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Monty, staring at his screen, and Tyrone, watching the sea, hollered at nearly the same moment, and Gator trimmed the engine, coming up toward a nondescript buoy with a jaunty little flag that bobbed extra in the teeth of the rising waves. Warnings in a few different languages told them to leave it alone. Too bad, so sad.
Flick leaned out with a gaff and hooked the buoy, trying to draw it closer. The thing listed sideways in the water, not yielding to his efforts. "Dang it. You sure this is one of 'em?"
Turning the helm over to Smitty, Gator joined his buddy at the rail. "Yeah, that's their logo—whale-huggers united or whatever." He took over the gaff, but the rope resisted. Should be easy to just pull up the payload and check out the electronics. No dice. "Joe! You're up."
"Me?" Joe scrambled up, looking uncertain.
"Yep. Somebody needs to go overboard and follow the rope down. You got a knife?"
"You want me to cut the rope?" He kicked his shoes off. "Do we have a wetsuit or anything?"
"Hey, Flick, you save your wetsuit from the Seals?"
"Nope! Sorry, kid." Flick's grin revealed a gold tooth he'd gotten in Malaysia a few years back.
Sitting back, Monty said, "Take a few deep breaths on the surface. The impact's gonna hit you hard, even though the water's not that cold. Get the line in one hand and don't let go. Got it?"
Joe nodded like a bobblehead on a dashboard, and Gator wrapped an arm around his shoulders in a brotherly hug. "You can manage." He pulled a knife from the sheath at his back and offered it hilt first. "Here, take this. It's got a lanyard so you don't lose it when you get down there. The thing shouldn't be any more than a few feet down, so don't take any stupid risks, okay?"
"Yeah," said Flick, "stupid risks are my job."
"In you go!" Gator tipped his head toward the side. He kept hold of the buoy with the gaff.
The kid visibly restrained the urge to salute, and jumped into the choppy sea. His head dipped under and he came up gasping. Some of the boys chuckled. Gator squatted down. "You heard Monty's advice. Deep breaths. Focus, okay? You got this. If I didn't have faith in you, I wouldn't've brought you on."
Staring into Gator's eyes, Joe took a few deeper breaths, his strain easing, then he turned away and reached beneath the buoy for the rope. With a final long breath, he tipped himself under in a powerful surface dive, following the line to their target.
"Thought we brought him on board because of his record," Flick remarked.
"Yeah, that, too." Anybody who sold drugs into his Citadel class was the kind of person Gator wanted on his side. That took balls. Balls which Joe had yet to display on this trip, but then he was the greenhorn in the crew, not some cocky leader among a class of cadets.
"So what've you found us?" Smitty asked. They kept watch on the water around the buoy, with the little stream of bubbles suggesting where their man might be.
"Rumors of buried treasure, of course," Gator began, and the others laughed.
"Sounds good to me!" Monty was staring at his dive watch, timing the kid. "I could do with a few million, tax free. Clear out some debts back home."
"Finally go back home," Gator said under his breath, and Monty gave a little acknowledgment. Monty's confidence in algorithms and methods had led to a few gambles he shouldn't have taken—and a few creditors who'd be interested in his whereabouts...if Gator felt like cashing in. Meantime, Gator carried on with his review. "What else? Right. Government crack-down on the cartels means not so much smuggling around here at the moment, but I've got some sources looking for opportunity. There's a kidnapping racket, but it's mostly on the other coast, nabbing people from the cities, hiding out on the islands 'til you get paid, that kind of thing."
"Tourist traffic?" Flick suggested.
Gator shrugged. "Hasn't picked up that much, in spite of the crackdown, so that makes the racket harder. We could set up for a protection scheme. Rob a few folks, then offer armed escort when the rumor gets out."
"Could work," Monty allowed. Twin bars of concern etched between his eyes. "We likely to be down here long enough for that?"
"Hard to say. Once we get this going, maybe moving on."
Flick straddled the cooler. "Lemme get this straight, the best payoff in our time frame is buried treasure?"
From the bow, Tyrone said, "We stay out here too much longer, we're gonna be the shipwreck! Storm's coming in pretty fast."
"I can check the black list," Gator said, "If we're up for some wetwork." They rarely went for the blacklist, a spreadsheet of work-for-hire assassinations in search of competitive bids. Kinda like E-bay for hitmen. In order to make wetwork pay for his crew, the price had to be pretty high, and the risk of identification pretty low. Joe wasn't in on their other freelance projects. Not yet, and especially not that.
Flick aimed his thumb toward the water. "Wetter than this?"
"Could be." Gator had gotten a proximity alert for somebody on the blacklist last seen within two hundred miles of his location. Trouble with that was, on a spit like Baja, the target could be two hundred miles out at sea. With his crew, they could swap out methods and shooters, make it hard for the authorities to track anything back to them. "None of the payouts looked real big, so I didn't follow up. Chances are the big-money targets are in Sonora or on a superyacht someplace."
Monty blew out a breath, tipping his head toward the water, and Gator shot him a look, bracing for the next step. Yeah, okay, sending the kid was a test, but death wasn't meant to be the failure mode, not this soon. Still, the last thing he could do was show any weakness, not in front of this crowd.
A sudden burst of bubbles and thrashing brought his attention back to the water as the kid exploded to the surface, holding their prize aloft. Gator seized his arm and drew him closer to the side, then plucked the slimy package from his grasp.
"Open her up, Monty, maybe we'll find a pearl."