The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone 13)

“Jansen,” I tried again.

I checked the forward cabin. Empty. I climbed to the upper bridge. Empty, too. Jansen was not on board. Had he been taken by the people in the plane? Or had he gone voluntarily?

I climbed back down to the main deck and considered my options. The waterproof case was gone. It had been here when I’d left earlier. Clearly, it had found its way onto the plane.

Then something caught my eye.

A red-and-white Igloo cooler, which hadn’t been there before.

Maybe Jansen had brought it up from below? I glanced out across the water and saw another seaplane. But instead of vectoring for Fort Jefferson it turned west and headed my way.

Then I noticed something else.

A wire leading from the Igloo, draping the port rail.

Alarm bells rang in my brain.

I rushed to the cooler and removed the top. The inside was packed with plastic-wrapped clay bricks. Metal posts were buried into the top layer. Wires led to an electronic device.

A detonator.

No timer was visible, which meant it was probably remote-controlled. The exposed wire leading out had to be an antenna.

I darted to the rail, glancing up to see the seaplane bank north and start a low sweep that would take it about a quarter mile off the stern. I caught the coloration. Blue and white. Then the ID numbers.

1180206.

The same one from before.

It had circled back.

That couldn’t be good.

I leaped from the boat into the water and powered myself deep.

Just as the Isla Marie exploded.

* * *

I surfaced.

Thankfully, I’d made it deep enough to escape the destruction. Debris floated everywhere and I felt a swift current that would take it all, including me, out to sea. Quite a mess I’d managed to get myself into and I wondered how much of it had been intentional on the players’ part.

Stephanie Nelle. Jansen. Coleen Perry.

And a guy named Valdez.

Stupid me assumed that Jansen had been either harmed or incapacitated. What was the saying? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And this fool had certainly done that. Had Jansen set me up for a kill?

I tried to swim back toward Loggerhead, but for every few yards gained, the current reclaimed that much and more. A piece of debris floated by and I retrieved it, using it for flotation, which allowed my arms and legs to rest. I’d swum more today than in the past two years.

I quickly drifted away from land.

Hopefully, some of the local residents beneath me weren’t out looking for an easy lunch. If so, there’d be little I could do to dissuade them.

An engine broke the silence.

Not a plane. A boat.

I’d been hoping the park service personnel at Fort Jefferson would come to investigate. After all, how many things blew up around here?

I saw a craft headed my way.

But not from the east where the fort lay. This one came from the west side of Loggerhead.

An inflatable.

Like the one from before.

Anything had to be better than wearing myself out and drowning in the open sea. Particularly considering my only exercise was jumping to conclusions. So I waved my arms and attracted attention. The buzz of an outboard came steadily nearer, then eased up toward me and I saw two men inside.

The divers from the wreck.

Nothing about this was going to be good, but what choice did I have? I took some comfort from the fact that if they wanted me dead they’d just leave me in the water.

I swam over and grabbed the inflatable.

Something hard slammed my head.

Thoughts flickered as my brain became dazed with pain.

Then the world vanished.

CHAPTER NINE

I opened my eyes.

I hadn’t taken a shot like that since some touch football that got out of hand two summers ago. My head hurt. Where was I? On a boat? Had to be considering the engine roar and a familiar shifting of up and down.

My woozy brain reverberated with all the possibilities.

Just as I’d thought back in the water, nobody here wanted me dead.

Not yet, anyway.

Slowly, the room around me began to take shape. I lay on a bunk, the smelly berth nothing fancy. I pushed myself up and sat on the edge. My first day on the job had definitely been interesting.

Footsteps bounded down a steep set of stairs and a man entered the cabin. He was dark and gaunt, narrow-hipped and rawboned, not a pinch of surplus flesh anywhere on his bones. His face was angular, deep-lined, with a hawkish nose and long black-and-silver hair slicked down close to his skull. An abundant salt-and-pepper beard concealed a thin mouth. What caught my eye were his slender fingers, the nails manicured, a gold ring set with a ruby glimmering from his left hand.

“I am Juan Lopez Valdez. Where is my 1933 Double Eagle?”

He spoke with authority, the perfect English laced with a Spanish drawl. I assumed this was the same Valdez that Coleen Perry had mentioned.

“I don’t have it.”

“Ms. Perry kept it?”

I nodded. “It was hers. Or her father’s, as she pointed out.”

He seemed to believe what I was saying. I assumed my clothes had already been searched.

He motioned.

“Let’s walk on deck. It’s stuffy down here, and you look like you need some air.”

* * *

I followed him up and saw that we were plowing through blue waves, not a speck of land in sight. The sky had totally cleared. Bright, hot, uncompromising sunshine streaked down. The rear deck was crowded with diving equipment.

“You came here to salvage the wreck?” I asked.

He propped himself against the outer rail and folded his bony arms across his chest. “That was my intention, after the storm cleared. But when we saw your boat, we moved faster. Senor Malone, we have a serious problem. I do not have my files or the coin.”

Another new tidbit.

Not documents as Coleen had described.

Files.

“How do you know my name?”

He reached into his back pocket and removed my wallet. He opened the wet leather and found my military ID. “Lieutenant Commander Harold Earl Malone, currently at Naval Station Mayport. Judge Advocate General’s corps. I’m familiar with that base. I visited there many years ago.”

I decided to go with the obvious. “Before the boat exploded, a seaplane arrived. Your files went off in it. Your coin is still on Loggerhead with Coleen Perry. Unfortunately, I’m not in the loop on either of those.”

“Except that you forcibly retrieved my files from the wreck. But for you, I would have them.”

There was that. “Where are we going?”

“South. Where it’s much safer.”

That meant Cuba.

“When I agreed to this exchange,” he said, “I made the mistake of thinking time had changed things. But I should have known better.”

The dots started to connect.

The files were to be traded to Coleen by Valdez for the coin, and all was good until the seaplane arrived. Might as well give this guy more bad news. “I think a guy named Jim Jansen has your files. And there must have been quite a few. That case was heavy.”

He shook his head. “A precaution I took, adding lead weights to the inside. If there were problems I did not want that waterproof case being taken by anyone. Better to let it sink to the bottom. But you’re right about Jansen. He’s been wanting my files for a long time. Now I seem to have provided him the perfect opportunity. With your assistance, of course.”

I didn’t like how he kept drawing me into something I knew zero about. So I pointed out, “I think Jansen wanted me dead.”

That seemed to get his attention. “Go on.”

“There were remote-controlled explosives on the boat. That seaplane came back to set them off, with me on board.”

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