Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  Linda looked up as we approached and leapt onto the dock in one smooth motion. “Good, you’re here. Meg, you’ll take that boat.” She nodded to the one she just vacated. “Help them get suited up. It’ll be easier to do that here than on a moving deck.”

  Linda jumped down into the other boat and disappeared into the small cabin while the rest of us waited for Meg’s instructions.

  “Let’s get the tanks stowed first,” Meg ordered.

  Rachel, Lex, Graham, and I took ours onto the boat and lined them up along the plastic seats. On the other side of the dock, Ramirez stowed his and Linda’s tanks while Cal joined Linda within the cabin to study the radio set up and undoubtedly get in the way. Once the tanks were stowed correctly, we returned to the docks where we’d left the black and blue wetsuits. They were hard to get on. I had to sit down on the wooden planks and drag each leg up my body, the long underwear bunching underneath so that I had to pause repeatedly, reach into the leg, and shove it back down. The wetsuit didn’t want to go over my hips, and I tugged and pulled on it, hopping back and forth as if that would somehow help.

  “Hang on, stop,” Lex ordered me, holding out a hand.

  She’d somehow gotten her suit over her hips and had tied the arms around her waist. She hooked her fingers over the slick fabric of my suit and gave a great heave, nearly pulling me up onto my toes. But it did the trick, the suit finally settling into place over my hips.

  “Thanks,” I said, and Lex went to help Rachel finish putting hers on.

  The fabric of the wetsuit was thick, obviously, since it had to insulate us against the chill of the deep ocean waters, but that meant that standing on the dock in the heat and humidity of the evening, I immediately began to sweat. I tied the arms around my waist like Lex had and then jumped onto the boat to check on Meg.

  She stood by the center console, running over the systems and the fuel and making sure that everything was ready to go. She already had her wetsuit on, and it fit her body better than the rest of ours did since hers was actually tailored to her rather than borrowed.

  “Hey,” I said, and she looked over her shoulder, smiling at me before she went back to flipping switches.

  “Hey. Ready to go?”

  “I think so. Can I have two of those dry bags? For our guns?”

  “Sure. They’re sitting on that bench.” She stuck her hand out behind her, pointing blindly toward the stack of dry bags. She was off by about a foot.

  “Thanks.” I snatched two and ducked out of the cabin. The others were finally fully dressed, and I handed one of the bags to Rachel for her and Graham’s guns while Lex and I stashed ours in the other. I tied the bags off. They were small enough to clip to the oxygen tank’s belt when it was time to enter the water.

  Linda stepped out onto the open end of the other boat, pushing Cal ahead of her. She raised a hand to shield her eyes against the bright rays of the slowly setting sun as she looked at the rest of us.

  “Are we ready?” she called.

  Meg appeared and flashed her two thumbs-up, and then we all looked at Rachel for the final all clear. She took a deep breath and tugged at the arms of her wetsuit, cinching them tighter around her waist.

  “We’re ready,” she said confidently.

  Under other circumstances, there probably would have been some kind of cheer in response to her words, but as it was, the mood was more somber, and everyone nodded firmly instead.

  Our group split as Ramirez and Cal joined Linda on her boat, and Rachel, Lex, and Graham jumped down beside Meg and me. I helped Meg undo the lines holding us to the dock, stowing the ropes away so that they wouldn’t be a tripping hazard. Linda eased away from the dock first, and Meg hurried to follow while the rest of us sat down in the back.

  24

  My stomach tied itself into knots the moment we started moving. It always did this as the final climax of a case loomed, but it was different this time since things were much more personal. I glanced over at Rachel. Her face had gone rather blank, but her hands were clenched atop her knees, and she stared out across the water as if she could already see the Wandering Heart.

  I moved to sit beside Lex, across from Rachel. Lex and I hadn’t had much time to talk recently, since Ramirez had swept her up to help finish his case, and I’d been off with Rachel for so long.

  “Doing okay?” I asked her.

  Lex had been playing with the sleeve of her wetsuit, and she put it down at the sound of my voice, tilting her head to look at me. “I guess so. I’m pretty nervous. Am I allowed to admit that? Or am I supposed to remain all stoic and whatnot?”

  I laughed. “You’re allowed to admit that. I’m nervous, too.”

  “Damn, if you’re nervous, then I should be quaking in my boots.” She glanced down at her bare feet. “If I were wearing boots.”

  I leaned against the hard back of the lowered seat, feeling the sun across my shoulders and neck. It stained the water red and orange and cast deep shadows across the waves, the little white caps glowing. We were still within the harbor’s no-wake zone, but we would be crossing that line soon, able to open up the throttle.

  “Nervous is better, actually,” I said to Lex. “Keeps you alive.”

  “That’s not as comforting a statement as you think it is,” she said, and I grimaced apologetically. “I’ve never really been in a proper fight before. Sparring during training doesn’t count. I always worked small cases at the NOPD.”

  “You tackled Blair Haddow in the parking garage,” I pointed out.

  “Sure, but then you were there to finish her off. It wasn’t like it was a pitched fight.”

  “It’s easier than you think,” Rachel said from across from us, her face coming alive again. Beside her, Graham crossed her ankle while she listened but didn’t say anything. “Once the fight starts, there’s only the fight. There’s no time for worry or emotion other than the occasional flash. You’d be surprised by how well your training becomes ingrained in your muscles. You’ll be fine. And we’ll be there in case you need help.”

  A troubled look folded up the corners of Lex’s face. “I don’t want you guys to have to look out for me.”

  “You’d look out for us, wouldn’t you?” I asked, and she nodded, though she didn’t seem like she knew where I was headed. I shrugged and adjusted my wetsuit. “It’s the same thing. Everyone looks out for everyone else.”

  Lex finally smiled, comforted, and we lapsed into silence as Meg crossed over the no-wake boundary and opened up the throttle. The roar of the engine took over as we picked up speed, following the white trail coming off Linda’s boat.

  The wind whipped through my hair, catching on the curves of the curls and pulling them away from my face. I rooted around in the bag containing my street clothes until I found the sunglasses I’d stashed in a pocket to protect my eyes from both the wind and the bright rays of the setting sun.

  Lake Pontchartrain opened up around us, bound by land on all sides but one. There weren’t many other boats out on the water, given the slowly gathering dusk, and most of them were headed back toward shore. I could barely see the mouth of the lake where it fed into the gulf way out ahead of us. The sun was behind us, baking into my skin and warming the fabric of my wetsuit. Between that and my long underwear, I could feel sweat slicking along my legs, and I almost looked forward to the cool dip into the water when we reached our destination, despite what lay on the other end. Almost.

  It took us almost an hour to reach the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain. We didn’t talk much during that time. The engine’s roar meant that we would have to shout, and we wanted to conserve our energy for what was to come. I joined Meg in the cabin as we entered the short channel that led from the lake to the gulf, wanting to keep her company and get out of the wind for a while.

  She perched on the tall swivel chair behind the wheel and took her eyes off Linda’s wake just long enough to look over and smile at me. We didn’t talk, either, but it was nice to sit in her presence, watching t
he confident way she controlled the boat. All around us, the sky was stained a beautiful red color, making it seem like the entire world behind us was on fire. I watched the setting sun until the bright light began to hurt my eyes, and then I looked away, caught for a second on the way the rays reflected off Meg’s bound hair.

  My breath caught when we passed out of the channel into the Gulf of Mexico. The water spread out into infinity in front of us, fading into darkness away from the red arms of the sun. I’d been to plenty of beaches before, seen the ocean time and time again, but it was a different thing entirely standing on the deck of a boat, journeying out into that vast expanse. How quickly it could swallow a person up. How quickly the weather could change, how careless the waves were with the things that floated atop them. Maybe careless wasn’t the right word. Heedless, maybe. What was an ant to a giant?

  I left the cabin to join the others outside again. I wanted to be closer to all that water and feel the breath of it on my face. The wind was stronger out here without the breakwall of land to soften it, and our boat charged through the waves, sending up spray after spray of white water. Each droplet caught the setting sun and sent a brief kaleidoscope of color through the air.

  I climbed carefully to the front of the boat and sat down, dangling my feet off the edge, my arms hooked around the railing. I couldn’t quite reach the water even if I stretched my toes down, but each crashing wave sent a cold spray across my calves. I leaned most of my weight against the railing and stared down at the ocean, tasting its brine in the back of my throat. If I watched the water, I wasn’t thinking about the confrontation to come, though I knew I should be preparing and planning with the others. But I needed a moment of calm first, a minute to breathe and find my equilibrium.

  I sat at the front of the boat for quite a while, even after my butt went numb against the hard deck, my feet chilled from the water. Linda’s boat remained a solid thirty feet ahead of us the entire time, Meg expertly making sure that the gap neither diminished nor increased. I’d gone into a rather meditative state, and I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. When the sun was just a nub against the horizon, Rachel stood and called me back to the group, having to raise her voice quite a bit to be heard against the combined power of the wind, the waves, and the engine.

  I looked back and flashed her a thumbs up and then drew my legs back onto the deck. My feet were slick, so I made sure I had a hand on the railing the whole way back to the seating area. I dropped onto the cushion beside Lex and immediately put my cold foot on hers so that she squawked in protest and punched me in the arm. I smirked at her while she scowled and scooted well away from me.

  “Let’s focus in,” Rachel said, and I straightened, nodding. “I just checked with Meg. She says we’re about twenty minutes out from the boat they’ve got keeping an eye on the Wandering Heart. It’s taken us a little longer than expected, but that should be okay.” Rachel didn’t entirely sound like she was okay with the change in the plan. After all, the longer it took, the more time Ward had to catch wind of our approach.

  “Have we heard from the watch boat?” I asked.

  “Yes. It seems Ward is still in the same spot.” Rachel’s brow crinkled as she spoke. “Does that seem odd to you? That he’s been anchored for so long?”

  “He probably just found a good spot to anchor for the night,” I suggested. Rachel’s face said, “trap,” and I didn’t want her going too far down that thought train.

  She pursed her lips and nodded, but I couldn’t read her face well enough in the darkness to tell if she believed me.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she conceded. “We need to be ready to move as soon as we’re in position.”

  Now was as good a time as any to do that, so we began to pull up the sleeves of our wetsuits and help each other zip them up the back. There was a pile of long rubber flippers as well, but we wouldn’t put those on until the last possible second. We didn’t have space in the dry bags for shoes that we could put on once we reached the yacht, so we would have to make the assault barefoot, which I had more than a few reservations about. I worried about the slippery deck and the increased chance for injury if I had to kick anyone. Maybe I could steal someone’s shoes once we boarded. Again, these were all things that it wasn’t helpful to worry about right then and there, and I tried to put them from my mind with a questionable degree of success.

  Ten minutes later, Linda began to slow, and Meg followed suit. I felt the change in power in the diminished thrum of the engine where I had my hands pressed against the deck. Rachel stood up to speak with her, swaying for a moment as the boat hit a particularly large wave.

  “How are we doing?” Rachel asked.

  Meg looked away from her instruments. Her face was serious, locked in concentration. “We should be able to see our other boat soon.”

  Lex and I stood and stepped up to the railing to look out across the blackened water to see if we could spot said boat. The last rays of the sun were behind us, so out in front, there was nothing but a smear of darkness. The moon was bright and almost full but hardly touched the ocean with its silvery glow, the stars sharp and clear in the sky above like some kind of silky blanket. It was a little hard to breathe, looking out into all that nothingness but knowing that there was still something there. It felt like something had swallowed the entire world up, and it was coming for us next.

  Linda and Meg had dimmed the lights on both boats and slowed to a careful crawl, keeping watch on their instruments to make their final approach on the boat they’d set to watch the Wandering Heart. I caught sight of lights in the distance, to the left of our course. I thought they were too large to be the Coast Guard boat, and my breath caught when I realized what that meant. That was the Wandering Heart. That was Simon Ward. That was Malia. This was the closest we’d ever been to them, and it made my heart pound in my chest and roar within my ears.

  The others had spotted it, too. Rachel stared at it with such intensity that her fury radiated off of her, practically creating visible waves in the darkness. I stepped over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She startled at the touch, glancing my way with eyes that glowed white against the black night. She nodded, understanding what I was trying to say without me having to open my mouth. That she needed to remain calm for this. That it would all be okay. She smiled at me tightly, the corners of her eyes crinkled with worry, and I held her shoulder for a moment longer before I released her, trying to make sure that she knew she wasn’t alone in this.

  We slowed further, and I swayed, trying to find my balance at this new speed. “There’s the other boat,” Meg called back to us, and I followed her extended finger to a smear of dull white against the dark water. It bobbed gently in the waves, and it was that movement that made it easier to spot. The radio on the console crackled, the sound shockingly loud after so long with only the engine’s drone for company. Meg grabbed it, pressing the button on the side.

  “I just talked with our watch team,” Linda’s voice said through the speaker, spitting static everywhere. “He says the boat hasn’t moved in several hours, and he doesn’t think he’s been spotted. We should be good to make our approach. I’m going to have him wait just in case we need the extra help. Over.”

  “Okay,” Meg replied. “I’ll get as close as I can without being spotted. We’ll see you on the other side. Over.”

  “Make sure the boarding team has a radio so they can call us if they need backup. Stay on channel four. Over and out.”

  “Will do. Over and out.”

  Meg put the radio back. Though she’d held her professional tone well, I still detected a quaver in her voice, especially there at the end, and she carefully put both hands back on the steering wheel, slowing the boat to a stop and cutting the engine before she turned to the rest of us. She dug two extra radios out of a cabinet and passed one to Rachel and one to me. “Here, put this in your dry bag.”

  Rachel accepted the radio and carefully tucked it away. I did the same.<
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  “I’ll drop you off on opposite sides of the boat,” Meg continued. “I don't want to get too close, so it might be a bit of a swim.”

  “That’s okay,” Rachel replied. She stood beside Graham, who was carefully checking over all the straps on the oxygen tanks, headed tilted toward the conversation to indicate that she was listening.

  “If you’re pointed toward the boat, it shouldn’t be hard to keep swimming in a straight line. You’ll probably be able to see the boat’s lights from underwater. Your tanks have flashlights attached to them, but I would call those a last resort. They’ll be visible from above if Ward has sentries posted.”

  I didn’t relish the thought of descending into that cold, black water with no light. It seemed like it would be so easy to get turned around and swallowed up, and I pictured things coming up from the depths. Tentacles with suckers or sharpened spines, drawing us down, down, down, to the hungry mouths far below.

  I shook myself. Now was not the time to get distracted by baseless fantasies. Did we have to worry about sharks out here? I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t ask, trying to put that thought from my mind as well.

  I busied myself with the scuba tanks. We had to help each other into them, and I held Lex’s up as she got her arms through the straps and then helped her buckle and tighten everything. Then she did the same for me. The weight of the tank settled across my shoulders, pinching the skin there. Meg came around to make sure the four of us had everything on correctly, tugging at straps and testing buckles. I pulled the skullcap up over my head and settled the large goggles over my forehead, the plastic heavy against my skin. The mouthpiece dangled from my shoulder, waiting to be put in.