Aruban Nights (Coastal Fury Book 19) Page 19

  “When do you guys think you’ll be getting here?” Ruiz continued. “The cops have been sniffing around at the docks lately. That’s one of the reasons I got the burner phone. I wanted to know so we can prepare to grab everything fast once you get here.”

  “Should be the day after tomorrow,” the man on the other end, Pablo, replied. “If we keep going at this rate, anyway. What do you mean by the cops sniffing around, though? Do they know something? Are they onto us?”

  I gritted my teeth nervously. Ruiz shouldn’t have mentioned the cops at all. Now, this Pablo person was starting to sound suspicious of what was happening.

  “Nah, nothing like that,” Ruiz replied. His voice wavered for just a second as his nonchalant facade cracked, but I wasn’t sure if it was enough that Pablo would have noticed over the phone. “Couple of the guys were down there yesterday, and there were a couple of pigs walking around asking people if they’d seen anything suspicious. Probably just trying to stick their noses where they don’t belong. Figured it’d be better for us to be careful for a while.”

  “Yeah, yeah…” Pablo replied. “Good idea. I’m glad you gave us the heads up then. We should be in early in the morning the day after tomorrow. It’ll still be dark enough that I doubt there’ll be any cops lurking around yet.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Linden raising an eyebrow at the irony of the man’s statement.

  “Yeah,” Ruiz replied. “Anyway, I gotta go. We got a crier in today, and she’s giving the guys a hard time. I better go deal with it.”

  “Alright,” Pablo replied. “Later.”

  The call ended abruptly a second later, without so much as a goodbye.

  “Okay.” Ruiz shrugged as he leaned back in his chair. “There you go. They’re arriving two days from now down at the docks. Are we done here, or what?”

  He had a smug, satisfied smile on his face, probably pretty happy about the fact that he’d scored himself some leniency in exchange for talking to us. We’d gotten the information that we wanted, but for some reason, I couldn’t dispel the uncomfortable feeling that was nagging at me.

  Now that we knew then Maduro would be arriving with the goods, we’d have the perfect opportunity to catch him, but something in my gut told me that it wasn’t going to be quite that easy.

  20

  Ethan

  Excited anticipation filled me the moment I opened my eyes the next morning. After finishing up Ruiz’s interrogation and coming up with a plan of attack, we’d once again been left with no choice but to wait for the ship to arrive. At first, I’d been anxious at the idea of having to just sit around until I remembered the conversation I had with Tessa a few days prior. The location marked on one of the maps was extremely close to where Holm and I were right now, and we had a whole day with nothing to do.

  “As long as you don’t use MBLIS funds to do this,” Diane had cautioned me the day before when I’d asked if Holm and I could go and check out the spot while we waited for Maduro to arrive, “then I guess it’s fine. Just be absolutely sure that you’re back well ahead of time to catch Maduro and the rest of the men.”

  After assuring her that we’d definitely be back with time to spare, I’d filled Holm in on the plan. He’d been just as excited as I was, and we’d gone back to the hotel to tuck early that evening so we’d be able to get an early head start the following morning.

  Now that morning had come, I was buzzing with nervous energy.

  I stepped into the bathroom for a quick shower, plugging in the small coffee maker I’d found in the room earlier and starting it up so it would be ready by the time I finished. The warm, rich smell of the coffee permeated the room by the time I stepped back out of the bathroom a few minutes later. I pulled on a thin t-shirt and a pair of jeans before reaching for my gun, unsure if I really needed to bring it with me since we’d be going out on a boat to look for treasure rather than hunting down criminals.

  It only took a moment of thought for me to pick up my holster and clip it to my belt. It would be infinitely better to carry it around all day and not need it than for me to suddenly find myself in a dire situation with no means of protecting myself. Goodness knows that I had more than one experience dealing with sudden, unexpected trouble while I was supposedly on vacation.

  My stomach rumbled as I gulped down a small cup of coffee, and I realized just how hungry I was. As usual, I hadn’t been eating the most balanced diet since we’d started the case. Usually, we were so busy during missions that we often had no choice but to grab bites here and there whenever we could find a free moment. I would have to take this rare opportunity to sample some of the local food before we headed out.

  I checked my phone as I finished off my second cup. It was almost six in the morning, which was the time that Holm and I had agreed to meet down in the lobby to leave. Since the spot on the map was marked in the middle of the water off the coast of Venezuela, the trip was going to take approximately four hours by boat. If we wanted to have plenty of time to explore and still get back to prepare for the mission tomorrow morning, we had to leave early.

  The sun was barely starting to rise as I left my room. The sky was a deep purple, so dark that I could still see stars up above me, with only the faintest hints of orange peeking out over the horizon. It was quite a breathtaking sight, made even better by the large, open breezeway that connected all the hotel rooms.

  As I walked over to the elevator, I slipped my phone out of my pocket to pull up the images that Tessa had sent me. I hadn’t had much of a chance to examine them since that conversation, and now that I looked at them again, I couldn’t help but marvel at them.

  I sighed as I stepped back out of the elevator and into the lobby. It was a shame that one of the maps had been so badly damaged. As I sat down in one of the rough, embroidery-upholstered chairs in the lobby, I stared down at the image of the damaged map, trying to figure out what it was. I’d already determined that one of them showed the northern half of Venezuela. In fact, now that I looked at it again, it seemed like it might fit right below the piece that I already had of the Bahamas. I’d have to check it later against the copy I had.

  The other two pieces, however, were a mystery. The other intact one had two X’s marked on it, and one X had the word “danger” scrawled beneath it in slanted, curved handwriting. I had no idea what that meant, but just the thought of it was admittedly tantalizing. Nevertheless, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at, no matter which way I turned the image. It didn’t help that I couldn’t tell which way the handwriting should be oriented since it was slanted, so I couldn’t use that to determine which way was up.

  The other piece, of course, was far more hopeless. Several spots were darkened with what I now knew was water damage, with a good portion of the parchment itself having deteriorated away. I could still make out the geographical lines, but I didn’t see any Xs on this one, which meant that whatever had been marked had probably been on the destroyed side.

  There was no point in mourning over it now, though. There was still hope that I might figure out exactly where the other two maps were meant to depict, but right now, my only focus was on the map that was very clearly a depiction of the waters above northern Venezuela.

  “Hey,” Holm’s voice called out a second later. I turned around in my chair and spotted him walking toward me, yawing as he came. “Sorry, I’m late. I overslept. Were you waiting for long?”

  “You’re not that late,” I replied as I looked at my phone, shocked to discover that it was already twenty minutes after six. Had I really been so absorbed in looking at the maps that I’d lost track of time?

  “Oh, cool,” Holm replied. “Anyway, do you want to get something to eat before we head out?”

  “Yes,” I replied as I stood up and tucked my phone into my pocket. “I was just thinking about that, actually.”

  The sky was a lot brighter as we walked out of the hotel a moment later. Still dark, but the stars were gone, and the rays of the sun
had swelled and were now lighting up more of the street around us.

  “The place is… this way,” Holm informed me as he looked down at his phone for the directions of the boat shop we’d looked up the previous night while making plans. We needed a boat that was capable of traveling out over the water for several hours and back while still preferably being small and compact. The rental place we’d found had boats that seemed to fit the bill.

  As we walked through town toward the beach, I was once again able to appreciate the unique architecture of the city.

  “It’s a Netherlands territory, right?” Holm asked as he looked up at a bright pink building.

  “Yeah,” I replied. We always did some cursory research about the countries we visited since we needed to be well-versed in their criminal justice laws, especially those pertaining to the powers of law enforcement and gun control. It had surprised me to discover that the tiny nation in the middle of the Caribbean was actually a part of the Netherlands, of all places.

  “I can tell,” Holm replied. I knew what he meant at once. The buildings were all very Dutch-inspired. Tall, rustic, and with large domed windows accented with wooden shutters. Of course, the only difference between Oranjestad and, say, Holland was the fact that all the buildings here were vibrantly colored in shades that could only fit in with these tropical islands.

  We were about halfway to the marina where the boat rental shop was when we came across a large red truck. A short line of people was standing outside of the large window cut out of the side as a savory scent drifted out toward me through the window and the open door.

  “Wonder what that is?” I mused aloud as I slowed to a stop a few feet from the truck.

  “Let’s go see,” Holm suggested as he turned and walked toward it. As I turned to follow, the woman who stood at the head of the line turned and began to walk away. She had a paper tray in her hands with what looked like small dumplings or buns stacked inside. I could see the steam rising from them as she picked one up and took a bite, smiling as he walked away chewing.

  The line quickly became shorter as the other patrons got their food and walked off, and before I knew it, Holm and I were standing at the front.

  “Hello,” the man standing at the window greeted us as he wiped down a glass with a dishrag. “What can I get for you?”

  “What do you have?” I replied as I glanced at the piece of paper taped to the side of the truck. It listed out several ingredients, but I wasn’t actually sure what I was even buying.

  “You are tourists?” the man asked as he eyed Holm and me knowingly.

  “Yeah,” I replied for the sake of simplicity. Agreeing with that was a lot easier than explaining that we were actually federal agents here to take down a complex drug smuggling ring. Regardless, I knew that the man was asking if we were foreigners, which we were.

  “First time in Aruba?” He nodded at his own question as though he already knew the answer. Technically he was wrong since Holm and I had been in Aruba before, but I didn’t bother correcting him on this point, either. “Well, I’ll tell you. This,” he held up one of the dumpling-like things I’d seen the other customers leave with, “is called Pastechi. Pastechi is like a doughnut, but better. Instead of jam inside, there’s cheese. I’ve also got ham, chicken, beef. You name it. Any of the ingredients there on the paper, we can add. This is a traditional food here in Oranjestad, very popular for breakfast. And my Pastechi is the best Pastechi in all of Aruba.” He puffed his chest out proudly.

  “Great,” I replied, bolstered by the man’s confidence in his own food. “I’ll take ham then.”

  “I’ll take chicken,” Holm added. The man nodded and said something to the cook standing in the truck behind him. I could see him rapidly moving around at the stove before dunking something into a large vat of oil. It sizzled as it went in.

  “That will be four dollars,” the man looked at me. I dug my wallet out of my pocket and handed over the bills.

  “Thank you,” the man said as he took the money. “It’ll be just a minute.”

  Holm and I moved to the side so he could take the next customer. He really wasn’t kidding about it being just a minute, as only moments later, the cook in the back pulled the wire basket back out of the oil before tipping the pastries inside out onto a countertop. He then used a scoop to separate and deposit a handful of pastries each into two paper trays before walking them over to the window.

  “Ham,” he said as he handed me one of the trays before turning to Holm. “And chicken. Thank you, please come again soon.” He smiled at us before turning around, already ready to prepare the next order. Despite being only the two of them, the little food truck seemed to run like a well-oiled machine, and I continued to watch in awe for a moment at the speed and precision of their work before turning to walk away.

  As we did, I reached down and plucked one of the little triangles of fried dough out of the basket. It was still hot, but not to the point that I couldn’t touch it. It smelled good, and as I popped it into my mouth to take a bite, I hoped that it tasted as good as it smelled.

  The amount of cheese that burst out as I bit into it surprised me, warm and flavorful around thick, salty chunks of fresh ham. It almost tasted like a grilled cheese sandwich, but about a hundred times better. Holm seemed to be enjoying his as well, as he was already on his second one and hadn’t stopped eating since he’d started. I wondered vaguely what the chicken version tasted like. Maybe I’d try that one some other time before we left.

  “That was good,” Holm remarked as he finished off his last pastechi just as we reached the marina. “And pretty dang filling for what we paid. Two dollars, was it?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed as I folded up the empty paper tray. I’d finished my own a few minutes ago, wishing I’d bought two orders instead of just one. Though it was pretty filling on its own, it had been so good that I’d still wanted more after the last bite. “We’ll have to stop by there again sometime. Maybe on our way back.”

  “Good idea,” Holm agreed as we walked up to the small building set along the edge of the marina. It was only slightly bigger than the food truck had been, and it had a similar square window set into the side.

  “Good morning,” the small, elderly man sitting behind the window greeted us. He was wearing thick glasses and had a soft, friendly smile on his face. “How can I help you?”

  “We wanted to rent a boat,” I explained. “We saw online that you had an MJM. We were hoping to rent that one.”

  “Oh, now that’s a nice one,” the man replied with a short nod. “New, too. Just got her in a few months ago. You boys planning on doing some sightseeing around the outer islands? That one’s a good one for long-distance trips.”

  “Something like that,” I replied vaguely. Long-distance was exactly what we needed it for, after all.

  “Well, then she’s your girl,” the man replied as he got up and walked to the wall at the back of the little building. I could see several rows of keys hanging there. The man spent a moment looking through them before finally plucking a set off one of the hooks.

  “Oh, you also rent diving equipment, right?” I asked as he began to walk slowly back to the window. The website we’d checked earlier claimed that along with boat rentals, the shop also offered scuba gear and even introductory classes.

  “We do indeed.” The man ambled slowly to the door to the right of the reception window. A second later, it opened with a click. “Come on in,” he said invitingly as he pushed the door open wider for us.

  As we stepped through the doorway and into the small building, I could see that the far left wall was dedicated to diving equipment. Dive suits hung on the wall, and a rack of shelves just to the side held an assortment of masks, regulators, and fins. It wasn’t the most expansive array of options, but it would probably do.

  “I hope you boys know what you’re looking for,” the man noted as he followed us to the back of the shop to where the dive gear was. “I’m afraid my eyes aren’t
what they used to be. I used to be able to tell a person’s size just from looking at them, could have ‘em fitted and ready to go in under a minute. These days I can barely tell what I’m looking at, to be honest with you.”

  “We’ll be alright,” I assured him with a smile as I turned to peruse the options available. As I’d thought, there wasn’t much variety, but luckily, Holm and I were both able to find suits in our sizes. The breathing equipment appeared to be in good condition too, which was ultimately the most important factor when it came to diving. I could deal with a poorly fitting suit, but I couldn’t deal with a broken regulator.

  Once we’d picked out everything we would need, I handed my credit card over to the shopkeeper.

  “Okay.” He beamed as he handed the card back to me. “You folks are all set. Let’s get you down to the boat now.” He led us out of the little shop, taking a moment to turn around and lock the door once Holm and I were both out.

  “Now let me see,” he muttered as he looked back and forth down the line of boats docked against along the marina. “Where did we put it again? Sorry, my nephew’s usually around to help with the customers, but he’s off at some school event today. My memory’s not what it used to be.”

  “It’s no problem,” I assured him, though internally, I grew more impatient by the moment. I was eager to get out on the boat already. The man finally seemed to make a decision and began to walk toward one of the boats docked on the left side of the marina. I recognized it as the same one that we’d seen online, and my heart began to race as we approached it.

  “Here she is,” the man declared proudly as he came to a stop in front of it. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? My nephew was the one who insisted that I buy her. Said she had all these new, top-of-the-line features. Seemed like a bunch of hot air to me, to be frank. Thought it was just a way for the manufacturer to rip people off on the price.” He clucked his tongue. “Now that I’ve seen her in action, though, I have to admit that she lives up to expectations. Anyway, you boys don’t want to listen to me talk. Have your fun. Rental’s good until ten PM tonight, and there’s a late fee for every hour that she’s late after that.”