Barracuda (9 page)

“The larger the fish, the stranger they act,” he
stated. “Some have extra fins, eyes, and teeth. I saw some very
strange angelfish. Usually, angelfish eat coral with their little
beaks and don’t get much bigger than two feet. One day, a fisherman
came running back to the dock with a nasty wound to his hand. He
had been out net fishing with his sons, and while he was removing
all of his fish he was bitten by a giant angelfish. He said the
beak was sharp and twisted, bigger than he had ever seen. It must
have been, too, because the beast tore off two of the man’s fingers
and half of his palm. His sons set out the fish on the pier for
everyone to see.”

“Had you ever seen anything like it?” James
asked, fascinated.

Celestial answered. “Things changed in Bikini
Atoll from all those nuclear bombs so many years ago.”

James couldn’t dispute this simple man’s
deduction.

“I can’t charter my boat for another day,”
Celestial told him. “I’m changing a fuel pump in the morning and it
will probably take all day. Besides, there has been news of a storm
for early afternoon, and the shark graveyard is about twenty
kilometers from the dock. We’ll have to wait.”

The seafarers said goodnight, and James walked
back to the hotel as Celestial drank rum on his boat. Halfway to
the hotel, he ran into Tanya. It was an accidental meeting, but
Tanya was always an opportunist.

She was dressed in a pink, pastel dress that
enhanced her sexy curves.

“I guess our dark dock doesn’t scare you at
night,” she said, in her most seductive voice.

“It’s beautiful down there,” he countered.

“Wait until the full moon. Then it lights up
like a Christmas tree with all the fish scales sparkling and the
moon beams reflecting off the water.”

“I can’t wait.” He smiled. James was falling
under her spell.

“Mmmm…it’s getting chilly. How about buying a
gal a drink?” she purred.

“How about a rain check? We’re doing an early
dive tomorrow to beat the inclement weather.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said with a
wink.

James walked back to his room, fantasizing about
Tanya until Dr. Collins snapped at him.

“Where have you been?”

James spent the next hour talking about his
conversation with Celestial. Tanya spent the next hour plotting
with Andrej.

***

“Can’t you move any faster, James? We don’t have
time to spare,” Dr. Collins lamented.

“I could go much faster if you would carry some
of this stuff,” James returned.

“You know I’m busy on the computer checking the
satellite links. I want to get out to the passageway and check on
the video equipment before the storm arrives. We will have to leave
it on continuous play while we investigate this shark cemetery. We
can always download the information later. Please hurry.”

James hustled the gear to the skiff while the
professor made the final computer adjustments. They weren’t taking
all the gear they normally carried since this would be a short dive
to calibrate the video camera and the piggyback transmitter. The
sun was barely above the horizon when the duo departed the dock.
Morose eyes followed their every move.

James powered the small boat to the beacon
mooring ball, and dropped anchor. The water was the roughest it had
been thus far, and a light rain was spraying them with a cool mist.
It took James a few minutes to tightly secure the anchor. He was
careful to make sure that it would hold in case the sea really got
rough. The tide was exiting the atoll, making the water behave
angrily. By the time the pair was suited up to dive, the waves were
rolling past and the small boat was bouncing in the froth.

“I think we should abort the dive, Professor,”
James yelled over the wind.

“We can get this done in less than five minutes,
James, so let’s stop lollygagging and go,” the doctor
countered.

With that, the scientists dropped over the side
of the skiff and raced down to the video equipment. As the
professor had claimed, the job was completed in less than five
minutes, but they had difficulty maintaining their position
underwater. The current was racing out toward the ocean at the rate
of about eight knots. The interior of the lagoon was protected, but
the passageway felt like the turbulence of a toilet bowl being
flushed.

With the job accomplished, Dr. Collins gave the
thumbs-up signal to James, indicating that it was time to ascend to
the boat. The current was ripping so fast that the divers could not
do a free ascent. They had to search for the anchor line and pull
their way up to the boat lest they be washed out into the open
ocean. Dr. Collins used a hand signal to James, indicating a
question:
Where is the anchor line?
The pair looked above
and then to the left and right. The two were on the bottom holding
their ground by clinging to rocks protruding from the gateway wall.
James let go for a second to do a pirouette so he could look in all
directions. The unforgiving current grabbed him and pulled him
through the passage and out into the open ocean.

***

“This is good. Right here,” Disco yelled to his
comrade, Nikolaij. Disco’s real name was Vladimir Zhivilo, but he
got his nickname from working as a bouncer in a disco. His friend
was called Nike because of his preference for the sneakers.

“Rock the boat until sinks,” Disco ordered.

Nike complied, and the small skiff sank like a
rock over the resting place of the U.S. Submarine
Apogon
.
The sandy bottom was at 175 fsw. The skiff landed stern down and
settled peacefully into the depth.

“Get in and have a little vodka, Nike,” Disco
joked.

Nike was bobbing in the water, and the larger
skiff that Disco piloted was rolling in the windy lagoon. Once he
scrambled aboard, Disco handed Nike a bottle and he drank
deeply.

“Good job, comrade. Let’s get back before anyone
is awake.”

5

This was Micko’s first time flying first class,
and he loved it. The seats were much larger and more comfortable.
The flight attendants were very attentive and friendly. He was
still a bit groggy since he had gotten up so early, so he decided
to take a short nap. The nap lasted three hours.

“Detective O’Shaughnessy, would you like some
breakfast?”

Startled, Micko looked up to see a rather tall
but pretty stewardess addressing him. Her nametag read “Ruth.”

“Sure. What do you have?”

“Scrambled eggs with either bacon or sausage, or
some nice Eggs Benedict.”

That wasn’t a difficult decision. “Eggs
Benedict, please.”

“Coffee or tea?”

“Tea, please. Plain.”
This sure beats that
overbearing Miss Maple
, he mused to himself while enjoying his
meal. He guessed he would really owe Sharon big time. Now there
were two sisters for whom he would have to buy souvenirs.

Micko glanced out the window and saw that it was
a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day. He was in the window seat as
promised, and the seat next to him was vacant except for his
knapsack. Micko decided to read through some of the material he had
on his vacation. There were still many questions he had about this
once radioactive atoll, and he also had a few misgivings about
being present for a hotel’s grand opening, hoping only for the
anonymity that had thus far eluded him. He was enjoying all the
attention on his flight, but he wanted a quiet vacation where
nobody knew who he was.

Micko was still troubled about his loss of
confidence since the shooting. He was normally a very easygoing guy
with many close friends, but this fear was consuming him. So far he
had not let anyone else know how he felt, except his psychiatrist.
He had recurring nightmares about being paralyzed with fear when
dangerous situations arose at work. Police work was always
dangerous. How would he be able to protect himself or his partner
with this insane fear? He silently prayed to God that this exciting
adventure would cure him of those demons.

To clear his head of negative thoughts, Micko
read the reports that Carley had downloaded from the Internet.
There were plenty of surveys and reports regarding
rads
and
other radioactive terms that were like Greek to him, so he just
scanned through them. The bottom line was that these reports stated
that the Marshall Islands were safe. He put those reports aside and
pulled out more reading material about the history of the
Bikinians.

There were 196 Bikinians in 1946 before they
were moved to various other islands in the Marshall Islands chain.
The current home of the Bikinians was Kili Island, about four
hundred and twenty-five miles south of Bikini. In the early years
of the twenty-first century, there had been almost four thousand
Bikinians, most still living away from Bikini Atoll. The total land
area of Bikini Atoll was just 3.4 square miles.

Micko now knew he was traveling during the best
time of the year for scuba diving. He was amazed at how small the
island and atoll really were, yet two of the best shipwrecks in the
world lay in this atoll. The Japanese Battleship Nagota lay in a
watery grave one hundred eighty feet below the surface. This was
the infamous ship from where Admiral Yamamoto directed his attack
on Pearl Harbor. And the USS
Saratoga
was the only dive-able
aircraft carrier in the world. Its final resting place was also one
hundred and eighty feet below. These two wrecks alone constituted
the scuba experience of a lifetime.

Micko felt his confidence level rising as he
truly anticipated these world-class dives. He put all the papers
down for a moment, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes. He
needed a little time to retain all this information. Soon he
drifted back in time to his scuba training days.

He and Gus had been partners in a busy South
Bronx detective squad. They had just finished up the tedious
paperwork on a couple of recent homicides when Gus lamented, “We
need a hobby.”

Micko fondly recalled how they had gone into the
scuba store and met the shop owner, Mike Carew. After accepting the
school’s brochure, the detectives went off on another case, but
they talked incessantly about scuba diving for weeks until one
morning when Gus came into work and proudly announced, “Micko, I
did it! I enrolled in the scuba course and I begin this week.”

When Gus completed the course and obtained his
scuba license, Micko repeated Gus’s routine and also received his
diving license. The two had made the first step to doing some
serious diving.

Ruth noticed Micko grinning with his eyes closed
and thought he was fast asleep again. She had been instructed to
pamper him, but thought it best to let him rest.

***

Later Ruth noticed that Micko was wide awake
again and reading scuba diving brochures. As she approached him he
looked up. “Are you in the NYPD Scuba Unit?” she inquired.

“No, I dive as a hobby and for excitement,” he
replied.

“Are you going to dive in Hawaii?”

“No, I’m going to drink and raise Cain in
Hawaii. Then I’m on my way to the Marshall Islands.”

“The Marshall Islands? Why are you going
there?”

“Well, it’s got some of the best virgin diving
around since no one has been able to dive there for more than fifty
years. Plus, it offers some of the best shipwrecks in the world all
located in a single lagoon.” He smiled warmly at Ruth for being
nice enough to show interest in him and his hobby. Most non-divers
yawned with boredom whenever a diver tried to explain the great
attraction of swimming in the silent world among our finny
friends.

Another passenger called out to Ruth and asked
for some water, and she smiled at Micko before returning to her
duties.

Micko continued studying the array of material
for his vacation until the plane touched down in Los Angeles for
refueling. Micko just carried his material to a seat in the lobby
until the jet was ready to continue to Hawaii.

Engrossed in his reading, the flight across the
Pacific seemed quick. Before he knew it, the plane was touching
down in Honolulu. Ruth had pampered him with food, pillows,
blankets, peanuts, and soda for the entire flight. Micko graciously
thanked the tall stewardess for her kindness as he exited the
jet.

Retrieving his luggage was a snap, and Micko
only waited ten minutes for the shuttle bus to drive him to his
hotel. Sharon had booked him into the Sunset Hotel located two
blocks off the beach. His cost was just seventy-nine dollars per
night for a rather nice room with a king-sized bed. He had to stay
two nights before the Island Hopper flight would fly him to Majuro.
If he’d stayed in a brand-named hotel on the beach, his cost would
have been tripled.

The driver of the shuttle bus carried Micko’s
luggage to the front desk and was rewarded with a five-dollar bill.
Micko handed the desk clerk his reservation and the clerk
smiled.

“Hello, Officer.”

“Does everyone know who I am?” Micko
complained.

“Yes, we do,” he answered with a flamboyant wave
of his hand.

Noticing the clerk’s nameplate, Micko requested,
“All right, Carmine, try to keep this quiet, okay?”

“Sure, Officer. Would you like to schedule a
massage for your leg? Jesse is our on-site masseuse.”

“Is Jesse male or female?”

“Oh, Jesse is all male, I can assure you,”
Carmine answered with a wicked smile.

“Well, Carmine, anyone who touches my leg must
have hooters, not a Johnson.”

Carmine cast a disapproving look toward the
ceiling and rang for a bellboy, who carried Micko’s suitcase and
dive bag to room number thirty-seven. The room was spacious enough
with the normal, trivial hotel room amenities.

Once he got settled in his room, Micko decided
to do some sightseeing. He had rested enough on the plane, so he
wasn’t tired. The hotel lobby had a tour desk nestled in the far
corner with a large selection of tour booklets. A pimple-faced
college boy sat inattentively behind the desk as Micko perused the
pamphlets. He was attracted to a tour of Honolulu that included a
trip to the USS Arizona Memorial.