Chapter 12 Jealous Much?

Chapter 12

Jealous Much?

I was intrigued, but I didn’t want to get bogged down. We still had a lot of information and planning to cover, so I kept my inquisition brief. “Does Angola have the records from the seventies?”

Skipper huffed. “Yes, but they’re not searchable like modern records. Somebody scanned the paper files and turned them into one enormous, old-school PDF document. It’s basically a poor-quality Xerox copy of already poor-quality paper files. It’s a mess.”

“Could you have missed his release?”

“Sure, but I had the computer devour every letter of the PDF, searching for anything relating to anyone named Kenneth and/or LePine. His intake is there, but nothing after that.”

I said, “Let’s put that one on the back burner and come back to it later. Let’s talk about the land. I want to see a map of who owns the land adjoining Kenneth’s. Can you do that?”

“Sure,” she said, “but it won’t be quick. You’ll have to give the computer and me a couple of days. Those counties—or parishes—down there aren’t exactly on the cutting edge of technology. Most property records are available, but they’re mostly handwritten in plat books. I even found one that had been surveyed in nineteen thirty-eight by a guy on horseback. He measured the property lines by counting the horse’s strides.”

“Most of the land is flooded bayous down there,” I said. “How could he survey it on horseback?”

She chuckled. “You’ll love this. Apparently, his horse’s dry stride was seven-tenths of a yard, and his wet-to-the-stirrups stride was half of a yard.”

“That was in the deed?”

“It was. I told you. It’s a different world down there.”

“Let’s move on,” I said. “Where’s the ship?”

She brought up a chart of the Caribbean and pointed toward the Dry Tortugas with her cursor. “Right there. Captain Sprayberry gave the crew three weeks’ liberty so they could go home and spend time with their families. They’re on recall, of course, so if we need them, they can be back aboard in seventy-two hours.”

I glanced at the location on the chart. “If he doesn’t have a crew, what’s he doing at sea? Shouldn’t he be in port somewhere?”

“Apparently, his crew would rather stay with the ship. A few of them took the time off, but over seventy percent of them stayed on board. They’ve been playing in the Keys for a week. They’re apparently doing some scuba diving and sunbathing as we speak.”

“Good. Those guys deserve a break,” I said. “Unfortunately, though, we’re going to need them. Get the captain on the horn if you would, please.”

A few seconds later, Captain Barry Sprayberry’s voice filled the air from the speaker on the center of the conference table. “Afternoon, Chase. How’s the saving-the-world business?”

“Business is good, my friend. That’s why I’m calling. We need you and your boat in Terrebonne Bay, just west of Grand Isle, Louisiana.”

“Are you starting a war with the shrimpers?”

“Not exactly. It’s not that kind of mission. You’ll be a floating hotel and op center more than anything else. Hopefully, you won’t have to shoot at anybody, and nobody will be shooting at you.”

“That sounds boring,” he said. “When do you need us?”

“Skipper tells me you’re on a reduced crew at the moment.”

“Yeah, but don’t worry about that. We’ve got plenty of folks on board to handle an assignment like you’re describing. If you’re sure there won’t be any need to sink anyone, we can be there in twenty-four hours.”

“I can’t imagine who we’d shoot at, but don’t yank your divers out of the water. Let them play. Have Gun Bunny pick us up at the airport in Houma, Louisiana, in forty-eight hours.”

He said, “No problem, boss. Are we trying to hide? If so, that’s tough inshore. There are so many oil rigs, crew boats, service vessels, and helicopters out there, there’s no way to hide in that bay.”

“I’m not particularly concerned about hiding,” I said. “Accommodations in that part of the world are hard to come by, so as I said, I’m using your warship as a Motel Six.”

“It all pays the same,” he said. “We can come in as far as Bayou Lafourche. Halliburton has a port, and we’ve got carte blanche with them.”

I gave his offer some thought. “For now, let’s lay off far enough to avoid unnecessary attention. We may change plans, but for now, let’s keep a low profile.”

“You got it. We’ll see you in two days.”

Skipper ended the call and asked, “What’s next?”

“Let’s load out and get ready to head into the bayou.”

She spun from her station at the console. “There’s one more thing you might want to do before you start packing.”

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about the tone of her voice told me I was about to step to the plate and swing at a nasty curveball. “What is it?”

“It’s waiting for you in the gazebo.”

The mystery was solved, and what waited for me in the gazebo was far more dangerous than any curveball.

I turned to Gator. “Take Shawn to the armory and load him out.”

The former SEAL said, “I’m pretty well stocked for gear, but thanks.”

I said, “The gear you have now… Is it your personal kit?” He nodded, and I said, “Go with Gator and build two more kits. One will stay in the armory aboard the ship, and the other will be your daily kit. I don’t want you to use your personal gear. We’ll provide you with everything you could need or want. Don’t be shy. Consider it an all-expenses-paid shopping spree.”

He said, “You’re the boss.”

On my way through the kitchen, I pulled two bottles of water from the refrigerator and headed through the back door. The steps leading from the back gallery and onto the lawn were replicas of the originals that were there for over a century before the fire. I’d stood on those steps beside Penny the day my great uncle, Judge Bernard Henry Huntsinger, married us on a day that seemed like both yesterday and a thousand years in the past.

The carpenters incorporated one of the few pieces of the original house back into those steps during the reconstruction. It was a charred, triangular piece of an original tread, and every time I saw it, the memory of my wedding day flooded my mind.

And now, in spite of who and what awaited me in the gazebo, the memories still came. Her long, blonde hair glistened in the late-afternoon sun and danced on the gentle breeze coming off the North River. The gazebo was the center of my world, the place to which I retreated when everything became too much. Jack Daniel’s and I spent countless hours inside that structure, and the instant I saw her, I knew I should’ve left the water inside and brought the bottle of Old Number 7 instead.

“Hello, Anya.”

Anastasia Anya Burinkova had almost been my end, but somehow, we’d both survived each other. She was dispatched from the Kremlin to find, flip, or kill the newly minted American operative fifteen years before, but the Kremlin’s plan came apart at the seams. Mother Russia’s beautiful sparrow found, enticed, and enchanted me, but instead of flipping me to provide American intel to the Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii, the irresistible SVR officer traded in her Russian credentials for a shiny new American passport with the name Ana Fulton emblazoned across the first page. I had been in love with her back then, and she was still in love.

“Hello, my Chasechka. Is beautiful afternoon, yes?”

“It is,” I said. “Thank you for bringing Skipper home.”

“Of course.”

I was convinced her Russian accent remained by choice. Her English was as good or better than mine, but it would sound and feel odd if she spoke without sounding like a recent export from Moscow.

“It sounds like you guys had a good time. Thank you for doing that for her. She needed the time away.”

“I told to her she can come to island anytime.”

“That’s kind of you,” I said. “Nice airplane, by the way.”

She’d learned to smile at State School 4 on the banks of the Volga River when the KGB taught her to make American men melt in the palm of her hand. The smile she wore that day hadn’t been coached. It was sincere, and even more beautiful than the one she’d learned behind the stone walls of Sparrow School.

She said, “Thank you. It is Citation jet, but you know this already, yes?”

“I guess I didn’t know you were type rated in the Citation.”

She tilted her head. “There are many things you do not know about me, Chasechka, but I want you to know them.”

“You look…” I didn’t finish the compliment, but she caught it anyway. Her fingertips explored her jawline, and she brushed the back of her hand against her cheek. “I had cosmetic surgery to restore my face. I am ashamed of my own vanity, but I did not like ugly scars. You think I am again beautiful, no?”

There was no way to escape the trap into which I’d willingly stepped, so I put my psychological education to work. “You’ve always been beautiful, Anya.”

I expected her to take the conversation down a path I wasn’t willing to walk with her, but to my surprise, she said, “You have mission, yes?”

“Sort of.”

She frowned. “Sort of? What does this mean?”

“We have a self-imposed assignment, but it’s not really a mission.”

She stared across the river as a pair of pelicans careened into the water from dozens of feet above. “Is time of day for birds to be hungry.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

Her attention didn’t leave the pelicans. “I could not leave without seeing you. There will come time when you will not come home from mission. Thought of this day makes me sad, so if I have opportunity to see you, even if only for moment, is ridiculous to cast away this moment. I thought maybe you would need help on this mission that is only sort of mission.”

“I need help understanding it.”

She turned to face me. “Is complicated?”

“Maybe. And maybe it’s far simpler than I’m making it out to be. I don’t know yet. Somebody is dumping body parts into the bayou southwest of New Orleans.”

She cocked her head. “This sounds like perfect place to put body parts. Alligators will destroy evidence, and no one will know. Why is this mission for you? Are you now police officer?”

I laughed. “No, I’m definitely not a cop. I’m just trying to help a friend.”

“I am your friend, yes?”

The question hit me like a truck, and I didn’t have an answer. I had never tried to define the relationship Anya and I shared. Perhaps friendship wasn’t the correct word, but it was as good as anything else I could come up with. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

“This makes me happy. I am available for mission or helping of friend if this is what you want.”

I was, again, caught on my heels. I didn’t have any tactical need for which Anya was the answer. She possessed skills none of the rest of the team would ever develop, but I had no way to know if that skill set would be necessary in Louisiana. Ultimately, I had a nice private chuckle inside my head thinking about the chaos a beautiful Russian would create in the bayous of Southern Louisiana.

I finally said, “Can I be completely honest with you?”

She tilted her head and smiled just like she’d done when I watched her walking on the beach in St. Thomas. I believed then, as I believed on the day we sat in that gazebo together, that both of those smiles were purely hers with no pretense of any kind. When she spoke, I’m not certain the words left her mouth, but I watched her lips form the word always .

“I don’t know what I need on this assignment. I don’t know if I need you or a posse of U.S. Marshals. Gator’s in love with a Cajun girl who sucks the brains out of crawfish. There’s an old guy who thinks the spirits of dead people visit him on their way to Heaven. Oh, and he may or may not practice voodoo. Also, he may or may not be dead. They lasso each other and throw concrete blocks through truck windows trying to kill people who mess with their daughters. There’s floating dismembered bodies—not torsos—just arms and legs that alligators won’t eat floating in the swamp. They haul two-hundred-year-old dead trees off the bottom of the bayou and sell them for thousands of dollars. And that’s just the normal stuff that goes on down there.”

She giggled.

“That’s not exactly the response I expected,” I said.

“You are cute when you do not know what to do, Chasechka. I think I will come with you, and we will make all of this make sense for you. Well, maybe not sucking brains of crawfish, but together, we will find reason for dead body parts.”

Stopping Anya Burinkova from doing something she wanted to do was like stopping a freight train with a Q-tip.

“Fine. You can come, but when I tell you to stay on the ship, you will stay on the ship.”

She shrugged. “We will see. And since we are taking ship, I will have great fun making you jealous when I flirt with sailors.”