Gone

CHAPTER 41

Scanlon cut the engines when they were eleven miles out. He went down and started setting the baits on the sea rods and parceling them out to the men.

“That won’t be necessary,” Vida told him, still up on the flying bridge.

“No?” Scanlon said skeptically, looking up at her. “Coast Guard has drones now, sweetie. Attached to them are cameras that can see through your pants and count the dimples on your ass from five miles up. What do you imagine the Coasties are going to think if they see your buddies here, out on this fishing boat, standing around?”

“Fine,” Vida said, checking her watch. She went back to scanning the horizon with her binoculars.

“You’re sure we’re in the right place?” she said.

“As if my life depended on it,” the captain said as he showed Eduardo how to cast.

The ship came into view from the south a little over an hour later. It was huge, a Handymax-class oil tanker, its rust-streaked black hull two football fields long from stem to stern. There wasn’t anyone visible on its deck. It was flying a Guatemalan flag.

This is it, Vida thought. It has to be.

She thought the ship would stop, but it didn’t even slow as it passed, about a hundred yards from the starboard side of the fishing boat. She craned her neck up at the deck.

Shouldn’t there be someone up there? Or is this the right ship?

The ship passed on. As the fishing boat bobbed in the tanker’s swell, Vida scanned the choppy surface to see if something had been tossed from the opposite side. But there was nothing.

Scanlon was opening the cooler on the deck below when she placed the barrel of the Walther to the leathery back of his red, sun-beaten neck.

“What is this?” she said. “Where is it? You brought us to the wrong place.”

Scanlon, unfazed by the gun, cracked his can of Bud as he slowly turned around. “Why would I bring you to the wrong place?”

“To double-cross us,” Vida said. “We weren’t given the coordinates. Only you were. You bring us here, to some bullshit point, then send another boat to the correct spot to grab the shipment for yourself.”

Scanlon laughed and swigged his beer.

“Lady, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Listen, Perrine and I go way, way back. We got drunk together in Paris at a NATO thing back when I was a SEAL. Ask around. Your buddies on the ship got spooked or tipped off or something, OK? I’ve been doing this shit for twenty years. It happens all the time. We go back to shore. You call your people. You’ll be — ”

“Ahhh!” someone yelled behind him.

The men were crowded at the back of the boat, yelling at one another.

“What happened?” Vida asked, rushing up.

“Eduardo!” one of them said. “He was sitting there a second ago, and then I don’t know what happened. It seemed like something pulled him into the water!”

A moment later, Eduardo broke the surface, ten feet off the stern.

“¡Ayúdame! ¡Tiburón!” he yelled. “¡Algo está agarrando el pie!”

Help me! Shark! Something’s grabbing my foot!

“You gotta be shitting me,” Scanlon said as Eduardo went under again.

The water broke again a moment later. It wasn’t just Eduardo this time. Vida jumped back, elbowing Scanlon in his beer belly. Beside Eduardo was a man in a full black scuba-diving suit!

“Surprise!” Manuel Perrine said as he peeled off the face mask and chucked it onto the deck. “How is everyone? Vida, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Everyone stood there, blinking, trying to catch up. Vida was completely flummoxed. The call had said they were there to receive a shipment. She hadn’t thought it would be the boss himself.

“I got you, didn’t I? I can tell,” Perrine said, swimming toward the rear of the boat.

“You actually jumped off the deck of that rust bucket, didn’t you, you crazy son of a bitch,” Scanlon said as he hauled Perrine up onto the deck.

“What can I say, Scanlon?” Perrine had a twinkle in his light-blue eyes. “I still got it.”

Vida kept on staring as the rest of the men fished Eduardo out of the drink. Perrine was back in the US! What did that mean? Nothing good. How could it?

Eduardo was right, she thought.

There actually was a tiburón. A two-legged one, now on board.