Operation Dolphin Spirit

by Kimberli A. Bindschatel

His eyes met mine. “You like that?”

  I flushed. “Oh, stop.” I turned back toward the monitor.

  Another article, posted in 2016, confirmed, “Earlier this month, the Russian government announced it was looking to buy five combat dolphins: two females and three males, physically unblemished, and in possession of ‘perfect teeth.’ Naturally, Russia did not reveal what it planned to do with the dolphins.”

  I couldn’t believe it. The information was right in front of us, courtesy of Google. “These must be those same five dolphins,” I said.

  “Odds are, yes,” Dalton replied.

  The monitor flickered and went out, then came back on.

  “The storm,” I said. “We probably learned all we’re going to from the internet anyway.” I thought for a moment. “But why are they here? In The Bahamas? This country has no relationship with Russia. Does it?”

  “Try one more search,” he said. “Try Bahamas and Russia relations.”

  I did. Turns out, in 2006, the Bahamian government invested hundreds of millions in Russia, which prompted an investigation into the relationship between Bahamian officials, money laundering and the Russian mafia.

  “Well, what does that have to do with training military dolphins here?”

  “I don’t know. But, in the morning, we need to have a real talk with your new boss. I’m betting she has some more insight for us.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Meanwhile…” He pulled my hair back from my neck and kissed me right behind my ear.

  I shivered. “That’s probably…we shouldn’t…”

  “We shouldn’t what?”

  His warm breath tickled my neck.

  “I don’t think…”

  “You don’t think what?” He reached across me, grabbed the armrest on the chair, and spun me around. “Don’t give me that excuse about getting distracted.”

  He took my hand in his and pulled me to my feet, then placed his other hand at the small of my back and pulled me tight up against him. “Because we’re professionals.”

  “We really should head to bed,” I said, not really meaning it.

  He grinned. “Yes, we should.”

  “I mean, get some sleep.”

  “Oh that.” He leaned closer and kissed my neck. I sucked in my breath. “Sleep is overrated,” he whispered.

  Then he was kissing me and I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep at all.

  Oh what the hell.

  And I was lost in his kisses.

  Dalton and I arrived at Kerrie’s house, right at eight a.m. The rain battered the island in sheets. Wind whipped in off the ocean at forty miles an hour.

  “You know Dalton, from the dive boat,” I said as we stood in the doorway, dripping on the tile.

  Kerrie invited us in. Natalie, her research assistant was there. Piles of notebooks were spread over the kitchen table. Her husband was gone, she said, working on a boat engine, and she and Natalie were catching up on some work.

  “I hate to interrupt,” I said, “but it’s important.”

  She looked at Natalie. Was that an eye roll?

  I reached into my pocket and presented my I.D. badge. “I’m a U.S. Federal agent. Dalton is my partner.”

  She jerked back from the badge in my hand as though I were holding a live snake.

  “Holy crap,” said Natalie. “U.S. Agents?” She looked at Kerrie with big eyes.

  The blood drained from Kerrie’s face and she started to wobble. Dalton was there, taking her by the arm and sitting her down in a chair.

  “You’re upset,” I said, “but not surprised.”

  She shook her head, her lip quivering.

  “You know about the Russian dolphins.”

  Her eyes moved to her children, playing in the next room. Billy pushed a fire truck around a furniture leg. Charlotte sat on the couch, her chubby legs out in front of her, brushing her doll’s hair. Tears welled up in Kerrie’s eyes and started streaming down her cheeks.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “We can protect you. If you tell us everything. But you need to tell us what you know.”

  Natalie sat back in her chair. “Hoh-lee crap.”

  Dalton found a roll of paper towels and handed it to Kerrie. She thanked him with a nod, tore a sheet off the roll, and dried her eyes.

  My focus on Kerrie, I went on. “You were threatened, weren’t you?”

  She managed a nod.

  “The kids?”

  She closed her eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears, then finally nodded.

  My fists clenched and unclenched. How dare they? Threatening to harm her kids was vicious, the lowest of lows. I wanted to march straight out to their boat right now and slam those men against a wall.

  I took a breath before saying, “Okay. Let’s start at the beginning. You first saw the Russian dolphins about eight weeks ago, correct? When Skylar was the intern here?”

  She nodded, then her eyes snapped up to meet mine. “Wait, how do you know about Skylar?”

  “I’m an investigator. That’s what I do.”

  “Oh.” It took a moment for her to adjust to my role change before she went on. “I didn’t think much about it. The dolphins, I mean. We spot transient dolphins once in awhile. Especially bottlenose that follow the coast.”

  “But?” I coached.

  “But these had transmitters. It’s customary to report sightings to the researcher. But I couldn’t find any published research for these particular animals.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we kept seeing them, every day. They’d come up to the boat. Their behavior was odd, nothing I’d seen before.”

  “So, you started to suspect something?”

  “It was Natalie, actually.”

  I turned to Natalie.

  “Well, I’d done an internship at a captive facility. Their behavior reminded me of those dolphins. But still, we didn’t think…”

  “We hadn’t heard of any errant dolphins, so I put out a notice,” Kerrie said, “in the marine mammal community. It’s happened before—”

  “Captive dolphins getting out of their enclosures, you mean,” I said. “Like over in Gulfport during Hurricane Katrina.”

  “Yeah,” she said, surprised I knew about that, too. “I posted notice on a science forum. The next day, a man cornered me. He said to make it disappear or—” she shook, her lip trembled “—or my kids would disappear.”

  “And this man, he was Russian?”

  She nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again. “He had a heavy accent. I think Russian, yes.”

  “Was he in the crowd the other day, on the beach, where the one was stranded?”

  “Yes, he was there.”

  “Okay. Do you have any idea why they’d be here? In The Bahamas?”

  Kerrie hesitated.

  “Do you have a guess?” I pressed.

  Natalie spoke up. “We came up with a hypothesis. We think they came from Cuba. Perhaps they were training there and the dolphins either escaped from a pen or maybe they were working with them in the open ocean. If it was illegal, whatever they were doing with the dolphins, their escape wouldn’t have been made public.”

  “Not on the public forums?”

  “Right.”

  “Why Cuba? Because the man who threatened you is Russian, you assumed--”

  “No,” Natalie said. “We came to that conclusion before he came into the picture. We looked at migratory patterns. These dolphins likely followed a wild pod of migrating dolphins from the south and Cuba is the only country where dolphins could be captive where we wouldn’t have access to information about it.”

  “You think these dolphins escaped and made friends with some wild, migrating dolphins who—”

  “More like, followed. To say they built relationships would be presumptive.”

  “Okay, they followed. Then once they arrived here in Bahamian waters, they decided to stay?”

  She nodded. “It’s prime habitat. Our dolphin p
opulation is healthy. Food supply is good. It’s a dolphin paradise.”

  “And now their trainers are here, too. We assume they followed them by using the satellite trackers.”

  They both nodded.

  I thought about it all for a moment. It made perfect sense.

  “Are these dolphins able to survive on their own in the wild?”

  “We think so,” Kerrie said. “What Natalie didn’t mention, is that I did eventually find information on the internet about the Russians having purchased five dolphins a couple years ago.”

  “We saw that, too.”

  “Well, I believe they were wild-caught dolphins, not captive-born. So, yes. Though they are now in a different habitat than they were born in, we think they can survive on their own.”

  “And they’re learning,” Natalie said with excitement. “We witnessed two of them crater feeding along with a small group of our native bottlenose.”

  “Ah, and of all the dolphins in the world, only the Bimini dolphins have been observed crater feeding. So that’s a good sign.”

  “A very good sign,” Natalie said.

  Dalton asked, “Have you seen any behavior you could identify as their trained skills?”

  “I don’t follow,” Kerrie said.

  “Is there any way to figure out what they’ve been trained to do?”

  She shook her head. “We briefly witnessed them crater feeding, once,” she said as though she felt the need to clarify Natalie’s overly optimistic statement. “But that was learned behavior by watching or interacting with the wild dolphins. Other than that, they showed signs of a comfort level with humans that only comes from regular interaction. Nothing else that we’ve documented.”

  Natalie nodded her head, confirming Kerrie’s statement.

  “So, let me make sure I understand,” I said. “It’s likely that these dolphins were being trained in Cuba, but somehow escaped, then followed some other dolphins here, wild, migrating dolphins, where they’ve decided to stay. The trainers have followed, using their trackers, and they don’t want anyone to know about any of it, so they threatened you to keep quiet about it. That about right?”

  Kerrie nodded and pushed back her bangs, glancing over to her children.

  “We think so,” Natalie said.

  “I would think they’d want to get those dolphins out of here, back to Cuba, as soon as possible. The longer they’re here, the greater the risk of being detected. I’m sure they’re breaking many Bahamian laws, not to mention the international agreements on wildlife.”

  They nodded in agreement.

  “And did you consider calling the police here? Or customs agents?”

  Kerrie looked me right in the eyes. “Are you kidding? My kids…”

  I nodded in understanding. The Bahamas wasn’t exactly known for incorruptible police and strong federal protection. “All right. How would they do it? How would they move the dolphins back to Cuba?”

  “Depends,” Kerrie said, tapping her fingers on the table. “That’s a long way to get them to follow staying close enough to the boat to hear the whistle calls. They’d be better to recapture them and transport them back. But they might not have the equipment for it.”

  “And if they can’t do either?”

  Dalton said, in a quiet, calm voice. “They’ll cut their losses and destroy any evidence.”

  The room went quiet as the four of us stared at one another. We knew what that meant.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Before we left, we assured Kerrie and Natalie that we wouldn’t do anything without talking to our supervisor and to them again first.

  My room was the closest. Dalton and I ran there in the pouring rain.

  Once inside, I shook my raincoat in the shower. Dalton plopped down in the only chair.

  “The clock is ticking for these dolphins,” I said, coming out of the bathroom. Dalton’s wet T-shirt clung to his chest. I bit my lip. What had I been saying? “We can’t let them kill them.”

  “I’m not sure what we can do. We have no authority here.” He combed his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back.

  “Then why the hell are we here? We need to call Hyland.”

  “Phones are dead.” He held up his hands as though he knew what I was going to say next. “But it doesn’t matter. This was a seek-and-learn mission. For now, we have no other directive.”

  My hands squeezed into fists at my hips. “But we can’t just stand by and do nothing.”

  He gave me that look.

  “I understand, the U.S. has no authority here. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking now?”

  “I don’t know.” I plopped down on the edge of the bed. “We can’t do anything until this storm passes.” A yawn snuck up on me. “And we’ve been up all night.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his eyes on me.

  “But we need a plan.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I rose and went to the window. Rain trickled down the glass in thick rivulets. A gust of wind made it vibrate. “We’re stuck here. Holed up.”

  “Yeah, stuck. Together.” He came up behind me, placed his hands on my hips. “What will we do with the time?”

  My nerves buzzed. I could think of a lot of things I’d like to do. With Dalton. “You are insatiable, aren’t you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I peeked over my shoulder.

  He nuzzled my neck.

  “Did you have something in mind?”

  He spun me around, took hold of me by the shoulders, and said, “Yes. I think we need to talk.”

  Uh. What? “Fine. Let’s start with why you never mentioned you had a wife.”

  “Ex wife.”

  I crossed my arms. “Either way.”

  “I did.”

  “What? You did not.”

  “I did. When we first met. In Costa Rica, when you barged into the bathroom—”

  “I didn’t barge in.”

  His eyebrows went up. “When you barged into the bathroom and demanded—”

  “Oh, you mean after I asked you to fill me in on the case, you handed me that business card, told me to memorize it, and ran away into the bathroom?”

  “I didn’t—will you knock it off?” He waited until I acquiesced. “In the bathroom, when you made the snarky remark about me not having a girlfriend.”

  I searched my memory. He’d been giving me crap about my observation skills, how the target was a rich guy, how his fat wallet was an attractive trait to women. And yes, okay fine, he’d said he was divorced. “I thought you were kidding.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Well, you were, I mean, we had this thing, you know, our banter thing we do.” I huffed. “You didn’t trust me yet.”

  He stared at me.

  “Okay, so you said it then. How was I supposed to know it was true? And that doesn’t matter anyway. You’ve never mentioned her since. You’ve never told me anything about your life. Nothing. Mom, dad, brothers, sisters. Nothing. And that’s fine. I know you’re not a big talker, and very private, I guess. But Dalton, a wife?”

  His shoulders slumped. He went for the edge of the bed and sat down. “It didn’t come up.”

  “Because you didn’t want to talk about what happened? Between you two?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What did she tell you?”

  I took the chair. “She told me she cheated on you.”

  He groaned, looked away. “I wish she hadn’t shared that.”

  “I’m sorry, Dalton. That must have been—”

  “Things happened the way they were supposed to.”

  I stared at him. “Really? That’s how you feel about it? It had to have been heart-wrenching.”

  He shrugged. “That’s how I feel about it now.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  His eyes snapped toward mine. “What do you want me to say? Yeah, it hurt like hell. It ripped my guts out. I wanted to kill the g
uy.” He looked away again. “He knew I was a SEAL, too, so the little prick must’ve had a death wish anyway.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He stared out the window at the rain.

  “She seems like she’s genuinely remorseful. I think she really loved you.”

  “I know that,” he said, his voice low.

  “Well, I don’t think—”

  “I told you. It was a Navy marriage. I wasn’t there. It is what it is. I mean, was.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t—”

  “But nothing.” His gaze met mine. “She didn’t seek it out. Yeah, I wish she would have made different decisions. But she didn’t seek it out. He was my friend. A good friend. I thought. He knew I was gone, that we had some issues. He made the moves. Came on strong. End of story.”

  “Your friend?” I said, incredulous.

  He looked away. “Obviously not.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Poppy, really? Do we have to do this?”

  “You wanted to talk.”

  He sighed, resigned. “It sucked. The whole situation. But it also made me see things more clearly. With her, anyway. Our relationship issues. I don’t harbor any bad feelings, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “As for him.” He winced. “Something’s wrong in that man’s head. A moral compass gone haywire. I don’t know. I mean, who does that? I thought he was my best friend. I would have taken a bullet for him. Then, the first chance he got, he betrays me in the worst possible way. Son of a bitch kept lying to me, too. Blaming her. Saying she was all over him, like he was some kinda victim. I gave him three chances. Three times I told him, just be straight with me. But he couldn’t do it. Didn’t have the balls to admit what he’d done.”

  “I can see why you’d be angry.”

  “I’m not angry.” He paused, thought for a moment. “I was. But not now. I pity him really. He’s the one who lost. Lost my friendship, hers. Lost his integrity, if he had any to begin with. He’s a pathetic creature who’s probably moved on to ruin someone else’s marriage.”

  “How’d you know the truth of what happened? I mean, they say—”

  “Doesn’t matter. He knows what he did. He has to live with that.” He turned to look at me, finally. “Karma will take care of him.”