Retribution Road

by Jon Coon

  “I just need a minute,” he said.

  She could hear the panic, even through the helium descrambler radio, and knew he was in trouble. “Breathe and focus on my voice. You can do this. You are doing this. It will be all right.”

  After a moment of total silence, she said, “Gabe?” Then she could hear him breathing, slowly, deeply. “That’s right, you’re in control. Just keep breathing. It’s all right.”

  He opened his eyes. All he saw were bodies. But her voice calmed him, and he made his peace with them. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right now. Thank you.”

  Gabe surveyed the sub with his cave light. It was grim. He pulled hose and pushed a body out of the way as he moved to the helm. The same Garmin chart plotter was mounted in the same way as in the first sub. Gabe undid the side knobs that held it in place and flipped it over. The door covering the memory chip was still intact. From his pocket toolkit, Gabe got a small screwdriver and removed the cover. He then popped out the postage-stamp-sized memory chip and zipped it into a compartment in the soft tool bag. The first part of the dive was done.

  Now for the grisly part.

  He looked for anything with a name on it. There were a few magazines, but very few personal items. He found one notebook with entries in Spanish. He stuffed that in his leg pocket. He checked his left wrist computer. Eleven minutes remaining.

  “How’s it going?” Carol asked.

  “I was losing it, but your voice … Got the chip. Nothing else so far.”

  “Okay, just watch your time.”

  On the deck, the tiger shark kept Tim entertained. It made several close passes and was not in the least intimidated by the diver. Especially a diver making no bubbles.

  Tim looked for something to fend off the curious shark in case things got too cozy. He found the hatch cover and decided it would work as a shield. Feeling better, he kept watch, holding the hatch cover for security.

  Gabe choked back his panic and went through the clothing of the dead hoping to find a wallet with ID or anything with a name. He was about to give up his search when he noticed one of the bodies was wearing a striped shirt like gas station attendants once wore. He rolled over the corpse and hit the shirt with his light. A red-bordered name tag said “Sebastian.” Gabe stood, thrust out his hand, and said loudly, “Sebastian, awake!”

  Bright light flooded the sub, and from Sebastian’s decomposing body, an ethereal spirit formed.

  “Do you speak English?” was Gabe’s first question.

  “Yes, I’ve lived in the States. Who are—”

  “You only have a few seconds to tell me what I need to know. So I ask and you answer. No lies, understood? Where you’re going it can be bad or it can be really bad. It’s up to you. Now, where is your base?”

  “The southern coast of Chiapas. In the jungle.”

  “Do you have charts?”

  “Yes. There are charts, but they’re all digital.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the helm there.” He pointed. “There is a little drawer, push in there and it will open.”

  Gabe did as the spirit instructed and was rewarded with several small memory chips.

  Sebastian’s spirit light began to fade, and Gabe knew what was coming. Time for one last question. “Son, why did you try to kill all those people. What did they ever do to you?”

  “It wasn’t what they did to us, amigo. It was what El Patrón—El Diablo—would have done to us if we didn’t. You killed us, but that was a kindness compared to what would have happened back in Mexico. I don’t hate you, but he does. And he is powerful.”

  “Do you know his name, your powerful boss?”

  “No, señor, no one knows. He is El Patrón, and to ask more is to die. No one knows.”

  “One more question, Sebastian, do you believe in heaven and hell?”

  “Aren’t those just stories for children?”

  Gabe saw the darkness swirling like a mighty storm and knew what was coming.

  “You should have listened to those stories, son. They might have saved you.”

  The hell hounds came through the hull and circled with vicious snarls. They were as big as boars with fangs like tusks and drooling jowls. Their eyes glowed like hot embers. They lunged and taunted, snapped and growled before finally attacking and ripping Sebastian’s spirit to shreds. With ghastly howls, the young man’s soul was carried away to an eternity of perdition, utter and ghastly destruction. His ghostly apparition, emptied of all substance and meaning, dissolved into sea foam, and not even the scent of his fear or the echo of his terrified screams remained.

  Gabe shook his head sadly and then checked his computer. It was time to go. He told Carol he was ready, and she gave the headphone back to the master chief.

  “How did it go?”

  “I think we got lucky. More than I hoped for.”

  “Good, let’s get you out of there. Let me know when you’re clear of the hatch, and we’ll start bringing you up. You’ve got a lot of deco so don’t get anxious.”

  Gabe climbed up the ladder and was met face to face with the tiger shark. Tim had backed away, but when he saw Gabe emerge, he came forward waving the hatch cover and making a fuss. The curious shark got the message and backed off.

  Tim pointed to his computer and then toward the surface. “Time to go.”

  They began the ascent that would take two and a half hours of wet decompression before they could do the last hour in the chamber. They stared into the blue void as they were raised and wondered where the shark had gone and where her friends were. Finally, they surfaced, cold and tired. From the deck to the chamber in a minute there was not a second for talk, and they were locked in the recompression chamber and on their way back to forty feet. They breathed pure oxygen from the oral nasal masks and counted down the minutes. Finally they heard and felt the chamber vent, and shortly thereafter the double hatches opened and they crawled out into the cool evening air. Carol waited with hot coffee and grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches.

  Tom was in the small office, and Gabe went in and gave his report. He showed Tom the memory chips and told him what had happened. He left out the part about nearly having a panic attack but told the rest accurately.

  “I’m exhausted. I need a good night’s sleep and then I’m ready to go home.”

  They boarded the boat, went back to the Mobile Oil platform, showered, and had huge Texas steaks for dinner. Gabe had a private room, and just as he was ready to turn off the light, Carol knocked and came in.

  “I’ll stay for a while, just in case. It wouldn’t be good if you woke the whole rig.” She crossed the room and sat on the bed.

  “How did you know what to do?” he asked and took her hands.

  “I talked to Alethea. She told me. She’s been praying for you all day.”

  “I never would have made it. The feelings were so strong. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

  “No one is going to make you try. You can walk away anytime. And no one will ever know.”

  “Thank you. I love you, and I’m awfully glad you were here.”

  After a Texas-sized breakfast, Master Chief Kurczewski walked with them to the heliport as they prepared to depart.

  “I don’t know what happened down there, but you scared the hell out of Tim.”

  “What?”

  “He said there were bright lights and he could feel the sub shake. I could hear you talking to someone through Carol’s headset, and it wasn’t Carol. And at the end there was screaming. Who are you and what the hell happened down there?”

  Gabe hesitated. He had no idea that anyone else might have heard his conversation or Sebastian’s tragic end. He looked Kurczewski in the eye. “I’m just an old blackwater river diver, Master Chief. But there are things in our world best left alone. What you heard, that’s one of them.”

  “That’s a sea story if ever I heard one.”

  “Not nearly as much as I wish it were. I’m sorry you
heard things that weren’t meant for your ears. I have to ask that you never mention them again. And please ask Tim to do the same. It’s for my safety as well as yours. I appreciate everything you’ve done for us, but—”

  “Yeah, I know, it’s classified.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, Agent Mulder, it’s been nice knowing you, and perhaps our paths will cross again someday. Best of luck with the cartel thing.”

  “Thanks, Mike. It’s been a real pleasure.”

  Chapter 37

  BACK AT THE RANCH, THE girls were full of whispers and giggles. Even Carol was caught up in the excitement. Double-wide trailers had arrived as temporary housing and construction workers had started building a new barn and laying out plans for a new house. Tom had a new truck and was looking online for a replacement for the Cessna destroyed in the raid. However, the whispers and giggles were about Tom’s sixty-fifth birthday and the surprise party they were planning for him the next day.

  Another birthday was not something Tom was thinking about. Nor was the reconstruction at the top of his agenda. He was intensely focused on finding Maria, who hadn’t been heard from since her last frantic call from Mexico City two weeks before. Tom had pulled out all the stops searching for her and was preparing to return to Mexico, in spite of the dangers the cartel presented. He and Gabe sat in the command center conference room talking about the trip.

  “We use pseudonyms on Facebook to send encrypted messages or sometimes just special ads to bogus email accounts. I’ve tried everything. She must have lost her sat phone and not be able to get online.” Tom stared at the bottom of his coffee mug, then set it on the desk. “I’m afraid she may be in too deep this time.”

  “Then how are we going to find her?”

  “This isn’t much, but those earrings she always wears … both are short range trackers. If we can get within a few miles, we should be able to pick up that signal.”

  “So you’re thinking a plane or drones?”

  “Or both. We know the hotel she checked into but never used. Our guys found her car, and there was a bug in it. So the cartel was monitoring her travel and phone calls. Clever fox. He’s good, I’ll give him that.”

  “So what are you thinking? When do we go?”

  “At this point, I don’t think you or I would last a day in El Patrón’s backyard. But we need to do something, and it needs to be today.”

  “Whatever it takes, I’m in.”

  “I’m trying to get a special team sent in. New faces. Ones the cartel won’t know. And planes from our CIA base in Colombia, ones the Mexicans won’t recognize as ours. Bob is calling in a lot of favors and so am I. But, honestly, I don’t know if that will be enough, and I want so badly to just get on a plane and go down there myself.”

  “You said it though. You wouldn’t last a day on your own.”

  “I’m working another angle, I just don’t know if we can put it together this fast.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a big airshow in Mexico City in two weeks. I’m trying to get the Confederate Air Force—excuse me, that’s now the Commemorative Air Force—invited. With all the fuss about the Confederacy, we had to change our name. But if we can pull this off, it would let us have a half-dozen slow flyers in the air and do a lot more than I could on my own. You and I could go in with a team, disguised of course, under the pretext of doing logistics for the show and then start searching. I know she’s the best, but three weeks is too long. We have to go now.”

  “When will you know? About the air show, I mean?”

  “Hopefully in the next twenty-four hours. I don’t think we have a lot of time.” Tom was staring at the bourbon bottle on the desk and thinking seriously about how much he wanted a double. But now was not the time. He put it out of his mind and settled for a bottle of water.

  “What can I do to help now?” Gabe asked.

  “It’s hurry up and wait. Just like we were trained for. How are you coming on those memory chips from the sub?”

  “Jimmy the Geek is working on them. They aren’t encrypted, so it shouldn’t be too hard. He said check back this afternoon.”

  “Good. Once we locate their base, we want to get trackers on those subs. Be thinking about how to do it.”

  “I know just the guy. Okay if we invite the Navy to help?”

  “It’s your party. Invite whoever you want.”

  Gabe called the Navy Experimental Diving Unit in Panama City and asked for Master Chief Kurczewski. “Please tell him Agent Mulder is calling.”

  Kurczewski came on the line laughing, “Yes, Agent Mulder, how can your Navy be of service today?”

  “Would you happen to have a submarine and a diver or two who would like to risk life and limb helping me tag some narco-subs so we can track them and really piss off the biggest cartel in Mexico?”

  “I like it so far. Keep talking.”

  “Well there are benefits: long hours, crappy food, rotten pay, and we’ll probably get shot at and barely escape with our lives.”

  “Outstanding. When do we go?”

  “I’m waiting on our tech guys to give us the destination. Shouldn’t take long.”

  “I’ll take it to our CO today. He may even want to go.”

  Gabe put down the phone at the command center desk and realized Carol was standing behind him.

  “You’re planning another little adventure, like the sub dive?

  He smiled. “That wasn’t so little.”

  “Gabe, we need to talk about what happened down there. That could have been a lot worse.”

  “But it wasn’t. I didn’t really panic.”

  “I don’t know what you’d call it, but it sounded like a pretty real panic to me. I talked with Alethea, and I’ve been reading online. There are meds, good ones, that will help. And she says you need to talk. That the more you talk the easier it will be for both of us. The medical community has learned a lot about PTSD in the last few years. You don’t have to live with this.”

  “I don’t want to burden you with my nightmares. Besides, when you’re there, I do just fine.”

  “She also said you are big on denial. Look, Bozo, I can help you. I’m willing to help you, but you have to do your part. I’m not letting you go off and have another episode that might not end as well as the last one unless you get a better handle on this.”

  “Okay, what do you want to know? I was trapped in a school bus with a bunch of screaming, decomposing, dead kids, and it freaked me out. I had to burn my drysuit because of the stench. And I couldn’t get the taste of death out of my mouth for a month. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “That’s a start. Tell me the rest. What is that dream you keep having?”

  “It’s the same. Either I’m trapped in that school bus or I’m hung up in the deco chamber with Emily, she’s not breathing, and I can’t get to her. Or I’m trapped in that sub with bodies bumping into me and no room to move. I’ve never been claustrophobic. I used to love cave diving. But now? I guess I’ve just seen too much. And I don’t think talking about it helps.”

  “Apparently kissing does,” she offered, smiling.

  “That could be true, and I think we should test that hypothesis more often.”

  “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make you a doctor’s appointment, and you try the new meds. Prazosin helps some patients with nightmares. Zoloft and Paxil have also helped. Promise me you’ll keep the appointment, and we will start testing that hypothesis more often. Also, talk with Alethea. I’m sure she can help.”

  Gabe walked from the desk in the reception area to the computer room where Tom and Jimmy the Geek were engrossed in navigation charts with blue lines running back and forth from Colombia to Mexico to Jamaica to the US southern Gulf Coast and back. There were so many lines the chart looked like a bowl of blue spaghetti.

  “Any luck?” Gabe asked.

  “Jimmy thinks there may be a point of convergence here,” Tom said, pointing to a spot on
the map in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas near the border with Belize. “Plenty of jungle and small coves that could hide a sub base. We’ll get the satellites to have a closer look. How did you do with the Navy?”

  “Master Chief Kurczewski is going to the commanding officer today. The commanding officer will take it to SEAL Team Two in Norfolk, and we should hear something soon.”

  Juan Caldera owned several houses and other real estate but had only one home for his family. Built like a fortress of steel and stone, it sat high on a mountain face just below a plateau with an airfield. He stepped out onto the third-story veranda with a brandy snifter in hand and watched the evening sun slip beneath western mountains.

  The mountains of Chiapas reached 4,900 feet, and the views of the river and the jungle below were spectacular. Emerald greens and tanzanite blues that would challenge the palette of any painter. Even the tranquility of the magnificent sunset or the happy laughter of his children playing in the spacious room behind the ten-foot bulletproof glass doors could not calm the storm of his emotion.

  His wife of twenty-two years, and still the keeper of his heart, came from behind and wrapped her arms around him. “Come in and eat. The children are waiting for you. They won’t go to the table until you come in.”

  “Yes, all right.” He kissed her, and they walked in, arms linked.

  “Dinner,” he said to the children inside, and growled like a shaggy lion. “Last one to the table will be my dessert.”

  Shrieking with laughter, the children ran to the dining room and stood by their chairs. Their parents entered the room, and when Juan helped Lareina into her chair, the children sat. Juan offered grace, and the first course was served by two kitchen servant girls. The children were quiet, waiting to be spoken to before speaking, and careful never to interrupt either of the adults.

  “I visited the hospital today,” Lareina said as they sipped coffee and waited for the first-course china to be cleared. “They are thrilled with your gifts to the children’s wing. They say many children will be helped by the physical therapy equipment you gave.”