Bluewater Enigma: The 13th Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers)

by Charles Dougherty

  "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.

  "They're about to bring the main course. You're right on time," Beverly said, "but you missed the excitement."

  "Excitement?" Dani asked. "What happened?"

  "The waitress stopped by to tell us the latest hot gossip," Harry said. "The tour guide told us this afternoon that Bequia was like a small town; he wasn't kidding."

  "What happened?" Dani asked.

  "There was a drug bust in the harbor while we were eating our first course," Liz said. "Two men on a boat named Sosueme were arrested, and the police towed the boat out of the anchorage."

  "Sosueme," Dani said. "I saw that boat. It was anchored close by. A little 32-footer from a no-name bareboat charter company. I figured this was their first stop out of Blue Lagoon. There were three men aboard. Some kind of guys' getaway, I guess. I was worried they'd get drunk and rowdy; I thought we were in for a noisy night in the neighborhood."

  "Three men?" Liz said. "The waitress said they only arrested two; that's strange."

  "Maybe the third one was just visiting," Harry said.

  "Or he delivered the drugs and left," Beverly said. "It could have been one of those setups like you told me about yesterday, huh? If they bought the drugs from him and he turned them in?"

  "It could be," Dani said. "And here we missed all the entertainment. If we had been on Vengeance, we would have had front-row seats."

  "Well, that's all right with me," Liz said. "I'm happy to enjoy a fine dinner ashore, cooked by someone else. That's much nicer than staying home and watching the neighbors get arrested."

  "I agree," Dani said.

  "Excuse me," Liz said, getting up and walking in the direction of the ladies' room.

  Dani watched Harry following her with his eyes, a hungry look on his face.

  "She's very pretty, isn't she," Beverly said, looking at him across the table.

  He flinched like a child caught stealing sugar. He looked at Beverly and smiled, shaking his head. "She's not my type. I always heard redheads were hot-tempered, anyway."

  "But she's more of a strawberry blonde," Beverly said. "I wouldn't call her a redhead, would you, Dani?"

  "No, but she has the temper, all right. She's slow to anger, but you don't want to see her when she's upset."

  Montalba was sipping wine, waiting impatiently for a report on the evening's activities in Bequia. When the encrypted phone rang, he answered it midway through the first ring. "Yes? Is it done?"

  "We're trying to work out what happened," the man on the phone said. "What we know at the moment is that the leader of the surveillance team is missing, and the other two men have been arrested."

  Montalba restrained himself. He took a deep breath and set the wineglass down on his credenza. In a calm voice, he asked, "What do you think might have happened?"

  "The team leader was planning to board the target vessel as soon as the four people went ashore for dinner. As best we know, he did that; or at least he left the vessel he'd chartered, expecting to board the target. We got a call from his second in command, and he said, 'Our leader's missing and we've just been busted by the cops. Send help.' After that, we heard the police cuff him and take him away. Then we heard them searching the boat, talking to one another. They found a packet of drugs wrapped in a wet, bloody cloth. That's all that's on the transcript. Our people disconnected when the police found the phone. It will erase itself after three wrong passcodes."

  "What transcript?" Montalba asked.

  "We routinely record incoming calls from our field teams. The recording's been transcribed."

  "What about the packet of drugs?" Montalba asked. "What were they doing with drugs?"

  "They were going to plant them on the target vessel, on your orders."

  "Then what were they doing on their boat, if the leader had already gone to plant them?"

  "I don't have an answer for that, yet, sir."

  "Are your people drug users?"

  "No, sir. We're a government contractor, remember? We have a random drug-testing policy, but all our people are routinely tested, in addition to the random spot checks. That could have been a backup stash of drugs, or perhaps the ones that the Coast Guard should have recovered yesterday."

  "Tell me about this missing team leader."

  "A former naval officer, sir. A navy SEAL. He commanded numerous covert missions behind enemy lines. It's hard to imagine — "

  "How was he getting to the 'target vessel,' as you call it?"

  "His plan was to swim; they were anchored no more than 100 yards away."

  "It's unlikely that he didn't make it, then, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir. I agree."

  "If he's missing, he must be on one of the boats or still in the water," Montalba said.

  "That about covers it, sir, but by now, we would surely have heard from him, unless something happened to him."

  "Could somebody have been waiting for him aboard the 'target vessel?'"

  "Of course, that's possible, but extremely unlikely, since he and his team had the target under surveillance for several hours before he left. And before you ask, it's even more unlikely that anyone would have been able to overpower him. Needless to say, he's an expert in hand-to-hand combat."

  "Can you check with whoever was going to conduct the law enforcement raid after he planted the drugs?"

  "Yes, but we're holding back on that. The plan was that the team leader would plant the drugs and then wait until the people had returned from dinner. At that point, he was to call his contact in the police, and the raid would have followed."

  "And are the people back aboard?"

  "I can't confirm that, sir. All our assets in Bequia are out of action at the moment."

  "What are you going to do to recover?"

  "We're moving a backup team in. They'll be there around daybreak. We're also arranging for a local lawyer to deal with the two men who were arrested. The timing on that depends on the local authorities. We expect that the two men will know more about what could have happened to their leader, but right now, all we can do is wait."

  "I see," Montalba said, through clenched teeth.

  "I'll call as soon as we learn anything new, sir," the man said.

  "Please do," Montalba said, disconnecting the call.

  Their guests retired to their stateroom after they returned from dinner. Dani and Liz sat in the cockpit behind the helm, enjoying a cool onshore breeze. Dani leaned over and cupped a hand around Liz's ear.

  "I got a text from Sharktooth during dinner," she whispered.

  Liz took her phone out of her purse and showed it to Dani, tapping the messaging app to show her that she had heard from him, too. "Did you respond yet?" she whispered.

  Dani shook her head. "You sleepy?" she asked, in a normal tone.

  "No, I'm wired," Liz said. "How about you?"

  "Me, too. Let's go for a moonlight dinghy ride."

  "Great idea," Liz said.

  They unlocked their RIB and climbed down into it, careful not to make noises that would disturb Beverly and Harry. Dani untied the painter and shoved the dinghy away from Vengeance, letting it drift a hundred yards before she started the engine.

  "Where are we going?" Liz asked.

  "I saw Lightning Bolt anchored on the north side of the harbor, not far from the ferry dock," Dani said. "I thought we could see what's on Sharktooth's mind, if he's home."

  "It was all I could do not to send him a text as soon as I got his," Liz said. "I only managed to restrain myself because I thought you probably already answered him when you went to the ladies' room."

  "I started to, but then I remembered he was planning to stay here tonight." She pointed at his brightly colored go-fast boat in the shadows near the commercial docks.

  Throttling back as she approached Lightning Bolt, she killed the
outboard and let the dinghy drift the last few yards. She stood and fended them off the side of Sharktooth's boat, not wanting to alarm him by bumping into it. She needn't have bothered, she realized, when his deep voice sounded from below.

  "Come on aboard, ladies," he said, his tone soft.

  Dani looked at Liz, taking in the surprise on her face. Dani smiled and shrugged. She tied their painter to a midship cleat and hoisted herself up onto the side deck. Liz was right behind her.

  "How did you know it was us?" Liz asked, as Sharktooth appeared in the companionway, silhouetted in the light from the cabin.

  "Jus' guessin'," he said. "Nobody else gon' come callin' this time of night."

  "We decided to come over here so we could talk, instead of sending you a text and then having to whisper about it," Dani said.

  "Mm-hmm, I thought mebbe you'd think of that. You want anything to drink? Tea, mebbe?"

  "Tea would be nice, if it's not too much trouble," Liz said.

  "Jus' made some fo' myself. Water's still hot. Come on below."

  As he busied himself in the small galley, Dani said, "Okay, tell us what happened."

  "Mon swim up to Vengeance from a little boat anchored close by. Sosueme," he said. "So I grab him an' — "

  "Where were you?" Liz asked.

  "In the water. I hide in the shadow under the transom, watchin'. I think it won't be long, cause they mus' be watchin' for you to leave."

  "So you grabbed him," Dani said. "Did he put up much of a fight?"

  "No. I knock him out while he climb the boarding ladder. Swim back here with him, an' take him for a little ride, out where nobody hear him if he scream."

  "And what did you learn from him?" Dani asked. "Who's behind this?"

  "He didn't know. He worked for a company called SpecCorp. It claims to provide security and intelligence-gathering for businesses, but it's mostly a contractor to the U.S. government."

  "What kind of contractor?" Liz asked.

  "Black ops. They do stuff the government doesn't want to get blamed for. Illegal stuff," Sharktooth said. "They work for other people, too — anybody who pays them."

  "They're the ones that were shadowing Connie and Paul once," Dani said.

  "Mm-hmm. Tha's right."

  "Who are they working for?" Liz asked. "Surely the U.S. government's not behind planting drugs on Vengeance."

  Sharktooth smiled and shook his head. "Keep believin' that, Liz."

  "They were?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch.

  "I don't know, but you give them way too much credit. He didn't know who was paying SpecCorp for this little bit of work. Their field people never do know who the client is. That's how they protect the client's identity if they get caught."

  "What else?" Dani asked.

  "He was one of the three who stole Vengeance and sailed her down from Miami. One of the men with him installed the surveillance system while they were on the way."

  "Are those the same men who were on Sosueme?" Dani asked. "I saw three men aboard earlier."

  "Not the same men. The two who sailed down with him went on to another job. The two with him on Sosueme were assigned to him after he got Vengeance down here."

  "We heard they got arrested," Liz said.

  "In a drug bust," Dani added.

  "Mm-hmm. The mon I caught, he had drugs to plant on Vengeance. He paid off the mon who runs the drug enforcement squad in St. Vincent. He was goin' to call them once you were back aboard, and they were goin' to raid you and find the drugs."

  "We suspected as much," Dani said, "but why us?"

  "Not you," Sharktooth said. "The target was your male passenger. The police were going to solicit a bribe from him to keep the whole thing off the record. They don't know who he is, but somebody's planning to blackmail him. And the woman, she's part of it."

  "You were right, Dani," Liz said.

  Dani nodded. "But what about the drug bust on Sosueme?"

  "Once I finished with the mon, I had no use for the drugs, so I thought the right thing to do was return them to their owners. I swam over and put them in their cockpit."

  "And you tipped the police?" Dani asked.

  "Mm-hmm. The Chief Superintendent here is a friend of mine and your father's. He's an honorable man. I was in touch with him earlier, after the business wit' the Coast Guard. After I learned the mon who run the drug squad is crooked, I called the Chief Super and told him what was happening, most of it, anyway. What he needed to know. He arranged for the arrest of the men on Sosueme. An' prob'ly have the crooked p'lice arrested, too."

  "This SpecCorp thing bothers me," Dani said. "They've popped up before with Connie and Paul, and now they're after us. I don't like that we can't find out who they're working for."

  "Mm-hmm. Phillip and I talked about that. He had an idea."

  "What's that?" Dani asked.

  "We call him up; it's easier if we can all talk." Sharktooth picked up his satellite phone and punched in Phillip's number.

  "Sharktooth?"

  "Yeah, Phillip. Dani and Liz wit' me. Let's talk about your idea on SpecCorp."

  "Did you tell them about the video clips?" Phillip asked.

  "Not yet," Sharktooth said. "I sent Phillip some short video clips of Rick Norris tellin' me what he knew 'bout SpecCorp's surveillance of Vengeance."

  "Rick Norris?" Liz asked.

  "The mon I caught tryin' to board Vengeance," Sharktooth said.

  "He was a former Navy SEAL, a Lieutenant Commander," Phillip said, "or so he told Sharktooth."

  "You must have had quite a conversation," Dani said. "Talkative, was he?"

  Sharktooth grinned. "Mos' people talk a lot when they t'ink the longer they talk, the longer they live. I show you the video, if you like."

  "Just tell us about the good parts," Liz said. "We need to get back, in case the guests wake up."

  "Already tol' you mos' of the important stuff. Listen to what Phillip wants to do."

  "Okay," Liz said, "tell us."

  "Yes, please," Dani said.

  "I'm thinking about sending them a little message," Phillip said.

  "Them?" Dani asked. "You mean SpecCorp?"

  "Yes," Phillip said. "Just to throw them off balance, give them something to think about. I've known some of their higher ups for a long time. They're bullies, not nice people, and they think they're hidden away where nobody can reach them."

  "Okay," Dani said. "What are you going to do?"

  "The CEO's a guy named Delaney. I went through Ranger School with him, a long time ago. He's scum. He lives in a heavily guarded compound in Northern Virginia. Guys in body armor with automatic weapons and dogs. Got the picture?"

  "Yes. Go ahead," Dani said.

  "I have some friends who live in his neighborhood. I'm thinking maybe they could drop off a memory stick with the video at his house. He's not stupid. He'll connect the dots."

  "Sounds like fun," Dani said. "Sorry I can't deliver it personally."

  "That's how I feel, too. I didn't want to do it without talking with you."

  "I'm in," Dani said. "How about you, Liz?"

  "Why not?" Liz asked.

  "The only down side is the potential for escalation," Phillip said.

  "That's all? Escalation's a downside? Not to me." Dani said. "How soon can you do it?"

  "Probably sometime tomorrow. I've already talked to them; I just wanted your okay before we pulled the trigger."

  "What do you think they'll do?" Liz asked.

  "SpecCorp?" Phillip asked. "I think they'll relay the message to the people who hired them. Like I said, they're bullies. It's one thing when they're hiding behind a government client and picking on people who can't fight back. Delaney won't like being threatened on a personal level."

  "Do it," Dani said. "By the way, Sharktooth, what happened to the man you grabbed, this Norris guy?" Dani asked.

  "That thief?" Sharktooth asked. "He escaped. Stole a hundred dollars' worth of chain, too. But greed got him
in the end."

  "I don't understand," Liz said.

  Sharktooth winked at Dani. "You tell her."

  Dani nodded. "I'll bet he stole more chain than he could swim with."

  "Why wouldn't he have just dropped it, then?" Liz asked.

  "He didn't want to lose it, so he wrapped it all around his waist and fastened it with a shackle, would be my guess," Dani said. "Greedy, like Sharktooth said."

  Sharktooth smiled and nodded. "Mm-hmm. Dani, she know how stuff happens. More tea, ladies?"

  "We'd better get back to our guests," Dani said. "Thanks, Sharktooth, Phillip. We'll be in touch."

  "My pleasure," Sharktooth said, standing up to see them to their dinghy.

  15

  "This is a follow-up to last night's report," the man on the secure phone told Montalba. "The situation is still fluid, but I wanted you to have the latest information."

  "All right. What have you learned?"

  "We have another surveillance team in place as of about an hour ago. The people on the target vessel had a late breakfast in the cockpit, and they're hanging out aboard the boat."

  "Okay," Montalba said. "That's good. What else?"

  "Before I continue, sir, do you know what their plans are?"

  "No. Why do you ask?"

  "The surveillance team is using a speedboat at the moment. They wanted to get to Bequia from St. Vincent as quickly as possible. That works all right as long as they stay in Bequia, but depending on where the target vessel goes, a sailboat would be less conspicuous."

  "You should do what you need to do to follow them wherever they go. I'm not privy to their plans."

  "I see, sir. We'll handle it, then. No problem. Now, the rest of what I have is from the two men who were arrested, via the lawyer we sent in."

  "Do you trust him?"

  "Yes, sir. We've used him before."

  "Okay. What's he learned?"

  "The team leader left to deliver the package to the target vessel at approximately seven p.m., when the people left to go ashore in the dinghy. He was well camouflaged; they lost sight of him once he was a few yards away," the man said. "They began to worry when he didn't come back after an hour. An hour and fifteen minutes after he left, they were in the main cabin of their boat debating whether one of them should go looking for him. They also discussed calling in for instructions. Before they agreed on the next step, they heard a thump from the back of the boat. When they went up to check, they found the unopened package of drugs that the team leader had been carrying. It was — "