Deep Blue (24 page)

Ford was pondering,
An international hit man who plays Secret Santa on his days off?

Absurd.

The truth would have to wait. He exchanged texts with Dan Futch, and was dialing Tomlinson for the third time when the Brazilian's jet went airborne.

Tomlinson's karmic riddle: There are four passengers on an airplane. Only one is destined to die in a plane crash. So where are the three missing parachutes?

He had created this modern Zen
kōan
to nudge his students toward enlightenment.

His favorite answer:
What is the sound of four asses puckering?

A more thoughtful response was
Karma can be a beauteous circle or a bitch with fangs, but Destiny is not carved in stone.

In a perfect world, he might have been comforted by this concept when the explosion spewed him through the sub's fuselage into the bowels of a late-afternoon sea.

Instead, his last cognitive thought was
Fuck me, Louie . . . this is gonna hurt.

After that, the world turned weird and very, very blurry.

Breathing seawater was better than breathing helium. Tomlinson became weightless as he tumbled toward the bottom . . . or tumbled somewhere. He wasn't sufficiently conscious to decipher direction, or even open his eyes to the glare of celestial light.

Light?

The surface was up there somewhere! He began to claw his way toward it. For sustenance, he inhaled another watery breath.

Light faded. Murk displaced all else even as helium buoyed him up into a golden field of wreckage that included a head of cabbage, Styrofoam, the listing tower of a periscope, and green, helpless bottles of Steinlager beer bobbing nearby. His drooping eyes struggled to assemble order from a tableau that was too damn strange to deal with.

Vomiting, however, was familiar. The same with treading water. He had often done both while stoned or half asleep.

Tomlinson felt sleepy now. He could have drifted off, no problem. That's what he was doing, drifting into sleep, when an unseen force grabbed his hair from behind, yanked hard, and began to drag him across the surface. Painful . . . the sluggish lunging pace was nauseating, yet he didn't have the strength to break free, so he lay back and vomited again.

A voice hollered, “Hey . . . Hey! I need help. There's a paddle over there. Swim to the paddle. There's enough of your boat left to hold us both.
Hurry.
We have to get out of the water.”

Tomlinson gagged and wedged an eyelid open. What he saw against the setting sun was a hallucination: Julian Solo, his shirt burned off, arms bloody, clung to the tip of the periscope not far
away. The tower, which had been leaning, was gone and slowly pulling the periscope down with it.

“Grab one of those beers,” Tomlinson croaked, “and breathe in some saltwater.”

“Shut up . . . Shut up and look at me! There's a paddle over there.” Julian pointed frantically. “Your boat's still floating. Get the paddle and come get me. Please. My sub—my real sub—it's on its way. You'll love it, man. I'll take you anywhere you want.”

“Sure . . . Swim over and we'll talk about it. You ever been to Maui?”

Tomlinson's voice was improving.

“I can't, you idiot. There's a shark and I'm bleeding. Just a minute ago, I saw it over there.” More frantic pointing, which led Tomlinson's eyes a few points south of the sun. He didn't see a shark, but he did see a low-flying aircraft. It was close enough to reveal colors of orange and white, accompanied by a ceiling fan thrum.

“That's a Coast Guard chopper,” he called in reply. “Oh—I get it. You're afraid they're coming to arrest
you
.” Then he winced and said, “Shit, that hurts! Hey . . . let go of my hair.”

A heavy tail smacked him in the face when he turned. It was like being hit with a bullwhip, but the blow levitated him into consciousness.

It was the dog. The dog had towed him to the remains of Ford's monster boat, which had overturned, but its unsinkable inflated tubes were still floating high.

He flipped around, climbed onto one of the tubes, then tried to pull the dog up by the collar. “Damn it, Pete . . . cooperate.”

The dog lunged away with a wild splash and swam toward Julian, who was wrapped around the periscope like a pole dancer at a strip joint. He was screaming, “It's coming . . . It's coming back!”

After a moment to clear his head, Tomlinson called, “Pete doesn't bite. Shallow up, man,” then checked on the chopper. It was cargo-sized, close enough that the propeller blast roiled the Gulf's sunset colors with an escalating roar.

Loud. It was difficult to hear Julian, who was pointing again, but not at the helicopter. “Do something. Watts, goddamn it . . . help me!”

Tomlinson expected to see the missing crewman. Instead, a dorsal fin appeared from out of the sun, black and glistening against a blazing sky. The fin was cruising toward Julian, then angled abruptly toward the dog, which was okay. The massive wake and dorsal were familiar.

“It's not a shark,” Tomlinson hollered, “it's a killer whale.” But just in case, he cupped his hands and added, “Pete . . . Hey, get your crazy butt back here.”

The animal's head pivoted in response, but he kept swimming. The dorsal fin, which had been zigzagging, increased speed on a straight line toward the dog.

Tomlinson got to his feet, ignored the few barnacles on the hull, and triangulated the distance. The whale would intercept the dog before the dog got to Julian. Those three elements were separated by less than thirty yards.

“It's only a killer whale,” he shouted again.

Julian suddenly went silent. The periscope had sunk from his
grip, leaving him alone in the water. He looked blankly at Tomlinson for an instant and mouthed the words,
Help me
—or his plea was lost to the roar of the helicopter that passed low overhead.

At the same instant, the dorsal fin sounded. A giant gray shadow lifted the dog from the water and spun him around. The dog responded by tilting his butt and diving after whatever had bumped him.

“Pete. Pete, you dumbass!”

There was nothing Tomlinson could do but watch from his elevated position as a giant shadow, pursued by the dog, made a graceful turn toward Julian.

To the north, the chopper had also banked. A helmeted man appeared in the door, holding what might have been a rifle. Tomlinson looked up long enough to wave his arms in acknowledgment.

When he turned back, Julian was gone. A second later, the dog surfaced. He spouted a geyser of water from his snout and began to swim a circular search pattern.

Searching was pointless. Below, peering into the shaded depths, Tomlinson could see Julian rocketing downward, helpless against the languid strokes of a massive scimitar tail. In counter-sync, Julian's porcelain face appeared, vanished, and reappeared; a descending beacon dwarfed by the gray tonnage of a predator that was not a whale.

Hello, Dolly!

The Coast Guard chopper zoomed in and hovered. The first thing Tomlinson said when he and the dog were aboard was “This is an emergency—I need to use a phone.”

A phone call to the marina office was signaled by a clattering bell on the wall outside. Mack was headed there anyway on this tropical eve, with the moon already up in a dusk-bright sky. It was Friday, the nineteenth day of Christmas.

He ignored Jeth and Fast Eddie, who were wrestling with a keg of beer. Same with Capt. Hannah, who was socializing with Ransom, Ted Cole, Alex, and some other fishing guides beneath holiday lights. When Marta, the pretty Cuban, called to him, “Where's Sabina?” he only pointed to the office window, where he could see the girl sitting on the counter.

Friday was traditional party night at Dinkin's Bay, but the crowd was bigger than usual because of the season. Mack equated
population with profit. The more people in attendance, the more beer, hats, and T-shirts he would sell.

Even so, he was in a foul mood. Sanibel cops had spooked away business two hours ago when they showed up looking for a bomb in a music box.

“It's another damn hoax,” he'd told them. “Just like the boater who was supposedly attacked by a great white. You didn't hear about that? I was standing by the VHF when it happened and I knew right away it was bullshit.”

The cops had cleared the area anyway; wasted a perfectly good sunset, before opening the marina gates again—money down the drain.

The fancy new sound system was another irritant. It had taken hours to set up—a job he had surrendered, finally, to Figueroa. The little Cuban, although not bright, was a savant when it came to wiring and other jury-rigging skills. Worse, after showering and a change of clothes, Mack had returned to the marina only to realize he'd put Rhonda's boat mate, JoAnn, in charge of music.

It was a stupid oversight on his part.

So far, JoAnn had played nothing but weird, sleep-inducing Gregorian chants, as if intentionally trying to piss off him and his not-so-secret lover.

“Do you think she knows?” Rhonda had asked for the millionth time.

“Are you kidding? I guarantee she'll play
Madame Butterfly
just to make you cry” was his response.

Mack was right. When the soprano's first wistful lyrics began in sync with the clanging phone, he took off for the office. He'd heard
the damn song often enough to know he didn't have long before the heroine launched into a series of high notes that would reduce Rhonda to tears and quite possibly blow out the speakers.

“Excuse me . . . Make way, please.” Mack threaded his way through clusters of people, some of whom were already covering their ears, the volume was so loud. By the time he got to the office, he'd covered his ears, too. “Turn that damn thing down!” he yelled. “Why didn't you answer the phone?”

JoAnn Smallwood was from Old Florida stock, and not a woman to cower. “Answer your own damn phone,” she shot back.

Mack did; put the phone to his ear while Madame Butterfly wailed the first notes of an ascending scale.

He said, “What . . . huh? Hang on a sec.” He covered the phone and glared at JoAnn. “It's Tomlinson. I can't hear him and he sounds upset. Turn that goddamn thing down.”

Sabina, wearing a red felt dress, had sat quietly until then but got involved by demanding in English, “I'm a
children
. Stop swearing, you
pendejos
.”

The girl reached for the volume knob, the old amplifier where it had always been, on a shelf near the cash register. As her fingers made contact, however, the Earth shook, a window imploded, and the little girl screamed.

From a speeding Coast Guard helicopter, ten miles out, Tomlinson saw the explosion—sparks atop a rising plume of smoke.

He lowered the phone.

“Oh my god,” he said.

Dan Futch changed radio frequencies and tapped the screen of the Garmin GPS while saying, “An area thirty-five miles west of Sanibel has been declared a temporary no-fly zone. Same area as the Captiva Blue Hole. I wonder what the feds have going on?” He glanced at Ford, who was flying the plane. “I take it back. Don't tell me a damn thing.”

“When we're on the ground,” Ford said, “I will. Any reception?”

Futch checked his phone. “We might have to climb to pick up a signal. But not now. When we're closer. I want Fort Myers tower to think we're coming out of the Everglades. Because of the no-fly zone, we'll have to make our approach into Dinkin's Bay from the mainland.”

They'd been airborne almost three hours, but, with no tailwind
to boost ground speed, Sanibel was still twenty miles away. To the east was a string of lighted dominoes—condos on Vanderbilt and Bonita Beach. Out the portside window, the moon brightened a December sea.

It was nine-thirty p.m.

A few minutes later, Futch activated an electronic responder and the little Maule climbed to a thousand feet. Sanibel Island appeared in the windscreen, a twinkling scimitar not unlike the ruby-handled knife in Ford's gear bag. The knife and $150,000 in cash, presumably counterfeit, would add to his credibility when—and if—a secret debriefing was scheduled.

Something had gone rotten at the highest levels in D.C. He was certain of that now. He also knew they might decide to kill the messenger rather than risk a messenger who, after speaking the truth, would demand the truth.

That was okay—
they
were predictable. A silence of more than a week or two would tell him much of what he needed to know. If it happened, he would turn the tables and target them—or he would have to find a new home. There was no other way. He would never again put people at risk who were guilty only of being his friends.

Ford touched the mic to speak. “I don't think you ought to stick around after we land. It's not that I don't have room, but—”

Futch silenced him by pointing northeast to where Sanibel was broadened by the expanse of Dinkin's Bay. “Lots of blue lights flashing down there. Looks fairly close to the marina . . . or maybe it's beachside. What do you think?”

The biologist used the windscreen brace to pull himself up for a look. “I've got to get down there.”

“With all those cops?”

“It's the ambulances that worry me,” Ford said. “Put me on the water, get me close. Just like before.”

•   •   •

He exited
through mangroves into the parking lot, thinking,
Where the hell is my boat?

The parking lot was nearly empty, which was also strange, but lights were on at the marina and he could hear static-laced music—Gregorian chants through blown speakers, it sounded like, the volume low.

Nor were there any blue flashing lights. Until then, Ford felt as if he'd been waiting to breathe.

Or maybe it was too soon to be sure.

He threw the gear bag in his truck and jogged to the office, where one shattered glass door was open. He charged inside, expecting to see blood on the walls, but there was none. Nausea transitioned into confusion. He went out the side door toward the docks and nearly collided with Tomlinson, who was coming around the corner with an Igloo filled with ice.

He dropped the cooler. “Doc . . . ?
Doc,
you're alive. Or”—he stepped back—“are you?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“For real?”

“Jesus Christ, stop your babbling.”

Tomlinson threw his arms wide. “That's all the proof I need,
hermano
. Wow, there are times when reality really throws my ass for a loop.”

Ford endured a hug and a flood of questions before pushing away. “Where is everybody?”

“A bomb,” Tomlinson said. “Marion—talk to me. You were shot. I saw it happen, man. That snake Vargas—”

“Vargas isn't as bad as you think,” Ford cut in. He kicked at some broken glass, and scanned the docks, seeing lights on in a few boats but no people. “How many were hurt?”

“Aside from you? Or did the bullet miss? Vargas sure as hell wasn't shooting blanks.”

“Drop it. Geezus, I'm fine,” Ford said, but it took a while to convince his pal. Finally, he grabbed one side of the cooler, waited for Tomlinson to heft the other handle, and they walked toward the parking lot. “Get it over with. Tell me who was killed. How many hospitalized.”

“Nobody.”

“Bullshit. This happened because of me. I know it and you know it. Don't lie.”

“Would you just listen? A bomb, yeah, it blew out Figgy's eardrums, and windows for about a mile—you know, windows that weren't up to code—but that's all. No other injuries that I've heard about.”

“Impossible. It's Friday night, party night. This place had to have been packed.”

“No, it's destiny, man, that's what it is. But only because the bomb went off at Mack's cottages, not here. In the clubhouse. Thank god, the place is built like a bunker; didn't even damage the cottages, except for the windows. Everyone's there now, waiting for the cops to finish doing whatever it is they do. Then it's party time,
so I came back for ice. I've never seen so many unmarked narc cars in my life.”

The feds are already involved,
Ford realized, but listened to Tomlinson explain, “The bomb was in a new sound system that arrived—it's a long story. Anyway, Figgy went outside to reset a breaker and that's what saved him—you know, no power, then he hit the breaker switch. If it wasn't for those concrete walls—” He stopped, a look of sudden wonderment on his face. “Doc . . . Julian's dead. I saw that happen, too, man. Black karma in the form of a great white shark—”

“No more mystic visions. Just tell me. Julian's really dead?”

“Marion . . .
with my own eyes
. It happened when I was anchored over the Captiva Blue Hole. Today, just before sunset.”

“You're sure.”

“Am I ever. A great white, I swear. Julian, pieces of him, are passing through her large intestine as we speak—once a shit, always a shit, you know? But I shouldn't joke. The look on that pathetic loon's face when the shark took him under.
Jesus.
The Coast Guard was shooting video the whole time, if you don't believe me—from a chopper. If I call the station, maybe they'll”—Tomlinson hesitated—“That's the good news. The bad news is, it shows wreckage of your boat, too. Julian blew it up. But Pete's fine, don't worry about him. He's at the cottages with Figgy.”

“Who?”
Ford stared in the direction of Mack's new property. He was thinking about the man he no longer trusted. Maybe the man was there with local police, the FBI and ATF agents, and other agencies that would be hanging around the island for weeks.

“Your dog,” Tomlinson said. “I've been calling him Spaceman 'cause that's where he's from—outer space—not what you're thinking. Hang on a sec.” He wobbled around with the weight of the cooler and pointed to three vague shapes outside the office. “Those plastic cows showed up a week ago. Tonight, he came back dragging that new one. Crazy bastard's been stealing from the Episcopal church on Periwinkle.”

“The dog? Stealing what?”

“One of the Wise Men, obviously. It's sure not Mary, and Joseph wouldn't be jeweled up like a pimp.” Tomlinson steeled himself for the maddening question that came next.

“How stoned are you?”

“I knew it, I knew it. From a
Nativity scene
, dude. Are you sure you're okay?”

No . . . the biologist was not okay. Tomlinson recognized the signs. In Ford, impatience could signal a new project, or anger. But it could also signal a glowering obsession too dark to risk inquiry.

“I've got Mack's Lincoln,” he added in his cheeriest voice. “I'll tell you the rest in the car—one hell of a story it is, too—but first we have to stop for some beer and goodies.” He looked over the Igloo, grinning. “We've got a lot to celebrate tonight. Sweet, huh? All our friends are there primed, ready and waiting.”

Friends.
The word, and the word's obligations, stuck in Ford's consciousness until the cooler was stowed in Mack's car. When the trunk was closed, he started toward his truck. “I'll meet you there. Not right away, so don't mention you saw me.”

“You mean, pretend—”

“I don't want anyone to know.”

“Whoa, I don't like the vibe I'm getting here. At least tell me what's going on.” Tomlinson watched, expecting his pal to look back. He didn't. “Hey . . . Doc . . . ? Marion! Where are you headed? I mean
really
? And, for christ's sake, don't tell me some science gig in Orlando.”

Ford at least chuckled a little at that. “Take care of Pete,” he replied but didn't
stop.