Atomic Lobster (27 page)

JUST OFF THE COAST OF COZUMEL

H
igh tide. The flukes of a Danforth boat anchor grabbed the sandy bottom. Its chain rose thirty feet to a cabin cruiser bobbing in the light chop. It was like any other such boat, except fishing poles were replaced with arrays of high-gain antennas.

These were the same waters where cruise passengers took reef excursions: red-and-white dive flags in Styrofoam buoys marking novice snorkelers splashing in the warm, shallow surf. Parrot fish, stingrays, nurse sharks, moray eels.

This particular cabin cruiser, however, was in deeper water, farther north than the tourist boats ventured. And it was the middle of the night. Beneath the boat, high-candlepower halogen beams split the darkness as divers swept the ocean floor.

Special agent Denise Wicks had been flown in from Tampa, and now paced impatiently on the cruiser’s back deck. She leaned over the stern, watching the spotlights’ greenish-yellow glow wavering up through emerald water.

The radio crackled. A diver with a special underwater microphone: “We found it.”

Everyone rushed into the cabin and gathered around a video monitor with a live feed from the bottom.

“There it is,” said the boat’s pilot. “Just like we thought.”

Wicks bent toward the screen. “We’re too late.”

SS
SERENDIPITY

“Just keep walking,” said Serge. “And don’t try anything. I’m pretty quick with a knife.”

McGraw was going to try something, just as soon as they got in Serge’s stateroom, where there wouldn’t be any witnesses or interference. He’d use the moment when Serge had to close the door, a fleeting distraction, but all the opportunity that someone Tex’s size needed.

They reached the room. Serge swiped a magnetic card with a free hand and turned the knob. “Inside.”

The pair took two steps. McGraw made his move. But Serge had bet in advance what Tex might try. He left the door open and knocked Tex cold with the butt of his combat knife.

The world slowly returned to McGraw with a pounding skull. Fuzzy reality came into focus. He tried to move. No luck. His legs, arms and chest were tied fast to a chair in the back of the cabin. Duct tape across his mouth. He felt something round between his teeth: a clear, flexible tube that exited through a hole in the tape and ran up the wall. It was tied to a closet rod and capped with a funnel.

“Coleman’s beer bong,” said Serge, walking out from behind the chair. “And I thought it was a brainless purchase. But you can learn from anyone. That’s why I like people.” Serge uncapped a bottle of drinking water and took a refreshing swig. “Wait. Can you believe me? The impolite host. I’ll bet you’re thirsty!” Serge poured the rest of the bottle in the funnel. McGraw couldn’t figure it out: If this guy was trying to drown him, why was he pouring slowly enough so Tex could swallow and prevent it from going down his lungs?

“Like cruising?” said Serge. “Me too! Bet you’re dying to learn some incredible trivia. Luckily you drew me as your guide! Just read a fascinating study on rogue waves. People used to think they were an ancient mariner’s myth. But after a number of twentieth-century sightings and photographic evidence, their existence could no longer be doubted!” Serge opened another water bottle and poured. “A sheer, ninety-foot wave almost capsized the
Queen
Mary
in 1942 before she slowly righted herself. Will you stop looking at the tube and listen?” He finished pouring and grabbed another bottle. “People naturally assume there has to be some kind of underwater seismic event. Not true! Rogues can happen anywhere, a freak statistical anomaly of wave mechanics, usually when conflicting flows collide far out at sea and start a harmonic rhythm like a kid on a swing set going higher and higher. Always wanted to see a rogue wave. The cruise people try to cover up the possibility, but for customers like me, it’s a selling point, the whole movie-of-the-week ‘who’s going to survive’ angle. Hey, I just got a great idea!” Serge slipped a disk in the DVD. “Let’s watch
The Poseidon Adventure
!” He uncapped another bottle. “Shelley Winters’s finest work.”

Dry-ice fog seeped over the dance floor in Club Nitro.

Coleman tapped Rachael’s shoulder.

She swatted him away and continued talking with the man on her other side.

He tapped her shoulder again.

“Fuck off.”

“But I want someone to talk to.”

“Can’t you see I’m trying to hook up with this guy?”

“What’s he got that I don’t?”

Rachael leaned back on her stool and made an all-encompassing gesture at Johnny Vegas.

“Oh,” said Coleman. “That.”

“Now leave me alone!”

“Can’t we all talk together?”

“No!” She got up from her stool and turned to Vegas. “Your cabin?”

Johnny sprang off his own stool. “Yessss!” He took her by the arm.

Coleman slouched in inebriation. “You are
so
like Sharon.”

Rachael stopped and looked back. “Who’s Sharon?”

“This chick we used to know in Tampa.”

“I had a sister in Tampa named Sharon. Ten years older. That’s how I stumbled into your apartment. She used to live there.”

“That’s how
we
found the apartment.” Coleman’s head sagged lower and lower. “Our Sharon used to live there, too. What a coincidence: two roommates both named Sharon.”

Rachael patted Johnny’s hand. “Just be a second.” She sat down next to Coleman. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Guess it was this trip we took to the World Series in Miami.” His forehead now rested on the bar. “Where’s your sister now?”

“She died,” said Rachael. “In Miami.”

Johnny cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” said Rachael. “Something’s come up….”

Johnny’s crest fell.

“…But I’ll meet you later. You know that secluded midsection balcony near the lifeboats?”

He nodded.

“One hour, lifeboat five,” said Rachael. “Don’t be late.”

Johnny brightened and left. Rachael grabbed Coleman’s hair and pulled his head up. “Tell me more about the World Series….”

“Not much to tell…”

And he spilled it all: How Sharon had been on a road trip with them down the East Coast, coked out of her skull, getting on Serge’s last nerve. Then the final motel room confrontation in Miami Beach when she tried to kill Coleman, but Serge got the drop on her.

“Then what?” said Rachael.

“Put her in the trunk and left the car outside the stadium—”

A tremendous crash. Coleman and Rachael turned toward the front of Club Nitro.

A table had been upended, drinks everywhere. Tex McGraw struggled to his feet, staggered a few more steps and pulled down another table. People screamed. Security swooped in. Tex grabbed one of them by the front of his shirt, trying to communicate, but his speech was hopelessly slurred. Then he crashed back to the floor with an ugly thud and lay motionless. A pool of urine began to spread.

The chief of security arrived. “What are you standing around for? Get this jackass out of here. And call a janitor.”

Two brawny men in tight black T-shirts reached down and grabbed his wrists. One suddenly dropped an arm, jumped up and turned sheet white.

“What are you doing?” said the security chief.

“He’s…dead.”

JUST OFF THE COAST OF COZUMEL

E
very agent aboard the cabin cruiser immediately recognized the image on the video monitor: A clear, three-foot rectangle of shatterproof safety glass bolted to a steel table and anchored on the ocean floor. Through the front of the rectangle were two holes, where thick rubber gloves extended inside. It was a “clean box,” the kind they use for premature births or to handle virulent biological samples at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

At the bottom of the box were two empty vials caked with white-powder residue.

Agent Wicks had said they were “too late” because the box was flooded with seawater and clearly abandoned.

“Get me a recovery crew!” If she was right about the box, there was no way the boat was equipped to handle it.

The American intelligence community had been on alert for a dirty radioactive bomb when they’d received word of a far more viable threat. A dirty cocaine bomb.

Someone stepped up to Wicks. “You really think this is where they mixed anthrax with the cocaine and sealed it inside those statues?”

“Explains our eclectic list of nine victims back in Florida,” said Wicks.

“But why mix it with cocaine?”

“That’s the whole point,” said Wicks. “The main hurdles of a homeland anthrax attack are smuggling and nasal exposure. Cocaine solves both problems with a vengeance. Florida already has an extensive drug distribution network. Just mix the batch in a second country, stand back and let human nature do the rest. It practically delivers itself.”

“Let me get this straight,” said the other agent. “First we thought this was a black market antiquities operation, which was really a cover for cocaine smuggling, which turns out to be a vehicle for anthrax?”

“They’re getting sharper,” said Wicks.

The agent pointed at the empty clean box on the video monitor. “So what do we do now about this latest statue we just missed?”

Wicks looked up the coast at the twinkling lights of a distant cruise ship. “It’s all up to Foxtrot.”

SS
SERENDIPITY

Club Nitro had been cleared of passengers. Sheets covered the front windows. Music off; lights on.

“Must have had too much to drink,” said one of the guards. “Acute poisoning.”

The ship’s doctor shook his head. “No alcohol smell of any kind. And his pupils aren’t right.”

“But he was falling all over the place, slurring his words.”

“That would fit,” said the doctor.

“Fit what?”

“He drowned.”

“What do you mean ‘drowned’? He was breathing and talking.”

“Not your run-of-the-mill drowning. This required a lot of help. I’m afraid we have a murderer on the ship.”

“Now just a minute!” The ship’s spirit director stepped forward. “We can’t throw around words like murder and needlessly panic passengers. What do you really have to go on?”

The doctor looked down. “Massive colon and bladder evacuation.”

“That’s revolting!”

“I put it as delicately as I could.”

A junior officer entered the club. “One of the maids just found this sticking out of a trash can near the elevators.” He held up a beer bong with frayed strands of duct tape.

“What the heck’s that?” asked the spirit director.

“Murder weapon,” said the doctor.

The spirit director took a deep breath. “Okay, tell me what you
think
happened. But this is all off the record.”

“Hydro-saturation,” said the doctor. “Someone forced him to drink massive amounts of water. Probably tied up with the tube taped in his mouth. The whole trick was to pour at a precise, constant rate. Too fast and the stomach can’t hold it, gag reflex. Too slow, he just urinates.”

“Still, it’s just water. How can that kill you?”

“Easier than you’d think. The human body is mostly fluid, billions of cells acting like microscopic water balloons, suspending nuclei and other genetic matter. But too much water and those little balloons swell to bursting point.” He pointed at the extremely late Tex McGraw. “Autopsy will find massive cellular rupture in major organs, including the brain. That was the staggering and slurred speech. Utterly excruciating way to go.”

“You’ve heard of cases like this before?”

“Some colleges banned it from fraternity hazing after pledges ended up in emergency rooms. And two disk jockeys accidentally killed a woman in a water-drinking contest for some stupid prize. But this time we’ve got a complete psychopath.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It required at least a couple of sick, methodical hours to pour the water, long enough to take in a movie.”

THREE A.M
.

A
ll quiet on the SS
Serendipity
. Nothing to report except the usual late-night stumbling back to staterooms and a few TVs turned up too loud.

It was peaceful inside Serge’s room. The curtains were open, bathing his cabin in the wavy grayscale light of a full moon.

Coleman often slept like the dead; other times he pitched and twisted into different positions for hours, mumbling through a dreamscape of monsters and candy canes. Tonight, all the covers had been kicked off. Coleman lay inverted with his head toward the foot of the bed. The evening’s alcohol intake triggered the bathroom urge. His eyes fluttered open.

Someone stood over him.

“Rachael, what are you doing there?” The moonlight sparkled off something in her hand. “Why do you have that knife?”

The blade flashed out. Coleman lifted a forearm in defense. Skin tore across his elbow.

“I’m bleeding!” He looked up from his arm. “Have you lost your mind?”

Rachael clutched the weapon in both fists and raised it over her head. “You killed my sister!”

The knife plunged. Coleman rolled to his right. The blade sliced the mattress where his head had just been.

“Rachael, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Her name was Sharon!”

“Sharon?” The blade came down again. Coleman rolled to his left. Another slash through the sheets. “Wait! Stop! There must be some kind of mistake!”

“There’s no mistake. You blabbed everything at the bar. Now you die!”

The knife kept coming down. Coleman kept rolling. “I can explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain!” Another stabbing attempt, another evasion. Rachael was wired out of her head, providing both strength and inaccuracy. More rolling and slashing.

“Hold still! I want to skull-fuck you with this knife!”

Stab, stab, stab. All misses. Stuffing began coming out of the mattress. Something had to be done about all his squirming. She leaped on top of Coleman and straddled his chest, pinning his shoulders with her knees.

“Time to die!”

With Coleman under control, the rapid flailing of the knife gave way to sadistic toying. “Can’t move, eh?” She smiled with evil glee, stroking his cheeks and lips with the sharp steel tip.

“Please! Stop!”

“Where do you want it first? Cut your tongue out? Cram the blade through an eyeball? Slice your nuts off and stuff ’em in that fat disgusting face?”

“Keep going,” said Coleman. “Nothing I like yet.”

Serge was in the other bed, sleeping on his side facing the window. He stirred from the commotion. “Will you two keep it down? I’m trying to catch some winks.”

“Serge!”

“Shut up.”

“Help!”

“What now?”

“Rachael’s trying to kill me. And I have to pee.”

Serge, still groggy. “Why would she want to do that?”

“Her sister was Sharon. She knows we killed her.”

Serge rolled over. “Holy Jesus!”

The knife was high above her head for the death thrust.

Serge grabbed the alarm clock off the nightstand. The plug snapped out of the wall. The knife came flying down. Serge whipped the clock. It smacked Rachael in the temple, and she tumbled to the floor. Coleman jumped out of bed, ran in the bathroom and locked the door.

Rachael was up in a heartbeat, turning the knife on Serge with incandescent rage. “Bastard!”

Serge dashed over to the balcony door and opened it. “Bet you can’t catch me!” He ran outside.

Rachael gave chase. Just as she crossed the threshold, Serge nailed her in the nose with a brutal elbow. She stumbled backward into the room. Serge advanced and clipped her jaw with a flurry of rabbit punches until she splayed across the carpet. Then he ran back onto the balcony and yanked a Class C fire extinguisher off the bulkhead.

Anyone else would have been unconscious for hours, but Rachael was still zooming on crank. She jumped back to her feet as Serge reentered the cabin. He deflected the knife with the side of the extinguisher, and caught her under the chin with the butt.

She went down again, and Serge pounced. Now it was her turn to get straddled. She bucked like a colt. “Get off me!”

“Nag, nag, nag.” He grabbed the extinguisher and forced the nozzle through her lips. She struggled and coughed as he threaded the rubber hose a solid foot down her trachea. Then he covered her entire mouth with his left hand, leaving only enough room between his third and fourth fingers for the hose. More thrashing. Serge made a stiff arm and pushed down on her face with all his strength.

A toilet flushed. Coleman came out of the bathroom. “That feels better.” He moseyed over to Serge. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Something I should have a long time ago.”

Serge reached with his free hand and pulled the extinguisher’s safety pin. “Sweet dreams.” He squeezed the lever.

Rachael’s chest instantly inflated beneath Serge. Her lungs reached capacity, and the extinguisher’s contents raced back up her airway. Twin sprays of foam shot out both nostrils like seltzer bottles.

Serge rolled off her. Rachael jumped up.

“Watch out!” yelled Coleman. “She’s got her knife again!”

“Won’t do much good now.”

She swung the blade erratically at both of them, over and over. They didn’t even have to move. Every violent swipe was several feet off the mark, sometimes in the wrong direction. She staggered and twirled, still swinging the knife, crashing into walls and furniture. It didn’t seem possible, but her fury actually increased: Rachael couldn’t believe she was being irreversibly killed by Serge, and she took out her frustration by attacking the room in general, smashing mirrors, flinging dresser drawers, tipping the mini-fridge.

“Up on the bed!” said Serge. They hopped atop the same mattress for safe viewing as the Tasmanian devil continued its destructive spin through the cabin.

“What’s happening?” asked Coleman.

Rachael pirouetted into the bathroom. Crash. A toilet lid flew out the door.

“She’s drowning.”

“On dry land?”

“A rare treat.”

“Rare? But you said that’s how you whacked Tex McGraw earlier this evening.”

“Different method. Plus you told me about those DJs who already did it. Just fuckin’ great. I worked hard on that idea, but nobody will believe it was mine first. So now they make me kill someone else.”

“It’s not fair.”

“But you can’t dwell or you’ll never be happy.”

Rachael came out of the bathroom and began slamming herself against the side of the TV console.

Coleman pointed. “What’s she doing now?”

“Trying to pump her own chest.” Serge yelled across the room: “Won’t work!”

“Why not?” asked Coleman.

“You can pump if it’s water. But fire-retardant foam acts on the scientific principal of cohesion. That’s why I chose it.”

“Co-what?”

“As foam bubbles fizz out, their chemical residue clings to lung walls, clogging brachia, which deliver oxygen to the bloodstream.” He nodded toward Rachael, flapping spastically against the entertainment center. “It’s all over now except the credits.”

She came twirling back through the room, breaking lamps, tearing down curtains. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she lurched out the open balcony door, hit the railing with her pelvis and jackknifed over the side.

Johnny Vegas waited next to lifeboat number five. He grabbed the starboard railing, gazed up at the moon and felt an invigorating wind in his hair.

Rachael flew by a few feet from his face and quickly disappeared beneath the black waves. Johnny bit his lip and went back inside.