Off Course: A clean action adventure book

by Glen Robins

  Three minutes had elapsed since he started assembling the scuba gear. Quick but confident. Cautious but experienced.

  Without ceremony, Collin climbed into the water, bracing himself against the tidal surge. He pulled the mask over his eyes and adjusted the rubber gasket before sucking in slightly to seal it against his skin. He moved the snorkel into place, put the mouthpiece between his front teeth, and took two quick test breaths. When he was waist deep, he slipped on the fins.

  Before launching himself into the surf, Collin took one last look at the GPS. It showed 2.1 miles to the tip of the closest island. Not knowing the strength of the current, he wondered how long it would take him to traverse that distance. He pushed off the rocks in the direction of the island, having one finger on the button of his vest, which he pressed to add air to the buoyancy compensator until he could feel himself floating near the surface. With the snorkel in place, he pumped his legs in the water, feeling the fins propel him forward, breathing through the snorkel to save air in the tank as long as possible. Collin fine-tuned the angle of his legs and feet and positioned his body to maximize the thrust of the fins. Before long, he felt himself skimming along the surface.

  ****

  Scripps Cancer Research Patient Clinic, La Jolla, California

  June 15, 7:52 p.m. Pacific Time

  The humming and beeping of the medical equipment was interrupted by a soft feminine voice. Emily bolted up, still jittery. The voice came from three feet to her right. A nurse was standing next to Sarah’s bed.

  “Mrs. Cook, someone is here to see you. Someone you asked me about earlier. Mrs. Cook, please wake up and say hello to your very special visitors,” the short dark-haired nurse said as she leaned in close and gently shook Sarah’s shoulders.

  Emily looked on in silent anticipation. Sarah’s eyes were slow to open. It was as if she needed a crowbar to pry her eyelids apart. Her focus adjusted and she let out a joyful squeal as her tall white-haired knight stood at her bedside smiling down at her. His big hands scooped up hers and held them tight.

  “I’m so happy to see you, dear,” Henry said. “And so sorry I couldn’t fight those animals off. They caught me completely by surprise—jumped out from behind the trash bins as I came around to your door. I’m so sorry I let them take you.” His eyes were moist, and his voice choked. One of those eyes was circled in a bright purple ring and one of his cheeks bore a bruise and a scrape as proof of his scuffle.

  Sarah took in the battered face of her husband with doleful eyes and swallowed hard before she attempted to speak. When she did, it was just above a whisper. “No, no, Henry. Don’t you blame yourself. Those monsters ambushed you―us―without warning. It wasn’t a fair fight to start with. I’m just glad you’re all in one piece.”

  “I’m so sorry, dear,” Henry repeated.

  The two kissed and held onto each other’s hands like they were hanging from a building. Twenty-four hours’ worth of stress and anxiety pooled up like rainwater in a storm, then seeped below the surface.

  Emily looked at her hands instead of watching Henry and Sarah. She felt like an intruder. Her own loneliness, like a whirlpool, threatened to pull her down into its inescapable depths.

  Richard, the oldest Cook child, moved to his father’s side and caught his mother’s eye. Her surprise turned to elation. Henry stepped back as she reached for their son. When their embrace ended, Sarah looked to her left where another concerned figure stood in anticipation. Megan, her only daughter, burst into tears and practically launched herself into her mother’s arms, holding on until they both stopped sobbing.

  While the Cook family huddled and hugged, Emily caught sight of another figure moving through the dimly lit space at the foot of Sarah’s bed. A man stepped over to the side of Emily’s bed as she looked down at her hands. His sudden presence surprised her. “Emily Burns? You look marvelous,” he said in his best imitation of the Billy Crystal character who made the phrase popular back in the day.

  “Rob Howell? What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I came home when I heard about Sarah’s health issues. Figured I should add whatever support I can in Collin’s absence,” he said smiling. Then he looked at Emily’s bandaged cheek and spoke in an almost reverent tone. “I’m sorry about what happened to you two. I feel awful knowing that if I had gotten to your office just a little sooner, you and I would have been at lunch somewhere instead—”

  Rob’s cell phone started playing Linkin Park. He fumbled it out of his pocket with agitated haste. Glancing at the screen, Rob apologized to Emily for the interruption, explaining that he had to take the call and excused himself from the room.

  Emily shook her head softly and tried not to look as awkward and alone as she felt.

  The Cook family continued to talk, and Megan continued to cry, not noticing Rob’s exit.

  When Rob returned to the room moments later, the Cook family circle had widened to include Emily. Henry stood between the two beds, holding a hand from each of the ladies. He smiled at both of them. Without Henry speaking a word, Emily knew he cared, like a father, and that simple gesture pulled her back from the edge of the whirlpool.

  Rob moved to the far side of Emily’s hospital bed and attempted to contain a smile. Emily tried to read the eager yet subdued expression on his face. “What is it, Rob? You look like you have some good news.”

  He grinned at her and said, “Later. For now, I want to make sure you’re OK.”

  ****

  Western Caribbean Sea, 2 miles north-northwest of Providencia Island

  June 15, 9:03 p.m. Caribbean Time

  When he felt he had been swimming for a respectable amount of time, Collin stopped to survey his surroundings and his watch. In the darkness, he could just make out the white hump of the Admiral’s hull sticking up out of the water behind him. Ahead, tiny yellow specks of light twinkled just above the horizon. The GPS indicated he had traveled four-tenths of a mile. His watch indicated twenty-five minutes had elapsed since he reentered the water. Fighting the current and the swells was hard enough. Dragging all that weight was slowing him down, making him work harder than he should have to. Survival was paramount, which is why he loaded up on provisions before exiting the Admiral, but time was of the essence. A quick mental tally of the items dangling from the mesh bags told him he would need to dump the canned food and anything that was not essential. He could survive without food. Sparing only two water bottles and the GPS, Collin emptied everything out of the yellow mesh bag clipped to his buoyancy compensator and let them sink to the bottom of the ocean. It was now slim enough to wedge into his vest to make him more streamlined. Less weight and less resistance should speed things up.

  Despite his frustration at making such slow progress toward the Island of Providencia, Collin put his face back in the water and continued to battle the current. Recalling his scuba training from years before, however, he chose to turn himself forty-five degrees to the pull of the current and swim for ten minutes. After the ten minutes was up, he turned ninety degrees and paddled and kicked for another ten minutes, again at a forty-five-degree angle to the current. After half an hour, he noticed he had covered significant distance. He was now halfway there.

  After another ten minutes, something changed in his watery world. In the distance, a muffled hum grew steadily louder and stronger. Collin stopped to survey the horizon, rotating in a circle. That’s when he saw it approaching from the three o’clock position. Two spotlights scanned in all directions from either side of the bow of a swift-moving boat. The beams of light stretched and retracted as they swept across the water’s surface. Although the oncoming vessel was still an estimated quarter of a mile away, Collin’s heart jumped to his throat. It was probably a Coast Guard boat from who knows where. If they saw him, he could say good-bye to his family and his freedom. Upon learning the fate of his men, Pho Nam Penh would surely show no mercy on Collin’s mother and Emily. Would Penh stop there or hunt down the rest of his family? The tho
ught made him shudder and produced a surge of adrenaline to power him forward. He had to alert Lukas and soon.

  Collin had less than a mile to go before he reached the island. As near as he could tell, he had been swimming hard for about an hour and five minutes. At this rate, he had another hour to go. He was exhausted and breathing hard, so he knew that even if his considerable stamina held up, the air in the tank would not last him the whole way. But he had no choice; the boat approached unexpectedly fast. Diving below the surface and hiding underwater to avoid being picked up and interrogated was his only option.

  Collin fumbled for his regulator, put it in his mouth and pushed the air release button on his buoyancy compensator to allow himself to sink as the speeding vessel with its search lights raced toward him. Holding his nose and blowing out to relieve the pressure on his ears, Collin dropped quickly below the water line just in time to look up and see the lights from the boat panning in every direction, followed by the hull and the propeller, and then the wake straight above him as it left a contrail of shimmering silver moonlight on the surface. The propellers were no more than ten feet from his head, bouncing up and down in the swells, as they charged toward the wreckage of the Admiral Risty.

  It was a close call. He easily could have missed the warning signs in his state of concentration and physical exertion. All of his and Lukas’s efforts over the past six months would have been knocked over and sunk like the Admiral Risty. And only a handful of people on the planet would have known how close Collin and Lukas had come to their goal of ending Pho Nam Penh’s threat to the American way of life and averting the calamities Penh had cooked up for the Western world.

  In the eerie darkness, Collin waited to make sure the boat with the lights would not turn around, sensing life and movement all around him as he floated. Knowing the scrapes on his knees and hands were seeping blood, as well as the poorly bandaged gash on his arm, he feared what he couldn’t see yet figured must be lurking somewhere close by. He forced himself to count to thirty as a precaution before he turned on the dive light to behold his fate.

  With the dive light on low beam, he found himself in a strange aquatic world with fish he’d only seen in dive magazines. They were brightly colored and mysterious. A few hefty but harmless ones had moved in for a closer look, curious about this alien. For the most part, the other fish carried on as if he wasn’t there. When he started to move again, after checking his dive compass and getting his bearings, it was like a curtain of fish opened to allow him passage through their tight formation. It was a peculiar and exciting phenomenon. The big guys peeled off in search of something more to their liking. The little ones moved alongside him, aimlessly, for a while, then disappeared.

  Retreating back into his thoughts, his heart began to ache fearing he wouldn’t make it to land in time to warn Lukas of Pho Nam Penh’s intentions and threats against his family. In Collin’s absence, he knew Lukas could do something to protect them. But he had to know what Collin knew in order to act. There was no time to rest. Ignoring the fatigue, the bruises, the torn flesh, the scent he was leaving behind in the water, and the growing hunger, Collin pushed himself forward through the water faster than before. Either the current was not as strong below the surface, or his determination and adrenaline had helped him find that extra gear. He knew he was making progress.

  Twenty minutes later, Collin noticed he was swimming over a reef. It gradually rose to meet him. Then the ocean floor turned to a mix of sand and rock. He surfaced and found himself within a few hundred yards of land. It was mostly dark. To his left, he spotted a few lonely lights that seemed to follow the curve of the island as it bent away from him. Straight ahead, he could see what he figured was a cluster of small buildings with orange-ish lights that oscillated in the night sky. Beyond them, to his right, was mottled darkness. The moon and stars struggled to cast enough light through the dissipating clouds for him to discern the existence of anything other than trees and bushes. From his vantage point, the land seemed to be flat to his right and there seemed to be an accessible, though rocky, beach. That was the direction he headed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  London, England

  June 16, 4:30 a.m. London Time

  Nic’s hand and head felt heavy as he placed his phone back in its cradle. He rubbed the other hand across his face and sighed. Another blow to his career. Another failure to complete the simple assignment Alastair had given him six weeks ago to track and capture this nobody named Collin Cook. Despite his bitter disappointment, he was obligated to inform his counterparts in the FBI. Nic checked the time in Los Angeles. 8:30 in the evening. He knew Reggie would still be working.

  “I’ve good news and bad news, Reggie.”

  “Why don’t you start with the good news?”

  “OK. The good news is the Colombian Coast Guard have picked up three Asian men floating in the Caribbean a few miles off the coast of Isla de Providencia. They’re unarmed and in pretty bad shape. Glad for the rescue, I’d imagine, but not talking. The Colombians also picked up four sailors who claim to be the Captain and crew of the Admiral Risty.”

  “What’s the bad news then?”

  “The bad news is that Collin Cook was not one of the men they rescued. He was not with the other men and could not be found anywhere near the shipwreck. The Captain thinks he died below-decks when the boat capsized. The Colombians have ordered a dive team to search the area of the wreckage at first light.” Nic paused, not so much out of grief, but more like placing a divider between tasks on his list of things to accomplish that day. “I’m really sorry to pass along such horrible news, Reggie. Since you’ve got a relationship with them, will you talk to his family?”

  “I’ll wait to hear back from you before I do that,” said Reggie. “Knowing his mother, she won’t believe he’s dead until we produce a body for her to examine.”

  “Right. I’ll be in touch again once the Colombian divers report their findings.” Nic’s voice conveyed a hint of his eagerness to wrap this thing up, cut his losses, and find a more fruitful field to plow.

  “Thanks, Nic. And good job. I’ll let Alastair know what an important asset you’ve been throughout this whole investigation,” added Reggie, knowing he needed to keep Nic’s spirits up. “This thing isn’t over yet, Nic. We have to either recover Cook’s body or find him alive. You understand that?”

  “Yeah, I understand,” said Nic, trying to hide his disappointment.

  Crabtree continued. “You’ve proven to be a valuable contributor throughout this case. I know it’s dragged out and we’ve been left holding the bag a number of times, but we’re not done yet. Not by a long shot. We’re going to need you and your skills as the next phase of this hunt begins.” Crabtree paused while Nic absorbed the message. “I assume you’ve coached the Colombians on interrogating the Asians they picked up. They ought to be able to provide information that will lead us to Pho Nam Penh. They could be very useful to your search for him and the solving of some very far-reaching crimes, know what I mean?”

  Nic rallied, forcing optimism into his tone. Maybe, just maybe, there was still a sliver of hope, a chance at redemption. “Yep, I’m planning to do just that. We’ll see what we can get from them. The larger question, however, is what if they don’t find Cook’s body? What if he got away again and by not searching until morning, we’ve given him several hours’ head start?” Nic’s forceful breathing betrayed his inner frustrations.

  There was a pause on the line. Reggie didn’t reply at first but let out a long sigh. He sucked in a quick breath and began, as if thinking out loud, “I guess we’ll have to deal with that when it presents itself. It really wouldn’t surprise me either way. If he survives, he will undoubtedly be wanting to talk with his mother. I just got word that our rescue team has returned her to the hospital. We’ll meet with her and the girlfriend there as soon as possible. Meanwhile, we are monitoring all of their incoming calls, texts, emails, tweets, posts, messages, Instagrams, Snapchats—you
name it, we’re watching it. We’ll know the minute he surfaces. If he surfaces.”

  “Wonderful. Just bloody wonderful. I’m left once again with nothing to show for my work,” huffed Nic. “This case has been a bloody nightmare.”

  “And it’s not closed yet,” said Crabtree. “We’ve still got work to do, so keep your wits about you. Think outside the box, like Collin Cook would do.”

  ****

  Western Caribbean Sea, Providencia Island

  June 15, 10:28 p.m. Caribbean Time

  As he drew nearer the island, Collin came to the surface and used his snorkel to conserve air in his tank. It was down to 600 psi, just 100 psi above the critical stage where the diver knows he needs to get to the surface as soon as possible. Lost in his thoughts and worries, and glad for the faster pace of swimming underwater, he hadn’t paid much attention to his air supply. He swam hard and fought the current to move southward toward the flat, vacant area on the island he had spotted.

  The journey was slow and painstaking. Collin measured his progress against a stand of trees on the shore. It was gradual and tiring, especially since the current continually tugged him westward.

  Above his own splashing and the rumbling of the surf against the pebbly sand in the distance, Collin heard another mechanical noise. This time, it was coming from above. When he turned toward the sound, it was too late. The pontoon-equipped float plane was diving straight at him. It looked to be no more than twenty feet in the air and a few hundred yards away. The plane wiggled its wings as it approached. It took a few seconds to register in Collin’s panic-stricken mind, but the friendly gesture finally dawned on him.

  The plane’s pontoons bounced lightly on the tips of watery peaks before settling down and gliding toward Collin. The engine shut off and the plane came to rest within a hundred feet of Collin’s position. With the island as a shield, the sea was much calmer here. Before the plane stopped, the door swung open. The pilot pulled his headphones down around his neck and yelled out to Collin, “Hey, your German friend, some dude who goes by Billy Bob, sent me out here in the middle of the night to track your cell phone signal and pick you up. Said something about you need to talk to your mom right away.”