Jack Rogan: The Ocean Dark

Thanks to editor extraordinaire Anne Groell for her patience, insight, and enthusiasm. Thanks are also due, of course, to David Pomerico and the entire team. For advice, assistance, and their expertise, enormous thanks to FBI Special Agent Dana Ridenour, Tufts University professors Susan Ernst and Anne Gardulski, and the helpful people at the Port of Miami.

The singing began at nightfall, and the dying soon after.

Braulio stood just inside the wheelhouse of the Mariposa , smoking a cigarette and listening to the creak of the fishing boat and the clang of the metal pulley against the winch out on deck. It sounded like a buoy dinging nearby, but there wasn’t a buoy within half a day’s sail of this place. They were off the map. Off the edge of the world.

The tip of his cigarette glowed orange in the gathering dusk. The breeze that swept through the wheelhouse carried the smoke away, but still the air felt stifling. Braulio had lived his whole life on the islands of Costa Rica or out on the open sea. At fifty-four, the fisherman was the oldest man on the boat, but even he had never been in these waters before. No one came out here, and there was no reason to do so unless you were lost, or you needed to conduct business in secret.

Illegal business.

Life had been easier for Braulio when it had just been about catching fish.

“Anything?” he asked.

Estevan sat in a chair bolted to the floor of the wheelhouse, leaning back with his eyes closed. In front of him, the radio whispered lonely static, soft and wordless. He opened his eyes into slits and looked at Braulio. “Do you hear anything?”

Braulio gave a shake of his head and turned away, walking out onto the deck. The ship swayed underfoot but his gait was steady. Sailor’s legs. On land, he felt unsteady. Out here he knew who and what he was, or he had, until his age had caught up with him and work had grown scarcer, and need had turned him into a criminal.

Did he hear anything? Only the sounds of the old fishing boat and the low muttering of the crew. Alberto and Javier played cards down in the cabin. Hector stood aft, fishing rod in his hands, letting his line drag with the current that swept toward the dark hump of the island in the distance. Cruz, the first mate, sat in the bow drinking expensive whiskey, though he was long past appreciating its quality. The captain, Ruiz, seemed happy to let Cruz raid his private stock, but the bastard never shared the good stuff with the rest of the crew.

Braulio took another drag on his cigarette, forcing his trembling fingers to be still. He cursed silently, exhaling a lungful of smoke. His hands had begun to shake several months ago — infrequently at first, but then more and more. He had told himself that his age was to blame, that he had damaged the muscles in his hands somehow while working the lines. But the tremors had grown worse. He ought to have seen a doctor, but by then he had decided that he did not want to know. Still, hiding the tremors from the crew had become more difficult. Just this morning Javier had noticed, and Braulio had spun him a lie about arthritis medicine.

Smoking helped, though. Focusing on the cigarette, holding it to his lips, somehow made the muscles in his hands relax. The whole process — the familiar comfort of a cigarette, the smell and the taste — had always eased his tension and anxiety. It might be filling his lungs with poison and probably would kill him in time, but right now Braulio needed to smoke, and not just to still the shaking of his hands.

Estevan sat in front of the radio. If there had been any contact at all, he would have heard and responded. He would have told Cruz immediately, and the first mate would have shared it with the rest of the crew. But there had been no contact — not from the buyers with whom they were set to rendezvous, or from Captain Ruiz.

That last one worried Braulio the most.

He leaned against the railing, facing away from the island. He didn’t like looking at it, and did not want to think about why they had lost communication with the captain and three crew members who had gone ashore. The last glimmer of daylight burned on the western horizon and to the east the world had gone dark, but still no word from the island. That hadn’t been the plan. The men who’d gone ashore should have been back by now.

The quiet troubled him. Troubled them all, though none of them wanted to show it. They were all holding their breath, wondering what the hell had happened. Not only had they lost contact with the captain, but the clients should have been in range by now for radio communication. Yet nothing.

Braulio watched the upper rim of the sun sinking into the water to the west, and shivered.

Fucking Ruiz had decided to get clever, and if there was one thing Braulio had learned over the course of his life, it was that trying to be clever nearly always led to disaster. The Mariposa had left port in Costa Rica with the guns on board, as planned. The job had been simple — rendezvous with the client, deliver the guns, pick up the cash, then catch a ton of fish before setting course for home. But Captain Ruiz just had to complicate things.

The island isn’t on any of the charts , Ruiz had said that night in the bar, whispering low, his eyes glittering with whiskey and greed. He spread an old, yellowed map on the table and weighted the edges down with sweaty bottles of beer. But it’s here. This thing is old, maybe a hundred years. Still, what are those marks?

To his credit, it had been a good question. Marks had been made on the map indicating … well, something. Ruiz had thought it an old pirate map, which Braulio considered ridiculous, though he did not dare say so out loud. And, after all, it could have been a pirate’s map. Who was to say?

Ruiz had shifted the rendezvous to the open water not far from the island and the Mariposa had arrived a day early. The captain had wanted time to explore the island, to figure out what the marks on the map represented. The rest of the crew had been all for it. They were young enough to believe in buried treasure.

Braulio had not cared much either way, as long as he got paid. But then, a little more than six hours ago, after realizing that the coordinates on the map were slightly off, they had finally come in sight of the island. At his first glimpse of the place, Braulio had felt his skin begin to crawl.

The island was a cemetery. Not of human graves, but of sunken, derelict ships.

“What is this? What does it mean?” Hector had asked.

The captain, staring out at the wrecks arrayed along the coast, had not responded.

It had been Cruz, the first mate, who had laughed. “Are you a superstitious fool now? Haven’t you heard the stories of the Sargasso Sea? The currents must cross here. Ships drift in and strike the rocks.”

Some of the men nodded, satisfied with that story. Hector had glanced at Braulio as though looking for reassurance, but the old man had ignored him, focusing on the captain. Cruz always had an answer for everything and it made the whole crew want to throw him overboard at least once a day, but the explanation seemed sensible, if hard to believe.

That was when Ruiz had tried getting clever.

“Load the gun crates into the lifeboats.”

Braulio had stared at him. What the fuck? But even as the question crossed his mind, he had known the answer. Ruiz intended to make the clients sweat, try to force them to come up with more money or something else in trade before he would turn the weapons over. And from the gleam in his eye, it seemed Ruiz had been planning this for a while.