Backwater Tide

by Steven Becker

  My eyes were drawn back to the surface when, without warning, Maria tucked her body into a pike position, preparing for another dive. With one knee against her chest and her other leg fully extended, she slid below the surface. Below her a burst of bubbles caught my attention and I started to breathe deeply. I had seen regulators in free flow, but this was different. Looking for the source, I saw two pairs of fins spinning together behind a section of the wreck. A cloud of sand quickly rose from the bottom and obscured the fracas.

  I took one last breath and descended. Maria’s entries were designed to conserve air; mine used half of my supply. By the time I reached the bottom, I was already struggling and had to pull myself from rib to rib just to hold myself under. I felt the first convulsions before I reached the bubbles and knew I was in trouble. Fortunately Justine had seen the fight as well and was finning toward me. She gave me a thumbs-up and continued toward the two men.

  I struggled to reach the surface. It was shallow enough that there was no risk of an embolism, but I knew I could drown in knee-deep water if I passed out. Whether I made the decision consciously or not, I bolted for the surface, spit out my snorkel, and started gasping for breath. With a fresh supply of oxygen, I dropped below again. This time I was right above them and dove straight for the bottom.

  Below me, Maria was scooping up coins when suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed her ankle. There was no doubt who had hold of her.

  Twenty-Six

  Slipstream had timed his grab well, waiting until Maria had expended her air supply. The other diver he’d fought with was in the process of rescuing his buddy, whom Slipstream had knocked unconscious when he had taken his tank. With the amount of silt kicked up from the fight, there was little visible evidence that anything was wrong from the surface.

  There was surprisingly little fight left in her before Maria's body went limp. Shallow water blackout is a real concern of even experienced free divers. In seconds, with her brain no longer communicating with her muscles, her mouth would open and she would drown. It would look to the world as if she had gotten stuck amongst the wreckage while trying to extract a piece of treasure.

  To everyone but me and Justine, that is. I was on the surface, gulping air in huge breaths. Deep down I knew that was only going to introduce more carbon dioxide than oxygen into my system and it took several seconds, ones that could mean her life, before I was able to slow my breath rate and inhale some useful air. After several breaths, I tried to mimic Maria’s entry and slid below the surface.

  The struggle had reduced the visibility of their location—the only indication was the cloud of silt. It wasn’t until I entered into it that I could identify the people, and that was really only by the color of their fins and swimwear.

  Slipstream had a stranglehold on Maria, who lay limp in his arms. Justine struggled to tear his arms away, but I could tell she needed to surface. Like a tag team in a wrestling match, I tapped her shoulder and took over. She bolted for the surface.

  Free divers know how to slow their heartbeats and use the smallest motions possible to conserve their air and extend their bottom time, but I wasn’t near that class and was surprised by how quickly my supply was gone. Too soon after I had taken over for Justine, I felt the first convulsion in my diaphragm and knew I had only seconds before I too would have to surface.

  Deciding Maria was going to die unless I did something drastic, I stopped pulling on Slipstream’s arms and tried to grasp the regulator from his mouth. Instead of trying to free her I hoped that if I crippled him he would release her. The change in tactics surprised him, but just before the rubber came free of his mouth I could feel his teeth bite hard into the molded mouthpiece. He tried to shake me off and I was just about to release my grip to renew my air supply when my arm tangled in one of the other hoses.

  A standard regulator setup has four hoses attached to the first stage, which is fixed to the tank. One is the main regulator hose, slung to the right of the diver. On the diver's left are the low-pressure inflator hose that is connected to the buoyancy compensator and the high-pressure hose that goes to the gauges. The remaining hose is an alternate air supply called an octopus. It was that hose that I became tangled in, and my struggle released the regulator attached to the hose from its clip on the vest.

  Grabbing for the floating mouthpiece, I stuffed it in my mouth and took two large breaths. The playing field had been leveled. Slipstream turned his attention to me and I saw Justine grab Maria’s body and take it to the surface. That second of relief cost me and suddenly the lights went out.

  I had no idea how long it had been or how I had gotten there, but I knew I was on the surface. I heard voices around me before I saw anything. Slowly, I took stock. My head was fuzzy and there was an intense pounding behind my ear. I tried to open one eye.

  “He’s awake,” I heard someone say.

  Suddenly there was a flurry of activity around me. I opened my other eye and it took a second for the world to come into focus. With all of the faces above me, I thought I might be seeing double, but when I saw there was just one Justine, I started to sort things out. She leaned over and brushed my hair out of my eyes while several other people worked around me. I was conscious enough to hear them call out my vital signs, which were in the stable range.

  I started to sit up, but felt arms wrap around me. Giving in, I lay back and let them fuss with my head while I tried to remember what had happened. I recalled fighting with Slipstream and then Justine swimming Maria to the surface. That was it, and soon I thought I felt well enough to have the blanks filled in.

  “Maria?” I asked.

  “She’s fine. They just airlifted her to Jackson Memorial. You saved her life,” Justine said.

  “What about Slipstream?”

  “No sign of him. There were several boats in the vicinity, or he could have swum down the beach.”

  “Can I sit up and have some water?” I realized how dry my mouth was.

  “Take it slow,” she said.

  “Forget that. He’s all right. We gotta get that bastard.”

  I knew that voice, and it didn’t make me happy.

  “Cool it. We’ll get the guy, but let’s take care of the living first.”

  This time it was Grace’s voice. She came to my other side and with Justine’s help eased me against the combing of the Miami-Dade Contender. Grace handed me a bottle of water while Justine got directly in front of me and stared into my eyes. It wasn’t a weepy kind of romantic moment, but a concussion protocol. From the look on her face, I knew I had failed.

  “You’ve got a bad head wound, probably needs some stitches. Definitely a concussion.” Justine summarized my injuries.

  “Good then,” I said, taking a long drink of water and trying to stand. Between the waves rolling the boat and the confusion in my head, I wavered. Pushing away Justine’s help, I grabbed one of the rod holders behind the seat and pulled myself to a standing position. The roll of the boat caused me to stumble and I looked around. The tide had started to ebb, causing the sloppy conditions. We were just beyond the soup, the breaking waves and white water closest to the beach.

  Worried more about the cameras on the beach getting pictures of him rescuing the treasure heiress, the Miami-Dade captain had ignored basic seamanship and the boat was being slowly pulled toward the staged wreck. He was focused only on the beach and didn’t notice that as we were being drawn closer the waves had spun the boat parallel to shore and were breaking high against the port side.

  Using the stainless steel pipe that held the t-top, I pulled myself to the helm. “You see a thirty-foot, narrow-beamed boat out there? Red top with outriggers?”

  “That’s half the boats in Miami,” he said dismissively.

  “We find that boat and you’ll have your arrest.” That got his attention and he either figured enough pictures had been taken or there’d be more coming if he added the arrest to his resumé. Without reading the breaking waves, he quickly spun the bow toward the
open water. The timing couldn’t have been worse and a wave broke across the bow, flooding the boat. Instead of matching the seas, he hammered through them and we smashed into several more waves before we hit water deep enough that the waves rolled under the hull. Much to the delight of the captain, I leaned over the side and threw up. Wobbly, I made my way back to the helm. Water streamed through the scuppers as he accelerated and we were quickly running on plane, but without a destination. “Radar work?”

  “Yeah.” He called one of his men over and instructed him to search for a boat with a thirty-foot signature.

  I wished we were aboard Johnny Wells’s Interceptor instead of on the police boat. Between the power of his electronics and his skill, Wells could zero in on birds working bait from five miles away. Watching the Miami-Dade officer fumble with the controls, I realized the effort was futile. I wasn’t sure how long I had been out, either, but guessing from the position of the sun over the beach, it had been at least a half hour. DeWitt’s boat could be twenty miles away by now.

  If there wasn’t going to be a chase, I wanted off the boat. The question was where. The receding tide had made a beach drop too dangerous and we were several miles from Government Cut and about the same from Haulover Inlet to the north. To complicate matters, I had no idea which way they had gone—assuming my theory was correct.

  Slipstream would be going down for at least the attempted murder of Maria Gross, which led me to believe he had killed her father as well. He would have had to overcome the effects of drugs and alcohol to meet Morehead in Coral Gables the night before we found him, but watching him toss off the walking cast like he was suddenly healed had revealed to me his deviousness. I was starting to feel stupid when Grace moved to the helm beside the captain and took my place. She made the decision for me and the boat spun to the south.

  Minutes later, we entered Government Cut. The captain ignored the maximum speed warning and blazed through the channel. Finally, he cut the wheel hard to starboard and rounded the point. Without our losing momentum, our wake hit the Miami Beach Marina; within seconds millions of dollars’ worth of boats were banging against the floating docks and each other. He seemed oblivious as he cut the wheel again and coasted to a stop at the fuel dock.

  Grace hopped off first and deciding this was our stop, Justine and I followed. Before my foot hit the dock, he had already started to spin the boat back to the cut. Between the moving boat and the change in height to the dock, I lost my balance and dropped to my knees. Grace and Justine immediately surrounded me, but I brushed them off and slowly rose. Concussion or not, I had to keep going.

  I needed to find Susan and see if DeWitt had left the party. Justine and I had jumped in with most of our clothes on and I realized my phone was still in my pocket. Pulling it out, I pressed the power button, expecting a blank screen in response, but surprisingly it lit up. The manufacturer’s claims that it was waterproof were correct.

  Susan’s number was near the top of my text history and I quickly pecked out a few questions for her. Seconds later the phone dinged and I saw her response: an emoji that I couldn’t see. It could have been smiling or crying, for all I knew. I texted back a string of question marks and asked her to call me.

  There was a longer pause this time. I answered immediately and could tell by the background noise that she was still at the Savoy. “What’s going on over there?”

  “Helluva party—thanks, Kurt.” She hiccuped after saying my name.

  This was when Susan was at her most dangerous. Asking her to do anything could and probably would be misconstrued. As an officer of the law, I should have alerted hotel security, but I just said I’d get with her later. All I could gather from the brief conversation was that the incident hadn’t put a damper on the party. For all the people watching from the beach and hotel knew, what had happened to Maria could easily have been part of the program. “Where’s DeWitt?”

  “Kurt, I met this guy. He’s a calls himself commodore …”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear in disgust. “She’s drunk. We’re on our own,” I said, looking back and forth between Justine and Grace. The last thing I needed was the two of them to start fighting.

  My phone rang again. This time I knew the number and answered right away.

  “I think we should dive that wreck again,” Mac said.

  He sounded excited—for Mac. “What’d you find out?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Same place and time okay?”

  I answered in the affirmative and realized he had disconnected before I could say good-bye. Justine and Grace stared at me. “That was Mac. He wants to dive the wreck again tomorrow.”

  “Sounds pretty secretive,” Grace said.

  “That’s just the way he is.” A thought crept into my mind, but if things hadn’t been so jumbled in there I would have seen the answer to our problems right away.

  “I’d like to tag along,” Grace said.

  “You’re not going without me,” Justine added.

  I almost said it was okay if they played nice, but just before the words came out of my mouth, my brain processed my thoughts.

  “We don’t have to find Slipstream and DeWitt. They’ll come to us.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Justine was not going to be left behind and I knew better than to fight with her. Besides, I would have been wrong in excluding her because I wanted to protect her. She was as competent as I was, even more so underwater, and that was where we were going.

  Grace called for a cruiser to pick her up and offered us a ride back to my truck. Justine shrugged and we accepted.

  “Where’s your partner?” I asked.

  “Water and boats aren’t his thing,” she said.

  I knew there was more, but vowed to stay as close to both as I could to avoid him. While we waited, I worked through my plan. Mac wanted to dive the wreck. Though he wouldn’t say what it was over the phone, obviously he had discovered something. Justine and I would go with him. Grace had offered the use of the Miami-Dade Contender. They could take up station a few miles away and keep a radar surveillance of the site. I thought it might be better, and less alarming to DeWitt and Slipstream, if Johnny Wells and his ICE team would help. First of all they were unknown, and second, DeWitt, at least, would know that Miami-Dade was out of their jurisdiction in the park. ICE as a federal agency wouldn’t be questioned.

  I called Johnny and left a message.

  The police cruiser pulled up and we jumped in. By now the surge of adrenaline was long gone and I was feeling tired and had a headache. Justine, sitting next to me in the back, yawned. I grasped her hand and we sat in silence as we were driven back to the beach. Johnny hadn’t called back yet and I had to agree to let Grace handle the surveillance. I hoped my concussion wasn’t affecting my decision-making process. Knowing she was going to be involved was reassuring, but the crew would be forever suspect in my mind.

  We agreed on a time. There was no update from Susan—not that I’d expected a report—and no reply from Johnny Wells, either. Turning south on the Turnpike, I cringed when I saw the flashing yellow warning signs indicating road construction ahead. We had passed the golden hour. Between seven and nine, post rush-hour, and pre construction, were usually the only times you could run a speed limit sortie from Miami to Homestead.

  Brake lights illuminated the road ahead, and I saw the four lanes start to merge to three and then to two. It was almost an hour later before we reached our exit. Thankfully the Homestead-Miami Speedway was dark or we would have had another delay. It only took a few minutes to drive the empty surface streets to the park entrance.

  The gate was locked and I tried to blame my fumbled attempt with the key on the low light, but I had to admit the head injury was affecting me. After opening the entrance we drove in and parked behind the headquarters building. I turned the power off on my work phone and stuck it in my pocket, then locked the truck. Justine started toward the sidewalk that led around the building to the dock, but I grabbed
her hand and pulled her in the other direction. Staying to the shadows, we walked the perimeter of the parking lot. Through the gaps in the mangrove-lined shore it was hard not to look at the offered views of the open bay with Miami’s skyline in the distance, especially when my brain was creating halos around the lights. It always struck me as some kind of weird irony that the hundred and fifty thousand acres of pristine water was this close to Miami.

  There was no dodging the cameras pointed at the dock, but we did our best to use the boats for cover. Passing Susan’s and my matching center consoles, we snuck toward Gross’s boat. Martinez would know it was gone when he got here in the morning and with no way of locating me, suspect that I had taken it. In a backward way that was exactly what I needed. I would have liked for the mission to be off the books, especially because Mac was involved, but felt like this was my window of opportunity. If I wanted to draw the killer into my trap, I had to let Martinez know where we were. But it had to appear to be a mistake.

  I hoped my plan would work because by now, I had confused myself. After stepping aboard in what I hoped was a blind spot, I fired up the engines while Justine untied the lines. Before we made the turn to the main channel, I looked over at the empty slip where the ICE Interceptor docked. The forty-foot quad-powered cruiser was equipped for multi-day missions and it looked like Miami-Dade was my only option now. A few minutes later, we were chugging out of the channel toward the moonlit barrier islands.

  Once clear of the channel, I handed the wheel to Justine and grabbed my phone. Meeting Mac back at the headquarters dock, or even at Bayfront Park, was too close to home and Martinez’s network for me to be comfortable. I left a message to meet at Alabama Jack’s on the south end of the bay. Not only would we avoid the office, the location was closer for him and an easy run to the wreck site. After disconnecting with him, I texted Grace that we would need her team.