Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  If only Chase weren’t in the wind. She looked at the newspaper headlines in Arizona. No new reports of bodies in the desert. No mention of the FBI. She decided to believe that no news was good news, at least in the United States. In the Galápagos, it seemed likely that no news meant the story had been swept under the rug.

  It was only a little after four thirty, so she dialed the American Embassy in Quito, and connected with an English speaker there by the name of John Dixon. After she explained who she was, Dixon said, “We are aware of the situation with the death of Dr. Kazaki.”

  “There’s been another attack.” She explained the shooting incident she’d witnessed this morning. Dixon interrupted in midstream.

  “This Bergit . . . is she an American citizen?”

  She hadn’t anticipated that question. “I don’t think so, but she was mistaken for one.”

  There was a long pause as they both considered the implications of that statement. Then Dixon said, “Explain how you know this.”

  Was she about to step on a land mine? “Are you an American citizen?” she asked.

  When Dixon responded that he was, she felt slightly more secure, so she explained the whole crazy business of the Zing pseudonym and the redheaded avatar. All Americans under the age of sixty knew about social media and screen names and images by now, didn’t they?

  At the end of her account, she heard only the distant clacks of computer keys. “Hello?”

  “I’m looking at your blog posts now,” he said.

  “Check out the comments on Zing’s post. There are threats.”

  “So . . . you believe that your blog posts led to this attack on the Norwegian tourist?”

  Put that way, she sounded like the criminal. She swallowed her annoyance and confirmed, “They thought they were attacking Zing.”

  “Are you aware that in Ecuador you can be arrested for participating in a political protest, Miss Westin?”

  Not that again. “I’m not engaged in a political protest.”

  “The government of Ecuador may not see it that way. There have been no attacks on you, correct?”

  “Yet.”

  She hoped she only imagined the scoffing noise before he said, “I advise you to cease the critical posts. And you might want to leave the country as soon as you can.”

  She explained that the police had her passport. Another prolonged silence followed by a faint click. Had he invited someone else to listen in?

  “You referred to this shooting of the Norwegian woman as ‘another attack.’ Are you saying that Dr. Kazaki was attacked? According to our information, his death was accidental drowning.”

  “His air hose was severed and his neck and face were slashed. Does that sound accidental to you?”

  A beat. “Do the fiscalia consider you a suspect in Dr. Kazaki’s death?”

  The image of that dive knife and earring in the police station leapt into her head. “You’d have to ask them. They haven’t detained me.”

  Another beat. “So, in summary, nobody has threatened you, Summer Westin, or indicated that you will be maltreated in any way?”

  Damn it. Dan had been killed and Bergit had been shot. How had Dixon succeeded in making her feel like a neurotic wimp? “That’s correct,” she responded quietly.

  “I’m sure the fiscalia will return your passport as soon as they finish their investigation.”

  “Uh-huh.” And when might that be?

  “We will continue to monitor the situation, Miss Westin. Thank you for contacting your U.S. Embassy.” The dial tone announced the end of their conversation.

  “That went well,” she said to her computer.

  She was tired of thinking about the whole sordid mess. She was sick of her tiny cabin. If she was going to get a bullet through the head, she’d rather die outdoors than in her bunk. And since she hadn’t actually died yet, Out There would expect her to do a post today for Wilderness as well as Zing. She slung her binoculars and camera around her neck and walked topside. Her head still ached, but the fresh air felt good.

  Papagayo was anchored in Darwin Bay, nestled in the crescent of Genovesa Island, also known as Tower for its looming eighty-foot-high cliff. The tour group had explored the island this morning as she and J.J. were diving. Hundreds, or maybe thousands, of birds swirled over the island. According to her guidebook, the island was home to red-footed boobies, frigatebirds, swallow-tailed gulls, red-billed tropicbirds, storm petrels, masked boobies, and a wide variety of gulls and terns. If she was lucky, she might spot short-eared owls. She would head for Prince Philip’s Steps—a trail that lead to the top of the cliff.

  When her kayak hit the water with a splash, a crewman leaned over the railing, then shouted something over his shoulder. Constantino rushed out, waving. “Miss, we eat dinner in one hour!”

  “Save me some,” she yelled. She slid into the kayak cockpit and paddled away before anyone could stop her.

  The wind had died down and the water was calm, lapping gently at the white sand beach. She landed the kayak there, pulled the boat out of the reach of rogue waves, and then climbed the trail. Birds dipped and swirled overhead, soaring in a circular pattern around the island, so thick she felt like she was climbing into a cloud of giant gnats. The only sounds were the breeze and myriad bird calls. It seemed impossible that this morning she’d gone scuba diving, witnessed attempted murder, and nearly given herself the bends. She was probably the only tourist to whom each day in these islands felt like a month.

  She shot a video of hundreds of birds wheeling against the orange sunset, then quickly captured several stills of the small gray storm petrels ducking into narrow rock crevices that hid their nests. As she zoomed in on an arriving petrel with a fish in its mouth, she spotted an owl sitting motionless only a few yards away. The petrel parent disappeared into a narrow crevice, and Sam heard the cheeping of a chick inside. After a few minutes, the adult petrel oozed back out of the crevice, flapped its wings, and was airborne. The owl leapt into the air and came down hard on the petrel with its talons. With a piercing cry, the petrel slammed into the rock and fluttered there, dazed. Before it could regain its feet, the owl had pounced again, digging its talons into the unfortunate seabird. With a flurry of feathers, the owl took off with the still-shrieking petrel squirming in its deadly grasp.

  Sam continued to film its flight, but if she’d had a rifle at that moment, she would have shot that owl. It was a crazy thought for a wildlife biologist. This was the natural order of things. The petrel chick had lost its parent, but the owl had found food for its babies tonight.

  As she listened to the soft cheeping of the hidden and now orphaned chick, she couldn’t stop thinking about Dan’s toddler son Sean. He would wonder why his daddy never came home. Bergit, an innocent tourist, had been shot to scare off Zing. She was sick of predators.

  A wave of birds took off a short distance away. As their wingbeats and raucous calls subsided, Sam heard a footstep behind her.

  19

  Before she could turn, a hand landed on her shoulder. “Relax,” said J.J. “It’s only me.”

  Sam dropped the rock she’d grabbed. “How’d you get here?”

  “Panga.”

  “They let you take one?”

  “I didn’t ask.” J.J. stared at her. “Are you one hundred percent again?”

  “Maybe eighty. My head still aches, and my hands and feet still tingle.”

  “And you’re still rattled by what happened this morning.”

  Sam studied the other woman’s face. “You’re not?”

  J.J. plopped down on a stone step. Sam sat beside her. After unzipping the black nylon waist pouch she wore, J.J. rummaged for a second, and then held out a photo.

  The dog-eared snapshot showed a thirtyish man, with unruly long dark hair and a rakish smile. He raised a champagne glass toward the camera.

  “Carl Bascom. My lover, I guess you’d say now. We were engaged.” J.J. made a wry face. “That was before his right foot
was torn off by a land mine.”

  Good Lord. “Is . . . was he a soldier?” Sam asked.

  J.J. shook her head. “He’s an NPF biologist, just like me. He was checking reports of poaching in a tiger preserve in Thailand.”

  Sam resisted the urge to clamp her hands over her ears. She handed the photo back.

  J.J. gently traced a fingertip around her lover’s paper image. “The poachers got tired of trying to track the tigers. The cats were too unpredictable,” she said sadly. “So they set land mines around the watering hole.”

  Sam tried hard not to envision the resulting damage to man or tiger. “I’m sorry, J.J.”

  “Carl broke off our engagement. Said he didn’t want to saddle me with a man who wasn’t whole.” J.J. stuffed the photo back into her pouch, brushed the back of her hand across her eyes, and then looked out at the sunset. “Right now NPF has fifty teams in the field, combing this planet, counting plants, animals, insects. The world needs a wakeup call, and we’re going to give them one.” She pursed her lips, thinking for a moment, then turned to Sam. “Are the locals trying to scare us? Of course they are. They desperately want that Chinese company to build that new resort.”

  She turned her face back toward the sea. “But the thugs are not going to succeed. Someone has stand up for the animals, for the planet. Even if they kill us—make us martyrs, like Kazaki—we’ll be continuing the fight that way, and NPF will send someone else. So it doesn’t really matter what they do to us.”

  Doesn’t matter? Sam felt a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze wafting up the hill.

  J.J. continued. “You didn’t die, and Zing—”

  “Bergit,” Sam corrected. Bergit had no hint she was part of this battle. The phrases innocent bystander and collateral damage trotted across Sam’s brain.

  “—didn’t die. So it’s a win for our side. The enemy has shown their hand, and they made themselves look stupid.” J.J. stood up and stretched. “Let’s go have dinner. Do you think you might be up to the last dive at Wolf tomorrow?”

  Sam nodded. She wanted to get this job over with.

  J.J. squinted at her. “You sure? It’s not a great idea after a DCS episode. We could put the dive off for a day.”

  “I’m fine. I want to finish.” Her flight reservation was two days away. She still wanted to believe she was going to be able to use it. One more dive, two more posts. Her contract would be done, the world would be wiser, and she’d be out of here.

  “Okay, then,” J.J. said. “We need to get to bed early because we have to get up before dawn tomorrow. It’s a long trip up to Wolf.”

  “Who’s taking us?”

  “Some guys I met in town,” J.J. said over her shoulder. “I picked the fastest boat; otherwise it would take all day.”

  “Who are these guys?”

  J.J.’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Could be drug runners, for all I know. It’s a pain in the butt to get to, but Wolf is especially important. It’s remote and it’s jam-packed with sharks and other fish, so if any area is getting strip-mined, it will be there.” She glanced at Sam. “Stop looking so worried. The boat owner has a sideline business running a high-speed shuttle service between island towns, so he can’t be too sleazy. Plus, my deal with him was under the table, with only half up front. Half on safe return to Papagayo. So we’ll probably be okay.”

  Probably? Sam was beginning to hate that word. She followed J.J. down the steps in the growing darkness, no longer feeling quite so reassured by the other woman’s presence. J.J. was fearless because she had a death wish.

  Summer Westin, on the other hand, didn’t have the makings of a true eco-warrior. She didn’t want to end up like Dan. She wanted to feel Chase’s lips on hers, help Maya make a quilt, hear Simon’s husky purr as he curled in her lap, eat Blake’s latest concoction, and watch the slide show of her father’s honeymoon trip.

  It doesn’t really matter what they do to us? Of course it mattered what happened to Dan. To Bergit. To Carl. To J.J. To her. It all mattered. She wanted to save the planet, but she also wanted to live.

  * * * * *

  After dinner in her cabin, she wrote Wilderness’s post, focusing on the owl killing the petrel and the need to always be on the lookout for predators. It would not make her Seattle editors happy, but she’d sworn she was going to write about the real world of the Galápagos.

  Wilderness’s email folder held a message from Elizabeth Kazaki. Dan came home this morning, she had written. This little tag was in the pocket of his wetsuit. Is it important?

  That explained why Sam hadn’t seen Dan’s wetsuit at the police station. Attached to the message was a photo of a small metal tag. It looked to be brass. The beginning encrustations of coral or barnacles obscured much of the engraving, but between blotches, she could make out a J, followed by either an F or a P and the numbers 4 and 3. The end pieces were broken through and it was bent in the middle, looking as if it had been pried off a larger piece it had been screwed or nailed into. The image seemed vaguely familiar, but she didn’t know why.

  She sent a note of thanks to Elizabeth and said she would report any connections she made.

  An email from Tad Wyatt told her to keep the murder clues coming. Readers are intrigued. At least this is something positive from Dr. Kazaki’s death. Wyatt had no doubt added the last sentence as an attempt to console her. Only an asshole marketer would consider increased readership a trade-off for a man’s murder.

  There were still no messages from Chase in her email or voicemail. He was simply unable to contact her, she told herself; it didn’t mean he’d rejected her. It didn’t mean anything terrible had happened to him. Did it?

  She crawled into her bunk feeling such a mix of emotions that she wasn’t sure she could ever get to sleep. Grief over Dan’s death. Anger and guilt for Bergit’s shooting. Frustration from her failure to discover who had killed Dan and her inability to contact Chase. Anxiety because the fiscalia had her passport and earring. Worry that thugs like Carlos Santos knew where she was. Armed thugs.

  But as J.J. had pointed out, she had survived a near-death experience today. Zing and WildWest—and poor Bergit—lived to fight another day. The trouble was, her team was getting awfully tired of the battle.

  * * * * *

  Chase wished he’d worn a down vest under his windbreaker. The Arizona desert was surprisingly cold after dark. He and Nicole were hunkered down in a makeshift blind along with Dread, Randy, Joanne, Marshall, and Ryder. Between the seven of them they had an arsenal—six long-range semiautomatic rifles, the full automatic Ryder brought, a pistol apiece, and heavy backpacks loaded with ammunition.

  Each of them wore a pair of night vision goggles strapped to their heads. Only Marshall’s were in place at the moment as he peered into the dark desert. Without the goggles, Chase saw only dim silhouettes of saguaro cactus. They looked like an army of alien beings surrendering, spiky arms held high.

  The stars were magnificent. Summer had given him back the stars—had he ever told her that? He’d tell her when they met up in a few days. He’d also tell her that while he always wanted more time with her, he’d take whatever time she would give him. Whether that was a few days, a year, or forever.

  Undercover work was proving to be simultaneously tedious and stressful. Every day felt like he was hiding out in a foreign country. That thought made him wonder continuously what was happening to Summer on those goddamn Ecuadorian islands.

  “Any minute now,” Dread said, interrupting Chase’s thoughts. The glow from his cell phone lit up the planes of his face. “They’re supposed to be coming through any minute now.”

  “Says who?” Nicole asked.

  Dread held up his cell. “We got eyes at the border.”

  “If you can see illegals coming through, how come Border Patrol can’t?”

  Ryder snorted. “Border Patrol sees ’em just fine.”

  The muscles in Chase’s neck tightened. Homeland Security’s constant worry
was that the ranks of the Border Patrol were being infiltrated by cartel members or corrupted by massive bribes to overlook the flow of people or drugs across the border. “You telling us Border Patrol notifies you when they’re coming?”

  Ryder spat into the dust. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Chase thought the slimeball might have nailed the toe of his boot. “Let’s just say that the official Border Patrol can’t deal, right? All they’re allowed to do is net the wetbacks, give ’em a nice chauffeured ride back across the line, and then do it all over again in a few days.”

  “That’s the government for you,” Joanne said.

  “But there’s those inside Border Patrol that know there’s only one way to get rid of the problem.” Randy pulled a flask from the chest pocket of his jacket, unscrewed the lid, and took a swallow. He held the flask out and glanced around their little circle.

  Chase knew he was still on probation, so he reached for the flask, threw back his head, and took a gulp. Whiskey. It tasted like Jack Daniels. Good, burned all the way down his throat. “Thanks.” He handed the flask back.

  “So the Border Patrol knows we’re here?” Nikki pressed. “I don’t want to get shot by an officer thinkin’ I’m a wetback.”

  Chase apologized for Charlie’s wife. “Nik’s a worrywart.”

  Ryder put his hand on Nikki’s forearm. “Don’t sweat. They know all about this. Hell, they support us, ’cause the man doesn’t let them do what needs to be done.”

  “Don’t touch my wife.” Charlie frowned at Ryder and Nikki shook off the man’s hand. Ryder held up both hands in mock surrender.

  Was what Ryder said true? Chase’s gaze connected briefly with Nicole’s, and then he quickly looked away. Was she as worried as he was? This was supposed to be a joint operation between Customs and Border Patrol and the FBI. But if the CBP connection was corrupt, anything might be happening right now.

  Last night, Nicole had managed to find an Internet café and send an email message to her old friend Rhonda@freeflorida.net, which was the actual email address of their FBI superiors. The encrypted message, labeled Nikki’s Vacation Report, was full of details about their traveling companions and plans and, most importantly, Dread’s cell phone number. That cell phone was gold; it was the portal they’d been seeking into the New American Citizen Army network.