by Mark Donovan
After getting back to the hotel and cleaning up the three went down to the hotel’s restaurant and had another fantastic evening dinner. By 9pm, however, they were all exhausted and each heading off to their own rooms to crash. They needed to depart the hotel for the beach by 5:30 am to allow themselves enough time to get prepared for Dave’s dive. Joe left the restaurant for his room first, leaving Dave and Dana to have a couple of minutes to themselves.
“Joe’s been doing a phenomenal job,” Dave said.
“Yes, he has a great attitude and is a quick learner. However, Dave, I’m very worried about you tomorrow. I don’t want to see you get killed.”
She was looking intensely at Dave as she voiced her concern. It was obvious to Dave as he gazed back at her that she still held deep feelings for him. Feelings that she still seemed to want to try to suppress, but was having an increasingly difficult time doing.
Dave reached out and put his arm around her shoulder as they walked out of the restaurant. She didn’t pull back, but instead nestled more closely into him.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said gently. “I know what I’m doing and will be very careful. It is essential that we get Evans and Hardy to ingest the nano-dust if we are to take this administration down. With Hardy infected, we’ll have a first-hand look at what’s going on in the Oval Office on a daily basis. And with Evans infected, we’ll be able to track his business transactions as they relate to the TMA plans. With Barbas, Evans and Hardy walking around with nano-dust in them, they’ll quickly destroy themselves and the administration, as they tell their own tragic play to the country’s citizens.
Dana stopped walking and looked up at Dave. “I trust you’ll make every effort to be safe tomorrow Dave, but those guys play for deadly keeps and I just don’t want to lose you again.”
Dave looked down at her when she completed her last words and stared at her for a minute. He then gave her a light kiss on her lips and said, “And I don’t want to lose you again either Dana. But, I also want us to live in a free country again. Without our freedom we will have nothing.”
The two walked arm and arm together back to their hotel rooms. When they got to the door of Dana’s room, the two stopped and just stared at each other quietly.
“You have a big day tomorrow Dave. I’d love to have you stay with me tonight.”
Dave cut her off with another kiss to stop her next words. “I know,” he said. “There will be time later. Get some sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow morning at 5:30am in the lobby.”
With that, Dave gave her one more light kiss goodnight on the cheek and left her to walk on to his hotel room. Dana watched him walk down the hall for a few seconds before inserting her plastic room key into the door lock and walking into her room.
Chapter 50 (March 24, Sunday 6:00am Atlantic Standard Time)
They had already made it back to the beach and set up their surveillance camp again by 5:50am the next morning. Dave was already in his shorty wetsuit and was attaching his tank and regulator to his buoyancy compensator device (BCD) while Dana was getting his dive mask, snorkel and fins. Joe was pulling out the nano-dust canisters from their packing box and placing them into a mesh dive bag.
There were very few lights showing onboard the Kosmos. However, there was a guard that could be seen patrolling around the deck of the yacht. It was obvious by his movements and gait that he was tired, and his attentiveness was down. The sky was just starting to lighten and it appeared he was anxious to be relieved of his night watch.
As Dana eyed the guard walking onboard the yacht she said, “Dave you’re going to need to time your boarding of that boat. You should wait to board it until the guard is towards the bow of the boat.”
“That’s why I’ve got Joe here and this radio receiver ear piece. When I near the swim platform at the stern of the yacht, I’ll have my ears on listening for Joe’s command to proceed with the boarding.”
“No problem Dave. I’ll feed you play-by-play directions on when to move and when not to,” laughed Joe.
“Joe, help me get this tank and BCD on.” Dave sat down next to the tank and BCD on the ground tarp and began to wriggle into his BCD. Joe helped lift the BCD and tank up a bit so that Dave could squeeze into the BCD and fasten it and adjust the straps. The BCD already had integrated weights installed in it, so there was no weight belt to deal with.
After standing up with the BCD and tank strapped to his back, Dave dipped his dive mask into a pail of sea water that Joe had earlier collected, and then spit into the mask. After swishing his saliva around in the mask with his fingers, he re-rinsed the mask in the pail of water. Saliva still seemed to be the best, and lowest cost, dive mask defogger on the market.
“Dana, turn on my air and I’ll be ready to roll.”
Once Dana had completed turning on the tank’s air, Dave placed the regulator in his mouth and tried breathing. It was operating flawlessly. Air flowed easily when he inhaled. He left the regulator in his mouth so that there was no chance of it free-flowing and creating any unwanted noises, and losing large volumes of air from the tank. Joe then handed him the dive bag with the two canisters of nano-dust, and one last time Dave checked his BCD pocket to make sure that the water tight bag with his radio ear piece was in it.
With the checks complete he made a direct path from their camp to the water’s edge. As soon as he hit the water he got down into a crouch position to enter the water quickly. He wanted to make sure that no one on the Kosmos saw him enter the water. Based on the fact that the sunrise had yet to occur, and minimal lights were on the yacht, it was a pretty safe bet he had gone undetected when entering the water. After dropping below the surface of the water he put on his swim fins and checked his compass before making a direct course for the Kosmos.
Dana and Joe watched Dave’s trail of bubbles as he moved in the direction of the yacht. He moved surprisingly quickly. As he was nearing the yacht Joe turned on the radio and got prepared to talk Dave through his mission onboard the yacht.
Dave made it to the yacht in just under 15 minutes. The swim had been invigorating. He had felt more alive and excited than he had in years, though he still had some trepidations on boarding the yacht. He knew that Barbas suspected NSurv and him were behind the video of him. He also knew that Barbas was ruthless, and would have no compunction torturing him first to extract information out of him about NSurv, before killing him. As Dave surfaced at the port side stern of the Kosmos he held the water tight bag containing the receiver ear piece. He had left his BCD and tank at the bottom of the ocean directly underneath the Kosmos. As he placed the ear piece in his ear he heard Joe repeatedly saying that the guard was on the starboard forward side of the yacht.
“Perfect,” thought Dave. He quickly climbed up onto the swim platform and then made his way up the flight of stairs to the main deck of the yacht. He then moved quickly to the cover of a jet ski that was sitting on a platform at waist level. From this new vantage point he had a straight line view down the port side of the yacht. He hid behind the jet ski and waited for the guard to come walking down the port side of the yacht.
“Guard on the bow and making his way towards the port side of the Kosmos,” Joe transmitted over the radio.
A second later Dave saw the guard walking in his direction. He walked at a lazy pace and was smoking a cigarette as he passed by Dave three minutes later. Dave could see the bulge in the man’s sport coat as he passed by. No doubt he was carrying a weapon. Once the guard had rounded the stern of the yacht and began his walk up the starboard side again, Dave made a beeline for the sky lounge up near the bow of the yacht. As he progressed up the port side of the yacht, Joe continued to give him updates on the guard’s position and any other human movement. He had made his way about a third of the length up the port side when a door opened in front of him. He froze in his tracks. It was a galley cook. In his hands he was carrying a large tray containing various fruits. Fortunately, as he exited the door he moved forward in the direction of the sky lounge.
Apparently he was preparing the lounge for breakfast. Dave ducked behind a lifeboat until the galley cook had made his way up and into the sky lounge. He then continued to move rapidly up the side of the yacht as he knew he had lost precious time. Joe had already been reporting that the guard was nearing the bow of the yacht again.
As Dave got to the sky lounge he ducked into a door adjacent to the lounge door. It was a small utility room that contained boat cleaning tools. It turned out it was the perfect place to hide and wait for Barbas and his company. As Dave waited in the utility room, Joe continued to feed him an updated status of activity on the yacht, or at least activity that he could see from the shoreline’s vantage. The guard who had been patrolling the deck had been relieved at 6:30am by another man. The new guard had a lot more spring in his walk from what Joe described. He was completing his patrol laps around the yacht in half the time as the previous guard.
Dave could also hear the muted sounds of the galley staff shuffling around in the lounge and occasionally talking amongst themselves. However, it was nearly three quarters of an hour from when he slipped into the utility closet until he heard Barbas’s baritone voice bellowing out orders to staff members in the sky lounge. His voice was easily loud enough to be heard through the utility room’s thin walls. Evans and Hardy were expected to be in the sky lounge in just a few minutes, at 7:00am sharp, and apparently the galley crew had yet to complete its breakfast preparation. Suddenly he also began to hear the soft sound of music playing in the sky lounge. It was Bob Marley and the Wailers playing.
Dave removed the two canisters of nano-dust from the dive bag and removed the safety locks from their nozzles. While he had waited in the utility room he had formulated a plan for releasing the nano-dust in the sky lounge. However, the new guard’s lap rate around the yacht created a bit of a challenge. Timing was now going to be very critical. Once Evans, Hardy and Barbas were in the lounge eating breakfast, he would wait for Joe’s next report on when the guard would pass by the utility room and the lounge. He would then wait 20 seconds before slipping out of the utility room with both canisters. It was going to be a risky move, but his plans were to simply crack open the back port door of the sky lounge and place the nozzle ends of the canisters into the lounge. He would then turn on the nozzles and release the nano-dust. From the sounds he had heard earlier from the staff, the port entrance was far enough away from the dining table that he hoped no one would see the door slightly ajar nor hear the canister nozzles hiss. The only wrinkle in his plans was the new guard’s lap rate around the yacht. It would take approximately two minutes for the canisters to empty their contents of the nano-dust. Based upon the new guard’s lap rate, he’d barely have enough time to empty out the canisters’ contents before the guard rounded the port side of the yacht and had an unobstructed view of him.
Dave heard Barbas yell out a loud and vivacious good morning when Hardy and Evans entered the sky lounge together. Evans and Hardy were not as excited and loud as Barbas, but Dave clearly heard them respond to Barbas’s welcome. As he waited for Joe’s next report of the guard passing by him, he heard the sounds of clinking plates and silverware and the men talking. The galley crew had also left the sky lounge so that the men could share their breakfast by themselves.
“Guard just passing by you,” chirped the sound of Joe’s voice in Dave’s ear piece.
It was game on. Dave checked his dive watch and observed the second hand count off twenty seconds. He then cracked open the utility room door to see if the deck was clear. No one was in sight. He slipped out of the utility room and only took a couple of steps to the port door of the sky lounge. He crouched down on his hands and knees and cracked open the door only wide enough to insert the canister nozzles into the lounge. He then pulled their triggers and the nano-dust began to spew out from the canisters. Fortunately, the Bob Marley music that continued to play muffled out the hiss sound of the nozzles as they spewed out their contents into the lounge. Now it was simply a matter of timing and luck. It would be close, but most of the contents of the dust should be dispensed in the minute and a half he had allocated for dumping their contents. He would then have thirty seconds to jump over the deck railing and into the water below.
Time seemed to stop as Dave anxiously waited for the contents of the canisters to empty out. He continued to look behind him to see if the guard was coming up the port side. When ninety seconds had ticked off his watch he removed the canisters from the lounge doorway and backed away from the door. Just as he was putting the canisters in his dive bag the guard rounded the corner of the stern port side. He was still nearly seventy-five yards away from Dave, but he saw him anyway. Dave immediately ran to the yacht’s railing and jumped over the side of the yacht and into the Caribbean Sea. Fortunately he had already pulled his dive mask out of the dive bag and had it in his hands when he jumped overboard. He quickly put the mask on after landing in the water, and pulled in one large breath of air before diving underneath the yacht. As he dove underwater he heard the guard yelling on the yacht that there was an intruder onboard the boat. As he dove down toward the sea floor he could see bullets darting through the water adjacent to him. One nearly hit him in the leg as he quickly swam underneath the yacht.
His tank and BCD were resting on the bottom thirty feet below and it was a fifty yard underwater swim to them. Dave knew he had to take another breath before he could reach his gear. He swam half the distance down the length of the yacht before surfacing right near the port side hull of the yacht. He could hear Barbas yelling orders and feet running up and down the deck above his head. He took another lung full of air before once again diving underwater. His gear was only twenty yards away and he could clearly see it below. He took long strokes with his arms and kicked his legs hard to dive down to the gear. As soon as he got to his dive tank he shoved the regulator in his mouth and took in three large gulps of air. He then strapped on the BCD around his waist and put on his dive fins. He knew he only had minutes to make a break for the shoreline before he would be chased down. He only hoped Dana and Joe saw what was happening and were packing up and running to the car. He’d have to find them later if he escaped Barbas’s guards.
Dave stayed on the bottom as he kicked furiously towards the shore. However, he decided not to chance it and swim directly towards the beach, though it was a shorter path to the shore. Instead he vectored off at a sharp angle to the right so that he would exit the water much further down from the beach area. By swimming further down the shore line, he hoped Barbas’s men would not see him exiting the water. He was also counting on the theory that the guards would have assumed he would have taken the path of least resistance to the shore, directly in front of the yacht.
He had swum for what had seemed an eternity when he began to hear the sound of a boat engine ripping through the water. His dive computer indicated he was in only 10 feet of water so he knew the shoreline wasn’t much further ahead. Again, he changed his course further to the right to put even more distance between the yacht and himself. Fortunately no one had seen him when he started his swim in the deeper water. However, he knew everyone on the Kosmos was scanning the shoreline looking for him to exit the water. His only chance was to stay underwater for as long as possible, and then lose the gear when he was in about five feet of water and make a sprint for the heavily forested shoreline. He’d leave his booties on to afford him some level of protection once he made it into the thick brush of the forest.
On the surface, Barbas’s men continued to race laterally back and forth between the Kosmos and shoreline searching for the intruder. Barbas also had a pair of binoculars affixed to his eyes looking for Dave, as he simultaneously barked out orders into a hand held radio. As his men on the inflatable tender continued to race up and down the shoreline, they continued to take wider and wider sweeps.
The bottom was coming up fast. Dave looked down at his dive watch and confirmed that he was only in six feet of water. Sitting on the bottom he stripped off his BCD and ta
nk and took a few more deep breaths on the regulator. With all of his remaining strength he kicked hard towards the shoreline with his fins. He rode a small wave into the shoreline and jumped out of the water. He was nearly 300 yards east of the beach, but Barbas’s men were coming fast in his direction. Apparently they had spotted his shape in the shallows. They were still 200 yards away from him, but he didn’t have a lot of time. He ripped off his fins and mask, and sprinted towards the heavily dense underbrush of the shoreline. As he ran he heard shots ring out and bullets were ripping the shallow waters near him.
It was rough terrain. The shoreline was rocky and there were low lying cactus and thick vegetation all around him. He had no choice. He had to push through it or else he’d be a dead man in minutes. The only advantage of the thick forest and undergrowth was that it would be just as difficult, if not more so, for Barbas’s men to follow him. He doubted they would be dressed for such an unexpected chase. It would also be difficult for them to see him in the thick underbrush. He would just need to survive working his way through the forest without breaking a leg or killing himself by stepping into a rock crevice.
From the shoreline Dana and Joe had witnessed the explosion of activity onboard the yacht. They had also seen Dave jump over the side of the yacht and into the water. They had discussed the previous night this possible outcome. In the event that it did happen, Joe and she were to grab their equipment and make a beeline for the car. They would then connect up with Dave at sunset to give him enough time to hike through the forest to the road that led back to Cruz Bay. Fortunately, before having to make a run for it, Joe was able to configure and confirm the nano-dust was operational in both Evans and Hardy.
Dana and Joe saw the men in the tender racing back and forth off the shoreline of the beach as they drove away from the parking area slowly.
“Jeez, I hope he makes it,” said Joe as he looked out the window of the car. “They were actually shooting at him. They didn’t even know who he was or what he was doing.”