Coastal Fury Boxset (1-3)

by Matt Lincoln

  “He’s everything to me,” Mrs. Lemon said as she watched her husband’s sleeping form. “I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”

  “How long have you been married?” I noticed a white circle on her empty left ring finger. She absently rubbed at it.

  “Seventeen years.” Mrs. Lemon turned her gaze toward us. “I hear you’re divers, too. What’s your agency?”

  “MBLIS,” I answered. “We investigate crimes that occur in or involving international waters. Holm and I were SEALs before this, so we know a few things about diving.” I winked and grinned.

  “Darrel wanted to be a SEAL,” Mrs. Lemon said with a laugh. “Turned out that he couldn’t stand guns. He got kicked out of boot camp when he couldn’t get over it.”

  “It’s not for everyone, Mrs. Lemon,” Holm admitted with a gentle smile. “We need more people who can’t stand guns.” I gave him a side-eye. He wasn’t wrong, but I hadn’t heard him say anything like that before. “It says a lot that he even tried.”

  She nodded. “Please, agents, call me ‘Bridget.’” She pointed to her husband. “Darrel goes by ‘Dare’ in the diving world.”

  “Oh!” My jaw dropped. “Dare Dives! I’m slow today. Robbie, this is the couple who does all those technical dives and equipment tests. The ones I followed on YouTube.”

  Holm’s eyes widened, and he stared at Dare’s bed. These two were well known in the diving world. They’d been pushing deep dives for the past two decades and helped with a lot of innovations in that field.

  “Our niece designs a lot of our gear now,” Bridget said with pride. “We’ve been so busy educating that she’s taken over most of the engineering.” Her smile faltered, and she looked down at her hands. “I mean… we were educating. I… I guess that’s over now.”

  “May I sit next to you, Bridget?” I asked. At her nod, I pulled a visitor chair close. “What’s his prognosis?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Days. Weeks. Hours. Nobody really knows, but the best guess is a few days. The way the doctor explained was that he got close to something really, really hot.” Bridget looked to the ceiling and bit her lower lip. A tear ran down the side of her face and toward her ear. “The only thing we know for sure is that he’s dying.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. Near the curtain, Holm pinched the bridge of his nose. “And you, how are you doing?”

  “Rattled. Scared.” She met my gaze. Her hazel eyes reflected the green tones of her hospital gown, and her salt-and-pepper hair wisped around her face. “They’re pretty sure I’ll live, but I’m going to have a high risk of cancer for the rest of my life.”

  “So, tell me about your trip to Belize,” I prompted.

  “We went to test equipment to make deep dives safer.” She reached over to the bedside table and picked up a phone. “More and more recreational divers are pushing their luck, and we’re looking out for them. Technical divers always like pushing things, too.” A smile slipped out at that.

  “You went to the Blue Hole, then?” Holm asked with no little hint of wistfulness. That was a bucket-list dive for both of us. We just hadn’t made time for it. “How deep did you go?”

  Bridget frowned. “We went all the way down…” Her hands grabbed at the blanket as if clawing at a memory. “My GoPro caught the footage, but I don’t remember much of it.” She shook her head. “We ascended safely, but I barely remember it.”

  She handed me her phone, where a video was primed to play.

  “We used full face masks, and my niece recorded our radio transmissions, but they cut out by the time we reached the bottom.”

  “That’s four hundred feet,” I told Holm, and he nodded. “If anyone knows how to pull off a dive like that, it’s you and Dare.” Yeah, there was a reason the Lemons were heroes in the diving world. Their expertise was off the charts. “So there’s no recording of what you said at the bottom?”

  She pointed to her temple. “It’s here, but it’s fuzzy. I got so sick later that, I don’t know, I forgot stuff.”

  Holm came over and watched the video with me. Bridget must have had a great case for the GoPro because the best of them were rated at maybe two hundred feet. I pushed play and couldn’t stop an appreciative sigh. The water in Belize’s Great Blue Hole was clear, and she’d descended near the reef wall.

  In the upper zones, the reef life was as mind-blowingly gorgeous as it got. The shallows had the sandy floor and the saturated colors of fish, coral polyps of every shape and size, living rock everywhere, sea turtles… everything.

  Further in, the floor dropped off into a sapphire abyss. The Lemons kept close to the wall, and the camera caught images of the cave system that existed long before the ocean rose to take over dry land. Stalactites and stalagmites, some larger than small houses, that could’ve only formed before the caves were submerged were now covered in algae.

  At the point labeled one-hundred-and-thirty feet, they did a check.

  “How’s the mask?” Bridget’s voice came over the radio. The camera focused on Dare treading above the layer. He made the extra air tanks he carried look like no big deal. “Any fogging today?”

  “Nah, it’s good.” Dare tapped his full-face mask. His mellow voice was familiar from his YouTube channel as he swung his light toward his wife and momentarily blinded the screen. “Booty check.”

  Holm snorted and then cleared his throat. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “He’s always had a great sense of humor,” Bridget waved off the concern. “It’s how we did equipment checks.”

  Her use of the past tense hit me in the gut. She was a practical person and knew she’d gone on the last dive her husband would ever make. I wondered if she’d ever dive again.

  The video skipped ahead to a point labeled two-hundred-and-eighty-five feet.

  It was like looking at clouds from a mountaintop. The misty layer was barely visible in the dim daylight. Bridget’s flashlight showed the still, eerie barrier to the bottom of the Hole. That mic and equipment check was more serious.

  Dare came into view. “Second thoughts?”

  “No. Just… nerves.” Bridget’s voice sounded tense. I looked up and saw her gazing at Dare’s bed. “We’re doing something no one else has.”

  “Let’s get to it, then, woman! Come on in. The water’s poison!”

  A slight laugh got the best of me. I wasn’t into watching a lot of media, but Dare’s sense of humor had me hooked for a couple of years. My career took priority, and I’d lost track of his channel, but I’d always appreciate the man’s immense knowledge and terrible jokes.

  The couple descended into the hydrogen sulfide cloud. Bridget’s clear blue view turned caramel as visibility dropped to a few feet. Dare’s flashlight sometimes flickered across the screen. The mic checks with their niece were more subdued and developed a crackle until the radio cut out altogether at around three-hundred-and-ninety feet, according to text on the screen.

  Following that, the only audio bits were occasional murmurs of the couple speaking with each other, the parts which weren’t recorded from the boat. I kept wondering if they were experiencing interference.

  “Radioactivity?” Holm suggested as I paused the video.

  “Dunno. Water’s a hell of an insulator.” I frowned. “It could be several issues. Bridget, do you remember anything about the radio?”

  She gave a slow shake of her head. “Just vague moments. Sometimes I think I remember it breaking up, but it might only be because I know we lost contact with the boat.” She tapped her fingers on her book.

  I resumed the playback. Bridget’s GoPro caught clear images of the detritus and silt. The water had a bluish-brown cast to it, and the floor seemed to reflect it. Her gloved hand poked at uneven points in the silt to reveal dead conchs of different sizes, a few crustaceans that were just as dead, and, eventually, some sort of blue fabric.

  “I wish I’d brought that up,” she told me as she held out her left hand.

  I paused again. In the pi
cture, Bridget had wrapped the fabric around her hand along the same margins as the fading burns on her hand now. Damn.

  “Was that a towel?” I asked. “A radioactive towel?”

  Holm’s brow wrinkled and then cleared. “It could be medical waste. Or maybe it got exposed at a power plant or…” His face paled and chose not to finish that sentence.

  “Dare started feeling sick around then,” Bridge told us. She blinked. “I do remember that. The first symptoms made us think it was hydrogen sulfide getting in through the seams of his suit.” She sighed. “That’s what we told Haley, anyway.”

  The next part of the video showed Dare doubled over, and I winced. It was hard to see divers in distress, let alone in those conditions. The rest of the video had been edited to show their ascent with decompression stops. They used an advanced technique technical divers had been employing in the past few years, a technique developed with Dare’s input.

  “And that’s it,” Bridget said. “We felt better enough to get on the plane the next morning.” She shrugged. “Over-the-counter stuff for nausea and headache, and hydrocortisone for the burns.”

  “What do you remember about your flight?” Holm asked as he stood. He walked over to Dare’s bed.

  “We were exhausted,” Bridget answered. “I think I drifted off pretty soon after we were in the air.”

  “I think he’s waking up,” Holm quietly called.

  Bridget swung her legs out from under the blanket and tugged her gown tight. Even layered front and back, nobody liked hospital gowns. Holm stepped away as Bridget padded over to Dare’s side. She pulled a heavily bandaged hand from under the blanket and stroked his arm above the gauze.

  “Hey, you,” she whispered. “We have visitors.”

  Dare looked up to Holm, who nodded. “Special Agent Robbie Holm, sir.” He started to hold out his hand to Dare, but he caught himself and gestured to me instead. “That’s my partner, Special Agent Ethan Marston.”

  Dare’s reddened eyes met mine.

  “Not a pleasure… to meet you,” he rasped. A hint of his mischievous nature touched the corners of his mouth. “Bet you don’t… don’t meet many murder victims before… before they die.”

  “Well, it’s a first for my partner and me,” I answered. “You’ve made a hell of a difference in the diving world. You’ll be missed.”

  “Plan a… a big funeral reception,” he told Bridget. “Got the divers goin’.”

  She squeezed his shoulder and nodded. Her jaw muscles tensed, and she blinked several times. Damn, that woman was strong.

  “Ashes to the sea, baby,” she whispered. “These men will find the motherfu—,” she cleared her throat and blushed. “They’ll get the bastard who did this to you.”

  “I have one question, and then we’ll leave you folks some privacy,” I gently announced. Dare’s barely perceptible nod angered me. Nobody should have to go through what was happening to him. “Do you remember anything that you might have touched or handled on the bottom of the Blue Hole?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited, and Bridget groaned. “He’s being obnoxious as usual,” she told us. “Dare, what do you remember?”

  A weak smile reached those waning eyes. “It’s my nature.” The rasp was a little worse, and I wondered how much longer he’d be able to speak. “The Blue Hole… it is spectacular… Someone violated it. I… didn’t realize what I had.” He stopped to take several shuddering breaths. “Small, empty canisters… towels… Felt something hard, tubelike, under…” He lifted a hand, flinched, and laid it down. “The silt. Felt burning when I picked it up… thought H2S.”

  Bridget caressed his upper arm. “That’s all,” she said for him. “It’s the most he’s said today.”

  Dare’s eyelids were getting heavy.

  “Thank you for your time.” I shook Bridget’s hand. “We’ll do our best to get to the bottom of this.”

  A shaky laugh came from Dare’s direction. “‘Bottom’ of this.”

  “Bottom of the Blue Hole.” Holm laughed. “Good one, Dare.” He touched the foot of the bed. “It’s been an honor to meet you.”

  “Are you going to dive the Blue Hole?” Bridget asked before we left the room. “Make sure it’s safe for the tourists?”

  “Any excuse to get my fins wet, ma’am.” I grinned. “We’re going to Belize, and we’ll make it right.”

  “Do that.” Dare’s voice was barely audible now. “Dive safe… and go find my killer.”

  4

  The next morning, the conference table was, for the first time in memory, full. Everyone on my immediate team under Director Diane Ramsey was present, and she, Holm, and I were the only ones who knew the seriousness of the case.

  We even had the new member who’d joined us less than a week earlier. Diane stole him… acquired his talents… from Cyber now that we were getting more digital crime.

  I’d barely had a chance to meet the guy before now. As I prepared the slides on the laptop at the front of the room, the new guy wandered in last, found an empty seat next to Special Agent Lamarr Birn, and sat. Everyone turned to face me.

  “First big briefing,” TJ Warner said with a nervous laugh. He ran his hand through the curly mop that was his hair and rocked back in his chair. “Um, go team?”

  Birn covered a laugh that shook his shoulders but stayed mercifully silent so that Warner totally missed it.

  “Sure, go team.” I nodded to the kid. “May as well start out big with this case.”

  I surveyed the assembled team. To my left was Diane. Although she was the boss, she used to be one of us, Birn’s partner. We had all become good friends, and it sometimes felt strange to answer to her. Holm and Birn were there, of course, as well as Birn’s latest partner, Sylvia Muñoz.

  “Bonnie and Clyde” sat toward the back of the room, as they tended to hyper-focus on the scientific angles to our cases. Bonnie had some badass computer skills, but she’d lost lab time trying to catch some tech load our unit often dumped on Cyber. That was why Warner joined us. He’d take the load and would sometimes bring Bonnie in to help.

  Finally was Ethel Dumas, our outspoken medical examiner who scared away every assistant MBLIS tried to assign her. Speaking of Ethel…

  “Explain to me again why I’m here,” she complained from the chair she’d dragged to the door. Ethel hated group settings, so for here, there was nothing like access to a quick exit. “We don’t have a body, I don’t have a report.”

  “You will soon enough,” I informed her. “Our victim is still alive. Barely.”

  People sat straighter as I pulled up one of the Dare Dive videos on mute. He was demonstrating techniques to equalize ear pressure and moved on to remove his regulator long enough to show the camera what it looked like when working underwater. If I unmuted it, we’d hear a quirky narration aimed, in this case, at novice divers.

  “He’s our vic?” Birn exclaimed. Yeah, he was another fan. “Well, hell, what happened?”

  “What I’m about to tell you does not leave this office,” I stressed to the group. “It’ll get out to the media soon enough, and when that happens, the closer we are to solving it, the better.”

  “You’re not inspiring confidence, Marston,” Muñoz pointed out.

  “Darrel Lemon is dying of acute radiation sickness,” I announced to shocked silence. “He and his wife, Bridget Lemon, dove to the bottom of the Great Blue Hole in Belize, and they encountered radioactive materials at approximately four hundred feet deep. Mrs. Lemon’s exposure was less intense, and she’s expected to make a full recovery. Our job is to find out what they were exposed to and who put it there.”

  “Woah,” Warner breathed.

  “Yeah, ‘woah’ indeed,” I echoed. “The Hole is shut down until the approved diving areas are cleared of radiation. Holm, Birn, Muñoz, and I are going to help with some of this while we look for any evidence that might show in the normal dive zones. We have something in the works for exploring the bottom.”
<
br />   An old friend often worked the area, and I’d reached out on the way to the briefing that morning. I’d hear by noon if his involvement were a go.

  “Do we have any theories?” Rosa “Bonnie” Bonci asked.

  “We’re leaning toward medical waste based on what was filmed.” I advanced the presentation to a still of the towel-like fabric Bridget Lemon had found in the silt. “This could be from a nuclear medicine department. That would jive with what Dare said about finding canisters.”

  I posted a slide with images ranging from vials and tiny canisters with the yellow radioactivity labels to larger canisters for storage and containment. In tiny doses, the particles saved lives by making it possible to image parts of the body that otherwise aren’t able to be seen on scans.

  “The good news is that water, especially saltwater, is an excellent insulator,” Bonnie told the group from her seat. “The diving hole is probably safe, but I get the need to make sure.”

  “The bad news is that Dare Lemon was in contact long enough to receive a deadly dose,” I added. “What’s strange is that even though the exposure was bad, it shouldn’t have been lethal, if the doctors are right about time and type of exposure. Something’s not adding up.”

  Joe “Clyde” Clime tapped and swiped on his tablet in a sudden burst. His brow furrowed, and he frowned.

  “Do you have something, Joe?” Diane asked.

  He froze and looked up. “This reminds me of something I heard about a while back. There are rumors that it could be possible to… to condense radioactive particles, so to speak, to make stronger materials.” He shook his head. “There isn’t much online, just a few hints that it could be a thing. It shouldn’t be a thing, though, because even if it is possible to do that with used medical waste, it would be a lot of expensive work.”

  Although we’d been focused on medical waste, more nefarious purposes had occurred to me. I hated to consider the implications of Clyde’s revelation. If there was someone out there making radioactive materials stronger, a lot of people could get hurt.

  Diane stood and smoothed her pants. Ethel turned the lights on, as my presentation was clearly over.