I kissed her and went back to sleep. It felt like ten minutes later, when I heard a light tapping on the hatch. I quietly got out of bed and opened the door. I nodded at Julie who turned and slipped quietly into the crew quarters as I slipped on my Topsiders. There was coffee in the pot and the timer was set for ten minutes ago. My guess is that Tina set it, before coming to bed. I poured a cup, filled a thermos, set it up to brew another pot and then went up to the bridge. I checked the GPS and saw that we were only sixty miles from Cozumel. I opened the cabinet and pulled out a book on Mexican ports of entry. I’d already gathered everyone’s passports. I found the listing for the main commercial port docks on the west side of the island. I’d had Chyrel call there to let them know of our arrival. I entered the precise coordinates for the dock into the GPS and returned it to autopilot. Mexican Immigration and Customs was at the end of the cruise ship pier and I knew from past experience that I could be there a while.
Just before sunrise, Tina joined me on the bridge. The clouds to the west were starting to be colored by the sun in pastel pink hues. They spanned the horizon, north to south in an unbroken line. She stretched her legs out in front of her and arched her back. Then leaning forward, she checked the GPS which showed we were twenty-five miles from the Mexican island.
“I thought we would be there by seven o’clock,” she said. “Have you heard anything more from Tony and Art?”
“They’re probably still asleep,” I said. “Doubt we’ll hear from them for a while. The GPS displays our time. Cozumel is an hour different from Florida. It’s 0600 local time.”
An hour later, with our quarantine and courtesy flags flying, we tied off at the commercial dock, next to the immigration and customs building. I took the boats paperwork and all four of our passports into the building, hoping that since there wasn’t a cruise ship currently at the dock I might get lucky and be in and out quickly. It wasn’t record pace, but faster than usual. The customs officer walked with me back to the dock. Deuce and Julie had joined Tina on the bridge. We stepped aboard and I noticed that Deuce had dutifully opened all the fish boxes, hatches and drawers in the cockpit.
The customs officer made a cursory inspection of the cockpit, then dropped down into the engine room. He was back out in a minute and we proceeded into the salon.
“What is the nature of your visit, Captain?” he asked as he looked slowly around.
“Buceo sus hermosos arrecifes, como de costumbre, Senor,” I responded.
“They are quite beautiful, si,” he said. “Our records show you are a frequent visitor here. Your friends know not to touch the reefs?”
“My charter,” I said. “I never even allow divers to wear gloves. Makes them less apt to do any damage.”
“It is just the four of you?” he asked looking toward the cabins.
“Yes,” I said. “Feel free to look around. I’ll be topside tending to my charter. Those three are a handful.”
I left the salon and called up to the bridge. “Can I get you some fresh fruit? Or perhaps a bagel?
“We’re fine, Captain,” Deuce said. “When can we go ashore? I understand there are some fine shops and stores here in San Miguel. The ladies would like to do some shopping.”
A few seconds later the customs officer stepped down from the salon and said, “Everything’s in order, Capitan. Yours is a beautiful vessel. Here are your visas. We hope you and your guests will enjoy your stay on Isla Cozumel.”
“Gracias, senor,” I said, taking the visas and passports from him. Then I quietly added, “Si estos esnobs ricos no volverme loco, lo hare.”
He looked up at Deuce, Julie, and Tina on the bridge, smiled at them and said, “Enjoy your stay.” Then quietly to me as he stepped toward the gunwale, he added “Si gastan un monton de dinero ambos seremos felices, senor.”
I climbed up to the bridge and Julie said, “Rich snobs, huh?”
“Nothing moves a customs officer quicker than the knowledge that someone is waiting to spend lots of money in his country,” I said. “Let’s go ashore and do just that. It’s a safe bet that Santiago has someone here that’s going to report back to him. I want it to look like you three are wealthy charter customers.”
“I need to check in with Tony and Art before we do that,” Deuce said.
We went down to the salon and I powered up the laptop. Deuce first checked in with Chyrel, via video. She looked like she hadn’t had a lot of sleep. “How much sleep did you get last night?” he asked her.
“I got a couple of power naps in,” she said a little defensively. “Charity’s been monitoring the com with me.”
“Any word from our boys?” Deuce asked.
“They checked in at 0600,” she said. “They’re on a small knoll about two hundred meters from the Hezbollah camp, in a thick tangle of underbrush. Tony sent an audio file of a conversation they picked up with the parabolic mic. Nothing much on it, just a couple guards grumbling.”
“Can you patch me through to him on video?” Deuce asked.
“Just a sec,” Chyrel said. A few seconds later a smaller picture appeared in the corner. Tony’s face was covered with flat green and tan markings behind the hood of his ghillie suit. I could barely see that he had a headset, with a boom mic on.
“Everything alright?” Deuce asked.
“Shoulda brought a stronger bug repellant,” Tony whispered. “These Cuban mosquitoes are the size of crows. We have line of sight with the camp, but there’s no way they can see us, even if they walked by right in front of us. Art’s set up a little north of me, in a similar blind. We’re west of the camp, so we’ll get better visual in a couple of hours.”
The sun’s in their eyes, I thought. They were probably loading up on energy bars and napping until the sun got higher.
“Send any audio or video you pick up to Chyrel,” Deuce said. “And keep your ass down.”
“Roger that,” Tony said and the screen went blank.
“Chyrel,” he said. “Anything they send you, have it translated and send it to me in a text. Just the good stuff, you know what I want.”
“Will do, boss,” she said and the whole screen went blank.
Deuce turned to me and said, “I just don’t feel right being down here, while they’re out in the bush.”
“Hazard of command, brother,” I said. “You’re not a field operative anymore. Get used to it. I can see you in Smith’s immaculate suit on day.”
“Never gonna happen, man,” he said.
We left the boat and strolled the streets of San Miguel, visiting the many shops. I gave Tina, Julie, and Deuce each a wad of cash. In two hours, we’d spent over a thousand dollars, including a stop at Aqua Safari Dive Shop, where I bought the latest dive computer.
We shopped some more and ate lunch at Senor Frog’s across from the docks. After lunch we took a cab to El Cid Resort and booked two suites at $300 a night each and dock space. We carried our purchases to the suites and stopped in the Babieca Dive Shop on the premises and arranged to rent four tanks to be delivered to the Revenge at the commercial dock. I tipped the clerk generously and asked if he could have someone place them aboard, so we could do a dive before coming back to the hotel. He said that wouldn’t be a problem and I told him the boats name, where we were docked and to just strap them in place on the dive bench. We went to their private beach and relaxed a little and then we caught another cab back to the boat.
“We can do a shallow dive just a little ways north of here,” I said. “There’s a nice little patch reef across from the Coral Princess Hotel, where the wall is further out.”
“Wall?” asked Tina.
“Most of the dive sites here are wall dives,” Deuce said. “The bottom drops vertically to over two hundred feet in some places, very near shore.”
“I can’t go that deep,” she said.
“Neither can we,” I said. “Not without different equipment. We’ll stick to shallow dives, until I think you’re ready. Then we can drop over the wall a
little deeper.”
We cast off and headed north along the shoreline about two miles. While the girls were down below getting their swimsuits on, Deuce said, “Did you see her?”
“See who?” I asked.
“The woman from Santiago’s boat,” he said. “She was across the street at an outdoor café when we came out of the motel.”
“No,” I said. “I must be slipping.”
“Guess he thought you could use some female company,” he said with a grin.
“Well I don’t,” I said. “I think you’re enjoying this maybe a little too much. Maybe she’s just here to keep tabs on me.”
“You heard the recording,” he said. “Guess you could play it like Tina seduced you on the trip down. She’ll probably check the front desk to see how many rooms we booked and what kind. But, it’s a pretty safe bet that she’s going to make a play at some point while we’re here.”
Julie and Tina came back up to the bridge just as I dropped the anchor in the gin clear water. I’d dropped the anchor about ten feet off a large reef in twelve feet of water and powered back until the anchor caught hold in the sand.
“Y’all take your time getting ready,” I said. I’m going to dive down and make sure the anchors good and solid.”
While they were gearing up, I grabbed a pair of goggles and a tag line, walked to the bow and dove in. I tied the tag line to the anchor line at water level and threw the coil out to the port side as far as I could. The water was warm, about eighty degrees. I pulled myself, hand over hand, along the anchor line to the chain, then swam across the bottom to the anchor. It was jammed deep into the sand, no way would it come out. I swam back up at an angle and reached the surface about twenty feet from the bow. I swam to the stern, checking the tag line to make sure that it had drifted to the stern on the port side and climbed out.
“The water’s great,” I said.
We geared up and got ready to get in the water. Tina insisted on wearing her wetsuit, worried she’d get cold. “There’s a line floating behind the boat,” I said. “Once we’re in the water, grab it and pull yourself to the anchor line, up at the bow. When we’re all there, we’ll follow the anchor line to the bottom and fin over to the reef.”
“Is there a current?” Tina asked.
“Yeah, but not much of one,” I said. “The tag line is more to save air. No sense going down here and finning to the reef. There’s nothing to see under us, but sand.”
We entered the water one at a time and this time Tina was able to hold her head above water on entry. We swam and pulled ourselves to the anchor line. “It’s about twenty feet at the anchor,” I said. “You’ll probably have to clear your ears a few times going down. Just don’t be in a hurry about doing it. If it hurts come back up the anchor line a bit and try again. A lot of people have trouble doing this and some have to be in an upright position, so try it that way by dumping almost all your air and hanging on the anchor line.”
Tina nodded her head and said, “I’m ready.”
We slowly descended down the line. Tina hung on, while the three of us slowly finned into the current staying all around her. She didn’t have any trouble clearing her ears, but I noticed she was having to hold onto the line tighter. I realized I hadn’t told her about the affect water pressure would have on the air in her BC. I stopped her, pointed to the air bladders in her BC and made a constricting motion with my hands, then pointing down. She must have understood, because she immediately added just a little air to her BC until she was neutrally buoyant.
We continued to the bottom with no more problems and Tina actually controlled her buoyancy using her BC without any further instruction. We finned over to the little reef, where I motioned her to stop. I pointed to the reef, then to her hands and shook my head. She gave me the OK sign and I pointed to the reef, at her gauge cluster and shook my head again. She understood and put her gauge cluster in the pocket of her BC.
We continued to the reef and the first thing we saw was a spotted moray, tucked into a crevice with only his head sticking out, opening and closing his mouth. This time I remembered to bring a small slate and pencil, so I could write the names of the fish down for her. I did so and showed it to her. We continued along the edge of the reef and saw a number of young angel fish and butterfly fish. Each time Tina would point and wait for me to identify it. At one point we saw a splendid toadfish, very rare in shallow water, which I also wrote. By the end of the dive, I’d filled the front and back and was having to erase names. We saw several kinds of parrotfish, angels and butterflies all over the reef. All very young. It seemed the reef was a nursery for hundreds of species. By the end of the dive, Tina was pointing at certain fish, then pointing to its corresponding name on my slate.
The dive lasted about twenty minutes. Tina was doing that much better at controlling her breathing. Deuce and I both still had over 1000 pounds of air when we started for the surface though. We were halfway up when a large eagle ray swam by, probably eight feet across. Tina saw it first and grabbed my hand pointing. It circled around us, Tina spinning on the anchor line to watch it, then swam off toward the wall.
When her head broke the surface, she spit out her regulator, pulled her mask down around her neck and said, “What was that?”
“An eagle ray,” Julie said.
“Are they dangerous?” Tina asked. “It was beautiful.”
“No,” I said. “Unless they jump out of the water and land on you. That one was huge.”
“There’s so many baby fish here,” Tina said. “It’s beautiful.”
We followed the tag line back to the stern of the boat and climbed aboard, Deuce and I first, then Tina and Julie. We sat down on the bench and took off our dive gear, grabbed our big towels and climbed up to the bridge. I engaged the windlass to hoist the anchor and started the engines. We turned and headed out to deeper water, then went south toward the hotel.
“Do we have enough time for another dive?” Tina asked.
Julie smiled and said, “The worm has turned.”
We laughed and I said, “Let’s wait until tomorrow. You catch on fast. We’ll go over a few things this evening and I think you’ll be ready for a wall dive in the morning.”
“Why is wall diving so special?” she asked.
“That eagle ray we saw,” Julie said. “It’s a deep water fish. All the colorful tropical we saw are reef fish. That splendid toadfish is a deep water reef fish. We were lucky to see all those on a shallow reef. On a wall it’s normal. You have the reef fish close to the wall, ocean dwelling fish, sometimes even dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, even whales, just a few feet away and deep water fish just below you. Next to drift diving, wall diving is my favorite.”
“Reef diving, wall diving and drift diving?” Tina said. “I’m going to have to get a book for this too?”
“We won’t be doing any drift diving,” Deuce said. “That involves someone staying on the boat and following the divers as they drift with the current.”
“We could do a drift if y’all want,” I said. “There’s plenty of independent six pack operators around here. I’m sure the concierge could find one for us.”
“Six pack?” Tina asked. “I’m going to guess that’s a small boat.”
“Small or big,” Deuce said. “But limited to six passengers.”
“Let’s do that,” I said. “Probably be cheaper than running two 1015 horse engines, anyway. Plus you get a better feel for the local islanders.”
We arrived at the hotel’s private dock and two staff members helped tie the boat off. The older one asked, “You have tanks empty, senor? Jose take to fill?”
“Sí, cuatro, amigo,” I said. “Se les puso de vuelta en el barco tambien puede tener?”
“Sí, senor.” He said smiling. “Ahora mismo.”
I reached into my pocket and handed him a one hundred peso bill and said, “Gracias, no hay prisa.”
We walked up the dock to the hotel and Tina said, “I know living in Key West,
I should know Spanish, but I didn’t understand any of that, except boat.”
“He asked if we had any empty tanks to refill,” I said. “I asked him to put them aboard when they were full.”
We took a cab to the Mayan ruins in the center of the island and spent the rest of the afternoon playing tourist. This time, I did notice the Cuban woman. She was sitting in the lobby of the hotel as we left, pretending to read a magazine. I held Tina’s hand as we walked through the lobby, making sure that the Cuban woman saw.
Deuce was reading several text messages during the ride to the ruins, completely absorbed in them. When we got out of the cab outside the gates to the ruins he said, “Art picked up one side of a phone call from one of the terrorists. He was talking to Santiago, wanting to know when the next shipment was coming. From the conversation, he didn’t sound very happy with the response, but finally said he’d wait a week, but wanted a reduced price. Tony sent a message saying he was able to get a count of people in the camp. Looked to be ten or eleven men and he thinks all the arms are stored in one tent. They’re going to sleep this afternoon and sneak into the camp about midnight to get an inventory of what arms they have on hand.”
“They can do that?” Julie asked.
Deuce chuckled and said, “Art’s okay, but Tony could sneak into Jesse’s bunk and count his pubic hairs, then sneak out again.”
“No he can’t,” I said. “I shave ‘em.”
Tina and Julie both slugged me on the shoulder. We went through the gates and hired a local guide. Tina was impressed with the ruins, asking all kinds of questions of our private guide. His name was Felipe and he spoke very good English. Julie asked him how he’d learned English so well and he said he’d once worked on a freighter for four years. The crew was from all over the world, but the Captain insisted they all learn and speak English, though he was Norwegian himself. “I also speak some German and French,” he said.
Before sunset, we were about worn out, so we went back to the hotel. We decided to get cleaned up and meet for supper at the La Chopa, right here at the resort. Within minutes of being seated, I spotted the Cuban woman at the bar. We had a really great meal of prime rib and I laughed and made sure the Cuban woman saw that Tina and I were a couple. No doubt she could have gotten the desk clerk to give her the information that we had two rooms and two to a room. I don’t know why I thought it was important to make the woman see us as a couple, but I did. When we left to go back to our suites, I had my arm around Tina and let it slide down to her ass, as we walked past the Cuban woman.
Fallen Hunter (Jesse McDermitt Series) Page 25