Deek crossed the Cape Coral Bridge and made his way through densely packed little homes to the marina and hotel complex off Glover’s Bight where the Great American Boat Show was being held. Upon reaching their destination, Deek was informed that on-site parking was full, and he was forced to backtrack to a privately owned, cash-only lot. There, a florid Florida man perched on a folding lawn chair under an umbrella separated Deek from forty dollars of his remaining money. After Boone had covered his airport parking, he couldn’t bring himself to beg again. Before leaving the car, Deek grabbed a backpack containing a much-needed change of clothes and a toiletries bag.
At the convention site, while Boone, Em, and AJ checked into their hotel rooms and stashed their luggage, Deek popped into the hotel lobby bathroom, changed out of his clothing in an empty stall, then brushed his teeth and washed his face. Unfortunately, he hadn’t packed a razor or shaving cream. He looked in the mirror, running a hand over his stubble. Meh. Good enough.
Returning to the lobby, he waited until the others came down, and then the quartet made their way toward the convention and approached the reservations tables. They didn’t get very far, when Emily abruptly shouted, “Blimey! Mermaids!”
Off to the side, near the entrance to the main convention floor, two “mermaids” sat: a brunette with a red shimmering tail, and a blonde with a blue tail. Both women wore half-tees with a dive flag formed from the words “Scuba Radio.” They flanked a table covered with swag and “World of Boating” and “Just Plane Radio.”
“Sorry, mates… but I have to get some pics with the mermaids. I am powerless to resist! C’mon, AJ! Your dive op is Mermaid Divers, so you don’t have a choice either!” Emily grabbed AJ by the hand and tugged her toward the Scuba Radio table. “Boone, you’re our cameraman!” she called back over her shoulder. “Get your arse over here.”
Boone shook his head with a smile plastered on his face. “She’s kinda got a thing about mermaids. You go on ahead. Once she’s had enough, we’ll get some tickets and head in after you. Where’s your booth?”
“Back left corner of the exhibition hall.”
“Well, we’ll find you.” With that, he strolled after Emily and AJ.
Deek approached the entrance, digging into the backpack for his boat show ID lanyard. Not here? Is it in the car? Shaking his head, he went to the registration desk and extracted his driver’s license and one of his business cards. “Deek Morrison… Maritime Administration, Department of Transportation. My apologies, but I’m afraid I’ve mislaid my ID.”
The woman at the table gave him a quizzical look, then adjusted her glasses and peered at her list. “Maritime Administration. Booth #76?”
“Sounds right.”
“Funny, I just made up an ID for a gentleman for that booth.”
“What? Who?”
“A Mr. Ansari.”
Deek’s stomach did a flip. Mo Ansari was a fellow analyst in his office—and a Class A suck-up to the higher-ups. What on earth…? “Uh… okay. Well, could I get a replacement?”
“Of course, one moment.” The woman was already digging through a box on the floor beside her chair. “Let’s see your ID again?” She wrote on a card with a pen and slid it into a plastic cardholder. “Mr. Deek Morrison. Here you go.” She handed him a lanyard. “Don’t lose it!” she said cheerfully.
Deek took it. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, already jog-walking toward the entrance. He spared a glance at the Scuba Radio table. AJ and Emily were currently posing with the mermaids, and Boone was on one knee, clicking away on a smartphone. Deek directed his attention to the entrance, flashed his badge, then plunged into the convention.
A few actual boats were inside the hall, but many of the vessels on offer were represented by large, high-def photos on posterboard—a number of these were docked in the adjacent marina. Deek rushed past booths for Sea Ray, Grady-White, Valhalla, and Newton, before he paused to get his bearings.
“Would you like a T-shirt?” an attractive presenter asked as he passed a booth for Penn fishing gear.
Deek took the T-shirt without thinking, mumbled a thank you to the young woman, and was twenty steps away when he realized he’d forgotten where he was going. What was the booth number? Seventy-six, back left corner, his panicked mind managed to recall.
Now with a destination, Deek allowed himself to scan some of the exhibits as he passed. Many of the items—rigid inflatable boats, remotely operated underwater drones, rebreathers—sent his mind down a rabbit hole of all the possible ways they could be used to attack a ship full of diplomats.
Deek scrambled along an aisle to the far wall and dashed down to the back corner, turned right… and froze.
“Morrison! So glad you could join us!” his boss called out, a radiant smile on his face. There was nothing friendly about that smile.
* * *
Grady Foster pulled into the parking lot shared by the Gulf Star Marina and the Fort Myers branch of Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille. “I love this place,” he said, killing the engine. “If we have time, I wanna get a grouper sandwich!” He started to get out.
Angler stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Wait.” With a practiced eye, he scanned the other cars in the parking lot, then expanded his gaze to include the surrounding buildings.
“This is where you told him to wait, right?” Foster asked.
“Yeah.”
“Something wrong?”
“That’s what I’m trying to determine.” Angler was still concerned about that chase in Grand Cayman. It was likely that his spectacular plane crash and a few CCTV cameras here and there might have put them onto him, but what if his communication had been compromised? Satisfied with what he saw, he nodded his head—now topped with a baseball cap for the Tampa Bay Rays—and grabbed the brand-new duffel bag at his feet. The waterproof bag from Grand Cayman lay within, but he’d decided that was a bit too conspicuous to be carrying around. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“You, uh… you might wanna take care of that.” Foster pointed at Angler’s face.
Angler twisted the SUV’s mirror and looked at the beads of blood on the side of his chin. After the chase in Grand Cayman, he’d wanted to lose the goatee, but a quick field shave in the Steak ’n Shake bathroom hadn’t gone off without a hitch. Muttering, he licked a thumb and swiped at the damage, then pressed the heel of his hand against it. “Gimme a sec.”
A few minutes later, Angler entered the restaurant. On the outside balcony, he found the skipper of the Beeracuda sitting at a table overlooking the marina. The man looked up as they approached. “Who’s he?”
“A passenger.” Angler shared a glance with Foster, then nodded toward the bar inside. “Grab that fish sandwich you were talking about. I’ll come get you later.”
Foster shrugged and went inside. Angler sat and set the duffel down beside his chair. The skipper’s eyes followed it to the floor.
“Where you at?” Angler asked.
“Right down there, end of the pier.” He nodded at the dock that ran parallel to the restaurant’s balcony.
Angler spotted the boat. “You have the dinghy I requested?”
“Yep.”
“Motor good?”
“Inspected it myself. Oil change, new spark plugs… good to go.”
Angler nodded. “We’ll be here tomorrow morning at seven.”
“Half up front,” the man reminded him.
“Up front can mean a lot of things,” Angler rumbled. “Could be now… could be tomorrow when we board the boat for our little trip. So I’ll give you half of the half now, another quarter tomorrow morning.”
The skipper looked like he was going to object, but Angler was already unzipping the bag on the floor.
“You eat lunch here while you waited?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you have?”
“Shrimp tacos.”
“That’s not enough. Have a burger.” Angler dropped the take-out bag from his lunch onto the table.
The man looked at it. “I like burgers.”
“’Course you do. You’re a red-blooded American.” Angler stood up and hefted the duffel. “Next burger, you’ll get tomorrow morning. Then a couple more once we reach our final destination. I’m a man of my word.”
* * *
Mr. Powell continued to smile at Deek. Dressed in a full suit, his boss had a lanyard and badge hanging in front of a red tie.
“Sir…” Deek managed, sparing a glance behind his boss. The booth was immaculate and Mo Ansari was busy hawking flyers and beer koozies to the few passersby who had made it to the back wall of the convention. “I… uh… I can explain.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary, Morrison… how about I explain for you? You lied to me yesterday and said the booth was doing well. Then you flew to the Cayman Islands. And on my end of this little charade, I basked in the warmth of your glowing report about how well things were going for about five minutes, before I realized that was all likely horseshit. Mr. Ansari, how many people have actually signed up for our newsletter?”
Ansari snapped to attention. “Three, sir. Four, if you count the guy who signed up as ‘Gene Poole’ and gave an email address of youmustbekidding@blowme.com.”
Powell’s cheek twitched. “And how many brochures have we handed out in the past two hours?”
“Lost track, sir… maybe… ten?”
“You see, Morrison? That’s a dishearteningly realistic number for an offshoot of the Transportation Department at a boating show. But yesterday, you told me you were—and I quote—‘handing out flyers like candy.’ Well, once I fully absorbed the ludicrous nature of that statement, I called down here and asked if someone could deliver a message to Booth #76. I was informed there was nobody to receive my message, as Booth #76 was no more than an unoccupied, plastic fold-out table with a haphazard pile of stickers and pamphlets.”
“I was just—”
“At which point I booked two last-minute plane tickets for Ansari and myself to come down here and ‘show the flag’ for the Maritime Administration, since we’d already spent a considerable amount of department funds to book this slot in the convention!”
“Sir, I was right!” Deek blurted. “Şeytan Taciri’s operative received a large amount of cash from a bank in Grand Cayman. I have reason to believe he departed in a boat that had gone dark with its transponder off and—”
“What did I say to you two phone calls ago, Morrison?” Powell bellowed, snuffing out Deek’s attempt at explanation.
Mo Ansari gave Deek an innocent, raised-eyebrow look, wondering if Deek did, in fact, remember his boss’s words.
“I provided you with a very simple if/then statement, Morrison. ‘If you’re not behind the counter of our booth when the boat show opens… then you will no longer be employed by the Maritime Administration.’ Now… were you behind the counter when it opened yesterday?”
Deek swallowed. “No, sir.”
“Then you’re fired. Give me your badge.”
Deek lifted the boat show lanyard. “This, sir?”
“No, you imbecile! Your Maritime Administration badge!”
“I… I don’t have a badge, sir.”
“You lost your badge, too?” Powell roared in disbelief.
“No, sir. Analysts don’t have them, sir.”
“They don’t?” He turned to Ansari. “You don’t?”
Ansari shook his head.
“I have business cards,” Deek said quietly.
“Well… give me those.”
Deek handed over the three remaining business cards from his wallet. Powell snatched them from his fingers and squinted at them. “These are terrible.” He handed them to Ansari. “Make sure we have better cards.”
“I’ll get right on it, sir!” the sycophant promised.
Deek was already striding away, face flushed, as his boss shouted after him, “Don’t expect a letter of recommendation, either!”
Yamaha, Cummins, Shimano, Abu Garcia… Deek surged past presentation booths for marine engines and fishing gear, his awareness of the world shrinking to a tiny pinhole just ahead of him as he searched for the exit. Suddenly, a face entered his narrow focus. “Hey… Deek… what happened?”
Deek halted, blinking. AJ Bailey stood in front of him.
“Boone spotted you and said something was wrong,” she said. “Has something happened?”
Deek looked around, seeing Boone and Emily behind AJ, looking on with concern. “I… uh… I’ve been fired.”
“Oh, shite, I’m sorry mate!” Emily declared, moving to his side and placing a hand on his arm.
“To be honest, I’m surprised he didn’t can me a couple of days ago,” Deek said, with a sad half-smile on his face.
Emily hugged him from the side while AJ placed a hand on his shoulder. Boone abruptly leaned down and spoke.
“Let me get this straight… you just got fired, because you were supposed to be standing behind a booth handing out brochures and stickers?” he said, a note of disdain in his voice.
“Boone, lighten up, the bloke’s just—”
“But meanwhile, you’ve got a possible terrorist in your sights, with at least some idea of motive,” Boone interrupted, “and if you’d been here picking your nose behind a wobbly table, you wouldn’t know half of what you know, right?”
Deek nodded. “Yes, that’s about right.”
“Well, now you’ve got nothing holding you back.”
“I also have no official governmental abilities to help me with my investigation.”
“Were they all that helpful before? From what you told us in the car ride, it didn’t sound like you were getting much support from your department. Except for… who was it that helped you with tracking that plane? The one you followed to Grand Cayman?”
“Oh, that was my buddy, Pete. But he’s not with the Maritime Administration.”
“So, that’s something you two now have in common,” Boone said matter-of-factly.
“Boone!” Emily punched him in the arm.
“No, he’s right…” Deek said, frowning.
“Unlike your boss, Pete actually helped you,” Boone pointed out. “And he’s got some useful skills, right?”
“Yes. He’s a fellow boat spotter, but he’s got an additional interest in tracking executive jets and private planes. Has a lot of next-level software.”
“Perfect,” Boone said. “That guy you were chasing? His trail ended on a boat with no transponder, right?”
“Oh! And you think he was heading for Jamaica, yeah?” Emily added. “Probably fly back here from there; so maybe some planes for your mate to track. That’s a good next step, innit?”
“Yes… good. I can tell him what to look for, and he can sort through them quickly.”
“Right!” AJ added, piling on. “And Roy—Detective Whittaker—likely has some more data by now, so maybe you can determine course and speed. Figure out when they’d have reached the Jamaican coast.”
“And maybe the phone came back online at that point,” Deek mused. His firing was by no means forgotten, but at least it now had some company in his head. “AJ, can you contact the detective for me? See if there’s anything more?”
“Sure thing.”
“I’ll reach out to Pete; ask him to compile all outbound traffic from Jamaica to South Florida from dawn until now. And there’s Kate—that Keys divemaster who called on the drive from Miami? She has quite a few resources at her disposal, too. In fact, I should connect her app-designing friend with Pete. And maybe I can track down Sam Waters. She’s the deputy who jumped on the seaplane while it was taking off.”
“Brilliant! See, you’ve got a whole crew, already!” Em pointed down the aisle of exhibits. “And while you wait to hear back from them, why don’t you help us look at boats, yeah? I’ve been salivating at several prospects.”