Circle of Bones (52 page)

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.”

Spyder laughed. “I’m gonna be screwing all right, bro.” He looked at her with eyes that shone and pulled down the zipper on the front of his jumpsuit revealing a café-au-lait-colored concave chest with a small scraggly patch of hair between his nipples. “We gonna have us a good time, eh bitch?”

She let her eyes wander ever so slowly down the length of his body, then back up to his face. She held his gaze.

He nodded, his eyes growing brighter. “You like what you see, don’t you? Pinky, get down there inside her boat. Keep an eye on her. I don’t trust her. You let me know if she tries to grab anything down there. She’s tricky.”

The man called Pinky climbed down the steps into the main cabin and walked forward to the mast before he turned around.

“Now it’s your turn,” Spyder said. He waved the gun toward the companionway. “I don’t want to shoot you before we had a chance to party, so you don’t try nothing, hear? I’m right here with this gun.”

Even though it sickened her, Riley was prepared to use whatever tools were at her disposal to get rid of these two. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just take off this rain jacket,” she said. “It’s getting so hot.” She mirrored his action when she pulled down the zipper on her foul weather gear, then she pulled off the sleeves behind her back, thrusting her breasts toward him. She was braless under the damp teeshirt and Spyder wasn’t missing a minute of the show she was putting on for his benefit.

“Hurry up,” he said, his voice growing hoarse. “Git down in the cabin.”

 She gave him time to watch her as she rose and stepped up into the companionway. Her khaki shorts weren’t all that short, but there was still plenty of leg showing. The more she could arouse him, the less his brain would function. Because men always had a size advantage over her, she had learned to lull them into thinking her small stature meant she presented no threat. 

She bent over and peered down into the cabin, then looked back at Spyder over her shoulder. “You’re not going to hurt me are you?” she asked in a small voice.

He sat up straighter and moved his torso toward her as he spoke. “I said git down there.”

She hopped down to the top step, then held the edge of the hatch and swung down into the cabin.

Pinky jumped back like he was afraid she was going to kick him in the nuts, and he almost tripped over the threshold of the doorway to her forward stateroom.

She turned to face Spyder as he came down the steps. He had stripped out of the jumpsuit, and he was wearing threadbare jeans cut off at the knees.

“I’ve been alone on this boat for a long time,” she said, her eyes wandering over his skinny bare chest. “I almost forgot what it was like to have men aboard.” She glanced over her shoulder at Pinky. He was standing directly behind her, watching.

“Don’t pay him no mind,” Spyder said. “Pretend he ain’t there. It’s just you and me.”

“And your gun,” she said.

“What’s that line? You know, from that old movie?”

She leaned back and looked down at the bulge in his jeans. “I can tell that’s not a gun in
your
pocket.” He smiled and she took a step toward him.

“Hey, watch that,” Spyder said, lifting the gun and extending his arm. “Stay back.”

She drew in her breath and froze. “It’s okay,” she said raising her hands in the air. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do,” she said, but she had closed the gap between them by one step.

“Okay, then, take off them shorts.”

She breathed in, held her breath for a few seconds and ran the tip of her tongue around her lips. Then looking down she popped the button and eased the zipper down revealing her suntanned belly and the dark purple nylon of her bikini panties. She eased the khaki shorts past her thighs and all the way down to her calves. She stepped out of them by stepping forward and then tossed the shorts through the doorway into the aft stateroom. The gap between her and Spyder had closed by a few more inches.

“I’ve never undressed with someone pointing a gun at me before,” she said, trying to smile at him. “It’s kind of exciting.”

He waved the gun at her chest. “Now take off your shirt.”

She looked down at his crotch. “I think I should take
your
shorts off first.” She took another step toward him and now the barrel of the gun was no more then ten inches from her breastbone. 

“Bitch, you gonna git naked and do everything I tell you to do – but don’t do nothin’ stupid,” he said.

She kept her eyes on his and thought that this whole idea might turn out to be one of the stupidest things she’d ever done, but she knew she had to get close enough to get control of the gun. “You’re the one with his finger on the trigger. Seems to me I should be the one worrying.” She took another step forward and brushed the fingers of her right hand across the front of his jeans. 

He moaned and his eyes rolled out of focus.

She raised her left hand and let it rest on his right shoulder at the same time her fingers danced up and unbuttoned the top button of his jeans. As she lowered the zipper with her right hand, her left hand slid down his right arm. Riley could tell from his breathing which hand he was focusing on. When her right hand reached his wrist, she made her move.

It was only a matter of seconds, but to Riley, it seemed that the world had slowed and the three of them moved like dancers through that small space in her cabin. Riley thrust her left hand down over his gun hand at the exact same instant she pivoted her right shoulder backwards, around and away from the front of the barrel so that in an instant she was standing next to him, no longer between the two men.

Spyder’s surprise at her movement caused his reflexes to pull the trigger, but because his reactions were slowed by her distractions, she was out of the way when the gun went off. It sounded as though the pop of the gunshot and Pinky’s high-pitched scream occurred at exactly the same moment. The pudgy man, who had been standing behind her, crumpled to the floor, both hands gripping his left knee, a red stain growing on his white pants. She heard Spyder cry out his brother’s name, but without stopping the fluid movement she had started, Riley guided the forward momentum of Spyder’s gun hand down, then she bent his wrist around in an upward curve until the barrel pointed at the man’s own chin. He was still screaming and struggling to get the gun away from his head when it went off. Riley let go of his hand and jumped back in surprise. 

There was a second of silence after the shot, then Pinky screamed “
Spyder!
” when his brother toppled sideways against the door to the aft head. The man’s eyes were open, but unseeing. His mouth continued to open and close like that of a gaffed fish gasping for air on deck. Blood seeped from the ragged hole in the soft tissue under his chin and trickled from the corner of his mouth, but she saw no evidence of an exit wound. In straining to get his hand free, Spyder had pulled the trigger himself.