by Matt Lincoln
“Come on, Holm,” I scoffed before turning sideways on the couch to look directly at him. “You’re not dumb. How many times did we go over it back when we were still with the SEALS? You know what can happen if a diver ascends too quickly.”
“I don’t have the bends,” he grumbled as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Are you sure?” I asked, genuinely concerned. Decompression sickness could be extremely serious, depending on the severity. People died from it. “Joint pains, especially around the neck and spine, fatigue, dizziness. It kind of looks like you have the bends to me.”
“Well, I don’t,” he snapped curtly.
“Irritability…” I mumbled.
“Irritability isn’t a symptom of decompression sickness,” Holm retorted with annoyance.
“No,” I sighed, “but changes in behavior are, and you aren’t usually a grumpy jerk. Look, you really should—”
“Oh, there you are,” Agent Chapman called as he poked his head into the break room and spotted us on the couch. “Sorry that took so long. Our vice-director was on a rampage, trying to figure out how those guys managed to slip past all the actual Coast Guard boats nearby to attack us. It took a while to get things settled. Anyway, we’re ready to go if you are.”
“Yes, we’re ready,” Holm replied as he stood from the couch, wobbling just slightly as he did. It didn’t look like Chapman had noticed it, but I certainly had. Something was undoubtedly up with Holm, and I was concerned that coming back up from the ocean floor so fast might have affected him. He was a grown man, though, and we were in the middle of a case, so it wasn’t like I could force him to go to the hospital.
Nevertheless, I made sure to keep a close eye on him as we made our way over to the interrogation room. If he took a turn for the worse, I wasn’t above physically dragging him to see a doctor myself.
Agent Hills was leaning against the wall outside the interrogation room when we arrived, a tablet held in one hand. He turned to look at us as we approached.
“Suspect’s name is Marco Ruiz,” he informed us without preamble. “We didn’t get anything when we ran his prints through our system, but since we were operating under the assumption that he might be connected to the pirates, we also did an international search, including in Colombia. Turns out our friend here used to be a teacher.”
“He what?” I asked in surprise. That was not at all what I’d expected to hear.
“Yep,” Hills replied as he handed me the tablet. “That’s the only reason we were even able to find a match on his prints. Teachers in Colombia are required to pass a background check to work with children. He doesn’t actually have any criminal record as far as we could find.”
“That’s… unexpected,” I remarked. “A schoolteacher just decided to join a band of pirates and start waving a gun around?”
“Something like that,” he replied flatly as he peered through the two-way glass at the suspect. “You’ll have to ask him yourself once we’re in there. So, how are we doing this? Seems like four would be quite a crowd. As much as I’d like to make the guy squirm, it could become a mess with so many in there.”
“Why don’t we do one agent from each branch?” Chapman suggested helpfully. “The other two can watch from out here.”
Luckily, the MBLIS interrogation room was fully equipped with a large two-way mirror and electronic speakers that amplified sound and would allow anyone outside the room to see and hear the interrogation going on inside.
“That’s fine by me,” Holm mumbled as he rubbed at his temple. “You can go, Marston. I’ll wait out here.”
He didn’t wait for a response before falling into one of the chairs outside the room. That he didn’t at least pretend to argue and try to be the one to speak with the suspect did nothing to alleviate my concerns about his well-being.
“I’ll wait out here too,” Chapman added before turning to his partner. “You handle these types of suspects better.”
“Alright.” Hills smiled eerily, showing the most emotion I’d seen out of him since we’d met. “Looks like it’s you and me, Marston. You ready?”
I was worried about Holm, but I needed to focus on the case for the moment. After the interrogation, I’d insist again that he get checked out if he was still acting weird. If he refused, maybe I’d have to get Diane involved.
“I’m ready,” I replied before pushing open the door to the interrogation room and heading inside with Hills right behind me.
Marco was sitting at a metal table in the center of the room in an uncomfortable metal chair designed to make the interrogation experience as unpleasant as possible. He looked up at us as we entered, the frown on his face deepening as we sat down across from him.
“Hello Marco,” I greeted him calmly. “That was quite the scene back there. Do you want to tell me what that was all about?”
His upper lip twitched as though he wanted to growl at me, but he kept silent.
“Huh… that’s strange,” Hills muttered darkly as he leaned forward to glare at the suspect. “You seemed pretty eager to talk back on the boat. Hell, the only reason you got caught off-guard was that you were too busy blabbering on to pay attention to someone sneaking up right behind you.”
“Shut up, you stupid pig,” Marco spat back at him bitterly.
“There it is,” he snickered. “Just can’t resist, can you? Your ego’s so frail that you can’t take one measly little insult without panicking and screaming in defense.”
“I said, shut up!” he growled as he lurched forward against the table and bared his teeth threateningly at Hills, like a rabid dog. I raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed by the display. With his hands cuffed to the table, he’d ended up looking far more goofy than threatening. Neither Hills nor I reacted to his little show of aggression, which only seemed to make him angrier.
“I don’t think I will.” Hills smirked. It was an unsettling look and not what I would have expected from the stony-faced man he’d seemed to be up to now. “But it’s obvious that you’re getting upset, so why don’t we just cut to the chase? Tell us what we want to know, and we can just get all this over and done with.”
“Nice try,” Marco scoffed. “But I’m not talking.”
This hadn’t exactly gone the way I’d planned. Normally, when I was involved in an interrogation, I tended to do the bulk of the talking. Hills had jumped right in, though, and I was curious about where he was going with this. I was on alert, though. Normally, I tended to keep my cool and think carefully about what I said during interrogations. Hills, on the other hand, was acting pretty brashly, practically provoking the suspect into talking. It was a valid tactic, but one that could quickly backfire.
“You’re not talking?” Hills parroted before giving an exaggerated sigh. “That’s a shame, really, since you only have two options here. You can either tell us what we want to know, and we’ll cut you a deal to make sure you get off light, or we can throw you back into your cell, find your little friends ourselves, and then I’ll personally make sure that word gets around that you’re a snitch and the only reason we were able to find them.”
I tried hard not to give off any physical reaction to the shock I felt. Just what the heck did Hills think he was doing, offering deals and making threats like that without consulting me, or anyone else for that matter? I was incredibly annoyed, but it wouldn’t do any good to show that to Marco. If he caught an inkling that Hills and I weren’t on the same page, he might use that to his advantage.
“Y-you can’t do that!” Marco stammered, his face going white as a sheet.
“I can,” Charlie replied, sounding bored. “And I will. Can’t imagine your friends would be too pleased if word got around that you sold them all out.”
“But I didn’t!” he yelled, his face red with fury as he slammed his cuffed fists down onto the table. “I wouldn’t! You can’t just make things up!”
“Why not?” Hills sneered. “Who’s going to stop me? And do you really think t
hey’ll believe you even if you say you didn’t sell them out?”
“They’ll kill me,” he mumbled as he stared down at the table with wide, terrified eyes. “You can’t do that!”
“Then I won’t.” Hills shrugged as he leaned back in his chair, his expression smug. “All you have to do is answer our questions, and I’ll keep my mouth shut. You can run away and disappear somewhere they’ll never find you.”
A long beat of silence passed as Marco’s eyes flitted between us, filled with conflict.
“Okay,” he finally muttered after a tense few seconds. “What do you want to know?”
Hills turned to look at me as if offering me the opportunity to question him first. I stared back at him for a second, still irritated. I’d have to bring it up to him later. For now, though, at least we had Marco talking.
“Tell me what you were doing out there today,” I began as I turned to look back at Marco.
“We went to see if we could retrieve any of the drugs,” he replied reluctantly.
“So you are with the pirates that attacked the ship yesterday,” I clarified.
“Yeah.” He stared at me as though it was obvious, which it was, but it was always better to get as clear a confession as possible. It made it much harder for criminals to worm their way out of trouble later in court.
“Okay,” I replied. “Tell me about the pirates then. I heard you were a teacher before you joined up with them. How long have you been working for them?”
“About two months?” He shrugged. “A cousin of mine told me about them after I lost my job.”
“Of all the things you could have done, you decided to join a gang of murderous pirates?” I asked incredulously.
“Of all the things?” He chuckled humorlessly as he leaned across the table to glare at me. “Maybe here in the United States, people have a lot of options to pick and choose from, but back in Colombia? I was lucky to get a job as a teacher. Do you have any idea how hard I worked to be able to find myself a decent, respectable job? The pay was still crap, but at least it was honest. And it all went down the drain because of some stupid little punk.”
He bit his lip bitterly as he spoke, and his hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white, pressing tightly against his skin.
“What happened?” I asked, feigning sympathy.
“That little… brat,” he spat angrily, his voice dripping with hateful vitriol. “He was a cocky little jerk. He had a well-off dad, and he thought he could do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. One day, I walk into my classroom and see him beating on one of my other students, a kid half his size. I pulled him off and threw him to the ground. I didn’t even think about it. I was just trying to protect one of my students. But of course, the kid hurt his arm when he fell and went running to tell his dad. I was fired before the end of the day. Kicked out like a pathetic dog all because I was trying to defend that kid.”
“That’s really awful,” I replied, genuinely sympathetic this time. It sounded like a completely unfair situation. “It still doesn’t explain how you ended up working for a gang of pirates, though.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Marco huffed angrily. “My options were already slim as it was, but then this bastard and his dad started going around telling everyone that I’m a child abuser! Rumors start to fly. Before I knew it, no one wanted to speak to me, let alone hire me. Someone vandalized my house with spray paint. I became a pariah basically overnight, all because I tried to do things the right way. Get a good job, be a good person, help someone in need.”
He paused for a minute to scoff and shake his head with disgust.
“What a load of crap,” he continued. “I realized then that there was no point in being a good person. What good did it do me? The bad people with power won in the end, and I was left to pay the price. Screw that. I want to have power. I want to be in control, for once in my life! Las Viboras gave me that. For the first time in a long time, nobody was telling me what to do! I was the one in charge.”
He smiled smugly as he finished his crazy tirade. I felt bad for the tough hand he’d been dealt, but it wasn’t an excuse for doing the things he had done. Plenty of people had gone through the same or worse, but not everyone who experienced something bad became a pirate or murderer.
“Las Viboras?” I repeated his earlier statement.
“That’s the name of our organization,” he replied proudly. “They’re my family. They respect me more than anyone did back when I was some pathetic teacher dealing with whining little brats all day.”
“Alright,” I replied flatly, quickly moving on. There was a lot I would have liked to say about his so-called “family,” but I didn’t want to slip up and say something that might cause him to stop talking. For now, I’d keep those thoughts to myself. “So, tell me what happened yesterday. Why did you attack the ship?”
“That attacked us first!” he replied defensively as he slouched in his chair. “About a month back, we were making a delivery in Florida. A bunch of their guys attacked ours and killed all of our men.”
He frowned at the table and shook his head.
“If they killed everyone,” I asked, “how did you know it was them?”
“The boss got a call as it was going down,” he replied, his face twisted into a snarl. “Our man was screaming about how they were being attacked. Some guys busted into their boat in the middle of the night while they were sleeping. Our man said that they were speaking Chinese. That’s all he managed to say before the boss lost the call.”
“Who is your boss?” I asked, my mind moving at a hundred miles a minute as I processed everything he’d just told me. “And how did he figure out who the assailants were? If the only clue was that they were speaking Chinese, that leaves a pretty broad pool of suspects.”
“The boss’s name is Viper,” he answered reverently. “And he’s not an idiot. If anything, he’s a genius. There’s a reason he’s the boss. He looked up records of ships that had docked in Florida that same day. There was only one ship from China. Apparently, it’s not all that common for them to stop in Florida since California’s closer.”
That was actually a good point. It would be really strange for a ship importing goods from China to circle all the way around to Florida unless they had a really good reason. Like, say, illegally smuggling drugs into the country.
“And,” Marco continued, “the man who called the boss said something about the Chinese guys saying this was their turf or something before they went all crazy. I didn’t hear the call myself, but that’s what the boss said. He sent some more men out to see if there were any survivors, but everyone was dead by the time they got there.”
“I see,” I replied slowly as I worked everything together in my head. “So you heard all of this secondhand from your boss, who then instructed you to go kill a rival smuggler group. You never actually saw the bodies or heard the phone call yourself.”
“What are you implying?” Marco glared at me.
“I’m not implying anything,” I replied with a shrug. “I’m just restating what you’ve just told me. Am I wrong?”
“Whatever,” he mumbled as he slouched down in his chair and looked away from me. I could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he thought about the implications of what I’d said. “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong. This boss is our leader. He only does what’s best for the organization.”
I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. The way Marco blindly worshipped this guy was nauseating. It seemed pretty evident to me that this Viper guy had played him and everyone else who had taken part in the attack yesterday like a deck of cards.
“Alright, Marco,” I sighed as I leaned forward to rest my elbows against the table. “So, he told you that you needed to avenge your… fellows. You attacked the ship then?”
“We sure did.” He grinned proudly. “Sank that sucker right to the bottom of the ocean.”
“So you did,” I deadpanned. “Where’d y
ou get that giant warship from?”
“Oh, that?” He smirked. “It’s one of Viper’s latest investments. He said we had gotten powerful enough now that it was time to let the world know who we are and that they should be afraid of us. He said if people saw us attacking a huge cargo ship with it, they’d know we were a group that shouldn’t be messed with.”
“You’re joking, right?” Hills interjected. “All of this was just some bid to make yourselves seem all big and tough? And all because some wannabe pirate with a stupid nickname fed you some bull about them making the first strike? You didn’t honestly fall for that, did you?”
“Shut your mouth!” Marco yelled as he slammed his fist on the table again. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a moron,” Hills replied simply. “Frankly, the most horrifying part of this entire story was the fact that you were once a teacher. I can’t imagine what a terrible job you must have done if you’re this dumb and easy to trick.”
“Shut up!” Marco snarled, his face red and so tense that a vein throbbed on his forehead.
“Let me guess,” Hills scoffed. “He was the one who told you to go back to the scene in a fake Coast Guard boat, right?”
“I-I… well—” he stuttered over his words.
“And, of course, you just blindly obeyed like the simpleton you are,” Hills sneered. “It must be nice, having an underling like you. He could tell you to take a long walk off a short pier, and you’d do it, wouldn’t you? You don’t have any agency of your own.”
“Y-you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marco went on again like a broken record, though I could tell by the wavering of his voice that his resolve was starting to break.
“You know he’s just using you, right?” Hills murmured as he leaned closer over the table again to peer at Marco. “That’s why he sent you instead of going himself. He knew there was a good chance you’d be caught by the law, and look at what happened. Look at where you’re sitting right now. You think he cares that you’re going through all of this for him?”
