kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller)

by Chesler, Rick

  They descended the stairs. Tara's foot made a squishing sound as it pressed into the carpet below. Soaked. Two doors were set on either side of the hall about halfway down its length.

  Tara opened the door on the right.

  She sucked in her breath as she peered inside. Water everywhere. It was clear that the yacht’s hull had been severely punctured, perhaps even sheared away. Only the shallow depth of the river kept the craft from completely sinking.

  “Is it possible that the Tropic Sequence sailed all the way up here for some reason and hit a rock?” While she wished it to be true, Kristen knew that it was not.

  Tara shook her head while using her flashlight to probe the dark depths of the room she had just opened. “Someone hid the Tropic Sequence. No one would ever deliberately take a yacht this huge all the way up here, which must have been difficult. Not to mention that this location was not part of your father’s meticulously planned itinerary.”

  Neither Kristen nor Dave had a reply. They were staring with fascination past the door Tara had opened.

  The room was almost completely submerged. With the angle of the ship, it would be easy to jump right in, like stepping into a swimming pool. The yacht’s bulk had created a placid pond next to the river bank. They could see all the way to the bottom.

  At first Tara thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. She could see lab benches and chemistry equipment—some of it still intact—computers. A flooded lab.

  “This stateroom was converted to the ship's lab,” Kristen confirmed, recalling a diagram of the Tropic Sequence from the magazine article.

  They gazed beneath the shimmering surface into the room below. The ambient light was muted by the thick jungle above and by the boat itself, so Tara shined her flashlight into the watery pit. Large piles of debris occupied the bottom of the tilted room, in between the rows of fixed lab benches. Tara played the beam along the lines of the room. None of them knew exactly what they were looking for. Just a clue as to what happened here, Tara thought, as the light reflected off of a broken computer monitor. Something that will tell me where to look next.

  She had just finished another sweep of the room’s length, starting from the bottom back up to the surface, when an anomaly caught her eye. A splash of color where none should be.

  “See that?” Tara said, pointing to what was now the lower right corner of the submerged space. Kristen squinted as she focused into the dim confines of her father’s former lab.

  Her eyes followed the path of Tara's finger to a twinkling of green. As she watched, the luminosity weakened. She asked Tara to shine her beam on the unknown light source.

  When she did, her mag-light reflected off of something metal, gold in color.

  “It’s the lid of a jar,” Dave announced.

  “A jar?”

  “Yeah, like one of those big mason jars with the screw-on tops that hold pickles. But it’s weird, because it looks empty.”

  “Do me a favor and turn the light off for a few seconds,” Kristen said.

  Tara killed the light. They peered eagerly into the water.

  The green particles danced again inside the jar.

  “Bioluminescence,” Kristen said.

  “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Dave asked.

  “Because it’s out of context. As a marine biologist, you know that bioluminescence is a light given off by living cells in response to stimuli. You’re used to seeing it at night, when water is disturbed, like in a boat wake, or sometimes even in waves breaking on the beach. But we’re looking into a lab that’s been flooded by freshwater, so you didn’t think of it. These phosphorescent cells seem to be stimulated by the presence of a light source. Did you know there are at least nine species of marine bacteria that bioluminesce?”

  “I knew some did,” Dave said, “but not how many. But you said marine bacteria. Are there any freshwater species that give off light?”

  “Bioluminescence is almost exclusively a marine phenomenon, although there are a few exceptions. But seeing as we’re looking at a lab from a marine sampling expedition, I’d wager it’s a seawater sample contained within the jar. That’s why the jar looks empty until the cells fluoresce—it contains water, and it’s underwater.”

  Tara cut in. “Can we save the biology lecture for later, please?” Tara said. “My light's getting dimmer.”

  Dave reached into his backpack and pulled out a small waterproof flashlight—a dive light. He switched the light on and shined it down toward the jar.

  “Would you like to know for sure?” he asked Kristen.

  Kristen gave him a look. Tara began to wonder if, despite their five-year age difference, there was a growing attraction between the two marine scientists.

  “If I got you the jar, you could find out what microorganism it is that’s bioluminescing,” Dave offered.

  “Yeah, that would be good, but how?”

  Dave bent to his backpack and opened it. He removed a set of simple snorkeling gear — mask, fins and snorkel.

  Kristen’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, no way. You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “It’ll just take a minute. I’ll dive down, grab the jar, and shoot right back up.”

  Kristen shook her head. “Dave, I can’t let you do it. I’d feel responsible—I’d be responsible, legally, if anything happened to you, since technically, you’re working for me.”

  “What’s the big deal, anyway?” Tara asked. “Why do you want the jar so bad?”

  “If Dave doesn’t want to get it, then I’m not going to worry about it. But if it was a sample collected by my father, I’d like to take a look at it. I may even be able to narrow down the ship’s location based on the type of bugs contained in the sample. Longshot, but still, if Dave is willing…”

  “Kristen,” Dave said, “if this will help you, I want to do it. It won’t be hard.”

  “Your work for Johnson turned out to be dangerous enough, didn’t it?” Kristen said.

  No arguments there. Tara also remained silent as she considered the ramifications of Dave penetrating the sunken lab. On the one hand, he’d be disturbing a crime scene. But on the other, he’d be retrieving possible evidence in the case that, according to Kristen’s expert opinion, could prove useful from an investigative standpoint. And who knew what else he might find down there? Tara decided she would leave it up to Dave and Kristen.

  “It’s not just the snorkeling itself,” Kristen continued. I know you can dive down there—what is it, fifteen feet?”

  “I’d say twenty—tops. I’ve done seventy-five free diving to spear fish.”

  “I know you can do the dive. But this was a chemistry lab. Who knows what you’d be diving into?”

  “The river would have carried anything away by now. I know it looks calm, but the water is flowing through here.” He grabbed a leaf off the soggy floor and tossed it into the flooded chamber. It sailed off to the left, out through a hole in the lab’s wall. “See?”

  Kristen’s eyes darted back to the jar, which was glowing green again.

  Dave began pulling on his fins, which were not bulky scuba flippers but small, stubby fins typically used for body boarding. “Look, if I don’t feel comfortable at any point, I’ll come right back up.”

  Tara cautioned him to touch as little as possible, both for safety’s sake as well as for preservation of evidence.

  12:01 P.M.

  A minute later, light in hand, Dave slipped into the water. He gripped the edge of the yacht’s hallway with one hand while he adjusted his mask. Then, after carefully aiming his beam and taking a series of rapid breaths followed by one deep one to hyperventilate, Dave bent at the waist and swam straight down through the cool river water.

  He passed between two lab benches, taking great care to avoid hitting the water faucets and other fixtures as he descended. He kept his beam aimed at what he thought was still the green jar. He passed an open cabinet, glanced inside and saw stacks of iron ring stands for holding glassware
, as well as some Bunsen burners and rubber tubing, before continuing his way to the bottom of the lab.

  After what seemed like a long time but was only about thirty seconds, Dave reached the pile of debris at the end of the row of benches, which was the bottom of the room. Up close, he could see that there were mounds of shattered glassware, microscopes, computers and electronic lab equipment he wasn’t familiar with. Careful not to touch any of it, he skirted over the pile to where he had seen the jar.

  Reaching the end of another lab bench, he began to worry when he still hadn’t seen the jar. He flicked his light off, looked around.

  Dave was relieved to spot the green glitter. He flipped his light back on and fixed the jar’s position in the beam. He swam to it. Picked it up. Began his ascent. He was careful not to hit his head on anything on the way up.

  And then he was at the surface, gulping a large breath through his snorkel, placing the big jar in Tara’s outstretched hands.

  Kristen examined the container while Dave pulled himself back into the hall. The jar’s seal was tight. Whatever sample was inside would have remained uncontaminated.

  Dave flipped his dive light off as he removed his snorkel gear. Kristen and Tara watched as the green particles came to life within the jar.

  Did Kristen’s father collect these microbes because of their bioluminescent characteristics? Kristen suspected that there were potential commercial applications for bio-lights, to which her father would have been attracted.

  Perhaps he had already worked with these very microbes?

  Tara took a photo of the jar before handing it back over to Kristen.

  12:04 P.M.

  “Let’s see what’s behind door number two, shall we?” Tara said, turning to face the door opposite the lab.

  “It ought to be dry,” Kristen remarked. The room on this side of the ship was higher out of the water. If the hallway they stood in was dry, then the laws of gravity said that this room had to be.

  Kristen clutched Dave’s arm as Tara put a hand on the doorknob. She turned it. Nothing happened.

  “Locked.”

  The three of them stared at the knob. Neither said anything for a long moment.

  “It’s got a keyhole, so it could have been locked from the outside,” Dave observed. “But the key could be anywhere in this huge ship, assuming it’s still on board,” he finished.

  “Do most yacht cabins have locking doors?” Kristen asked.

  “Well, it’s been a while since I was in the market for one myself,” Dave said as Kristen smiled at his humor, “but I think they might, because a lot of them end up getting used for charters or other multi-party situations, so they’d want potential clients to have the option of locking up.”

  “So how do we get in?”

  “Other than possibly squeezing in through a window from the outside, we’d have to bust down this door.”

  “Allow me,” Tara said. From the plastic casing that held her badge she extracted a lock pick. After ten seconds of fiddling, they heard a sharp click. “Got it,” Tara said, turning the handle. She pushed the door slowly open.

  All of them noticed the rancid smell. Tara identified it as the weaker odor from when they had first stepped aboard. Now it offended.

  The stench of decay.

  The room lay at a crazy angle, but using the king-size bed as a reference point, Tara was able to put it into perspective. It wasn’t as large as the flooded lab, which must have been the master suite before it was converted for scientific use, Tara conjectured, again thinking back to the ship’s schematic drawing from the case file.

  The room’s two windows were completely filled in by vegetation. A series of cabinets made of tropical hardwood lined the moss-stained walls just under the ceiling. A large closet occupied one wall.

  Tara crossed the threshold first. After ascertaining that the floor retained sufficient structural integrity to support their weight, she signaled for Kristen and Dave to join her. Kristen brought a hand to her nose. “Horrid smell.”

  “Let’s hurry up and check it out,” Tara replied, crouching down on one knee to pull open a drawer at the foot of the bed frame. It contained a few sailing and scuba magazines, a seashell identification guide, some paperback novels, a deck of cards, and a portable DVD player. Typical at-sea entertainment. Wondering if it might contain something interesting, Tara picked up the DVD player and ejected its disc: the movie JAWS. She put the player back in the drawer.

  Kristen, meanwhile, had moved to the overhead wall-mounted cabinets. She opened them to reveal an assortment of T-shirts, shorts, swim trunks, towels and extra bedding.

  Dave watched her close the last cabinet. He moved to the closet. Its double doors were closed.

  “Fancy furniture for a boat,” Dave said, running his hands over the smooth wood. Kristen and Tara moved to join him.

  “Koa wood,” Dave said, continuing his assessment. “A hardwood native to Hawaii. Rare these days, and expensive. I got a little jewelry box made of the stuff for an ex-girlfriend once, cost three hundred bucks.”

  “Open it,” Kristen said, not wanting to hear anymore about Dave’s past romances. Dave gripped the handle on the left door. He pulled it open.

  They all screamed as the bodies tumbled out.

  Dave, whose footing was already unsteady on the inclined floor, was knocked to the ground by the weight of three dead men careening into him. Kristen was struck in the temple by the closet’s right-side door as two more corpses bashed it open, but she was able to back away before they came into contact with her. Tara also managed to step aside, swinging a foot over the head of a tumbling corpse.

  “Oh, Christ!” Dave trilled, pinned to the floor by the revolting figures. “Get ‘em off me!” he shouted, flailing his limbs.

  Kristen was too mortified to act. She merely stood there, one hand covering her mouth as her mind struggled to process the nauseating spectacle, but Tara reached down and grabbed Dave under the armpits, dragging him free from the decaying bodies.

  In all there were five dead men left to decompose in the tropical humidity.

  The crew of the Tropic Sequence.

  Tara knew it to be true even without being able to discern all of their faces, three of which had long since succumbed to the accelerated putrefaction fostered by a hot, humid environment. No longer identifiable. But one of them still wore the same striped T-shirt and yellow shorts he’d been photographed wearing for an Alacra promotional shot.

  Even as Dave stood and distanced himself from the dogpile of dead bodies on the floor, one question pierced Kristen’s brain: is one of these bodies that of my father?

  But gradually the fog of panic began to recede into the recesses of her brain, and some semblance of the reasoning which had led her to early professional acclaim began to take hold. William Archer was a large, bearish man. His hulking frame was not among the deceased here, even accounting for weight loss by decomposition.

  Tara began photographing the corpses and the closet from whence they came.

  Still flustered, Dave’s hands slapped at his stomach and chest as if he were brushing away a swarm of ravenous insects. He was more than a little upset at his up close and personal confrontation with death, but Kristen couldn’t stop her mind’s wheels from turning now that they’d crested a hill and had begun to roll down the other side.

  She counted the bodies again. One...two...Is that arm part of a separate body? Yes, okay so three...four...five...

  The Tropic Sequence had sailed with a crew of six men, including Dr. Archer himself.

  “Check the closet for one more body,” Kristen said.

  Tara prayed there was not for Kristen’s sake as she stepped past Dave, tip-toeing through the huddle of wasted men on the floor to peer into the rare furniture item. Inside, the closet was stained and spattered with blood and sloughed body parts, but it contained no more corpses.

  While Dave and Kristen cowered together in the doorway, Tara knelt down close to the dead men
. She pulled out a pair of white latex gloves from her back pocket and put them on. Next, she turned one of the bodies over. Only then did she register the cause of the crew’s death.

  Their throats had been slashed.

  Like Johnson’s.

  And not just slashed, either, Tara noted with rising discomfort. These were vulgar gashes, nearly beheading the men. Whoever had done this was taking no chances they might live, or else had some deep-seated hatred of these people, or both.

  Dave vomited, doubling over, and Kristen led him out into the hall. Tara barely noticed as she stared at one of the bodies.

  A folded piece of paper protruded from a pants pocket.

  Tara went toward it, crouching, inching her way to the reeking corpse. Extending a hand, she plucked the paper from the dead man.

  …CGCC29TTGG...

  “What are you doing?” Dave asked Tara from just outside the cabin in the hallway.

  Ignoring him, Tara unfolded the paper she’d taken from the dead man’s pocket. It was a piece of lined paper like those used in school, but unlike those seen in school, it was speckled with blood. The handwriting on the top half of the page was orderly and neat, but the second half of the message was scrawled across the paper with total disregard for its lines. “Hold on, I’ve got something here, Tara said, before reading to herself:

  Crewmember Roger Afferson, May 30: Kaulakahi Channel, between Kauai and Niihau—relatively calm, clear sky, 3-4 foot seas, 10 knot SW wind.

  5:15 A.M.: Took water samples. Sighted same nameless ship we saw yesterday. Following us?

  6:00 A.M: Ship is definitely following us. Does not respond to radio.

  6:30 A.M.: Attacked by pirates! Writing in darkness as I hide in supply closet 3. Heard gunshots & screams. Seems like we are outnumbered but it could just be their weapons. Men in black ski masks. Asian/Pacific skin. Speak English. Roland was pistol whipped going for the radio. Last I saw before hiding. Wanted to fight but suicidal. Still hear screams & running footste—