“Yes, Kildar,” Yosif said, grinning. “I don’t think anyone will call the swim.”
“Guys, if you’re going down, call the damned swim,” Mike said, looking at the team. “Yosif, Edvin,” he added to the assistant team leader, “it’s your job to make sure everybody makes it. On second thought, Edvin, you carry the buoy. Stay near the back. Don’t drown yourself.”
“Yes, Kildar,” Edvin said.
“Work on the sidestroke I taught you,” Mike said. “Pull, breathe, kick, glide, repeat. Every four or five strokes look up to make sure you are heading the right way, otherwise just follow the shoreline. We can easily add fins as soon as they get here. Stay with your swim buddy. Repeat after me: Stay with your swim buddy. If you don’t, life will get interesting.”
“Well, this is interesting.”
“What?” David Levin said, looking up from his computer.
David had been a kid in New Jersey, planning on working at the chemical plants around Trenton just like his dad, when he saw his first Jacques Cousteau show. One show was all it took.
His parents hadn’t had the money to pay for the, back then, incredibly expensive sport of SCUBA diving. So when he’d turned eighteen he’d hitchhiked to Florida and found a dive shop that needed somebody to work in their back room for just enough to survive and, oh, yeah, they’d throw in dive lessons.
Twenty-seven years later he was the owner of Diver’s Headquarters, one of the largest suppliers of dive gear in South Florida. With ten locations and a warehouse jammed with gear that was sold not only through brick and mortar stores but also on the internet, he was a “mover” in the international dive community. He had decades of experience in what did and did not work in sport diving and was frequently consulted by manufacturers when they had a new system, light, fin or suit they wanted to sell.
“It’s an e-mail,” Joe Barber replied. David had hired Joe when the kid came in the door trying to sell him some orange solvent cleaner. The kid was clearly underage and Dave suspected, and later confirmed, that he was a runaway. But the kid had been such a hard seller, Dave offered him a job on the spot. On the phone, and back then they got a lot of phone-in orders, there was no way anybody would know the kid was underage. And there were ways to make the paperwork disappear.
Once he hit eighteen, Joe had worked his way up fast, first as a top floor salesman, then a store manager, then back to the phones and now internet and finally to manager of the whole direct sales division. Dave had seen that gleam in the runaway and known he had a player on his hands. Dave had been married and divorced three times but nary a kid despite trying. Maybe it was the chemicals in Trenton. But he sort of had a son in Joe, who was, everybody knew, his heir apparent.
“Don’t keep me guessing,” Dave said.
“Lady in the Bahamas wants thirty sets of gear,” Joe said, wonderingly. “Everything from fins to tanks. All top line. Zeagle regs and BCs, Pro wetsuits… Everything listed by model. She’s asking if we can supply it overnight or even for delivery late today. They’re willing to pay to charter a plane.”
“Do we have the systems?” Dave asked.
“Not in the warehouse,” Joe replied, tapping at keys. “We’d have to scrounge the stores. She wants thirty ZX Zeagle Flathead VI. We’ve got, total, twenty-seven.”
“Get ten from Zeagle’s warehouse,” Dave said. “They’re just up in Hialeah. Tell them we need them delivered today and don’t fuck with us. Hell, get the entire shipment if you can. Tell the lady the plane will take off tomorrow before first light and be there at first light. Private strip, right?”
“Yep.”
“Tell her there’s going to be some extra costs with such a rush shipment,” Dave added. “Figure out what it’s going to cost us. Add fifteen percent. See if she geeks.”
“Whatever the market will bear?” Joe said. “I’ll add twenty.”
“Good boy.”
Chapter Twelve
“I should have charged you through the nose for this,” Don said, gruffly, shaking Mike’s hand. “Long time.”
Don Jackson was a tall man, heavy of body with white hair, and skin that was bright red from the sun. He never seemed to really tan but he never seemed to really burn, either.
Besides running a charter business, and a tobacco distribution system and a few condos and rental boats — the guy was just a compulsive businessman — Don ran some special shipping interests. Oh, not smuggling, just niche shipping. Don ran landing craft.
Landing craft were, in general, a horrible way to ship cargo. They were capable of sailing in almost any sea but their engines drank fuel and they couldn’t carry all that much compared to their fuel costs.
However, landing craft had one great benefit; they could take the cargo anywhere there was a beach and roll it right out.
Don’s landing craft had done various jobs over the years, generally for the very rich. You wanted a party for a hundred on an otherwise inaccessible tropical island? Don could roll off a container containing, literally, everything from soup to nuts. Bring your own cooks, though.
He’d participated in multiple movie shoots as well. Movie makers generally wanted somewhere “unspoiled” for shoots. Unspoiled just as often meant inaccessible. Don had developed a reputation among the guys who arranged things like that for being there on time, guaranteed. In the islands, that was pretty unusual. The Bahamas ran on “Bahamas Time,” which was less precise than “In’shallah,” which was orders of magnitude worse than “mañaña.” There was no time on earth less precise than “Bahamas Time.”
Don didn’t work on Bahamas Time. A New Yorker who had been south long enough that the accent was barely noticeable, he still ran on New York time. If he said he’d be there at ten am you could set your watch by it.
“That’s one heavy ass container, Mike,” Don continued, as the mover, basically a small tracked bulldozer converted to pull containers, started pulling the containerized cargo off the landing craft’s ramp and up the white sand beach. “And you know what?” he added. “When we checked in with Bimini customs, they looked at the manifest and just waved us through. It wasn’t sealed or bonded but, you know, they just didn’t seem to care. That’s lax even by Bimini standards, Mike. I could have been carrying a container packed with coke for all they knew.”
“Going the wrong way to be coke,” Mike pointed out. “How you been?”
“The arthritis is starting to kill me,” Don admitted.
“Too many fast women,” Mike said, drawing a snort. Don had been married for damned near fifty years.
“So what’s in the container?” Don asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Mike said. “You’re not even asking about my associates.”
The Keldara were scattered around the estate getting it in gear but many of them had stopped to see the arrival of the container. Even the boat class had stopped to watch it being rolled up the sand. If Mike were to put one word on their expressions, that word would be “avid.”
“They look like a bunch of extras,” Don said. “You doing movies these days?”
“Nope,” Mike said. “Well, not often. I collect a few.”
“Was talking to Sol after you up and disappeared,” Don added. “Interesting coincidence you going and disappearing, then that nuke going up in Andros.”
“I swear you guys are like a couple of old women,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Next you’ll be accusing me of being the guy who killed Osama.”
“Well, let’s see,” Don said, rubbing his chin. “Osama gets killed in October. You show up in December in a brand new boat and immediately spend the next couple of months basically out of sight. And I’ve seen you with your shirt off, buddy.”