone.”

  A phone call to the marina office was signaled by a clattering bell on the wall outside. Mack was headed there anyway on this tropical eve, with the moon already up in a dusk-bright sky. It was Friday, the nineteenth day of Christmas.

  He ignored Jeth and Fast Eddie, who were wrestling with a keg of beer. Same with Capt. Hannah, who was socializing with Ransom, Ted Cole, Alex, and some other fishing guides beneath holiday lights. When Marta, the pretty Cuban, called to him, “Where’s Sabina?” he only pointed to the office window, where he could see the girl sitting on the counter.