“So this is about finding the truth and not a reward?”
“One other detail. My drunken arrival during the robbery shows up on the security video too. When the police figure that out, who do you think will take the fall for all this if the Sea Lion gets away?”
Ray was quiet. He shook his head, probably wondering if his being with me would make him an accomplice.
“Finding Truck and the Sea Lion may be the only way I can clear my name. If we can get a reward, we’ll do that too, don’t worry.”
Ray shook his head and stared out the window. I dug into my breast pocket.
“Punch these coordinates into the GPS. Raul has the Sea Lion circling a small area just outside the container ships.”
He stared at me a long second, then pulled the hand-held GPS off the Velcro that attached it to the instrument panel. Ray Floyd was a helluva mechanic, a surprisingly astute social philosopher, and an all-around nice guy. I’d never seen him hurt a mosquito, much less get into a fight. But he also spent every waking minute away from the airport wired into every kind of military shoot-em-up video game on the market, so he had a mean streak in there somewhere.
“All those years of training on the joystick in front of your game station, Ray—now’s your chance to try it in the real world. Just think of these guys as terrorists and let’s kick some ass.”
He pressed his lips together and I could see the corners of his mouth twitch. Yep, here came the smile. The GPS plotted a course, and to our mutual delight, the Sea Lion’s position was less than five miles away.
“Do me a favor,” I said. “While I keep my eye out for them, go through the checklist for a water landing.”
When I explained my loose idea of a plan, Ray got very quiet. After several moments of paralysis he took the clipboard and ran his finger down the checklist for our landing in the Bay of Limon. I kept the altitude low so the Sea Lion wouldn’t spot us and so we could land quickly once we find them. Truck would certainly recognize Betty, and if he was involved he’d smell a trap. We’d find out soon enough.
As we flew around the bay getting into position, I was amazed at the number of huge cargo ships awaiting passage. Colorful containers dotted ship decks, some stacked five high. Products from all over the world destined for Pacific ports and consumers.
I spotted a sailing ship in the distance, the size of a toy compared with the freighters. The twin masts and yellow hull left no doubt that it was the Sea Lion. I banked to port and added flaps. While Ray called out the checklist we made a bouncy landing in the washing-machine chop and came to a quick stop. Our GPS location was exactly where Raul told me to be. I reached for Ray’s cell phone.
“Hello, Buck, you in position?” Jaime said.
“Just landed. Go ahead and ask Raul to issue instructions.”
We disconnected and I stumbled into the back. I imagined Gunner parked on the tarmac, enraged as his radar showed us just a couple miles off shore. I only hoped we could make this happen faster than whatever he came up with.
“The depth finder shows fifty feet here,” Ray said. “Drop anchor?”
“There’s plenty of line.”
While he fumbled with the bow hatch and anchor line, I donned my wetsuit. When I felt the pull of the anchor jerk us into position, I took a deep breath.
“What if your Panamanian buddy doesn’t do what he promised?”
“He will.” I bit my lip. He’d better.
I used my binoculars to scan the waters to the northeast and finally spotted the Sea Lion. It was on a reach perpendicular to our position. Come on, Raul. I watched for five minutes—nothing. Another five minutes, and still no change in course. The seas sloshed in all directions, and Ray was looking a little wonky and muttering to himself. I hated doing this to him and I really appreciated how game he’d been. He could have whined or refused to come, but he sucked it up. Ray didn’t know Truck as well as I did, and he certainly didn’t have an FBI agent manipulating him, so he was doing all this for me, pissed or not.
The Sea Lion tacked in our direction.
“Okay, she’s coming our way,” I said. “Raul’s people must have made the call to the Sea Lion.”
Ray clung to the bulkhead, trying to watch the horizon out the window. I tossed him a life vest, which he needed no coaxing to put on. I swung the buoyancy compensator and scuba tank over my shoulder, buckled up, sat in the hatch, pulled on my flippers, cleaned my mask, took a deep breath from the regulator, then fell forward into the water. When I looked up, Ray stood in the hatch and handed me the tools I hoped not to need. I then turned face down to float on the surface.
I did what I could to calm my breathing, but as I floated in the seventy-five- degree water, staring into the murky blackness of the Bay of Limon, I had too much time to think. The meeting with Raul Acosta had been a painful reminder of my success, and his calling me King Charles cut like a knife. At least he hadn’t asked about Heather, my ex-wife, who’d helped charm the Spanish map away from him in the first place.
I looked up and Ray nodded at me. I glanced down the bay and saw the Sea Lion closing fast. I sucked a deep breath of dry, compressed air, and the shiver turned to a wash of adrenalin.
Places, everyone, the show’s about to start …
20
The Sea Lion had dropped her sails and coasted to a stop next to Betty but didn’t drop anchor. I kept an ear out of the water so I could hear what was being said. Problem was, much of it was in Spanish. I cocked my head and saw three men at the rail, one at the helm, none of them Truck. They were dark-skinned Latinos but more Indio than black.
I bit down hard on my mouthpiece.
“How long was he under water?” someone said from the sailboat.
“About seventy minutes, but at that depth it was too much,” Ray said. “He’s got nitrogen poisoning, the bends. There’s a decompression chamber in Colón, near the harbor, if you can take him.”
“Why not fly your plane?” It sounded like he said “jor plan.”
“He’s the pilot. I’m just along for the ride.”
Next glance saw the men on the Sea Lion in heated debate. I hoped Raul’s people had poured it on thick, as charity from this bunch was unlikely. Their spirited argument ended abruptly.
“We will take him, but what about you and the plane?”
“I can’t leave it, I radioed for a pilot to come help me. They were trying to find someone who knew how to fly one of these.”
Ray was doing great.
I saw the men drop a rope ladder over the side of the Sea Lion. My breathing began to escalate along with my heartbeat. Still no sign of Truck. Did that mean he was dead?
Damnit.
One of the men climbed unsteadily down the ladder. The waves and chop rocking me around made the Sea Lion move unpredictably.
“Here, take this line and we can try to pull ourselves closer together!” Ray said.
I felt the plane and ship close in on me, and suddenly feared getting crushed.
“Is he conscious?” one of the men asked.
“He was. Can you reach him? Almost … you’re really close.”
I saw a hand reach out to me. Another man was just behind him, clutching the ladder in one hand and my rescuer in the other. A short pang of fear caused me to hesitate. Then I felt the hand grab me by the hair, the man yanked hard, and the pain pushed me to action.
I reached up and grabbed him by the belt. His eyes barely had time to grow wide. When I spun my body and pulled him, he fell heavily into the sea. His partner swung for a moment on the ladder, then caromed into the water too. A bright flash turned the water’s surface bright orange, and the smell of phosphorescence and a shrill scream told me Ray scored with the flare gun.
The men in the water started to react after their partner on the boat, his chest ablaze, shrieked in agony. One began to swim toward me, then stopped when I raised the spear gun up from below the surface. But it was the fourth man on deck, the one unharmed by the flare, who pu
lled a rifle up to his shoulder. With no time to chicken out, I lifted the spear gun, centered it on his chest, froze for an instant, lowered the gun, then pulled the trigger and nailed him in the thigh with the untethered four-foot spear. He dropped the rifle overboard, which crashed into one of his associate’s heads.
With my spear spent, the man who’d made a move toward me before now came at me hard and knocked my mask askew. I felt awkward and vulnerable, burdened by the scuba gear. Ray couldn’t shoot these guys with the flare gun without hitting me.
Something came over my shoulder and jabbed at the man who was twisting my head. It was the boat hook—Ray jabbed the man in the chest with it!
I took the opportunity to submerge, get my wits about me, and resurface next to the Sea Lion. I came up behind the man who was struggling in the water, trying to reach the ladder. With my dive knife now in hand, I grabbed hold of the ladder and pulled him into my chest with the knife over his throat. He instantly stopped struggling.
“Hey!” I shouted. “I’ll cut his freaking throat!”
The other man in the water let go of the boat hook that he was trying to pull away from Ray. He treaded water and stared at me. I kicked off my flippers, brushed the mask off my head, pulled the release strap on the buoyancy compensator and dropped the tank, then pushed the other man away and high-tailed it up the rope ladder onto the Sea Lion.
On deck, the charred Peruvian lay still but groaning, and another one clutched the spear that had passed through his leg, with blood squirting out and pooling below him. I could hear Ray yell at the others, threatening to shoot another flare, but knew that wouldn’t last. There was another rifle leaned up against the bulkhead, which I grabbed and trained on the men in the water. Ray and I exchanged a glance, and I think we felt the same way, anything but victorious, just sick at the carnage we’d imposed.
But the Sea Lion was ours.
I waved the others on board, and after Ray checked Betty’s anchor, he jumped into the water with a shriek and climbed aboard to help me secure the men and tend the wounded. I handed Ray the rifle and left to search the ship. A sudden concern stopped me in my tracks. What if there was nothing here? How would I explain our attack? I could add piracy to my résumé and Panama to the list of countries where I was under investigation.
The hatch that led below was locked from the outside. I flipped up the hook, pulled open the door, and stepped down the ladder. The only sounds were the lap of the waves and the creak of the hull throughout the main cabin. Four crates were piled on the floor. My memory was too fuzzy to tell if these were the same ones I’d seen the night of the robbery.
I was looking around the cabin for a tool to pry open a crate when a sound from behind the closed door to the bow caught my attention.
It was a grunt.
I moved forward cautiously, then stood at the door. It too was locked from the outside. I heard a rustle inside and a steady scratching sound. What I found when I opened the door made me laugh.
Truck Lewis, tied and taped to a bunk. It must have taken all four men to corral him—the guy had the physique of a linebacker. His mouth was covered with duct tape, which I removed first.
“What in the hell you doing here?” he said. “We back in Key West?”
“Not yet, old buddy.” I smiled. “Before I do anything, though, I want to know what your role is in all this and why you punched me when I saw you the other night.”
Truck rolled his eyes. “I was trying to save your life, fool. You showed up drunk and asking questions and them motherfuckers wanted to kill your ass.”
I felt the back of my head where the lump had been.
“Gee, I guess I should thank you, then.”
“All right, wise ass, just get me the fuck outta here.”
I made quick work of his bonds and he stood unsteadily, holding himself against the cabin door.
“You bring the Marines?” he said.
“More like the Air Force. Let’s go.”
I clambered around the four trunks in the cabin and started up the ladder.
“You already unload some of this treasure?” Truck said.
I paused on the steps. “What do you mean?”
“There were eight of these damn things. About broke my back hauling ‘em down here.”
Aside from the cabin where Truck had been tied up, it was wide open below deck. There were no other crates.
Truck stretched and shook his arms to get his circulation going while I searched.
“Only these four crates now,” I said. “What happened to the rest?”
“We stopped several hours into the trip.”
“Stopped? You mean you went ashore somewhere?”
“Man, we were still at sea. They had me captain the ship until a big speedboat showed up out of the dark. Then they locked me in the cabin, but I heard talk and the sound of the crates moving around.” He paused. “Get this, I heard one of the Peruvians mention a name I recognized, then heard the voice to go with it.”
“What are you talking about? When?”
“When we met up with that other boat.” He grinned. “I’m pretty sure our old homeboy Manny Gutierrez was there. He must have off-loaded some crates.”
I realized I was holding my breath and exhaled.
“Gutierrez—”
A loud crash on the deck above us made me jump.
“The hell was that?” Truck said.
I was already halfway up the ladder.
21
The man with the spear through his leg had collapsed. Blood was everywhere. The one Ray had shot with the flare was still upright but hanging on the rail and groaning. Ray held the gun on all four men. The two I’d wrestled in the water were in their late twenties, had ochre-colored skin and the pointed features of Native Indian descent.
Ray’s expression bespoke concern and confusion. All in all, the scene was a mess.
“Damn, you fucked these guys up good,” Truck said.
“Got a first-aid kit on board?”
“Man, this is a tourist boat. People getting drunk and falling over all the time.”
Truck went below and returned with a white box adorned with a red cross. I took the gun from Ray, who wobbled over to the mast and slumped against it.
Truck applied a tourniquet to the impaled man, then cut off the pant leg above where the spear passed through his quadriceps. One of the Indian-looking men and Ray helped hold the wounded man while Truck pulled the spear the rest of the way through. Fortunately the shaft was smooth and there was nothing tied onto the end, but the man writhed and moaned anyway—it had to hurt like hell. Truck cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide, applied Neosporin to the neat holes on both sides, and wrapped the leg with gauze.
Next came the burn victim, who tried to take a swing at Truck when he peeled off the man’s shirt to check his wounds. Truck dodged the blow, then clasped a hand around the man’s throat.
“Try that again, Poncho, I throw your ass to the sharks.” He looked from one to the next of his former captors. “You boys have seriously fucked with the wrong dude. I’ll clean your asses up, but you mess with me once more?”
By the looks on the guys’ faces, these kids—none of them looked like they’d made it out of their twenties yet—they got the message.
“Where the hell are we, anyway?” Truck said once he’d completed his ministrations.
“You were about five miles from passing through the Panama Canal,” I said.
“You shitting me? Damn, boy, the Sea Lion made it here like a champ. Always dreamed of sailing her down through the Spice Islands to find me a nice little Trini. Um- hmm.” He shook his head and smiled like a proud parent.
“You should have seen the scene in Key West,” I said. “Television crews from all over, police, state troopers, FBI. Unbelievable.” I chuckled. “And your boss was real concerned about your well being.”
“Lou Fontaine? Yeah, I bet he was. Probably figured I ran off with the loot and his boat to boot.�
�
“Yep,” I said. “And so do the KWPD and the FBI.”
Truck looked over at Betty rolling in the light seas, then back at me.
“Now what?”
“There was a crazed mercenary in a private jet following us to get to you,” I said, “but we left him disabled in Panama. We can’t trust the Peruvian government and I can’t fit all those crates on board Betty.”
“What’re you saying?”
“Can you get the Sea Lion back to Key West on your own, or do you want Ray to stick with you?”
“Piece of cake.” His gaze passed quickly over the four captives. “These boys’ll be fine down below.”
I turned to the one who wasn’t wounded and nodded my head at him. “Peruvian?”
He shrugged and turned away. The one who’d been shot with the spear opened his eyes and looked up at me.
“Si, Peruvian.”
He continued passionately in Spanish, nodding at Truck, then pointed below deck. All I could make out were the words oro and plata, which I knew meant gold and silver.
Maybe these men were connected to the Peruvian rebels in the news and had sought to repatriate the treasure taken by the conquistadors from Potosí back in the 1500’s and 1600’s. Whatever their intent, I didn’t care. I was just glad to have found Truck safe and relatively innocent.
But Manny Gutierrez? Could Truck have been mistaken? How could a Cuban colonel in the Secret Police be involved with Peruvian thieves or rebels?
I suggested we call the Coast Guard and ask them to meet Truck en route back to Florida, but he reminded us the pirates had tossed the radio overboard back in Key West. I sent Ray to get the spare radio we’d brought, along with his cell phone.
“Keep my name out of it,” I told Truck while Ray was gone. “You take the credit, okay?”
We set the wounded captives up below as comfortably as possible, bound their hands and feet, then more thoroughly tied the others to the same bunk where Truck had been. Once the cabin door was secured, we all turned to the crates.
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