Operation Dolphin Spirit

by Kimberli A. Bindschatel

  As I held a bag of ice on my own battle scar, I stared out over the marina to the mangroves beyond. It was my day off. From my intern duties, that is. A good thing because I didn’t get to bed until four a.m.

  I didn’t envy Dalton having to explain the damage to the Zodiac. Of course, his boss knew from the beginning that he was here undercover. And the government would cover the damage. But still.

  And this morning, we knew nothing more than we did before.

  We were back to square one.

  The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t buy the drug running theory anyway. There had to be some other connection, some other reason to train a dolphin to carry a backpack. But filled with what, pirate treasure? Follow the money. That’s what they say. Bimini had a long history of pirates and shipwrecks, not to mention looting. Had someone trained dolphins to retrieve valuables from deep-water shipwrecks? Maybe, but the dolphins couldn’t load the backpacks themselves, but they could transport the goods. Maybe. Seemed far-fetched still.

  Follow the money…

  Skylar planned to study the impact of the building of the pier—the pier where the express ferry docked, bringing hordes of spenders to the casino at the Hilton. Was there some tie there? Possibly. But the casino was open for business. Nothing was hindering it, as far as I could tell. Maybe something was in the works that would hinder it.

  “There you are,” Chris said, approaching me. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sitting in a bright pink Adirondack chair on a tropical island, enjoying the ocean breeze. I just ordered a drink with an umbrella in it.”

  “Oh-kay. What’s happened?”

  I told him about the midnight run that went nowhere.

  “Wow, that sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  My drink arrived. Chris grabbed it before I had a chance and slurped a mouthful through the straw. “Maybe you’re going about this all the wrong way.”

  I sat up in the chair and took the drink from him. “Do you know how many plastic straws are used every day?”

  “No. Did you hear me?”

  “Yes. I’m sure I am.” I yanked the drink from his hand and took a sip. “What would you do? I mean, if you could train a dolphin to do anything, anything in the world, specifically carry something, what would it be?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “I’d train one to knit.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I am too. Maybe attach the knitting needles to their flippers somehow, and then—”

  “All right, you’re right. I’m going to order another drink. Without a straw.”

  “My point is, you don’t seem to be thinking outside of the box here.”

  “I know. I told you. My brain’s been fried.”

  His eyebrows wiggled up and down. “Hot, steamy sex will do that.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, so does meeting his ex-wife the very next day.”

  “What! Are you serious? Did you even know he—”

  “No.” I glanced around, making sure no else could hear us.

  “And what, she just showed up? Here?”

  “On her honeymoon. And she’s pregnant. Married to an old friend of Dalton’s, a SEAL.” I frowned. “They were on the dolphin swim.”

  “No way. What an odd coincidence.”

  I stared at Chris. It was an odd coincidence. “Well, she told me she’s always loved dolphins. This is one of the best places in the world to swim with them in the wild.”

  “So what’d he say about it? Why has he never told you?”

  “You know Dalton.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this before.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. Do you think my dad would have liked Dalton?”

  “Whoa, okay, switching gears. What brought that up?”

  “I don’t know, rum?” I took another sip. “I was just thinking about Dalton being married before and what that would be like and my dad will never walk me down the aisle, which is fine because all of that is really not my style anyway.”

  “Okay, Poppy-girl, you really need a break.”

  “Not until I figure out why we’re here on this island. The dolphins need us but I can’t figure out what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s so frustrating!”

  Chris stared at me, worried, then patted my leg. “I’m here to help. Let’s focus on the job right now. I’ll help you brainstorm. What are you thinking?”

  I took another sip of my drink. “Well, the idea of pirates crossed my mind.”

  “Ooooh. Pirates.” His gaze turned inward. “I saw this pirate calendar once.” He pursed his lips and an eyelash fluttered.

  “Are we talking about gay pirate porn?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Dolphins finding treasure. I could see that.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t have the opposable thumb needed to pick it up.”

  “Right.”

  “It could be some rich guy wanting exotic pets. There’s a Saudi sheik with a fleet of gold-plated cars, I’m not kidding, who drives around London with his pet cheetah riding shotgun.”

  Chris groaned.

  “Well, you said to think out of the box. Maybe there is some yahoo here who wants some pet dancing dolphins and the marks are from the elastic tugging too tight on their pink tutus. Who knows?”

  “Not that far out of the box.”

  “You never know what we might stumble on to.”

  “Why do you have to stumble? Someone on this tiny island knows something. Who else have you talked to? About the dolphins?”

  I thought about it. “No one, really.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, Sherlock, what do you suggest?”

  He cocked his head, eyed me.

  “Yeah, sorry. I don’t know why I’m being snarky. I’m just…”

  “Maybe you do need the day off.”

  “No. Tell me your idea. Please.”

  “Well, I heard about this place called the Dolphin House. Maybe the owner has some insight.”

  I got up from the chair. “Sure. Why not?”

  Chris helped me drain the glass, then we walked the few blocks to the most well-known tourist stop on the island.

  Since 1993, Ashley Saunders, a Bahamian writer and historian, has been at work building the Dolphin House—a kind of museum-tribute—by hand, with only recycled materials he’s found on the island and in the sea.

  The exterior facade is a sandy stucco embedded with rows of conch shells, mosaics made of broken tiles of all colors, fossilized coral, and any other one-of-a-kind item he felt added to the charm, like a plastic seahorse or broken wine bottle.

  Inside, the decor is just as eclectic. Every color of the rainbow shines from the multiple mosaics on each wall, representations of all kinds of scenes from the sea. License plates from all over the world are embedded along the ceiling like a wallpaper border. Fishing net and floats hang from the rafters.

  One wall sports a whiskey bottle embedded in the concrete that still has one shot left in the bottom. Ashley had a story for that and every other embellishment, including a solid bronze mermaid he’d found while swimming as a child.

  On the first floor, one room is stuffed to the gills with memorabilia. Photos of famous people who’ve visited the island—most notably, Ernest Hemingway—as well as other historic items such as old cannon balls from the pirate era.

  While he most definitely was a man obsessed with dolphins, he didn’t seem particularly knowledgeable about the current state of affairs with the nearby pod. His passion was of more of a spiritual nature.

  We thanked him for the tour and gave a donation.

  As we left the building, I noticed a man sitting on the side of the road at the corner of the property of the Dolphin House. His hair hadn’t been combed in some time. He wore a green army jacket decorated in patches and threadbare shorts.

  I approached, said hello.

  “They’ll take ya ta mars,” he muttered.

  �
��What? Who will?” I asked.

  “Dolphins. They kin teleport ya. It’s all interstellar, man.”

  I gave Chris a subtle nod to keep walking, not to crowd us, and sat down in the shade next to the man. “The dolphins? They travel to Mars?” I asked. He clearly did not have full, neurotypical brain function, but you never know where you might get a bit of information. “How do they do that?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. Gov’ment secret. But they kin, just the same. Beam ya up, Scotty. In a hollow-gram.”

  “That’s fascinating,” I said. “I didn’t realize they could form holograms.”

  “Everybody knows that.” He picked at the hem on his shorts.

  “Have you ever done it?” I asked him, trying not to make him feel like I was interrogating him. He seemed like he’d clam up.

  “What’sat?”

  “Teleported to Mars?”

  He shook his head. “Ya gots to be careful. It’s dangerous.”

  “What’s dangerous?”

  His eyes locked on mine, crazy eyes. “Messing wit what the gov’ment don’t want ya to know no how.”

  He had a thing about the government. My bet was he was a troubled veteran. “Do you know the secret the government doesn’t want us to know?”

  “Tis them Ruskies. They invading.”

  “I see,” I said. “And the dolphins? Are they—?”

  My phone rang in my pocket.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. He pursed his lips. “I don’t know nothin’.”

  “Okay, I understand,” I said, getting to my feet. “It was nice to talk to you.”

  He didn’t acknowledge my goodbye.

  It was Greg calling. I put the phone to my ear as I walked away. “Yo. Can’t you tell, with your fancy computer skills, when it’s a bad time to call?”

  “Nope. You ever heard of muting your phone?”

  “Touché.”

  “Yeah, so I came across an anomaly. Missing file numbers.”

  “You lost me.”

  “The homework you ditched. The photo filing of the dorsal fins. There’s a segment of files missing.”

  “How do you know they’re missing? I mean, if they’re missing, how can you know, you know?”

  “Because I’m a genius.”

  “Well, that’s a given. But, uh, I need the layman’s explanation.”

  “The numbers are missing from the sequence. Even photos that are out of focus or of someone’s feet get filed. They go in a dump folder. It’s a science thing. You don’t delete. Just label unusable, or whatever.”

  “Okay, I remember her telling me that.”

  “But there’s a whole section of deleted photos. Gone. Disappeared.”

  “Let me guess, the dates start about eight weeks ago.” The timeframe in which Skylar said the dolphins had first arrived.

  “Yep.”

  It was time to have a talk with Kerrie.

  “You’re welcome,” he said and hung up.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kerrie’s home was a one-story bungalow on the south end of the island, facing the sea. We found her on a plastic lawn chair in the shade, watching her kids play in the sand.

  She rose from the chair to greet us. “You’re back? So sorry for your loss.”

  I’d forgotten to fill Chris in on my cover story, how I’d explained my trip to Mississippi with a dead grandfather. He was quick enough to follow along.

  “Thank you,” I said. “This is my friend, Chris. He’s just visiting for a couple days.”

  “As long as you get the work done,” she said with a not-so-friendly tone. Maybe she wanted me to be a little distracted, not dig too deep. No such luck, lady.

  “Not a problem.” Some intern at headquarters is plugging away at it right now. “That’s what I came to talk to you about.”

  She crossed her arms, holding herself still, but her eyes flitted from me to Chris and back.

  “Something’s been bugging me. I was logging the photos, like you asked, and there are some files missing.”

  She blinked, trying to hide her reaction. “What do you mean, missing? If they’re missing, how would you know they’re missing?”

  Exactly what I said. “Digital photos are given a file name in numerical sequence as they’re taken. There’s a whole bunch missing.”

  She shrugged, looking away. “They were probably bad photos. Got deleted. Forget about it. Just focus on the ones that are there.”

  “Well, see, I thought of that. But then I remembered that you told me to file every image, even those out of focus or whatever. You told me specifically not to delete them.”

  She glared at me. “Even scientists make mistakes. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you sure, because—”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she snapped and moved toward her kids. Over her shoulder, she said, “Go on now.”

  Chris and I followed.

  “I noticed another thing,” I said, acting as if her behavior was perfectly normal.

  She drew in a breath and exhaled with annoyance. “Yes?”

  “There aren’t any photos of the dolphin that got stranded. Or the one that came up to the boat the other day.”

  Her muscles tensed.

  I continued. “The ones with the satellite trackers on their dorsal fins.”

  She spun on me. “Listen. I’ve given you a really simple task. Catalog the photos that are there, not waste time wondering this and that. Now, can you do that or not?”

  Her eyes flashed. She was scared. As sure as the sky was blue, there was fear in her eyes. She definitely knew something. Something big. And there was no way she was going to tell me, an intern.

  Had she been threatened? I glanced down at her kids. She had a lot to lose.

  A thought bubbled up in my brain. The man who’d been following me. He had been following me. Had he threatened Kerrie? He wasn’t Bahamian. Or an American. His facial features were European. Definitely Eastern bloc. Belarusian came to mind.

  Then I remembered something the homeless veteran had said. Could it be?

  “I can do the job,” I said. “It’s not a problem.”

  Relief showed in her eyes.

  “But I do have one more question.”

  She tensed again.

  “I met this man over by the Dolphin House. He told me dolphins can teleport to Mars.”

  She snorted and seemed to relax slightly. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Yeah, no.” I smiled. “But he also said something not so crazy. He said the Russians were invading.”

  Her face paled. Barely, but enough that I noticed. She gathered her son close to her and her eyes locked onto her daughter. “That’s a troubled old man,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “I don’t know why you’re wasting your time. Please just do your job.”

  Chris and I nodded and headed back toward the office. Once we were far enough away, I asked Chris, “What do you think?”

  “As sure as I know you’re head-over-heels in love with Dalton, I’m sure that woman has been threatened by a Russian.”

  I clamped my jaw tight.

  I called another meeting of the team.

  This time, we met right away. I filled them in.

  “Why didn’t you mention this Russian guy before?” Mike said, a hint of accusation in his voice.

  “Hey,” Dalton said. “We already chased one red herring.”

  Mike clammed up.

  “Wait, we saw a guy, looked Russian,” Tom said. He turned to Mike. “Remember? On that boat, kinda looked like a live-aboard research vessel.” He gave the description. “We haven’t seen him in the marina at all though.”

  “We could take some jet skis, zoom around like tourists, get a look at it,” I suggested.

  Dalton shook his head. “You’re too recognizable with that red hair.”

  I frowned. It was true. If I was right, and he’d been following me, he knew who I was.

  Mike said, “We could take Droppin’ Skirts out near him,
do some fishing, maybe barbecue, check it out. I’ve got a sauce recipe I’ve been wanting to try that’s—”

  “You’re enjoying this op a little too much,” I said. “Especially the whole dropping skirts thing.”

  Tom held back a smirk.

  “Hey, did I mention the two blondes in bikinis we met? We could get them to come along, too, maybe ride on the bow. Perfect distraction. They’ll never notice there are two dudes on board.”

  Eye roll.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Dalton said and got up to leave.

  “Wait.” I got up to follow him. “How? What do you mean?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  I waved a quick goodbye to the guys and followed him down the dock.

  “Hey, wait.”

  He didn’t slow or look back.

  “Dalton!”

  He stopped but didn’t turn.

  I came up beside him. “What the hell?”

  A flock of gulls launched from the dock in a flutter of wings, yack, yack, yacking.

  “What’s going on? Since when do you go off and do something without informing your team?”

  “This one—” He sighed. “I can get what we need. It’ll just have to be off book.”

  “Off book? What are you talking about? You don’t do things off book.”

  “I’m a SEAL, remember? I know how to board his vessel without him knowing I was there.”

  “Right. So, why couldn’t you tell me and the guys?”

  “It’s a two man job.”

  “Okay, fine. Tell me what I need to do.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “Two SEALs.”

  “Do you think I’m not—” Oh. I drew back. “You’re going to ask Rod?”

  “He’ll do it.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But isn’t that rather awkward? He’s on his honeymoon for heaven’s sake.”

  “Yeah.”

  “With your ex-wife.”

  He didn’t hide his annoyance.

  “Dalton. I don’t understand. Why would you even—”

  “Hey, there’s the guys.” He gestured at a boat. It was Gaspar’s Revenge, idling toward the gas dock.