Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Once he’d found the right one and unrolled it across his knees, I switched the overhead from red to white and leaned over toward him. “We’re about here,” I said, pointing to a spot south of the Seven Mile Bridge. “Where we’re going is G Marker, here. It’s the one marked with a twenty-two, due south of Spanish Harbor.”

  He looked at the knotmeter, checked the scale on the chart and said, “Less than half an hour?”

  “Give or take a few minutes. The client asked for a reef in forty feet of water with low relief. There’s quite a few that fit the bill, but for his level of photography, water clarity is real important, so that narrowed it down to just a few spots.”

  “The two women will be modeling underwater? In what? Scuba gear?”

  “I don’t have any idea what he’s got in mind. He’s one of those creative types, so it should be a pretty interesting day.”

  I heard jazz coming up from the salon and turned the topside speakers up just loud enough to create a pleasant background to the steady swish of the bow wave. I set the radar alarm for two miles and swallowed the last of my coffee. Leaning back, I put my feet up on the dash next to the wheel and clasped my hands behind my head. “If you’re serious about retiring, you can’t find a better place to put everything behind you than right here.”

  “Yeah, I’m quickly seeing just what you mean,” Travis said as he took a drink from his coffee mug and looked out over the foredeck at the water. The waning moon was nearing the horizon far ahead of us, causing the surface of the water to sparkle.

  “How old are you, Travis?”

  “I’ll be fifty-five in July. You?”

  “Forty-six come next month,” I replied. “You miss it?”

  He looked over at me pensively. “The military? Yeah, all the time.” He turned and looked out to the starboard side as the early morning traffic crossed the Seven Mile Bridge in the distance.

  Forty minutes and few words later, we came down off plane, idling slowly across the deeper part of the reef a hundred feet off the marker tower. I switched on the stern-mounted underwater lights and they lit up the water all around us. Peter, Tom and the two models looked down, pointing, and discussed things for a minute, then Peter called up that the spot looked perfect.

  Kim took Travis forward, showing him how to release the brake on the anchor chain, and it rattled out of the well, the anchor dropping to the sandy bottom. I reversed the engines, idling backward with the current until Kim signaled that we had enough rode out and set the brake on the winch. Once I felt the heavy Danforth bite into the sand, I gunned the engines, setting it deep, and then shut them down. We were anchored and ready to dive, just as the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon. Peter and Tom were suited up in lightweight wet suits, and with the cockpit lights now turned on I noticed for the first time that the two women were wearing, of all things, evening gowns.

  I helped Travis get his gear together and Kim helped the two divers set theirs up on the four-seat bench I’d had built, which anchored in the fighting chair mount. I was puzzled about the evening wear, but neither Peter nor Tom offered any explanation.

  When everyone was suited up and ready, Peter turned to Travis and explained, “Your and Tom’s primary job is to keep the girls on air using your octopus and to move them and their dresses around as I direct you. Just watch for my hand signals.”

  “They’re wearing evening gowns underwater?” Travis asked, incredulous.

  Peter winked and smiled, saying, “You’ll see.”

  Annette and Mitzi each wore long, flowing pastel gowns. Annette’s was strapless, pale blue below the waist with a tight-fitting dark blue bodice, while Mitzi’s was a yellow-and-white number with a plunging neckline, cut very low in the back with a halter strap tied around the back of her neck. Each woman wore matching gloves that almost reached the elbow and carried high-heel shoes.

  “An interesting day, you said?” Travis quipped, as Tom did a giant stride entry from the swim platform.

  Peter handed Tom the camera equipment and stepped off beside him. Turning, he pulled his mask down around his neck and said, “Hand me the light bar, please.” Kim unstrapped the unwieldy mechanism from the top of the bench and handed it down to him.

  To the two women, Peter said, “Wait until we’re on the bottom and set up, then come down with Travis, sharing his second regulator, just like we discussed yesterday.”

  Annette and Mitzi stood on the platform with Travis, looking down into the water, and nodded. In a luxury yacht commercial it would look normal, but on a working dive boat, the two fashionably dressed ladies standing beside a diver looked kind of comical. A few minutes after the two divers descended, there was a flash of light from below and Annette said, “They’re ready for us.”

  Travis went in first and the two women knelt down and rolled forward head first, entering the water with hardly a ripple, the long gowns flowing up around them as they both somersaulted and came up on either side of him. They moved in the water like they went swimming while fully clothed all the time.

  “We’ll each take your arm,” Mitzi said to Travis, taking his left one and treading water. “We’ll trade your second regulator back and forth as we go down. Don’t worry, we’ve both done this a few times and we won’t use much of your air. But you’ll have to guide us to where Peter directs you, since neither of us will be able to see very well.” A moment later, they disappeared below the surface, the chiffon gowns billowing behind them.

  “I think I could live here all my life and never see anything stranger,” Kim said.

  “Don’t say that,” I replied with a grin. “A stranger thing is always just around the corner down here. Go get the computer set up for editing. I’ll keep an eye on things.”

  I went back up to the bridge, where I had a better view, and turned off the underwater lights. Looking down, I could clearly see the three divers, and I couldn’t help thinking that the models in those flowing gowns looked just like giant fly fishing lures. But they both seemed very comfortable in the water, allowing Travis and Tom to move them around in front of the bright light bar, which was attracting quite a few brightly colored reef fish. Soon, the divers swam away and the strobes on the light bar began to flash.

  I watched as Tom and Travis moved the women around the reef edge and Peter photographed first one and then the other as they slowly drifted upward in the current. The women were breathing off each diver’s octopus rig between shoots. From above, it looked kind of weird, but Peter’s the artist. The sun was above the horizon now and I poured another cup of coffee from the thermos, sitting back to think about Stockwell’s earlier announcement and plans.

  He was right about Deuce. His easygoing manner and his ability to instill confidence in others made him perfect to take over Stockwell’s position as the political liaison between the leadership in Washington and the teams in the field. With the new team being spun up to work out of Key Largo and Deuce presently overseeing their training, no doubt working right alongside them, he’d be in a much better position to know each person’s strengths and weaknesses.

  The wild card was Jules. They’d only been married less than a year and she’d only been north of Palm Beach a few times in her life. She’s an island girl who loves the water and she knows the backcountry better than anyone I could think of. Adapt to life in Washington? I wondered.

  Deuce has had been slowly acclimating to his new lifestyle here in the subtropics himself. They’d bought a Whitby ketch and lived aboard at Rusty’s little marina. Hell, he’d even grown his hair and beard out and was wearing boat shoes. I wasn’t sure if he’d relish being in Washington full-time. But, when it came right down to it, he’d go where he was told and do what was needed of him. He’d probably accept the position. Not out of any desire for advancement. Deuce wasn’t like that. He’d do it out of the realization that he was the logical man for the job and his desire to serve to the best of his ability. Nothing more.

  Then there was Stockwell. Was he rea
dy to leave the city life behind or was he just pulling my leg? No, I thought, he’s not the leg-pulling type. If he felt it necessary to send someone else down here, even himself, he’d just do it and if he said he was retiring and considering living down here, that’s exactly what he was doing. A Colonel’s pension wouldn’t go far, though. Maybe he’d done some wise investing over the years.

  After forty minutes under water, the lights on the bottom winked off and the divers slowly surfaced to swap out tanks. Kim had fresh tanks ready and waiting and together we exchanged the empties without the divers even getting out of the water. I checked each one’s depth gauge and none of them had a red line over thirty-five feet, so I reset the maximum depth indicator to zero on all three consoles. A second dive to that depth wouldn’t require a decompression stop, but I suggested they do a safety stop at ten feet after the next one, just in case. Peter and Tom readily agreed.

  Thirty minutes after they’d gone back down and Kim had returned to the salon to work on the computer, the urgent beeping of the radar alarm brought me out of my thoughts. It was set to alert me if another boat came within a mile.

  My first instinct was to look out to sea, east to west, where any large ships might be coming too close to the reef. Seeing nothing, I checked the radar, which showed a small boat closing fast from the southeast, where the sun was now well above the horizon. Looking that way, I couldn’t make it out in the blinding glare of the sun on the water. The radar showed it to be less than a mile away.

  Damned idiots, I thought. Though I couldn’t see them, they had the sun to their backs, and my boat, with its blue hull, white decks and the big red-and-white diver down flag flying above the roof, should be visible for twice that distance.

  I snatched the mic to the marine band radio and hailed them. “Vessel approaching the dive boat Gaspar’s Revenge, anchored south of Marker Twenty-Two, I have divers down. Change your course and slow down.”

  There was no response, so I repeated the call, checking to make sure I was on the hailing channel. Again, no response. The boat was within a few hundred yards according to the radar, but still invisible in the glare and coming on quickly. They were approaching way too fast and directly out of the sun. Something’s not right, I thought as I opened the overhead locker and took out my 9mm Sig Sauer P226 in its clip-on holster. I quickly checked the magazine and chambered a round before slipping it into my waistband at my back and pulling my tee shirt over it.

  Why would a small boat be coming out of the southeast? There’s no land that way except … Haiti! Impossible! That’s seven hundred miles of open ocean. The only other possibility was that they came out of one of the islands in the Keys and were intentionally approaching out of the sun.

  Once on the deck in the cockpit, I stepped up onto the starboard gunwale and shielded my eyes, straining to make out the approaching boat. I could hear the sound of the outboard approaching, but still couldn’t see it. I waved my arms and pointed out to sea several times, trying to direct them away from my divers.

  Suddenly, a twenty-foot runabout went screaming by less than thirty feet away with two black men on board. As I reached for my Sig I saw the man in the back of the boat throw something toward me, splashing into the water ten feet away. It was followed instantly by another as the driver pointed a gun at me and started shooting.

  Instinctively, I knew he had no chance of hitting me and little chance of even hitting the Revenge, so I aimed carefully, but didn’t return fire.

  Suddenly the boat rocked to port, knocking me off balance and into the water as two geysers shot up from the depths. The runabout never slowed down, speeding off around the marker and heading back toward the islands. I swam quickly to the dive platform empty-handed, having dropped my gun when hitting the water. Kim came running out of the salon and I shouted for her to get back inside as I levered myself up onto the platform.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Kim shouted, leaning over the transom.

  “Just get back inside!” I yelled, quickly throwing one leg after the other over the transom, rolling across it and heading to the storage cabinets. She started to protest, but I shoved her inside, locking the hatch from the inside and closing it. I grabbed a mask from the cabinet and in two quick strides, I was over the side and putting the mask on underwater.

  Quickly tilting my head back, I broke the seal around my cheeks and exhaled through my nose to clear the water. Then, jackknifing my body, I started kicking for the bottom thirty-five feet below. The two women were drifting near the base of the reef, either dead or knocked out. One of the divers was swimming to them and another was holding the sides of his head, but swimming to the inert third diver. I recognized the equipment on the diver headed toward the women as my own and knew it was Stockwell.

  I started swimming after Stockwell, diving deeper and from above him. As he reached Mitzi, I came down right next to him. Pointing to Annette who was twenty feet away, I grabbed Mitzi under the arms and with my lungs starving for air, I pushed off the bottom with all I had. In the back of my mind I recognized that the sound of the boat’s propeller was getting fainter and headed away.

  My lungs were burning from being down too long and as I kicked frantically for the surface I started to release the air in my lungs. Breaking the surface, gasping for air, I took Mitzi in a cross-body drag, kicking toward the stern of the Revenge about twenty feet away.

  Stockwell surfaced with Annette in tow. Wearing fins, he quickly passed me, pulling her inert body behind him. Reaching the dive platform, he quickly shed his gear and climbed up, pulling the Annette up behind him. I reached the platform and Stockwell pulled Mitzi up onto it with Annette before helping me up onto it.

  Together we pulled both women through the transom door. Neither was breathing and we found no pulse, so we started CPR. Hearing splashing from behind the boat, I looked back and saw both Tom and Peter swimming under their own power toward the dive platform. As I started to lower my mouth to Mitzi’s once more, she began spitting up foamy, pink seawater. I left her there and banged on the hatch for Kim to open it. When she did, I told her to pull Mitzi inside the salon and wrap her in a blanket.

  “She’s probably in shock and suffering an embolism,” I added as I quickly climbed up to the bridge and started the engines.

  I engaged the windlass, but it seemed to take forever for it to drag the boat forward before the change in its pitch told me the anchor had come free. When I heard the rattle of the chain on the roller, I glanced back and saw Tom closing the transom door and Travis still bent over Mitzi’s body. Peter was collapsed in the corner, but waving off Tom’s help.

  I engaged the transmissions and pushed both throttles to the stops. The Revenge responded instantly, surging forward and up, climbing on top of the water as I spun the wheel to the right. I straightened out, heading east. Once she reached planing speed the hull broke the surface bond of the water and we quickly accelerated to over forty-five knots.

  I glanced back down to the cockpit and saw that Tom and Travis were both working on Annette, who still lay motionless on the deck. I turned back and checked the radar as I reached for the radio mic. I saw the runabout on the screen. It was headed due east about two miles ahead. I keyed the mic. “Dockside! Dockside! This is Gaspar’s Revenge with an emergency!”

  Seconds later a voice came back over the speaker. “Gaspar’s Revenge, this is Dockside. How can we help?”

  “I’m coming in with injured divers. CPR is being performed on one, another has a possible embolism, and there are three others that are awake, condition unknown.”

  “Contacting Fisherman’s Hospital now, Gaspar’s Revenge. Come straight to the fuel dock, we’ll have transportation waiting for you. What happened, Jesse?”

  It was then that I recognized the voice. Robin used to work at Dockside until about a year ago, but left suddenly. “Those idiots from Miami just threw grenades at us, Robin.” Somberly, I added, “I had five divers in the water.”

  I glanced back down a
t the cockpit. Nobody was there and Kim was climbing up to the bridge. “How are they?”

  “Not good, Dad,” she replied, sitting down in the second seat. “Mister Simpson can’t hear anything and is bleeding from one ear. Mitzi and Annette are both awake, but coughing up blood.”

  She saw me glance at the radar and checked it herself, looking at me with a concerned expression. The other boat was only a mile ahead, but we were coming up to Sombrero Key light and they were angling to go on the south side of it. The straighter course to Knights Key Inlet or Sister Creek would take us well to the north of it.

  Every fiber of my being wanted to chase them down and crush them under the bow, but I eased the wheel to the left, putting the light on our starboard bow. Kim switched the sonar to forward scan and looked around to check where we were.

  “Dockside,” I said, keying the mic again, “our ETA is less than ten minutes.”

  “Roger, Jesse. Ambulances are on the way.”

  “Are they going to be okay?” Kim asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I hope so. I just don’t know.”

  The intensity of the concussion from a grenade is magnified underwater. Peter had no doubt ruptured an eardrum and likely the others had as well. The two women coughing up blood indicated a serious embolism. At thirty-five feet the pressure was more than double that on the surface and to compensate the external pressure, air is delivered through the regulator at the same pressure. Essentially, a breath at that shallow depth held the same volume of air as two breaths on the surface. If a diver came up too fast while holding their breath, the air in their lungs would expand, causing an embolism, or air bubble, that could block blood flow to part of the body, or worse, enter the heart and stop all blood circulation.

  Another voice came over the speaker, “Gaspar’s Revenge, this is Monroe County Deputy Martin Phillips.”

  “Go ahead, Deputy Phillips.”