The Blue Tango Salvage: Book 2 in the Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc. Series

by Chris Poindexter

  “Except that I’m annoyed,” she finished for me. “Pretty much the size of it. Miss Flower was right about you.”

  “Miss Flower is right about a lot of people,” I pointed out, “including you.”

  We enjoyed our beers in silence for a few minutes, until she couldn’t hold the next question back any longer. “So…what the fuck?” she asked.

  I laughed at that. “You two are going to have to sort out your own shit. I’ve got my own...complications...going on.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” she mulled. “So much easier when someone can just give you the answer.”

  “Especially if it’s the answer you want to hear,” I chuckled.

  “Teddy says you’re the smartest man he knows,” Charlotte added, “and Teddy’s the smartest man I know.”

  “Teddy and I are smart in different ways,” I corrected. “Teddy and Flower together are something else entirely.”

  “You said a mouthful there,” Charlotte laughed. “Strange I ever ended up here but now I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

  “It’s not that far from Louisiana,” I pointed out.

  “How the hell..?”

  “Your accent,” I pointed out. “It’s Cajun but not city Cajun, so that means somewhere like….Houma,” I guessed.

  Her eyebrows went up and her mouth opened. “Just outside of there, but not far.”

  “You want another beer?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  She sighed. “I suppose I should go find him before this goes in a direction I didn’t intend.”

  She levered her 5’ 10 frame out of the hot tub. She was lean and muscular, wearing one of those tie bikinis that were two tugs away from paradise. Her skin was olive toned and she had a panther tattoo up one shoulder. It was the perfect spirit animal for her; smooth, powerful and cunning. Not the type that would ever be anyone’s pet, never domesticated and always with tooth and claw just beneath the silky smooth surface.

  “I had a surprise lined up for his last night here,” she said, wrapping a skirt around her long legs.

  “Q doesn’t always react well to surprises,” I cautioned.

  She cocked her head at that comment, as if listening to a whisper far away, thought about it for a second and said, “I suspect he’ll get used to it.”

  “I suspect he will,” I smiled. “Hey, do me a favor. If he asks if you told Miss Flower about his dick, just act all evasive.”

  “Why on earth would I tell her that?” she asked.

  “No reason,” I grinned. “He just doesn’t need to know that.”

  She did kind of a half-shrug, half head shake that’s the hallmark of people who have seen it all and done half of it. “You are a strange man, but okay.”

  A moment later and the golf cart whirred her away around the corner. I had a feeling there were going to be a lot of surprises in the future between Q and Miss Charlotte and not all of them would be entirely pleasant. They never were with that type.

  Chapter 17

  I showed up a few minutes early for dinner, catching a ride with one of the other residents who saw me walking when Q never made it back with the golf cart. It was a nice day for a walk and yet it felt awkward turning down the kind offer.

  Q, Charlotte and a redhead I didn’t know were already there along with Teddy and Flower.

  “I was just going to come and get you,” Q said, surprised to see me.

  “Now you don’t have to,” I smiled.

  “The boys are gonna try out the truck tonight,” Teddy greeted, handing me a beer.

  “Outstanding,” I said. “Can we go?”

  Teddy nodded. “I think that was the general idea.”

  Dinner was a selection of local wild game, vegetables Nat and Rick grew in their automated grow system and smoked goat, which was surprisingly good.

  “I haven’t had goat since we were in…,” Q was going to say the name of the last place we’d been in the Middle East, then thought better of it, “...back east.”

  “We had goat in Cozumel,” I reminded him.

  “I wasn’t counting burritos,” he grinned.

  “We raise meat goats right here on our land,” Flower informed us. “It’s how we recycle all our kitchen scraps and yard trimmings.”

  “When we can keep any,” Teddy added. “We sell the shit out them. The Mexicans buy every goat we’ll part with.”

  Q and I hurried through our dinner so we could get up to the shop. Charlotte told Q she’d see him when he got back and we headed up to the shop. Bobby met us at the door.

  “We were just about to run the van on in town,” he told us.

  It certainly didn’t look like all that much; just a heavy duty van with a small lift bucket. It was white with several phone company decals and the name of a contracting company.

  “We couldn’t decide which company to go with, so we just decided to slap all of them on there.”

  It was a bit odd though we could always play it off as a contracting company that worked for several phone companies. Outsourcing was always a plausible explanation and it would explain why any other crews working in the area didn’t know us. Once I started looking, I could see some odd features; a camera pod here and there, several antennas, and a few other peculiar features that would take careful inspection to discern.

  “This is awesome,” I said, looking it over, “but if we’re going to test it, let’s give it a real test. We need to do it somewhere else…like Okeechobee.”

  “If something goes wrong--”

  “If something goes wrong in Miami, we’re fucked,” I pointed out. “Either this shit works or it doesn’t.”

  For someone the size of Mt. Rainier, Bobby looked momentarily hurt. “I just thought--”

  “Home field, I get it. But I need to know how good this is and, to figure that out, we need a bigger venue.”

  Bobby shrugged, called Jesse over and we all piled in. Q rode shotgun, Jesse drove, and Bobby explained the van systems to me as we made our way out to the highway.

  “When we’re rolling, the bucket has to stay locked, so the cameras in the lift are all facing forward,” he pointed out. We still had a 360 degree field of view by switching to the cameras on the van’s rear deck and Bobby showed me how to switch between daylight, thermal and infrared.

  He explained they don’t run the IMIS catcher when we were rolling because it worked better when the van was stationary and he didn’t like driving around advertising we had it.

  “Good idea,” I agreed. “With all this we hardly need it anyway.”

  “The thermal cameras aren’t too useful in daylight,” he pointed out, “but at night you can cover a large area.

  What I could see was impressive enough. I had a better view than Jesse and he was driving. I could track passing cars and then freeze a frame and zoom up their license numbers. What Bobby and his crew had done with the van was amazing. What we could do putting Bobby and Deek together would rival the best intelligence team anywhere.

  It also became apparent that a white van dressed up as a utility truck rarely warrants a second glance from anyone. We picked out a side street in a neighborhood that was a mix of residential, commercial and light industrial buildings. We picked a fairly conspicuous intersection and pulled up on the sidewalk. Q donned a reflective vest and hardhat as did Jesse and they set up some cones on each side of the van. Jesse went up in the bucket and pretended to be working on a cable junction. We fired up the IMIS catcher.

  After a few minutes the map screen was dotted with cell phones. The longer the unit ran, the more detailed the information. We could see the numbers and sometimes the names of people at each address and traveling through the area by car. Even when people left the house, we could see a list of who had been there since we arrived. Bobby showed me how to assign tracking boxes to specific numbers and the tracking box left a little trail of their driving route. We could also set up the system to track anyone who had been at a particular address an
d where they went after they left.

  “We need more of these,” I concluded, watching the data play across the screen. “No wonder the cops don’t want anyone to know they have this shit.” It was a marvel of spying technology.

  “You haven’t seen the good part yet,” Bobby grinned. He switched the cameras over to thermal imaging and suddenly we could see through walls. People were little blobs of heat and the system overlaid the IMIS data with what we looking at on the screen. Even though it was dark, we could follow people walking and tag them with their phone data.

  “This is the shit, Bobby,” I said honestly.

  With the cameras in the bucket we could scan the entire neighborhood. We wouldn’t be getting ambushed by anymore snipers on building roofs.

  “We probably shouldn’t sit here too long,” he pointed out. He showed me how to lift the desk and it clicked shut to form a tool bench, quickly hiding all the sophisticated electronics before we opened the doors.

  I switched with Q so he could have a chance at the controls. Cars drove by without giving us a second glance and a police car cruised by a couple blocks over. After a few minutes I heard Q and Bobby laughing. I stuck my head inside to find them zoomed in on a house down the street, two people having sex in the living room.

  “Want a date?” Q asked. “We traced her phone number to an online ad for an escort service.”

  “Looks like she’s earning it,” I agreed. “Capitalism in action.”

  I whistled for Jesse to come on down, we’d seen enough. The van blew away anything I had a right to expect for the time allotted. I had to keep reminding myself it had been less than 72 hours since we were being shot at in Miami. In our world three days is forever and it’s easy to forget that the rest of world moves at a radically slower pace. So, when something amazing happens in our logistical reality, it’s always a pleasant surprise.

  We buttoned up the truck and headed back to the park. This time Q stayed in the back and Bobby rode up front.

  “This is the shit here,” Q observed, clearly impressed with the van’s technology.

  “And it’s all off the shelf components,” I reminded him. “Surveillance gone wild.”

  “Can you imagine what Deek could do with this?”

  “Oh, that reminds me.” I texted Deek a laundry list of things we’d need. He’d need more lead time on some of them.

  HARD TO GET, he pointed out on one of the items. I had to text him back and remind him he had a jet at his disposal and, when you’re making a statement, price is no object.

  Q took over the camera controls on the way back to the park. I decided we should buy the van, minus the IMIS catcher, which had to go back to Poncho when this all was over. It bothered me that we hadn’t thought up a mobile surveillance platform before but when we were on home turf we didn’t need it. That was an oversight I was determined to correct.

  We got back to the houses and Charlotte’s golf cart was at Q’s place and the lights were on. He looked apprehensive.

  “Getting shot at doesn’t bother you,” I reminded him, “but you’re letting a girl get in your head?”

  He looked embarrassed. “She’s just...so…”

  “I get it,” I finished for him. “You’ll be fine.”

  I made my way over to my own dark, empty house but it didn’t bother me. I had my own relationship turmoil coming home tomorrow and, assuming Amber stayed with operations, the nights I’d have to myself would be few and far between. Even though I appreciated having her in my life and I liked our relationship, being able to just veg in the hot tub with a cold beer and look at the stars was its own brand of luxury. On the way through the kitchen I found a little present Flower left. It was some of the park’s finest weed so it was a better night than I expected.

  The next morning I just stayed in bed a while, contemplating our last day at the park. It was surprising that I wasn’t looking forward to leaving. Staying in any single place this long was an unnatural act for Q and I and, no matter how safe we were here, it still didn’t feel right. All the same, I liked it here and liked the lifestyle. But we had a job to do and we owed Sergei. In our business you can’t let people take a shot at you and not drop a building on them. It sets a bad precedent and that’s especially true when it comes to the Russians. They don’t respect weakness and, if we let this slide, word would get around.

  I took my time, caught up on the news and had a leisurely breakfast. About an hour later Charlotte and the redhead, whose name was Jaclyn, left Q’s place and he wandered over a few minutes later.

  “How’s your morale?” I asked by way of greeting.

  “Boosted!” he confirmed. “What time we rolling out?” he asked, helping himself to some of my bacon.

  “Probably around 5:30,” I guessed. “We need to find accommodations for our temps.”

  “Can’t stash them on one of the boats?”

  “We’ll need to keep this one terrestrial,” I mulled. “Sergei will be watching the marinas and I want our first day back to be a big surprise.”

  “The warehouse?” he asked.

  “Probably.”

  “I hate the warehouse.”

  “It’s only a couple nights,” I assured him.

  “I liked that villa we had in Miami,” he pointed out.

  “Can’t go back to the same one,” I reminded him. “I’m sure Deek will find us something.”

  “It’ll be another warehouse,” he grumbled.

  We were interrupted by my park phone ringing; the display said it was Jesse.

  “Jesse, what’s up?”

  “Um...I’m not sure this is any of my business…” he began. I gave Q a puzzled look.

  “No worries, Jesse, it’ll stay between you and me.” That got Q’s attention.

  “Well,” he said awkwardly, “your girlfriend is here and she’s been holed up with Miss Flower in the office.”

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  “They sure are laughing a lot,” he clarified.

  “Thanks, Jesse, you did the right thing,” and I hung up.

  Q tensed up. “What?”

  “Flower and Amber are bonding at the office,” I said. The terror of the comment plainly visible on my face.

  “I’ll drive,” Q sprang into action. We bolted out the door, down the stairs and piled into the golf cart.

  “Doesn’t this thing go any faster?”

  “It’s a golf cart,” he reminded me.

  “It just seems so fucking slow!”

  “Still a golf cart.”

  It was an interminably slow trip to the office. Pulling into the parking lot we were greeted by a customized Jeep Wrangler that still had the drive-out tag on it. It was bright red with a brush guard, bumper winch, a snorkel and a pair of off-road lights on stalks that matched a custom light bar across the front. On the back was a full size spare and two locking five gallon cans. Whoever had done the customization had raised it, added heavy-duty shocks new rims, upgraded tires and rock guards.

  “Sweet ride!” Q approved.

  “I don’t remember girlfriends being so expensive,” I complained.

  “That’s because you used to pay them by the hour,” he reminded me with a grin.

  We hurried inside to be greeted by howl of girl laughter from the office. My worst fears confirmed the girl behind the desk just pointed at the office.

  “Oh!” I heard Amber say, bounding out of the office a moment later after spotting us on the cameras.

  She was wearing khaki slacks and a green shirt with boots, her hair pulled back under a new JEEP baseball hat. I was hoping they at least threw the hat in with the deal on the car. Looking a little like a shorter, hotter version of Amelia Earhart, she ran over to give me a big hug and a kiss.

  “Hi,” she smiled, Flower following her out of the office a minute later.

  “Shame on you for hiding this sweet thing for so long,” she chided, taking Amber’s arm. “We’ve been having the best time.”

  “Yes, w
e have,” Amber agreed. “You have awesome friends.”

  “We’re going to head in town and pick up a few lady accessories,” she informed us.

  Like another car? I wondered.

  “And we might just head on over to Okeechobee for a massage at the spa,” she added. “We’re going to stop and pick up Charlotte and Jacky on the way.”

  Q, who had been enjoying this moment far too much, suddenly had his smile turned upside down.

  “I need her back by five,” I said. There was no winning play for anyone with a penis in this exchange.