by Matt Lincoln
“Special Agent Marston?”
“That’s me.” I took his hand, and we shook. “Are you our liaison?”
“That I am,” he answered. “Anders Tozin at your service. You may place your baggage and equipment on the trailer, and I’ll give you a ride to the cars my government is lending you.”
“Better not get into any chases that end in the water,” Holm said with a laugh.
Tozin’s eyebrows lifted at that.
“My partner is giving me shit,” I told the liaison. “I killed my car when a suspect went down a flooded street last night.”
Tozin’s faced smoothed. “Ah. Right, then. I shall hope for the best.”
He went over to the trailer and helped load cases and bags as they were brought to him. Warner lingered and began chatting despite the face full of towels. Holm and I went back on the plane to help get the last few pieces.
“Looks like someone made a friend,” I observed as Holm dug out a large box labeled for the mobile lab. “Tell you what, I thought the kid was going to puke. I did not see the bloody nose coming.”
“I wouldn’t have bet against you,” Holm admitted. He stopped at the exit and looked out at Warner and Tozin. “Seems to me like he needs to get out more.” He glanced at me with his trademark grin and eye sparkle of mischief. “He is over twenty-one, right?”
“Legal age in Belize is eighteen,” I pointed out. “But yeah. You have to be at least twenty-one to work for MBLIS.”
“We’ll need to take him out tomorrow night, get him to relax, and realize we aren’t going to torture him,” Holm insisted.
“Unless that is torture to him.” I leaned around Holm to see Warner getting on the tram with Tozin. “Take it easy with the kid. He spooks easy.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
We got the rest of the cargo area unloaded, and the trailer looked ready to tip over. Holm and I took the tram’s back row, just in case.
Tozin got us to a trio of matching black Audi A8s. Not bad, not bad at all. Once everyone and everything was loaded in, Tozin took the lead and escorted our little caravan to a large villa near the beach in Belize City. We parked in a four-car garage and gathered at the door into the house.
“We took the liberty of providing you access to one of the houses we keep for visiting dignitaries,” Tozin said with a grin. “Encrypted internet, security system, fully stocked kitchen, briefing room, everything you need.”
“I like how you slipped ‘fully stocked kitchen’ in there,” Birn pointed out. “A man’s gotta eat.” At a side-eye from Muñoz, he corrected himself. “We all gotta eat.” He patted his belly. “Some of us more than others.”
Tozin showed us the essentials and then made ready to go. We were gathered at the open kitchen, and I had claimed one of the sturdy metal and wood bar stools at the counter overlooking the living room.
“As you might imagine, I have many anxious persons to soothe over the closing of our favorite tourist location.” Tozin wrote his cell number on a sticky note and stuck it to the kitchen counter on the way out. “Call me if there is anything you need. Anything at all.”
Before settling in, we worked together to sweep the house and cars for hidden surveillance. The only bugs we found were defunct models that had probably sat in vents for years.
“They seem to be playing fair,” Clyde said after we clear the interior of the house. “Still, to be safe, Bonnie and Warner are setting jammers in the meeting room.”
“So, we’re ready for tomorrow,” I observed. “The Lemons’ dive captain and niece will be available first thing in the morning, and then we go to the Blue Hole.”
Clyde scratched at his chin and shifted his weight. “Warner and I have been talking. It would probably be a good idea for us to go set up in the lab the government opened for us. If you find anything radioactive, we need to be ready to process and measure it.”
Over in the living room, Warner had made himself at home in a plush recliner with his laptop on his, well, lap and a bowl of chips at his side. His nose was swollen, but Bonnie had stabilized it with some tape. A “They Might Be Giants” shirt replaced the other band tee that had been stained from his bloody nose. Now, he perked up at the mention of his name.
“Oh yeah,” he agreed. “Joe and I can handle all that stuff while you guys go out on the water.”
Clyde’s shoulders relaxed a little, and I sensed a bit of collaboration there. His propensity toward seasickness was well known among our team, so we generally avoided putting him on boats, at least not without Dramamine. I couldn’t help wondering if Warner’s fear of travel extended from planes to boats. If so, how did he end up with us?
“Have you two played ‘rock-paper-scissors’ on who gets to drive a fancy-pants Audi to the lab?” Holm teased. At Clyde’s sudden flush, I think we both realized that was exactly what had taken place. “Okay, who won?”
Clyde tried to deny it, but Warner’s hand shot in the air without him looking up from his screen.
Holm and I left the new buddy crew to bond and went up to choose rooms. Ours ended up being across the hall from each other. He lingered at his door with his tablet in one hand and overnight bag in the other.
“Something on your mind, partner?” I asked. The guy had been preoccupied for a few days, it seemed, but it hadn’t stopped him from doing his job as well as ever. “I’m here.”
Holm’s faraway expression turned to a smile. “It’s all good, but hey, I think Bonnie better watch out that Warner doesn’t steal her lab partner.”
I waved off the notion. “I think the three of them will form a nerd squad and hold the office’s good toys hostage for better coffee.”
“They wouldn’t be wrong to do that.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “This is true. Maybe we should warn Diane.”
Holm snorted. “Nah. I wanna see her face if and when it happens.” He stepped inside his room. “Well, I have to catch up on more reports. It turns out they don’t fill in themselves on their own.”
“Procrastination will get ya every time. See you at the butt crack of dawn, Robbie.”
“Night.”
He went in and shut the door. I wandered into my room and kicked back onto the king-sized bed. Surely Holm hadn’t gotten that far behind in his reports. Then again, this was Robbie Holm I was thinking about. My best friend and work partner usually did get his part of the paperwork in at the last minute.
Even so, I had a feeling that reports weren’t all he was writing. I smiled because I’d witnessed this before. There were some things my buddy was sensitive about and liked to wait before telling anyway, but I was his oldest friend and recognized it.
Holm was showing all the signs that he was in love. What I didn’t know was with who.
7
We met Haley Lemon and the captain of the boat who took the family out to the Blue Hole the next morning at the marina where the boat in question was docked. The Maria’s Lace was a simple dive yacht large enough to make the trip and back and maybe stay overnight.
Haley brought a heavy three-ring binder and tossed it onto the table in the yacht’s galley. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her clothes were wrinkled as if she had worn them to bed. She slid onto the bench and rested her elbows on the table.
“I designed their gear from top to bottom,” she told us. “Uncle Dare and I went through every millimeter of the material to prevent H2S saturation. We tested and retested the deep dive tanks and air mixes.” She blinked as she met my gaze. “Did you know that they were each carrying one less tank than normal? It’s because of the new compression and mixes we developed. And you know what? It worked. All of it worked. But it didn’t do them a bit of good.”
I glanced at Holm. He was better at calming witnesses who bordered on hysterical. I was better at fetching water and tissues, so I got up and walked a whole two steps to the sink and cabinet to do just that.
“Haley, it did do them good,” Holm soothed. “Imagine going through all they are now
plus having the bends or H2S poisoning. Nobody could’ve done better.”
I set the water glass and a tissue box next to her binder. She pushed the thick stack of documentation over for us to look at. Those were trade secrets. She was putting a lot of trust in us to give us a peek. I paged through and pretended to be absorbed in it while listening. The pretending part got more difficult the deeper I got into the diagrams and notes. The Lemons really were a brilliant team, and they came up with stuff that would’ve taken me decades to figure out. I finally had to close it to do my job and listen.
“No, but I’m glad,” Haley was saying. “If she’d brought that towel up, Captain Crane and I could’ve gotten sick, too. We have to go back for yearly scans after handling the contaminated…” She blinked several times, and I handed her a tissue. “We both had a little exposure, but the doctors aren’t worried.”
“Did you see anything out of the ordinary that morning?” I ventured. “Even with the water insulating the particles, they couldn’t have been down there long.”
Haley shook her head. “I was too busy doing last-minute safety checks. That’s not something you mess around with by getting distracted.”
Holm looked at me and smirked.
“What?” I demanded.
“Aruba, and that’s all I’m saying.”
I wanted to punch him, but we had a witness. It would’ve been a friendly punch. Probably. He had to know I’d get him back for that one.
“What happened in Aruba?” Haley asked me.
“Nothing,” I grunted.
“A girl.” Holm laughed. “My partner almost drowned because he got distracted by a girl.”
“The less said, the better,” I growled. “And that was before the SEALs. It doesn’t count, so shut up.”
The corner of Haley’s mouth twitched. That was an improvement, even if it came at my expense.
“You know what I’m talking about, then,” was all she said to that point. “You can ask Captain Crane whether he noticed anything. I’d think he would’ve said something by now if he had.”
I nudged the binder back over to Haley.
“This is remarkable work, and it’s going to save lives,” I told her. “I can see applications for recreational divers that your uncle was probably going to push to have incorporated into mainstream diving. This is a legacy thing.”
Her cheeks colored as she accepted the binder back. She cradled it a little and took a deep breath.
“You’re right, of course.” She nodded to Holm and then me. “Thank you. I’m flying to Miami in a few hours to… to say goodbye. I’ll tell him what you said. It’ll mean a lot.”
A few minutes later, Captain Derrick Crane joined us in the below deck. The old sea dog’s leathery skin damned near creaked as he moved about the cabin. He joined us at his little galley table.
“I know you’re going to ask if I saw or heard anything,” he started off. His rural American accent got me wondering where he hailed from. “Truth is, I told everyone I didn’t, but I got to thinkin’, maybe what I saw wasn’t what I thought I saw if y’know what I mean.”
“Pretend I don’t.” I wasn’t so sure I did. “Explain it from the beginning.”
“We got to the dive site a little after sunrise.” Crane looked past my shoulder as he spoke, almost like he was watching it on replay. “Divers get out there early if they can, and those Lemons weren’t no different. There’s always boats out at the atolls, so that’s normal.” He crossed his arms and put his elbows on the edge of the table. “I didn’t think much of it except that he was toward the middle, further out than he should’a been. Not my business ’coz I was helping those nice folks with their testing and all that.”
“Tell us about that boat,” Holm interjected. “What did it look like? What was he doing?”
“I thought he was pushing divers off the boat.” He mimicked a shoving motion. “Me, I like divers to step off themselves, but others like doin’ other things, and that’s their p’rogative. I figured that’s all that was going on until after talking to government types. After that, I had a dream where I was seein’ it again, only it wasn’t people, it was barrels. But it could’a been just a dream.” He thought for a moment. “The boat looked like a center console. Somethin’ real simple-like, but it was pretty friggin’ far, and I was helping those folks on my own boat.”
“You still are helping,” Holm told him. They shook hands, and Holm gave him a card. “Thank you for your time. If you think of anything else, call.”
We left the Maria’s Lace and walked to a different, quieter area of the marina. I couldn’t help grinning as we met up with the three other team members going on the dive trip that day. Bonnie wasn’t a diver, but she was always up for collecting samples and doing basic work with the mini-lab. Muñoz and Birn were our equals in diving, though.
“An old friend of mine is taking us out,” I told everyone, including Holm. It felt good to be able to drop a good surprise on people. “He and some friends custom-built his boat, and they use it to go after pirates and traffickers. Bounties, if they come across them. Remember that old Airwolf show? Think of that concept on the water.”
Holm’s eyes widened, and then Birn’s.
“No way,” the big guy rumbled. Birn wasn’t easily impressed, so it was cool to get one up on him. “Not him.”
Muñoz looked at each of us like we were crazy. Sometimes I forgot she’d come in from the West Coast less than a year earlier. Some rumors didn’t seem to make it out there, and this was one. For her part, Bonnie frowned as if trying to remember something.
“Hey, guys.”
I turned to see a tall guy with black hair and green eyes approach. He had a few years on me, but with the shape he was in, he looked no older than thirty.
“Team, meet Jake Header,” I announced. “Former SEAL, former so-secret-he-can’t-tell-you stuff that’s still classified, and now a pirate hunter.”
Holm shook his head in amazement. I’d always felt bad that I got to work with someone he’d looked up to and was never allowed to tell him about it. It was during the only time we were sent on different assignments during our careers. It was also one of the most challenging times of my life.
“It’s an honor, sir,” Holm gushed.
I allowed them a few minutes to get the hero worship out of the way. Birn and Bonnie joined Holm as they chatted with the swarthy modern-day buccaneer.
“You sure this is on the up and up?” Muñoz asked in a low voice as she approached me. “I just Googled the guy, and there’s some heavy stuff about his boat and crew.”
I sighed with a nod. “I got special clearance, Sylvia. As much as I love the guy, he walks the edge. The deal was only him, and we’re his crew for the duration. As far as we know, there are no international warrants for his arrest.”
“And I suppose we aren’t checking for local warrants.”
“No, ma’am.”
Once the hubbub eased, we followed Header to a plain-looking catamaran that had been backed into its slip. It was equipped with generic dive equipment that even Muñoz wrinkled her nose at.
There was just enough space to stow our gear and seat everyone besides. The crestfallen looks on Holm’s and Birn’s faces were more fun for me. These were badass adults who looked like they were promised bullet train rides and ended up with Thomas the Tank Engine. I got some dirty looks sent my way as I took one of the seats along the hull.
Header winked at me.
“There’s more to her than it seems,” he promised. This, I suspected, was true, but not in the way he teased. “Welcome aboard. Sit your asses down and hold on tight.”
Header trawled out of the slip and through the marina. By the time we reached open water, my teammates looked, for the most part, annoyed. Holm gave me his “you gotta be kidding me” look about the same time I grabbed the front edge of my seat.
See, Captain Jake Header loved to mess with people, even friends and allies. It was in his nature, and you had to
be really sure you wanted to hang around him for any length of time. It’d been a few years in my case, and I thought I was ready.
“Ethan, is something wrong?” Jake called out in a pleasant tone.
I narrowed my eyes, sure he was up to something. “Why do you ask, Jake?”
“Oh, no reason other than you looked like you were ready to take a shit on my boat.”
“I guess I thought—”
Jake slammed the throttle open, and the catamaran lurched forward. The engines fully kicked in, and hell if that bastard didn’t catch me off guard, anyway. Like everyone else, I fell sideways and had to grab something to keep from hitting the deck. God, I loved to hate that man.
“What the hell is going on?” Holm yelled over the roaring engines and splashing water. “I thought he had something a little more… advanced.”
“Give him a few minutes. You won’t be disappointed,” I replied.
Header took us north and then to a property with a wide boathouse. A gray tarp hung across the front, and Header docked along the structure’s outside wall.
“What you all really want to see is in there,” Header announced. “Go on in. As long as you don’t break anything, I won’t have to break you.” He kept me back as the others went to check out their big surprise.
“We got leads on more of those traffickers,” he reported. “Some of them aren’t looking so good, Ethan. My team is working on an inland rescue right now, and I don’t like the chances of what they’ll find.”
“Do you need to go?”
He shook his head. “I’m a frogman, brother. I’m more useful at sea. My people got it, I just think they’re gonna be too late.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, but y’know, we’ve recovered a lot of people so far.”
“True that.” I jumped onto the dock. “Not to change the subject…”
“Not at all,” Header laughed.
“How’s it going to feel to run her in the open with a free pass for the week?”
“Christmas, man, Christmas.” Header’s infectious grin reminded me of some not-so-nightmarish days. “Ready to meet her?”