“No,” Don shouted. “I am that call. That girl you’ve got, the one named Emma Elkins, she’s mine. My kid!”
Kid? Since when did Don ever have a kid? “You’re fuckin’ with me, right?” But hearing Fedder’s words worried Prince because Don was a lot of things, but never a bullshitter.
“Listen to me carefully, Prince. We all make a mistake once in a while. It’s part of the game.” The “game,” what he and Fedder had called the drug trade back then. They’d never been super close, more like colleagues from different companies in the same industry. They’d only come to know each other as fellow expatriates down in South America. But Prince had liked Don. The guy’d known how to survive — till he got busted on his boat.
That old familiar voice was growing more and more serious in his ear: “And you made a big mistake grabbing those two girls. That young black woman is Emma’s best friend.”
Oh, shit. Prince saw where this was going. He shook his head.
“You don’t believe me,” Don went on, “you ask Emma who her dad is.”
“Okay, I got it,” Prince replied, still shaking his head, already imagining the fury on the faces of his men down in Middleburg.
“Remember the deal I made with you six years ago? You got to keep your garden…” Prince’s coca plantation about a hundred miles from Cali. “And the road in and out of there…” His smuggling route. “And you gave me those addresses.” FARC jefes. “Remember?”
“I hear you,” Prince replied noncommittally, not knowing who the fuck was listening in, but appreciating Don’s discretion on the line.
“I’m glad you remember,” Fedder said, “because you’ve got to get Emma home. And I hope to hell you don’t have her in one of your coffins.”
Don knew about them because Prince once told him they served three purposes: the first was to smuggle coke in the hollow walls, bottoms, and lids; the second was to imprison informants and scare them to death; and the third was to bury them, when necessary.
Prince was already opening Emma’s lid and nodding at Ship to free her friend.
“They’re out, even as we speak, Don.”
“Let me talk to Emma.”
“Here she is.”
Prince stepped back while the girl, who sounded a little breathy to him, talked to her father. The sister looked shaky.
“Shit, girl,” he said to Tanesa. “I’m sorry. I had no idea you all were tight with big Don Fedder.”
Tanesa looked puzzled at Don’s name coming out of Prince’s mouth.
Emma handed Prince’s phone back to him. Prince studied her face.
She kind of looks like him. The shit you don’t know about people.
“Like I say, Don, I didn’t know. She doesn’t have your name.”
“Yeah, well, blame that one on her mom. One more thing, Prince.”
“Yeah, you got it.”
“You still have that bulletproof Hummer?”
“Newer model.”
“Armed guards.”
“More than ever.”
“Use all that to get those two back to my daughter’s house safely in Bethesda. You do that and I’ll help you with the feds, if you ever need it.”
“You’re saying I’ve got a chit I can cash.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Good, but I was going to do it anyway, Don. I’d never leave them hanging around this hood.”
“Thanks.”
“Back atcha.”
Prince put away his phone and looked at Emma and Tanesa. “Hey, you two, I’m sorry. Sometimes a man makes a mistake, so I’m going to take you home. Thing is, to seal the deal, you got to forget any of this happened. This place, all of it. You cool with that?”
“My dad already told me, and I told her. We’re cool.”
Tanesa was nodding beside Emma.
A minute later they were back in the Hummer, just them and Prince and the rising waters of the Potomac parting for his beastly SUV.
Lana waved Red into the cabin. He put the wheel on autopilot and hurried to the doorway. “It’s over,” she told him. “The Delphin was taken out by a P-8.” The navy jets had been airborne over the southern ocean since the news of the hijacking broke. “The sub-killer nailed it with a torpedo after locking onto the data stream.”
“Nice work,” Red said.
“The submarine? Sunk?” Galina asked.
“Yes,” Lana replied. “It’s gone,” she added, as she messaged the news to Don.
Red shook his head. “Man, the damage those sons of bitches did.”
Lana nodded. “The next thing we’re going to hear, you watch, is the Russians saying Dernov was just another one of their rogue hackers working all on his own for patriotic purposes. They’ll be covering their crimes by providing some data after the damage was done, and the net result is we lose 150 or more sailors, a nuclear-armed sub, and the whole world is flooded. But fuck if they’ll get away with it,” Lana cursed. “We’ve got his computer. We’ll do the forensics. We got into it, and now we’ll track down his links to whoever he was working with, wherever they are.”
But even as she spoke, Lana had her doubts. Shaking her head, she wondered how much cyberscrubbing was going on as she and Galina were working with tiny antennas and three laptops on the high seas.
Red looked up from a handheld device. “Here’s a report that Ukrainian separatists have abducted a hacker who goes by the handle Numero Uno across the border into Russia. I’m guessing he’s about to meet his new bosses.”
Lana felt even more dejected. She had hoped to follow those data streams to Oleg’s other conspirator.
She looked at Oleg’s black screen. There was nothing there, nothing for all the families of the men and women who’d died so miserably — and so publicly — on the Delphin. There would never be any body retrieval for any of them. She hoped Oleg was dying a death equal to all their pain. And then some.
A message from Holmes brightened her mood immeasurably: Emma and Tanesa had just arrived back home. Lana shared it immediately with her companions on the trawler, then with Don on Storm Season, adding, “Thanks for whatever you did.”
“You’re welcome,” Don texted back. “I’m just glad that nightmare is over. I know it’s been horrible for you. It’s been horrible for me.”
She wanted to hug him. It scared her to realize that. Really hold him and let the swell rock them together.
What are you thinking? she scolded herself.
Red checked the autopilot and ducked back into the cabin. “Your ex must have some kind of clout with one of the heaviest hands in the DC drug trade.”
Lana nodded. Mostly, she wondered if Don was starting to have that kind of clout with her heart. It was as if he’d slipped a rootkit into it. Information security specialists feared the damage rootkits could do once they were loose in a system. Lana worried Don’s own version was already breaking down the access controls surrounding her heart.
No, she barked at herself. Don’t go confusing gratitude with… With what? she asked herself earnestly. With love? Lust? With wanting to have your family back together again?
She sat in the cabin trembling, hoping neither Galina nor Red noticed.
Look, she finally told herself in exasperation, he saved their lives. You’re hugely relieved. That’s all it is. Get a grip.