Bluewater Enigma

by Charles Dougherty

  "Look, Harry. I like Beverly; that's not a nice thing for you to say. It makes me feel uncomfortable."

  "We could just give it a little try, Liz. See how it goes. If we get on all right, maybe she'd even join us. Would that make you feel better about it, knowing she was in on it?"

  "No, Harry. I'm sorry. Beverly may be open to that kind of thing, but I'm not, okay?"

  "Okay. That's cool, Liz. We'll just keep it between the two of us, if that suits you better."

  "The two of you sounds better," she said. "Let's just pretend we didn't have this conversation, okay? No harm, no foul? Isn't that the saying you Americans use?"

  "Don't pretend to misunderstand me. When I said between the two of us, you know I meant between you and me, Liz. Now come on. Dani and Beverly are gonna be gone for a while yet. He moved closer, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You know you want to, babe. Let's just do it. It'll be great, I promise. I won't do anything you don't like. You call the shots, okay, beautiful?"

  "You really mean that?"

  "Sure, I do. Try me."

  "Take your hand off my shoulder; I don't like your touching me."

  "Aw, you're just playing hard to get. Let yourself go."

  "Harry, listen to me. It's not going to happen. You're a handsome man, but I find your behavior repulsive. Dani and I run a professional business here, not a floating brothel. If that won't suit you, we'll refund your money and you can both leave as soon as Beverly gets back."

  She tried to back away, and he raised his other hand, now holding both of her shoulders. She whipped her right arm up and across his left forearm, gripping his right wrist in her right hand. She twisted from her hips and drove her left hand into the back of his right arm, twisting his wrist with her right hand.

  He stumbled forward, trying to get away, and she increased the pressure on his arm until he cried out.

  "You're hurting me," he said.

  "It's not an accident," she said. "I told you I didn't like to be touched. You believe me now?" She cranked his right arm up behind his back.

  "Yeah, I get it."

  "Good," she said. "I'm going to let you go, and you're going to resume behaving like a gentleman."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Don't go there. Believe me, I don't want to hurt you or your wife." She released her grip and shoved him away.

  "Beverly's not my wife," he said.

  "Somehow, I knew that. I wasn't talking about Beverly. She's here by choice, maybe, but I'll bet your wife thinks you're somewhere else. If you go home with a broken arm, it might be tough to explain, so behave yourself."

  "Okay, okay. Lighten up. You can't blame a fella for asking." He shook his arm, rubbing the muscles she'd stretched.

  "But I can blame a fellow who won't take no for an answer. Now, go back up on deck and chill out. I need to finish our lunch before Beverly and Dani come back."

  13

  "I'm glad they wanted to do an island tour," Dani said. She and Liz had dropped their guests off at the taxi stand near the dinghy dock and helped them arrange an excursion to see Bequia. "She's okay, except for asking a lot of questions, but there's something creepy about Harry. Or maybe it's just me."

  "It's not just you," Liz said. "He's a creep, all right. He hit on me while you two were off snorkeling before lunch."

  "He did?" Dani asked, eyebrows rising. "How did you deal with that?"

  "I tried to talk my way out of it," Liz said, "but he wasn't taking no for an answer."

  "What happened?"

  "You would have been proud of me. When he wouldn't stop touching me, I put him in a bar hammerlock and offered to break his arm."

  "Atta girl!" Dani said, grinning and raising her right hand, palm out.

  Liz chuckled and high-fived her.

  "He really is a jerk, then," Dani said.

  "But we already knew that," Liz said.

  "Yes, but he's a worse jerk for ignoring your protests."

  "I don't know," Liz said. "I thought he was as bad as they came, leaving a pregnant wife and a child to come play in the islands with a ... well, whatever she is. I wasn't too surprised when he decided to try his luck with me."

  Dani frowned. "It's strange, but I like her, even knowing she's up to no good. Why is that, do you suppose?"

  "I feel the same way about her," Liz said. "I think it's because she doesn't present herself as being anything other than what she is."

  "A hooker, you think?" Dani asked.

  "That conjures up an image that's at odds with the way she behaves," Liz said. "Hooker, escort — terms like that have some connotations that just don't fit her. She's reserved and pleasant, and she comes across as thoughtful and smart. I can't figure out what she sees in him. He's scuzzy. I was pretty sure he was going to make a play for one of us before the cruise was over."

  "Better you than me," Dani said. "I wouldn't have had your restraint, I'm afraid. That would have been the end of the charter, right there."

  "I offered that," Liz said, "before it got physical, but he had his mind on something else."

  "She booked this, though. I wonder how she would have reacted if he'd taken you up on canceling?"

  "I thought about that before I offered to refund their money and terminate the charter."

  "And what did you decide?"

  "That he wouldn't take me up on it. He was too determined to have me. But I had to make the offer."

  "I'm glad he didn't," Dani said.

  "Glad he didn't what?" Liz said. "Try to rape me?"

  "No. We both know how that would have come out. I'm glad he didn't take you up on your offer to end the charter."

  Liz scrunched her brow up and shook her head. "I don't understand."

  "It would have set us back too far," Dani said.

  "Set us back? " Liz asked. "We don't need the business that badly. A one-week charter's no big deal."

  "Oh, it's not that," Dani said. "I want to get to the bottom of this, and I think we can learn something from playing out the rest of their week."

  "Get to the bottom of what?"

  "Whatever's going on here. Somebody stole our boat and wired it for sound and video."

  "But we've got a pretty good idea that somebody's setting him up for blackmail," Liz said.

  "Yes. No question," Dani said. "But that doesn't explain 'why Vengeance.' There's something else going on besides the blackmail plot."

  Liz didn't respond for several seconds. "What could it be?" she asked.

  Dani shrugged and shook her head.

  "Do you think somehow we're a target, too? For surveillance?"

  "That's all I can come up with so far," Dani said.

  "But why us? What could anybody learn by eavesdropping on us?"

  "If we knew that, it would go a long way toward letting us figure out who it is."

  "But we already have a good idea why they want to blackmail Harry, or whatever his real name is," Liz said.

  "We may be wrong," Dani said.

  "Now I'm lost, Dani. What are you thinking?"

  "We leapt to the conclusion that the charter guests were the target of the surveillance, and then we found out he was a congressman and it seemed even more likely, right?"

  "Yes. And then she led us into that ambush by the St. Vincent Coast Guard; they knew about the drugs."

  "Maybe," Dani said.

  "Maybe? But you saw the pictures of the stash on his phone."

  "Oh, the Coast Guard knew about the drugs, all right. My 'maybe' was about her leading us into it."

  "Well, she did," Liz said. "We wouldn't have been there except for her."

  "But they could have intercepted us farther offshore, Liz. I keep thinking that the drugs would have been overkill if all they wanted to do was blackmail the congressman. With the recordings, he's dead meat. They didn't need a drug bust."

  "You think we were the target of that?" Liz asked.

  "Maybe."

  "But what about the idea that she asked us out to dinner so
somebody could have access to the boat?" Liz asked.

  "We'll know more after tonight," Dani said. "If somebody tries to sneak aboard, then we'll be pretty sure she's part of the setup. Plus, Sharktooth may be able to learn something from them."

  "And if she is?" Liz asked.

  "One step at a time," Dani said. "Maybe Luke will find out more about her."

  "What should we do with the rest of the afternoon?" Liz asked, after a moment.

  "I don't know, but I don't want to go back to the boat. I can't stand the idea that we can't talk openly in our own home."

  "Me, either," Liz said. "Let's take a walk up to the old battery above the Devil's Table. I could use the exercise."

  "They just piled in their dinghy again and headed for town. They gotta be going to dinner, this late." The small man peered out a porthole on the little chartered sloop. "Want me to head over there and do it?"

  "No," the team leader said. "That's the kind of thing I'm trained for. Besides, I need to figure out the best place to put the package."

  He unzipped his duffle bag and took out a black Lycra dive skin. As he pulled it on over his tank suit, the larger of the two men rummaged in a locker and came out with a sealed plastic bag. He held it, waiting until his boss had zipped himself into the suit.

  "Why you wearin' that?" he asked. "Scared you'll get bit by one of them jellyfish or somethin'?"

  Taking the package and tucking it into his dive skin, the leader pulled the zipper all the way up. "No. Makes me harder to see. White skin catches the light."

  "Huh," the big man said. "What about your face, then?"

  The man in the Lycra suit grinned and reached in his duffle bag again, coming up with a stick of black grease-paint, which he began to smear on his exposed skin.

  "I see," the big man said.

  "You boys behave yourselves. I won't be long," the leader said, as he climbed up into the cockpit, keeping low to avoid silhouetting himself in the lights from town. His two minions watched as he slithered under the lower lifeline and lowered himself into the water without rippling the surface. He ducked his head underwater and disappeared.

  When he judged that he'd covered about half the distance to Vengeance, he drifted up, letting his head break the surface. He pirouetted in the water, checking the horizon. Finding nothing to worry about, he took a deep breath and sunk into the water again.

  He stayed under until he was beneath Vengeance. Putting one hand on the bottom of the boat, he worked his way to the boarding ladder that was hanging amidships. He surfaced with one hand on the lowest step and looked around for several seconds, listening, studying the play of light and shadow on the water's surface.

  Satisfied that he was unobserved, he held on and pulled the zipper of his suit down far enough so that he could take the sealed bag out. Besides the drugs that he would plant, there was a super-absorbent microfiber towel in the bag. He would use that to dry himself off at the top of the ladder before he went aboard. It wouldn't do to leave a trail of wet footprints on the deck.

  As he reached for the next higher step, he sensed motion in the water around his legs. Then there was an explosion of bright light in his head and he felt himself sliding back into the water.

  Sharktooth wrapped a big arm over the unconscious man's shoulder, grabbing him around his chest. He put a foot against Vengeance's underbody and pushed off, pulling his victim against the side of his chest, keeping the man's face out of the water. In less than two minutes, he rolled the still-unconscious man onto the swim platform of Lightning Bolt, the go-fast boat that he used for rapid travel between the islands.

  Hoisting his bulk out of the water, he grabbed a handful of Lycra and dragged the man to the transom. With no apparent effort, he scooped the man up in his arms and stepped over the transom and into the cockpit of the 50-foot, heavily modified Cigarette boat.

  He took a moment to tie the man's wrists and ankles before he started the engines. The three 600-horsepower engines were barely audible with the water-cooled exhaust system in use. When he valued speed over stealth, Sharktooth could open the exhausts and cruise at well over a hundred knots, but tonight, he wanted to attract as little attention as he could.

  He retrieved the anchor and idled out of the harbor, heading west. Once he was out of earshot of the harbor, he pushed the throttles forward, running at an almost silent 60 knots until he was out of sight of land. He cut the power and let the unlighted boat drift.

  Opening a locker, he took out a bucket and dunked it over the side, filling it with seawater. He turned and poured it over the man's face, watching as he gagged and coughed. He writhed on deck, trying to avoid the stream of water.

  "You have a good nap?" Sharktooth asked, as the man blinked and shook his head.

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  "You be nice," Sharktooth said. "I'm the las' mon you ever gon' see. No need to be vexed."

  "What do you want?"

  "Tha's bettah. You jus' need to answer a few questions befo' you die in peace."

  "Where the hell do you reckon he is?" the small man asked his companion. They were playing cards in the main cabin of the 32-foot charter boat, waiting for their leader to return from planting the drugs on Vengeance.

  The big man shrugged. "Beats the hell outta me. I don't much give a shit, either. Maybe he drowned."

  "He's a SEAL, man. He wouldn't drown swimmin' no farther than that. It ain't over a hunnerd yards. Shit, I could swim that with my hands tied behind me. Somethin's wrong. You think he done set us up or somethin'?"

  "What the hell are you talkin' about? Set us up how?"

  "I don't know, but he shoulda — " he was interrupted by a loud thump from up on deck.

  "I bet that's him," the little man said, mounting the companionway ladder.

  He was back in thirty seconds, a bloody package in his hand.

  "Whatcha got there," the big man asked.

  "I don't know," the small one said, beginning to unwrap it. "This is a piece of that fuckin' wetsuit thing he was wearin', but it looks like he done bled all over it."

  "That weren't no wetsuit. Wetsuits is made out of rubber, you dumbass. Lemme see that." The big man snatched the package and flicked open a folding combat knife. Slicing away the Lycra, he muttered, "I'll be a son of a bitch."

  "What?" the little one asked, crowding in to get a look. "It's the damn drugs."

  "You sure?" the larger man asked.

  "Hell, yeah! I wrapped 'em in that there plastic my own self."

  "What the hell could this mean? You think somebody took him out?"

  "Wouldn't bother me none. He's a dickhead. But why would they throw the drugs on our boat?"

  "Did you see anybody when you went up and got the package?" the big man asked.

  "Uh-uh. Nobody, no boats moving around, nothin'."

  "Somebody musta swam up and throwed it on the deck, then," the big man said. "I think maybe we better call in. What do you think?"

  "Yeah, probably so. You gonna do it?"

  "You got seniority," the big man said. "It's your job, asshole. Comes with the territory when you're second in command. What's the matter? You scared they'll fire your ass or somethin'?"

  "Reckon that's about the worst could happen, ain't it."

  "Yep. We ain't in the army no more. There ain't much they can do to us, is there?"

  "Gimme the sat phone," the little one said. "May as well get it done." He scrolled through the directory and placed the call. It was no sooner answered than a siren blared outside their open porthole. He set the phone on the saloon table and stood up to look out, ignoring the man's voice that came from the phone.

  As soon as the siren went silent, a voice blared over a loud hailer, "St. Vincent Marine Police. Everybody aboard Sosueme on deck, now, with your hands in the air."

  "Sosueme," the little one said. "That's us, ain't it?" He looked over his shoulder when the big man didn't answer and saw that he was already through the companionway, his hands raised. He picked
up the phone and said, "Our leader's missing and we just been busted by the cops. Send help."

  "Roger that," the voice on the phone said. "Can you tell me — "

  The little man dropped the phone and raised his hands as a man in body armor came down the companionway ladder, a pistol in his hand. A second man crouched in the companionway, an M4 automatic weapon pointed at him.

  "Don' move," the man with the M4 said. "You are under arres'. Put both hands on the back of your head and turn around, slowly."

  The little man complied, and the man who was already below snapped a handcuff on one wrist and pulled his hands down behind his back, cuffing the other wrist.

  "Got him cuffed," the policeman said, turning the little man around and frog-marching him to the companionway. "Up the ladder, slowly," he ordered.

  The little man climbed into the cockpit and saw that his companion was already in the patrol boat, face down in the bilge. "What's — "

  The policeman behind him swiped his pistol across the back of the little man's head. "Don't talk until I say to. Get in the boat and lie down next to your friend."

  14

  They were almost finished with their first course when Dani felt her phone vibrating against her thigh. She swallowed a sip of wine and returned the glass to the table. "Excuse me for a moment," she said. "I'll be right back."

  She went into the ladies' room and entered a stall, closing the door and taking her phone out. She sat down and touched the home button, entering her access code. She read the brief text message from Sharktooth.

  "Intercepted intruder. All good. Expect no further trouble tonight. Respond when you can for complete story."

  She wanted to respond before she went back to the table. The prospect of waiting an hour or more to satisfy her curiosity was daunting. She forced herself to put the phone away and return to the dining room, where she found that the busboy had cleared the remains of their first course. "Sorry," she said, sliding into her chair.

  "No problem," Harry said, cutting his eyes to the side to watch her as she sat down.

  She felt herself blush; his look made her skin crawl. She was glad the dining room lights were dim.