Gone (Michael Bennett)

nothing.
    Scanlon was opening the cooler on the deck below when she placed the barrel of the Walther to the leathery back of his red, sun-beaten neck.
    “What is this?” she said. “Where is it? You brought us to the wrong place.”
    Scanlon, unfazed by the gun, cracked his can of Bud as he slowly turned around. “Why would I bring you to the wrong place?”
    “To double-cross us,” Vida said. “We weren’t given the coordinates. Only you were. You bring us here, to some bullshit point, then send another boat to the correct spot to grab the shipment for yourself.”
    Scanlon laughed and swigged his beer.
    “Lady, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Listen, Perrine and I go way, way back. We got drunk together in Paris at a NATO thing back when I was a SEAL. Ask around. Your buddies on the ship got spooked or tipped off or something, OK? I’ve been doing this shit for twenty years. It happens all the time. We go back to shore. You call your people. You’ll be —”
    “Ahhh!” someone yelled behind him.
    The men were crowded at the back of the boat, yelling at one another.
    “What happened?” Vida asked, rushing up.
    “Eduardo!” one of them said. “He was sitting there a second ago, and then I don’t know what happened. It seemed like something pulled him into the water!”
    A moment later, Eduardo broke the surface, ten feet off the stern.
    “¡Ayúdame! ¡Tiburón!” he yelled. “¡Algo está agarrando el pie!”
    Help me! Shark! Something’s grabbing my foot!
    “You gotta be shitting me,” Scanlon said as Eduardo went under again.
    The water broke again a moment later. It wasn’t just Eduardo this time. Vida jumped back, elbowing Scanlon in his beer belly. Beside Eduardo was a man in a full black scuba-diving suit!
    “Surprise!” Manuel Perrine said as he peeled off the face mask and chucked it onto the deck. “How is everyone? Vida, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
    Everyone stood there, blinking, trying to catch up. Vida was completely flummoxed. The call had said they were there to receive a shipment. She hadn’t thought it would be the boss himself.
    “I got you, didn’t I? I can tell,” Perrine said, swimming toward the rear of the boat.
    “You actually jumped off the deck of that rust bucket, didn’t you, you crazy son of a bitch,” Scanlon said as he hauled Perrine up onto the deck.
    “What can I say, Scanlon?” Perrine had a twinkle in his light-blue eyes. “I still got it.”
    Vida kept on staring as the rest of the men fished Eduardo out of the drink. Perrine was back in the US! What did that mean? Nothing good. How could it?
    Eduardo was right , she thought.
    There actually was a tiburón. A two-legged one, now on board.

CHAPTER 42
     
    EVEN WITHOUT THE AID of a rooster, I woke up on the air base bright and early the next morning.
    The afternoon before had been hectic. Parker had me fill out some paperwork that officially made me a government contractor with top secret intelligence clearance. I was given temporary FBI credentials and, even better, a Glock 17. After dinner, she’d also handed me a pile of files to take back to my room. I’d pored over them until almost one in the morning.
    I’d never seen a CIA report before, and I was surprised to see how similar they were to the NYPD ones I was used to. The gist of what I’d read was that, though there were a lot of leads and tips as to Perrine’s whereabouts, so far they hadn’t amounted to much.
    Usually paperwork in cases drove me nuts, but I was actually pretty jazzed about the whole thing. I wasn’t exactly back at my Major Case Squad desk at One Police Plaza in Manhattan, but at least I was doing something positive, for once in the past eight months. Something constructive.
    I was even psyched about giving my talk. Public speaking is usually on par with a root canal on my list of favorite things, but that morning, I was actually raring to go to give my speech about Perrine to the US troops who were after him.
    But, as it turned out, my enthusiasm was short-lived. After my shower, I was in a towel, shaving in the dormitory head, when my phone rang.
    “Hey, Parker,” I said, holding my phone away from my mouth to avoid covering it in Barbasol. “I’m almost done with the first draft of my speech. Think one part Gettysburg Address, one part St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth. ”
    “Sounds … ambitious,” Parker said. “But