Deep Blue (4 page)

In the afternoon, Ford dozed, or tried to, with the bug jacket pulled to his knees, hood drawn with only his nose protruding. Heat was a vaporous weight. It herded insects into the shade, so he zipped himself into his jungle hammock. His fear of being without reading material bordered on phobia. He had allowed himself only one sodden paperback,
Sea of Cortez
, by John Steinbeck. When he skipped to the part about biologist Ed Ricketts, a swatch of onionskin paper dropped free. Unfolded, he saw that it was a page written by his boat mystic pal, Tomlinson, who, apparently, had used it as a bookmarker. The man's elegant nineteenth-century penmanship was unmistakable.

What a goofball,
Ford thought. The page was from the original manuscript of Tomlinson's best-known book,
One
Fathom Above Sea Level
. The book had earned his pal an international following and a limitless supply of fawning devotees, many of them the bespectacled, pottery-throwing Berkeley types who were prone to sunburn yet seldom wore bras.

Ford had time on his hands. It wasn't his kind of book—he'd tried to wade through it before—but, what the hell?

He read:

My inner voice tells me I have no worth beyond the kindness I show strangers. It claims I make clown faces, and have no power to escape the puppeteer's strings.

Bullshit. The truth is this: my inner voice lies to me. The same is true if yours whispers that you are not worthy of happiness, or sufficiently attractive, or smart enough, or lack the strength to live without fear.

All lies.

Deep in the brain is a coward's crevice that values safety above all else. Why try? Why bother? Why risk any small success if failure is guaranteed?

Our silent voices are more trustworthy guides—bell note sounds that favor action over inactivity, and a life fully lived rather than a life of gray complacency.

How do I know this? Three weeks in an insane asylum have erased all the murky lines regarding life, death, shit, and Shinola. Thus I take rubber pencil in hand . . .

Enough. Ford slapped a mosquito; yawned while refolding the page and stored it in a hammock pocket provided for personal items. Another high-tech anomaly in this ancient place was googling the name Winslow Shepherd.

There was much to learn.

He broke camp long before sunset and policed the area until he was certain no modern spoor was left behind.

The little motorized boat—or the stolen paddleboard—would be his last base camp before he fled Mexico.

Without a hood, the man identified as David Abdel Cashmere had the face of a bird; delicate, predatory, and vaguely reptilian, eyes framed by black hair. Surfing shorts, and shirtless, too, contrary to religious tenets, yet his pale ears signaled a devotion to modesty. In his adopted home of Indonesia, he would have worn a cap beneath a prayer scarf, a keffiyeh.

Quite a change for a failed actor from Chicago who had killed children with bombs and cut off human heads.

Yesterday, KAT had sent several candid snapshots for Ford to study. It was the same man, but was it the
right
man? This guy looked bigger, stronger, than in the videos. Maybe a substitute target was part of the setup, too.

Ford steadied the binoculars and messed with the focus. He was
looking into the sun; glare blurred details. Aboard the towboat, the same Mexican crew was strapping the suspected assassin into a parachute harness. Also aboard were three Asian men, probably Chinese. This made sense if Cashmere and his group were here to secure funding. For decades, China had been quietly buying property—and loyalty—in third-world countries while the other major powers squabbled nose to nose.

Arming terrorists would be a solid investment in China's future.

With the Chicagoan, or whoever it was, kneeling on the launch deck, the boat idled into the wind. Ford focused on the boat's captain while the captain focused on the weather. Miles away, the squall, after building all afternoon, had grounded itself to the ocean with tentacles of rain. In high cumulus towers, lightning popped in silence. A slow, freshening wind rumbled ashore with the scent of tropic rain.

Ford knew what the captain was thinking: ocean squalls can linger for hours, then sprint landward. If you can see lightning, it can kill you. The trip should be canceled, but that would mean no pay, no tips. The captain probably had a family to support, and his boss would be pissed. Might even fire him for doing what was right instead of returning with smiling clients and a chunk of cash for the resort.

Ford empathized with the guy. He swung the binocs to the Asians, none of whom were smiling, nor did they appear aware of the squall. They were busy snapping photos of a jungle sunset, a ginger backdrop infused with jade. There was the illusion of osmosis; a siphoning of light. Slowly, the bay separating Ford from the resort was filled with a phosphorescent glow while the Earth darkened.

He scanned the beach, where a few vacationers, mostly couples, strolled. Nearby, he suspected, KAT and Winslow Shepherd were also watching. Perhaps with other confederates, but where and how many?

Down the shoreline, a rock jetty led into the harbor. Three men on Jet Skis were there in a tight little pod. Not moving, just sitting, as if enjoying the sunset. But they weren't there for the scenery. Their attention darted from the go-fast boat to the string of islands that separated the deep water from the bay where Ford waited. Serious, their manner, if not their expressions. The distance was too great for detail.

He let the binocs hang and cleaned his glasses. It was too late in the day for tourists to be on rental Jet Skis. Hell . . . it was too late in the day for parasailing, for that matter. Not with a squall building.

They're baiting me,
he thought.
Or they want David Cashmere for themselves.

He argued it back and forth. In any environment where there's a potential for danger, instinct is a more reliable guardian than intellect. If something doesn't feel right, it's not right. Ford knew this was true . . . sometimes, at least. Yet, he distrusted any behavior driven by emotion, and his uneasiness bore striking similarities to fear.

Vanity played a role, too. Last night, before midnight, KAT had told someone on the phone: “Mission scrubbed—you believe that? Whoever they sent is just another old-world hack; a dinosaur without a clue how things have changed. So”—the woman's laughter was irksome—“we'll just keep on keepin' on. His type is always so predictable.”

Ford thought,
We will see.

He focused the binocs on the man in the chute harness, who was still on the launch platform, a tad wobbly in the gusting wind, even with the mate helping to steady him.

A decision had to be made. Was the man actually the killer or some innocent bastard being served up as a target?

The captain gave a sudden thumbs-up and hit the throttle. The parasail blossomed huge over the boat and swept the man upward in a graceful arc. Ford didn't hear the familiar warbling cry, but he saw it: David Abdel Cashmere, mouth open, sailed high into the sky with his tongue fluttering.

In the video, the assassin had done the same while lofting a severed head.

Ford shouldered the bag and bulled through the mangroves to his boat, where he stopped long enough to cup his ears and listen. Wind freshened in gusts; mangrove leaves clattered, while, offshore, the squall rumbled.

No noisy Jet Skis, though.

He motored three hundred yards downwind to an island he had chosen earlier and dragged the
cayuca
out of sight.

•   •   •

From this new vantage point,
he couldn't see the resort, or the beach, or even the towboat. But the parasail was there; a scarlet blossom in the twilight sky, high above the trees where Ford waited, the Vertx tactical bag at his feet.

A tree provided a leaning post. He braced the laser, snapped open the peep sight, and found the dangling appendage that was
the Chicagoan-turned-terrorist. The rope linking Cashmere to the boat was a gray thread on a gray-green sky. Even at this distance, almost a quarter mile, the laser's beam would have permanently blinded the man if it swept across his eyes.

That was an option.

Ford lowered the laser and looked at the ground to confirm the weapon he'd selected was there. It was a twelve-inch sliver of wood from a black mangrove or lignum vitae tree that had been crystalized by salt and sunlight. No coroner would question how it had punctured the brain of a man who'd fallen from the sky.

Ford, wearing gloves, secured the stake in his belt and used the binoculars.

The parasail was still laboring into the wind. He could tell by the angle. It moved toward the squall clouds that sailed landward; black towers fulminant with rain and the day's last green light. After several seconds, lightning popped. Cashmere, in his harness, saw it, or maybe heard a sudden sizzle that spun his head around. Long seconds later, the thunder reached Ford, who took pleasure in the man's scared-shitless reaction. The failed actor began a frantic waving, motioning for the captain to bring him down.

Ford retrieved the laser and got ready.

The parasail appeared to pause. It tilted briefly, lost altitude as if threatening to collapse, then ballooned round and taut. This indicated the towboat had turned and would soon cross abeam the wind like a sailboat on a long reach.

The captain was preparing to reel in his client. First, he would have to circle into the wind and gradually slow while the boat's mate
did the grunt work. It was a process that required several careful minutes because running across the wind put a tremendous strain on the chute's tackle.

Ford released the laser's safety lock, pressed the activation switch, and used the tree to steady his aim. Instantly, he was linked to the parasail by a needle-thin beam of light that was the same luminous green as the sky. A Star Wars character with an infinity sword—that image came into his mind.

Using tiny sawing strokes, he painted an area midway between Cashmere's feet and the water below. Even with the peep sight, there was no chance of cutting the rope. Ford was well aware of this fact. That's why he had packed to leave in advance. But if he got lucky, if the megawatt laser melted only a few nylon strands, then the combined force of wind and engine torque might do the rest. If the laser failed, nothing was lost. He would retreat unnoticed, undiscovered, and, hopefully, allowed to pursue terrorist converts—and KAT—another day.

But it happened. One instant, the parasail was aloft . . . the next instant, it was a deflating balloon that spiraled crazily toward the peep sight while Ford's eyes widened in surprise.

Holy shit.

He grabbed his bag and started through the mangroves toward where he guessed the parasail might impact. Foliage blocked his view, but the escalating sound of slapping canvas and Cashmere's screams kept him on track. Halfway across the island, limbs suddenly exploded en masse.

Ford stopped. An instant later, the tree canopy parted, as if
cleaved by a plow, and the sky was displaced by a scarlet cloud that was the parasail. Tied to the end, like the tail on a broken kite, was David Cashmere.

Christ—still fifty yards to go. He confirmed the wooden stake was in his belt and charged ahead, while wind bubbled beneath the chute and dragged the man inland, where the rigging finally snagged. When it did, the guy suffered a hell of a jolt, then he hung there, legs dangling, dazed but conscious enough to hear someone crashing toward him.

The look on Cashmere's face when he saw a human being coming to his rescue—shock and child-like hope. He even managed a smile when he yelled, “Praise be to God—help me, brother.”

Ford hollered back, “Don't unbuckle that harness,” and kept going; vaulted over roots and used branches for support. He couldn't hear the Jet Skis yet, but knew they would come.

The failed actor recognized an American accent when he heard it, so he switched roles. “Goddamn, man, am I glad to see you. My face is bleedin'; arms, too. Help me get down from here.”

Above, a branch snapped and tilted him in his harness. Only then did he realize he was thirty feet off the ground. “Oh my god . . . help me, man. I can't—”

A rumble of thunder blotted whatever came next.

“Grab a limb,” Ford yelled, and kept repeating advice while he battled the last few yards through the brush.

Cashmere tried; reached and kicked his legs, but lost his nerve when the parasail lifted several feet higher, then bounced him as if on a trampoline. “Oh . . . shit. Man, I'm gonna die up here if you don't—”

More thunder.

A tangle of yellow nylon snaked along the top of the tree canopy, the last of it draped among low branches. The guy was too far off the ground to reach without climbing trees too frail to climb, so Ford turned toward the rope. When he was halfway there, another gust dragged the parasail into the air while the man screamed, “Dude . . . do
somethin'
!”

Ford did. He trapped the rope, secured it around his waist, and began tractoring in line. Soon he was pulling at the ankles of the killer he had watched behead two innocent people—Cashmere, still in his harness and tangled in a shroud, while a storm tried to pull them both off the ground.

In the distance, the hornet whine of Jet Skis was now audible. Ford locked his hands on the harness and let his own weight pull the man down until they were nearly eye to eye, but it was a battle. The wind was getting stronger.

“Shut up and listen,” Ford said, which didn't do the job, so he slapped the man—not hard—and nearly lost his grip on the straps.

Eyes the color of almonds sparked. “Asshole. Why the hell you do that?”

No acting. This was the real David Abdel Cashmere.

Ford replied, “Do what I say, you'll be okay. First, dump your pockets.”

“Pockets?”

“Do it.”

“The hell I will. Get me down from here or I'll—”

The parasail shot upward. Ford had snaked an arm through the
harness, so it lifted them both into the trees, where they spun, then yo-yoed.

“Shit.”
Ford got his legs wrapped around the guy's waist, then emptied the pockets himself—nothing but a plastic room key, a guest wristband, and some change that spilled to the ground, falling farther than expected when he looked down.

Some of the fight went out of the Chicagoan. “I'll do anything, man;
anything,
but don't let that wind take me again. Okay? Money—you want to get paid? Seriously, I'm rich . . .”

The temptation was to use the wooden spike and get it over with. Instead, Ford let the man talk while he switched his grip from the harness to the dragline, which trailed to the ground. When he got both hands tight, he pushed away, then swung close enough to grab a tree limb. After that, getting down was like descending a ladder, just slower, because he had to get a wrap, then pull the parasail down hand over hand. Finally, he dropped free, still holding the yellow line.

On the ground, he tied a quick-release loop around a sapling, then pulled Cashmere to within a few feet of safety. The whole time, the man had been hollering threats and orders, but suddenly realized what had happened.

“Hey—why'd you stop? I'm gonna get this damn harness off before—”

Ford yanked the rope free and let the parasail jolt to a tenuous stop a few feet higher. “I'm going to ask you a few questions. If you lie to me, I'll let you fly away.”