Born Ready (4 page)

He paused on the pier to take a deep breath of home and Carl stopped, seeming to understand that Scott needed a moment. It was good to be back.

They walked into the restaurant, greeted by the clatter of dishes and the hum of voices. Most everyone in the place was Coast Guard of one fashion or the other—active duty, reservists, auxiliary or family members of Coasties. People waved and called out to them.

The hostess knew Carl by name and led them to his regular booth that looked out over the water.

On the wall behind them was a ten-year-old photograph of Carl with Scott’s father, Ben. They wore their navy blue operational dress uniforms and had their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. Looking like brothers, they grinned for the camera.

The picture had been snapped just after they’d completed a successful search-and-rescue mission for missing teens who had taken out a sailboat without permission and got caught in a squall.

It was the last photo ever taken of Scott’s dad. Two weeks later, he was dead, killed in a drug interdiction operation. Psychologists might have said Scott had gone into the same line of work as his father as a way to avenge his death. They would have been half-right.

“How you been?” Carl asked.

The question was more perfunctory than fact finding. He and Carl stayed in touch through email, corresponding at least once a week. “Good, good.”

“Dating?”

Scott shook his head and immediately thought of Jackie, but he had no idea why.

Six months without sex. That’s why.

Their waitress came over. “The usual?” she asked Carl.

Carl nodded.

The young woman turned her eyes on Scott, smiled coyly. “And what will
you
have?”

He thought about flirting with her but he wasn’t really in the mood. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jackie Birch and the disdainful look she’d given him. Scott loved a challenge. He preferred to do the chasing instead of being chased.

“Scrambled eggs, four slices of bacon cooked crisp and a fruit bowl.” He placed his order.

“Anything else?” She licked her lips.

“Cup of coffee.”

The girl looked deflated, picked up their menus and wandered off.

“I can see why you’re not dating,” Carl said. “She was interested.”

“I know.”

Carl watched the departing waitress. “She’s cute.”

“Too young.”

“She’s over eighteen.”

Scott shrugged.

“What’s up? A year ago you would have been hitting banter shots like tennis balls.”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “I guess I’m looking for something a bit more demanding.”

“Picking up a young waitress is too easy?”

“Something like that.”

Jackie kept prowling the back of his mind as he remembered the look on her face telling him to buzz off. He’d
wanted
to convince her that he was a man worth knowing. Why was that? The intensity of his attraction to a woman that should not have attracted him niggled.

Carl drummed his fingers on the Formica tabletop. For the most part, he was a self-possessed guy. Scott knew his friend. He had something on his mind. “What’s up, Carl?”

A somber expression crossed the older man’s face. He pressed his lips together, blew out a breath. “Juan DeCristo has resurfaced.”

Scott tensed, folded his hands into fists against his thighs. DeCristo was the drug lord responsible for his father’s death. It had been ten years, and while the pain had ebbed, it never completely went away.

And the need for revenge? Would he ever stop feeling it?

He’d been in college when it had happened. Messing around instead of taking his academics seriously. He had wanted to enlist in the Coast Guard as soon as he graduated from high school. Ninety percent of the Coast Guard were enlisted. But his dad argued he would have more opportunity if he went to college. So he’d gone and majored in girls and good times. Then his dad had been killed and that had changed everything forever.

Scott had gotten serious about his studies. He’d changed his major to criminal justice and graduated with top honors from the University of Florida. The next day he joined the Coast Guard. They’d welcomed him like the prodigal son. He’d risen up through the ranks, working in various positions from San Diego to New Hampshire where he’d met Amber. Ironically, she’d left him just two weeks before he’d gotten the desk job in D.C.

“DeCristo is still alive?” He had to force the words through his constricted throat.

“Unfortunately. He—”

The waitress returned with their breakfast.

Carl paused, thanked her. He waited until she walked out of earshot before he resumed his story. “DeCristo was in a South American prison for a while, but his interactions there seemed to have only made him stronger. He met people. Curried favor. He’s got powerful connections.”

Scott picked up his fork, but he’d lost his appetite. He knew how the story went. He worked the coastal borders between California and Mexico. Understood all too well the uphill battle of preventing illegal drugs from reaching American soil.

“We’ve had an influx of high-grade cocaine coming into the Keys. Users aren’t accustomed to such a pure product and there have been a half dozen overdose deaths.”

Scott inhaled a slow hiss of breath.

“With government cutbacks, we’ve been in a staffing crunch. Add to that our patrol boat operational gap and we’ve got big trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s rumors that DeCristo has gotten his hands on the latest stealth technology.”

That stunned Scott. This was the first he was hearing about it. Then again, D.C. was something of an ivory tower. He needed to get out on the seas more often, check on the local sonar. “But how?”

“Spies? A government mole? Hell, he could have gotten in from Russia. You’re in on high-level security. You know there are leaks. Money talks and it’s estimated DeCristo is worth over a billion dollars.”

Scott pushed eggs around on his plate. “How substantial are these rumors?”

“Substantial enough that I’m bringing this to you.”

“Details.” Scott pushed his plate away, steepled his fingers, leaned in closer. “What have you heard?”

“We arrested a tourist last week who had two grams of the high-grade coke on his boat. He was looking for a plea deal and claimed to have gotten the stash from a young woman working for DeCristo.”

“How credible is the guy?”

Carl shrugged. “Typical small-time drug dealer, but his story is just outlandish and detailed enough to have credibility.”

“What do you mean?”

“He says that the woman told him DeCristo is using a stealth drone submarine to transport the drugs and he’s using her and other young American women to help him.”

“How does the operation work?”

“Supposedly, DeCristo is dropping the submarine into the water off Cuba. It’s got a navigational camera that can get it through the open water, but it needs help maneuvering through obstacles in the mangrove channels. According to the source—which I admit is not terribly reliable—these young women go out in the estuaries at an appointed time, usually in the early morning or just after sunset, in skiffs with homing beacons on them and they guide the drone into shore. We haven’t picked up a damn thing on our radio, but if it is a stealth submarine, we wouldn’t.”

If what Carl was saying was true…

Scott’s gut tightened. It
was
possible. A savvy drug lord with the right connections might indeed be able to get his hands on stealth technology and make his own drone. And if he was hiring young American women to guide his drone in, no one would be the wiser. Key West was an open port just waiting to be abused.

A rushing noise built in Scott’s ears, low and insistent. The hairs on his forearm lifted.

Jackie Birch.

Part of him said, no way, but another part of him, the suspicious part that had a degree in criminal justice and had worked drug interdiction on the high seas knew better. Anyone was capable of being a drug mule. From junior high school kids to grandmothers.

Jackie Birch.

It could explain why she’d been so unfriendly. Why she was in the estuary alone at dawn. Could she be a courier for DeCristo?

Disgust hardened a knot in his stomach. How could he have been so stupid? So led around by his dick?

Six months without sex, that was how.

He felt like a damned fool.
Your father’s murderer is turning the Key West mangrove channels into a devil’s playground and he’s using gullible young women to do it.

Except Jackie hadn’t seemed the least bit gullible. She struck him as focused and very capable. A woman who knew exactly what she was doing. His stomach soured. The eggs smelled gelatinous.

“We need to seriously look into this,” he told Carl.

“I was hoping you’d say that, but I don’t have a budget for supposition. I have no proof beyond this small-time dealer who’s looking for a plea bargain. It could all be bullshit.”

“But you feel it’s got a ring of truth to it?”

“Considering DeCristo’s connections? Yeah, I think it’s not only plausible, but possible.”

“Let me do some digging.”

“But you’re on vacation.”

“You know there’s no such thing as a Coastie on vacation.”

“Your sister is getting married. You’ve got tuxedo fittings and rehearsal dinners—”

“Next week. That’s all next week.”

Carl shook his head. “I told you because you have pull in Washington and I thought that maybe you could get us a bigger budget for interdiction.”

“In order to do that I’ve got to have something stronger to go on than a rumor. I’ll put my ear to the ground,” he said. “You just leave this to me.”

3

I will ensure that my superiors rest easy with the knowledge that I am on the helm, no matter what the conditions.

—Surfman’s Creed

WATER.

It stirred Jackie Birchard’s soul in a way nothing else did. She’d been born in March, a Pisces. Sign of the fish. Not that she believed in anything as unscientific as astrology. Her father would never have stood for it if she had exhibited a budding interest in horoscopes.

She sat cross-legged on the dumpy old sofa that came with the apartment she rented, her notebook computer nestled in her lap while she monitored the readout from her equipment submersed in the estuary. The conditions were perfect. She was determined to prove that her hunch was right.

Up until a year ago,
Starksia starcki,
aka the Key blenny, could be found in only one location in the world. Just South of Big Pine Key. But then suddenly, the Key blenny had started disappearing from that area.

Dr. Jack Birchard had been of the mind the Key blenny was on the road to complete extinction and he attributed it to a number of cumulative environmental factors in that region. Even though he cared deeply about the ecology, her father was also the most unsentimental man on the face of the earth. Stoically, he moved on to other more salvageable creatures, leaving the Key blenny to its fate.

This was when the crack in their relationship—that had been there from the day she was born—expanded into an unbridgeable fissure. She couldn’t forgive him for writing off the Key blenny.

Particularly, when he looked her in the eye and said, “It’s just one species of fish. We have to focus on the bigger picture. Let it go, daughter.”

And she’d made the mistake of bringing up an old emotional argument that had no place in the discussion. She raised her chin, met his challenging stare with a razor-sharp glare of her own. “Just like you did with Mother?”