Doc - 19 - Chasing Midnight

by Randy Wayne White

  Something else I noticed while at the reception: Kazlov’s bodyguard was watching me a little too closely.

  I wanted out. I had things to do. I was particularly curious about what the Russian’s luxury yacht looked like from beneath the surface. It was a twenty-some-meter Dragos Voyager, black hull, white upper deck, built in Turkey. One glance at its bright red waterline told me it was a false line, and the craft was carrying something heavy.

  So I had given Kazlov’s security guy the slip, and left Tomlinson to deal with the poisonous Ms. Densler and her techy-looking associates, all members of a controversial organization, Third Planet Peace Force—3P2, as it was commonly abbreviated.

  Alone at last, beneath a starry June sky, I had donned scuba gear and slipped into the water. I wanted to spend some time observing the Gulf sturgeon penned there as an exhibit, and enjoy the solitude of depth and darkness, before getting serious about inspecting Kazlov’s yacht.

  Not total darkness, of course. The docks were illuminated by rows of underwater lights, which provided both visibility and entertainment. Underwater lights attract baitfish. Baitfish attract bigger fish. Big fish attract the true oceangoing predators. There was no telling what was swimming around out there in the gloom.

  The night sea is relentless theater, one small drama after another, alive with sounds. With my scuba exhaust bubbles as a metronome, catfish bawled, distant dolphins pinged, pistol shrimp crackled among pilings where spadefish and sheepshead grazed.

  Mostly, though, my attention was fixed on the Gulf sturgeon. At a yard long, and fifty pounds, the animal was probably around ten years old—less than a third of its probable life span. As it moved along the bottom, suction-feeding sandworms and isopods, it reacted to my presence with the guarded indifference of a species that has survived for two hundred million years.

  If Batman had a boat, it might resemble the Gothic symmetry that defines the twenty-some species in the family Acipenseridae. The Gulf sturgeon I was watching was a tri-edged submarine, shaped like a spear from the Bronze Age. Its armored scutes were suggestive of helmets worn by jousting knights, its lateral lines were effective, timeless shields. Had the Civil War ironclads enjoyed the same protection, their battles might have survived the harbor.

  The sturgeon is among the few bony fishes to have flourished through ice ages, meteorite assaults and volcanic upheavals that dinosaurs and a million other long-gone species could not endure. Only in the last hundred years has the animal’s genetic virtuosity been tested. Loss of habitat and pollution play roles. But it is the global love of caviar that has put the fish on the endangered species list.

  Female sturgeon, of all species, are slow to mature—ten to twenty-five years before they can produce the eggs for which they are caught and killed by poachers and black marketeers. Even then, the timing must be exactly right. The eggs must be harvested before the fish ovulates. After ovulation, the shell of the egg—the chorion—is riddled with tiny holes to accept sperm. Salt, and sometimes borax, which are added as preservatives to caviar, convert ovulated eggs into mush. They are uneatable, not marketable. Which is why even farm-raised female sturgeon must be sacrificed, and why there are ever-fewer mature sturgeon swimming wild in our global waters.

  This fish, only yards away, was a prime example of a healthy Gulf sturgeon—and why I didn’t want to miss this rare opportunity to observe it feeding at night.

  So I was enjoying myself.

  Until the explosion.

  I had been underwater for about twenty minutes when it happened. I heard a percussive thud that jarred the soft tissue of my inner ears, and left me blinking in the sudden darkness. Then I felt a delayed, radiating pressure that caused me to grab for a dock piling as a mild shock wave rolled past, my swim fins fluttering, but not much.

  I didn’t know, of course, but the explosion also took out every light on the island, along with the island’s emergency redundancy systems—backup lighting, generators, computers and the land-based communication systems.

  Also unknown to me, a military-grade GSM mobile blocking device had been simultaneously activated to jam cell phones, wireless Internet and VHF radios.

  Suddenly, for the first time since a telephone had been installed, Vanderbilt Island was actually an island.

  Instead of suspecting that a hostile group was taking the island hostage—something I should have given serious consideration—my first thought was lightning strike.

  It made sense. Only a few minutes before, a rain squall, ion-charged, had strafed the coast, moving westward in darkness toward the Yucatán. I had waited until I thought the danger was past, but summer storms are tricky to predict. The night clouds had still been incandescent, rumbling spires when I had entered the water.

  Lightning hit a transformer and the transformer exploded.

  That’s the way my mind accounted for what had happened. It explained the power outage that, just as abruptly, changed the underwater world I now inhabited.

  In the space of those few seconds, the sturgeon I was observing ascended several million years in the hierarchy of fish and primates.

  I was demoted proportionally.

  On the Darwinian ladder, the fish was now far more advanced than some dumbass, bat-blind marine biologist who happened to be underwater and alone, breathing air from an aluminum tank.

  Me, the dumbass biologist.

  A moment later, it got worse. My sense of direction was skewed, and I somehow ended up under the docks. How far, I wasn’t sure, but I banged into enough pilings to know it had happened.

  Calmly, very calmly, I attempted to surface. Fifteen feet is a short distance, unless you are underwater—and unless the valve of your scuba tank snags a cable tethered to the bottom.

  It happened.

  For a spooky moment, I strained against the cable. It stretched but wouldn’t break. Then, instead of dumping my gear and swimming to the surface, I made the stupid decision to try to free myself rather than leave so much expensive equipment behind.

  More than one diver has killed himself for the sake of a few hundred dollars.

  Steadying myself against a piling, I used my right hand to search for whatever it was I had snagged. Finally, I found it: a jumble of nylon rope. Even through my leather gloves, I could tell. Maybe it was the line from a crab trap that had been blown in by the squall.

  Strapped to my belt was a perfectly good dive knife. A superb knife, in fact. One of the last stainless steel survival knives made personally by the late Bo Randall of Orlando.

  But, once again, I put the value of my equipment ahead of my own safety. If I pulled the knife from its scabbard, I risked dropping it—probably never to be found in the silt below.

  Instead, I traced the nylon line until it became taut. I got a couple of wraps around my hand, used the piling as my anchor and gave a violent yank.

  Suddenly, instead of just being snagged, I was tangled in what felt like an ascending web of rope.

  Another very poor decision. Me, the dumbass, indeed. So my reality was now this: I was underwater, alone, in total darkness, tangled and tethered to the bottom.

  Yet… I still wasn’t worried. Not really. I had plenty of options, plenty of air, and I have lived an unusual life. I had been in tougher spots than this and survived. Marion D. Ford, world traveler, expert waterman, drown in a marina basin in four meters of water? Not likely.

  Ego, again.

  Diving alone at night isn’t for amateurs, nor the poorly equipped. In that way, at least, I was prepared. I had a good knife. And looped to my dive vest, a brilliant little ASP LED flashlight.

  I decided to have a look at what I was dealing with before going to work with my knife. Methodical action, taking small, careful steps, is my way of neutralizing panic. When I freed the flashlight, though, my hand banged what might have been a piling crosstie, which caused me to fumble and drop the thing.

  Uckkin Id-ot!

  Even though I spoke through my regulator, a dive buddy—had I been
wise enough to have recruited one—would have understood that I was getting frustrated.

  Fortunately, I’d hit the flashlight’s pressure switch before it tumbled to the bottom. It landed on its side.

  Visibility was better than usual after a storm—which meant the viz was poor, only a few yards at most. Even so, the little LED speared a dazzling column of light toward a buoyed ring of netting where the sturgeon I had been watching was penned.

  A second sturgeon had joined the animal, I noted through the murk. Both appeared unfazed as they hugged the bottom, silt blooming from their gills, as they suctioned crustaceans and worms from unseen holes. I was amused by the notion the fish were now observing me, but I knew better. Even in temporary captivity, wild Florida sturgeon had better things to do than watch a primate drown.

  The flashlight provided enough ancillary light for me to take stock of the situation. Yes, I was tangled in a dozen yards of crab line, a weighted trap somewhere off in the darkness.

  For the next ten minutes, I stayed very busy trying to recover from my error, and the snowballing series of small mistakes that no diver with my experience should have made. Underwater, the only expert divers worthy of the term have scales, or fluked tails. No matter how shallow, or close to shore, that reality doesn’t change. Primates are rank tourists whenever depth exceeds the distance between our feet and our nose.

  For me, the “expert diver,” it was a much deserved kick in the butt. And a reminder that “the unexpected” only surprises amateurs, drunks and children.

  It was not, however, the most compelling reminder of the night.

  A stranger, pointing a semiautomatic pistol at my head, would provide that.

  2

  I was a little shaky when I finally surfaced. And mad enough to have exhausted the profanities that accurately described my incompetence—and there were many.

  A dazzling tube of light still marked my flashlight’s location. It was beneath a dock in the deepest part of the basin. Seeing it was frustrating enough to cause me to swear at myself again. My damn tank and regulator were down there, too. Plus a weight belt!

  I had gotten so badly tangled that I had jettisoned everything but my buoyancy compensator vest. Worse, I hadn’t managed to get a look at the underside of the Russian’s yacht, which was moored in deep water along the outside T-dock. The vessel sat alone, tethered to shore power by an electrical umbilical cable, which explained why its cabin had gone black, and why its pumps were no longer bilging water that is omnipresent in a craft her size.

  Thinking, Her emergency generator will kick on soon, I treaded water above the flashlight, vaguely aware the generator did not start automatically—a fact that would prove of grave importance by early the next morning.

  I was more concerned with what had just happened. Finally, I decided, screw it. Enough for one night. I could always buy more scuba equipment. More likely, though, I’d recover my gear in the morning.

  To regroup, I rolled onto my back, inflated my vest and took a look around. The power was still out; no backup generators running on shore, either, which I found odd. The marina was a gray scaffolding of docks; the island, a density of shadows pocked by rooflines, coconut palms, the opaque glint of windows. Miles to the northwest, though, a pearlescent glow told me that Bare Key Regency Resort, and its floating casino, hadn’t lost power. Farther north, Sanibel was an inverted island of luminous ivory, moored beneath the stars.

  Seeing the lights of Sanibel reminded me that Vanderbilt Island is only a thirty-minute boat ride from my fish house and laboratory on Dinkin’s Bay. Fast, unless you come by sailboat, which I had (against my better judgment), arriving earlier that day aboard Tomlinson’s old live-aboard Morgan, No Más.

  The decision seemed harmless at the time because Vanderbilt ranks as one of the most insulated and safest retreats in the world. The acreage is a tropical garden of blooming flowers and coconut palms, with a historic fishing lodge built atop the remnants of a pre-Columbian pyramid. That’s right, a shell pyramid in Florida. Vanderbilt is one of several ancient places on the Gulf Coast once inhabited by contemporaries of the Maya.

  Now, though, as I floated in darkness, I began to regret coming by sailboat. There was no telling how long the island’s power would be out. More than a few hours, and I’d be forced to bunk aboard No Más instead of the air-conditioned suite in the main lodge, where I had already stowed my overnight bag.

  Tomlinson snores. He barks and chortles as he dreams. If I’d arrived in my overpowered fishing skiff, I could sleep in my own bed and be back on Vanderbilt Island before breakfast.

  Then the prospect became even more unsavory. What if Tomlinson had lured his eco-elitist friend, Winifred Densler, aboard No Más while I was underwater? By God, I’d sleep on the dock before enduring close quarters with someone like her. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d slept outside to escape Tomlinson’s craziness.

  I flutter-kicked into deeper water for a better view of the very few boats among the network of dockage. My friend’s old Morgan was moored thirty yards from where I’d surfaced, so it wasn’t hard to spot. No oil lamp showing through the porthole, though… no sounds that I could hear.

  Reassuring, but it wasn’t proof.

  I checked my Chronofighter dive watch: 9:45 p.m. Early, by island standards, where days are shortened in favor of long nights spent partying.

  Tomlinson probably was still at the main lodge, getting determinedly drunk by candlelight. Or entertaining his eco-elitist lady friend, or some equally determined female—or females. The man is open-minded when it comes to excess. And he’s a resourceful opportunist when it comes to power failures.

  No one else was around, either. The caviar reception again. The island’s summer population, which was zero, had been displaced by a dozen weekend caviar-minded dignitaries, which was why the marina was now a ghost village of a few empty boats and silence.

  That was okay.

  It was nice to be in the water, alone at night—particularly after coming so close to being killed by my own ineptitude. I decided it was the perfect time to drift for a while and look at stars. After being reminded of my personal deficiencies, it might be comforting to reaffirm that, above me, were a trillion indifferent solar systems that simply didn’t give a damn what happened to me, and never would.

  That’s exactly what I was doing—floating on my back, looking at the sky—when I noticed a lone figure coming down the dock toward me.

  It was a man, walking fast, hands in his pockets. Was he wearing a crewneck? It crossed my mind because Tomlinson’s environmentalist friends had all worn black crewnecks, the organization’s yellow logo on the breast pocket. Maybe the visitor had come searching for Tomlinson and the outspoken Ms. Densler.

  My glasses were around my neck on fishing line, but I also use a prescription dive mask. I seated the mask on my face, but there wasn’t enough light to see. So I tilted the mask to my forehead and waited.

  There was something so determined—no, aggressive—about the man’s body language, it stopped me from calling out a greeting. Or asking, What knocked out the power? which I would probably have done under different circumstances. Small islands are throwbacks to small towns of the previous century—even a retreat for the ultrawealthy. Strangers interact. People smile. They wave. They make inane remarks about the weather, totally out of character with the aloof and guarded lives they’ve probably left behind.

  Not with this guy, though. He wasn’t out for a stroll. He was on a mission.

  I used my fins to rudder me safely into the shadows, closer to shore, where, if need be, I could be out of the water quickly.

  The man continued along the main dock, still walking fast. That’s when I realized he had spotted my flashlight. The one I had dropped and left on the bottom. Its beam created a murky corona beneath the dock, noticeable from a long distance because it was the only light for miles.

  Yeah… the guy’s attention was focused on the light, because he didn’t stop u
ntil he was standing directly above it. I watched the man squat to get a closer look. Then he was talking into what must have been a cuff link–sized transmitter, because he touched a finger to an earbud as spoke into his wrist.

  “I think find him at marina. You hear? I see underwater light, I see bubbles.” Then, to himself, he muttered, “Damn radio amateurs!”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, other than my regulator was leaking residual air (I had closed the valve after jettisoning my tank.) And the man had some professional training of some sort or his tone wouldn’t have been so contemptuous.

  He was having radio problems, obviously. I watched him slap at the transceiver before he asked again, “You goddamn hear me or not?”

  The accent was Russian. For a moment, I assumed the accent confirmed it was Kazlov’s bodyguard, or an employee of one of his competitors. He definitely wasn’t with the Chinese mega-millionaire. But then I remembered that Densler and her party crashers were part of an international organization. I’d been told there were five Third Planet members on the island, but only three were at the reception. I’d gotten a quick look at the other two, though, before I’d fled the fishing lodge, a pair of chubby blond-haired twins who, Densler had said, drove their van from California. Were the twins originally from the Caspian Sea region, the epicenter of the organization’s work?

  Possibly. If so, I guessed they would soon be enjoying a night in an American jail, compliments of one pissed-off Viktor Kazlov.

  The prospect buoyed my spirits as I watched the man bang the transceiver with his fist, then curse it with a string of Russian profanities. Finally, he said, “Transmission jammed! Bastards have jamming device, you hear?”

  A jamming device? On Vanderbilt Island? Hilarious. I actually smiled. I didn’t believe it, of course, but at least the guy was entertaining.