Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6) (15 page)

“So the term ‘boat bum’ is a misnomer? Still, I can see the attraction to the lifestyle. You do this only once a week or so?”

Was he trying to feel out how honest I’d be? He’d already alluded to the fact that he knew my schedule.
Probably even knows how much I paid for fuel
, I thought. No, with all the information that crosses his desk, the daily comings and goings of a part-time transporter wouldn’t be high up in his memory.

“As little as possible,” I replied. “Only because I enjoy being out on the water, more than anything else. I came into some money some time back and do this because I enjoy it. So, I can be very selective about who I take out and who I tell to piss up a rope.”

He laughed and said, “Well, I for one appreciate your selectivity. Those two models are a lot easier on the eyes than any Senate subcommittee member.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “and probably younger than your own kids.”

“Never married, no kids.”

“Really?”

“I was engaged a couple of times, but they couldn’t deal with Army life and I just never had much of a desire to get married.”

I steered due south, knowing the opening in the reef ahead like it was a paved road. When the sonar picked it up slightly to port, I turned the wheel a little and reduced power. Pointing at the sonar display, I said, “The opening in the reef is about forty feet wide and twenty deep, plenty of room for us, but it’s always a good idea to approach narrow passages slowly, in case the tide brought something in and wedged it in the opening.”

Not seeing anything on the 3-D digital display and sweeping the surface with the spotlight, I pushed the throttles back up and we went through the opening into deep water. The truth is, I’d never been able to decide which I liked better. The vastness of the deep blue water on the south side of the islands, or the crystal clear, filtered water percolating into the backcountry of Florida Bay from the Everglades. Each held its own attraction for me.

Passing the thirty-foot line on the plotter, I turned to the west, pulled up G Marker on the GPS memory and selected it. I switched on the autopilot, so the computer would steer a course that would take us straight to G Marker, veering out away from the reef line. On modern nautical charts it’s called Marker 22, having been changed sometime in the early eighties from G Marker, but local fishermen and divers still refer to it by its old name.

“Is that where we’re going?” Travis asked, pointing ahead and slightly north to a green marker light.

“No, that’s Marker 49A. G Marker is a few miles further. The red light.”

“I guess you learn all these things over time?”

“The less time it takes, the better,” I replied. “What you don’t know can get you in trouble fast out here. Reach in that chart locker by your leg and pull out the one marked eleven-four-forty-two.”

Once he’d found the right one and unrolled it across his knees, I switched the overhead from red to white and leaned over toward him. “We’re about here,” I said, pointing to a spot south of the Seven Mile Bridge. “Where we’re going is G Marker, here. It’s the one marked with a twenty-two, due south of Spanish Harbor.”

He looked at the knotmeter, checked the scale on the chart and said, “Less than half an hour?”

“Give or take a few minutes. The client asked for a reef in forty feet of water with low relief. There’s quite a few that fit the bill, but for his level of photography, water clarity is real important, so that narrowed it down to just a few spots.”

“The two women will be modeling underwater? In what? Scuba gear?”

“I don’t have any idea what he’s got in mind. He’s one of those creative types, so it should be a pretty interesting day.”

I heard jazz coming up from the salon and turned the topside speakers up just loud enough to create a pleasant background to the steady swish of the bow wave. I set the radar alarm for two miles and swallowed the last of my coffee. Leaning back, I put my feet up on the dash next to the wheel and clasped my hands behind my head. “If you’re serious about retiring, you can’t find a better place to put everything behind you than right here.”

“Yeah, I’m quickly seeing just what you mean,” Travis said as he took a drink from his coffee mug and looked out over the foredeck at the water. The waning moon was nearing the horizon far ahead of us, causing the surface of the water to sparkle.

“How old are you, Travis?”

“I’ll be fifty-five in July. You?”

“Forty-six come next month,” I replied. “You miss it?”

He looked over at me pensively. “The military? Yeah, all the time.” He turned and looked out to the starboard side as the early morning traffic crossed the Seven Mile Bridge in the distance.

Forty minutes and few words later, we came down off plane, idling slowly across the deeper part of the reef a hundred feet off the marker tower. I switched on the stern-mounted underwater lights and they lit up the water all around us. Peter, Tom and the two models looked down, pointing, and discussed things for a minute, then Peter called up that the spot looked perfect.

Kim took Travis forward, showing him how to release the brake on the anchor chain, and it rattled out of the well, the anchor dropping to the sandy bottom. I reversed the engines, idling backward with the current until Kim signaled that we had enough rode out and set the brake on the winch. Once I felt the heavy Danforth bite into the sand, I gunned the engines, setting it deep, and then shut them down. We were anchored and ready to dive, just as the first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon. Peter and Tom were suited up in lightweight wet suits, and with the cockpit lights now turned on I noticed for the first time that the two women were wearing, of all things, evening gowns.

I helped Travis get his gear together and Kim helped the two divers set theirs up on the four-seat bench I’d had built, which anchored in the fighting chair mount. I was puzzled about the evening wear, but neither Peter nor Tom offered any explanation.

When everyone was suited up and ready, Peter turned to Travis and explained, “Your and Tom’s primary job is to keep the girls on air using your octopus and to move them and their dresses around as I direct you. Just watch for my hand signals.”

“They’re wearing evening gowns underwater?” Travis asked, incredulous.

Peter winked and smiled, saying, “You’ll see.”

Annette and Mitzi each wore long, flowing pastel gowns. Annette’s was strapless, pale blue below the waist with a tight-fitting dark blue bodice, while Mitzi’s was a yellow-and-white number with a plunging neckline, cut very low in the back with a halter strap tied around the back of her neck. Each woman wore matching gloves that almost reached the elbow and carried high-heel shoes.

“An interesting day, you said?” Travis quipped, as Tom did a giant stride entry from the swim platform.

Peter handed Tom the camera equipment and stepped off beside him. Turning, he pulled his mask down around his neck and said, “Hand me the light bar, please.” Kim unstrapped the unwieldy mechanism from the top of the bench and handed it down to him.

To the two women, Peter said, “Wait until we’re on the bottom and set up, then come down with Travis, sharing his second regulator, just like we discussed yesterday.”

Annette and Mitzi stood on the platform with Travis, looking down into the water, and nodded. In a luxury yacht commercial it would look normal, but on a working dive boat, the two fashionably dressed ladies standing beside a diver looked kind of comical. A few minutes after the two divers descended, there was a flash of light from below and Annette said, “They’re ready for us.”

Travis went in first and the two women knelt down and rolled forward head first, entering the water with hardly a ripple, the long gowns flowing up around them as they both somersaulted and came up on either side of him. They moved in the water like they went swimming while fully clothed all the time.

“We’ll each take your arm,” Mitzi said to Travis, taking his left one and treading water. “We’ll trade your second regulator back and forth as we go down. Don’t worry, we’ve both done this a few times and we won’t use much of your air. But you’ll have to guide us to where Peter directs you, since neither of us will be able to see very well.” A moment later, they disappeared below the surface, the chiffon gowns billowing behind them.

“I think I could live here all my life and never see anything stranger,” Kim said.

“Don’t say that,” I replied with a grin. “A stranger thing is always just around the corner down here. Go get the computer set up for editing. I’ll keep an eye on things.”

I went back up to the bridge, where I had a better view, and turned off the underwater lights. Looking down, I could clearly see the three divers, and I couldn’t help thinking that the models in those flowing gowns looked just like giant fly fishing lures. But they both seemed very comfortable in the water, allowing Travis and Tom to move them around in front of the bright light bar, which was attracting quite a few brightly colored reef fish. Soon, the divers swam away and the strobes on the light bar began to flash.

I watched as Tom and Travis moved the women around the reef edge and Peter photographed first one and then the other as they slowly drifted upward in the current. The women were breathing off each diver’s octopus rig between shoots. From above, it looked kind of weird, but Peter’s the artist. The sun was above the horizon now and I poured another cup of coffee from the thermos, sitting back to think about Stockwell’s earlier announcement and plans.

He was right about Deuce. His easygoing manner and his ability to instill confidence in others made him perfect to take over Stockwell’s position as the political liaison between the leadership in Washington and the teams in the field. With the new team being spun up to work out of Key Largo and Deuce presently overseeing their training, no doubt working right alongside them, he’d be in a much better position to know each person’s strengths and weaknesses.

The wild card was Jules. They’d only been married less than a year and she’d only been north of Palm Beach a few times in her life. She’s an island girl who loves the water and she knows the backcountry better than anyone I could think of.
Adapt to life in Washington?
I wondered.

Deuce has had been slowly acclimating to his new lifestyle here in the subtropics himself. They’d bought a Whitby ketch and lived aboard at Rusty’s little marina. Hell, he’d even grown his hair and beard out and was wearing boat shoes. I wasn’t sure if he’d relish being in Washington full-time. But, when it came right down to it, he’d go where he was told and do what was needed of him. He’d probably accept the position. Not out of any desire for advancement. Deuce wasn’t like that. He’d do it out of the realization that he was the logical man for the job and his desire to serve to the best of his ability. Nothing more.

Then there was Stockwell. Was he ready to leave the city life behind or was he just pulling my leg?
No
, I thought,
he’s not the leg-pulling type.
If he felt it necessary to send someone else down here, even himself, he’d just do it and if he said he was retiring and considering living down here, that’s exactly what he was doing. A Colonel’s pension wouldn’t go far, though. Maybe he’d done some wise investing over the years.

After forty minutes under water, the lights on the bottom winked off and the divers slowly surfaced to swap out tanks. Kim had fresh tanks ready and waiting and together we exchanged the empties without the divers even getting out of the water. I checked each one’s depth gauge and none of them had a red line over thirty-five feet, so I reset the maximum depth indicator to zero on all three consoles. A second dive to that depth wouldn’t require a decompression stop, but I suggested they do a safety stop at ten feet after the next one, just in case. Peter and Tom readily agreed.

Thirty minutes after they’d gone back down and Kim had returned to the salon to work on the computer, the urgent beeping of the radar alarm brought me out of my thoughts. It was set to alert me if another boat came within a mile.

My first instinct was to look out to sea, east to west, where any large ships might be coming too close to the reef. Seeing nothing, I checked the radar, which showed a small boat closing fast from the southeast, where the sun was now well above the horizon. Looking that way, I couldn’t make it out in the blinding glare of the sun on the water. The radar showed it to be less than a mile away.

Damned idiots
, I thought. Though I couldn’t see them, they had the sun to their backs, and my boat, with its blue hull, white decks and the big red-and-white diver down flag flying above the roof, should be visible for twice that distance.

I snatched the mic to the marine band radio and hailed them. “Vessel approaching the dive boat
Gaspar’s Revenge
, anchored south of Marker Twenty-Two, I have divers down. Change your course and slow down.”

There was no response, so I repeated the call, checking to make sure I was on the hailing channel. Again, no response. The boat was within a few hundred yards according to the radar, but still invisible in the glare and coming on quickly. They were approaching way too fast and directly out of the sun.
Something’s not right
, I thought as I opened the overhead locker and took out my 9mm Sig Sauer P226 in its clip-on holster. I quickly checked the magazine and chambered a round before slipping it into my waistband at my back and pulling my tee shirt over it.