Breeders (6 page)

Neil had drifted off to her side, keeping an eye out for the sharks. Alexa waved him over and pointed at the skull. He swam over, peered inside, and cast Alexa a wide-eyed glance. He raised his shoulders as if to say, “What the hell?”

Alexa swallowed; her mouth felt parched from sucking on the dry air.

She swam a couple of feet away then pointed her flashlight over the top of the container, trying to separate the forest from the trees. And then her suspicions were confirmed.
 

The container was filled to the brim with decomposing corpses.

Bruce peered toward the gloomy skies as he heard the distinctive whopping of helicopter blades. A shape appeared; it resembled a tiny wasp on the distant horizon, heading toward them. “You see that?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

Ryan Barnes lifted his binoculars to his eyes. “It’s a Robinson R44, not one of ours.”

“Shit, I hope it’s not a TV crew,” Moolman said with the familiar, worried frown on his brow.

They stood watching as the craft flew toward them. It’s small for a chopper; looks a lot like a dragonfly, Bruce thought. The noise of the blades increased, and it flew over the boat, spraying them with a fine mist before circling back.
 

“Look familiar?” Bruce asked.

Moolman and Barnes shook their heads, cupping their hands over their eyes. The wind from the hovering chopper buffeted the boat, causing it to rock on the water. “It doesn’t have any registration numbers either,” Moolman shouted, puzzled.

Bruce waved at the aircraft. It was painted white and had no identifying numbers at all. The helicopter floated twenty yards above them; then, a hatch opened and something fell out. It plonked into the water ten yards from their boat. A second later, a large explosion rocked the vessel, water spraying onto the deck.
 

“Shit, that was a grenade!” Moolman shouted, holding on to the railing for balance. “Get us out of here.”

The skipper slammed the throttle forward and managed to tear away just in time as another explosion hit the water. “What the . . .?”

“We can’t leave them down there,” Bruce yelled, holding on to his cap.

The skipper kept quiet, a grim expression on his face, peering straight ahead as the craft rocketed over the water.

Eben de Vos pulled himself toward Bruce. “Don’t worry, we have the GPS coordinates,” he shouted over the deafening roar of the boat engine.

Bruce looked back. The chopper was hovering above the water. “Do you have any weapons?” he asked.

“I have my service pistol,” Moolman said and unbuckled his holster.

“Give it to me,” Bruce said, motioning with his hand.

Moolman handed the gun over.
 

Bruce looked at the gun in surprise before he shouted, “Turn around! Stay twenty yards away so they can’t lob any more bombs at us!”

The man nodded then turned the boat in a sweeping circle, doubling back the way he had come.

“Slow down,” Bruce shouted, taking aim.

The engine burbled deeply as they coasted toward the chopper; Bruce fired three shots, and the chopper banked to the side before it lifted up into the sky. The chopper rotated slowly to face them, and the gun barked as Bruce fired two more shots. Two tiny holes appeared in the helicopter’s windshield. It rose higher and swooped over them, making a hasty retreat.

Eben turned to Bruce, gaping as the chopper became a speck on the horizon. “What the hell was that all about?”

Bruce looked around, watching the skies wearily. “I have no idea. But why lob bombs at us if a grenade launcher could have made the job so much easier?”

“Maybe they didn’t come prepared for a gunfight?” Moolman asked.

Bruce chuckled, weighing the tiny Ruger LCP in his hand. “Neither did we. Since when are police officers issued pop guns?”

Moolman shrugged. “I don’t like guns, but they forced me to take one, so I chose the smallest I could find,” he said uncomfortably.

Bruce looked at him in amazement and then at Eben and Barnes. He couldn’t help but chuckle when he saw the astonished looks on the other men’s faces.
 

Jake Petzer removed the pale blue envelope that he had hidden beneath all the crap in his drawer. He felt guilty that he hadn’t told anyone about it yet.
 

“To Jake” had been written on the front of the envelope in Alida’s distinctive, flowing cursive. He lifted it to his nose and took a deep whiff. It smelled of her: lavender and rosemary and the herby scent of the mountain grasses.

He removed the letter, unfolded it, and ceremoniously palmed it flat on his bed. He had read it a thousand times, and he wished he could make himself stop. He had never felt so unhappy in his life; his heart felt broken to pieces, and the tears were never far away. The damn letter wasn’t making it any better.

On the page, in her neat handwriting, she had copied a poem originally written by Ingrid Jonker, a South African poet who killed herself by taking some pills and walking into the ocean.
 

Alida had probably planned to give it to him, but she had left it in her satchel. She had seemed somehow preoccupied the last time they had seen each other. The last time he would ever see her. Ever. He missed her breath on his neck, the way her long eyelashes fluttered whenever she teased him. She had been a goddess. His goddess.

He swallowed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand as he turned the envelope around. Strange characters had been scribbled on the back. The letter had the same strange writing on the back as well.

เราเป็น
1000

He had searched on the Internet for the exact characters and narrowed it down to some crude Asian script. He had to be able to recreate the characters precisely for the translation services to understand, but how could he if he didn’t understand how they were supposed to be written? It was useless. He should have given it to Moolman immediately.

He folded the letter and carefully slid it back into the envelope. He picked up his cell phone and punched in a number. It rang once and went directly to voice mail.

He swallowed and said, “Hello, Inspector, this is Jake Petzer. I don’t know if this has anything to do with Alida’s death, but I have a letter here with some funny inscriptions on it.” His voice sounded unsteady. He cleared his throat. “Maybe you should take a look?”

He disconnected the call and rolled over onto his side. He began to sob. He missed her so much.
 

She was gentle and kind and soft and beautiful. Some of his friends were afraid of her, said she was some sort of a witch, but he had known her better than that. She called it the Gaia philosophy. She believed in being one with nature and protecting Mother Earth, and yes, she would have some weird ceremonies up in the mountain, but she wasn’t evil.
 

She was a good person.

Sometimes too good, he thought. She trusted people too easily. Believed everyone’s bullshit stories. She said that the boys at school used to take advantage of her—told her they loved her, got laid, and moved on. Jake used to have many friends. But they started bragging about sleeping with Alida. He decked three of them. After that, he had only Alida.
 

And he didn’t care that none of them had come to visit him since Alida’s death. They were probably celebrating it. But he knew he had lost his soul mate. No one on earth could ever come close to her intellect and wit. He wondered if he should simply end it all, as Ingrid Jonker had. Pop some pills and walk into the ocean. Then he shook his head and sat up determinedly. No, he would be better than that. He would leave life soon enough to join Alida, but not until he found out the truth.
 

How was Alida killed? And probably more important—
 

Why?

Alexa and Neil hung around at sixteen feet for another ten minutes, allowing the compressed gases they had been breathing in the deeper water to naturally diffuse out of their bloodstreams and tissues. They knew they would need to do another dive in order to extract the bodies, and they wanted to minimize the side effects of breathing compressed oxygen.

Neil glanced at his dive watch and made the OK sign. He pointed his thumb toward the surface. Alexa wanted to get out as soon as possible; the shadowy shapes were still circling far down in the depths below. It had been the creepiest dive she had ever done.
 

She nodded and started inflating her Buoyancy Control jacket. Suddenly, she heard the patrol boat on the surface gun the motor and roar away above their heads, leaving a plume of white foam in its wake. The explosion followed, ramming her with a wall of water and almost ripping her mask off her face.

Neil grabbed her arm, his eyes darting. He pointed toward the surface, but Alexa shook her head. No way, buster. She pointed to her cylinder gauge then grabbed his. They had been submerged for less than thirty minutes; they had ample air left to wait things out. Neil pushed her away and gestured that she should stay put. A burst of bubbles escaped her mouth as she growled, but her angry pleas reverberated in her own ears. Shit. What had happened to the cool, calm, and calculated Neil? He was the one who used to keep her out of harm’s way, who stopped her from blundering into danger like a damned fool. She heard her teeth grind, but she followed him. She couldn’t risk losing him ever again.

As they breached the surface, a cold blast of air stung their faces. The fine spray from the rotor blades blinded her; she popped her regulator back in her mouth to keep from choking on the salty mist. She shielded her mask with a hand. A small chopper hovered six feet above them. Someone hung out of the cockpit on the passenger side, and she saw his arm move as he lobbed something at them. Shit, not again.
 

She pulled Neil down with her as she dove, but he responded a second too late. The blast hit them in the back at a depth of five feet, Neil taking the brunt of the impact. It sounded like someone started tuning an electric guitar underwater, but the tone remained at a screeching pitch, unwavering. She breathed deeply, calming herself, and mercifully the sound subsided to a barely tolerable high D, dipped to a low C, then back up again.

She held Neil by the arm. His body was limp, a large rag doll that slowly rotated onto its back as soon as she released him. Bubbles streamed from his regulator. It was a good sign; he was still breathing. She pulled him toward herself, mounting him and gripping his torso between her legs. She equalized both of them at twelve feet, examining his face as she did so. His eyes were closed and his mask had started filling with blood. Shit, this could be serious. She tried to recall the safety drills they had performed for emergency situations. It had been more than two years ago since Boucher, her dive instructor, had drilled the process into her. Loss of consciousness: Ascend at less than a foot per second while slowly forcing air out of the victim’s lungs with your legs. Bring the diver to the surface. Head trauma: Same drill. Listen, recruit, bring the injured diver to the surface. Shit.
 

She glanced up. The chopper was still there, its hazy outline visible against the grey skies. Shit. She had no choice; she had to get him to the surface.
 

Alexa whipped her head back as she heard the dull roar of a powerful outboard. The patrol boat’s hull sped through the glassy reflection above her, bouncing in and out of the water as it tore its way toward them. The insect-like chopper’s blurry image rose higher before it disappeared. She let out a stream of bubbles and then inflated Neil’s BC to its maximum. Screw emergency protocol.

They broke the surface like a cork exploding from a bottle, Alexa still riding Neil. She started paddling toward the boat, waving and shouting like a mad woman, “Neil’s been injured. Help!”

The patrol boat gurgled to their side, and Alexa swam on her back to the rear of the vessel, dragging Neil between her legs. Eben de Vos pulled the tanks and their jackets up to the deck, and Bruce and Moolman helped heave Neil aboard.

Bruce immediately pulled Neil’s mask from his face, and a thin stream of blood trickled from his nose. “He’s breathing on his own,” Bruce said, supporting Neil’s head on his thigh and securing the chin with his hand as he wiped the blood away. “What the hell happened?”

Alexa kneeled beside Neil. “They were tossing grenades at us.”

Bruce tried to pull the regulator from Neil’s mouth, but Neil had bitten down hard, the muscles in his jaw knotted shut. Bruce slapped his cheeks a couple of times. “Neil, wake up.”

His eyes fluttered.
 

“Wake up, boy!” Bruce shouted and slapped him again, hard.
 

His eyes shot open, darting around in their sockets. Bruce helped Neil sit up, and he spat out the regulator, wiping a thin strand of mucus away from his chin. “Ow. Shit, that hurts,” he said, rubbing the back of his head, his face contorted in pain.

Alexa closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “You scared me,” she said and punched his arm.

“Ow,” he said again, turning to her.

She laughed and hugged him. “C’mon, you’ve got the toughest nut in the business, it couldn’t have hurt that much.”

Neil stood up groggily, holding on to Alexa for support. “Who were they?”