Barracuda (26 page)

“It probably also saved your life,” James
added.

Rat went on to say that while he was cutting
himself free, he watched the carnage below. When he looked at his
depth gauge, he saw that he was only at 75 fsw, so he knew he
didn’t have to decompress. He watched the huge fish rip his fellow
club members to pieces and then disappear below the carrier. He was
virtually unscathed from the massacre for which he was partly
responsible.

Rat had a million questions, so James explained
things expeditiously. The Renegade listened intently and then sat
in stunned silence.

Steve was in a state of deep depression and
didn’t want to talk about the day’s events, or more importantly,
what still needed to be done. Micko shook him. “Steve, snap out of
it! We have a lot of work to do and we need your help!”

He laid out a quick plan. Shorty would take the
Thor
back to the Bikini resort, make out the proper reports,
and alert the authorities in Majuro. Steve would power the
Happy
Monkey
back to the Majestic resort and make the proper reports
and notifications. Micko and the scientists would be dropped off on
a small sandy beach near Regis’ shack while Celestial and his mate
returned to the pier and secured the
Hummingbird
.

The men were still silent but they agreed. They
all knew that attempting to recover the bodies would be an act of
madness. The killer fish was a huge deterrent, and the bodies would
be molested by foraging fish within minutes of their sinking. The
poor divers were gone forever.

***

Hiroshi supervised the off loading of the barge
in a very disagreeable mood. He had listened to Tanya, but he knew
that she had been lying through her teeth. Andrej and the desk
clerk had already confirmed that it was her passkey that had been
used to enter the office and remove the Bible, not Nike’s. His mood
turned even fouler when he saw one of the locals pull a boat up to
the fuel end of the dock and pick up the rest of Steve’s party.
Hiroshi had wanted to store fifty five-gallon drums of fuel at that
end of the pier. Now he had to store them on the short end of the
wharf near the dynamite shack.

So many things had Hiroshi infuriated. Those
damn Russians were screwing everything up. The entire reason for
their stupid resort was to clean laundered funds for the two
organized crime families. The ruling powers would not accept
failure from either the Russian or Japanese mobsters. Failure meant
death. The Russians were playing with his life. By losing the
Bible, all their death warrants were sealed. No excuses were
accepted. No replacement Bible would be sent. The Majestic would be
sold, and a new method of money laundering would be found. The
crime families would probably end this unholy alliance and launder
their own money separately.

Now the Russians had killed a New York cop and
still hadn’t recovered the Bible. This was not good. The home
office would probably deal with them right after the grand opening.
Many of the syndicate members and their wives were on hand for the
festivities. They were having a grand time gambling in the casino,
dancing in the nightclubs, and drinking in the lounges. The
gangsters were throwing big bucks around in an attempt to impress
their peers and their women. After all, this was a huge event, the
grand opening of the casino and dive resort that would make
millions in legitimate cash and launder many millions more. The
crime lords were thick as thieves, but they still didn’t know about
the missing ledger.

When the barge was finally unloaded, Hiroshi
ordered it to be pulled back out into the atoll but out of the way
of boat traffic. Mara helped set a temporary anchor for the one
hundred-foot barge, and then carried the barge crew and fireworks
team to shore in the
Lily II
. The
Lily I
would stand
guard for the first shift to prevent the rebels from vandalizing
the live ordinance aboard the barge. The fireworks display was
scheduled for eight o’clock, so the barge personnel would have
plenty of time to relax and enjoy the earlier festivities.

***

Leaving the
Saratoga
, the
Thor
went east toward Bikini Island. The
Happy Monkey
raced west
back to Shark Alley Island, and the
Hummingbird
loafed in
the direction of the fishing village. Rat had been transferred back
onto the
Thor
along with the recovered bodies of the divers
and the injured woman. Celestial, Regis, Micko, and the scientists
were alone again to work out new plans. The men were tossing out
ideas on how to kill the barracuda when they noticed a small skiff
off to their right heading toward the
Apogon
.

“Regis, give me those binoculars,” Micko
requested.

Regis went back out on the rear of the deck and
collected the binoculars from a salty old sea bag. “Here you go,
copper,” he joked, somewhat back to his old self.

Micko took the glasses and stared for several
long moments at the driver of the skiff.

“That’s Chuu, Hiroshi’s right-hand man. I wonder
why he’s going out there.”

“Maybe he’s going to confirm your death,”
Celestial chimed in. “Just because the Russkies said you are dead
doesn’t mean the Japs will believe it.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t take him for a diver,” Micko
returned.

“Let’s just get back to the village and form a
plan,” the professor said.

***

Steve raced the
Happy Monkey
back to the
dock and jumped out, leaving Carol and the others to tie her up. He
saw Andrej and Alex sitting in the Neptune lounge sipping
cocktails. They seemed anxious and concerned about something
already, and Steve knew he was about to really ruin their day.
“Andrej, we must stop all diving immediately,” he blurted.

Andrej looked up at him with a startled
expression. “There is no diving from our boats until after the
grand opening.”

“I mean no one can dive until the barracuda is
killed.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Alex
asked. “Have you been drinking or smoking some of that funny
stuff?”

“I just came from the lagoon,” Steve explained.
“The New York cop dove on the
Apogon
and never surfaced. The
Thor
dropped divers on the
Saratoga
, and they were
attacked by an oversized barracuda. More than a dozen divers are
dead. You can’t allow any more divers to enter the water until the
beast is killed.”

“Dead divers, dead cops, barracudas—what in the
hell are you talking about?” Andrej demanded, beginning to lose his
patience with the dive master.

Steve told the pair what had happened, but left
Micko’s part out to reinforce his death story. Buying his story,
the Russians began working on how they could blame the entire
incident on the Bikini resort and the cop for hot-dogging with a
local fishing boat.

“We lost no one, so we are okay,” Alex said.

“Steve, go down to the wharf and give the armada
dynamite from the shack,” Andrej barked. “Then have them go out to
the
Saratoga
and start dropping it. We’ll kill this stupid
barracuda before the fireworks tonight and be done with it. Diving
begins again the day after tomorrow as scheduled. After the two
Lily
boats drag that rusty barge back to Eneu, the diving
will continue.”

“That’s awfully dangerous,” Steve protested,
“and it will be destructive to the reef and many other innocent
fish.”

“Give those native boats dynamite and blow that
fish to kingdom come!” Andrej snapped. “Whoever brings me the head
of that fish gets five thousand dollars.”

Steve was about to suggest that they put a
ransom on the barracuda and let the local fishermen catch it for a
prize, but the tone in Andrej’s voice killed that idea. He
hesitantly went to the wharf and talked to Mara. The natives were
very poor, and the idea of dynamiting the atoll was shocking, but
the allure of the five-thousand-dollar reward was tremendous. A
native could never make that much money in a lifetime. Before long,
two dozen boats took up positions surrounding the grave of the USS
Saratoga
, and on Mara’s command, the bombing began.

Ten minutes later, it was over. Each explosive
blast shook the water horizontally, and then huge plumes of water
shot up vertically. Within minutes, hundreds of fish rose to the
surface. Most were small in size, but a few large amber jacks were
also killed and randomly floated by.

Steve had known this would happen. Most of the
large predators would flee the lagoon if they escaped the first
blast. The odds were that the barracuda had either fled or sank to
the sea bottom in his death throes.

The natives searched for the five
thousand-dollar barracuda, but to no avail. Mara directed them back
to the dock and thanked them all for their participation in the
barracuda hunt. He apologized to Steve for their failure.

“Mara, those are your people and they did your
bidding, even though they didn’t really want to,” Steve said.

“No apology is necessary,” Mara replied. I just
hope the thing is killed. If not, hopefully it left Bikini Atoll
for good.”

***

Celestial moved the
Hummingbird
close to
shore near the small village and Micko jumped out.

Pointing to a canary yellow hut Regis said,
“That’s my humble abode, and you are very welcome to stay with me.
Although I have to say I don’t usually share my house with dead
men.”

Micko waded through the water until he reached
the sand but stopped short in his tracks when he saw a young man
wearing a Renegade bandana wrapped around his forehead. The man was
retrieving a bait trap from under some mangrove trees.

“Hey!” Micko cried out. “Where did you get that
bandana?”

“I didn’t steal it, mister!” the man cried.
“Really, I didn’t.”

“Okay,” Micko agreed. “What’s your name?”

“They call me Rambo,” he whimpered.

“Stop sniveling and be a man!” Micko ordered.
“Where did you get that bandana?”

Rambo broke down and told the sad story of the
Barrett brothers, and how he had left them when he knew that they
were dead. “I didn’t mean anything,” he said. “They had dozens of
bandanas, and I only took one. They were underwater way too long,
so I knew that they were dead. Please don’t report me. There was
nothing I could do.” The young man broke down in tears again,
falling down to his knees and pleading for leniency.

“All right, Rambo, what’s done is done,” Micko
said. “I won’t do anything to get you in trouble. Do you know where
Flacka lives?”

“Yes, she is a good friend of mine. She is badly
hurt. I will take you to her.”

Micko grimaced at the news as Rambo took him
through several narrow alleys and into a small dark shanty.

“Is this where she lives?” Micko asked,
surprised.

“No, Flacka must hide from the Russians,” Rambo
explained. “This place is safe.”

“Who’s there?” a male voice growled from
inside.

“It’s Rambo and an American friend of
Flacka’s.”

“The policeman?”

“Yes, my name is Mick O’Shaughnessy, but people
call me Micko.”

“My name is Tiki. Please come in.”

Tiki lit several small candles, and the room
suddenly looked much larger as the shadows danced in a plethora of
oscillating waves. Micko could see Flacka lying on a makeshift bed,
her face covered in bandages. Anger welled up inside of him, and he
knew what he had to do. His confidence had been slow to return, but
he would need more now as he turned back into detective mode.

“Who did this to you, Flacka?” he asked.

“Disco wanted to know where you were going and
on whose boat,” she told him painfully. “He and that bitch Tanya
were going to follow you and kill you. I didn’t tell, but a
neighbor saw Disco and Nike beating me and told them that you were
going out with Celestial. I’m so glad that you are alive. I thought
they would kill you.”

Micko held her hand and spoke gently. “Don’t
worry about me. Just get back on your feet again real soon. The
people at the pool bar miss you.”

He smiled at her and she smiled back. Then he
delivered a final warning.

“A lot of things are going to change here real
soon, so I want you to stay out of sight.”

“I have plans for tonight as revenge for this,”
Tiki announced.

“But I want my pay before anything happens,”
Flacka cried.

“How do you get paid?” Micko inquired.

“I see my friend Chuu and he pays me.”

“I’ll send Rambo to get Chuu to come to your
house and pay you. This way they will think that you are still at
home. I want you to tell him something that will get my plan into
action. Tiki, I want you to bring her back here after Chuu
leaves.”

Micko explained his plan and sent Rambo to the
hotel to wait for Chuu. Suddenly, they heard loud explosions from
the lagoon.

Tiki jumped up and was about to flee when Rambo
stated, “They are dropping dynamite in the atoll to kill a big fish
that injured some divers. I heard them talking down at the dock, so
I came back here to pull out my traps so my bait fish wouldn’t get
killed.”

“What big fish?” Tiki asked in disbelief.

“Trust me, it’s a long story,” Micko said.
“Don’t go swimming until after the barracuda is confirmed dead.
Just get Flacka back to her own bed while Rambo goes to the hotel,
and then bring her back here under the cover of darkness.”

***

Celestial pulled into his berth on the end of
the wharf and saw the unusual boat activity out at the
Saratoga
. Without warning, explosions ripped the quiet of
the scenic island. All heads turned in time to see huge spouts of
water rising one hundred feet into the air and then cascading back
down again into frothy foam.

***