by Matt Lincoln
“Lighthouse Reef Airstrip,” Holm told me. “That’s where he’s going.”
He pointed to a growing smudge. The offshore boat had lost speed, but it still had enough of a lead to arrive at the island first.
“He’s got to have a plane up there.” I opened the throttle. “I’m not letting this bastard get away.”
Wraith surged forward. She sliced through the water like a hockey star on ice. Holm worked on taking out the engines, but the guy was good. Even two engines down, he knew how to handle the trim and speed to evade some of our fire.
Another flash and smoke trail from the side of their boat, and I cut to starboard. The grenade hit the water to port and sent us skittering to the right, but Wraith’s sturdy hydrofoils and pontoons kept us upright and flying at those assholes.
The airstrip was at the north end of Northern Two Cayes, a small island at the end of the reef. And there were boaters out.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I swore. “Civvie boats.”
Holm left off the weapons. He swore a blue streak that’d make any sailor proud as bullets pinged off our hull. I flinched when they raked across the forward windshield, but they didn’t so much as scratch the view. Whether they were out of grenades or they actually cared about civilians, our attackers didn’t fire any more RPGs.
My bet was on the former.
“There’s the plane,” Holm pointed at a duo-prop Piper on the sand runway. “Someone’s already there, and they’re spinning up the engines.”
“Dammit!”
We were close but not close enough. They ran their boat aground, and I saw flames about the engines. Lucky for them the engines lasted as long as they did. One figure jumped onto the beach, and the other tossed a few things to the other before vaulting off the boat. They grabbed their gear and sprinted toward the airstrip. Halfway there, one turned back to their boat and dropped to a knee.
We were maybe fifteen yards out, and I put Wraith into a skidding stop as their boat went up like a volcano. Flaming metal and fiberglass parts rained onto our hull and peppered the water all around. The wake wasn’t as bad because of the shallow water, but there were at least two civvie boats in the blast area.
As I nosed Wraith up to the nearby dock, the Piper started rolling. Holm fired at the plane after it passed some small structures. Bullet holes appeared behind the boarding door but didn’t slow them down. The pilot had mastered the short takeoff and was airborne before we could do a damned thing about it.
“We need to check on those boaters and get them help.” I backed Wraith off the beach and headed over to where the sailboat I’d seen was now in trouble. A flaming hole in the sail was spreading. The other boat that was in the area was a powerboat, and they approached the sailors. “Robbie, see if there’s a way to hail Jake’s crew.”
“Aye-aye.”
I pulled astern of the sailboat, opposite of the powerboat, and opened the hatch. Holm ran to the back.
“Is anyone hurt?” he called out.
The answer was faint but clear. “Yeah, no thanks to you idiots!”
“We’re suing,” someone else shouted.
Holm closed the hatch and returned to the copilot seat. “They’re fine.”
“Wraith, come in. We’re getting distress readings.” A deep voice came over the speakers.
Holm and I stared at each other. “They’re just now getting this?”
“Had… ow… had transmissions off…” Header groaned. “Tell them… bring fuel an’ the doc…”
“The wound stopped bleeding a few minutes ago,” Tessa reported with a worried edge to her voice. “I’ve kept him as still as I could.”
I steered Wraith back toward the dock near the flaming wreckage.
“Wraith crew, this is Marston,” I transmitted. “The captain has a head injury and gave me limited control. Please bring fuel and a doctor.”
“The doc,” Header rasped.
“‘The doc,’” I corrected.
“We have your coordinates. Header, if you can hear me, I freaking told you so. This was the dumbest—”
“We’re en route,” a calm, light voice reported. “ETA is twenty. Has the vessel taken damage?”
“Unknown,” I answered. “She handled well, but there were some near-hits that rocked us. I don’t wanna move Header any more than necessary.”
“Copy that. Stay put. Don’t let anyone else aboard. And, uh, discretion is appreciated.”
“Aye-aye.”
The boat we pursued burnt itself out as we laid Header on a row of cushions. Tessa didn’t speak other than a few words to Header.
“I don’t understand you,” she told him. “You’re risking your life by not letting us take you to the hospital.”
“I’ve both taken worse,” Header told her. “It… it’s what we do.”
She crossed her arms and didn’t talk to either of us for a while. I didn’t blame her for not understanding. Civilians didn’t get what it meant to get the mission done, whether it was defusing a bomb or chasing down the bad guy, the mission came first. In too many instances, failure led to more death and destruction.
I sat on the hatch and let my feet dip into the water. A chunk of the other boat’s hull had landed almost under where we’d parked. Since it would be a while until Header’s crew arrived, and I couldn’t do more to help him, I decided to check it out. The water was a little over six feet deep and, now that the sand had settled from the chaos, clear.
The hull segment wasn’t large, and it was easy enough to get a grip on the fiberglass. I walked the piece out onto the beach. The blast had littered the beach and immediate surroundings with debris. Visitors were probably going to find remnants for years to come. I didn’t want to think about how long it was going to take to clean the mess in the first place.
I started down the dock when I saw the yacht from that morning. They blasted their horn as they approached and then weighed anchor far out enough to not run aground. I waved and walked the rest of the way down to the back of Wraith and hopped over to the hatch.
A dinghy appeared from behind the yacht. Two people rode it across smaller swells than we faced earlier. As they got closer, I was disappointed to see they wore hats and mirrored aviator sunglasses. My curiosity was in high gear, but I respected my friend too much to make anything of it.
They parked the dinghy at the hatch door. The first crew member brushed past me and then Holm to kneel at Header’s side. Both of them wore loose-fitting jackets, but this person had a feminine jawline and long red hair pulled into a braid.
“Yeah, don’t mess with her,” the other person said with a laugh. This person had the lighter voice from the radio call.
She flipped him the bird and then gently patted Header’s cheek. He’d drifted off again but came to. When he saw the half-hidden face above him, a slow grin spread across his face.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said in a woozy tone.
She answered in a flurry of sharp signing. There was a lot of pointing between him and me. Yeah, I didn’t think she liked me. Tessa glanced at me, and I gave a slight shake of my head. I didn’t want them to know she could read some of the signing.
“Which one of you is the doc?” I asked.
“I am he.” The redhead’s companion signed something. She made an exasperated raspberry sound and sat back. “Tell me what happened.”
I recounted everything from surfacing in the Bug to laying him on the cushions. He checked Header’s vitals and responses as I spoke. The redhead paced between the hatch and the copilot’s seat.
“Okay, um, I’m not going to tell her about Bug until later.” The doc cleared his throat. “She’s already pissed that it’s not here. That thing’s her baby. Was her baby.”
I shrugged. “You might be able to salvage it. That’s a nice little submersible, and it did a great job.” I looked between them.
“We’ll contact your team and tell them where to find you,” the doc informed me. “The captain is done here, and that’s
a group decision.” He smiled. “You seem like a great guy, but you’re a cop first, friend second.”
I nodded. “Understood. It was a hell of a ride, though.”
“That it is.” He watched the redhead go through another series of signs. “Yeah, she wants everyone off, like five minutes ago. We’ll take care of the captain. I won’t say I’m not worried, but the injury could be a lot worse.”
We grabbed our things, which wasn’t much compared to the day before, and moved them to the dock. The redhead stopped Tessa and grabbed her camera bag. She signed to the doc.
“She wants the memory card,” he told Tessa.
“No!” She pulled back on the bag. “I didn’t take pictures of the Wraith or Jake or anything like that.”
“Let her show you the display,” I suggested.
“Leave her alone,” Header ordered in a slightly stronger tone. I noted that he didn’t speak directly at her. Interesting. She could hear but not speak? “The camera wasn’t even out until we were in the sub.”
The redhead released the bag and backed off with her arms spread wide. She marched to the captain’s seat and warmed up Wraith’s engines. I helped the doc load the dinghy into the cabin, and then he closed the hatch. I shook my head as they pulled away from the dock.
“You were quiet,” I told Holm as the Wraith joined the yacht.
“He’s your friend, Ethan.” He picked up his bag. “I have concerns. I like the guy, but Muñoz is right. They’re vigilantes, and they’re going to cross bad lines someday. What are you going to do when that happens?”
Holm shrugged and walked off and toward the small building next to the airstrip.
“I suppose you’re upset that I didn’t take him straight to the hospital,” I said to Tessa in a soft voice. “He didn’t want to go.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Header’s an adult and gets to make his own choices. Personally, I would’ve taken him to an emergency room.”
“He wanted—”
“It was your choice,” she insisted. “Ethan, you know as well as anyone that people with head injuries don’t make great decisions sometimes.”
I rubbed the back of my head and watched the other boaters pull into the only other dock on the beach, way down at the other end of the airstrip. Those folks were one stray piece of shrapnel away from getting someone killed that day. Our unsuspected subject could kill someone else at any time. We didn’t know if they would go after innocent civilians next.
The fact that I suspected the answer to that question didn’t make me feel one damned bit better.
24
Tessa watched Ethan as he helped his MBLIS team pick through the rubble of the boat they’d chased earlier in the Wraith. Muñoz had arrived in a single-engine Cessna a couple of hours after Jake Header’s crew left. She’d brought Bonnie and Clyde, as they called Rosa and Joe, and their mini-lab. Another hour later, a Belize Coast Guard cutter brought Birn, Warner, and help for the people whose sailboat had been hit by the explosion debris.
A sudden flurry of activity at the wreckage got her attention. She got up from the towel someone had provided to sit on and picked her way across the debris-strewn beach to where Bonnie stood with hands on her hips.
“What’s got them all riled up?” Tessa asked the lab tech.
“They think they found a way to trace the boat to its owner.” Bonnie waved Tessa over to where she stood ankle-deep in the water. She wore galoshes, whereas Tessa only had her sandals. “The outboard motors were made by a small company in Tampa. Our subjects filed serial numbers and scraped the company name off the motors, but they didn’t get to the crankshafts.”
Tessa took photos of MBLIS personnel picking over the remains of said boat. She zoomed in on the part Holm held and was discussing with others.
“So you’re saying the crankshaft has information that’ll lead to where the motors were made?” Tessa stepped around a charred seat cushion.
“Exactly.” Bonnie pointed over toward where Ethan poked through another section of the debris. “He can tell you more about it.”
Tessa found him ankle-deep in the water. He turned a spark plug around in his hands and looked out to sea. She turned and only saw the water stretching to the horizon.
“What are you looking at?” she asked him.
Ethan shook his head and looked at her. “Nothing. I’m just going over everything that happened. If we hadn’t been afraid of hitting civilians, we could’ve disabled the plane with Wraith’s weapons. We could’ve stopped them from getting away.”
“We can still catch them,” she told him. “They have that information on the motors being made in Tampa.”
He nodded. “That points back to Sedin Disposal and MediWaste. If Sedin is at the center of this, that means at least two other people are working with him.”
“You said before you aren’t sure it’s Sedin.” She snapped some photos of him reaching into the water for another piece. “Are you still leaning away from him doing all this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He stood and nudged sand mounds with his foot. One after another was more sand, with a broken conch shell under another one. “I need perspective.”
“Or you need to think about something else for a while.” Tessa heard Sylvia Muñoz call her name. “I’m going back in the plane. Come with us. Bonnie or Clyde can ride back with the others on the cutter.”
“I should help with this mess. I feel responsible.”
Tessa took a breath. “You weren’t the one who fired the RPG. The bad guys did that.”
He glowered at the water for a moment, took a long, deep breath, and then let it go.
“Okay, I’ll fly back with you. We’ll bring Warner to help ferret out who that boat belonged to.” He looked down the beach toward the other boaters. “I should beat it. They won’t want me riding back on the cutter with them.” He turned the spark plug over a few more times and then walked ashore. “As far as they know, a couple raging assholes shot up their boat. I’d rather get back to the job than deal with that business.”
They waded out of the water together, and Ethan handed the spark plug off to one of the technicians.
“Heya, Marston,” Sylvia called out as they approached the Cessna. “It’s not Bette Davis, but it flies straight and safe. Plus, it’s not too big for this little bitty runway.”
The Cessna only carried four people. Muñoz piloted, Warner sat in the co-pilot seat, and Tessa sat next to Ethan in the back. It was late afternoon when they landed at the smaller airport in Belize City, rather than the international runway north of town. One of the black Audis was parked by the little terminal, and Ethan drove them back to the villa.
On the way, Tessa checked messages and email on her phone. A familiar name stood out in the email, and she opened the message. The news made her feel a little giddy, and she couldn’t help smiling.
“What’s made your day?” Ethan asked as they pulled into the garage.
Tessa held the phone screen to her chest. “Just some information that’ll be helpful for a different project. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Ethan shrugged as they got out. He, Sylvia, and Warner went to the meeting room to go through the information they had. Tessa grabbed a bag of tortilla chips and a water bottle from the kitchen and then headed up to her room. She went to her email while the daily download from her camera’s memory card progressed.
Professor Calvin Parish was an expert in the American South, and she’d quietly asked him if there was anything in late seventeenth-century port town records about the Dragon’s Rogue. Pirate ships were known to go up the East Coast. Most people had the idea that they stuck to the Caribbean, but that wasn’t so. While the warmer seas were more attractive, some pirates hunted in cooler waters at times.
She read and reread the email. Parish had come through and in a big way. Tessa started for the hall, but she hesitated. This was information she wanted to share at a special moment. This was the last night in Belize
, and their last date had been ruined. What better way to make the best of things than to present Ethan with the good news at a romantic dinner in the city, without grenades or bullets?
She ran downstairs and found the meeting room open. Ethan was speaking to Warner, and Muñoz was typing away at something. Tessa knocked on the door frame.
“Come on in,” Ethan said. He sounded much more relaxed and in charge. “We have some updates, but we’re waiting for the rest of the team to get in.”
“They’re two, no, one block away,” Warner reported. He pointed at his laptop screen. “I put this tracking app on everyone’s department phones,” he explained to Tessa. “That way, we can check in if someone goes silent.”
“Or if you want to know how long until we can leave for dinner,” Ethan observed. “Or if someone stays out too late.”
Warner put his hands up in protest. “No, dude. We only use it when people are on duty. It’s a safety thing.”
Sylvia raised an eyebrow. “Still creepy, Warner.”
“Did you say something about dinner?” Tessa asked Ethan. She tried not to sound disappointed.
“Since it’s our last night Belize, we’re all going out to a tavern tonight. They have a little of everything, so it should be a hit.” Ethan rolled his eyes at Warner. “Even the pickiest ones of us.”
Warner pointed at Ethan without looking up from his computer. “Not commenting on that. I will, however, inform you that our party has arrived.”
The door to the garage opened at that minute, and the rest of the team dragged in.
“Anything new?” Holm asked as he wandered into the meeting room.
“I’m waiting for everyone to get in here.” Ethan waved everyone in.
Sweat and sunblock scents filled the room. Tessa hoped it would be a short briefing. She liked these people, but she didn’t care to share a close space with them right then.
“The boat is registered to Sedin Disposal,” Ethan announced. “Everyone who works there was accounted for today.”
“What about people who were off today?” Birn asked.