Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“Not in a hundred years, my dear.”

“Back to your original question, the reason I hesitated was my surprise. This is the first time Ramirez mentioned his boat. He’s given us the impression he used dugouts. Remember the fuss he made about how great our little putt-putt inflatable was? I was sniffing around one day and found a shed holding an airboat.”

She leaned up on one elbow. “An airboat! Why didn’t he say something?”

“I think it’s obvious. He didn’t want anybody to know. I think our friend Ramirez is more complicated than he appears.”

“I have the same impression. I think he was being disingenuous about sending us scientific geeks off on a potentially dangerous mission. We’ve told him enough about the Special Assignments Team for him to know what we do when we’re not counting river dolphins. I think he wants NUMA brought into this thing.”

“Looks like we’ve played right into his hands, but I’m not sure why he’d be so Machiavellian.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Gamay said. “He was talking about the scientists from the university acting as bio police. He is a scientist from a university. He sort of side-slipped the implication.”

“I noticed.” Paul stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. “So you think he’s actually a bio cop disguised as a botanist?”

“It would make sense.” Gamay paused in thought. “I must confess that the real reason I want to investigate was in those bags we found with the Chulo. I’m intrigued at how a backward Indian got all those high-tech toys, aren’t you?”

There was no sound from the other side of the bed except that of low breathing. Paul was exercising his famous talent for dropping off to sleep on command. Gamay shook her head, pulled the sheets over her shoulders, and did the same. They would be up with the sun, and she expected the next day to be a long one.

6

THE MEXICAN CUSTOMS AGENT leaned from his window and checked out the two men in the white Ford pickup truck. They were wearing beat-up shorts and T-shirts, Foster Grant sunglasses, and baseball caps with bait shop logos on them.

“Purpose of your visit?” the agent asked the husky man behind the wheel. The driver jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the fishing rods and tackle boxes in back. “Going fishing.”

“Wish I could join you,” the agent said with a smile, and waved them on into Tijuana.

As they pulled away, Zavala, who was sitting in the passenger seat, said, “What’s with the Spies Like Us routine? All we had to do was flash our NUMA IDs.”

Austin grinned. “This is more fun.”

“We’re lucky our clean-cut appearance doesn’t fit the profile for terrorists or drug runners.”

“I prefer to think that we’re masters of disguise.” Austin glanced at Zavala and shook his head. “By the way, I hope you brought along your American passport. I wouldn’t want you to get stuck in Mexico.”

“No problem. It wouldn’t be the first time a Zavala sneaked across the border.”

Zavala’s parents had waded across the Rio Grande in the 1960s from Morales, Mexico, where they were born and raised. His mother was seven months pregnant at the time. Her condition didn’t stand in the way of her determination to start life with her newborn in El Norte. They made their way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Zavala was born. His father’s skills as a carpenter and woodcarver brought him steady work with the wealthy clients who built their fashionable homes there. The same influential people helped his father when he applied for a green card and later for citizenship.

The truck was on loan from the Red Ink’s support team because rental cars couldn’t be taken into Mexico. From their hotel they headed south from San Diego, passing through Chula Vista, the border town that is neither Mexican nor American but a blend of both countries. Once into Mexico they skirted the sprawling slums of Tijuana, then picked up MEX 1, the Carretera Transpeninsula highway that runs the full length of Baja California. Past El Rosarita with its concentration of souvenir shops, motels, and taco stands, the commercial honky-tonk began to thin out. Before long the highway was flanked by agricultural fields and bare hills on the left and by the curving emerald bay known as Todos Los Santos. About an hour after leaving Tijuana they turned off at Ensenada.

Austin knew the resort and fishing city from the days he crewed in the Newport-Ensenada sailboat race. The unofficial finish was at Hussong’s Cantina, a seedy old bar with sawdust-covered floors. Before the new highway brought the tourists and their dollars, Baja California Norte was truly the frontier. In its heyday Hussong’s was a haunt for the colorful local characters and rugged individuals, and the sailors, fishermen, and auto racers who knew Ensenada when it was the last outpost of civilization on the eight-hundred-mile-long Baja peninsula before La Paz. Hussong’s was one of those legendary bars, like Foxy’s in the Virgin Islands or Capt’n Tony’s in Key West, where everybody in the world had been. As they stepped inside Austin was heartened to see a few scruffy barflies who might remember the good old days when tequila flowed like a river and the police ran a shuttle service back and forth between the cantina and the local hoosegow.

They sat at a table and ordered huevos rancheros. “Ah, pure soul food,” Zavala said, savoring a bite of scrambled eggs and salsa. Austin had been studying the sad expression on the moose head that had been over the bar for as long as he could recall. Still wondering how a moose got to Mexico, he turned his attention back to the map of the Baja that was spread out on the table in front of him next to the satellite photo showing water temperature.

“This is where we’re going,” he said, pointing to the map. “The temperature anomaly is in the vicinity of this cove.”

Zavala finished his meal with a smile of pleasure and opened a Baedecker’s guide to Mexico. “It says here that the ballena gris or gray whale arrives off the Baja from December to March to mate and give birth to its young. The whales weigh up to twenty-five tons and run between ten and forty-nine feet long. During mating, one male will keep the female in position while another male—” He winced. “Think I’ll skip that part. The gray was almost exterminated by commercial whaling but was made a protected species in 1947.” He paused in his reading. “Let me ask you something. I know you’ve got a lot of respect for anything that swims in the sea, but I’ve never thought of you as a whale hugger. Why the big interest? Why not leave this up to the EPA or Fish and Wildlife?”

“Fair question. I could say I want to find out what started the chain of events that ended up with the sinking of Pop’s boat. But there’s another reason that I can’t put my finger on.” A thoughtful expression came into Austin’s eyes. “It reminds me of some scary dives I’ve made. You know the kind. You’re swimmi

ng along, everything seemingly fine, when the hair rises on the back of your neck, your gut goes ice-cold, and you’ve got a bad feeling you’re not alone, that something is watching you. Something hungry.”

“Sure,” Zavala said contemplatively. “But it usually goes beyond that. I imagine that the biggest, baddest, hungriest shark in the ocean is behind me, and he’s thinking how it’s been a long time since he’s had authentic Mexican food.” He took another bite of his huevos. “But when I look around there’s nothing there, or maybe there’s a minnow the size of my finger who’s been giving me the evil eye.”

“The sea is wrapped in mystery,” Austin said with a faraway look in his eyes.

“Is that a riddle?”