by Ben Muse
“Great. My obligation is fulfilled. I guess this means goodbye.” I reached out to shake her hand. “I’ve enjoyed our time together, Special Agent Brighton. Be sure to tell Schmidt thank you for all he’s done for me.”
She looked at me and laughed. I tried.
“Thanks, I needed that. Let’s get your car at Bailey’s. I’ll drive it back, and you follow in the Civic. I was touched that she’d put herself in harm’s way for me, but I’m sure it was only because Schmidt told her to. Where are all the chivalrous women these days?
“Any word on who tried to kill us yesterday?” And Kenny, your spy before me.
“Nothing yet. They’re looking for the truck, but so far, nothing.”
“You know, Jenna. I can’t help but think back to my first meeting with Agent Schmidt. My getting shot at was somehow left out of the conversation.”
“Would you rather go back to prison?” she said in a tone that bordered on scolding.
“If it means not getting shot at . . . no, you’ve got me there; I’m not going back. I bet Kenny never thought he’d be killed either, huh?”
Jenna looked as if she’d been sucker punched.
“Who is Kenny?” she said unconvincingly as she kept her eyes on the road. “What are you talking about?”
“Please don’t do this. We were just beginning to trust each other. You had someone in here before me, and he was murdered, so I became Plan B. Isn’t that right?”
We sat there in the car and Jenna sighed audibly. I was done talking.
“He’d been working for us for about three weeks. He was a local and had been at Aquatic for three years. We aren’t sure what happened.”
“Sounds like someone in my father’s firm is working for Durov . . . or you have a leak on your team.”
“I trust my team; you should too.”
“I’m sure Kenny trusted your team as well.” I regretted that as soon as it slipped off my tongue. Jenna stared straight ahead as we pulled into her complex. After we parked, she looked at me before we exited the Civic.
“I’m sorry Schmidt wasn’t fully forthright in the beginning, but we are way past woulda coulda shoulda. You still want to do this or do you want the alternative?”
“I told you; I’m not going back to prison. And I’m sorry about the cheap shot, but this isn’t gonna work unless honesty flows both ways.”
***
“I’m sleeping at my place tonight. Your couch is officially worse than my prison mattress,” I informed her as we sat at the kitchen counter eating leftover spaghetti.
“I’m coming with you; you know that, right?” she advised.
“You’ll have to sleep in the same room as me, because it would look weird, you and I shacking up, and one of us sleeping in the living room on a couch.”
“Are you prepared to be a gentleman?”
Not entirely. “Are you prepared to wear oversized sweat pants and a muumuu? Seriously, stay here. I’ll be fine.”
“Chase, you’d be hamburger if it weren’t for me yesterday. Remember? Besides, Schmidt’s orders.”
“What happens tomorrow night when I have my date with Anna? What if she wants me to stay the night? Can’t have you cozying up with us on the couch.”
“My, aren’t we confident? We’ll have someone follow you and maintain surveillance on the house. Who knows about your date, lover boy?”
“Anna, you, my father, Bailey. And anyone you and they may have told.”
“We’ll get someone in place early at her home, and we’ll of course need you to put some ears in there.”
I nodded. Not the way I wanted to begin my time with Ms. Petrov.
“All right, debrief time,” she said as she rinsed the plates off and placed them in the dishwasher.
“Jenna,” I began, “are we safe here? What if yesterday wasn’t some local looking for revenge? What if they know who you are and the reason why you are here?”
“We’re as safe here as anywhere,” she said with a slight hesitation in her voice, giving me the impression that doubt had crept into her confidence level.
She came out of the kitchen and adjusted the camera before she sat on the couch and faced me. She punched a few keystrokes on her laptop, and we began another round of mental waterboarding. When the conversation turned to my after-hours production docks visit, I had an idea.
“How would my new girlfriend like a tour of the Refit Department late tonight? Specifically, Dock Two? I think the key may be this new feature I glimpsed. There’s an odd, funnel-like structure hanging from the hull of this yacht, but it’s all hush-hush so I couldn’t get close enough for a look without pissing the shift manager off.
“You can get in there after hours?”
“My ID card is supposedly full access, so we’ll see.”
Jenna called Schmidt to get permission. She hung up after a minute.
“It’s a go. He wants pictures.”
***
Forty-two hundred miles away, the Beaumont, a massive Consco-owned cargo ship, sailed in a southwesterly direction at eighteen knots, one hundred miles south of the Spanish resort island of Ibiza. The Beaumont, several hours out of the port of Genoa, would continue on its present course for the next six hours. It would pass south of the Spanish coastal towns of Cartagena and Almeria before it turned west, traversed the Strait of Gibraltar, and headed out into the open Atlantic, on a west-southwesterly course that would take it to Savannah, Georgia, in about six days.
Unbeknownst to anyone on the Beaumont, another vessel sat fully fueled and loaded, twenty-five miles east of Tangier, Morocco, in Slip 21, at the bustling port of Tanger-Med. This ship’s captain, a burly Frenchman with yellowed teeth and a weathered face, lit yet another Gauloise and sat tracking the Beaumont’s position on his laptop on the bridge of the new two-hundred-fifty-foot exploration ship, Poseidon . In about ten hours, they would depart and fall in fifty miles behind the Beaumont. Speed was not an issue as she could do twenty-five knots comfortably, even with all the extra people and equipment on board.
Nestled snugly on the Beaumont, in the front of a deck-level, dark-blue container box, was an innocuous-looking, octagon-shaped metallic canister, the size of two bass drums stacked on top of each other. Two black, rubberized handles were attached to the canister and music-related bumper stickers covered the entire exterior. The canister was labeled as music equipment and should anyone check it against the ship’s manifest, they would see that it contained heavy-duty concert speakers. But no one would check it, and if all went according to plan, in three days it would be tossed overboard, where soon it would make its own music in one of America’s most important cities.
Chapter 29
“You’re sure you can get us in there?” Jenna said as we descended to the seabed in the large freight elevator. It was two a.m., and the Refit section of the production building was empty and eerily quiet.
“Unless they change the codes nightly, I don’t see why not.”
Silence greeted us as we stepped out of the elevator and into the dimly lit hallway. We made our way quietly down to Dock Two, and I opened the roll-up door and entered the same code as Mack had earlier. The door hissed and opened. We were in.
I punched in the code on the inside basin wall and the watertight door swung back into place and sealed. I didn’t want an open door to alert a roaming security guard. So far, the only person we had seen was the guard at the main gate to Aquatic.
Our footsteps echoed lightly as we walked towards the darkened underbelly of the yacht. We had mini-flashlights out, but there was enough ambient light to keep us from turning them on, though the dimness played havoc on our depth perception as we wound our way into the maze of ship scaffolding, until we were standing next to the funnel-like appendage.
“Go ahead and take your exterior pictures. I’ll take a look underneath,” I said, lying on my back and sliding under the structure. I pulled my flashlight from my front pocket, turned it on, and shined it along its length. I
t was longer than I expected, approximately ten feet in length, six feet wide, and about five feet tall from where it connected to the hull. Jenna began taking pictures, and I cringed inwardly after every flash of light exploded from her camera, positive that it would attract someone. My beam of light landed on a circular hole cut in the center, approximately one and a half times the size of a manhole cover. Suddenly, as I was sliding over to it, an automated female voice came over the speakers hidden high in the Refit ceilings and pleasantly announced, to our horror: “Dock Two will begin filling in approximately two minutes. Please clear the basin floor.” Shit! This wasn’t in the plans.
“Chase, what’s happening?” Jenna said nervously.
“You heard the lady. Time to bug out.” Two minutes can be an eternity if you are speaking in front of a group of people, or holding a plank position at the gym. When one tries to escape a massive flash flood in an empty, giant swimming pool, all the while maneuvering through a metal jungle, time simply flies. I slid out before I was able to get a look inside the funnel. Flashlights on, we quickly made our way out of the scaffolding and ran to the airlock door so I could open it before some crappy piece of computer code denied our exit.
“Ninety seconds until Dock Two begins filling. Please clear the basin floor,” said the voice again. I punched in 7721 and the digital display read, “Error. Please enter the correct code.” The first waves of panic began to wash over me. This could not be happening; the damn code just worked not four minutes ago. Then I had a moment of clarity, and I knew we were screwed, because I realized someone was doing this to us and they were in control. Why else would our basin be filling with water? It was two in the morning, after all, and too much of a coincidence to think otherwise. I entered the code again and got the same expected result.
“Dammit!”
“Chase, what’s the plan?” Jenna whispered urgently, and shined her light on the panel. Suddenly, the glass casing that kept the keypad dry during wet dock began to lower and close.
“We have to get clear of this floor. In about a minute, that exterior door on the opposite end will open, and sea water will flow in like a tsunami.” I looked for the portable stairs from earlier, but they were nowhere to be found. I then set my sights on the thirty-foot basin walls. Surely there would be metal rungs built into the side for accidental fall-ins, and they did, way up top, near the railing that lined the dock. We were trapped.
“One minute until Dock Two begins filling. Please clear the basin floor,” the voice said. By now, it sounded like she was mocking us.
“Let’s see if we can climb the scaffolding,” I suggested. The idea was dead on arrival as it clearly wasn’t high enough. I looked all around . . . and then it hit me!
“There’s a circular hole cut into the bottom of the funnel. It may be our only shot, unless you want to deal with a torrent of water and an unstable yacht.”
“You want me to climb into a metal coffin at the bottom of this boat. Are you fucking crazy, Chase?”
“I’m open to suggestions, Jenna.”
“Thirty seconds until Dock Two begins filling. Please clear the basin floor.”
“Let’s check it out quickly so we can have time to get as far away from the boat as possible if this doesn’t work,” she said. Once again, we went into the maze. I slid under the structure, and my light focused on the hole. I went to my knees and stuck my head inside, shined the light around, and saw that it was just an empty, cavernous space, and my hopes sank. I started to back out when my light hit the ceiling of the strange structure, and I spied a handle and a circular outline. A hatch?
“Fifteen seconds until Dock Two begins filling.”
I climbed into the space and grabbed the handle. Someone with a black marker had drawn an arrow in a counterclockwise motion with the word “open” written above it. I turned the handle in that direction and the hatch barely budged.
“Ten seconds until Dock Two begins filling,”
“Jenna, get in!” I looked down, and her head came up through the hole.
“Five seconds until Dock Two begins filling.”
“Get it open, Chase!”
“I’m trying,” I said, as I pulled with all I had. Slowly it started turning, and I could see the hatch begin to lift inward.
“Dock Two exterior door opening,”
“Faster, Chase,” she urged. Sweat had broken out on my brow and slowly, painfully, I continued to turn the handle as we both heard the crashing sound of approaching water.
“Water’s below us,” she said. We were about three and a half feet off the ground, and I stole a quick look at the opening. Her light shone on the seawater as it rushed toward the back wall. It would begin to rise in seconds. We had maybe a minute.
“Keep me updated on the water, Jenna. If I can’t get this open, we’ll have to slip out the hole and take our chances in the water.” And probably die trying.
I pulled on the handle with all I had and painstakingly got through two full revolutions in about fifteen seconds.
“Chase, water’s up to the hole.” I detected a hint of panic in her voice.
The going was agonizingly slow, and I was about to give up, when Jenna said, “Chase, the water’s not coming in. Do you think the exterior door closed somehow?” The panicked tone was replaced by confusion.
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t know what to think. All I knew was I had extra time to get the hatch open. It was then that we felt the ship lift slowly from its resting place. Jenna’s question was answered.
I’d read a lot in prison, and something was telling me that the air pressure in the chamber was keeping the water from flooding in. I wondered what would happen when and if I opened the hatch.
“Jenna, here’s the plan. We clearly can’t stay in here. We either need to swim out the bottom of the hole and try to make it to safety or get the hatch open and escape into the ship. I’m opting for the hatch. I don’t want to chance it out there in the watery darkness. What I need you to do is be ready to get through the hatch as quickly as possible. I’ll be right behind you. If my thinking is correct, the minute we open it, this space is compromised and water will fill quickly. Just my guess. Understand?”
“Got it,” she said nervously.
I began turning the handle. It became easier, and I noticed the hatch door inching its way above the ceiling more and more with each revolution. It wouldn’t be long now. “Take a deep breath and be ready,” I advised her. Four turns later, the hatch popped free, and I could hear the hiss of air escaping the chamber. Water rushed in over my feet.
“Go, Jenna.” I moved out of the way and hoisted her through the opening as cold seawater rapidly moved up my body in this strange, dark place. When she was through, I grasped the sides and pulled myself up and out, onto a metal grated surface. The water closed in fast.
“Shine the light on the hatch,” I said quickly as I closed it and began turning the handle affixed to its top. This handle had rubberized grips that made turning easier than its sister handle on the bottom. Small amounts of seawater seeped out the sides of the hatch until it sealed fully and would turn no more.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I’m fine; thank God you got that open. I shudder to think what would have happened.” She buried her head in my chest, and we shared a moment.
“Well, we’re still not out of it. Let’s find our way out of here and move up to the main deck.” We were in the darkened engine room, and our flashlight beams skipped over the large dual-shaft diesel engines and metal ductwork, until they landed on a white stairwell. We ascended through two additional decks as the boat continued to sway gently. We walked out onto the main deck and the floor I’d helped install earlier.
“Remind me to instantly veto any other bright ideas you come up with,” she chided as we looked across the fifteen feet of water that separated us from either side of the dock. “What now?”
“Simple,” I said. “We swim to the rungs and get the hell ou
t of here. I’m sure an alarm has been triggered somewhere.”
“What about the security guard at the gate?” she wondered.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it; unfortunately, we have no bridge to cross now,” I said. “Let’s put our valuables in your backpack, and I’ll swim holding it over my head. This trip wasn’t a total waste. You did get a few pictures we can send to Schmidt.”
Valuables secured, we were set to swim across when our friend came back over the loudspeakers: “Dock Two drain commencing,” she said without warning, and suddenly the pumps came on and the water level began to drop.
“Into the water now, Jenna. We have to get to the side while we can still access the metal rungs, or we’ll be trapped until the morning shift shows up.” Already the water level had dropped a foot. Someone, somewhere was watching us.
We jumped in together and made a beeline for the rungs. I got there first and tossed the backpack onto the concrete dock. Water was already a foot below the lowest rung and dropping precipitously when Jenna got to the side.
“Hurry up,” I said as she climbed out. I was clinging to the last rung as the water had dropped to my knees. I used my upper body strength and climbed to the top rung. Jenna grabbed my hand and helped pull me clear. I stood and watched as the water continued to be pumped out.
“You may want to have your gun handy,” I suggested. I still felt like someone was watching us, but we made it through the access gate and back to the golf-cart storage area without incident. Five minutes later, our cold and soaking wet bodies were pulling out of the main gate. The security guard made no effort to stop us, as he simply threw up a hand. For the second time in as many days, someone had tried to kill me, and it was beginning to piss me off.
Chapter 30
An index finger to her lips indicated that the ride to her apartment would be a silent one. It was highly probable that my car was bugged.
“What the hell happened to you two?” were Christian’s first words as I tossed my keys on the counter. He was sitting on the couch banging away on a laptop.
