Rising Water

by Wayne Stinnett

  I looked out over Bight Bay and beyond. I could see the rugged eastern cliffs of Flanagan Island, two miles away, surrounded by a ring of turquoise in a sea of azure. Bordeaux Mountain on St. John rose up in the distance behind it, clouds shrouding the peak of the dormant volcano.

  John stepped out onto the porch. “What’s on your mind, Jesse?”

  “Heard anything new on that storm you told me about?” I began. It was a delaying tactic and we both knew it.

  “Moved off the coast yesterday and kicked up a few squalls in the Cape Verde Islands.”

  “Low pressure?”

  “Loosely organized,” he replied. “The Hurricane Center said if it shows any development at all, they’ll upgrade it to a depression.”

  “Tell me about the east end of Norman Island.”

  “Not much to tell,” he said, leaning against a post. “Like all of these rocks, the east side gets the worst weather and surf, so nobody lives out there. It’s rocky, with cliffs as high as a hundred feet above the breaking waves. Fissures open inland, caused by runoff and wave action. There’re no beaches, no piers, and no place to land a boat.”

  “But you said your friend saw the Onayan boat heading straight there.”

  He nodded. “There’s a little bay with a sand beach on the south side. It ain’t much, but a small boat could land there. It’s a good half mile hike across rough terrain to where the commune is located. And that’s only after you get to the top of the hill.”

  “What’s it like underwater?”

  John shook his head. “Steep drop off, mostly rocks, hardly any coral. Divers rarely visit that part of the island. Seas are too rough. Sharkers go out there at night, but it’s illegal. Hammerheads feed in the deep current between here and Peter Island. Another reason divers don’t visit.”

  “Hammer—?” I suddenly had a gruesome thought. “Wait! That’s it.”

  I turned and went back inside, John right behind me.

  “Aside from the missing body parts,” I said to Lettsome, “did your pathologist find anything else unusual?”

  “What do you mean? Dat’s not unusual enough?”

  “Humor me,” I said. “What else did they find?”

  Lettsome looked at me, then around at the others, before he answered. “Di doctor said dere wasn’t very much blood in di body.”

  “Wouldn’t that be normal after a decapitation?” John asked.

  “It depends,” the detective said. “When a person dies, di heart stops. If shot and dey don’t die right away, a person could bleed out. But once di brain stops, di heart stops. Cut off a person’s head or shoot dem in di head, and most of di blood stays in the body.”

  I spun toward John. “Got a chart?”

  He hurried to the back bedroom and returned with a nautical chart, rolling it out on the table.

  “The compound is here,” I said, putting a finger on the eastern shoreline of Norman Island. Then I traced my finger northwest, to where the body was found on Little Thatch.

  Lettsome leaned forward, looking at the chart. “Di prevailing current is to di northwest.”

  “Almost a straight line,” I said, standing. “With nothing to stop a body from floating right up on Little Thatch from here.”

  “I’m going with you,” Jerry Snyder said, as John and I packed some supplies we’d need.

  “No, you’re not,” I replied, without looking at him.

  “You’re still limping,” he said. “You can’t go it alone.”

  “I once spent more than a month alone in the deserts of Kuwait, son. Surrounded by the enemy night and day.” Then I straightened and put a hand on his shoulder. “Besides, you’re on your honeymoon.”

  “Yeah, well, the first three days were great.”

  I could understand the dejection the turn of events had caused him. He’d hoped the beginning of their marriage would be a series of wonderful, fun-filled days in the sun. At least they’d had three days, and his wife was still alive. Having lost my second wife on our wedding night, I knew his honeymoon could have been worse.

  “Wouldn’t be a bad idea,” John agreed. “You’re not at a hundred percent.”

  “Can’t take the risk,” I said, turning to John. “He’s a cop, yeah. But he’s way out of his jurisdiction here.”

  “And you?” Jerry said.

  “I spent twenty years in the Marine Corps, doing just what I’m about to do now, infiltrating an enemy stronghold alone. Then I spent several more years with Homeland Security, teaching their operatives to do the same thing.”

  “That doesn’t give you the authority to do what you’re planning to do,” Jerry said. Then he turned to Lettsome. “And as a police officer, you’re just going to let him?”

  “We have a long-standing working relationship with his employer,” the detective said.

  “Then hire me,” Jerry said to John.

  John rubbed his chin. “I’m not the one that does the hiring.”

  I already knew John was planning to recruit the kid. He had the background Armstrong was looking for.

  I was planning to go ashore at the eastern end of the island, just to look around and see if I could find anything. If the body floated all the way to Little Thatch, maybe something with five digits had washed up on the rocks here, and the sharks missed it.

  I looked Jerry over again. “You dive?”

  “I’m certified,” he said. “Made a couple hundred dives.”

  Turning to John, I said, “Call Jack. If it’s okay with him, I’ll take him along. If nothing else, just to keep the sharks away from me.”

  John went to the back room to make the call.

  “How will we get there?”

  “My boat’s right out there in the bay.”

  “I looked at the chart,” Jerry said. “Impossible to anchor, unless you have like a thousand feet of anchor line.”

  “I do, but we’re not anchoring. John will drop me in the water and hang out offshore, like he’s fishing.”

  Jerry looked toward the back of the house, his face a mask of concern, and then he leaned in close. “Are you sure? I mean, a one-eyed man in an unfamiliar boat?”

  “John used to own her,” I said. “And as far as the eye, or his age for that matter, you’ll look far and wide to find someone more capable. Never judge a book by its cover, kid.”

  John stepped back into the living room. Mitzi and Alicia were out in the backyard, working in her garden.

  “Here’s the deal,” John said to the younger man. “As a precaution, the company does background checks on just about every person one of us encounters, so we already know a great deal about you.”

  I knew what lay in store for young Snyder. John wouldn’t have told him that if both he and Jack Armstrong didn’t think Jerry would be a good fit. Since accepting the offer from Armstrong, I’d learned that John had been responsible for recruiting a lot of the operators Armstrong employed or contracted with.

  “We look for a certain kind of person,” John continued. “We prefer our operatives to be military- or police-trained. They gotta be bright and have good morals, blah, blah, blah. But they also have to be independently wealthy and have a desire to help others.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jerry asked, looking from one of us to the other.

  “It’s a job offer,” I said. “A chance to make a bigger difference than you’ll ever make in Newport Beach, even if you were to one day become the chief of police.”

  “I’m not looking for a job,” he said. “I was just offering to help.”

  “Why?” John asked bluntly.

  “Huh?”

  “Why do you want to help? Mitzi didn’t offer, and she’s one of us. Alicia didn’t offer either. It’s a simple question. Why do you want to help?”

  I knew that it was anything but a simple questio
n. I’d seen the answer in a picture once. A snapshot someone took as they were evacuating one of the World Trade Center buildings, just before they collapsed. It was a picture of a fireman, facing the camera, moving up the stairs with all his equipment on his back, heading up nearly 100 floors. All the other people in the stairwell were moving down.

  What made one person rush into a burning building, when others were running out? The reason was written all over the face of that young firefighter.

  “I don’t know,” Jerry stammered. “I just feel the need to help out.”

  “Dig deeper, son. Why do you want to help out?”

  Jerry looked from John to me, searching for the answer to a test for a job he didn’t think he wanted. I saw the same look of resolve and determination that I’d seen in the young firefighter’s face.

  “They killed that woman,” he said. “Nobody deserves what they did to her. They tried to kill us, to hurt Alicia. I want to understand why, and I want them brought to justice.”

  John scoffed. “That’s right out of the police training manual. Sometimes, it ain’t about justice. Sometimes it’s about fixing things right.”

  Jerry gulped and stared out the back window where Mitzi and Alicia were tending the garden. Then I noticed a change; a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “People who hurt others have no place in a civilized society,” he said. “They’re a blight on humanity that should be surgically removed.”

  John grinned, putting a firm hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “We are the scalpel, son.”

  He went on to tell Jerry a little of what Armstrong Research did, both in the public eye and behind the scenes, even divulging the source of some of our funding—the U.S. government.

  When he finished, John reached into his back pocket and handed Jerry an envelope. “You’re on the payroll as of right now, if you want. Which, by the way, ain’t much. We don’t want people who do it for the money.”

  When his wife returned, Jerry took her to Mitzi’s room to explain what was going on. I could hear them talking but couldn’t make out their words. At one point, Alicia cried.

  “Don’t forget this,” John said, bringing the case with the dive mask from his room.

  I stuffed it into the top of my backpack. “Think he’ll be okay?”

  “Don’t know about his seaworthiness,” John said. “But that can be learned. I think he’s got the heart, though.”

  A few minutes later, they came out of the bedroom. Alicia went straight to the kitchen and just sat at the table, looking out over the yard.

  “You ready?” I asked Jerry.

  “Yeah.”

  The chair scraped as Alicia got up. She crossed the room and hugged her husband tightly. “You be careful,” she told him. Then she turned to me. “And you bring my husband back in one piece.”

  “We’re just going to have a look around,” I told her. “DJ’s already sent pictures and information about what’s going on in the Onayan compound. But Detective Lettsome needs more than that.”

  Twenty minutes later, with the sun dipping toward the western horizon, John drove past Pirate’s Bight and onto the beach. He slowly made his way around the beach chairs and stopped the electric cart next to my dinghy.

  My ankle felt good. Not being able to move it was a big help. I wondered how it would be with fins. If push came to shove, I could just cross my legs and dolphin kick.

  We quickly transferred everything to the dinghy and pushed it into deeper water before I climbed in. I lowered the engine and started it, and then John and Jerry got in. It wasn’t far to where Floridablanca was moored and I kept the dinghy at a slow speed, so as not to attract attention.

  We were aboard quickly, and after disabling the alarm, I opened the main hatch to the salon. “Go ahead and get her started,” I said, handing John the keys.

  I opened the lazarette hatch and started down the ladder, telling Jerry to follow me.

  “This is a lot of space,” he said, once he’d joined me.

  Neither of us could stand up straight, but the aisle from port to starboard had shelves fore and aft, loaded with all kinds of equipment, spare parts, tools, and even canned goods. My passengers were always amazed at Floridablanca’s storage capacity. The lazarette was pretty much the same size as the cockpit, and that was large enough for a picnic table for eight, with room to walk all the way around it. Lined with dozens of shelves and drawers, some removable, with additional hidden space behind them, I could outfit the boat for a four-man dive team to live off the grid for months.

  “Ever use a rebreather?” I asked, taking one of the Draegers from a shelf.

  “Went through the Air Force’s combat diver training in Panama City,” he answered. “But they phased it out soon after. I’ve only made a handful of closed-circuit dives.”

  “Simple, really,” I said.

  The two of us sat down on a bench as I explained the basics of how the Draeger equipment worked. The engine started, and a few minutes later, I heard the transmission drop into gear.

  While John took Floridablanca out to sea, I put together the equipment we’d need, explaining what everything was for, and how to use each. Then we carried it up to the cockpit, staging each set separately. We tested one of the earwigs with the new mask, and it worked perfectly.

  “You’ll have to bend the bone mic a little forward on yours,” I told Jerry, “and wear your mask slightly askew for the seal to cover the mic. But with the antenna that’ll float behind you on the surface, we can communicate.”

  Wearing black Lycra suits, the two of us went forward to the command bridge. A quick glance at the chart plotter told me we were already halfway to the eastern shore.

  “Head straight on out a half mile or so,” I said. “Then turn and come back toward the spot where the compound is located. The boat will shield us from anyone watching when we go in the water.

  “How far out?”

  “At least a quarter mile,” I said. I gave him an earwig. “Just give us the word.”

  I went to the watch bunk and raised the cushions, exposing a storage locker. After moving a couple of items aside, I pushed on the bottom and a section of it lifted up.

  “Here,” I said, handing Jerry a loaded Glock 9mm handgun. “We’re only looking for evidence. This is just in case.”

  “And if they come at us with more than eighteen people?” Jerry asked, checking the chamber and sliding the magazine out. “Er, make that seventeen.”

  I figured he’d be at least familiar with the weapon. A lot of police forces issue Glocks.

  “Don’t worry about that,” John said. “This old boat has more firepower than anything they have there.”

  “Really?” Jerry said, flatly.

  I nodded. “Yeah, really.”

  Floridablanca was a lot more lethal than Gaspar’s Revenge and she could deploy a .50 caliber machine gun or even an electric mini-gun. With all the extra room below Floridablanca’s decks, I could hide and quickly deploy an arsenal. Rusty had once told me to never go out to sea unarmed. I might have taken his advice to the extreme. I’m a gun guy.

  The eastern end of the island slowly passed by, as the sun fell behind distant clouds to the west. A little more than half a mile beyond the island, John started a slow turn to starboard.

  When we were more than halfway through the turn, Jerry and I went aft and quickly suited up, keeping low behind the waist-high steel gunwale.

  The sun, hidden behind the clouds, was disappearing over the horizon. Full darkness would be upon us when we went into the water.

  “Nervous?” I asked, looking around the cabin at the approaching shoreline, now blocking the sun entirely.

  “A little,” he replied.

  “Use that. Call it a sixth sense, nervousness, or apprehension—whatever. It heightens your awareness.”

  “We’re 5
00 yards from shore, Jesse,” John’s voice said over the tiny speaker in my mask. “I don’t see any movement on the cliffs.”

  I opened the transom door and stepped down onto the swim platform, fins in hand, and my mask dangling under my chin. It was bulky and heavy, but underwater, the mask would be nearly weightless with the air trapped inside.

  Jerry stepped out behind me and we both leaned against the rail to put our fins on. My ankle ached a little, but the tape was doing its job. It would have to give a little, for my fins to extend and be of any use. I hoped it wouldn’t present a problem, since it was a tendon on the side that was injured.

  “Going to neutral,” John said.

  I pulled my mask up over my face, then turned and checked Jerry’s full-face mask, making sure the bone mic was secure under the mask’s seal. Outside, it could pick up vibrations through the mask, but his voice would be extremely muffled. When I heard the clunk of the transmission disengaging, I tapped him on the shoulder and stepped off into the water.

  Turning, I saw Jerry right beside me, and together we kicked away from the boat, trailing our antenna tethers behind us.

  “Clear,” I said, once we were far enough away.

  “Roger that,” John said, at the same time I heard the transmission reengage, sounding much louder below the surface. “How’s the ankle?”

  “No problem,” I said. “We’re going to go deep. You won’t hear from us for about five or six minutes.”

  “Roger that. Be careful.”

  Taking a bearing on the lowest part of the cliffs, I checked my wrist-mounted compass and we submerged

  Descending, Jerry and I started toward the island. He swam next to me as I counted my kicks. I checked on him often, having never dived with the man. He seemed capable and confident, though diving with unfamiliar equipment.

  We leveled off at thirty feet. The tape on my ankle wouldn’t allow me to straighten my foot fully, but there was no more pain than before we went in. It was probably diminishing my speed per kick, but we were swimming right toward an island from 400 yards away. There was no chance we’d miss it. But old habits die hard, so I counted.