Barracuda (12 page)

“Never mind then. How long for the boat to
arrive?”

“Very soon. Bikini is just about fifteen
kilometers away.”

Micko’s thoughts drifted back into self doubt
about his mental and physical ability. He feared that he might
panic while scuba diving, or his injured leg would be too weak to
endure the rigors of the sport. The detective silently anguished
over these taunting fears.

6

James was caught in a terrible current like a
riptide that swept him away from the passage and the islands. He
knew he was in trouble, and he slowly ascended until he reached the
surface. Then he shot a few blasts of air into his BC vest and
floated like he was wearing a life jacket. He was still being
pulled into the open ocean, but not as fast as he had been when he
was submerged.

The rain was falling heavily, and it severely
diminished his visibility. He spun around on the surface until he
regained his bearings. He could see Enidrik Island and the gateway
back into the lagoon, but he could not see the skiff or the
professor. He figured that he was being swept west but had no idea
what lay in that direction.

James was an experienced diver, so he did not
panic. Panicking was the kiss of death. Instead, he slowly turned
on the surface and searched for land in the direction that he was
being veered. The visibility was too poor to see more than a
quarter of a mile. He decided that he might as well conserve his
energy and just float until Dr. Collins drove the skiff to find
him. In the unlikely event that the professor could not locate him,
he would just float aimlessly until the doctor returned with a
search party. It wouldn’t be hard to locate him. All they had to do
was follow the current.

James remained calm and drank as much of the
rain as he could. He knew he would need to keep hydrated, and if he
had a long wait and caught a chill, he could always urinate into
this dive skin. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to do, but it would warm
him.

Suddenly, Dr. Collins in his scuba gear popped
up in front of James and scared ten years off his life. This was
the last thing he had expected to happen.

“Professor, where the hell is our boat?” James
shouted over the wind.

“It’s gone! It’s gone!”

“How could it be gone? I secured it
tightly.”

“Someone cut the anchor line! Someone cut the
anchor line!”

James took a deep breath. “Relax, Dr. Two-Times,
and let’s work this out.”

He swam close to the professor and secured their
two BC vests so they would float securely together. “Now tell me
about the anchor line being cut,” he said.

“When I saw the current pull you from the rocks,
I knew that getting to the boat was our only hope. I searched
frantically for the line and finally spotted it. It was flapping
like a flag in the current just a few inches off the lagoon bottom.
I swam to it and saw that it was still connected to the anchor, but
the end leading to the skiff was frayed. Nylon rope does not fray
or break! It was cut on purpose. I guess we know what kind of
people would do such a thing.”

“Do you think this has anything to do with the
ledger?” James asked slowly.

“Dead men tell no tales, nor do they report
money laundering,” the doctor returned.

“We are not going to be dead men, but we may be
out here for a while. Fishermen won’t go out in weather like this,
but on the bright side, these tropical storms usually don’t last
long,” James wished aloud.

“I wonder if the fishermen even come out this
far,” Dr. Collins pondered. “They really don’t have any reason to
because the lagoon is chock full of tasty fish.”

James was trying not to think of this too much.
“Both resorts have sport fishing boats, and they must go out beyond
the atoll, but where will they go today? Are they even booked for
today?”

The scientists kept each other calm as the storm
intensified and the sea hammered them with massive waves. Soon the
professor began to show signs of seasickness from the constant
rolling up and down and side to side. James worried that if Dr.
Collins upchucked, he could become severely dehydrated. Fish food
was the unfortunate result of heaving in the water, and James was
afraid of attracting fish to their predicament. Little fish get
eaten by bigger fish, and so on.

***

“Is the Bible safe?” Andrej asked.

“Yes,” Disco answered.

“Were there any complications?’

“No, Boss. It was an easy job. They decided to
dive in that dangerous section between Enidrik Island and the
Aerokoj-Eneman chain. We waited until they dove and left their boat
unattended, and then we pulled up next to the skiff and cut the
anchor line. Nike drove their boat to the mooring line of the
Apogon
and sank it. By the time anyone locates the sunken
skiff, it will be assumed that the men perished in the storm.”

“Where are they now?”

“If the current didn’t bash them to pieces in
the passageway rocks, they were pulled out into the ocean. There’s
nothing out there for a hundred miles, so they won’t survive. If
the sharks don’t get them, the sun will. They won’t last for two
days without water, and there is no boat traffic in that direction.
They’re done for, Boss.”

“The Americans have a saying about Murphy’s
Law,” Andrej warned. “What if they are found alive?”

“Then it was merely an unfortunate accident,”
Disco answered, “and it cannot be traced back to us. They failed to
properly secure their anchor and it pulled free during a terrible
storm. The skiff sank, and they drifted out to sea with the
tide—nature at its worst.”

Andrej liked it. It seemed like a win-win
situation. He no longer had to worry about his head being on the
chopping block for allowing outsiders to see the ledger of illicit
activity. But his equanimity didn’t last long as he had a tremulous
thought. “Did they make any phone calls last night?” he asked in
sudden hysteria. “What if they reported what they had seen?”

Disco called the receptionist, who brought up
the scientist’s rooms on her computer. They had made only one call
to New York, which lasted one hour and seven minutes, she
reported.

Disco looked at Andrej and shrugged. There was
no way of knowing what that conversation had been about.

This was only the beginning of Andrej’s
paranoia.

***

Dr. Collins did get seasick, and the results
attracted many fish; but the remains scattered quickly because the
seas were so rough. It was a roller coaster ride throughout the
night. The men were lifted high into the air before sliding down
the trough of the wave. Another wave would crash over their heads,
and then they would be lifted again and the roller coaster repeated
itself. It was exhausting being continuously battered by the waves.
The professor was so ill, and James was unable to talk reassuringly
to him without getting a lungful of burning salt water. The
situation was grave, but James knew that if they made it through
the night, they would be all right.

The professor was so weak from the reckless
waves that he actually fell asleep in the pounding surf. James kept
Collins’s head above water as he fought to survive for the two of
them, but hunger, thirst, and exhaustion caused him to become
delirious. He kept seeing the dorsal fins of man-eating oceanic
sharks—but that was impossible. Sharks were not so dumb as to ride
such a roller coaster. They were in the calm depths, searching for
food. Nevertheless, James’s hallucination made him believe that he
was floating with the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. His
delusion seemed so real that he actually heard men being attacked
by sharks and shrieking in pain while others were wailing in
hopelessness.

He didn’t know how long his dementia had lasted,
but it passed with the sounds of waves crashing on land. At first,
he thought it was another hallucination, but he finally realized
that they were being pushed toward a land mass. He woke the doctor
and they swam toward the black silhouette, moving with renewed
vigor as they realized that land meant life. The closer they got,
however, the more they recognized that this was nothing more than a
small outcropping in the middle of the ocean; but it was a dry
haven, and they couldn’t afford to be pushed past it.

“Kick, Professor! You must kick or we will be
dragged beyond it!” James commanded.

“It’s Coney Island! Coney Island!” the delirious
scholar proclaimed.

James kicked as hard as he could and pulled the
professor in the direction of the small island. He was nearly spent
as he dragged Dr. Collins onto the small sandy shore, unbuckled
their BC vests, and let the scuba units fall to the ground. Now
that he was more mobile, he pulled the doctor to dry land. Then he
fell in a heap onto his back and stared up into the jet-black
heavens. “No stars tonight,” he muttered before thanking God for
saving them.

Dr. Collins kept repeating, “Coney Island! Coney
Island!”

Rolling over onto his stomach to look at his
deranged friend, James suddenly burst out laughing. This small,
low-lying piece of land had one tree on the far end that, when
silhouetted against the dark sky, resembled the famous parachute
ride at Coney Island Amusement Park.

James hugged his scientist pal and laughed
heartily as the wind and rain buffeted them in the open sand. He
looked for some kind of shelter, but there was just the one tree.
No boulders, hills, or bushes—just the parachute jump.

“C’mon, Professor. Let’s walk to the other end
of Coney Island,” James said with a laugh as he removed the rest of
the doctor’s gear. He dropped his own remaining gear and easily
dragged the doctor to what he could now make out as a palm tree. As
they got closer, James realized with surprise that there was a
small shack directly next to the palm tree. He pushed open the door
to the fishmonger hut and breathed a sigh of relief. It was dry and
warm inside compared to the beating they were taking outside from
the wind and relentless rain that stung their faces. The two fell
in a pile and slept like never before. Word War III would not have
woken them, as the wind outside howled like a thousand whirling
dervishes.

***

A few days had passed since the sinking of the
scientists’ skiff, and Andrej was driving everyone nuts with his
paranoia. He thought the scholars might have notified the F.B.I. in
New York. He speculated whether the new tourists at the Majestic
were cops. He feared that the organization was out for his head,
and he saw assassins sitting on every barstool.

The last straw came when the papers arrived for
a tourist who was to get VIP treatment. The travel agent had
connections, and the VIP tourist was a New York City police
detective. Andrej was in a state of hysteria. He was convinced this
cop was a spy out to gather the goods on him.

“Tanya! Tanya, where the hell are you?”

“I’m right here, Andrej. What’s the matter?”

“I want you to check out this cop who’s coming
tomorrow. Find out if he’s on a missing persons’ case involving the
scientists or if he’s investigating me. Then figure out how we can
get rid of him.”

“Andrej, we can’t off a cop without the law
breathing down our necks,” she cried.

“If he finds out about the Bible or any of our
illegal activities, we are just as good as dead anyway. The
organization will make an example out of us. Besides, scuba diving
in these treacherous waters can be quite dangerous,” Andrej
insisted.

“How will I find out why he’s here?”

“Make some phone calls to our associates in New
York, and have all this cop’s telephone calls monitored.”

***

“Okay, Rambo, let’s go,” Bill ordered.

“First the money,” Rambo answered. He was a
resident Bikinian who owned his own twenty-foot skiff and earned
money as a fisherman and part-time handyman. His real name was
Ramon, but since he fancied wearing bandanas on his forehead, his
friends called him Rambo. He was not quite comfortable with the
peculiar brothers, but he needed the cash. He was a young man with
a wife and two small children, and he recently had to have his
boat’s outboard motor overhauled.

“Here’s the fifty we agreed upon,” Bill
returned. He turned to his brother. “Do you have all your gear
aboard?”

“All set, Billy.”

“All right, Rambo. Take us out to the
Saratoga
, but come about from the east and let the
Lily
I
pass us from a distance,” Bill directed.

Bill and Bob had already informed Steve that
they were tired and would not dive on their last day at the
Majestic. Steve had been silently relieved and took the rest of the
divers on a morning dive on the stern section of the USS
Saratoga
.

Bill’s plan was to wait until the
Lily I
brought the divers back from the
Saratoga
. Then Rambo would
motorboat them to the carrier. The brothers would pry open the
hatchway cover, hide the bandanas, search for artifacts, and then
depart with no one the wiser. Then they would go back, pack their
bags, and get transportation to the Bikini resort to meet the
Renegade Dive Club the next day. There would be no more Steve to
worry about because they would be diving with a completely
different resort. The hatch would already be off, and no one could
stop them from penetrating the wreck.

The ride to the
Saratoga
was quiet. Rambo
nervously scanned the horizon for other boats that might become
aware of their scheme as he drove the boat to the surface mooring
ball and the brothers tied onto it. Bill and Bob were gearing up
when Rambo noticed the mesh goody bag filled with Renegade
bandanas. They were black and white with a scull and crossbones and
the Renegade name printed in red flames. He couldn’t resist
slipping one out of the bag and into his pocket.