Barracuda Page 15

  “The bathroom’s all yours,” Micko called out, giving Tanya ample time to put his things back.

  “You made such a mess,” she said with a smile as she brushed past him into the bathroom. She sensuously rubbed a finger in the wetness covering her breasts and placed the finger in her mouth. “You taste so good, too,” she cooed.

  “I’m beat,” Micko moaned. “I’ve got to lie down.” He walked over to the bed and fell heavily onto it, making the springs creak.

  Tanya closed the bathroom door tightly and began to wash.

  Micko quietly slipped off the bed and grabbed Tanya’s pocketbook, rifling through it quickly until he found her passport. He saw her full name: Tanya Borisnev, born December 12, 1967. The passport had been issued in Belgrade. Her information was easy to remember. He put it back into her pocketbook and climbed back into the bed.

  Meanwhile, Tanya was quite pleased with herself. She had found no evidence that this detective had been sent to investigate them, and she’d had the best sex of her life. She had always dominated her men before. It had also been nearly a year since her last sexual encounter, one that left her completely unsatisfied. She washed herself with care as she heard her conquest snoring in the other room.

  Micko feigned being drunk, exhausted, and asleep. When Tanya exited the bathroom, he stopped his pretend snoring and acted like the bathroom light had woken him up.

  “Go back to sleep, lover,” she whispered.

  Suddenly, all the lights went out, the music stopped, and a siren began to blare.

  “Shit! The goddamn rebels again!” she cursed.

  “The rebels?” Micko questioned.

  Tanya carefully went to a closet and removed a large lantern and two flashlights. “The rebels do this every once in a while. No matter how much security we have, they find a way to knock out the lights.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “We don’t know. Somehow they find a spot to short out the system and blow the main fuses. It only takes about thirty minutes to fix, but it is quite annoying.”

  They both dressed in the low light given off by the lantern with the shrieking sirens in the background.

  “I better get back to my room,” Micko said.

  “You’re probably right. I’d better get back to mine as well. This casino room would have been a great place for us to spend the night if conditions were different.”

  “Maybe next time,” he lied.

  Tanya handed him a flashlight, and he kissed her on the cheek and walked out as she was still getting dressed.

  It was damn spooky going through the blackened casino with flashlight beams spearing through the darkness. Micko quickly exited the casino and worked his way back to the hotel lobby from the outside. He stopped to marvel at how pitch black the Majestic was and how the small fishing village and the locals still had lights. The rebels sure knew what they were doing. He heard a yell and a commotion in the distance near the golf course. Looking in that direction he heard several gunshots and more yelling. He figured Disco and his boys were chasing the rebels.

  In the utter darkness, Micko quickly ran up the stairs to Andrej’s penthouse office and used the passkey he had just removed from Tanya’s purse. The flashlight she had given him provided more than enough illumination for the task at hand. Flacka had done her part as he’d requested by arranging the blackout with her rebel friends. She had been more than happy to collaborate with her new cop friend if it could help the rebels.

  Entering the penthouse was a breeze, and Micko laughed when he found the “Bible” lying open on Alex’s desk. Apparently, the bookkeeper had been working on the ledger when the lights went out. All the Russians, it seemed, were involved in chasing the dissidents or repairing the damage. This left Micko alone in the penthouse, and he spent less than one minute to enter, grab the Bible, and leave. He placed the ledger down the front of his pants and pulled his shirt over it.

  When the commotion died down, he walked back to the hotel and the lights came on just as he entered lobby.

  “Do I get charged extra for this excitement—the blackouts, shootings, and shouting?” Micko asked the concierge in jest.

  The startled man just stared at the detective with his mouth agape.

  Micko went straight to his room and wrote down Tanya’s information. Then he rummaged through his wallet, found Buddy Burger’s card, and called his FBI friend.

  “Hey, Buddy, Micko here. I think you might be interested in what I found out about your money laundering investigation.”

  Micko revealed all he had learned, and Buddy promised to be on the next flight to Bikini Atoll. Micko was pleased with himself, but he knew that he had to hide the journal. He remembered that Flacka had told him that Celestial could be trusted. The scientists also trusted him and his boat, the Hummingbird.

  The village was quiet and the dock was eerily silent as Micko approached. He saw two figures walking toward him from the depths of the wharf. Micko hid behind a barnacle encrusted piling and watched until he recognized Dr. Collins and James.

  “Professor, James, it’s me,” he whispered.

  The professor put his hands up toward his face in a defensive posture, and James leaped backward a few feet.

  “Don’t be afraid. It’s me, Micko.”

  “Jesus, man! You just scared ten years off my life,” the professor blurted.

  “Shh. Where is Celestial’s boat?”

  “Down at the far end of the dock. Why?” James responded.

  “I have the ledger and I need to hide it tonight.”

  James’s eyes widened. “Professor, we can take it to the shark graveyard. Celestial says no one ever goes there or even knows about it.”

  The three men returned to the dark depths of the wharf and went back to the Hummingbird. On the way, James explained to Micko that Hiroshi was using the Lily I and Lily II to pull a fireworks-laden barge from Eneu the next day. The scientists had just checked with Celestial, whose boat was once again seaworthy, so they hired him to continue with their research, beginning with the retrieval of the underwater camera from the passageway.

  “Celestial, this is Micko,” James introduced. “He is a colleague of ours.”

  “No, he is the policeman,” Celestial returned.

  “Is there anyone on this island that doesn’t know that I’m a cop?” Micko questioned once again.

  “No,” they all answered in unison.

  Micko explained to Celestial the need to hide the ledger that night, and Celestial agreed. The foursome climbed into the boat when suddenly another man appeared from below decks.

  “Hi, Regis, the first mate.” The man stuck his hand out to Micko, who shook it. This dark-skinned man stood about six feet tall with a slender build. Celestial was well over six feet tall with a muscular barrel chest. The two men were about the same age, and it was obvious that they were lifelong buddies.

  The five new friends exchanged pleasantries as Celestial slid the Hummingbird from its berth. Regis perched over the bow of the boat and directed Celestial with exaggerated arm movements since they were running without lights.

  The Hummingbird was a forty-five-foot converted trawler. Celestial had won it in a card game from a drunken New Zealander several years earlier. He had the market on commercial swordfishing since his was the only boat equipped for such a difficult task. Even the sport fishing boats from the two resorts couldn’t match this old steamer. The Hummingbird had the fuel capacity to reach the edge of the continental shelf where the really deep-water swordfish were. The rest of the villagers and the sport fishing boats stayed local.

  The Hummingbird was not an attractive-looking boat, but it was a very capable vessel. Celestial operated it from the elevated wheelhouse, and Regis handled the ropes and deck-side duties.

  Celestial held his finger to his lips, indicating that no one should speak. Sound carried on the water, and since the Russians and Japanese were probably still out looking for the insurgents, the need for silence was urgen
t.

  Once the Hummingbird crossed the atoll to the shark burial site, Celestial broke the silence, but still spoke in hushed tones. He motioned for Micko and the scientists to come into the wheelhouse. The three were deciding how to safeguard the Bible underwater when Regis popped the question.

  “Why not dig a hole on this small beach and hide it above the waterline?”

  “That’s brilliant!” James exclaimed.

  Celestial had an old oilcloth that he used for his own boat diary. He wrapped the incriminating journal in it, and Micko buried it at the base of a palm tree. The Hummingbird returned to port as quickly and silently as she had left, and the men made arrangements to meet in the early morning and head out to the passageway.

  9

  Tanya finished getting dressed and grabbed her flashlight. She had heard Disco yelling out orders to his men and then heard gunshots coming from the direction of the golf course. Her first thought was to see if Andrej was all right. When she arrived at the penthouse, she realized she had left her purse in the casino room during all of the confusion.

  Tanya pressed the doorbell and then realized it would not work without electricity. She knocked heavily on the door, but there was no answer. Without her pocketbook, she was also without her passkey.

  She went down the stairwell toward the lobby but heard a commotion coming from the main casino. Racing toward the angry voices, she saw Hiroshi gesturing wildly. He was ordering his Japanese henchmen to go into the fishing village to locate the rebels.

  “I want them all rounded up and punished!” he screamed. His face was beet red. Tanya had never seen him lose his composure so badly.

  “Disco and his men are chasing some of the dissidents across the golf course,” she told him.

  “I want them all!” he ranted. “It ends here tonight!”

  Just then, the lights came back on.

  Tanya turned off her flashlight, walked to the hotel lobby, and asked the concierge if he knew where Andrej was. A group of well-dressed people were complaining to the concierge about the blackout and demanding that it never happen again. The concierge waved to Tanya, exasperated that he didn’t know where anyone was at the moment.

  Suddenly, her cell phone rang and she recognized Andrej’s phone number on the caller ID.

  “Get here immediately!” he barked.

  “Are you in the penthouse?”

  “Of course, I am! Get your ass up here right now!”

  “I was just up there and there was no one inside,” she said.

  “Someone was here, you silly whore! The Bible is missing!”

  Tanya knew that the elevators would be too slow with people heading back to their rooms, so she ran up the stairs to Andrej’s office. When she arrived and rang the bell, the door was opened by one of Disco’s men, and she stepped in to see Andrej pacing the room like a caged tiger. Alex was sitting on a couch with his head in his hands, rocking back and forth, moaning.

  “Who? How?” she blurted.

  Andrej stopped pacing and stared at her with dagger eyes. “If I knew that, I would have had Disco cut his balls off and shove them down his throat!”

  “Only someone with a magnetic strip key could have gotten in here, and the cleaning staff people don’t have such a card,” Tanya thought aloud. “The rebels couldn’t have done it, and the doors are operated by a completely separate electrical system than the lights. Only someone with an access card could have removed the Bible. Could Hiroshi have taken advantage of the blackout to remove it?”

  “Don’t be an idiot!” Andrej shouted. “Why would Hiroshi want the ledger? Where are those scientists and that cop? I thought you had the cop under control.”

  “I do. He was with me with the lights went out,” she insisted.

  “Where the hell is he now? Why did you have to ring the doorbell? Where is your key?” Andrej demanded.

  ***

  Disco and his men chased a group of rebels onto the golf course. The rebels were far ahead, and Disco realized that he and his men would run more slowly while firing.

  Just as the rebels ran down an embankment and out of sight, a small explosion occurred off to the left side of the golf course. A small storage bin was engulfed in flames, and the fire was in danger of spreading to the clubhouse. Disco knew that he could not catch the rebels and that this explosion was to aid in their getaway, so he directed his men to stop the chase and tend to the fire.

  “Andrej and Hiroshi are gonna have my ass,” he cursed.

  ***

  Micko was certain that the Bible was safe on Bokbata Island. The Hummingbird was being tied up to its berth by Regis when Celestial said, “You better get back to the hotel before you are missed.”

  Micko and the scientists knew that Celestial was right, so they walked wordlessly back to their rooms, traveling separately, knowing that they would meet again at six a.m.

  The scientists went straight to their respectful beds and were asleep in minutes. Micko snuck up the casino stairs to Tanya’s private room and placed her passkey on the hallway rug. He thought that a member of the casino staff would find the key and return it to the front desk. There the concierge would swipe the magnetic strip, see the owner’s ID appear on the computer screen, and then return it.

  He hoped that Tanya would think she had dropped it during all the blackout confusion. Little did he know that she’d never left the room with her purse.

  ***

  Eddie and Tom were having breakfast in the Bikini resort’s spacious yet bland cafeteria when Denise, their dive master, approached. She was tall, slender, and tanned hailing from Tampa, Florida. She brushed her long blonde hair away from her face and asked, “Are you guys ready to dive the HIJMS Nagato at eleven?”

  Eddie answered, “We can’t wait, but we should have been the first to dive, today, on the USS Saratoga, not the Aussies.”

  “I know. You Californians were here first, but the Aussies made special arrangements to dive the wreck first,” she replied. “I can guarantee that the carrier will still be there at three o’clock when you guys do your second dive of the day.” She smiled brightly.

  “I wish you had two dive boats instead of just one,” Tom lamented.

  “So do I,” Denise conceded as she walked to the breakfast counter.

  “I really wish we didn’t have to share the Thor with those guys,” Tom said as he pointed to the loud Australians at the other end of the cafeteria.

  “It’s okay, Tom. We’ll still have some great dives. Just worry about the batteries in your u/w camera. If they fail, you’ll never forgive yourself,” Eddie replied with a laugh.

  He knew that his best friend was a bit neurotic and had to be placated at times. Tom liked things to run smoothly and quietly, and the Aussies got on his nerves. Eddie was much more forgiving and carefree. The Aussies were a bit annoying, but he remembered how he had been in his enthusiastic youth. The average age of the Sydney dive club was more than twenty years younger than that of the California club. Of course, there would be some friction, but it was like water off a duck’s back to Eddie; and he spread this laissez faire attitude amongst his club members.

  Denise loaded her breakfast plate with French toast and coffee, and then made her way over to the belligerent Aussies. She thought them to be a bit rowdy and obnoxious, but fun. She knew it would be an interesting week with such opposite dive clubs sharing the Thor.

  She sat down at Rat’s table and could smell the residual alcohol from the previous evening’s partying. “The forecast is for a perfect day of diving, gang, so be on the boat at seven sharp. We will hook up to the carrier and then I will go over the dive profile. We should be in the water by eight and do a checkout dive on the flight deck. With deco, the total bottom time will be about sixty minutes. Then we’ll travel back to the dock, and the Californians will go to the Nagato and dive a similar profile. When your surface interval is complete, I’ll come back for your group. You guys stated that you wanted to do a second deeper dive on the Saratog
a. Any questions?”

  “We can penetrate the wreck on the first dive, can’t we?” Bulldog asked.

  Rat immediately kicked his leg under the table for asking such a foolish question. Steve had already telephoned Denise, so she was expecting the Aussies to try to enter the wreck at the hatch site for their scavenger hunt. Denise was glad that Steve had affected temporary measures to keep the hooligans from penetrating the Saratoga.

  “There is absolutely no penetration of the USS Saratoga, but I’ll talk more about that during the dive profile speech later. Enjoy your breakfast, guys.”

  Like most slender women, Denise ate like a bird and finished her meal before walking her tray back to the serving station. She poured herself another cup of coffee and walked over to another table of Renegades. She would be coy and try to figure out the game plan for the scavenger hunt.

  Meanwhile, “Are you a moron?” Rat asked Bulldog.

  “What? Like she doesn’t know we’re going in?” Bulldog replied.

  “She isn’t supposed to know until after we do it,” Rat warned. He kept an eye on Denise until she left the cafeteria and headed down toward the dive boat. Then he called all the Renegades to his table.

  “We will pretend to listen to the bitch’s dive profile, but this is our dive profile,” he announced. “When she gives us the divers down signal, we descend down the mooring line and head straight for the hole that Bill and Bob made. At that point, its every diver for themselves, and the scavenger hunt begins. Be careful, be daring, and be victorious!”

  ***

  Tanya called Disco and asked him to have breakfast with her. He thought that this was quite unusual, but agreed. He had been trying to get into her “tight as a clam’s ass” pussy for some time. All the men lusted for her, but she never took a lover on Shark Alley Island. She was all business but sexy as hell.

  Tanya needed Disco’s help. She was repulsed by the very sight of him and all the other henchmen, but business was business. Having returned to her casino room to recover her purse but found her passkey missing. It was then that she realized that the cop had set her up.