Deep Blue (6 page)

“Returned, delivered. Yeah, he's back. And you couldn't be more right about the money thing. Sabina—” Tomlinson waited for the girl to look at him, but she didn't.

“How about five dollars?” the girl countered and flung a bony hand in the direction of the stilthouse. “I was rich until Marion interfered. A thousand U.S. dollars; piles too big to carry. Then he made me share with my idiot sister, but what he really did was give it to Mama, because I haven't seen that money since. Now I'm poor and want five dollars.”

“Deal,” Tomlinson said, while the girl talked on in a mix of English and Spanish: “I will call the dog and make him sit. But you'll do all the work and pay for my shampoo. And if he growls when I tie ribbons around his ears, you have to hold his mouth closed. Promise?”

This was asking a little much. “Uhh . . . I should probably speak to your mom before we make any legally binding agreements. Is she around?”

“Marta is none of your business, so stay away from her. You make Mama nervous. When she's nervous, she changes into her new dress or takes a shower.”

“Marta?”

“I'm old enough to call my mother by her name.” Sabina turned an ear to the houseboat, which was old and motorless, but had a fresh coat of blue paint. “Yes . . . showering, like she's doing now. I'm surprised there's water left because Maribel spent an hour primping before her rude friends came with bicycles.”

Maribel was the older sister who shared her mother's beauty but not Sabina's sharp edge.

“Marta gets nervous, huh?” Tomlinson tried to conceal his interest by feigning interest in the bay, where the dog was chasing the shadows of birds that soared above. “I suppose it's only natural she gets a little flustered when a man comes calling. That's probably true no matter who it is. Some tall, handsome hombre, or—”

“Not handsome,” Sabina said. “I'm talking about you. And Marion, of course.” She peeked up at the sun, fought off a sneeze, then looked at the water and made a circular motion. “Round and round and round,” she said. “He's chasing an airplane that he thinks is a fish. That dog is no smarter than certain adults I've met.”

This close to sunset, all the rental boats were in, and the guides would be back soon to fillet sea trout and mackerel and whatever else their clients had iced for dinner. Already a cloud of gulls and terns battled for air supremacy above the docks and the panting dog.

“He's chasing bird shadows,” Tomlinson said, “not airplanes.”

“I'm not a child. I know what a bird is. Perhaps I can teach you.” She pointed at the sky. “Birds flap their wings and have feathers. But
that's
an airplane. See? No feathers.”

Tomlinson shielded his eyes from the sun. It took him a moment to locate an object that flew higher than the gulls, but still low enough to cast a shadow on the water. It wasn't an airplane. It was round and flat, about the size of a coffee table. “I'll be go to hell,” he said. “What the . . . it's a freakin' flying saucer.”

“Stop your swearing,” the girl warned, “and admit you were wrong. It's been flying in circles above our boat for the longest time. What I've been wondering is where they found a pilot small enough to drive such an airplane.”

“Not your boat. It looks like it's hovering over—” Tomlinson
pointed to Figgy, who was still fishing from a canoe midway between the marina and Ford's house. “But that doesn't make sense, so it's probably—” He got his bearings so he wouldn't fall off the dock, then strode toward the object, hands shielding his eyes. “Hey . . . it's a drone. A goddamn drone.”

The girl pirouetted onto the dock, and followed. “It makes no noise,” she said. “That's why only the dog and I saw it. How can an airplane fly without an engine?”

“Damn thing's no toy,” Tomlinson remarked. “It's circling the marina, probably shooting video.” He took another few steps. “Sonuvabitch, yeah. Sending video to some narc hidden around here someplace. Goddamn feds, I bet. They've had their noses on my act for years.”

Sabina's good instincts told her it was a bad time to scold the man again for profanity.

“Unless . . .” Tomlinson was thinking out loud. He thrust his hands out, a signal for the girl to stop. “Whoa. Don't say a word for a second. Just watch.”

Sabina followed the man's gaze and understood. Down the shoreline, partially screened by trees, the back window of Marion Ford's lab opened, but not wide. Ford's face filled the space long enough for him to adjust his glasses, then only his hands were there, a small dark object in one of them.

“What's he doing?”

“Quiet.”

“Is that a . . . ? What's he holding, a flashlight?”

Tomlinson pivoted and shooed the girl away. “We're going back to your houseboat.”

“But I want to see!”

“Call the dog,” he told her. “The dog will stay with you until I talk to Doc and see what's up.” He spoke in a tone Sabina had never heard him use before. Not mean, not bossy, but serious, like one adult speaking to another.

Sabina started to reply when one of the tourists hollered, “Oh my god . . . look at that!”

She turned; Tomlinson turned, too, and they both watched the flying saucer tumble down, down, down until it smacked the water with the sound of sheet metal falling from the sky.

It hit close, very close, to the little Cuban, Figueroa, who, surprised by the sound—or the sudden wake—tumbled backwards out of the canoe.

The dog saw it all, and took off through the water. He cut a beeline wake, only the animal's head and rudder-tail showing until he had crossed forty yards of open bay. By then, the drone had sunk, but Figueroa was still fighting to keep his nose above water.

For a second, it looked like the dog was going to rescue the Cuban. Instead, he ignored Figgy and went after the drone, which had gone under a couple of canoe lengths beyond, where there were bubbles. The dog tilted his butt high and clawed toward the bottom. Three times he dived to search for the thing, spouting water from his nose like a dragon when he resurfaced.

The fourth dive, the dog went down and didn't come up.

“This is bad,” Tomlinson said, kicking off his Birkenstocks.

Down shore, Marion Ford hit the water, and was swimming before his face cleared the surface.

Ford knew the dog was alive, struggling on the bottom, because the surface boiled where he'd gone down. Trouble was, not far away, the Cuban was struggling, too, slapping water the way children do when they can't swim. He was trying to get to the canoe, which had drifted just out of his reach.

Ford knew Tomlinson was behind him, swimming hard but not fast. His pal had too much hair, and those baggy shorts created drag for the elegant windmill strokes of someone who'd participated in water ballet until it got too competitive. He would have to let the dog drown unless he could yell some sense into the Cuban.

Ford yelled in Spanish, “Figgy. Stand up, for christ's sake, it's shallow!”

The Cuban made panicky gurgling sounds and managed the
word
shark
a couple of times, even though the great white was too big to enter Dinkin's Bay, or most other bays in Southwest Florida.

“Goddamn it, take a deep breath . . . use your feet.” To demonstrate, Ford speared his legs down in what was maybe five feet of water, stood for a microsecond, then used the bottom to dolphin forward, almost to the dog. When he looked up, Figgy had done it; was staggering like a drunk in water up to his chest.

Ford eyeballed the spot where the dog had gone under—only remnants of a surface boil left—and did another dolphin dive. He used his hands to feel along the bottom, which was sandy, spiked with sea grasses and tunicates. Visibility was never great in the bay, but it was better in winter, which was the dry season. Even without a mask, he could make out blurry images.

Finally, there was the dog: a black shadow on a plain of gray marl. Ford's hands found fur; got his arms around a bony chest, but the dog's body resisted when he tried to lift. He got his feet under him and used his legs to heft what felt like a great weight, which was mystifying because the dog weighed less than eighty pounds. All bone and muscle, true, but why the hell . . . ?

When he got the animal to the surface, he understood. The dog's collar had looped around something, the landing gear of what looked like an aircraft. The object was not heavy, but wide and round and solid, which had turned it into an anchor.

He yanked the aircraft free and let it sink, then took stock. The dog lay limp with his mouth open, long tongue dangling; eyes closed, and he wasn't breathing. Warm, however, the animal's furred weight, and dense with muscle. He cradled the dog, tilted his head, then squeezed but not so hard that ribs broke. Water and bubbles
vomited from the mouth. He repeated that until there was nothing more to jettison.

“Come on—wake up.” Talking in the stern way of a trainer giving commands while he thumbed open one eye, then the other. No gleam of consciousness looked back.

Ford knew CPR. But on a dog? He tried anyway: mouth and airway appeared to be clear. A bear hug allowed several quick chest compressions . . . then he cupped his hands around the retriever's snout and exhaled mightily.

The furry chest inflated a little, but not much. He checked for a heartbeat. None.

Several times, he repeated the process while the dog sagged in his arms, warm, dense, and still. So close to life, yet not alive. Many a night, that warmth had caused irritation when the dog demanded bed space, particularly on summer nights—a breach of conduct to which Ford provided stern words, but ignored when the lights went out, or the temperature dropped.

He'd lost track of time. How many minutes had gone by? Four . . . six?

More time passed before he finally told himself,
Stop.

As he knew better than most, the demarcation between life and death is a fragile veneer; a thread parted by a single breath. On one side lay the present; on the other the past, irreversible.

“Is he okay?”

With all Tomlinson's splashing, Ford shouldn't have been startled, but he was. “Not breathing.”

“What?”

Ford realized he hadn't actually spoken those words. He'd tried, but they hadn't made it past his lips. “He's, uhh . . . he's not . . . his respiration stopped.”

“Give him to me, I'll do it.”

He thrust out the dog so Tomlinson could take him, then busied himself using his feet to relocate the sunken drone.

Tomlinson was near tears. “Cripes! This is like Batman drowning . . . he couldn't . . .
Damn it.
Wake up, boy, come on now. He'll be okay, Doc, you just wait.” The man was silent for several seconds, then yelled, “Figgy, get your ass over here!” He went silent again.

The Cuban had overtaken the canoe. “This boat is a worthless turd,” he called over. “It won't let me in.”

Tomlinson's Spanish was good enough to say, “Walk the freakin' thing over here, you dumb shit. Get the lead out.”

Ford's toes found the drone. He kept his back to the marina and lifted the thing to the surface, but just for a quick look. It was an expensive, high-tech piece of machinery. No obvious markings. The carapace was carbon fiber. It bristled with eight propellers and the appendages of telemetry. Two . . . no, three mini-camera eyes were mounted on robotic cams, and a cockscomb of antennas along the spine.

The genius of technology, as always, was in the parroting of nature. In this case, a flying crab.

Eight days he'd been away, the last three nothing but butt-busting travel, not one minute of sleep. Now to return to this?

A reasonable way to refocus was to haul the drone ashore and
give it a careful inspection. Where had it come from? Why had a military-grade drone—an unmanned aerial vehicle; UAV—been circling his house?

The problem was, Ford knew the answer and he didn't want anyone—especially Mack or others watching from the docks—to figure out the truth. Someone—an organization or its hireling—had sent an aircraft to monitor his lab. They wanted to know if he was still alive and if he'd made it back to Sanibel.

His eyes moved to the marina, where Mack stood apart from a cluster of tourists. A few locals had been alerted, too. Rhonda and JoAnn, middle-aged women, were on the bow of
Tiger Lilly
, an old, ornate Chris-Craft that was their floating home. Marta Estéban and her daughter Sabina watched from the dock. A couple of other familiar faces were there, too. All friends.

A UAV required a pilot linked via a computer. He focused on the unfamiliar faces, presumably tourists. There were eight . . . no, nine. Young parents with a couple of kids; some mom-and-pop retirees; a fit-looking threesome dressed in stretchy cyclist outfits. A male cyclist and two others: one of them, unmistakably female; the other, no clue.

None carried a briefcase of the sort necessary to house a computer control system. And only the woman cyclist was concerned enough to jog across the deck, where she jumped down among the mangroves to get a closer look.

Maybe she was a UAV hobbyist and it was her aircraft.

Ford hoped this was true.

He kept his back to Tomlinson and tuned out a monologue that oscillated between wild profanities and gentle spiritual negotiation.
By then, the Cuban, Figgy, had gotten involved, saying, “Brother, I don't think you're doing that right unless you're kissing the dog good-bye. You never been to a cockfight?”

The absurdity of this caused Ford to turn. The two men had laid the retriever across the bow of the canoe, Figgy holding the dog's rear while Tomlinson did compressions and blew air into the dog's mouth. His pal looked up long enough to say to Figgy in Spanish, “Do you mind? I'm trying to concentrate here.”

“Just a question, man. I never liked this dog much. He growled and pissed on my foot once. Why you think a dog do that? Trotted up, sniffed, and pissed right on my—”

Tomlinson said, “Hold the damn canoe steady. Check his heart. Do you feel anything?”

Figgy continued talking. “Yes, and me wearing my new shoes.”

“His heart's beating?”

“No. Yes, he pissed on my shoe, so I don't like this dog. But if you trying to breathe life into an animal, brother, you not doing it right. That's why I ask about cockfights. You never been to a cockfight?”

More compressions, another attempt to blow air into the retriever's mouth. Tomlinson, exasperated, said, “If you know something I don't, show me.”

“Ain't no roosters around to show you, man. I'm talking about fighting cocks. I had a bunch one time. They didn't fight worth a damn, so I had to breathe lots of them back to life.”

“You breathed
roosters
back to life.”

The Cuban asked, “What else you gonna do? They too stringy to eat, man.”

“He's all yours,” Tomlinson said and waited to trade places.

Ford had had enough. “Carry him back to shore—but not in front of those kids. Into the mangroves by my place, take him there.” He pretended to kick around with his feet. “That little plane—whatever it was the dog was chasing—I can't find it. So to hell with it.”

Tomlinson gave him an odd look while the Cuban, slogging around to change sides, said, “Okay. But if he bites me, it's your fault.”

Figgy's CPR technique was unorthodox. He clamped the dog's jaws shut and opened his own jaws wide enough to insert half of the dog's snout into his mouth. First time, he damn near gagged. Pulled away, saying, “Dog snot . . .
mierda
, man,” but went right back at it, blowing air while Tomlinson worked the dog's ribs like a bellows.

How long had it been?

Ford wondered about that, irritated with himself. When something of potential importance occurred—a gunshot, a scream, a lightning strike—he automatically looked at his watch. It's the way he was. Not this time. It felt like a lot more than five or six minutes had passed. Add to that the minute or two the dog had been trapped underwater.

If true, further efforts to revive the retriever were futile. Worse, it struck him as a pointless indignity to man or animal—in this case, a dog who, while not spectacularly bright, had possessed quirks that Ford, like most dog owners, found endearing because they either were qualities he lacked in himself, or mirrored strengths that appealed to his own vanity.

“That's enough,” he said finally. “The dog's dead. Don't make more of it than it is.”

The UAV was on its side between his feet. He squatted, pretending to adjust a shoe, and picked it up, but kept it beneath the surface when he started toward shore.

“Marion?” Another odd look from Tomlinson. “You okay? How long has it been since you got any sleep?”

Ford didn't respond. Slogging toward them in a hurry was the woman cyclist in blue-and-gold racing tights, no helmet, chestnut hair tied back. Tall with broad shoulders, and busty enough to give the illusion of narrow hips until the water deepened. Without stopping, she called, “Hey. Hey! Someone said there's a dog out here in trouble.”

No mention of the drone.

“Slide your feet,” Ford called back. “Even if you're wearing shoes, slide your feet. A lot of stingrays on the bottom out here.”

She kept coming, but took longer strides like a skater. “What about the dog?”

“It's too late unless you're a veterinarian. Too late even if you are.”

“I am,” she said. “Are you sure?”

This was unexpected. “You're a vet?”

“My office is in Sarasota, but maybe I can help. Are you sure he's gone?”

Ford floated the UAV drone behind him, even though it was underwater. “No, he's right there. He drowned; got snagged on something and was down too long.”

That struck the woman as insensitive. She stopped and squinted, looking beyond him to the canoe—nearsighted or her contacts
weren't up to the task. “Thank god, the owner hasn't given up,” she said, then abandoned her skating technique, got her knees up, and ran past him. Stumbled only once; kept her balance and covered a lot of ground. An athlete. Soccer or track; possibly, a hurdler.

She didn't hear him respond, “I am the owner.”

Ford watched the woman until the angle threatened to bring the dog's body into view, then turned away.

Where could he hide the UAV? He focused on the problem as he waded toward shore. More people had gathered on the docks, and the fishing guides were back, idling their skiffs, beneath flocking gulls, into the boat basin. Vargas Diemer's yacht was in the channel, too, the Brazilian standing at the flybridge wheel looking svelte, crisp, and confident.

Too many eyes. Ford would have to drop the drone before he got ashore. But it had to be the
right
place. As he knew, if you sink even a sizable object in a small area of water, it's still damn hard to find. Years ago, he'd hopped into a rental boat with Jeth, one of the guides, to test a small outboard. Jeth had failed to tighten the transom bolts; the motor had vibrated off, not far from the dock, in less than six feet of water, yet it had taken them hours to find the damn thing.

Another example was . . .

He stopped. Why was his mind wandering? Strange, the way he felt; a sudden inability to focus that might be caused by days without sleep. On the other hand, it might also be a way of distancing himself from what had just happened to the retriever.