Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1)

by Fernando Gamboa

  She parted her legs slightly, inviting him to take advantage of the time he had left.

  Spurred by that suggestive gesture, Riley slid to her neck, stroked it, and ran his lips over it. Then he descended to her breasts, reveling in the dark areolas, gripping the nipples between his lips, licking and playing with them until he caused a series of small spasms in the woman.

  Later, slowly and gently, kiss by kiss, he sank below the stomach until reaching her groin. Lightly colored hair trimmed in a line pointed like an arrow to the start of her vagina, a flower of fleshy petals that called him to push inside. Ignoring his own desire, Riley stopped there on the edge, barely caressing her with his lips, exploring the shores of sex with his tongue, delaying direct contact while increasing Carmen’s hip movements along with her excitement.

  “Don’t be bad . . .” She sighed.

  Riley looked into her eyes and smiled lasciviously.

  Making way between her thighs, he sat opposite her genitals as she used her hands to help open them for him. With surgical precision, he introduced the tip of his tongue into the pink slit in her dark skin. She tasted like woman and perdition. He easily found the path between the moist, warm folds that protected the small, delicate pearl of pleasure. He barely grazed it but still pulled a moan of pleasure from Carmen’s lips.

  They had made love so many times that Riley knew the exact places he should caress and how to do it to make that woman, who had had hundreds of lovers, enjoy being with him like no other. He was like a seasoned pianist who anticipated the sound each key would make long before playing it.

  At last Riley started to circle his tongue around the clitoris. First wider, then narrower, from top to bottom, bottom to top, softer, firmer, slower, faster . . . He changed the rhythm and the motion according to her reactions. Her spasms and moans of pleasure guided his movements in search of a crescendo that approached the peak, bordering on orgasm, flirting with ecstasy but without allowing her to reach it so easily. He wanted it to last. Carmen moaned again, speeding up her breathing, moving her hips rhythmically, instinctively. He sped up. More and more quickly, stronger and stronger. He felt how she accelerated to the climax, which excited him and caused him to get a painful erection.

  She grabbed his hair, forcing him to climb up and kiss her passionately and bring himself inside her. She grabbed his butt and pulled him in deeper, rocking her hips. Then she pushed him aside and got on top. Straddling him, she controlled the rhythm and depth herself while he gripped her breasts. Her thick black hair swung back and forth, and she panted hard, her eyes fixed on his as she rode to ecstasy.

  Carmen sped up, faster and faster. In a paroxysm of sensuality culminating in a cry of pleasure, she tensed all the muscles in her body, squeezing herself against him when she felt he had also reached ecstasy and, taking his pleasure beyond description, made him orgasm inside her.

  13

  The Pingarrón glided just a mile from the arid, monotonous coastline on the ship’s starboard side. A mild easterly wind formed the occasional fleece lining on the crests of the small waves. The voyage was peaceful nonetheless, and the wind pushed around some small, tall clouds, which at that hour of the morning still hadn’t had time to clothe themselves in white.

  Riley kept the motors at slow ahead, leaning on the wheel and staying attentive to any suspect surf that peeked from the surface. In these conditions, with the sun just at the bow and less than a quarter of it above the horizon, seeing the shadow of a menacing reef hidden under the water was almost impossible.

  Jack was by his side, silent, watching the narrow passage between the shallows with his hands behind his back. Since they had set out an hour earlier from the Port of Tangier, they exchanged no more words than necessary. When Riley had asked how his night had been, Jack just said, “Dark.”

  Some hundred yards back, somewhere along the starboard quarter, the nautical chart showed a rock less than seven yards underwater. But the one that kept the captain vigilant was another that, on the same coast, was only three yards under the waves: a giant granite can opener, crouching in hopes of creating its own version of the Titanic. The calculations told him the rock was somewhat off their course, but a good sailor is naturally distrustful, and even if the chart, the sounding line, the dial, and the Holy Spirit itself assured him he was not in danger of running aground—he’d always found that euphemism funny—he wouldn’t stop being prudent and navigating as if he were crossing a minefield.

  Julie entered the bridge deck. She looked at the chart of the strait, drew a few lines from the shore converging on the red X, put the protractor and pen down, and looked at Riley. “Captain, we’ve arrived.”

  “Depth?”

  “Eighty-five feet.”

  “Very good,” Riley said, turning the throttle off. “We’ll drop anchor here. Put both of ’em down so we don’t drift, and whoever watches the bridge, take bearings every fifteen minutes. I don’t want to wake up from my siesta and find us stranded on a beach.”

  He sent a message to the captain of the Port of Tangier that they’d had a problem with their propeller and would have to anchor there for a few days to wait for replacement parts. Then he called everyone, including Kirchner and Elsa, to the deck. Riley had decided not to try to hide their mission from the two passengers. By the time they’d have gotten off in Lisbon, the job would be done, and Riley figured seven heads were better than five.

  Leaning on the bulwark, they waited in the morning sun for their captain to give them the details of the recovery, which they still knew little about.

  “Would you rather hear the good or the bad news first?” Riley asked.

  “Great start . . .” Marco muttered, chewing a cigar.

  Everyone else just looked on uncomfortably.

  Riley continued, “We have to find a cargo ship five hundred feet long, sunk, according to its location on the chart, about one hundred feet deep. We have to access it as best we can, find an object”—he opened his hands as if holding an invisible box—“of about this size, and bring it to the surface intact.”

  “We’ve never done a recovery that deep,” Julie said. “Or with so much current. It’s going to be difficult.”

  “Sure. It’s going to be difficult.”

  “And what’s the good news?” César said, crossing his arms.

  Riley gave a crooked smile. “That was the good news. The bad is we have till Saturday to do it.”

  “Saturday?” César asked. “Which Saturday?”

  “The coming one, of course.”

  “But today’s Sunday. The original deal was twelve days!”

  “I know, but things change.” He looked at each of them and went on. “Now we only have six days to make the delivery, so there’s no time to lose. In a half hour I want the launch ready to go, a couple of lead weights, and a buoy with a forty-yard rope. Marco and I will probe the bottom, and if we find something we’ll dive. César, you man the launch. Julie, you stand guard at the helm, and Jack, you’re in charge. I’d appreciate it if you made us a good lunch, because we’ll be very hungry when we get back. Any questions?”

  Elsa raised her hand. “And what do we do? I’m going crazy stuck in the cabin all day, and I’d like to help.”

  “Well, I don’t know how.”

  “I’m a really good swimmer,” she said, “and yesterday Julie bought me a swimsuit. I could go with you in the launch and dive too.”

  Kirchner opened his mouth to protest, but Elsa whispered something that made him stop.

  Riley looked at Kirchner, then Jack and Elsa. Her eyes were filled with enthusiasm. “Okay,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll get some goggles and flippers for you. But I gotta warn you it’s not rare to see big blue sharks that would be thrilled to have a veterinarian as a snack.”

  Elsa smiled. “I’m too skinny to be a good snack,” she said, passing her hands along her waist coquettishly. “A shark would go for someone bigger, with muscles, like you.”

  Jack and the captain
exchanged a glance milliseconds long, with which they silently said more or less: What do you want me to do, Jack? She’s the one who wanted to come. And the other answered, Save it—I’m preparing the fucking lunch while you two swim half-naked in search of a sunken ship.

  Soon Riley, Marco, César, and Elsa were in the launch, heading away from the boat. The men were dressed in warm clothes, since the day was still cold, but Elsa had nothing on but a black bathing suit and a towel over her shoulder like she was heading to the beach. Riley paid little attention to her, while César forced himself not to, Marco said something obscene to himself, and Jack almost had a heart attack as she was leaving.

  When they’d gotten about one hundred yards away from the Pingarrón, Riley started shedding his clothes. “Let’s start here . . . Depth?”

  César slowed down the noisy motor as Marco dropped and retrieved the probe. “Eighty-five feet,” he said, checking the mark on the cord. “Sandy bottom.”

  “Good, I’ll go first,” Riley said, already in his underwear. “We’ll take turns every ten minutes to prevent hypothermia. Oh, and César, I know you know, but try to draw the tracking lines as straight as possible, and don’t exceed a couple of knots, I don’t want to be waterskiing.” He put on his mask and snorkel, grabbed the rope tied to the stern, and jumped in.

  “Tracking lines?” Elsa asked, wrapped in her towel.

  “We’re going to comb a grid of about five hundred yards per side,” César explained, turning up the motor, “and since you can’t make marks in the water, you have to reference the horizon. You trace the lines of the grid with a compass as straight as possible to keep from skipping something.”

  “But it’s a big boat, isn’t it? It should be easy to see, even though it’s underwater.”

  “If you learn anything from spending years on the sea,” César said as he looked alternately at the horizon and the compass, “it’s that nothing’s ever easy. The ship could be on other coordinates or deeper than we expected, so we could pass right over it.”

  “What if after going over that grid completely, you don’t find it?”

  “We draw another and do the same.”

  “And what if you still miss it?”

  “Start over and find help.”

  “Help? From who?”

  “From our Lady of Grace.”

  After three hours of searching, they had covered about half of the quarter-mile grid. After drying himself with his damp towel and donning his wool sweater again, Riley drank the rest of the coffee in the thermos. He was shivering and ready to place a marker buoy so they could go back to the boat, regroup, and warm up with a nice bowl of soup.

  Marco was the one being dragged now, holding on to the rope with both hands. Though he hadn’t complained, he was definitely freezing to death. Meanwhile, César kept taking bearings with his hand on the rudder, and Elsa looked disappointed with the tedious outing as she leaned on the side, letting her fingers drag along the surface of the water.

  Then, when no one was expecting it, Marco suddenly released the rope and, thrashing as his head came out of the water, let out what seemed to be a curse in his native tongue.

  Riley looked back to see what was happening, and César turned off the motor. “Did you see something?” Riley yelled.

  Marco just cursed again.

  “What’s going on?” Riley asked, thinking he’d gotten a cramp or something.

  Marco pointed.

  In that exact moment, just in front of Elsa—who was still apathetically bent with her hand in the water—a gray mass emerged from the depths, bright and round, almost a yard high and less than an arm’s length from the side of the boat.

  Elsa, startled, sat up like a spring. All her boredom appeared to vanish. Meanwhile, from the middle of the creature, which looked like a polished rock, a hole the size of a coin opened, and a stream of air filled with thousands of water droplets fired into the sky like a little volcanic geyser.

  “Captain!” she screamed.

  Riley was already by her side when she turned to him with a questioning look. Then, without saying anything, he stretched his arm out of the boat and tenderly stroked the side of the great gray bulk with his fingertips.

  In response, the gray mass emerged even more, which surprised Elsa even more. Like a precious jewel born from the ocean, a large brown eye appeared on the surface of the water and fixed its pupil on the young woman as if it recognized her, blinking several times as it let the captain caress it.

  Elsa put her hand on her chest and tried to stammer out a question that didn’t make it.

  “It’s a pilot whale,” Riley said, noticing an expression of bliss on Elsa’s face that he hadn’t seen up till then. “A kind of dolphin.”

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . beautiful.”

  Riley affectionately petted its skin as it tilted its head like a happy dog enjoying its master’s touch. “It is,” he agreed, visibly moved. He stood up. “They all are.”

  Elsa then realized there were about a hundred others in the water, almost all bigger than the launch. They surrounded them completely, appearing and disappearing on the surface. “Are they dangerous?” she asked.

  “They’re as big as trolleys and have many, many teeth,” Riley said. “But no, they’re not dangerous at all.”

  With the words barely out of his mouth, Elsa took her snorkeling mask from the bottom of the launch, stood up on the rail, and dove headfirst into the sea.

  Riley’s jaw dropped as she disappeared under the water and didn’t reappear until after almost a minute, surrounded by animals six yards long and weighing a few tons, which could finish her with a simple, involuntary beat of a fin. But this didn’t seem to be of concern to her when she poked her head out of the water and took off her mask.

  “It’s magical!” she exclaimed, beside herself like a girl seeing snow for the first time. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life!”

  “Damn it, Elsa! Come back to the boat! You’re crazy! You can’t do that!” Riley said.

  “Oh no?” She grinned. “Well, I’d say I can!” She put her mask back on and went under.

  Riley was angry and worried at first, but then he realized that a few years earlier he would’ve done exactly the same thing. I’m getting old, he thought. “The hell with it,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

  “Captain?” César asked.

  Riley took off his turtleneck, grabbed his own mask, and climbed over the side. “You’re in charge!” was the last thing he said before jumping into the water with the whales, screaming for joy, and smiling.

  When he surfaced in a cloud of bubbles, the first thing he did was look around for Elsa. For a second he thought he saw her: a slim mermaid hovering between several pilot whales that seemed delighted by her presence. But he soon lost sight of her, and the only thing he could see was tens of gray backs and large dorsal fins cutting the water. It was clear that he wouldn’t be able to follow Elsa’s trail, so he decided not to worry and go deeper to enjoy the spectacle himself, trusting Elsa would know how to take care of herself. He adjusted his mask, took a deep breath, and plunged down.

  He found himself surrounded by a crowd of gray whales slowly and gracefully swimming in the same direction. He could see them driving themselves by moving their tail fins up and down in slow motion. It seemed to take them no more effort to move through water than it took birds to move through air. Riley thought of pelicans, big awkward marine birds. On land they always seemed about to trip, but once in the air, skimming the waves with the tips of barely beating wings, they were majestic creatures. Whales are the marine equivalent of pelicans, he thought. They don’t swim as much as fly.

  A baby whale at least ten feet long came up to Riley, followed closely by what must have been his mother. The baby innocently studied him from head to toe with its left eye. Riley couldn’t help but reach out to touch its cheek as he would a child’s. When the whale went to return the gesture, raising one of its pectoral fins, t
he surge of water flipped Riley over. The mother put herself between them, perhaps sensing the fragility of the human. Then she nudged the calf away, and they swam deeper, passing under Riley’s feet.

  He watched spellbound as the mother and calf drifted away, their bodies blurring with the blue of the deep. They disappeared, and all that was left of them was a tiny trail of bubbles rising from the bottom. There, he could dimly make out a still mass, darker than the rest in the shape of a perfect rectangle.

  It was the blurry silhouette of a narrow, elongated object, large and made of straight lines.

  A ship.

  14

  Plans of the Phobos were spread over the table in the lounge. Detailing its various decks and a dozen cross sections, they gave a clear picture of the dimensions and the layout of the freighter, which was about the size of one and a half football fields. They focused on the central superstructure, with its officers’ cabins, bridge, and radio cabin. It was where they were most likely to find the mysterious device.

  The problem in this case was that during a couple of free dives, Riley had found out the ship was keel up—completely upside down.

  “It’s a bitch,” Jack said.

  So everyone seemed to be thinking, even Kirchner and Elsa.

  “The good part,” Riley said, tapping on the table with the tip of his pen, “is that it’s only ninety feet deep, which gives us more diving time, and the water’ll be a little less cold.”

  “That isn’t much help,” Jack said.

  “Could you see what state the superstructure is in?” César asked, resting his chin on the back of the chair he’d turned around.

  “I couldn’t get that far down,” Riley said. “But given the position of the ship—”

  “It’ll be like a giant accordion,” Marco said as he picked his teeth with the tip of his knife.