The Ocean Dark

11

Drug runners really knew how to live. Special Agent Rachael Voss lay on the bed in the master suite of the impounded yacht and felt like she was reclining in the hand of God. Either that or a cloud made of money. The thick spread and memory-foam mattress embraced her, and the fluffy pillows reminded her of all of the Cinderella-princess fantasies she’d had as a little girl — until the age of five, when a boy had pushed her down for the first time. She’d gotten up and pushed back, and that had changed things.

Too many people never learned to push back.

Voss still liked pretty things, even something fancy and frilly once in a while, but the luxury that had gone into decorating Rojas’s master suite bordered on the absurd. Drugs made you stupid, and drug money let you finance your stupidity.

While his usual mules raced go-fast boats through the Caribbean, drawing the attention of every agency interested in breaking up their business, the real lords of the Colombian drug trade had sent Rojas straight up the middle, looking like nothing more than another rich asshole. If not for a total fuckup paranoiac informant they had on the inside, he might have gotten away with it.

Instead, the arrogant, bloated sack of shit got concrete and steel bars, and Voss got to sleep in Rojas’s bed.

Which might’ve meant more if she could actually have fallen asleep.

They were anchored in the shallows off a small island she hadn’t even bothered to find out the name of, not far from St. Croix. Chauncey wasn’t going to let her get far when she had to be back early in the morning to brief Turcotte on Viscaya Shipping — as if the bastard hadn’t already read everything in the file a hundred times. Voss’s partner was out there on the Antoinette, but Turcotte didn’t give a damn about that. Counter-Terrorism had an almost religious zealotry. Turcotte wouldn’t want to abandon an FBI undercover agent in the field, but he’d let the undercover gig ride as long as he had to in order to get what he wanted — some kind of connection to al Qaeda, or whatever terrorist organization had been making his bosses froth at the mouth this month.

Voss wanted this thing wrapped up now.

“Fuck it,” she said, under her breath.

Climbing out of heaven, she clipped her weapon to the waistband of her shorts, grabbed her cell phone, and headed for the door. She didn’t drink, but somewhere on the boat someone would have coffee. There was always coffee. And it would give her hands and her mouth something to do, calm her and hype her all at the same time. It didn’t look like she’d be getting any sleep tonight anyway, so what difference did it make?

Voss left the suite barefoot. She’d barely taken three steps when a figure blocked out the moonlight and Pavarotti descended into the cabin. Special Agent Joe Plausky didn’t look a damn thing like the dead Italian tenor; he was thinner, clean-shaven, and very much alive. But he sang opera in the shower, and the squad had bestowed the nickname on him. Voss hadn’t even been around when Plausky was in the shower, but the nickname stuck.

“Oh, hey. I was just coming to get you,” Pavarotti said, fairly buzzing with energy.

Voss cocked her head. “Please tell me we’re a go.”

“Call just came through on the sat-phone. The Antoinette just made a sudden course change and they’re running flat out.”

She swore through her teeth and pushed her blond hair away from her face with both hands.

“No confirmation that they’ve made contact with the sellers?”

Pavarotti threw up his hands. “Come on, Rachael. You knew it wasn’t going to be perfect when we set this mission up. We could wait, but then we risk the deal going down before we get there and we’ve got jack shit. This was a roll of the dice from day one.”

Voss laced her fingers behind her head and blew out a long breath. “We go. Tell Nadeau to get under way, top speed to the sat-phone’s coordinates, and we’ll wait there for the beacon.”

Dark eyes intense, he turned and started topside.

“Hey, Pavarotti?”

Pausing, he glanced back.

“It’s Special Agent Voss. Agent Voss if you’re feeling casual. Even just Voss, if I’m not in the middle of giving you an order. My mother, my boss, and the guy I’m currently sleeping with get to call me Rachael, and even from them I don’t like it much.”

Pavarotti did not smile. That was good.

“I’ll make a note of it.”

Then he was gone, scrambling topside, and Voss climbed up after him. While he talked to Agent Nadeau — who was at the wheel of the impounded drug boat — and then started spreading the word among the rest of the squad, Voss walked aft. The chair she’d been sitting in earlier still sat by the railing, empty, but she was too wired to sit down now.

Voss flipped open her phone, auto-dialed her supervisor.

“You coming in?” was how he answered.

He didn’t sound sleepy; in fact, he sounded like he’d been waiting for her call. Too many of those nasty-tasting energy drinks. Voss tried to tell him they were the same kinds of things snake oil salesmen had purveyed as miracle tonics in another era, but he loved the disgusting things.

“Going out, actually. We got the call.”

Chauncey hesitated before going on. “You’re sure about that? I don’t want Turcotte getting in the middle of this, either, but trying to jump-start this thing could end up blowing the whole—”

“Shut up, Chauncey.”

“Now hold on—”

“You think I’d risk my partner’s cover, never mind his life, just so I could stop Turcotte from taking away our case? I told you, we got the goddamn call.”

Again, he hesitated. But this time when he spoke, his tone had changed. “I’m sorry, Rachael. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Get on the line to Coast Guard and ICE. We need everybody in the water, ready to go.”

“Done.”

“And, Chauncey …”

“I know. Don’t call you Rachael.”

“Yeah. And don’t forget to cancel our morning meeting. Give Turcotte my regrets.”

By the time she closed the phone, they were picking up speed, white foam curling away from the hull. Voss started up toward the prow of the boat. She still wanted that coffee.