Blackwater Sound (16 page)

“And the second problem is, it's pretty damn hard to focus a pulse of that magnitude. So if you set it off, the thing would be likely to kill the person operating it and everyone in the immediate proximity. Now that would be considered a fairly serious drawback from a military perspective.”

“From almost any perspective,” Thorn said.

Sugarman said, “What if you put the gun somewhere real isolated? And you triggered it by remote control, would that work?”

“Isolated,” Thorn said. “Like out in the middle of the Everglades.”

“I don't see why not,” Cappy said.

“So it is possible?” Thorn said.

Cappy had a sip of beer. His eyes strayed off to his sand tables, all those plastic heroes. Victory and defeat so dependent on chance. Not right or might, but just a little fog, an hour's delay.

“Back in '62,” he said, “when the U.S. exploded Test Shot Starfish over the mid-Pacific, it was a one-point-four-megaton nuclear blast and its electromagnetic pulse destroyed satellite equipment and blocked high-frequency radio transmission for hours all across the Pacific. Ever since then, people have been speculating about generating the pulse without setting off the explosion. Is it possible? Well, I'm no physicist, but if it was doable, then it would sure as hell change a whole lot of what we accept as reality right now. Very possibly it might alter the very nature of warfare. All the sophisticated electronics we depend on, radar, supersonic jet fighters, laser-guided missiles, that would all be useless. A bunch of strategically placed
HERF guns out in the field could knock everything out and we'd be walking around in the dark. We'd be back to Shaka Zulu and his shortened ax.”

“All in all,” Thorn said, “that might not be so bad.”

Cappy gave a rueful smile.

“Don't be so sure, Thorn. Take away the nuclear arsenal, supersonic fighter jets, the radar, the smart bombs, yeah, I know it sounds like an improvement, but think about it. If the rules changed all of a sudden, things could get awful goddamn bloody before the power structure got sorted out again. A clear pecking order is what keeps the status quo, and the status quo is what keeps things stable, orderly, and peaceful.”

Everyone considered that for a moment. Then Thorn reached into the pocket of his shorts and brought out the plastic baggie. He handed it to Cappy without comment.

Cappy held it up and inspected it through the clear plastic.

“Intriguing tool,” Cappy said. “We're definitely not talking about an instrument to clean your fingernails. No, sir, this is obviously a man-killer.”

“Anything you could find out would be interesting,” Thorn said. “But you probably shouldn't touch it. Might smudge the fingerprints.”

“I know a few guys into knives. I'll dig around.”

“So the bottom line on this HERF thing, Cappy, you think it's bullshit.”

Cappy had a sip of beer and stared at Thorn.

“There's a lot of science going on these days,” Cappy said. “Who can say for sure? To make something like that portable, someone'd have to come up with a new-generation battery. Some breakthrough in fuel-cell technology. Then yeah, I guess it could happen. But I hope to hell I'm not alive to see it.”

Two beers and a half hour of gossip later, Sugar and Thorn were back in the car, killing a few stray mosquitoes as they headed back up the Overseas Highway.

“So what do you think?”

“I think it's a damn good thing you're out of the loop on this one, Thorn. This is some heavy shit.”

“Fairly heavy, yeah.”

“ 'Cause if this HERF thing exists, you're dealing with something that's way, way out of your league. And if it doesn't exist, then you're dealing with some world-class loonies. Either way, it's no-win.”

As they passed by Vacation Island, the pager on Sugarman's belt began to pulse. He pulled it off, checked the screen, and gave Thorn a quick, unhappy look.

“I gotta take this,” he said.

A mile up the road, he pulled off at a Circle K and while Thorn went inside for a jar of chunky peanut butter and a six-pack, Sugar used the pay phone.

Sugarman was behind the wheel by the time Thorn climbed back inside.

“So who was it?”

“Professional courtesy call. Our new friend in Miami.”

“The hard-ass?”

“No, Romano.”

“So?”

“So the boat turned up. Peretti's boat.”

“Let me guess.”

Sugar said, “It ran ashore on a remote beach on Treasure Cay.”

“That's Abaco. North end of the island. He made good time.”

“Yeah, but still a long walk from Marsh Harbor.”

“Oh, he'll make it,” Thorn said. “I don't doubt it for a second.”

“He's a tough old coot, all right.”

“Yeah,” Thorn said. “Made it across the Gulf Stream, found the island. Ditched the boat before anyone could arrest him for stealing it. He's not as loony as he seems.”

“Romano says they're sending somebody over there from Miami PD to do the crime scene stuff on the boat, locate Lawton, and bring him home. So they don't need your help.”

“I'm sure they don't.”

Sugarman studied him for a long moment. Thorn gave him a sober look.

“This HERF thing has looney tunes written all over it. I'd stay well clear of this one.”

Sugarman started the car and put it in reverse and backed out of the space. He halted at the edge of US 1, waiting for an opening in the traffic. He glanced across at Thorn.

Thorn had tilted his head to the side. His eyes were shut and he had a rapturous look as if he were communing with his long-dead loved ones.

“All right. What the hell're you doing now?”

Thorn kept his eyes closed.

“Just trying to pick up the beat,” he said, “of that different drummer.”

Her father opened Morgan's cabin door and stood there for a moment until she'd blinked and stretched herself awake.

“It's pinging,” he said. “Started a couple of minutes ago.”

“How close?”

“Twenty, twenty-five miles south.”

“Well, congratulations, Dad. Your calculations were accurate. You must be pleased.”

He nodded, but he didn't look happy. Not at all.

“Come on, Morgan. We have to move.”

“All right, all right. Give me a minute.”

But A. J. stayed in the doorway, arms loose at his sides. Eyes downcast, mouth warped with anguish, his throat working as if he were struggling to swallow some dry crumb of food.

“No, Dad, come on. Don't do this.”

Her father closed his eyes, bowed his head, and shook it hard as if trying to silence a host of whispering voices.

“This is my goddamn fault. All of it.”

Morgan sighed. Veins and sinews showed in his throat. Dark voltage radiated from his flesh.

“It's okay. You did all you could, Dad.”

He lifted his head and looked at her carefully.

“Did I?”

“You did everything possible.”

“Goddamn it, Morgan. I could see Andy just a few feet away. It was my one chance. He was so goddamn close. His hand reaching out. He was alive, looking at me, eyes wide open, waving that hand.”

“The line broke, Dad. You couldn't do anything about that. You fell, you busted a rib. Remember?”

“I could've jumped into the water like you did. Held my breath.”

“It was too late by then, Dad. He was too far down. A second after the line broke, I couldn't see him anymore. He was gone.”

“This is my fault, all of it.”

Morgan let go of another long breath. She rubbed at the ache sprouting behind her temples. Ten years later, it was still the same, like all the clocks had broken, the galaxies had stopped spinning on the day Andy died. The same exchange they'd had back then, the same one they'd had every year since. Her father's ritual week of self-loathing. Morgan reciting her useless refrains.

“I grabbed the rod out of your hands, then I set the goddamn drag too tight. I knew better. But I panicked. I wanted to reel him back to the boat, so I pushed the drag too far and the line couldn't handle the strain and it broke.”

“It's over, Dad. Now we're going to catch her. We're going to set it right.”

“I screwed up. I lost your brother and I lost Darlene. Oh, I don't blame her for what she did. No mother should witness such a thing. I never should have taken you all along in the first place. It was my
passion, not anyone else's. I dragged everyone out there, exposed my family to that danger. For what?”

A. J. stared fiercely at the beige carpet, as if he could penetrate the hull of the boat, see down into the awful depths.

“I had that rod in my hand and I panicked. The one time I needed to apply my skills. The one time when everything I knew about the art of fishing really and truly mattered, and I blew it. I lost my son. And look at this, where we are. What I did to us. We're what's left, Morgan, you and me and Johnny, the sad remains.”

A. J. peered at her through the fog of his heartache. He blinked. His eyes were damp and filled with fluttery light.

“It's pinging, Dad. We shouldn't be wasting time.”

He looked up, swallowed. The light rose in his eyes.

“All right, Morgan. Get up. Come on now. Let's move. Let's kill this son of a bitch.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said. “Okay, Dad. Okay.”

 

It was Good Friday, the twenty-first of April. A coolish morning, low humidity, only a few patchy clouds along the horizon, slick seas spread in all directions, a vast blue mirror. A. J. had them running south, the big yacht hauling ass, close to forty knots. Morgan stood beside him on the flybridge while Johnny fussed with the lures down in the cockpit.

As they churned across the calm seas, the GPS screen in front of A. J. pulsed with a bright blue dot a few inches due east of the
ByteMe
's location. A sharp ping sounded on each beat.

“How far away?”

“Five miles, maybe less,” A. J. said. “At least she was when that last ping came in half an hour ago. She's submerged again. She's moved by now.”

“In half an hour,” Morgan said, “she could've gone ten miles in any direction.”

She knew her father didn't want to hear it, but it was true. A marlin that size could sustain speeds as fast as the Hatteras's top end. And it could hit bursts of almost twice theirs.

“She's damn close,” A. J. said. “Closer than she's been since the day we saw her.”

“That big an area, it'd still be a miracle if we could raise her.”

A. J. gave Morgan a sharp look.

“Don't be a doubter, Morgan. You have to believe, you have to trust your passion.”

Morgan looked out at the spreading sea.

“You know this is what we have to do, Morgan. This is our job, to set things right. We don't have a choice in the matter. When this is done, there'll be time to turn ourselves to other tasks.”

“If we can remember how to do anything else.”

Morgan looked off to the west. A couple of other sport fishing boats were roaring south toward the Mushroom and Jurassic Park, the marlin fishing grounds most of the captains preferred. They were going to fish the bottom contours and current confluences or else they'd work the deep water as close to the hundred-fathom curve as they could. Just like the Braswells would've done if they'd still been fishing for blues, truly fishing. But that was all finished. They were following the ping. That was it. Just the ping.

A. J. turned the wheel a few degrees to the north.

On the console another light began to blink, this one green.

“We're getting a fax,” A. J. said. “Go check it, Morgan.”

Morgan climbed down the ladder and went into the salon. The fax was printing out. When it was done she pulled it from the machine and carried it out into the sunlight. Just a single sentence from Jeb Shine. One sentence.

Morgan closed her eyes and stood there a minute just breathing.

When she'd gotten herself together, she climbed up the ladder, took her place beside her father. A. J. glanced at her.

“What is it?”

Morgan shook her head.

“It's from Jeb Shine.”

“Go on.”

“At eight-seventeen this morning, the duplicate pod died. It's gone.”

A. J. flinched. He looked out at the stretch of blue sea, took a long breath, then resumed his watch of the GPS screen. He nudged the throttle forward. Steering the boat one-handed, he sank away again into his bottomless trance.

A while later as the
ByteMe
entered the target zone, A. J. cut the engines back to trolling speed. Down in the cockpit, Johnny lowered the outriggers to their gull-wing position, clipped each line to their tips, and let out the baits, free-spooling each rod until he had the baits where he wanted them, about two hundred eighty yards back, the exact same spacing they'd been using ten years ago when they jumped Big Mother.

He stood there a moment watching as the baits skipped along the flat sea just outside the foamy wake. Ducking into each wave, then coming out the other side. No natural baits for the Braswells, slimy mackerel or tuna, all that cutting open and hiding the hooks and lacing the fish back together. No, they used soft-sided lures with chisel heads, a hydrodynamic design meant to imitate flying fish. Those were on lines one and four, while two and three had purple and black Mega Billfish lures that were supposed to resemble small black fin or skipjack tuna striking at the surface. Same rigging they'd used the day Andy died.

Morgan looked at her father. The old man was staring out at the water, scanning the surface. Willing Big Mother to rise. To show herself one more time.

Down in the cockpit Johnny took a seat in the padded angler's chair. He drew one of his knives from its leather sheath. Then he slid his whetstone from the pocket of his baggies, spit a dot of saliva on it, and began a slow, soft, circular grind of steel against stone.

Ten hours later, on their way back to shore, Morgan handled the boat and her father sat in the fighting chair and stared out at the foamy wake as the daylight died. The ping was quiet now. It might stay quiet forever, or it might switch on again tonight or tomorrow. No way to know.

They'd dragged bait all day, covered every inch of the target zone, and they'd raised nothing, not even a dolphin or sail. A. J. sat motionless, staring out at the last desolate traces of sunlight.

By seven-thirty they were back in the main channel.

Morgan worked the boat across the marina toward their private dock. As she rounded the last turn and their slip came into view, she saw a man in a blue sleeveless T-shirt and yellow shorts standing stiffly at the end of the dock. He had white hair and a potbelly and seemed to be watching their approach.

“Somebody we know?” Johnny reached below the console for a pair of binoculars and popped off the caps.

Morgan squinted through the half light but couldn't make him out.

She picked up the radio and hailed Maurice Black, their security man, one of the two they brought along on these outings. She asked Maurice whom he'd let out on the dock.

“I thought you'd want to see him, Ms. Braswell. It's an older gentleman.”

Morgan held the mike close to her lips.

“We know a lot of older gentlemen, Maurice.”

“I don't know his real name, Miss Morgan,” Maurice said. “But I suspect you might want to meet with him since he says his name is Mr. Arnold Peretti.”

“Fucking-A.” Johnny lowered the binoculars. “He came to us. The old guy on Peretti's boat, he fucking came to us.”

“Well, well.”

“Did I do all right, Ms. Braswell?” Maurice said.

Morgan's grip on the microphone relaxed.

“You did fine, Maurice. Just fine.”

 

Not two minutes after they'd gotten the old man into Johnny's stateroom, gagged him and trussed him up, Roy Givens came clomping down the wooden planks in his white cowboy hat, those red boots, pearl buttons on his green-and-white checked shirt. Blue jeans cut tight to his lanky frame. Just showed up without warning. No hello, just, “It's time to talk.”

Morgan made him a bourbon and water and they sat in the salon chitchatting, waiting until A. J. finally emerged from his stateroom and wandered off to dinner at the resort restaurant.

When he was gone, she swung around and faced the Texan.

“I told you it was next Saturday, the twenty-ninth.”

“I know what you told me, darling,” Roy said. “But some of my associates, they've got a bad case of the heebie-jeebies.”

“About what?”

“Heard you'd gone and lost the item. Put it somewhere and can't find it.”

“Look, I don't have time for this bullshit. You need to get back on your horse and ride on home, Roy.”

Roy was leaning back against the tan leather couch. He spread his arms out across the top cushion. Very relaxed, settling in, going to stay as long as he liked.

Morgan was in her white terry-cloth robe. Her hair wet from the shower.

“You heard wrong, Roy. There's no problem. We're going on as planned. Demo next week, right on schedule.”

“You have the device then, it's in your possession?”

“That's right, we have it, Roy. We have the device.”

“Funny. We heard an old man had it. Some crazy old coot got hold of it and run off and you were chasing after him.”

Morgan sat down on the couch next to Roy. She flicked some lint off the knee of his jeans.

“Where'd you hear that, Roy? A crazy story like that?”

“Business I'm in, you gotta have good sources. And I do, pretty lady, best that money can buy. Police, FBI, we got people everywhere.”

“Get a refund, Roy, because your sources suck. We've got the device and we're going to put on a major show next Saturday, week from tomorrow. Now you get up and drag your carcass on back where you came from and sweet-talk your people. You hear?”

“And the blueprints?”

“Saturday after the show, you'll get everything you need, the complete starter kit. You can go into full-scale production, Roy, just mass-produce the ever-loving shit out of this thing.”

Roy gave Johnny a long look.

“Where can I find me a hat like that, boy? One of them convertible jobs.”

Johnny kept his lips pressed together.

Roy gave him a big smile, then turned back to Morgan.

“See, what it is, little lady, some of my folks are just flat out of patience.”

“Screw them,” Morgan said.

“Well, now, that's one approach, I suppose. But it's an attitude that might just come back to bite you in the ass. 'Cause just between you and me and the fat boy over there, you don't want to get us riled up. My people, we got enough demolitions in our back pockets to blow up…hell, I don't know. Enough to blow up this whole damn island, I'd guess.”