“Okay. Fine with me. Let me do my engine room checks, you can secure for sea, and we'll leave in a few minutes. What do you think? Should we drag Jenkzy along behind, or lift her aboard?”
“Why don’t we just double-line and drag her? I’m too tired to help you get the motor off. In this bright moonlight, we can keep a sharp eye on her while we’re underway.”
Fifteen minutes later, the anchor up, HiJenks secured and ready for sea, Hetta slowly steered towards All Bidness to say good-bye.
“Jenks, look at all those pangas around All Bidness. I wonder what’s going on?”
Jenks picked up the binoculars for a closer look and said, “Hetta, turn the boat. Head for San Carlos.”
“What? Don’t you want to yell at Bud?”
“He’s already dead to the world.”
“I guess you’re right. Oh, well, I’ll call him when we get to San Carlos. So, if Bud’s passed out, why do you figure all those pangas are there?”
“Just a wild guess, but I’d bet the boat boys are selling off Bud’s booze,” Jenks speculated, then put down the binoculars.
“Or food. Poor old Bud, he gets used by everyone.”
“Shouldn’t we do something? I mean, it’s obvious Pam’s not stopping those boat bums.”
“Pam hired them, remember?”
“You think Pam’s getting the money? After all Bud gives her, she’s stealing from him? Well, shit, why am I not surprised? I never liked or trusted her. ‘Poor old Bud’ is right,” Hetta said sadly.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do right now. Bud’s no idiot. He’ll wise up to Pam one day. If he already hasn’t.”
“You mean you think he might know what’s happening?”
“Could be.”
Under the moon’s silver glow Hetta could practically read a book. There was little wind, but a fair sized swell greeted their bow. She knew the waves meant high winds to the north and hoped the weather would hold for their crossing. There had been, however, talk on the ham nets of a possible norther in the offing.
“Just hold off for a few hours, you old norther,” Hetta said aloud as she checked her compass to see if she was on her 31-degree heading. Satisfied, she settled back into the captain’s chair on the bridge. San Carlos, and the beginning of a new phase in their lives, was just over ten hours away.
Jenks joined Hetta on the bridge, where they enjoyed the silvery vista, occasionally checking their compass course and discussing the future, until Jenks yawned.
“Honey, why don’t you get some sleep? It’s almost midnight. Even as hyped as I am, I’ll probably run down in a few hours. Meanwhile, all systems are running great and according to the compass we’re right on course for Catch-22. Let’s go below, get a GPS fix, and you can crash.”
In the main saloon, Jenks opened a drawer behind the captain’s chair and pawed through it while Hetta changed into warmer clothes for her watch. “Can’t find the GPS,” he told her when she returned with her on-watch paraphernalia: Kindle, reading glasses and iPod.
“It’s that gender thing. Men can never find anything,” Hetta grinned, leaning over to rummage in the drawer. The handheld radio was there, but no GPS.
“Gender thing, huh?” Jenks teased.
“They were both in there this afternoon. After I talked to Bud on the handheld, I put it in this drawer, and the GPS was right next to it. I remember, dammit. Son of a bitch! Whoever came on board took it.”
They searched the cabin, and finally admitted defeat. “It’s gone,” Hetta said, “but, on the bright side of life, we have a spare. The one I found on the beach. It’s in the safe.”
Jenks went to the master sleeping quarters, opened a cabinet and punched in the combination on the safe’s keypad. It whirred open and he took out the black plastic bag containing the GPS Hetta found at Caracol.
Hetta took the ship’s log from a bookshelf, noted their time of departure, and read off the coordinates for Catch-22 Beach. Jenks fired up the new GPS, and was preparing to add in their destination when he noticed a few waypoints already entered. “Hey, guess what’s loaded in here?”
“What?” Hetta asked, leaning over Jenks’s shoulder to see the illuminated readout on the GPS. He hit another button and the readout bounced back to the list of waypoints. The first one was coded “C” and was totally unfamiliar, but the second, coded “Petrol” was in the anchorage they just left.
Hetta grabbed her logbook to double check, ran her finger down a list she had compiled over the years, and sucked in her breath. In the middle of the page were the exact coordinates from the GPS. And written next to them: Bud’s Mooring.
Chapter 36
Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked-down quarry, the destined prey.—Shaw
Pam, naked and bathed in moonlight, sauntered into the bedroom carrying a flute of champagne in each hand. Her bikini line, glowing alabaster in contrast to her carefully maintained tan, gave the illusion she wore a bathing suit. Glancing out the open French doors of the beach house, she checked on All Bidness, saw nothing amiss, and handed a glass to her husband, Buzz Gibbs.
“Don’t you think the champagne is a bit premature, Pam? After tonight I’ll fill a bathtub with the stuff for you.” He sipped, and added, “Better stuff. Bud’s taste in bourbon is far better than his taste in bubbly.”
“Gibby, what happened with Hector? I mean it was just a fluke wasn’t it? Him getting busted and killed?”
“I’m sure of it. Something somehow went wrong, but it wasn’t anything we did. Way I understand it, the cops in Sonora just got lucky and Hector got dead. I didn't tell "Colombo" his little brother’s best high school buddy was a coke freak who was doing his best to fuck up the whole Mexican setup. Frankly, I’m glad Hector’s out of the picture. If he’d been taken alive he’d probably’ve sold his soul for a hit of nose candy. And if he talked to the right folks we’d be shark bait by now. Well, I’d be fish food. You’d be servicing some short-dicked Jap in a Tokyo brothel. Ichi has a real crappy sense of humor.”
“But he’s very ambitious.”
“Shit, they all are. Ichi wants the yen to bring back his father’s defunct industrial empire, Colombo and his little brother, what with Mexico becoming the new Columbia, want to crowd out Mexican cartels, Mo’s financing those foamin’ at the mouth raghead terrorists of his, and I think the Aussie just enjoys a good rousin’ row. Harvard trained ‘em right.”
“What do you want?”
“Out. I’m just an employee, and after tonight I collect my paycheck from a very discreet bank in the Grand Caymans and go live on a sugary sand beach with you, Sugar Britches. If the Bintu’s will let me.”
“Bintu’s?”
“My name for them. You know, they come from all over the world, but they all been to Harvard. Somehow, though, I don't think Harvard Business School had their career choice in mind. But, hell, bidness is bidness, as Bud would say.”
Pam giggled and sipped her champagne, mentally shopping for clothes, cars, and jewelry. “Can we live in New York City? I’ve always wanted to live there.”
“New York? Have you lost your mind? We can’t live anywhere in the States. If we’re not toast with the DEA by now, we soon will be. It won’t take them long to trace Water Princess right back to Bud. We can’t even stay in Mexico.”
“Why not? Bud’s the one they’re looking for, you know.”
“Once they nab him, how long do you think it’ll take them to figure out we’re involved? I mean, you’re his mistress of record,” Gibbs smiled, giving her a mock toast.
“Grand Caymans, huh? Our money’ll be there, so we shouldn’t have a problem staying. The money will be there, won’t it?”
“Unless we mess up. And we can’t. Nothing, and I do mean nada, can go wrong tonight because it’s my...our...last shot, Pammy, to take the money and run, cuz if we hang around here, and the DEA or federales don’t get us, the Mexican cartels will. That bunch of bad boys in Tijuana don’t like no stinkin’ freelanc
ers. You and me, we’ll leave it to the big boys to duke it out. Once the Bintu’s get confirmation that the stuff’s on the mother ship, our part is done, and the money hits the bank.”
“So, if the pangas only have to go as far as the mother ship, why do they need so much fuel?”
“Decoys. They offload at the ship, then I’ve given each one of them a second destination—way up north. With any luck, the space age boys at the DEA will keep busy tracking empty pangas straight into Tijuana Cartel territory. The Bintus want to keep the feds—ours and theirs—guessing, and fuck with the boy’s heads up in TJ. And speaking of fuel, I guess we’d better get over to All Bidness and see how things are going.”
All Bidness, tied stern and bow to keep her “business” side to sea, and away from prying eyes on shore, bustled with activity. Her crew was filling thirty gallon mammillas with gasoline from Bud’s newly installed “diesel” tank, and lowering them into pangas with a motorized davit. The brilliant moonlight alleviated any need for deck lights and the yacht was moored far enough away from shore that the residents of Punta Caracol, including the soldiers stationed at the end of the runway, could not see the operation.
Gibbs climbed aboard and inspected a row of mammillas lined up along the forward rails. He coughed. “For God’s sake don’t anybody light a fuckin’ cigarette,” he commanded, then grinned and added, “yet.”
Gasoline fumes permeated the air, and Bud’s normally pristine main decks were slick with fuel. All Bidness was a potential floating Molotov cocktail. The boat boys frantically mopped the decks with a liquid degreaser, then hosed it down with saltwater from the anchor chain wash down hose, but every time they filled or moved another mammilla, gasoline escaped from the ill-fitting lids and sloshed down the sides. Gibbs carefully worked his way to the bow, slipping and sliding over a mixture of Simple Green and gasoline. He clutched his bag of preset GPS receivers in one hand while hanging on to the rail with the other.
Pam emerged from the galley with a bottle of heavy duty dishwashing detergent in her hand and complained, “Jesus, it stinks out here.” Squirting Dawn in front of her, she made her way forward to where Gibby and Gato were working. Gibbs leaned over the rail, and was handing a GPS to a panga driver when Pam slid against him, almost pushing him overboard.
“Watch it! What in the hell are you doing out here? Get below,” Gibby growled.
“I just remembered something I forgot to tell you. That bitch Hetta? She found a GPS on the beach a couple of weeks ago and from her description of the case, I’d bet my last dime it’s from the panga that idiot Hector blew up. We got all the others back.”
“Holy shit! We’ve got to get that one back. If Jenks somehow figures out what’s going on he could blow tonight’s operation. Where in hell did they go?” Gibbs squinted towards the empty anchorage near the hotel.
Pam looked and shook her head. “I guess they left. But it doesn’t matter, baby.”
“It doesn’t matter? Are you nuts?”
“Nope, I had KiKi fetch the GPS from HiJenks while Hetta stuffed her fat face full of hot apple pie. I ain’t no dumb blonde.”
“You ain’t no real blonde. But you done good. I’ll reprogram that unit and use it for tonight’s run. Let’s get moving, we’ve got pangas waiting.”
Gabriel Gomez, sitting in his panga, heard Pam mention Hector’s name. Since he didn’t speak English, he didn’t know what the Gringa said, but he heard, “Hector.”
It was Hector he’d come for.
He'd promised his little brother, Pedro, he would no longer have anything to do with this business, but he had a score to settle, and this was the place to do it. His brother, when he regained consciousness, told him something he told no other; Pedro saw Hector in the helicopter. And he knew Hector saw him, knew he was still alive, but blew up the panga anyway.
Gabriel wanted a piece of his pinche puto cousin, Hector.
Gibbs followed his wife back to the main saloon. Out of habit, Pam paused at the door to slip off her shoes, but Gibbs just laughed and pushed in front of her. “Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter any more, huh?” she said. They tromped across the spotless white Berber, leaving a soap and fuel trail.
“Did you check on Bud?”
“Dead.”
Gibbs looked a little startled. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“No, you dork. But he has enough booze and tranquilizers in him to keep down an elephant. And so he wouldn’t be in the way, I slipped Sam Houston a Mickey Finn as well. He’s in doggy dreamland.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t drowned that mutt.”
“I probably would have if I didn’t think Bud would keelhaul me.”
“Losing your touch? Thought you had the old hillbilly under control. After tonight, it’s bye-bye to him, his boat, and his stupid dog.” Gibbs turned his attention to the GPS Pam handed him. “We’ve got plenty of time, but I’ll go ahead and load in tonight’s coordinates into this unit. The drop will be at Zero-two-thirty hours. Two and a half hours from now.”
“I love it when you talk military. Want something to eat?”
“Got any turkey left?”
“I think that little shit Sam Houston left some.”
Gibbs turned on the GPS, and then rummaged through his briefcase for the list of coordinates. He read the illuminated display, looked puzzled, then turned the instrument over and blanched. “Pam!” he bellowed, “get your ass in here.”
Pam charged into the main cabin, ready for a fight. “Listen you son of a bitch, don’t you yell at me like that. As a matter of fact, you can get your own damned sandwich.”
“Screw the food,” Gibbs said, waving the GPS. “Can’t you fuckin’ read?” He shoved the unit in Pam’s face, pointing to a black plastic label stuck on the back.
Pam looked at it and read, “‘Property of HiJenks. All others will be shot.’ Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh? That’s all you have to say? And now HiJenks is gone.” He threw the GPS onto the settee. “We have to stop them. If they try to use our GPS to get to San Carlos—and, thanks to you and your KiKi, they probably will—they’ll see the waypoints. The old coordinates don’t mean nothin’ anymore, except for one: petrol. Everyone in the Sea of Cortez knows that drug-running pangas need gas, and it won’t take a fuckin’ rocket scientist to put two and two together. Shitfire, all we needed was a few friggin’ hours.”
“What’ll we do?” Pam whined.
“That piece of crap trawler of theirs can’t do over ten knots, so we can catch them long before they reach San Carlos. Let’s just hope they don’t contact San Carlos by radio and tip off the Feds tonight. There’s no way to call off the drop. The plane’s on the way. Jesus, we can’t afford a screw-up tonight.”
Pam’s face suddenly brightened. “Hey, Gibby, Bud told me something’s wrong with HiJenks’s radio.”
“You’re kidding? Finally, a fuckin’ break. Come on, let’s go get them.”
“Uh, what do you mean, get?” Pam asked.
“Cut the blonde crap. You know damned well what I mean. Now move it.”
Pam and Gibbs rushed on deck and set into motion a scene of confusion. Gibby screamed orders while pangas were waved off and given orders to go to their rendezvous points. Full mammillas, too heavy to lift by hand, were lashed to All Bidness’s forward rails. The rest were thrown overboard.
KiKi and Gato fought a losing battle with mops, degreaser, and salt water, trying to blast enough gas from the deck so they dared start the engines. Pam went below and returned with blankets and sheets to spread over the slick decks and sop up more fuel.
While Gato started the engines, Gibbs flipped on the radar, and waited impatiently for the screen to boot up. When it did, he smiled. He was sure the dot glowing near the edge of the twenty-mile line was HiJenks.
KiKi threw off the mooring line, and All Bidness roared out of the anchorage at eighteen knots.
“All Bidness must be refueling dope pangas,” Jenks said grimly, “from Bud’s
new thousand gallon fuel tank. He said it was diesel, but my guess it’s gasoline. That’s the only explanation I can come up with.”
“Bud’s a drug runner? Jenks, I just can’t believe that. He’s never even smoked a joint. And he has all the money he'll ever need. Why on earth would he get mixed up in something like this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s Pam’s doing.”
“What are we going to do? Rat out Bud? We should, I guess, tell Jaime Morales about the GPS thing when we get to San Carlos tomorrow, but...oh, my God!”
“What?”
“Could Bud be responsible for Hot Idea? The Goodall’s deaths?” Hetta’s face was pale and her lower lip trembled.
“It’s possible, but if so, he’s a damned good actor. And he didn’t even blink when we told him about the GPS at dinner.”
“But now the GPS is gone,” Hetta said softly.
They lapsed into thought, each trying to figure out what to do next, until Jenks broke the silence. “Oh hell, Hetta.”
“What?” She followed his gaze to their radar screen. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the fast-moving target leaving the anchorage at Caracol, headed their way, was All Bidness.
Gabriel Gomez watched from his panga as All Bidness sped from the anchorage. He waited until the yacht cleared the point, then followed. He didn’t know what was going on, but he did know these Gringos worked with Hector. And Hector had to pay for what he did to Pedro. He had no idea that his detested cousin was already dead.
While Hetta studied the radar screen in disbelief, Jenks pushed both throttles as far forward as they'd go and watched the tachometers readouts rise to 2300 rpm for the second time in two weeks. “Hang in there one more time, baby,” he coaxed. HiJenks couldn’t outrun All Bidness, but Bob Jenkins was going to sure as the devil make Bud work to catch them.
“Oh, Jenks. Could it be? Bud’s after us? My Bud?” Hetta moaned.
“I don’t know what’s happening here, but my best guess is someone on All Bidness figured out that they got the wrong GPS when they raided HiJenks tonight. And right now we don’t have time to worry about how Bud got himself mixed up in the drug business. But I think we have to assume that someone on his boat wants a piece of us.”
Troubled Sea Page 23
