The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  For a while, it had worked.

  But then she’d started sleeping with Rogan, and it blew Hank’s mind. If she was screwing somebody else, he couldn’t just pretend she was a lesbian or an ice queen. That meant she just didn’t want him. Angie could’ve eased the tension a little, put on a work shirt instead of the tight tank tops she favored, but it got damn hot down in the bowels of the ship. And if the guy got off on sweaty, oil-stained girls in sagging blue jeans, what was she supposed to do about it? Change who she was because Hank had the social skills of a brain-damaged sociopath?

  Sometimes she let him take a good long look. Angie hated him enough to enjoy tormenting the guy, but she was pretty careful not to get into too many public displays of affection with Rogan when Hank was around. Waving too much red in a bull’s face was never a good idea.

  The engineer sat a couple of tables away, but there were a total of five tables in the room, so that was close enough.

  “Hey,” Rogan whispered in her hear. “You want to get out of here?”

  Before she could reply, there came the clatter of a tray on their table. Angie looked up to see Tori sliding into a chair across from them.

  “Hey. Do you guys mind if I join you?”

  Angie just looked at her. The Antoinette was a freighter, not some little dingy, but there wasn’t a lot of space for the crew to get away from each other, aside from their own cabins and the two rec rooms, so they put up with the proximity. Sharing a table in the mess hall with other people came with the job. You didn’t ask; you just took the available seats.

  But Tori asked, quiet and polite, because even after a nineteen day jaunt down to Manaus and halfway back again, she didn’t know the protocol. It was her first time out. Maybe that was why she made such an effort to be nice. She was like the new girl in school trying to make friends in the cafeteria.

  The right thing to do would have been to give her a few minutes, make her feel comfortable. But Angie had spent years on ships with men who didn’t think she belonged there, so when thoughts about the right thing entered her mind, she pushed them away. This wasn’t high school. It was her job. And right now, she was off duty.

  Angie stood up, grabbed her tray. “We were just finishing up. No offense.”

  Tori’s face fell.

  “We really were about to leave,” Rogan said quickly. “Sorry to abandon you.”

  Now Tori smiled and Angie saw, not for the first time, that skinny as she might be, and lost in her own thoughts half the time, the woman was very pretty. She didn’t like Rogan being so friendly.

  “It’s no problem. Next time,” Tori said.

  “For sure,” Rogan told her. “The stew was great by the way.”

  Angie almost jumped in with something about how Josh made the damn stew and all the office girl did was chop vegetables and fill pots, but Tori beat her to it.

  “Nothing to do with me,” the woman said, shrugging. “Wish I could take the credit, but Josh is the master. I’d like to take him home with me.”

  Angie raised an eyebrow. “Oh, would you? Things getting hot in the kitchen?”

  Tori actually blushed. “Only on the stove.”

  “Kinky,” Angie said with a laugh. “But don’t worry. Only a matter of time for you two.”

  She took Rogan’s hand and led him to the door, leaving Tori with a weird look on her face, like she wasn’t sure if Angie had been making fun of her.

  They stepped out onto the deck and started under the steps that reminded her so much of a fire escape, going up the outside of the accommodations block. Rogan paused at the next landing and they turned to look at the moonlight glinting off the water. The engines thrumming loudly. He slid his arms around her.

  “What is it about her?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tori gets under your skin for some reason. I mean, yeah, Hank Boggs I get. Toss the fucker overboard and have done with him. But what’s she done to you?”

  “I’ve got nothing against her,” Angie said, surprising herself with honesty. “But she acts like we oughta be girlfriends, right? For no reason except that she’s the only other woman on the ship--like that’s enough. But I’ve never been the sleepover, cry-on-my-shoulder, paint-each-other’s-nails kind of girl. Plus, you can’t tell me you don’t feel the chill Gabe and Miguel give off when they’re around her—“

  “The captain seemed fine with her today,” Rogan interrupted.

  “Maybe. But you heard what Pucillo was saying about him and Miguel acting strange, and you didn’t deny it. I’m not in a hurry to make friends with a woman the Rios don’t trust.”

  Rogan nodded, brow furrowed in thought. “I’ve gotta wonder why they don’t trust her. It can’t be just because she’s new. This is my first time on the Antoinette, too, and there are a few others.”

  Angie reached up, touched his face, grabbed his ear and tugged it, none too gently.

  “Ow!”

  She grinned, stepped in close, ran her hands over his chest. “I have a question for you.” She looked up into his eyes. “Why are we standing out here on the deck talking about Tori Austin, when we could be up in my quarters, naked?”

  Rogan kissed her, fingers twining in her hair before his hands slid down her back, over the dirt-streaked cotton of her tank top.

  “That,” he said breathlessly, “is one hell of a good question.”

  ~8~

  Rachael Voss sat in a deck chair on the prow of a boat that had once belonged to a Colombian drug smuggler named Alvaro Rojas, before the FBI took it away. She thought it unfortunate that a guy stupid enough to get caught his first time making a run north wouldn’t ever understand the irony of his boat being used in the fight against the smuggling of drugs and guns. It would’ve been nice to rub it in.

  But how the Bureau had justified holding onto the impounded boat, she’d never know. Christian DelRosso, the Special Agent in Charge of the field division operating out of St. Croix, had a reputation for getting creative when it came to getting the job done. Maybe he’d filed reports suggesting they might be able to use the boat to lure some of Rojas’s buddies, the guys he kicked back to. Or maybe the S.A.C. had just not bothered to make his report about Rojas yet.

  Voss didn’t care much about the how. All she knew was that Rojas’s boat might be just the tool she needed to keep her partner alive if the shit hit the fan out on the water. Whatever S.A.C. DelRosso put in his reports, that was fine by her.

  Not that DelRosso had been doing any of this to help her out. He was just pissed at the way the Counter-Terrorism squad had been trying to get into the Viscaya Shipping case. None of the evidence they’d turned up so far—calls, e-mails, witnesses—had even suggested Viscaya had any connections to terrorism. But that’s how Counter-Terrorism got their glory. When they were bored and had nothing else to do, they looked around for a good case where there was serious money involved, slapped the Terrorism label on it, and claimed it as their own. Thanks to the Patriot Act, they could step on just about anybody’s toes.

  The worst part for DelRosso was that Ed Turcotte—Supervisory Special Agent in charge of the Counter-Terrorism squad—stood two rungs lower on the ladder, but had connections and influence that went way over DelRosso’s head. Voss’s squad, out of St. Croix, reported to DelRosso. They were his people, and Viscaya Shipping was their case. But the reality of it was that Turcotte had pull DelRosso couldn’t match, and if the SAC complained, someone somewhere would start accusing him of disloyalty. He’d be put out to pasture like the federal attorneys who didn’t want to play ball with the post 9/11 interpretation of the Constitution. The Patriot Act had split the Bureau into two camps, and now they were involved in the ultimate pissing match, with Viscaya Shipping as the current target.

  Special Agent Rachael Voss had no love for DelRosso. The guy barely communicated with the field agents, especially the undercovers, preferring to communicate through his ASACs. Half the time, he didn’t even give the Supervisory Special
Agents—the people who actually ran the squads—a pat on the head when a job had been well done.

  But she didn’t want Counter-Terrorism getting involved in her case, especially with her partner undercover on board the Antoinette. If they came in now, they’d only make a huge mess of things. So right now, Voss liked DelRosso just fine. They had a shared interest in getting the Viscaya case wrapped up quickly.

  Another day or two would be all they needed.

  One way or another, it would be over after that. They had Coast Guard and ICE units on standby, but none of those boats were going into the water until she got word from her partner that the Antoinette’s rendezvous was imminent. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was gung-ho these days, but they weren’t any more eager than the Coast Guard to have a bunch of people sitting idle for twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours, waiting for a go-signal that might never come.

  Voss smiled. Nope, it was just her squad that got to float around drinking mai-tais, waiting for the shooting to start.

  As if anyone drank frigging mai-tais anymore.

  Bob Marley sang “One Love” on her cell phone. She shifted in her chair, took her feet down off the rail, and pulled out the phone. When she flipped it open she was careful not to drop it, knowing with her luck it would end up going right over the side. She’d dropped her keys in the water a couple of years back and never heard the end of it.

  “Voss.”

  “The clock is ticking, Rachael.”

  “I left my watch in my other shorts.”

  “What about this is funny to you?”

  She settled back into the chair, gazing out across the Caribbean, the night wind still warm and sweet with the scents of the tropics. Maybe it was her imagination. St. Croix was thirty miles away or more; it wasn’t like she could smell the flowers. But out here under the moon, the boat gently rocking, quiet except for occasional laughter from inside, life was good. Or it would have been, if she could just have worked the tension out of her neck and shoulders.

  Which was not going to happen until they busted the entire crew of the Antoinette, without anyone catching a bullet or a knife in the gut.

  “I don’t know if ‘funny’ is the word,” Voss said into the phone. “But the fact that I’m out here sipping a strawberry daiquiri and you’re probably still at your desk sucking back those nasty energy drinks is at least amusing, don’t you think?”

  The sigh on the other end of the line was crystal clear. “You don’t drink.”

  “How do you know I haven’t started?”

  “If you did, you wouldn’t drink something as girly as a strawberry daiquiri.”

  “Shit. I was going to say mai-tais.”

  The grunt on the line could almost have been a laugh. “Nobody drinks mai-tais anymore.”

  “Which is why I didn’t say it. What’s on your mind, Chauncey?”

  “Time, as I’ve already said.”

  Voss had worked under him for nearly two years, but she still hadn’t quite gotten used to her supervisor. SSA Chauncey Alfred Bosworth III seemed like some kind of gag. People didn’t name their children things like that anymore, and even when they did, they didn’t raise them to become FBI agents. The guy’s family was probably ashamed that he wasn’t a senator. Even worse, he was always trying to get people to call him “Chuck,” or at least “Agent Bosworth.” He’d even once suggested that Voss call him “sir.”

  But she loved calling him Chauncey. At first he’d get irritated, but eventually he’d seemed to realize that it had created some kind of bond between them, that Voss actually liked him in spite of his quirks, so he didn’t bother her about it anymore. He might stiffen up when she used the name, but he no longer corrected her.

  Chauncey had a mannequin’s sense of humor and he was a stickler for the rules, but at forty-six he counted as old-school FBI. These days, the Bureau recruited new agents for their education in languages or their cyber skills. Chauncey had come up in an era when they had wanted lawyers and accountants. He’d been the former. That was something he and Voss had in common, though she was eleven years younger.

  “So, what’s the bad word?” she asked.

  “Turcotte, of course.”

  Voss stared out at the ocean, thought about jumping in for a swim. “DelRosso was running interference.”

  “Only so much the S.A.C. can do when Counter-Terrorism starts pulling in favors. In January, one of the guys linked to Viscaya sold a shipment to a major dealer in Aubergine, South Carolina.”

  “So?”

  “Remember the flight school the Bureau tagged for training half a dozen of the guys from the cell that got broken up in Baltimore?”

  Voss remembered. Four Saudis and two Jordanian nationals, none of them with proper identification, all but one of them shipped to Guantanamo, and that guy only got a free pass because he was a cousin of the Saudi royal family.

  “Let me guess. Aubergine, South Carolina?”

  Chauncey grunted that maybe-laugh again. “Not even. Another town, almost fifty miles away. But Counter-Terrorism is using that to support their argument that they should get the Viscaya case.”

  Voss wanted to argue, but there would be no point. Once DelRosso got a push from above, it was out of his hands, and sure as hell out of hers.

  “How long?”

  “The handoff’s in DelRosso’s office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You’ll need to be there.”

  Which meant she had to be back on the island of St. Croix by nine.

  “My partner is out there right now, Chauncey. On the hook.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  Voss pressed her eyes tightly shut and massaged her left temple. A headache had started spiking deep.

  “What if it happens tonight? What if we get the go-signal?”

  Chauncey paused, but only for a second. She loved him for that.

  “Well, then I doubt you’ll make it to the meeting.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye. Voss nodded, breathing evenly, as she flicked her phone shut and slipped it into her pocket.

  She narrowed her eyes, looking out at the darkness, wondering where the Antoinette might be at that moment, how far from their rendezvous.

  Hurry up, you bastards. It’s not polite to keep a girl waiting.

  ~9~

  Gabe Rio stood on the metal landing just outside the door of the Antoinette’s wheelhouse, smoking a cigarette and staring out across the water. Suarez had the wheel, and Miguel sat in the chair beside him, surveying the instrument panel, hands down but ready to react, like a man about to try defusing a bomb.

  The analogy wasn’t lost on Gabe. The whole situation was a bomb, about to explode in their laps. They could wait maybe a day, two at most, and then they’d have to sail on to Miami. More than eight hours had passed since the raving they’d heard on the radio. He had no idea what had happened to the rendezvous ship—pirates or mutiny or violent betrayal—but it had sounded totally fucked, and pretty final. He’d wanted the idiot on the other ship to go to radio silence, but there’d been nothing since. No beacon. No contact.

  Miguel opened the door to the wheelhouse.

  “We’re here.”

  Gabe frowned. He’d felt and heard the engines slowing, but thought they might just be correcting their course. His cigarette dangled from his fingers and he took another drag, blew out smoke with his words.

  “You sure?”

  His brother cocked his head in irritation.

  Gabe nodded. “All right. Don’t get an attitude. Front office said the rendezvous was six or seven miles off the shore of an island, but I don’t see any lights.”

  “Me either. No lights. No boat. Nothing on radar.”

  “How long do you think we wait?”

  “You’re the captain, hermano.”

  Gabe smiled. “Why is it you only remind me of that when there’s trouble? When things are going good, you’ve got more opinions than anyone I ever met. Except maybe Maya.”

&
nbsp; Miguel didn’t smile. “Wouldn’t have hurt you to listen to her opinions once in a while.”

  A chill settled between them. The burning tip of Gabe’s cigarette trembled in his hand and he brought it to his lips, took a long drag, then blew it out slowly. He shot a glance at his little brother, saw Miguel trying to stand his ground, and looked away again.

  “You telling me things would’ve worked out if I’d just listened to her more?” the captain asked. “Maybe if I brought her flowers? Smiled more? Agreed with her when she wanted me to get a job on land so I could be home more?”

  “I’m not saying—“

  Gabe shot him a look that silenced him. Neither of them needed reminding that if Gabe quit working for Viscaya, Miguel’s days with the company would be numbered.

  “I’m not the easiest guy to live with, Miguel,” Gabe added. “But Maya didn’t end things because I didn’t listen enough. She ended it because she started fucking somebody else.”

  “You don’t know—“

  “The hell I don’t,” Gabe snapped, voice low. He turned his back on his brother. “A man knows.”

  The cigarette had burned down almost to the filter, but Gabe held it between his thumb and forefinger for one last drag. Behind him, he heard Miguel opening the door and going back into the wheelhouse, and only then did he flick the butt overboard. His brother had tried talking to him about Maya a hundred times, and Gabe always bristled. What did he know about having a wife? He’d had plenty of girlfriends but never married, never had to deal with the crushing weight of a woman’s expectations. Maya had known he wasn’t a talker when she married him. She had known that the sea meant everything to him, and that what he did for a living was sometimes illegal, but she’d smiled and said she didn’t need the details as long as he wasn’t hurting anyone. Gabe had lied to her about that part, but the look in her eyes had told him that she wanted to be lied to.