Floodlights lit the water behind the boat, and Flipper broke the surface skipping between two waves, its nose trailing a beard of yellow-green seaweed. Cole pulled it to the boat and shook off the debris. Then, he tossed the long silver magnetometer back into the water. “Okay, Flipper.” He waved both hands back over his shoulders then pointed out to sea mimicking the motions of a dolphin trainer. “Go get me a submarine, boy!”

Theo fed out cable until the coil at his feet was gone. Then he walked over and picked up his tablet off the hatch cover that led down to the engine room. He tapped the screen a couple of times and the RPMs increased on Shadow Chaser’s engine.

“We’re back in business,” he said.

“The alarm’s set?”

“You bet. We float over an old tuna fish can and this baby will chirp a little. But, if we pass over a hunk of iron the size of a submarine, this little magnet’s going to sing for papa.”

Cole knew he should feel tired, but he was running on pure adrenaline. For more than half the night, they’d pounded their way through the heavy seas and thunderstorms off the east coast of Dominica, and he hadn’t slept. But at least he had been able to rest when Theo was on watch. Once they had arrived here at the coordinates that Henri had given them, they had set up their search grid, launched the towed proton magnetometer, and started the long slow tedious business of searching the sea floor. The swells rocked and rolled Shadow Chaser even with the stabilizers. He thought of Riley out in those same seas in her much smaller boat, and once again he had to push down the fear that crawled up the back of his neck. He wished they’d hear from her.

The best way to get his mind off his worries was to stay busy. Cole opened the deck box on the starboard side and lifted out a pair of scuba tanks, a buoyancy compensator, regulator, and mask and fins. He began prepping and testing his gear; he screwed the regulator onto the tanks, checked his gauges, and strapped the dual tanks to the BC.

Theo crossed to another of the many large spools of thick black cable on the aft deck. He uncoiled enough to reach the center of the deck. Right after they arrived on site and started their search grid, he and Theo had used the big boat’s crane to hoist the Enigma out of the hold. The ROV rested in a cradle on its own pallet that they had strapped to the floor of the hold.  Theo attached the cable ends to the little submersible and picked up his tablet again. He began a systems check.

When both men were satisfied that their gear was ready, they leaned against the deck box, arms crossed, and watched the roiling water in their wake.

Cole checked his watch. It read 6:40. The sun should be up, would be up if it weren’t for the huge thunderstorm rolling in from the east. The wind had gone light and shifted to westerly. The noise of the seas and wind subsided for a moment and he heard her.

“Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is the Bonefish.”

“Thank God,” Cole said and he started across the deck to the wheelhouse. He’d only traveled two steps when the alarm squealed.

Theo whooped and Cole heard the engines idle down, then rumble in reverse as Theo tried to slow their forward motion.

“You bring in Flipper,” Cole shouted. “I’ll drop the marker.”

Cole ran to the starboard aft corner and lifted the coil of light line with a small anchor attached to one end and a white buoy on the other. “What’s our depth?” he yelled over the high pitched squeal from the magnetometer’s alarm.

Theo was at the rail on the opposite side of the vessel, pulling in the cable for the Flipper, careful to keep it clear of the vessel’s propeller. “Fifty meters,” he said, his voice breathless from the effort of hauling in the cable as fast as he could.

Cole stood up on the deck box and swung the grappling anchor back and heaved it out away from the big boat.

Theo got the big silver cylinder over the bulwark, dried his hands on his pants, and lifted his laptop. Cole heard the engine shift into neutral as he fed the line out and the anchor sank toward the bottom. The line was one hundred meters long, but a tangle in it could put their marker under water. When he’d fed out all the line, he tossed the buoy into the water.

“Hey Cap,” Theo shouted. “Go answer Riley and tell her the news. That was no soda can!”

“Right!” Cole said. He ran to the wheelhouse and grabbed the mike for the SSB radio. Before he pushed the button on the side of the mike, he glanced up at the color sonar screen. He saw a deeply angled ledge and along the bottom of the screen he watched the number indicating their depth change with every flash — 62 meters, then 66 meters, 71 meters, 79 meters, 82 meters, and then the readings went blank as it moved past the 100 meter depth. Damn thing must be sitting on the edge of a cliff, Cole thought.

“Bonefish, Bonefish, this is Shadow Chaser.” He bounced his right deck shoe on the wood floor boards. Come on, Riley. Wait until you hear this. Okay, okay, where was she? She was just calling them a few minutes ago. But oh, how things had changed in those few minutes. He couldn’t wait to give her the news. “Bonefish, Bonefish, this is Shadow Chaser,” he called again. I know you’re there, Riley. Answer me. He called a third time, but the only answer he got was silence.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

Aboard the Bonefish

March 31, 2008

5:55 a.m.

Riley could see Spyder didn’t really want to shoot. He wanted her to stop making noise. He had to know that the gun would wake up people in the village, including any Gendarmes, and he sure as hell wouldn’t want that. She felt confident she could handle the Brewster brothers alone — even if it was two against one.

“I said drop the knife, bitch!” Spyder yelled.

Riley hadn’t heard Cole’s voice on the radio for several long seconds. She hoped he had abandoned his attempt to reach her.

“Okay, okay” she said. She rested one hand for balance on the dodger next to her and crouched. She set the knife down on the fiberglass deck, and then stood up again.

“Now, turn around and git your ass into that cockpit. But remember, I’m right here with this gun pointed at your back. Don’t try nothing stupid.”

Riley turned, her mind whirring. She would wait until they were below. It would muffle the noise, and she would have more options in that confined space she knew so well. She heard the two men talking in hushed voices behind her as she climbed down and sat on one of the seats.

“Come on. I know you like to watch, Pinky.”

She saw the black boot scrape across the teak-topped coaming as Spyder climbed into the cockpit. Then he sat and swung the gun toward her.

“We ain’t got time for this, Spyder,” the chubby one said from outside the cockpit. He rocked from one foot to the other as he struggled with how to climb over the coaming and duck under the dodger and bimini.

 While he was dawdling, Riley took a closer look at the gun. It looked like a Ruger Mark II target pistol. Twenty-two caliber. One of her buddies used to bring one to the range at Quantico. She knew it well.

“Fuck we ain’t.” Spyder slid down the seat opposite her to make room for his brother, and he smiled his brown, gap-tooth smile at her. “Git down here, bro. We gonna make this bitch tell us where the doc is. That’s all.”

The chubby guy swung a leg into the cockpit, then hit his head on the stainless tubing as he tried to duck under the canvas. “Ow! Shit.” His other foot tripped on the winch, and he collapsed on the cockpit seat.

Now she understood why Spyder had moved so far out of the way.

The strange man acted as though nothing had happened. He sat up and ran his fingers through his white Afro. “I know you Spyder. That ain’t all you got in mind. Don’t screw this up.”