Deep Blue (3 page)

The pavilion was an ideal spot. Better yet, catch the man alone while he was snorkeling the reef that lay midway between the beach and Ford's spotting post hidden by trees.

It didn't happen.

He had been assigned an anonymous assistant; a “facilitator,” housed somewhere on the resort property. By the third day, he or she was getting antsy, too. Via encrypted phone, Ford received a text in Spanish:
Máx is leaving Wednesday,
not Thursday. What now?

Máx, as in Máximo, the maximum bad guy. It was code for the man he had been sent to find. Three days ago, more information had been provided about the videos, including details about the victims and their killer. The man with the ruby-handled knife was a failed actor named David Abdel Cashmere, who'd converted to Islam in 2010 at a Chicago mosque and was considered “homegrown.” It was an important distinction to law enforcement and terrorist organizations.
Homegrown
meant his conversion was so profound, he would do anything, including harm his own country, to advance his cause. He attended training camps for Lashkar-
e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group, and for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—ISIS. By 2013, he had emerged as an occasional spokesman for an al-Qaeda cell in the UK. ISIS came to power at about the same time.

In 2014, the FBI added Cashmere to the Most Wanted list, citing his involvement with a dozen bombings. They included Marriott hotels in Bali and Singapore, and several Christian day care centers in the Middle East—346 children killed.

In 2015, ISIS amped up Cashmere's status by naming him “American Senior Operative and Media Advisor,” but under the name of Máximo al-Amriki. Soon afterward, the group began to release videos of far superior quality to the cell phone variety the group was known for. Beheadings took on a Hollywood polish.

Cashmere, the anonymous assassin, was becoming a star.

No surprise there, but the news about Cashmere's schedule change gave Ford only two more days.

He was sitting, cross-legged, in muck and mosquitoes, across from the beach, binoculars nearby. It was noon; had to be eighty in the shade. He threw back the hood of his bug jacket and jabbed a question into the phone:
What's his afternoon schedule?

His ally, who went by the initials KAT, replied,
Golfing
w/financial backers. Tonight SOP: gets drunk, gambles, gets drunker, hires whores.

SOP stood for “standard operating procedure.” KAT's meaning:
The man was never alone
.

Ford asked,
Tomorrow?

Breakfast meeting; massage; lunch meeting. Booked sunset parasailing; cocktail reception, more whores.

The unnecessary use of the word
whore
suggested either disapproval or contempt. Ford already suspected his ally was female, not that it mattered. He'd never worked with an assigned “facilitator”; didn't trust the concept or the judgment of anyone naïve enough to be involved. For that reason, he had led KAT to believe he was thirty miles north, staying in the touristy village Playa del Carmen, awaiting more intel before showing his face at the resort.

Now this.

The obvious move: wait until Cashmere was drunk, then pay an early-morning visit to his room. He would need a key and a
diversion of some sort . . . And what else? While he considered that, he reread the text. A phrase jumped out:

Booked sunset parasailing . . .

Hmm . . .

Ford mulled that over. All day, every day, a twin-engine boat towed a steady stream of thrill seekers belted to a parachute that soared two or three hundred feet into the air. One solitary person at a time. The boat was out there now, making the same damn boring circle, taking care not to stray too close to the bay, where there were shoals and reefs and thickets of mangrove trees laced into limestone.

Ford typed
Stand by
and picked up the binocs. The boat was the go-fast variety, a yellow V-hull with twin inboard engines built for ocean racing or running cocaine. It would be useless in shallow water.

Aboard was a crew of two, a Mexican driver and a spotter, and several European-looking passengers whose eyes were fixed on the sky. They reminded Ford of happy children flying a kite.

He swung the binoculars and tracked a hundred meters of yellow rope upward to the parachute. It was a massive scarlet umbrella attached by threads and a harness to a miniature person, who, when the binocs were focused, became a laughing blonde in a bikini. Laughing because she'd removed her top to taunt her male companions far below.

Ford lowered the binoculars but continued to observe. He'd been wrong about the boat steering a circle. It followed a triangular
course because of prevailing winds; a steady northeasterly breeze. Steer downwind, even for a minute, the parachute might collapse. Apply too much throttle while steering across the wind, the rope might break.

He got to his feet, ducked through some brush, and exited bayside into quiet sunlight. The water was gelatin green, seldom more than a meter deep, and formed a waxen bond with distant islands and nearby hedgerows of rock and mangroves that separated the bay from deeper water.

No breeze here on the leeward side. At his feet was the spiraled egg casing from a whelk shell, dried and brittle. He returned to his spotting post; waited until the parasail swung to within a few hundred meters, then used segments of the egg casing to gauge the wind. One after another, he tossed segments into the air and watched them flutter to earth like miniature parachutes. With his boot, he marked off a grid. With his index finger, he measured variations of descent. All proportions were rough estimates, but close enough for what he had in mind.

His shoulder pack was a high-tech tactical bag, made by Vertx. In a hidden pocket, next to the Sig Sauer pistol, was the pocket laser. It resembled the gadgets used by college professors but was thicker, heavier, constructed of military-grade aluminum and carbon fiber. More like an LED flashlight, but with a security lock aft because it was to be used only in an emergency. The laser was powerful enough to signal an evacuation chopper, or even a satellite, sixty miles overhead, although it was designed to pinpoint targets for high-flying planes.

But was that all it could do?

Ford flipped up the tiny peep sight, twisted the lock to activate a sizzling green beam, and experimented on a nearby twig . . . then a mangrove root twenty meters away.

“Geezus . . . thing's dangerous,” he muttered, then engaged the lock and hid it away.

Ford sent two messages, one to a man he trusted; another to his facilitator, which read
Must meet tonight.

That evening, KAT, whose lapel pin said her name was Astra, sat within a circle of tiki torches, legs crossed, silky blouse buttoned, waiting for him at the pool bar. All guests wore green wristbands. Hers was black or dark blue. She was an
Ecotour Advisor
, according to the badge over her breast.

Ford, thirty meters away, was hidden by bushes and shadows. They had agreed to meet at eight. It was now eight forty-five. Using binoculars, he watched KAT check and recheck her watch. Watched her drum glossy fingernails on the table. She signaled the waiter and ordered another daiquiri. The bartender poured double strength and served it without making eye contact.

The woman, an exotic-looking brunette, was accustomed to third-world deference and other perks of the ruling class. But she
was not accustomed to being stood up. She opened her purse, retrieved what appeared to be an iPhone but wasn't, and typed a message in Spanish. The satellite phone in Ford's pocket vibrated in response. He read,
You're late. I have a car if you need transport.

Instead of responding, he continued to observe, no longer using the binocs. Between the hotel and patio bar was a courtyard where, on this tropical night, small brown men on ladders wove lighted icicles through the palms, a shimmering umbrella effect. It was a reminder that even here, near the equator, Christmas was only a few weeks away.

Ford changed into tourist garb and hid his bag and swim fins in the bushes while the woman finished her drink. When she left in a huff, he followed. She made two stops before returning to a row of luxury cabanas that overlooked the beach. She was in Cinnamon Cottage—the buildings were named after spices or flowers—and her movements inside the cottage could be tracked by the lights she switched on. When he was convinced she was alone, he responded to her last text in English.

Mission scrubbed.

Through the window, he saw her hurry into the kitchenette, blouse unbuttoned, hair wrapped in a towel, and pick up the phone. Frustration; disapproval. It was in her mannerisms. She used her thumbs to type
Why?

He didn't respond.

She demanded,
On whose authority?

Ford wrote,
End contact,
and powered off his phone. A satellite log, which she might be able to access, would confirm that he could
no longer receive messages. The same satellites would also confirm his location was in Playa del Carmen. He had stashed a little GPS transmitter behind the bumper of a public bus after syncing, then disabling, the GPS in his own phone.

Security cameras were a concern. In his pocket was a night vision monocular, or NVG, the newest incarnation made by American Technologies Network. Generation 4. No more halo glare around lights, and precise resolution. From his hiding spot, he could see details of the woman's face that weren't visible even after cleaning his glasses. Also visible was the until now invisible strobe of an infrared camera in the courtyard. Two more cameras were mounted high atop an inland wing of the hotel.

A wall of jasmine separated the pool bar from the beach. Ford used the cover to move to an unlit shuffleboard court beyond the view of the cameras. From there, he could see the front entrance of the woman's cottage. Giant moths beat themselves against a porch light. Bats carved meteoric shadows; the siren throb of frogs registered in the brain as silence.

KAT stepped out, wearing a white skirt and blouse with sandals, and walked briskly toward the main building, which housed the reception area, shops, and a restaurant. In her rush to leave, she failed to lock the cottage door. Ford slipped inside the room with its ceiling fans. The air smelled of shampoo and wicker. He planted a stickpin transmitter in the bedroom, another in the sitting room, where KAT's laptop was on a table but closed. Next to it was a pad of paper, with the resort's logo, the top sheet blank but veined from previous notes.

He tore off the top sheet, left the cottage, then jogged to catch up.
The woman was just entering the lobby, up the steps through the double doors and past a security guard. A minute later, she reappeared on the terrace of the main bar. Soon she was joined by a tall man, wearing a white dinner jacket, no tie, and wire-rimmed glasses. A wisp of hair was combed across a head that was bald and unusually large.

The guy was a moneyed businessman, Ford guessed, but looked more like a professor from some elite liberal arts college. Twenty years older than KAT, which would have meant nothing under different circumstances, but the timing and contrast set off alarm bells.

There was something familiar about the guy.

He retreated to a safe place and used Gen-4 optics to confirm what his instincts wanted to deny: the man in the dinner jacket bore an uncanny resemblance to a kidnap victim in the videos, an Australian named Shepherd.

Unlikely, but a closer look was required. Twice, he moved to get a better view; used optical contrast and focus to study facial features that are difficult to disguise: earlobes, chin, eye sockets. Without digital analysis, there was no way to be certain, but the guy sure as hell looked like the aging Caucasian who had been dragged, kicking and screaming, to the executioner's knife.

Why would a kidnap victim conspire with terrorists to fake his own death?

Ford let the question go and skipped to something more important. If it was Shepherd, this was a setup and there could be only one reason: days ago, in the lab, he had written, “Victim #3 might still be alive.”

That observation had been shared with only one person. Not that that meant too much. Procedure required the information to
be passed along to at least a few others for analysis. If true, someone on the inside had leaked his notes about the videos. Or . . . their communications had been hacked.

That's what Ford wanted to believe, but, either way, this was serious.

He switched off the NVG monocular. In his career, no assignment had gone exactly as planned. The need to adapt was a Darwinian component that, in his mind, vindicated whatever action was required. If war—or life—were easy, the weak would have been eliminated from the gene pool eons ago. But this was
different
. This was the first assignment that had the feel of an elaborate trap.

The man in the white dinner jacket was laughing, a wineglass in his delicate hands. Ford watched them interact until he was convinced they shared a professional bond and, if they hadn't yet shared a bed, they soon would.

That was a plus. Emotional ties were a potential weakness. The bedroom required an investment of time. People talked. They let their guard down. And the stickpin transmitters he'd planted in the cottage were all but invisible.

He grabbed his bag and slipped away. If KAT and her colleague—or colleagues—hadn't figured out he wasn't in Playa del Carmen, they soon would.

The question was, should he run? Or sidestep the trap and kill the bait?

•   •   •

At ten p.m.,
security lights dimmed when the resort's generators switched to eco mode. Ford headed for the bayside marina,
indifferent to the few vacationers who roamed the docks where yachts and trawlers were moored. His tourist disguise consisted of baggy shorts, sandals, a wristband fashioned from tape, and a golf visor, even though he didn't play golf and hoped he never would. The effect was as expected: security guards and guests ignored him.

Near a boat ramp where Jet Skis and paddleboards were stacked, a sign read

PARASAILING ADVENTURES

CONTACT OUR RECREATION SPECIALISTS!

Ford allowed the sign to lure him closer to the twin-engine go-fast boat that was empty but uncovered, afloat in a sheen of oil. A storage shed was nearby, door ajar: a room crammed with parasails and rope. Atop the mess, rolled into a ball, was the scarlet canopy he'd seen earlier. The parasail's harness, however, was still on the boat, looped over a winch that held several hundred yards of yellow braided nylon.

Ford didn't risk stepping aboard. There were rope samples enough in the shed.

His attention moved to the Jet Skis, then the stack of paddleboards. None of the boards approached the quality of his own favorite, an 11-foot carbon fiber Avanti, but there was a decent touring board hidden off to the side that was probably used by instructors. Ford claimed it with his eyes and did the same with a paddle.

He waited. From the direction of the pool bar came laughter and the tentative notes of a steel drum. A party was getting started.

Good timing.

When the docks emptied, he traded his tourist disguise for khaki shorts and paddled the board to his little dugout, anchored two hundred meters off the beach. He secured the board lengthwise, with barely room to sit.

The
cayuca
had a quiet little two-stroke kicker. A simple crank start, like an old lawn mower's, but powerful enough to rocket him back to camp through the silence of stars.

Behind, in the boat's wake, reggae music thrummed. The resort became a balloon of light that gradually deflated and was soon consumed by nightfall in Quintana Roo.

•   •   •

Ford's base camp
was miles from his spotting post—a cave of buttonwoods and palms up a winding creek where the Maya had quarried limestone.

In the morning, when the sun was high enough, he carried snorkel gear into the creek to an abrupt drop-off and spent half an hour exploring the walls and bottom—uniformly fifteen feet deep, squared like a box. He saw pottery shards and at least one unbroken bowl that, beneath a film of algae, was decorated with designs of deepest azure. It had been a thousand years, perhaps two thousand years, since a human hand had made contact. Tempting, but he left the bowl and pottery shards undisturbed.

What he could not resist was retrieving what had been recorded in KAT's cottage last night. He dialed a thirteen-digit number, entered a code, and stared into the ancient quarry while the data was downloaded onto his phone. Ironic, the contrast in time and place and technology.

KAT had not brought the man in the white dinner jacket home, but she'd made a phone call. Perhaps to him, but maybe not. Ford listened to the one-sided conversation several times. It was only a minute long, but packed an emotional punch.

“Bitch,” he said as he put the phone away. It was a word he seldom used.

Using the broad edge of a pencil, he shaded the sheet from the notepad he'd taken from the woman's cottage. Words began to emerge, amid much doodling, and sketches that might have been self-portraits.

Winslow Shepherd 802

Okay. This was proof. The man in the white dinner jacket was the Australian who'd supposedly been executed.

Pieces were taking shape.

•   •   •

Breakfast:
wild bananas, instant coffee, and military lasagna from a box of MREs. While his jungle hammock and clothes dried in the sun, he experimented with the laser and lengths of rope he'd stolen the night before. What was the maximum distance a six-watt tactical laser would burn nylon? How long would it take?

After that, there was time to rig the paddleboard for an extended trip and hide it. He hoped the board wouldn't be necessary, but success favored those who devised options in advance of need.

The wind was of constant interest. At first light, it had freshened from the northeast, steady and dependable. Far out to sea, though,
perhaps over a coral bank, or some unknown island, clouds of violet threatened rain before the day was done.

A storm would change everything, but it was pointless to fret. Around noon, he puttered to an isolated cenote; a black hole in the Earth sealed beneath luminous turquoise. The water was so clear, he tensed when he nudged the dugout over the lip of the crater, as if gravity would suck him downward.

He felt the same pleasant tension when he slipped over the side and jackknifed toward the bottom, but there was no bottom, only carousels of fish—barracuda, giant pompano, amberjack. They parted with predatory indifference to reveal limestone walls that spiraled into the inner blackness of the Earth.

At twenty feet, Ford latched onto a chunk of rock and gauged its weight before dropping it into the abyss. The rock tumbled in slow motion, with the resonance of skulls colliding, and started a brief landslide.

He looked up and imagined the little boat's anchor hooked to a larger boulder, the bitter end lashed to a dead but buoyant body. How far would the boulder tumble? At what depth, and for how many days, would a man's body dangle in suspension before predators reprocessed protein into fuel?

Adrift at the edge of the cenote was the largest predator thus far. It was a translucent blob the size of a garbage bag rooted to the tide by venomous strands, some of them twenty feet long. To sailors, it was a Portuguese man-of-war, but only a “jellyfish” to those who had not experienced the animal's sting. Each drifting filament was an arsenal of microscopic harpoons. They fired upon contact with living tissue, injecting doses of neurotoxin.

Sea jellies of all types were common here: bell domes and thimble-sized dwarfs called sea lice, because they could slip under a swimsuit and cause a maddening rash. The animals—and they were
animals—
had no head, heart, eyes, brain, or ears; they were seawater-fueled by hunger and light, all highly efficient hunters. Man or beast, if sufficiently entangled, would soon be consumed.