The boat had gone past the tip of Bonefish Key, a long, tapering point shaped like a shirttail. The marine center dock was no longer visible, and palmettos obscured the water tower. The low, monotonous islands offered no outstanding features that could be used as reference points, and perspective constantly changed.
“You must know these waters like the back of your hand,” Gamay said.
Dooley squinted at the sun-dappled water.
“It all looks the same, but you get so you can pick out little details that most people wouldn’t see.” He opened a storage box and pointed to a pair of goggles. “I cheat when I go out fishing at night,” he said with a smirk. “Got these night vision gogs over the Internet. Got some spare ones back at the boathouse.”
“Where does Dr. Lee go kayaking?”
“She paddles down the back side of the barrier beach. Lots of birds there. I’ll show you.”
Dooley headed between two mangroves. The passage narrowed, funneling them to a dead end. Dooley brought the boat to a halt and handed Gamay a pair of binoculars. She raised them to her eyes and saw dozens of snowy egrets and great blue herons wading in the shallows, looking for food.
Dooley pointed to a wooden stake that stuck out of the water a few feet from the shore.
“That marks a path that leads across the island. Only a few hundred yards, and there’s good surf fishing on the other side.”
Dooley powered up the outboard motor, and they sped out of the V-shaped cove and toward the wrecked boat. He made a sharp turn and headed back toward Bonefish Key. The water tower popped into view, and minutes later Dooley cut speed and expertly brought them alongside the dock. Gamay tied the boat off with a few turns of the bow and stern lines. She thanked Dooley and borrowed a chart of local waters, saying she wanted to see where they had been.
She passed Dr. Lee, who was on her way for her daily kayak paddle. Gamay said hello, and got the same polite reception as the first time they met.
She then stood at the top of the hill overlooking the marina and watched Lee until she paddled around a bend.
When Gamay looked past the superficial beauty of the island, she saw that it had a beaten aspect to it. The mangroves were half dead, and even the high ground had never dried out after the hurricane, producing rank decay that overpowered the flowers and hung over the island in an invisible miasma.
She wrinkled her nose.
This place stinks in more ways than one, she thought.
CHAPTER 21
JOE ZAVALA SAT BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HIS 1961 CHEVROLET Corvette, cruising along Interstate 95 to Quantico, Virginia, at a safe ten miles over the speed limit. The convertible top was down, the powerful V-8 engine under the hood purred like a contented tiger, a CD of Ana Gabriel was playing, the wind was blowing in his dark brown hair, he was on the NUMA payroll, and he was about to meet a beautiful woman. Life was sweet.
Around forty miles southwest of Washington, he turned off the highway onto a tree-shaded road and drove through countryside that first offered glimpses of military vehicles and structures, then led to a checkpoint manned by an armed guard. He showed the guard his NUMA credentials, had his name matched against a visitors’ list, and followed the signs to the main building of the FBI Academy.
Surrounded by three hundred eighty-five acres of woods, the Academy was built on the Marine Corps base in the 1970s under the reign of J. Edgar Hoover. The campus-style complex consisted of twenty-one buildings of a soothing honey color connected by a network of glass-enclosed corridors.
Zavala went through the front entrance of the main building and walked past a bubbling fountain into the atrium lobby. He checked in at the reception desk, and said he had an appointment with Agent Caitlin Lyons. He was given a security badge with his name on it to wear. A young woman was assigned to guide him through the maze of buildings and corridors.
He heard a commotion that sounded like a gunfight at the O.K. Corral and knew that he was near the shooting range. The guide ushered him in and pointed to a row of booths.
“Number ten,” she said. “I’ll wait outside for you. Gets a little noisy in here. Take your time.”
Zavala nodded his thanks, and took some ear protectors from an attendant. Then he went over to a booth and stood behind a woman who was firing at a silhouette of a man. She stood with her pistol in both hands, slowly and methodically pumping bullets into the target, hitting it in spots that would have proved fatal had the bullets been perforating human flesh instead of paper.
Zavala had no desire to startle a trained FBI agent while she had a gun in her hand. He stood behind her patiently until she turned and saw him. She beckoned for him to step into the booth. She replaced the spent magazine with a full one, handed him the pistol, and pointed toward the target.
The Walther PPK was a favorite of Zavala’s, and the grip felt comfortable in his hand. He raised it to eye level, flicked the safety off, and let off six shots in rapid succession. Every squeeze of the trigger found the center circle of the bull’s-eye over the heart.
He flicked the safety back on and handed the gun back to the woman. She pressed a button that brought the target to the front of the booth. She stuck her finger through one of the holes Zavala’s bullets had made and said something he couldn’t hear. He removed his ear protectors, and she said it again.
“Show-off.”
She placed the pistol in a hip holster and pointed to her wristwatch. They made their way to the door, first dropping off their ear protectors. The guide was waiting in the hallway, but Caitlin said she would show Zavala to the lobby when their meeting was over.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
They strolled along a shady path that was a world away from the sound of gunfire and the smell of cordite in the shooting range.
Caitlin Lyons was an attractive woman in her thirties, and if she hadn’t been wearing black, short-sleeved coveralls with a sidearm on her belt she could have passed for a member of Celtic Women, the musical ensemble. She had a peaches-and-cream complexion, and the brows over her remarkable blue-green eyes were high and arched. Her dark blond hair was tucked under a black baseball cap with FBI on the front.
“Not bad shooting, Joe. Ever think of joining the FBI?”
“As soon as they have a navy,” Zavala said.
Caitlin laughed. “You were very brave to come up to me when I had a gun in my hand.”
“Should I have been worried?”
“You know what they say about a woman scorned . . .”
Zavala winced. His dark good looks and unassuming manner made him popular with many women around Washington. He had gone out with Caitlin, but their budding romance was interrupted by a mission for the Special Assignments Team. He had not gotten back to her until now.
“Scorned is an ugly word, Cate. I was planning to get in touch with you after my last job.”
“How about abandoned, then? Jilted? Left in the lurch. Forsaken.” She saw the distress on his face. “Don’t worry, Joe,” she said with a smile, “I’m not angry at you for leaving me to run off on another NUMA mission. I’m a cop, I might have done the same. And I wasn’t looking for anything permanent anyhow. The FBI is as demanding as NUMA. Besides, if I need you, all I have to do is turn on the TV and I’ll see those Latin good looks. I watched the bathysphere dive. Very exciting.”
“The most exciting part was what you didn’t see.”
Caitlin gave him a quizzical look, and he pointed to a park bench alongside the walkway. They sat down, and Zavala told her about the attack on the bathysphere, Austin’s close call, and the connection to the Pyramid Trading Company. When he was done talking, she took his hand and squeezed it.
“You’re a cad and a bounder, Joe, but I would have been devastated if anything had happened to you.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Now, how can I be of help in solving an ocean crime? As you pointed out, I’m a landlubber.”