Just Needs Killin (19 page)

Jan was crunching numbers in Chino's office, which was less an office than a desk with a couple of drawers, when I emerged, freshly showered, from bilge duty. Po Thang was curled under her feet, gave me a sleepy eye, and went back for his tenth nap of the day.

"How are we doing?" I asked.

She sighed. "Broker by the day."

I looked around, saw no one and whispered, "Then we'd best get busy finding some money."

"That's for sure."

"Speaking of finding stuff, I see Sho and Gun are gone again. Did you see which way they went?"

Jan looked puzzled for a second, then laughed. "I get it. Shogun. And of course I did, you think you're playing with kids here?"

"Think we can pick them up on radar?"

"We can try." She looked around. "Where's Fabio?"

"He should be in the laundry room about now, washing his skivvies."

"That was a mean trick. Scared the crap outta me, too, but I wasn't sitting right next to the alarm horn like he was."

"
Moi
? It was purely an oversight."

"Sure it was. Let's take a peek at the radar screen."

There were several vessels, some of them possibly pangas, scattered inside and outside the bay, but it was impossible to pick out Kazoo and Moto's boat.

"Crap. Okay, Hetta, I guess one day, when they take off, we gotta follow 'em."

"I have a better idea. Let's take Po Thang to his beach and I'll tell you what I have in mind. I'll need your expertise."

"You need accounting help?"

"No, your other profession. You know, the one as a call girl?"

Po Thang had heard his name, sprang to attention, and scrambled out onto the open deck, where he impatiently ran in circles. He jumped into the panga the moment we hooked on the cable to lower it over the side.

As the electric winch slowly let out the cable, I speculated, "I wonder what Po Thang would do if we just lowered him a few feet and left him dangling? He reminds me of RJ. He'd sit in the car, in the garage, for hours, hoping to go somewhere."

"I miss that."

"Well, then, you can sit in my pickup for hours anytime you want."

"You're running a mean streak today, you know that?"

"Bilge water poisoning."

As always, fifteen feet from the beach, Po Thang launched himself into the water, and by the time we beached the panga, he was dog paddling around, diving for shells. We sat watching him carefully, ready to run when he headed our way with a goodly coat of salty water to share.

"Wet dawg alert!" Jan yelled, and pushed herself to standing. I jumped to my feet, we scrambled up the dune a bit, and waited until he shook at least twice. He shot us wimps a disdainful glare, threw his soggy tail into the air, trotted over to his shell pile, and spit out another silver coin.

Po Thang had just secured himself at least three trips ashore a day.

Unfortunately for my dog, we had a veterinarian on board. When I told Chino I had to take Po Thang ashore more often, he insisted on subjecting the poor pooch to the indignity of taking both a stool and urine specimen, and then declared people food off limits.

To make it up to my pup, I smuggled food from the dining room and gave it to him in bites every time he brought us a coin. We soon had a large stash of silver, but Po Thang actually got an upset stomach. Life imitates lies.

We were also keeping a close watch on Kazoo and Moto, whose daily late afternoon dive trips were as predictable as Rosa's dinner bell. They left at four, and were always back for the bell at six thirty. I calculated the speed of the panga, time elapsed, and everything we knew, but they could still cover a large area.

It was time to send in Jana Hari.

We were waiting for them when they came back, and gave them a hand with their gear. Jan, even though there was a slight breeze cooling the air, wore the tiniest bikini she had and was flaunting her wares in their faces. They pulled off the wet suits, and handed them to me without a single glance in my direction.

I sluiced the suits with fresh water, squirting some into Po Thang's mouth in a game he loved. So, between Jan vamping for our divers, and Po Thang racing around barking, there was enough pandemonium for me to do my job.

The next afternoon, Jan and I left before Kazoo and Moto did, and were hidden out of sight, waiting for the men to pass on their way out of the bay. Jan had a waterproof chart, and I brought the GPS tracker sent by Craig, my vet friend in Arizona, and meant for Po Thang.

"You think it'll work?" Jan asked as I fiddled with the remote.

"Dunno. That chip was meant to be implanted right under the skin, and I stuck it into the thickest part of the dive suit."

"Moto's got a tracker on his crotch?"

"Yep."

"Eeeeew. Thank goodness it ain't a crotch cam."

"Oh, I don't—here they come!"

I turned on the tracker, and got a jumble of numbers until a ping sounded and it steadied out.

"We gonna tail 'em?"

"Not unless we have to. The range on this thing is five miles, so if the battery peters out, so to speak, before they stop, we'll have to do the whole thing again tomorrow, from farther out."

Po Thang looked their way and whined. "Can it, Po Thang, they can't hear you."

"He's miffed because we didn't head directly for his beach."

"He'll get over it."

After a few minutes the panga slowed, then finally stopped, still within range of the tracker. "Okay, Jan, I think they're there. Write down these coordinates."

She did, then we plotted it on the chart. Just as we thought, they were off a beach not too far outside the entrance, and to the south. "Bingo."

I shut down the tracker unit, which also deactivated the chip. We wanted to do this several days in a row before making our own foray to the site, just to be sure they were going to the same area each day, and I didn't know how long the chip's activation period was.

We returned to
Nao de Chino
before dinner and deposited ten more coins to our stash. We hadn't gotten back to Granny Yee's house yet to retrieve the vase and the rest of the coins, but that day was coming soon, as her last email said she was disappointed in those Texas men; they were all old and sick.

Turns out something was missed in translation. Grans Yee thought the VA was a single's bar teaming with eligible
hombres
.

Jan and I pulled up Google Earth, zeroed in on the GPS coordinates we took down that afternoon, and found out Kazoo and Moto stopped their panga fifty or so feet offshore, just outside a cove on the Pacific side of Isla Margarita. Our chart showed the depth at around forty feet.

"Abalone?"

I nodded. "Looks like the right territory. They live on rocks."

"We gonna go out there?"

"Is there a cow in Texas?"

On Sunday, while Chino and the other Mexicans went off to church, Jan and I bided our time on Po Thang's beach, keeping an eye out for the Japanese divers to return from their dive.

Po Thang was running out of coins to fetch, but his shell pile was growing quite large.

Jan raised the binoculars. "Let the games begin."

We hugged shore, keeping
Nao de Chino
between us and the guys' panga, raced out the entrance and toward the GPS coordinates. We'd tracked them twice more, and they always went to the same place, so now we wanted to see what they were doing.

The cove had no beach, just straight, intimidating, rock walls on three sides. And even though it was a calm day, the surge inside the cove was pretty scary. We anchored offshore, suited up, and tied Po Thang on a short leash when I spotted a couple of sea lions. Last thing I needed was him splashing around with sea lions and being mistaken for one by a shark. Shark? I couldn't dwell on that for long if I wanted to keep a clean dive suit.

"Ya know, Hetta, of all the harebrained things we've done, this one has to take the cake. Forty feet, by ourselves, in the Pacific Ocean?"

"We've done it several times now."

"Inside the bay, in calm water." As if to make her point, the surge made the panga swap ends and hit the end of the anchor line with a snap, jerking us smartly.

"Maybe it'll be calmer underwater?"
Sure, and I've got this bridge….

"I doubt it. Let's make a deal. We both wear safety tethers attached to the anchor line." She gave the line a tug and declared us soundly hooked.

"Deal. No matter what, we can't be more than fifteen feet from the anchor line so we can pull ourselves back to it, at least. Our rebreathers are good for two hours, and if we have to we can come up fast, no problem at this depth. Got the underwater camera?"

"Yep, and the doggie cam is on. This way our relatives can have one last look at us going over the side so they can play the video for all our friends at our celebration of life?"

"Don't be ridiculous. We don't
have
any other friends," I declared and rolled backward into the water before I lost my nerve.

The surge terrified me. I held onto the anchor line like my life depended on it, which it probably did. Churned by the heaving currents, the water was murky, further upping my fear factor. I almost called off the dive, but Jan went by me and I couldn't let her go alone.

We went down fast, which was fine with me. As long as I concentrated on that line, making sure my hands were firmly attached, I felt somewhat secure. As we went deeper, the surge lessened some but was still way over my comfort level. However, I knew if all else failed I had enough in my auxiliary tank to make it back safely to the surface.

And while I recognized all this stuff on an intellectual level, my brain evidently wasn't relaying the information to my heart, which was in overdrive trying to escape my chest. I was burning air at what was probably ten times the normal rate.

Jan stopped suddenly and I ran into her, almost dislodging my grip on the anchor line. She turned, wide-eyed, or at least I think so, what with that big mask and all.

"What?" I hooted. I didn't really hoot, but I knew that's what it sounded like.

She hooted back and pointed at the pile of rocks rising from the sand bottom. I expected to see something large and toothy, but realized I was looking at what resembled a ship's hull.

And no wonder we were anchored so well, as our anchor line disappeared into a large open gash in the wreck, and was rubbing against what looked like a jagged piece of metal. So far the line was still intact, but I didn't know for how long.

I tapped Jan and jerked my thumb toward the surface and she gave me the a-okay sign, her thumb and index finger forming a circle. We had to get back to our panga, like yesterday, before that line severed. We were in the process of over-handing ourselves to the surface as fast as we could when the line jerked violently in our hands, then went suddenly slack.

Jan lost her grip, but managed to grab one of my fins. We dangled together for a moment or two before she realized her tether was still attached to the line and used it to regrip our lifeline.

By the time we reached the surface and pulled ourselves over the gunwale and into the panga, we were totally exhausted from both fear and being buffeted around by the surge. Po Thang was barking fiercely, and when I looked up I saw we were swiftly drifting toward a rock outcropping, and the breakers pounding it.

Without taking time to remove my breathing apparatus, I started the outboard and motored straight out to sea.

It was at least fifteen minutes before my heart settled down, and Jan and I could laugh at having cheated death once again.

"Looked it right in the face," I brayed.

"Speaking of faces, your's is uncommonly white."

"That's because any color I had in my body drained into my wet suit."

"You two lost
another
anchor?" Chino said at dinner that evening.

"Lost is such a harsh word."

Chino grinned at me. "What word would you use to describe cutting two anchor lines in less than two months?"

"Uh, temporarily misplaced?" One thing for sure, both anchors were incriminating evidence that we were somewhere we were not supposed to be. "You can dock my pay."

"You aren't getting paid."

"See, problem solved."

He shook his head and laughed, as did others at the table. Well, almost all the others; Kazoo and Moto's inscrutable faces twitched slightly right at the lip line.

We discussed Monday morning's maintenance schedule and I asked everyone to leave a list of supplies they thought we might need. I added five new anchors to the list.

Back in my cabin after dinner, Jan and I went once again on a cyber hunt, this time for shipwrecks in the area. Several were listed, but none where we found this one. Or rather, Kazoo and Moto found it.

Fortified with wine, we got up the nerve to watch what we knew would be both fascinating and frightening video of the afternoon's dive.

Before I hit PLAY, I told Jan, "You do know that watching this isn't going to do much in the way of getting a good night's sleep, doncha? That was, without a doubt, my very last dive. Ever!"

"Hey, I'm with you. I'm cleanin' out that suit and putting it in moth balls."

We clinked glasses and I hit the PLAY button.

First thing I noticed was the time, with seconds and minutes in the top left corner of what looked like nothing but a big blue blur. Then Jan's head loomed into the view finder as she grabbed the white anchor line. The sound was what one would expect underwater, except for what was probably me hyperventilating in the background.

Just watching this rerun of the dive tied my stomach in knots. "We're gonna need more wine," I groaned.

Po Thang, who had pushed his head between us, seemed to be watching the video, and gave a woof which probably meant, "See, I knew you idiots should have taken me along."

Jan fetched a new bottle and returned just as the wreck appeared. I froze the frame, slowed it, and we watched as the hull grew larger with each freeze frame. It was much clearer in the video than I remembered in real time, but in my fright, my eyes might have glazed over.

"Look at that," Jan exclaimed. "It's broke almost in half."

"I'd say. What kind of ship do you think it is? Looks to me like that hull is steel."

"I agree, just kind of the way the edges are jagged. I'm surprised there isn't more stuff growing on it. Must be that surge keeps it cleaned off or something."

"Or maybe it's been buried in the sand, and a storm uncovered it?"

I advanced the video a few frames, hoping we'd filmed more before all hell broke loose. Or more like
we
broke loose.

I stopped it again and pointed at the screen. "See that tower laying sideways? I get a feeling this was a fishing boat of some kind."

Jan squinted. "I think you're right. That looks like what they call a tuna tower. From up there they can spot schools of tuna."

"Okay, I'm gonna let it roll. Get ready to hang onto your tummy."

As we expected, everything went wonky when that line let go. The next clear identifiable shot was of my swim fin, and butt.

"Ya know, Hetta, that suit doesn't do much for your rear."

"Hey! Things look much larger underwater."

Early the next morning I loaded Po Thang's doggie cam videos into the computer, mainly for amusement. Watching me and Jan being stupid is always good for a chuckle.

What I saw, however, was anything but amusing. I found Jan working in Chino's office and dragged her back to my cabin.

"You are not effing going to believe this."

"What?"

"You'll see."

I replayed the doggie cam footage, which was pretty ho-hum, except for the two of us rolling out of the panga. I thought we looked pretty professional. Po Thang must have decided on a nap, because for the next ten minutes, which I fast forwarded through, the camera captured nothing but floorboards and paws.

The image suddenly rocked as Po Thang sprang to his feet, and lunged for the top of a gunwale. He couldn't get his head completely over the side because of the way he was tied, but it didn't matter; a large fin was clearly visible, circling the boat.

His barks grew more frenzied as he fought against his restraints, but luckily they held. Then, as the boat rocked violently, Jan and I surfaced like two watermelon seeds spit out by old man Neptune, and we launched ourselves over the side, and into the panga. The camera zeroed in on me as I flopped in, evidently saw we were drifting quickly into the rocks, started the outboard, and threw it into reverse.

And clearly behind us, was that fin. The camera jumped as I turned the boat, put it into forward gear and opened up the throttle.

Jan pointed to the monitor. "Say, did we just nick that shark with our prop?"

"I don't know, but one thing for sure, we spoiled his whole day."

We went on deck and inspected the prop for bits of shark, and while we were there Fabio came outside. "What's wrong?"

"Uh, nothing, just checking the prop. You know, safety first." I gave him a salute.

He leaned over and ran his finger along the prop. "Looks to me like you hit something."

"I certainly hope to hell I did."

Jan dissolved into giggles. Fabio looked confused and left.