by Chris Howard
The captain was coming at them, but he kept his head tilted up along their line of sight, trying to find what they were staring at—and hoping it wasn’t another “suicide” dangling from the crane rigging.
Andres nodded at him and said levelly, “Captain.”
Dewayne stepped in and put a big, gloved hand on the captain’s shoulder, keeping his arm and pointing finger leveled at the sky. “Keep looking up there, Cap.” He lowered his voice. “One of the soldiers with an H&K. Sort of a bland-looking dude, nothing you can describe. Man up on the wing of Marcene, looking down at us.”
Wilraven didn’t turn, even though he wanted to. His ship was tied up against the fenders on his left. In his peripheral vision he could just make out the dark shape of someone up there. He slid his focus up along Dewayne’s arm to the crane structure.
“So what’s up there?” Wilraven asked, looking up toward Crane Two.
“It’s written on my forearm, combination to my locker. Number nineteen.”
Wilraven dropped his focus to three sets of numbers written in blue ink just up from Dewayne’s wrist.
Andres added. “We’re with you, Captain. We do not want these mad killers on board any more than you do. The one who leads them, Levesgue, came around after the doc took away the two . . . injured crew members. He was asking for anything you might have grabbed from Serina. I told him if you had found anything worth grabbing, you would have stuffed it in the document pouch in your dive rig and harness. I led him to your gear in the dive shed, and unfortunately, when we unzipped the pouch and looked inside . . . ” He shrugged comically. “There was nothing.”
Dewayne lowered his arm.
Wilraven kept his voice low. “With the pod thing coming up and the two still alive inside, I completely forgot about the passports and papers. I owe you guys.”
He turned toward them, his back to the Marcene, and made an expansive who-cares gesture, half a shrug with both his hands out, palms up. Nodding vigorously, with a loud laugh as if Andres or Wilraven had made a joke, Dewayne turned and walked away.
The dive master said quietly, “They are still watching us. I will go to the Marcene to see Damien.”
“I’ll be up in a minute.” He smiled. “Got to get something.”
The crew lockers on Irabarren were in a narrow space between the welding shed and ROV shed, with the view from Marcene squarely blocked by Crane One’s base. He kept to the shadows and the looming structure of the crane, making his way as casually as he could to the narrow locker alley. There was loud metal-on-metal hammering and bright bursts of sparks from the welders, the noise covering Wilraven’s approach. It was so loud he could have kicked open—or even shot open—the lockers without anyone noticing.
Jack Minier, the youngest of the three-man welder team, was out in the open, mask tipped up as he inspected a seam along one of the hoists. He gave Wilraven a nod. “Captain.”
“Jack. Have you seen Captain DuFour?”
Minier shook his head. “This morning. Haven’t seen him since before the coins came aboard. But he wasn’t with the ROVs when they came up, far as I know.”
“Thanks.” Wilraven continued past the open welding shed doors toward the crew lockers, which wasn’t a place he often visited. He had his own cabin aboard Marcene with his own safe. Captains didn’t have lockers. Glancing toward the narrow opening to see if he was being watched or followed, he quickly scanned for locker nineteen, finding it halfway down, the metal plate with the number nearly rusted away.
Dewayne’s locker opened on the first try, and it was clear that Andres or Dewayne had stuffed the pouch contents in hastily. They were wadded up, still wet, dripping all over a stack of playing cards and running into an old deteriorating Folgers container full of machine parts.
He didn’t have time for the documents. He just grabbed the passports, shut Dewayne’s locker, and spun the dial. He had to get away from the lockers. The last thing he wanted was an obvious connection between his movement and actions and where interesting things might be stored.
He crossed the wide space, nodding at some of the ROV team and taking some time to look up at the cranes.
Mr. Levesgue was waiting for him at the base of Marcene’s gangway, standing in front of it, legs braced apart on Irabarren’s deck.
Shit.
Wilraven slowed, suspicious, his heart thudding. He took a deep breath, and Levesgue laughed, holding up a hand, one reproachful finger wagging at the sky.
“Not in life-threatening distress, but still require assistance? You know they were about to scramble a pair of F-35s out of Gitmo?”
Wilraven sucked in a deeper breath, a rush of cold through his body. He tried not to show anything on his face, but there was something there because Levesgue barked another laugh.
“Yeah, and those fighters could be here in ten minutes. Yup, those babies are pretty quick.” Then his voice went cold. “Know what they say? Give an inch, you take a mile.”
Wilraven closed his mouth, kept it closed. It felt like the whole world was spiraling out of control.
Levesgue straightened up, taking a step toward the captain. “What can I say? I want my mile back.”
There was a violent blur of motion; Levesgue’s right fist, holding something heavy, went left, wrapping around his body—away from Wilraven, while he made a quick jab across his body with his left fist, ramming it into the captain’s side. Not too hard. It was just enough to knock him off balance with a sharp spark of pain.
The captain danced away, arms going up for balance, and Levesgue’s right came back with his fist gripping the pry bar, two feet of heavy steel with a knob on one end, yellow tape candy-caned along the shorter bend. It was the one from Wilraven’s own dive kit.
Levesgue dropped into a crouch as he swung the weapon, and Wilraven took the steel several inches below the knee of his left leg. There was a crack, bone breaking, tissue tearing, and then there was just the sky and the branching black struts of the cranes smeared across his vision. The captain was on the deck, curling into a fetal position, rolling away from Levesgue, trying to protect his leg. He had one hand up to ward off any follow-up attacks.
But Levesgue just straightened, rolled his shoulders as if working out some tension. “You don’t think we have that kind of power, Captain Wilraven? The power to stop you? Do not try that again.” He tossed the pry bar to the deck at his feet. “Or I will have to take something else.”
Except for a few grunts of pain, Wilraven hadn’t spoken, just glared up at the soldier.
“Too bad,” Levesgue made a comic sad face. “I don’t think you’ll be doing any more diving on this op.”
Inda and Aro from the ROV team were running over from the far side of the Irabarren, and Levesgue turned as he made his way up the Marcene’s gangway, his voice just loud enough to be heard: “Better get that leg looked at, Captain Wilraven.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Passports
Wilraven was in pain on the floor of the medical station on Marcene, and Dr. Kozcera didn’t appear to be happy to see him again so soon, especially for another wound unrelated to his medical specialty. Damien was still in the tank, the big decompression chamber around the back side of Marcene’s superstructure, and the two from Serina were still unconscious, stretched out on the station’s only two gurneys, hooked up to machines, tubes running to their arms, masks over their faces.
The only place left for Wilraven was the floor, while Kozcera wheeled in an X-ray machine on a small hand truck, an old military field device that he positioned over Wilraven’s leg. The truck had a spindly framework that unfolded with a pale green service curtain around the captain. Kozcera set some values in the device’s interface, stepped outside while it hummed lightly, and then returned to finger through the scanned images. He selected one that apparently gave him the view he wanted and pushed it to the big screen at the back of the room.
While the doc folded everything away and wheeled out the machine, Wilraven sa
t on the floor, biting down hard against the pain. He craned his neck to see if there was any noticeable difference in the two from the pod. Nothing. They seemed to be asleep, breathing softly.
At least they were alive.
“Hey, Cap.” Angelo Gorriaga poked his head in to see how the captain was doing.
“First.”
The crews of both vessels were talking about little else, and the militant vibe had driven Levesgue and his team to come out on the offensive, patrolling the decks in light body armor and automatic weapons. Angelo indicated the gurneys. “Just talking to Damien. He was asking about the two sleeping beauties. Anything?”
Wilraven shook his head. “Doc will know more. Have a minute?” While he had been suiting up for the dive, he had sent the first officer to oversee the raising of the coins from the ROV Wendolyn, and Angelo had been tied up with that all day, counting, some rough sorting, and making sure it was stowed securely. Wilraven wanted to hear all about it, but there were more important questions to be answered.
“Sure.” With a glance over his shoulder, Angelo stepped all the way into the medical station, shot a look at the gurneys against each wall, and then crouched down in front of the captain. Wilraven dug out the stack of passports and slid off the rubber band holding them together. They were still soaked, seawater dribbling into his lap.
Fanning them out like a poker hand, he passed four over to Angelo. “Let’s see if these two are among the Serina’s crew. I want names and nationalities.”
It didn’t take more than twenty seconds to pull out two passports, both of them with a cross on shield and an olive wreath in gold against the reddish-brown covers. And Wilraven, who could read a little Greek, immediately picked out the second line on the cover,
ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΔΕΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ.
Both of them were Greek citizens from Rhodes. The woman was Adista Anastasatos, age thirty-one. The man was Tychasis Aristeidas, age twenty-nine.
Wilraven looked up from Adista’s passport as Dr. Kozcera came back from stowing the X-ray machine. Angelo got to his feet, backing against the gurney on the right side.
“I know her, at least the name. She was first officer on Serina.”
Grumpy as ever,and with a stern glance at Angelo, the doc said, “Not like she’s going to wake soon.”
Wilraven grunted in pain as Kozcera knelt and ran his fingers over the blackened bruising up his leg, pushing the word “Why?” into a gust of breath.
The doc wasn’t looking at him, his focus on the screen on the back wall instead, scanning the damage Levesgue had delivered. He gestured to Adista on the gurney to Wilraven’s right. “She is comatose. Undernourished, but that is not the problem. I suspect some kind of toxin, something in the air she was breathing. Poisoned, possibly from the one who did not live.” He made a tweezers motion with two fingers, as if trying to grasp the right word or concept. “Decomposition, it makes gases from the bacteria that are not healthy. But it may be something else. I do not have tools or agents here to screen for toxic substances.” He shrugged. “We know nothing about what was given to them before they were placed inside the . . . container. Most signs appear normal. I have her on drip and oxy, but we shall see if she wakes.” He shrugged again, dropping his gaze to the captain, who was clamping his teeth tight in pain. “She may not.” He jerked a thumb at Tychasis in the other gurney. “Or him.” He went on in much smoother Polish, but Wilraven didn’t catch more than a couple of words—and he only knew those from being around the doc for several years.
Dr. Kozcera tugged more of Wilraven’s pants leg out of the way and dropped a sealed brown pouch on the floor next to him, digging his fingers under the knee to lift the leg slightly.
Definitely no stinging this time either. Much worse. Wilraven was breathing hard through his nose because his mouth was closed so tight.
Gripping the leg of a gurney with one hand—knuckles white with pain—he held onto the passports in his other trembling hand. Angelo finally reached over the doctor to take them from him. He used the stack of different-colored little books as a pointer, indicating the upper decks. “Safe?”
Wilraven shook his head. “Somewhere in your bunk. Don’t trust . . . ” His eyes shifted up, hoping it was clear who he didn’t trust. All he needed was a gun to his head and they could open the ship’s safe. “Them.”
Levesgue hadn’t bothered coming to the medical station to intimidate or scare the captain, which was fine. Kozcera said he also hadn’t been in to check on the two comatose patients either, which kept Wilraven on his course. Now it was more important than ever to find out what had happened to the Serina Beliz. It clearly hadn’t been weather or some freak malfunction that had taken them down. He had the entire ship hanging at two hundred and something feet below them; he had two of the Serina’s crew right here—the last of the crew, most likely. He had their passports. He had a stack of other docs in DeWayne’s locker on Irabarren. The Serina investigation was moving forward.
He just needed to live through the next few days, maybe a week.
Pain shot up his leg. Unfortunately, he wasn’t doing as well with that as he would like.
The doctor tore open a military-issue bone fracture field kit. Not American. Squinting against the pounding ache in his leg, Wilraven thought he caught some German in the quickly discarded directions.
Kozcera glanced up at him. “This will hurt.”
Wilraven forced a smile. “No stinging?”
The doc raised an eyebrow. “You want a sting? I will give you something to hold down the pain.” He got up and rummaged around in a cabinet high on the wall, half turning to gesture down at the fracture kit. “I think you will need it before I put this on you. Then you will go rest.”
Kozcera gave him a shot in the arm, and a few minutes later the heat that had concentrated around the wound had now spread comfortably through his body.
The doc nodded. “Too much for one day. You need to get some sleep. I will call Angelo or the second and have them help you to your cabin.”
Wilraven just nodded and leaned back against the cabinets along the back wall, letting his eyes close for a minute.
He opened them with a snap when he heard a new voice in the room. It was Royce.
Then Kozcera’s commanding tones. “Aluminum tubing, something light but strong. Have them make a crutch.” The doc was ordering up some custom medical equipment from the welding team.
Wilraven tried to glare up at Royce, but didn’t feel anything move on his face. He tried to will the message to him instead. Distrustful little fuck.
Royce smiled down at him, and what really turned the captain’s stomach was that the smile seemed genuine. He expected a smugly satisfied expression, an I-told-you-so smile—a look that was clearly crooked or false, but there was something unexpectedly scary about sincerity from Royce.
The captain looked up from the floor, shivered a little over the sudden knowledge that if there could be a sign of bad things to come, it was all there in the look on Royce’s face.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Rendezvous
Andreden focused on the road, with an occasional glance at the exit signs.
Stick to the plan—with or without Laeina. He had to find Martin and Rebekah. The first item on the schedule was to rendezvous with Theo, who should be out in the blue nearby, waiting for him, which meant he needed a boat.
He could give Theo ship-searching tasks—or just searching for anything in the ocean. That was something the machine was extremely capable of handling, probably better than any human. Andreden had his radio gear and notebook. He wanted to be on the water with some power after he searched the AIS shipping traffic for the Katren. Laeina had said the ship was last seen somewhere off the Florida Keys. If it was out of range, he would send Theo after it.
Andreden got off the highway at Islamadora and onto Old US Route 1, slowing to scan the businesses and mailboxes at the end of driveways for a place he had picked out at the airport. It d
idn’t take long. He parked the battered lime-green Ford under a tree at the far end of the Jurney’s Marine Rentals parking lot, backing in to hide the lack of a back window. Digging out a change of clothes—the shirt he had on was covered in Laeina’s blood-- he wrestled them on before leaving the tiny car. He had to open the door to get his shoes back on. There wasn’t enough room, but wearing shoes was almost optional in the Keys anyway.
Looking around for spies—he was paranoid as hell now—he took the straightest path across the bleached lot to the front door, and within fifteen minutes he was the proud renter of a forty-foot powered catamaran named Rolinga.
He specifically picked Jurney’s because it was the first place he hit on the lists that offered bareboat charters—he would pilot the boat himself and didn’t want a crew. The boat was equipped, fueled up, and Rick, the sales rep, took Andreden over to the bayside docks in his truck, three big yellow stackable crates in the back with stores—dry and refrigerated.
They swung right on US 1, Rick gesturing and rolling through the powered cat’s capabilities, range, weather defenses, electronics, and safety gear. Andreden nodded absently and leaned down to glance in the truck’s passenger door mirror in time to see a plain white full-sized van pull into the Jurney’s parking lot a few hundred feet behind them. He even leaned closer to the mirror, trying to focus on the driver or anything that marked the vehicle. Too dark in the cab, just a tanned arm in the open window, and there were no markings on the door: no logos, company names, nothing. No way to tell if the van was driven by psychos. He only had a memorable view of the grille and front end of the hit van that had tried to kill them on the way up from Key West. He couldn’t remember anything about the van’s sides or markings as it soared hundreds of feet over the bright blue Atlantic, except that it had come to a refreshing end.
Rick helped Andreden lug the stores aboard Rolinga and gave him a quick review of the power and navigation panels, the radio, and waved vaguely at the cabin, indicating the head, stocked sport diving and fishing cabinets—nothing fancy: snorkeling gear, a range of cheap suits, but no SCUBA, no serious reels or rods, just enough the take the edge off boredom for someone who felt like getting in the water and splashing about.