Black Flag - Страница 3

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“What the hell do you mean you committed us to a job? We were only gone for an hour.”

I saw the bartender glance our way, and I toned down my voice. “How on earth did that happen?”

We were on an outdoor deck at a place called Shelter, getting dinner. It was a gorgeous summer day, and I wanted to enjoy it. Now I was hoping I didn’t have an aneurism. I halfway believed Knuckles was just pulling my leg, but when I saw him lean back with a scowl, I knew he was telling the truth.

He said, “A guy thinks he knows where Blackbeard’s treasure is located and wants us to help him find it. He said it would take no more than four days. It’s good money, it’s the Caribbean, and it’s my leave. Hell, I’ll go do it myself.”

“Not with my fucking company.” I looked at Brett and said, “I thought I told you two to send anyone who came in packing. How hard was that to understand?”

He said, “Pike, look at it this way: It’s a real job using Grolier. We’re down here to understand the business, and what better way to do that than to actually do some work? It’s in Jamaica. We’ll get paid to go on vacation.”

I looked back at Knuckles. “What do you mean when you say you ‘committed’ Grolier to the job?”

“We signed a contract.”

I exploded again. “How on earth did you find a contract? And on what authority did you sign?”

He said, “Jennifer made us study all that stuff while you were messing around with the Jeep. And you made me vice president of maritime operations. Remember? This is a maritime operation, so I had the authority.”

The only thing I could get out was a strangled groan. Jennifer put her hand on my arm and said, “What makes you think this guy is telling the truth?”

“Nothing. But who cares? He’s paying whether we just dive around a little or actually find something.”

“Do you know anything about Edward Teach?”

“Yeah. I went to the Provost Dungeon today.”

“I mean anything besides something from a comic book. The consensus is that any hidden treasure from Blackbeard is a myth. He didn’t rob boats full of gold and diamonds. His plunder consisted of dry goods and livestock that he subsequently sold. There is no treasure.”

Jennifer was a resident expert on just about anything having to do with humanity’s historical record, and I had ceased to be amazed when she pulled some tidbit of trivia like this out of thin air.

I arched my eyebrows and said, “Well, what about that?”

“Like I said before, who gives a shit? So we get in some diving, making these guys happy. And we get paid. And we solidify the cover with us as employees.”

He did have a valid point about the cover. It would do us some good to get them a pay stub from an actual operation that didn’t involve some sort of clandestine counterterrorism work. But I was still pissed.

“I give a shit. It’s my company.”

“Come on, Pike. You’re just being petty now. You know I’m right. You can use the money from Brett’s and my salaries to fix up that piece-of-crap sailboat of yours.”

Without thinking of the ramifications, I said, “I sold it. I don’t have it anymore.”

“Sold it? Where are you living now?”

Oops. I really didn’t want to go down this road. How did I end up on the defensive? After a pause, I said, “I don’t have a place yet. I’m crashing at Jennifer’s house until I find something.”

I saw him squint, wondering what that meant. Wondering a little too much. I saw Jennifer begin to blush and defensively said, “Just like I did when I got dinged up last year. Nothing’s going on.”

He said, “How long since you sold the sailboat?”

Before I could say, “Six months,” and doom our dinner to endless speculation, Jennifer cut in, saving our little secret by knocking him back on his heels. “Who cares about Pike’s living arrangements? What did this guy say the specific mission was? What are you — as VP of maritime operations — going to do to find Blackbeard’s treasure? What did you contractually sign us up for?”

He said, “It’s way easy. The first thing we need to do is find a shipwreck off of an island called Navassa. It’s a U.S. wildlife refuge in between Haiti and Jamaica.”

Now it was Jennifer’s turn to squint. “Shipwreck? This guy thinks Blackbeard went down in a ship by Jamaica? That’s absolute BS countered by the historical record. He was killed in battle off the coast of North Carolina.”

“No, no. He bought a map in Port-au-Prince that was supposed to lead to Blackbeard. On his way back to Kingston, Jamaica, his boat ran over a reef at speed. According to him, it ripped the bottom off and went down in seconds. He didn’t have time to do anything but save himself. So first order of business is to go get this map.

“I figured Pike and I could go do that. In the meantime, you and Brett could start poking around Kingston, seeing what the state of play is should we find the treasure.”

She said, “You’re not going to find any treasure.”

“I know, but he’s paying us as consultants. You and Brett work up a white paper on Jamaican and international law with regard to ownership. I mean, if he finds it, does he keep it? Does it go to whoever lost the treasure, like Spain or England, or does Jamaica get it because it was found in its territory? Just come up with the state of play.”

I said, “And when does this grand adventure begin? I need to get my Jeep out of the shop.”

Looking sheepish, Knuckles said, “Uhh… well, it begins tomorrow, actually. We’re meeting him in Kingston, Jamaica, at five o’clock.”

Chapter 4

The sky was slate gray, looking exactly like the choppy ocean that was bouncing our chartered boat all over the place, starting to make me a little ill. Not exactly the vacation diving I was looking forward to when Knuckles sold me on this stupid trip.

We’d flown to Jamaica yesterday evening and had met our intrepid Indiana Jones wannabe — an Irishman named Dylan. He was working with a bunch of Romanians who didn’t say a whole lot but seemed to be decent enough people. He’d explained his predicament, and it was pretty much what Knuckles had said. Jennifer told him what she knew of international law regarding antiquities, and I told him our left and right limits. That was when I found my first hiccup, as apparently Knuckles didn’t know our left and right limits.

The Irishman wanted Grolier Recovery Services to charter the boat and rent the dive gear, saying that’s what Knuckles had agreed to. I’d looked at him with daggers, and he’d only shrugged, which is why he wouldn’t be signing anything in the future but the checks for our bar tabs. I was explaining to Dylan that the customer bore all expenses, preparing for a fight, when I was surprised to hear him say he’d pay but still wanted us to do the charter. It was a little odd, but I did it, putting my name on the dotted line for two complete scuba rigs, six tanks, and a Bertram 540 fishing/dive boat — something that any sane person would describe as a fifty-four-foot yacht complete with kitchen. I was able to save some money by not paying for a crew, thanks to a captain’s license Knuckles had obtained on his off-duty time. I was sure he’d now try to get Navy reimbursement for the license as some type of mission requirement.

This morning we’d left Jennifer and Brett to their library chores, laughing at the fun we were going to have as we motored out of the Royal Jamaican Yacht Club. We’d swung around Port Royal and headed east, toward Haiti; then the weather had progressively taken a turn for the worse, making me wonder if I was going to wish I was in a library with Jennifer.

Knuckles kept his heading, the latest one in our grid search for the shipwreck, and I kept my eye on the scope. We chopped over a swell, and the fish-finder sonar chirped. I read the screen, seeing an anomaly, and shouted at Knuckles, “Hold what you got. We just passed over something.”

Dylan and his crew perked up and I said, “Might not be anything, just like last time. Don’t get your hopes up.”

We were just outside a reef about sixty meters off Navassa Island, a small, rocky outcropping in the middle of the ocean. Only about two miles square, the island was apparently some sort of wild bird sanctuary. Other than a lighthouse compound that had been abandoned decades ago, there were no other structures.

Knuckles dropped a sea anchor and I began suiting up for my second dive of the day. Knuckles said, “Depth?”

“About forty feet.” He stripped his shirt and Dylan said, “This looks more like the place. I think this is it.”

I didn’t say anything, but it was downright weird that he couldn’t remember where he’d wrecked his boat. I mean, you’d at least think you’d know which side of the island you’d gone around, but Dylan said he had been so frightened from the accident he just couldn’t remember. We’d been trolling all over the place, homing in on known reef beds, and so far had found nothing. We’d stopped about thirty minutes earlier for an anomaly and actually dove but come up empty. Hopefully, this one had something.

We went through our precombat checks, with me letting Knuckles take the lead. I was combat-dive qualified from the Special Forces school at Key West, but Knuckles was a SEAL. I routinely gave him a ration of shit about his supposed expertise in land operations, because I was naturally better than him, being Army and all, but here in the water I was more than glad to let him run the show.