Barracuda (20 page)

“Go back to sleep, lover,” she whispered.

Suddenly, all the lights went out, the music
stopped, and a siren began to blare.

“Shit! The goddamn rebels again!” she
cursed.

“The rebels?” Micko questioned.

Tanya carefully went to a closet and removed a
large lantern and two flashlights. “The rebels do this every once
in a while. No matter how much security we have, they find a way to
knock out the lights.”

“How do they do it?”

“We don’t know. Somehow they find a spot to
short out the system and blow the main fuses. It only takes about
thirty minutes to fix, but it is quite annoying.”

They both dressed in the low light given off by
the lantern with the shrieking sirens in the background.

“I better get back to my room,” Micko said.

“You’re probably right. I’d better get back to
mine as well. This casino room would have been a great place for us
to spend the night if conditions were different.”

“Maybe next time,” he lied.

Tanya handed him a flashlight, and he kissed her
on the cheek and walked out as she was still getting dressed.

It was damn spooky going through the blackened
casino with flashlight beams spearing through the darkness. Micko
quickly exited the casino and worked his way back to the hotel
lobby from the outside. He stopped to marvel at how pitch black the
Majestic was and how the small fishing village and the locals still
had lights. The rebels sure knew what they were doing. He heard a
yell and a commotion in the distance near the golf course. Looking
in that direction he heard several gunshots and more yelling. He
figured Disco and his boys were chasing the rebels.

In the utter darkness, Micko quickly ran up the
stairs to Andrej’s penthouse office and used the passkey he had
just removed from Tanya’s purse. The flashlight she had given him
provided more than enough illumination for the task at hand. Flacka
had done her part as he’d requested by arranging the blackout with
her rebel friends. She had been more than happy to collaborate with
her new cop friend if it could help the rebels.

Entering the penthouse was a breeze, and Micko
laughed when he found the “Bible” lying open on Alex’s desk.
Apparently, the bookkeeper had been working on the ledger when the
lights went out. All the Russians, it seemed, were involved in
chasing the dissidents or repairing the damage. This left Micko
alone in the penthouse, and he spent less than one minute to enter,
grab the Bible, and leave. He placed the ledger down the front of
his pants and pulled his shirt over it.

When the commotion died down, he walked back to
the hotel and the lights came on just as he entered lobby.

“Do I get charged extra for this excitement—the
blackouts, shootings, and shouting?” Micko asked the concierge in
jest.

The startled man just stared at the detective
with his mouth agape.

Micko went straight to his room and wrote down
Tanya’s information. Then he rummaged through his wallet, found
Buddy Burger’s card, and called his FBI friend.

“Hey, Buddy, Micko here. I think you might be
interested in what I found out about your money laundering
investigation.”

Micko revealed all he had learned, and Buddy
promised to be on the next flight to Bikini Atoll. Micko was
pleased with himself, but he knew that he had to hide the journal.
He remembered that Flacka had told him that Celestial could be
trusted. The scientists also trusted him and his boat, the
Hummingbird
.

The village was quiet and the dock was eerily
silent as Micko approached. He saw two figures walking toward him
from the depths of the wharf. Micko hid behind a barnacle encrusted
piling and watched until he recognized Dr. Collins and James.

“Professor, James, it’s me,” he whispered.

The professor put his hands up toward his face
in a defensive posture, and James leaped backward a few feet.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s me, Micko.”

“Jesus, man! You just scared ten years off my
life,” the professor blurted.

“Shh. Where is Celestial’s boat?”
“Down at the far end of the dock. Why?” James responded.

“I have the ledger and I need to hide it
tonight.”

James’s eyes widened. “Professor, we can take it
to the shark graveyard. Celestial says no one ever goes there or
even knows about it.”

The three men returned to the dark depths of the
wharf and went back to the
Hummingbird
. On the way, James
explained to Micko that Hiroshi was using the
Lily I
and
Lily II
to pull a fireworks-laden barge from Eneu the next
day. The scientists had just checked with Celestial, whose boat was
once again seaworthy, so they hired him to continue with their
research, beginning with the retrieval of the underwater camera
from the passageway.

“Celestial, this is Micko,” James introduced.
“He is a colleague of ours.”

“No, he is the policeman,” Celestial
returned.

“Is there anyone on this island that doesn’t
know that I’m a cop?” Micko questioned once again.

“No,” they all answered in unison.

Micko explained to Celestial the need to hide
the ledger that night, and Celestial agreed. The foursome climbed
into the boat when suddenly another man appeared from below
decks.

“Hi, Regis, the first mate.” The man stuck his
hand out to Micko, who shook it. This dark-skinned man stood about
six feet tall with a slender build. Celestial was well over six
feet tall with a muscular barrel chest. The two men were about the
same age, and it was obvious that they were lifelong buddies.

The five new friends exchanged pleasantries as
Celestial slid the
Hummingbird
from its berth. Regis perched
over the bow of the boat and directed Celestial with exaggerated
arm movements since they were running without lights.

The
Hummingbird
was a forty-five-foot
converted trawler. Celestial had won it in a card game from a
drunken New Zealander several years earlier. He had the market on
commercial swordfishing since his was the only boat equipped for
such a difficult task. Even the sport fishing boats from the two
resorts couldn’t match this old steamer. The
Hummingbird
had
the fuel capacity to reach the edge of the continental shelf where
the really deep-water swordfish were. The rest of the villagers and
the sport fishing boats stayed local.

The
Hummingbird
was not an
attractive-looking boat, but it was a very capable vessel.
Celestial operated it from the elevated wheelhouse, and Regis
handled the ropes and deck-side duties.

Celestial held his finger to his lips,
indicating that no one should speak. Sound carried on the water,
and since the Russians and Japanese were probably still out looking
for the insurgents, the need for silence was urgent.

Once the
Hummingbird
crossed the atoll to
the shark burial site, Celestial broke the silence, but still spoke
in hushed tones. He motioned for Micko and the scientists to come
into the wheelhouse. The three were deciding how to safeguard the
Bible underwater when Regis popped the question.

“Why not dig a hole on this small beach and hide
it above the waterline?”

“That’s brilliant!” James exclaimed.

Celestial had an old oilcloth that he used for
his own boat diary. He wrapped the incriminating journal in it, and
Micko buried it at the base of a palm tree. The
Hummingbird
returned to port as quickly and silently as she had left, and the
men made arrangements to meet in the early morning and head out to
the passageway.

9

Tanya finished getting dressed and grabbed her
flashlight. She had heard Disco yelling out orders to his men and
then heard gunshots coming from the direction of the golf course.
Her first thought was to see if Andrej was all right. When she
arrived at the penthouse, she realized she had left her purse in
the casino room during all of the confusion.

Tanya pressed the doorbell and then realized it
would not work without electricity. She knocked heavily on the
door, but there was no answer. Without her pocketbook, she was also
without her passkey.

She went down the stairwell toward the lobby but
heard a commotion coming from the main casino. Racing toward the
angry voices, she saw Hiroshi gesturing wildly. He was ordering his
Japanese henchmen to go into the fishing village to locate the
rebels.

“I want them all rounded up and punished!” he
screamed. His face was beet red. Tanya had never seen him lose his
composure so badly.

“Disco and his men are chasing some of the
dissidents across the golf course,” she told him.

“I want them all!” he ranted. “It ends here
tonight!”

Just then, the lights came back on.

Tanya turned off her flashlight, walked to the
hotel lobby, and asked the concierge if he knew where Andrej was. A
group of well-dressed people were complaining to the concierge
about the blackout and demanding that it never happen again. The
concierge waved to Tanya, exasperated that he didn’t know where
anyone was at the moment.

Suddenly, her cell phone rang and she recognized
Andrej’s phone number on the caller ID.

“Get here immediately!” he barked.

“Are you in the penthouse?”

“Of course, I am! Get your ass up here right
now!”

“I was just up there and there was no one
inside,” she said.

“Someone was here, you silly whore! The Bible is
missing!”

Tanya knew that the elevators would be too slow
with people heading back to their rooms, so she ran up the stairs
to Andrej’s office. When she arrived and rang the bell, the door
was opened by one of Disco’s men, and she stepped in to see Andrej
pacing the room like a caged tiger. Alex was sitting on a couch
with his head in his hands, rocking back and forth, moaning.

“Who? How?” she blurted.

Andrej stopped pacing and stared at her with
dagger eyes. “If I knew that, I would have had Disco cut his balls
off and shove them down his throat!”

“Only someone with a magnetic strip key could
have gotten in here, and the cleaning staff people don’t have such
a card,” Tanya thought aloud. “The rebels couldn’t have done it,
and the doors are operated by a completely separate electrical
system than the lights. Only someone with an access card could have
removed the Bible. Could Hiroshi have taken advantage of the
blackout to remove it?”

“Don’t be an idiot!” Andrej shouted. “Why would
Hiroshi want the ledger? Where are those scientists and that cop? I
thought you had the cop under control.”

“I do. He was with me with the lights went out,”
she insisted.

“Where the hell is he now? Why did you have to
ring the doorbell? Where is your key?” Andrej demanded.

***

Disco and his men chased a group of rebels onto
the golf course. The rebels were far ahead, and Disco realized that
he and his men would run more slowly while firing.

Just as the rebels ran down an embankment and
out of sight, a small explosion occurred off to the left side of
the golf course. A small storage bin was engulfed in flames, and
the fire was in danger of spreading to the clubhouse. Disco knew
that he could not catch the rebels and that this explosion was to
aid in their getaway, so he directed his men to stop the chase and
tend to the fire.

“Andrej and Hiroshi are gonna have my ass,” he
cursed.

***

Micko was certain that the Bible was safe on
Bokbata Island. The
Hummingbird
was being tied up to its
berth by Regis when Celestial said, “You better get back to the
hotel before you are missed.”

Micko and the scientists knew that Celestial was
right, so they walked wordlessly back to their rooms, traveling
separately, knowing that they would meet again at six a.m.

The scientists went straight to their respectful
beds and were asleep in minutes. Micko snuck up the casino stairs
to Tanya’s private room and placed her passkey on the hallway rug.
He thought that a member of the casino staff would find the key and
return it to the front desk. There the concierge would swipe the
magnetic strip, see the owner’s ID appear on the computer screen,
and then return it.

He hoped that Tanya would think she had dropped
it during all the blackout confusion. Little did he know that she’d
never left the room with her purse.

***

Eddie and Tom were having breakfast in the
Bikini resort’s spacious yet bland cafeteria when Denise, their
dive master, approached. She was tall, slender, and tanned hailing
from Tampa, Florida. She brushed her long blonde hair away from her
face and asked, “Are you guys ready to dive the HIJMS
Nagato
at eleven?”

Eddie answered, “We can’t wait, but we should
have been the first to dive, today, on the USS
Saratoga
, not
the Aussies.”

“I know. You Californians were here first, but
the Aussies made special arrangements to dive the wreck first,” she
replied. “I can guarantee that the carrier will still be there at
three o’clock when you guys do your second dive of the day.” She
smiled brightly.

“I wish you had two dive boats instead of just
one,” Tom lamented.

“So do I,” Denise conceded as she walked to the
breakfast counter.

“I really wish we didn’t have to share the
Thor
with those guys,” Tom said as he pointed to the loud
Australians at the other end of the cafeteria.

“It’s okay, Tom. We’ll still have some great
dives. Just worry about the batteries in your u/w camera. If they
fail, you’ll never forgive yourself,” Eddie replied with a
laugh.

He knew that his best friend was a bit neurotic
and had to be placated at times. Tom liked things to run smoothly
and quietly, and the Aussies got on his nerves. Eddie was much more
forgiving and carefree. The Aussies were a bit annoying, but he
remembered how he had been in his enthusiastic youth. The average
age of the Sydney dive club was more than twenty years younger than
that of the California club. Of course, there would be some
friction, but it was like water off a duck’s back to Eddie; and he
spread this laissez faire attitude amongst his club members.