“Yup,” Reg acknowledged, “heading out again to search some more at seven thirty.”
AJ continued, “Why don’t you see how things go tomorrow? Hopefully I’ll hear something from Jackson and we can decide then. Our lad is convinced he’ll disappear if he goes to the police; they’ll hand him over to the Russians on behalf of the Cubans and game over.”
“Alright,” Reg agreed, “we’ll play out tomorrow morning and see what shakes. But by the afternoon things better be firmed up and sorted or we gotta come clean with Whittaker.”
AJ clinked glasses with Reg and Thomas. “Sounds good, we’re going out tomorrow morning anyway. Promised we’d make up a day for some of the customers that missed out this week when we couldn’t run in the storms, so let’s regroup after that.”
Reg remembered something and dug in his pocket. “Here,” he showed the watch he’d found to Thomas, “Tell your sister to quit leaving stuff lying around in seaplanes at the bottom of the ocean.”
Thomas took the watch and flipped it over to see the inscription. “That’s hers alright.”
AJ looked as well. “Anything else down there that ties her to the plane?”
Reg shook his head. “Not that I saw and I had a pretty good rummage through it. Mind you it’s moved a bunch and stuff has been scattered so there’s no telling.” He took the watch back. “I’ll give this back to her at the house.”
Thomas added thoughtfully, “They talked about a small bag with some clothes and other stuff right? We’re all loaning them things to wear.”
Reg nodded. “I didn’t see anything like that but I’ll keep an eye out tomorrow – likely that’s all long gone in the storm. Probably out to sea by now.”
Chapter 39
The alarm on AJ’s phone slowly ramped up with a Metallica song. By the first chorus she was wide awake and fumbling for her mobile to calm the thrashing guitars. Saturday was usually a day for no alarms and sleeping in until eight o’clock, which was the latest her active mind would allow her to rest. But this Saturday she’d promised her clients she’d make up a day of diving lost with the week’s bad weather. Normally she wouldn’t mind, she loved what she did for a living, but on this day with all the chaos around Carlos and the Cuban oil fields on her mind she would have preferred to have the day free.
She rolled out of bed and took the handful of steps to the kitchen and turned the coffee maker on. Four years she’d been in this tiny one-bedroom apartment. After the whole U-1026 discovery and subsequent media attention she’d put herself in a financial position to buy a place, which she did. Her two-bedroom condo was now rented to a couple of guys that worked for Reg; AJ had never slept a night in it. Not that it wasn’t a nice place, in fact it was a gorgeous condo in a small complex on the inland side of West Bay Road at the back of Seven Mile Beach. With real estate prices being Monopoly money on the island it had cost a bundle but she’d rather have someone else make the mortgage payment for her and live simply herself in her comfortable little place. The apartment was actually a guest cottage in the garden of a palatial home overlooking Seven Mile Beach. The American couple that owned it flew down when they could spend time there but were more than happy for AJ to keep an eye on the place in their absence. She paid them a few dollars rent and took them diving; they had never raised the rent and begged her to stay when she bought her condo so it worked well for everyone.
She put on a tee shirt in case anyone was walking along the beach and pulled the curtains back on the sliding doors facing the ocean. The shirt was a men’s large with a Sea Sentry logo and hung down to her thighs. It had smelled like the person who gave it to her but she’d worn it so much in the past few weeks now it just smelled like her. At six o’clock in the morning the sun had yet to rise but a bright moon made glittery silver reflections on the calm water and the palms separating the beach from the garden cast long, faint shadows over the lawn to her window. Live simply, she thought, not hard when this is your view each morning, how could I wish for more? Yet she did wish for more.
AJ had been through a handful of serious relationships but they had all been carefully entered into and none devastating to leave. She felt she’d certainly been in love or at least in deep caring before but she was confident she hadn’t passed up her soulmate. For many years it had never bothered her she hadn’t found the right one and she enjoyed her existence on the island so much she felt her life was fulfilling and fulfilled. Until Jackson. She had never fallen for anyone so quickly before. Her nature, instilled by her mother, was slow and steady, make sure everything’s right, or more importantly make sure he’s worth it and worthy of you. This had steered her away from frivolous and brief encounters, which she was thankful for, and then she found herself in bed with Jackson after knowing him less than a week. There was something completely different with him. She felt more confident in herself around him, more willing to share, to open up. He was so sincere, he looked at life in such an uncomplicated way. If something was hurtful or harmful to a living thing or a natural place he wanted no part of it. He didn’t care about owning anything, although he wasn’t against having possessions, he just believed your objects shouldn’t own you. Having witnessed people fill their income with lifestyle only to become trapped by their debt, AJ found his clear and uncluttered perspective refreshing.
By being nothing but himself, Jackson had helped her see her life in a different way. He hadn’t changed her or tried to change her. Being with him had simply reorganised the pieces of her life and laid them out into a transparent understanding like a map before her. And right there, slap bang in the middle of the map was a gaping hole, a large void she always knew was there but refused to face. The person that completed her. The morning he left she was certain he was her soulmate. In the weeks that passed with no word, her old nemesis, self-doubt, burrowed back in and started working on her, breaking her down. Had she conjured all this up in her mind and he was just a guy, like so many others, who played games with the girls and notched up another score? AJ couldn’t imagine being so wrong about someone she felt so right about. The doubt chipped and scratched and clawed away day after day until two days ago on that brief call. And now, as she stared at the email he had sent her yesterday evening saying he was on his way, her heart glowed and her map felt complete.
Chapter 40
“Who wants to get wrecked this morning?” AJ called out to her eight customers organising their gear on the boat. The response was a loud cheer and waving of hands.
“The Kittiwake it is then,” she turned and yelled up to Thomas on the fly bridge. “You heard the good people, Thomas, let’s step on it and beat the crowd.”
AJ hopped off the boat to the pier and released the lines, giving the stern a shove away from the dock with her foot before stepping back on board. Thomas engaged reverse and the prop churned the pale blue water behind the Newton and eased away from the dock. Once it was in motion backwards, he dropped it back into neutral and spun the wheel and the thirty-six-foot boat lazily swung the bow around to face to ocean.
A voice shouting from West Bay dock direction attracted everyone’s attention and AJ looked up from stowing lines to see what the commotion was about. The Australian kid, Billy, that she knew worked for one of the other dive operations was standing next to a grey mid-size car yelling at the occupants.
“Come out of the car and tell me what you did with it!” Billy was barking in his thick Aussie accent.
Whoever the occupants were seemed reluctant to roll down a window, never mind get out of the car. Thomas had the boat turned around but was too interested in the scene in the car park next door to pull away.
Billy slammed his fist on the roof of the car. “Listen fucker, I saw you take off on it so either give it back or I’m calling the coppers!”
AJ couldn’t tell who was in the car with the morning sun glaring off the windshield but finally the passenger door opened and a large man stepped out dressed in slacks and a white shirt, hardly beach attire. Billy too
k a step back when he saw the size of the bloke he was now facing but kept at him like a terrier nipping the heels of a Rottweiler. “Why the hell did you steal my bike, mate?”
The man’s reply was too quiet to hear from the water but Billy opened the back door, hesitated a moment, then got in the car. The large man turned and looked directly at the group on AJ’s boat, all staring in his direction, before sliding back in the car himself and closing the door.
Thomas dropped the boat in drive and steadily motored away from the dock. AJ watched suspiciously as the car backed up and drove out of the car park, presumably for Billy to be reunited with his bicycle.
Anatoly turned to the kid who now looked a little terrified trapped in the car with these two strange men.
“I didn’t know it was your bike when I borrowed it, okay? We can sort this out, just calm down and we’ll take you to the bike.”
“Alright, but we gotta be quick about it, my boat’s waiting on me now,” Billy replied agitatedly, looking around out the window and wondering where they were going.
Anatoly turned back to the front and switched to Russian. “I’ve got no idea where I ditched the thing, all these mangroves lining the roads look the same to me.”
Mikhail kept driving. “What part of the ‘don’t draw attention’ order did you not understand?”
Anatoly stammered back. “The Bodden kid was taking off, I needed something quick and the bike was right there, I didn’t have a choice.”
Mikhail looked at him this time. “You always have choices. You made a bad one and now we have a distraction.”
Mikhail turned down a narrow road with no homes around and pulled over in a small clearing between some bushes.
“It’s here,” he said to Billy in English, “I’ll show you.”
All three got out although Anatoly had no idea what was about to happen, this certainly wasn’t where he had dumped the bicycle.
Mikhail met Billy around the back of the car and strode up intimidatingly close to him. “How much did your bicycle cost?”
“What?” Billy struggled to reply, realising his bike probably wasn’t here after all.
“Simple question, how much did you pay for your bike my associate borrowed?” Mikhail stared him down.
“Uhhh… couple of hundred CI from a mate who was leaving the island, and I gave him some fins too,” Billy managed.
“The fins, how much were they worth?” the Russian continued in his flat tone.
Billy was looking around, trying to figure out a place to run, getting more nervous by the second. “Fuck, I don’t know, twenty bucks?”
Mikhail reached into his back pocket and Billy cringed, convinced this weird eastern European guy was about to shoot him. Mikhail pulled three hundred Cayman Island dollars from the wallet he took from his back pocket and handed them to Billy.
“That covers your bicycle and some inconvenience.”
Billy relaxed and took the cash, happy he was not being shot and pleased with himself for lying about what he’d paid for the old bike.
“Do you plan on telling anyone about this?” Mikhail asked in the same tone.
Billy paused, nervous again. He had figured this was over and he was getting a ride back to the dock. “Uh, no, I guess not?”
He sensed the man move but it happened so fast he had no idea what was going on except he had a pain in his midriff and he couldn’t breathe at all. Billy’s knees buckled instantly and he dropped like a dead weight to the ground wheezing and gasping for air, the man leaning over him.
“Still guessing about telling people or are you sure now?”
Billy couldn’t make words but he shook his head and waved his hand, his other clutching his stomach where Mikhail had punched him with pinpoint accuracy right below his ribcage.
With that the two Russians got back in the car, leaving Billy rolling on the ground trying not to throw up.
Anatoly was nearly as surprised as Billy by the turn of events and while he was still trying to process things his boss turned to him and spoke slowly and clearly. “No more mistakes Mr. Karin.”
Chapter 41
As promised, they reached the wreck site ahead of the crowd and had their choice of mooring buoys. AJ directed Thomas to pull up to the mooring on Sand Chute, the reef buoy next to the wreck, and she tied them in. Gathering the group she gave them the briefing.
“We’re on the world famous former USS Kittiwake, a US Navy submarine rescue ship originally commissioned in 1945 at the end of the war. She had a long career in support of sub fleets and travelled many times between the eastern United States and Europe. One of her claims to fame was recovering the black box from the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in 1986 off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida. Decommissioned in 1994 she was purchased by the Caymanian government in 2008 and, finally, after a lot of work and delays, she was sunk here on January 5th, 2011.
“I think a couple of you have been on the wreck before but if it’s been a few years you’ll find it’s moved. Yup, a 251-foot wreck moved in tropical storm Nate, late in 2017. The storm was not a particularly bad one but because of the angle it hit the island the waves and surge here on the west side were worse than most hurricanes we’ve had. So the wreck broke the chains they had holding her upright, tipped over on the port side and slid down the sand to the huge coral head we’re currently moored to.
“It’s made the wreck even more interesting to dive as you travel through hallways and rooms tilted over but it also makes it very easy to get disorientated. Anyone prefer not to go inside the wreck?”
AJ looked around the crowd. One couple raised their hands. “Okay, no problem, we’ll run from bow to stern inside so you guys do the same along the outside on the port side and you’ll meet us when we come out on the stern deck. Just stay together in your buddy team and watch for the group. Alright, sand is at sixty feet and most of the time in the wreck we’ll be about forty to fifty so figure on a forty-five-minute dive. Let me know when you get to a thousand psi, stay in line behind me through the narrow stuff and remember gentle fin strokes so we don’t silt it up. We moored on the coral head as it’s nice to do our safety stop over the reef.” AJ glanced over at Thomas, who had the ladders down out the back ready to go. “If there are no questions let’s splash in and I’ll meet you at the bottom of the mooring… Oh, and bring a light if you have one, it’ll get dark in a few spots.”
As the divers dropped in the flat, calm water AJ began donning her gear and nodded for Thomas to come over, off to the side. She spoke quietly, “Was that the strangest thing on the dock, with Billy, the Aussie kid? Been bothering me riding out here.”
Thomas nodded his head. “Didn’t seem right, that guy was a big fella, looked like a businessman but what would he be doing stealing a man’s bicycle?”
AJ wriggled into her BCD. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but after seeing the Cubans’ boat and knowing the Russian bloke is on the island I feel like they could be watching us. They knew to go to your mum’s house so they must know who you are. The Russian met Reg. We just have to hope they don’t piece all that together and start looking at Reg’s house.”
Thomas handed AJ her fins, looking concerned. “Should I call and have them leave the house, just in case?”
The last of the customers stepped off the swim step and AJ moved to the stern, ready to follow them in. “Reg is out at the North Sound, Pearl is at the dock covering for Reg and we told Sydney and Carlos not to answer the phone at the house and they both ditched their cells so they couldn’t be tracked. I don’t think you can reach them.”
Talking it out made AJ feel even more anxious and she could see Thomas’s mind was racing. “Don’t worry Thomas, I’m sure it’s nothing, I’m just getting paranoid like I said. We’ll check on them as soon as we’re back to the dock.”
Thomas nodded. “Yeah, it’s probably fine.”
AJ stepped into the clear blue water knowing full well Thomas didn’t think it was fine, and neither did
she.
The calm of the muted sound below the surface helped AJ refocus and release some stress. The large coral head spire rose around sixty feet from the sandy slope with a broad flat top littered with healthy fans, brain corals, sponges and smaller fish. Turning to the east, the wreck of the USS Kittiwake spread out before the divers like a surreal alien movie set, the hulk of the vessel looming from the limits of visibility.
AJ led the group from the coral head towards the bow of the ship, ominously keeled over towards the reef. Entering the ship through a doorway on the main deck, she threaded through a couple of rooms amply lit from the openings. Her divers followed, adjusting their buoyancy and trying to adapt to travelling through rooms tilted over at thirty degrees. It made them want to tilt over as well but the air in their BCDs would try and pull them back square to the world again. A stairway with a thin metal railing appeared against the far wall of the next room and AJ turned and glided down them to the deck below and into the darkness. She always felt like Peter Pan floating through rooms, hallways and stairwells that had been built for people to walk through.
Light beams from the group flashed around blackened lower compartments, illuminating startled fish that scurried away to safer corners. Shining her torch below, AJ revealed the big diesel motors that once powered the ship and she dropped down the narrow space around the hunks of steel and circled the power plants. A couple of her group followed but the others decided the confined space deep in the heart of the ship was a little too claustrophobic, and settled for observing from above. Moving forward, AJ smoothly eased up through an opening in the decking returning to the main deck. Turning back towards the bow she led them into the mess hall and then a bathroom where the mirrors allowed the divers to see their reflections in clear areas between the corrosion and growth on the glass. Out through a doorway she turned to look back inside another opening that revealed the hyperbaric chamber the ship carried for use in diver and submariner rescues. The opening into the steel barrel was no more than three feet across but allowed enough room for them to carefully enter one at a time. An eerie blackness filled the chamber and any knocks against the walls made a deep reverberation. A small air pocket from exhausted gas from divers’ regulators had formed in the upper corner and shining light on the underside of the water’s surface gave a bizarre expectation of dry land beyond. Peeking a masked face above revealed a rusty steel surface and a deafening echo through the gas undampened by the water.
Gardens of the Queen Page 13