My mind kept drifting to Savannah. She’d dressed up to go see her sister one last time and arrange for her body to be shipped home. I felt bad for her that she had to do that alone, and cursed the ex for apparently not following through with his desire to work through their problems. She needed someone right now.
Forcing my mind back to the problem at hand, I thought again of any reason Brady would have for not turning over the head to the morgue. Marty wasn’t the kind of kid that rubbed people the wrong way. He was an honest and forthright young man, who sometimes wore his heart on his sleeve. I couldn’t think of how someone might hold a grudge against him, especially one of his superiors.
The wreck’s not far out of the way, I thought. I could just swing a little farther to the north once I reached Snipe Keys and I’d be able to see the spot, and certainly see the Coast Guard boats. Snipe Keys were easy to spot, being much larger and sitting farther north than the surrounding islands. It would only add thirty minutes to my route back to my island.
I turned slightly north as I neared Snipe Point, plotting a rough course in my head. I turned on the radar and it took a moment for the unit to warm up. When the image appeared, it swept the area around Cazador, showing the islands of the backcountry falling away to the south. Two green echoes marked two boats.
One was closer and headed south. Scanning the horizon to the north, I spotted the motor yacht headed in my general direction at trawler speed.
The second echo was farther away. I zoomed the radar out and could tell from the echoe’s relationship to islands I knew that it was pretty close to where Marty and I dove the wreck.
The Coast Guard had found it. With any luck, they’d find more evidence and maybe have the tools to get that boiler thing unbolted from inside the hold.
I was about to turn and make a beeline for home, but changed my mind. In for a dime, in for a dollar. The wreck site was six miles away and I’d be able to see the Coast Guard boat in just a few minutes.
At three miles, I could see the upper half of the boat. But it didn’t have the usual diagonal red mark of Coast Guard vessels. It looked like a dive boat. I slowed to about ten knots, bringing Cazador down off plane, and got my binoculars out.
It was a dive boat. An old Silverton express that had been neglected for years, perhaps decades. There seemed to be one man on the bridge and two in the cockpit. All three looked as though they were waiting on something. I needed to get closer. The old boat looked vaguely familiar, but beat-up express cruisers lay all over the boatyards and anchorages of the Keys, victims of the tourist business and hundreds of thousands of anglers. Those boats are the reason I charter so little. I’d hate for the Revenge to look like them. The eye becomes numb to them.
I brought up the saved waypoint on the GPS. Both it and the radar showed exactly the same distance and heading to the boat I was looking at. They were on the new wreck site.
Going up to the bow, I retrieved my go-bag. Some weeks ago, I’d seen an ad on TV while celebrating the Marine Corps birthday with Rusty at the Anchor. The commercial was for a pair of magnifying eyeglasses. They were only two-power magnification, but when stalking bonefish on the flats, any advantage in eyesight was good. They looked goofy as hell, but bonefish don’t care what a fisherman looks like.
I took them out and placed them on the console. Just in case, I put two teaser lines in the water, attached the lines to the clips on the outriggers and moved them out. If anyone looked, I’d just be a guy trolling for dinner.
Moving back to the helm, I set a course that would take me past the dive boat, within a mile of it. I put on the magnifying glasses and looked at the other boat. Though I was still three miles away, I could just make out the man on the bridge. He was scanning the horizon.
Slowing Cazador, the engine quieted. I didn’t want to alert the men on the boat to my presence any sooner than necessary. It was a calm, clear day, and if they had radar on and looked at it, there was no way I could hide. Cazador was smaller, with a top that matched the color of the water. I doubted they’d be able to see me until I was closer.
I set the autopilot and went behind the console, watching aft like a solo fisherman would do. Every now and then, I’d turn and look forward, stealing a glance at the other boat.
Nearly abreast of the boat, I glanced over and saw the man on the bridge watching me through binoculars. Just from the way he stood, I sensed that he wasn’t very much at home on the water. He was a smallish man, with shaggy brown hair and a sparse stubble on his face. Two divers surfaced, and the captain looked down at them from the bridge.
Once I was slightly past the other boat, I could chance a longer look as they fell astern. One of the guys in the water was handing a gray box up to another man on the swim platform. The captain climbed down and took the box, disappearing into the boat’s cabin. A few minutes later, he returned with another man that I hadn’t seen. There were six onboard.
The captain and the new man climbed up to the bridge and the first man watched me again, then pointed in my direction, handing the binoculars to the other man, now sitting at the helm. The man at the helm looked at me and I quickly looked away. He looked much more at home on the bridge than the other guy. And I could swear I’d seen him before.
The jig was up. They’d taken way more interest in my presence than a typical dive operator would. I put the glasses on the seat, then brought in the lines and outriggers.
I turned due west and mashed the throttle. The engine roared and El Cazador climbed on top of the water, speeding away and quickly reaching thirty knots.
The radar showed the other boat beginning to move, so I slowed to see which way they’d go. I wasn’t worried about them chasing after me. Most dive boats can barely reach planing speed, some maybe twenty-five or thirty knots, unlike the Revenge, which could reach fifty. But the Revenge was primarily a fishing boat, and charter customers liked a boat with enough speed that their time isn’t wasted on getting out to the Gulf Stream. This dive boat wasn’t a newer model, nor had it looked like it was as well cared for as it should have been.
The dive boat moved away to the north. I slowed and then brought El Cazador to a dead stop. The dive boat’s echo on my radar showed it moving almost due north at probably twenty knots.
Turning around, I headed straight for the wreck site at low speed. The other boat continued to speed away. I set the autopilot and quickly got a tank from the rack and my gear from the forward dry storage. Carrying it all to the stern, I put my dive gear together. If they continued north, I wanted to drop down and see what they’d been doing.
My tank wasn’t full. Nor were any of the others onboard. They hadn’t been refilled since Friday night. I inwardly slapped myself. I always fill tanks when I get back, or on the way back, if I’m on the Revenge. But it had been nearly dawn when we’d returned home from the Friday night dive, and we were all exhausted.
The tank I grabbed had a little over fifteen hundred pounds of air. I could manage my breathing and allow about fifteen minutes at forty feet, but that would leave the tank almost empty.
Laying the rig on its side by the transom with my fins, I pulled my mask over my head and let it hang below my chin. One less thing to do once I dropped anchor. I went back to the helm and throttled up slightly, still a mile from the waypoint on the GPS. The other boat was nearly out of sight; the radar showed it was three miles away. If they turned back, I’d have only six or seven minutes.
But I wanted to see what those men were doing.
The waypoint was coming up, so I slowed. Checking the radar, I saw that the other boat had also slowed, but was still headed north nearly four miles away. That was better. Even if they started to turn around at the very moment I hit the water, I would still be able to stay down till I’d sucked the tank dry, leaving me about a minute to get aboard and get out of there. I’d hear them if they turned around, so I wasn’t too worried about that.
When I reached the spot, I saw the wreck on the depth finder. I turn
ed into the current, waited until I was more than a hundred feet past the wreck, then killed the engine. I went quickly to the bow and dropped the hook, letting out a hundred and twenty feet of rode.
I took one last look at the radar. The other boat had slowed to a crawl, just shy of five miles due north of me. I picked up the tank and lifted it over my head, letting it slide down my back, as my arms moved through the shoulder straps of the BC. I quickly secured it, put my fins on, and swung my feet over the transom, adjusting my mask. I purged the second stage, put it in my mouth, took a breath, and stepped into the sea.
Below the surface, I started kicking for the bottom, the wreck clearly visible below and just forward of Cazador. Immediately, I could tell that the divers had at least untangled the nets from the boat. I swam straight to the starboard side of the work deck.
Coming down next to where I knew the gaping hole was in the side, I peered into the gloom. The cylinder was missing. I breathed slow, listening to the sound of the other boat. It was barely audible, which told me they were still a good distance away. The sand that had accumulated in the bottom of the hold had been pushed around, as if the divers had searched through it for something.
I went up and over the starboard rail, or what was left of it. Fish had already staked claim to the boat, hiding among the wreckage. I stuck my head inside the pilothouse. It was a mess, but the mess was wrong. An explosion will knock stuff off shelves, and the cabin had been partially destroyed, but there was more boating detritus than there should be. Dock lines, fishing reels, small fenders, and other junk floated, or lay on the deck. These were things usually stored in a closet or under a bench.
The watch bunk’s mattress was lying on the deck, under some of the gear, and the storage bin below the berth was open. I looked inside and saw that it had been fitted with a false bottom, which was lying off to the side. I tilted the panel out of the way to look inside.
All boats have hiding places, some better than others. This one was done well. The handle to lift the false bottom out looked like melted plastic attached to the bottom of the storage bin under the bunk. Finding junk there would be normal, so anyone searching randomly probably wouldn’t attempt to pry the melted thing off after digging through apparent years of junk.
The hiding place was empty, but whoever had lifted out the false bottom had just dropped it to the side, without turning it over. That told me they knew exactly where to look and had taken whatever was there. My elbow bumped the false bottom and it slid off the berth, turning over slowly. There was a small package duct taped to the underside of the panel. Yanking it free, I stuck it in the cargo pocket of my shorts and went to the aft part of the pilothouse where a deck hatch lay open.
I didn’t have a dive light, but enough light spilled into the engine room when I moved the hatch, that I felt comfortable probing further. It was a dogged hatch and the dogs were loose. That doesn’t happen in an explosion. I paused for a moment, listening. The sound of the other boat was gone. It had continued north.
Arching my body, I kicked down into the engine room. The overhead was only about five feet above the cluttered lower deck. On the surface, that’d be a head-knocker for me at six-three, but diving, there was plenty of horizontal room.
Noticing a large canvas pouch stuffed into the bilge behind the engine and transmission, I swam toward it to investigate. It looked like the same kind of heavy green canvas that my sea bag was made of. And it was totally out of place, stuffed in the bilge. The satchel was square, about a foot each way. I felt a tingle on the back of my neck.
There was a clasp on the top of the bag, so I opened it. I instantly knew what I was looking at, and I knew that I was way up the creek and no paddle in sight. The timer on the display of the explosive charge said I was going to be blown to bits in fifty-four seconds. No time to disarm it, and I didn’t have any tools, anyway. I was going to need most of that time to get to the surface.
The concussive effect from an underwater explosion are compounded immensely compared to the same blast on land. Air compresses, water doesn’t. I grabbed the satchel and swam hard for the hatch. If I was underwater when this thing blew, the concussive effect would at the very least knock me unconscious and I would drown when the air in my tank ran out. At worst, the concussion would stop my heart. Not that drowning is any better.
Exiting the pilothouse, I swam with the current until I was well clear of the wreck. There I dropped the satchel, part of my mind noting that I had twenty seconds.
When I released it, I started kicking toward the surface. In the excitement of finding the IED, I’d neglected to manage my breathing and when I took another breath, it was with a lot of effort. Experience told me I had one, maybe two more breaths at this depth. Three if I exhaled slowly on the way up. The clock in my head told me I had ten seconds.
I could see Cazador above me, the sun reflecting off the surface like sparkling diamonds. Though it risked an embolism, I kicked as hard as I could to get to the surface in time.
I felt the shock wave at the instant I heard the blast. I was only two more kicks from the surface. The concussion of the blast pushed my upper body out of the water. I hit the surface ten feet from the swim platform and slowly sank back down, stunned, and unable to move, ears ringing.
As I slowly descended back toward the bottom, I thought it ironic that a bunch of bloated fish were now rising slowly toward the sunlight. My last conscious thought was that their swim bladders had been ruptured.
By the time Cedric got back to Fort Myers on the dive boat, the sun was gone from the sky. Red and pink clouds took its place, but the colors were quickly fading.
Cedric carried the box to his car, nervous at the number of people still milling around the marina. He opened the trunk and placed it inside before taking his phone out of his pocket. Scrolling through his short contact list, Cedric stabbed a listing.
“Mission accomplished,” he said, when Ballinger answered.
“Did you get everything?”
“Everything we could find, including the box and a bonus.”
Ballinger paused for a second. “Bonus?”
“Remember that hunter boat?” Cedric asked.
“We’ll take care of that in the morning.”
“No need,” Cedric said. “The same boat was out there just before we left. The guy dove on the wreck, after we left.”
“Was the last package delivered?” Ballinger asked.
Cedric hadn’t seen it, but he did see the geyser shoot up behind the guy’s fishing boat. They’d been too far away to see anything more than the roof of the boat. But he knew from the size of the explosive that it would have killed anything close to the wreck.
“He was still in the water when it was delivered,” Cedric said. “I saw the aftermath and the boat was still there. It didn’t leave. We waited fifteen minutes.”
“You should have gone back and taken care of the boat.”
“Couldn’t,” Cedric said. “A private yacht must have seen it too; they were headed toward the guy’s boat, so we got the hell away.”
There was a pause, so Cedric got in the car and closed the door. He knew a little about explosives and felt pretty certain that if the man on the fishing boat had still been in the water, he wouldn’t have survived.
“Couldn’t be helped,” Ballinger said. “Another accident at sea. How soon can you pick up some party favors? I’m having out of town guests aboard tonight.”
“Three hours for me to get back to the city,” Cedric replied. “Then an hour. I can be there before eleven.”
“See that you do,” Ballinger replied. “That’s when things will get into full swing. And plan to stay this time. I have someone I want you to meet.”
Cedric ended the call and started the car. Before leaving Fort Myers, he filled up with gas at the ramp to I-75. The drive across the state was without incident, and Cedric stopped at his apartment in Opa-Locka to get cleaned up.
After showering and dressing, Cedric wen
t to his closet and kneeled to open the small safe he’d mounted to the floor with heavy anchor screws. Cedric kept Ballinger’s stash in his apartment; one of the many risks he took for the man. Removing several small bags, he stuck them in his coat pocket, locked the safe, and left.
The drive to the gated island community of Sunset Islands in Miami Beach took nearly as long as crossing the whole state, but Cedric arrived well before the appointed time.
He parked in front of one of the garages, far from the other cars, and got out. Knowing better than to waste time ringing the bell, Cedric walked around the side of the house, following a stone path to a gate. Crossing the backyard, Cedric heard party sounds—talking, music, and women laughing—as he walked toward the short pier and the big boat docked there.
“He’s waiting,” a big bald man said, as Cedric approached the foot of the pier.
“Everything okay?” Cedric asked Christian, Ballinger’s sometimes-overzealous head of security.
“Peachy,” the big man sneered. “Cowboys are only up by six.”
Cedric noticed the wire going up from the man’s collar to his ear and nodded. “The spread’s thirteen. Not playing well?”
“Defensive struggle on both sides,” Christian said, pushing the gate open. “Giants just kicked a field goal and the Cowboys have the ball with just five minutes left on the clock. Giants’ defense is killing Romo; sacked his ass for a safety a few minutes ago.”
“They’ll cover the spread,” Cedric said, walking past the man.
He continued out onto the short pier, then along the dock to the back of Ballinger’s yacht. Another security man stood at the steps.
“The Cowboys ain’t gonna pull it out,” Phil said. “Hope you got the cash, man. ’Cause Christian don’t take IOUs.”
Cedric nodded at the man. Phil was even bigger than Christian. “I ain’t worried. They’ll score.”
Rising Fury: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 12) Page 13