Pilot Error (14 page)

"She's not dead!" Reynolds wheezed, trying to pry the fingers out of his windpipe.

"Then tell me where she is, or you're gonna be."

Reluctantly, Dirk let him go. One hand going to his throat, Reynolds coughed twice before finding the breath to speak.

"We found the plane upside down on a beach, but no bodies. So we searched the island... and that's when I found the jacket. I dunno where she is, but I can tell you she's not on that island. She must've swum."

"I want her found."

"She's not gonna get far. I left two boats with full crews out looking for her. They'll get her."

"You caused this mess, so you get your fat ass back out there and find her! You understand me?"

"Screw you, pal. I ain't going back out there with that storm breathing down my neck. You wanna parallel park with the bitch one last time before we leave? You go find her."

Dirk's hand closed into a fist, and Reynolds warily fell back another step.

Still, the heavy man pressed the issue. "I mean, what the hell difference does it make anyway? She's probably marooned on one of those freaking sandbars... and it's not like she's gonna be a threat to us after we've left US soil. My advice to you, pal, is to just forget her and get on with the plan."

Eyes narrowing, Dirk watched Reynolds take a step away, and then another when it looked like his superior wasn't going to protest. Dirk could stop him, force him back out there to resolve this mess. Both of them knew it. But both of them also knew that a whole lot more than Dirk's personal agenda was riding on this venture, and Dominic Van Allen would only tolerate so much personal latitude. That cargo plane had to be loaded, refueled, and ready to fly back to Bermuda that evening and, as crude and vulgar as he was, Reynolds was the man to get it done.

Torn, Dirk swiveled to regard the ominous weather sweeping ever closer. Micki was out there, somewhere, and his hopes of retrieving her before 7:00pm were dwindling fast.

He didn't see Reynolds move to one of the cars parked just beyond the rental truck, rather heard the engine start and the slew of gravel that was spun from the rear tires as he left. Lost in thought, Dirk stooped to reclaim Micki's jacket and ran his thumb lightly over the abraded leather.

There was only one thing wrong with Reynolds' idea of leaving without her. Dirk couldn't just forget Micki and depart US soil when the cargo plane was there and loaded because, unknown to anyone else, Micki Jacinto was very much part of The Plan.

***

A slow eternity slipped by as Micki paced the foreshore and watched the tiny jon boat labor toward her. She was really, really going to let Hardigan have a good piece of Jacinto Temper for this stunt. Who did he think he was, playing these games with her?

Holding her tongue as the boat's hull ran aground in the shallow water, she scrutinized Luke as he climbed sluggishly over the side... and the rage in her unexpectedly changed to a fire of a different sort. Even exhausted, his stride was powerful as he made his way through knee deep water, towing the boat behind him. He had stripped off his cargo shorts again and, while wet, his black hip-hugging bathing suit revealed much more than it hid.

Dragging her gaze to his face when he neared, Micki was about to lash out with a few well-chosen words... when he kept on going right past her!

"Told you I'd be back," Luke said, pushing past. He tossed her the rope he was using to tow the boat ashore, but didn't stop to see if she caught it. "Did you miss me, beautiful?"

Indignation doused the fervor his near-nude presence had ignited. Turning, Micki started to retort, then thinking better of it she decided on another plan. Obediently, she pulled on the rope he had thrown at her, hauling the small boat far enough onto the beach to be in no danger of immediately washing away. A glance over her shoulder assured her that Luke had collapsed in a heap next to Fizz. He was resting his head on her backpack, his eyes closed and one arm thrown across his forehead, sipping water from the canteen.

Good. Let him stay there for a few minutes more.

Quietly as she could, Micki hoisted his camera bag from the bottom of the boat. She knelt to put it on the wet sand and, after untangling his damp khaki shorts from around the strap, unzipped the main section. Surprisingly, the first thing that came into her hand was a plastic bag containing the broken Rolex watches that he had earlier dismissed as fakes. Why would he save those? Unless they weren't fakes.

But right then, she did not have the luxury of time to puzzle it out. His camera and zoom lens, along with his binoculars, took up most of the room in the bag; his wet snorkel mask was still on the bottom of the jon boat. The item she wanted was tucked down one side—his purple shirt and what was wrapped in it. With a grim smile, Micki claimed the bundle and, keeping her back to Luke to hide her snooping, carefully unwrapped it.

The Beretta felt good in her hand, lifting her out of a submissive role and into a dominant one. Something fell out of the shirt pocket; two dull silver tabs on a beaded chain that she instantly recognized as military-style dogtags. What was Luke doing with dogtags? And why was he hiding them in his shirt?

"Micki?"

There was no time to ponder it now. Grabbing up the tags with a handful of coarse sand, she shoved them into the pocket of her jeans for later study.

"Be a sweetheart and throw me my clothes, huh? I'm beat, and this wind has kind of a nip to it."

Lightning strobed the world around her as she clicked off the Beretta's safety catch. She did her best to ignore it and the accompanying thunder, taking the gun in both hands and pivoting on one knee to face him. Much to her surprise, Luke was not lying exhausted on the beach, but approaching stealthily from behind. Fizz followed him halfway, and then sat down for a scratch.

Luke stopped five or six feet away, his gaze dropping briefly to regard the gun. He frowned. "What's this?"

Climbing to her feet, Micki hesitated as she brought the barrel up to his chest. As a kid, her father had taken her to the firing range and taught her the right way to handle a weapon. What she was doing now went against everything he had taught her, and she found that pointing a loaded gun at a flesh and blood human being was a lot harder than aiming one at a paper target.

"I want answers, Hardigan, and I want them now," she said bluntly, expertly masking the storm-prompted quiver in her voice.

Luke's eyes narrowed slightly, belaying the casualness of his tone. "That thing has quite a kick, beautiful. It'll set you on your pretty little tush if you take a notion to fire it."

"Stop buggering about and just tell me what the hell is going on!" Her gaze locked with his, and she tried to look as if she really would pull the trigger if he pushed her.

"First, put the gun down." Luke took another unperturbed step toward her, as if having a pistol pointed at his chest was an everyday occurrence. "Come on—"

"Stand still!"

Luke stopped. "Okay, okay. Just don't get carried away with that thing, huh?"

"Just you start talking."

"All right." He resigned himself with a sigh. "What do you want to know?"

Micki considered this carefully. She had so many questions, where did she start? "Who are the maniacs who shot us down?"

"A counterfeiting ring."

"Counterfeiters? They're common counterfeiters? I thought you were at least going to tell me they were drug smugglers!"

"Counterfeiters are into all sorts of rackets. DVDs, computer software, pharmaceuticals, clothing, watches—"

"Watches?" Micki nodded toward his camera bag. "So they
are
fakes."

"They're evidence," Luke clarified. He shook his head. "But fake watches are only a small part of their con. I'm betting they also deal in drugs and... aviation parts."

That was a new one on her. "What do you mean, like... seat cushions? Wing nuts?" Her temper exploded. "Something equally stupid that we almost got ourselves killed for?"

"Try engine parts made from substandard materials. They've claimed innocent lives all over the world... including Ray McNally's."

"Razor?"

"Yeah." Luke's voice was still devoid of expression. "That's why I wanted to get a look at that helo."

"Really. And what makes you the expert, when the Coast Guard hasn't even looked at it yet?"

Luke ignored her and continued. "I found thermal damage everywhere in the engine compartment. It was a mess; fuel and drain line insulation melted and charred, sheared bolts and metal debris from the turbine blade roots all over the place."

He huffed out his anger and frustration. "Ray died because that helo suffered catastrophic turbine shaft failure, which, if I'm putting two and two together right, and I know I am, was the direct result of counterfeit parts. Probably something as small as bearing spacers in the engine."

"So you are talking 'wing nuts.'"

"This is no joke, Micki. I've seen this before. The quality of these things is really poor. They're cheap to manufacture, and easily passed off as the genuine thing if you don't know what you're looking at."

"But you do."

"That helo went down because the hardface on those spacers, which are designed to seal the surfaces, wasn't durable. One or more probably wore through. Then hot gasses leaked into the oil compartment and that led to the shaft failure. Ray just had the bad luck to be the guy who was flying it at the time."

"I knew it wasn't 'pilot error.' Razor was just too good." Drawing a sobering breath, Micki struggled to come to terms with this new information. "But that would mean..."

"Exactly," Luke said somberly. "Ray died because of greed."

Greed. Micki looked down at the sand. Was this true? Had her 'little brother' died because someone was profiting from selling defective parts? But...
Dirk
was contracted to provide the parts to the Coast Guard in Marathon!

She looked up. Luke was watching her put it all together, and waiting to see what she would do with the answer.

"I don't believe you," she said, backing away from the man she held at gunpoint, and the idea of Dirk being involved in something like that.

She suddenly recalled what Tex had said last night at
The Sandpiper
, about Dirk having worked on Razor's helicopter prior to the crash. But Dirk worked on all the Coast Guard helos, plus all the civil aircraft the FAA sent his way for Airworthiness Certification, including her Cessna. That was his job, after all; he was a mechanic. And Tex had just been trying to distract her when he'd said it. It didn't mean Dirk was involved willingly, if it meant he was involved at all.

No! If Dirk had a part in this, then it had to be unknowingly. It had to be.

Micki forced out an uneasy chuckle to cover her skepticism. "Stone the crows, I just knew I had
James Bond
here."

Luke's lips twitched in grim amusement at the Australian idiom. "Not quite."

That brought another question to the fore. "Okay, so who are you?" she asked. "And what is it between you and these guys? Last I heard, the Feds didn't rent joy flights to nail suspected counterfeiters." Her eyes searched his face as her skepticism routed a new path. "Are you some kind of self-styled Good Samaritan, or a disappointed customer? These guys stiff you on a deal gone bad, Hardigan?"

Luke squared his shoulders in a movement that looked deeply ingrained, and unmistakably military. Micki thought of the dogtags she had pocketed, but before she played that hand, she wanted to take a better look at them.

"No." His brown eyes held hers with a coldness that went a long way to convincing her of his sincerity. "I'm the guy who's going to bust open the ring and make sure they all go to jail for a long, long time."

"Because of what happened to Razor?"

"For Ray, and for all the other lives lost because of greed. If Jurgensen hadn't used bogus parts when he serviced that helo, then Ray would still be alive." He nodded grimly to himself. "My guess is Jurgensen's been doing this for years, and not just with bearing spacers. He charges the Coast Guard—or whoever his customer is—full price for expensive genuine parts, installs a cheap knockoff, then pockets the profit."

Micki shook her head in denial. Despite what Luke had just told her, despite having witnessed Dirk throw money around like it was confetti, she didn't buy into her ex-lover's involvement one bit. She couldn't... not when he was the one person she was counting on to bring the cavalry.

"No. None of this is Dirk's fault. You said yourself, the fake parts are hard to tell from the originals. Dirk would have grounded Ray's helo if he'd spotted them. I know he would. Ray was our friend!"

Luke's voice, which had been devoid of expression throughout the conversation, now held a note of interest. "What is it with you and Jurgensen, anyway?"

"We're—" Micki's chin rose at the insinuation "—just good friends."

"Somehow I knew you were going to say that."

"And as a friend," she continued, unperturbed, "I don't believe Dirk is guilty of anything. You're just guessing, and your evidence is circumstantial at best."

The storm interrupted the tension between them with a simultaneous growl of thunder that made Micki's ears ring, and a blinding flash of lightning that was way too close for comfort. While Micki fought against her natural instinct to turn and flee, Fizz showed no such restraint. He scampered over to the closest human, and thrust a hopeful nose under Luke's hand, looking for comfort.