After a moment of thought, Chang turned to a computer and typed in Kurt Austin’s name. The computer took him to the NUMA website and provided him with a short blurb that identified Austin as a project engineer. Austin’s photo also was posted.
Chang stared at the coral-blue eyes, and the smile that seemed to mock him, until he could stand it no longer. He pressed the OFF button and Austin’s face vanished. Chang glared at the blank screen.
The next time I encounter Kurt Austin, he vowed, I will make him vanish forever.
CHAPTER 16
THE BERMUDA COAST GUARD CUTTER HAD RESPONDED quickly to Captain Gannon’s Mayday. After a quick look at the bodies and empty bullet casings littering the aft deck, the guards-men hurriedly called in the Marine Police Service. Within hours, a boat carrying a crime-scene investigation team arrived at the NUMA ship.
The six-man CSI team that stepped on board the research vessel’s deck looked like the car valets at a Nassau resort hotel. With the exception of Detective-Superintendent Colin Randolph, they were dressed identically in navy blue Bermuda shorts, light blue shirts, and kneesocks. As an officer, Randolph was allowed to wear a white shirt.
The men, in their spit-and-polish uniforms, stood in sharp contrast to Gannon, who was still wearing his pajamas when he welcomed Randolph and his team aboard. The captain led the way to the aft deck and introduced Randolph to Austin and Zavala, who had been talking to crew members about the night’s events. The inspector gave the NUMA men each a quick handshake, then turned his wide-eyed gaze to the bodies lying on the cartridge-littered deck.
The detective-superintendent was a round-faced man in his mid-forties who spoke with a lilt that hinted at his origins in Barbados, where he had been born.
He blew out his prominent cheeks like a puffer fish.
“Good Lord!” he said in astonishment. “Looks like a bloody war zone.” Then glancing at the bullet-riddled wreck of the Humongous, he said, “What’s that thing?”
“It was a remote-operated submersible vehicle designed to move along the ocean bottom,” Zavala said.
“Well, from the looks of it, that pile of junk won’t be moving anywhere soon.” He shook his head. “What happened to it?”
“Austin here was using the vehicle for cover, and the gunmen shot it out from under him,” Zavala said.
Randolph glanced at Austin, then gave Zavala a hard stare. Seeing nothing in either man’s face that suggested Zavala was joking, the detective-superintendent ordered his team to cordon off the crime scene with yellow police tape.
He turned to the captain.
“I’d be very pleased if you could tell me what happened on your ship last night.”
“Glad to,” Gannon said. “Around three in the morning, four armed men boarded the ship from a small boat and rousted me out of my bunk.” He plucked the front of his ratty-looking pajamas. “As you can see, I wasn’t expecting company. They were looking for Dr. Max Kane, a scientist who had been involved with the bathysphere project.”
“Did they say why they wanted Dr. Kane?”
Gannon shrugged.
“Their leader was a creepy guy with a shaved head. When I told him that Kane had left the ship, he rounded up my crew and threatened to kill them. He would have followed up on his threat if Kurt and Joe hadn’t intervened.”
Randolph turned back to Austin and Zavala.
“So you’re the ones responsible for this mess?”
“We didn’t have a lot of choice at the time,” Austin said.
“Do all NUMA research vessels carry armed security men?”
“Joe and I weren’t armed at first. We borrowed weapons from the gunmen. And we’re not security men, we’re NUMA engineers running the Bathysphere 3 project.”
Austin might just as well have said he was from France, like the Coneheads in the old Saturday Night Live skit.
Randolph’s eyes swept the scene, taking in the bodies, the weapons next to them, and the wrecked ROV. He was chewing his lower lip, and it was obvious that he was having a difficult time reconciling the blood-soaked deck with Austin’s explanation.
“Engineers,” Randolph repeated in a flat voice. Clearing his throat, he then said, “What kind of engineers?”
“I specialize in deep-sea diving and salvage,” Austin said. “Joe designs and pilots submersibles. He built the bathysphere.”
“And it was you two engineers who, against overwhelming odds, routed an armed band, using their own weapons to kill two of them in the process?”
“Three,” Austin corrected. “There’s another body on the bridge.”
“We were lucky,” Zavala pitched in, as if it explained everything.
“What happened to the fourth man, with the shaved head?” Randolph asked.
“He was lucky,” Austin said. “He got away.”
Randolph held a degree in police studies and was a veteran policeman, but even an untrained observer would have sensed something different about these two NUMA engineers. Relaxed and genial as he appeared to be, the broad-shouldered Austin had a commanding presence that went beyond his strikingly coral-blue gaze, thick gray mane of hair, and chiseled profile. And the handsome Zavala looked as if he just stepped out of some swashbuckling Hollywood epic.
“Is there any chance the men were pirates?” Randolph asked. “Bermuda does a big cruise-ship business, and rumors of piracy could be very damaging.”
“Piracy is possible but not probable,” Austin replied. “This isn’t Somalia, and these guys weren’t interested in the scientific equipment that pirates normally go after when they hit a research vessel. They knew Dr. Kane had been aboard and they were looking for him.”
“Thank goodness! I’ll put this down as an isolated attack, then.”
“Has the Coast Guard come up with any leads?” Austin asked.
“They surveyed the area around the ship, and will continue to keep an eye out. I suspect that the boat carrying the men who attacked your ship is long gone. I’d like full statements from you gentlemen and every crew member on board. Any way I can reach Dr. Kane?”
“We don’t know his present whereabouts,” Gannon said. “We can try to contact him.”
“Please do that, Captain. Could you also prepare a list of everyone on board?”
“I’ll get right to it, Detective-Superintendent. You can conduct your interviews in the mess hall.”
“Thank you very much for your cooperation, Captain.”
As Gannon hurried off to carry out Randolph’s request, Randolph said, “Now, gentlemen, since you were so intimately acquainted with the events of last night, perhaps you wouldn’t mind being interviewed first.”
“We’d be happy to tell you the whole story,” Austin said.
They shook hands all around. As Randolph walked off to supervise his team, he snorted like a horse.
“Engineers,” he muttered.
Austin suggested that Zavala take the first interview while he tried to reach Kane. He walked a short distance from the activity on the aft deck, and called directory assistance on his cell phone, asking for the number of Bonefish Key Marine Center. A computer-generated voice informed him that the lab was not open to the public and referred callers to the center’s website.
After a moment’s thought, he punched in another number from his phone list.
A low, cool female voice answered his call.
“Hi, Kurt,” said Gamay Morgan-Trout, “congratulations. Paul and I watched the bathysphere dive on TV until the transmission got cut off. How was the briny deep?”
“Briny and deep. I’ll tell you about it later. Sorry to interrupt your sabbatical at Scripps, but I need a favor. I’d like you or Paul to wrangle an invitation to the Bonefish Key marine lab in Florida. They discourage visitors, but if anyone can get in it’s you.”