Payback

4

Murdock stared at the news story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. It had made the front page. “Former Coronado SEAL Murdered in Santa Barbara.” He read the item quickly.

“Santa Barbara Deputy Sheriff Nevin Irwin…”

“Damn, it’s Irwin, he’s dead,” Murdock blurted out. Lieutenant Ed DeWitt looked up from the training chart he was writing. “Irwin? Nevin Irwin, who used to be in Team Five?”

“Yeah. I interviewed him a couple of times to come to our platoon. Then he blew out a knee. I knew he was up at Santa Barbara with the Sheriff’s Department.” He read the article aloud.

“The body of missing former Navy SEAL Nevin Irwin, a county deputy sheriff, washed up on Goleta Beach this morning. The county coroner said the body had been in the water for up to a week. Irwin had been reported missing at the Sheriff’s Department six days ago when he failed to report to work.

“His vehicle, a late-model SUV, was found near Goleta Point, where many surfers and divers often park. Irwin wore a full wet suit and an underwater breathing device. The coroner said death was due to a deep knife wound through the side that penetrated the wet suit. There was also seawater in the victim’s lungs.

“Irwin had been with the Sheriff’s Department for almost two years, had as his special assignment all water-related problems, and did whatever diving the sheriff needed doing.

“Sheriff Kirkendol expressed regrets at the death, and praised Irwin as an ideal deputy. He said Irwin had not been on any specific assignment involving the beach or the channel and that he did little recreational diving. Sheriff Kirkendol said the murder of the deputy would be investigated thoroughly and the perpetrator would be brought to justice.”

Murdock passed the paper to DeWitt, who read it and looked up. “Most SEALs don’t lose underwater knife fights.”

“Unless he was outnumbered three or four to one.” Murdock stared at the paper. A former SEAL killed in the water. That was unusual. Who would be skillful enough to do that? Another SEAL or some other highly trained diver. Who and from where? He looked at DeWitt. “You have the training sked worked out for the rest of the week?”

“Nearly done, Commander.”

“Good, you’ve got the con. I’m going to take three days leave and I’ll see you next Monday.”

Ed looked up, then nodded. “My guess is you’re going up to Santa Barbara.”

“Thought I might, but you don’t need to tell anyone. I’ll tell the master chief. He can reach me on my cell phone if we get an alert.”

Ed stood. “My guess is you’ll be needing your full wet suit and a Draegr.”

“Might just need them at that, Ed. Thanks. You take care of the store.”

Just after noon that same day, Blake Murdock sat across the desk from Sheriff Kirkendol. He wore civilian clothes and had just shown the sheriff his military ID and his SEAL Special Duty Card.

“Sheriff, I knew Nevin Irwin. He wasn’t in my platoon, but I had interviewed him twice. If he hadn’t blown out his knee he would have been one of my men. It bothers me that a former SEAL was killed in a knife fight in the channel. Our men are highly trained in knife fighting in and out of the water. In the water there are few men in the world who can beat us.”

“We can’t say for sure he was killed in the water, Commander. He might have been drowned first, then stabbed, or the other way around.”

“Still, it would take an extremely skilled and trained man to do it to Irwin. If that’s so, you may be dealing here with something more than a shiv fight at a tavern.”

The sheriff shifted in his seat, took a sip of his coffee, and stared at Murdock over the rim of the cup.

“Commander, I don’t know just how much to tell you. Irwin wasn’t on a water assignment the night he was killed, but we had been talking about another water death of an oil-rig worker. The man had been snorkeling and became entangled in wire around one leg of his diving platform three feet underwater. He drowned. The wire hadn’t been there the day before.”

“You have any suspects?”

“Not for sure. The platform boss where the man died said the worker had been curious about another drilling platform. Said curious things were going on out there. Gifford, the drowned man, was a scuba instructor and led kids on free-diving tours. He was an expert in the water. The coroner’s report says he was clubbed on the head and then drowned.”

“So, Irwin wanted to check out that other oil platform?” Murdock asked.

“We did. Went on a safety inspection. Everything seemed normal. She was drilling, nothing out of order.”

“But Irwin wasn’t satisfied. You guess that he parked his car on the point and swam out to the other platform.”

The sheriff frowned. “I’m not sure of anything. But that is a strong possibility. Irwin wasn’t easy to get off a project once he got a sniff of something rotten. I’d bet my last twenty he swam out there the night he was killed.”

“What could they be doing illegal on that drilling rig?” Murdock asked. “It’s too small to store drugs on there that they took off some ship. They could be smuggling diamonds, but that would be a lot of extra trouble. What could be going on?”

“We’ve had reports of merchant freighters stopping at the platform,” the sheriff said. “Some stay a few hours, some overnight. Makes no sense to me.”

“A question. If they killed the first man and tried to make it look like an accident, why didn’t they do the same with Irwin? If they couldn’t, why would they let the body wash up on shore when it would be obvious he was murdered?”

“Bothered us here too. Our best ideas are that in the fight the other man might have been wounded and had to go for aid, or maybe he simply lost the body. It would sink right after being killed, and at night at even a hundred feet a black-clad body would be tough to find.”

“Makes sense, Sheriff. This is sounding more and more like something highly sensitive is happening on or near that tower. The ships stopping is puzzling. Were there many Orientals on that platform?”

“Yes, now that you mention it. The man who toured us around said they had a lot of foreign workers. They didn’t care what nationality they were if they were good at their jobs.”

“Orientals? Chinese?”

“I’m no expert telling Chinese from Japanese from Koreans, but I’d guess there were ten or fifteen Orientals out there who I saw.”

“Have you made a report to any other agency?”

“Just the Coast Guard. I reminded them that I have jurisdiction on the platforms, but they might want to keep an eye on them.”

“I was thinking more like the U.S. Attorney General’s office or the FBI.”

“Oh, hell, no. Why would they be interested?”

“I don’t know, just wondered.”

The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then the sheriff shook his head. “I can’t let you go out there, Commander. I lost one good man to whatever it is out there. I don’t want you on my conscience too.”

“Thanks for the warning, Sheriff. But I’m just a private citizen going for a nighttime swim.”

“You don’t know what’s out there, Commander.”

“No, but I know they are deadly, and knowing that, I’ll be ready for whoever shows up. I’d like to bring back one of those live divers they must have. There had to be more than one to get the drop on Irwin that way. He had to have been surprised and attacked from the side or the back while facing another fighter.”

“Are you better in the water than Irwin was?”

“Sheriff, I’ve killed at least a dozen divers in the water in my career. So far I’ve been better than the man facing me.”

“A dozen?”

“Sheriff, we’re SEALs. We work in places and on big and little jobs you never hear about. So don’t let me be a worry to you. If I find out anything, I’ll tell you, or the FBI or the CIA or the President. If I don’t, nothing is lost. If I don’t come back, I’ve met the man who’s better than I am at underwater fighting.”

Two hours later, Murdock found the spot he wanted on Goleta Point to park his Ford Explorer. It was another two hours until dark. He had a burger and a milk shake and took a quick combat nap in the cab of his SUV. At dusk he put on his full wet suit, boots, and cap and then shrugged into his Draegr. It was the new type that mixed nitrogen and oxygen according to the depth you were diving. At a hundred feet it was a 32 % mixture. If you went deeper it changed. It meant you didn’t have to set the depth mixture you wanted as you did on the older Draegrs.

He’d had special Velcro flaps put on the wet suit on each thigh. One held an ultra-short speargun. It was powered by CO-2 cartridges and fired a steel shaft that looked like a ten-inch dart. It had three shots. Accuracy was good up to twenty feet. Beyond that it was plain luck. On his left thigh he positioned an old reliable Colt Detective Special .38-caliber with a two-inch barrel and six rounds. He checked the loads and put rounds in all six holes. Firing a pistol underwater wasn’t the smartest move. It was a last-ditch defense. He checked his KA-BAR to be sure it was in place. He put in earplugs and carried his flippers to the edge of the water. The point was deserted. He slipped into the channel just as complete darkness fell.

As he waded out, he spotted the lights of the two drill rigs in the immediate area. The one they called 27 was to the left, and farther out to the right would be the mystery tower, 4. The lights on both towers glowed in the darkness of the channel and the faint islands beyond. He figured it at two miles at the most.

For the first mile, Murdock swam on the surface. It was faster and there was no way his splash would be noticed. He had just passed the first platform when he went underwater to his normal fifteen feet and powered forward toward the second tower. He had no idea what he would find there, but he would start out deep and check around. He would constantly keep watching his back, and if any divers showed up, he’d be ready for them.

He came up once more to check his course, changed it slightly to the right. He was two hundred yards from the tower. It looked benign enough. Lights everywhere. He could see men working, hear the clang and roar of motors and steel hitting steel. Nowhere could he see any security lights bathing the channel waters around the tower legs. To detect any movement in the water around the tower would take a series of sonars, and he doubted if this outfit had them. But how else would they know there was a swimmer in the water near the tower? He gave his silent mind a point. All right, they had sonar, and highly sophisticated so it could tell the difference between a shark and a man swimming.

When he could see the lights through the fifteen feet of water, he surfaced once more and checked the oil rig. He was so close now he couldn’t see the top two levels. He could spot nobody on the first story. One more long look around, then he swam down and worked toward the depths. He leveled off at what he guessed was eighty feet and did a slow circle, watching every way around the compass. He spotted no swimmers, but his visibility was no more than five feet down this deep. He could still see the lights of the tower above, although now they were faint and wavering.

Time to start up. The sonar should have picked him up by now. Where did they have the sonar setup? How powerful was it? He leveled off at fifty feet. No swimmers, no spearguns, no bang sticks. He wondered if a bang stick would disable a man as well as a shark? He knew it would. The CO-2 set off by a shotgun shell would slam through a wet suit and gush inside the body cavity, expanding rapidly. It probably would collapse both lungs and balloon the body, sending it floating quickly to the surface. He should have a few for the SEALs.

At thirty feet he paused again, then swam around the square legs of the tower. No enemy divers. Why? If they had regular scuba gear they could easily go to thirty feet. The old Draegrs were set to work at a maximum of thirty-five feet. He looked upward watching for any shadows crossing the pattern of light from the hundreds of bare bulbs burning on the platform. Nothing. The third time he swept the area he found a swimmer. High up, maybe at fifteen feet.

Could the ones running the sonar communicate with a swimmer in the water? He didn’t know. If they had sonar, they might have a way to use voice through the water to a swimmer. He’d have to check that out. Upstairs. They were watching for him up there. They? He watched for another fifteen minutes and saw three swimmers. They came together for a conference evidently, then parted. Two went out of sight and the third one stayed on Murdock’s side of the platform.

He knew now the swimmers were there. Time for more surveillance. He swam down to the bottom. He wasn’t sure of the depth as he began to swim around the tower in ever-widening circles. Out about fifty yards on the west side of the tower, he found a strange structure on the sea floor. It was a dark blob, but definitely man-made. He didn’t want to use the one waterproof light he had. Up close he estimated the concrete-looking dome of a building was fifty feet square and fifteen feet high. There were no pipes, tubes, or wires extending from the structure on any side he could see, and no entryway on the sides or top. He pulled away from it and swam toward the tower and upward.

At fifty feet he paused again and watched for the shadow divers above him. Once more they gathered, probably exchanging notes on write boards, flashing small lights. Then they parted. Murdock drew his KA-BAR and powered upward at the lone diver on his side of the tower. The guard swimmer moved slowly back and forth as if walking a post. Murdock came up beneath him and touched his foot. The man reacted at once, drawing a knife and turning to face Murdock. The Navy SEAL powered straight at the surprised diver, batted away his knife hand, feinted one way, then drove in the other way, his KA-BAR slashing and tearing at the diver’s face mask and air tube. The man wore air tanks and was clumsy in his turns. Murdock dodged one way, surged upward as the airless diver clawed his way toward the surface. Murdock caught him and drove his blade deeply into the man’s stomach, then jerked it out.

He saw a second diver coming from his left, and pivoted around in the water. Murdock pulled the speargun from his leg, and when the diver was ten feet away and waving his fighting knife, Murdock fired the first ten-inch steel shaft. It hit the attacking diver just under his clavicle, missing his heart and lung. The diver soared upward out of the fight. Murdock waited, but no third diver appeared. He had no prisoner. He swam down to fifty feet and moved away from the tower. After a hundred yards he surfaced to get his bearings, angled more to the southeast, and began stroking for the shore.

Twice he came to the surface from his familiar fifteen feet, and adjusted his course to hit the point. It was easy to see from the water, being just up a ways from the Goleta campground where there were a dozen beach fires blazing brightly.

He stopped just offshore and checked the landing area. His Explorer was where he had left it. Nobody seemed to be around it. No one on the beach. He swam the rest of the way, walked out of the water, pulled off his fins, and carried them.

A man surged out of some shadows to his left straight at Murdock, swinging a baseball bat. Murdock spotted him at once and threw his swim fins at the man, knocking the bat out of his hands. Murdock pulled his KA-BAR, and was about to challenge him when he saw a second man come from directly in front of him with a knife. He ducked the charge, threw up his left arm, and felt the knife hit it, but the blade didn’t cut through. He whirled and found a third man charging toward him.

Murdock grabbed the speargun and fired for his legs. The steel ten-inch dart dug into the man’s right thigh and put him down. Murdock swung around and caught the man with the knife bearing in again. Murdock’s knife came up and sliced the attacker’s bare arm. Then he spun around and slashed again, drawing blood across the man’s chest. The attacker screamed and ran into the darkness.

The man with the baseball bat knelt on the ground holding his right wrist.

“Bastard, you broke my wrist,” he shrilled. Then he stood, holding his wrist, and ran toward the street. Murdock moved up to the man with the spear in his thigh. The man held up both hands.

“No more,” he said. “Christ, but that hurts. Damn speargun? You some kind of one-man army?”

“Something like that. Right now you’ve got a date with the local sheriff.”

“Hell, no, take me to the hospital, I’m bleeding.”

“You’ll bleed more if you give me any trouble. Get in the rig and shut your face.”

The man with the dart in his leg looked at Murdock’s stern expression and the KA-BAR knife he waved around. He nodded and crawled in the Explorer.

Fifteen minutes later at the Sheriff’s Department headquarters, Murdock, two detectives, and the sheriff questioned the man.

“Three of you came after me,” Murdock said. “Why?”

“Hell, we figured you’d have a wallet and some cash and maybe steal your car. We needed some loot to make a score.”

“You waited for me when there were twenty guys in the campground you could have rolled. I don’t buy it.”

The sheriff moved up. “Your ID shows you’re J. J. Martin. Look, Martin, we can get you to the hospital just as soon as you tell us who hired you to beat up Murdock. We found the brand-new hundred-dollar bill hidden in your wallet. A bum like you couldn’t hold on to a C note for ten minutes. Who hired you?”

“Just waiting for this dude to come back to his—”

One of the deputies slapped Martin with his open hand and knocked him off his chair. He wailed in pain. They sat him back on the chair.

Sheriff Kirkendol grinned. “Did you like that, J. J.? We’ve got lots more where that came from. Now. Nice and slow. Who paid you the hundred clams to beat up on the diver coming out of the water on Goleta Point?”

J. J. looked at the sheriff, then at the big deputy, who was opening his fist and closing it.

“Aw, hell, not worth getting beat up for. Don’t know a name. Some guy in The Pelican, that dark little bar on Fourth Street. He paid us a hundred each to find this diver and smash him up. Never saw the guy before.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“Oh, hell, no. He had a hat on pulled down low and shades on in the bar. Could have been almost anybody. Now can I get to see a doctor?”

“You want to press charges of assault and battery with a lethal weapon?” the sheriff asked Murdock.

“Too much bother.”

The sheriff turned to a deputy. “Take him to the emergency room and dump him off. No charges. And be sure that hundred-dollar bill is still in his billfold.”

When the wounded man had left, Murdock and the sheriff sat alone in the interrogation room.

“So, did you get to the tower?” the sheriff asked.

“Oh, yes. I’m sure they have some kind of sonar protection around the tower so they can spot boats or swimmers coming in. I don’t know how they do it. They put three armed divers in the water to greet me. One of them is going to be sleeping with the fishes tonight, another one has a speargun dart in his upper chest, and the third one swam away.”

“Thirteen,” Sheriff Kirkendol said.

“What?”

“That must be the thirteenth man you’ve killed. Glad that’s out of my jurisdiction. Did you find anything out there?”

“I can’t tell you, not until I tell some other people. But I thank you for your help. I’m heading back to San Diego.”

“Just like that?”

“It’s a federal case, Sheriff. I’ve got to report it. If we can give you any help on your case, we will. Right now I’m due back in the squad room down in Coronado. Thanks for your help. Don’t worry, I’ll clean up the blood that good old J. J. got on my Explorer.”

“Federal? Murdock, I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. Just don’t talk about that other oil rig out there. Something should be happening soon. You take care now.”

It was almost midnight when Murdock gassed his Explorer and headed out for home. Three hours, maybe three-and-a-half drive time to get down to Coronado. Shouldn’t be any traffic this time of night, and if he pushed it a little, he might get in some sleep tonight before calling Don Stroh at 0600. If he was lucky the spook would be in his office by 0900 Washington, D.C., time. Murdock pictured the solid structure built on the bottom of the Santa Barbara Channel about two miles offshore. What in hell was it? Who put it down there? What could it possibly be used for? Why would the protectors kill anyone snooping around? He wanted some answers, and he knew Don Stroh would too.