Scott Sigler - Pandemic

“It went down in 1950 over Lake Michigan,” Stanton said. “It was a DC-4, flying from New York to Minneapolis, had to—”

“Reroute due to weather,” Jeff finished. “We’re familiar. Fifty-eight people died, worst crash in American history at the time, blah-blah-blah, and so on and so forth. It’s the Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes. No one has found the wreckage.”

Steve looked surprised that Jeff knew about the disaster. If this kid thought he’d discovered something unique, he didn’t know a damn thing about the Lakes culture.

“No, no one found the wreckage,” he said. “Or the bodies.”

Jeff smiled and looked to the ceiling. This wasn’t his overeager whatever it takes to win your business smile, but rather his I smell bullshit and you’re wasting my time smile. Cooper wanted to strangle his friend: just play along, you idiot .

“Got news for you,” Jeff said. “After all this time, there ain’t gonna be no bodies.”

Steve Stanton laughed, the sound short and choppy, overly loud. “That’s the point,” he said. “That’s why the insurance companies never paid out to the families of the crash victims, because no bodies were found.”

This was a play for insurance money?

Cooper’s hope sparked higher. “You don’t look like a lawyer, Mister Stanton.”

“I’m not, but my boss is,” Steve said. “He’s gathered a bunch of descendants together and is ready to file a huge lawsuit on their behalf. All kinds of compound interest and stuff, it’s gonna be mad stacks.”

Mad stacks? Cooper looked at Jeff. Jeff shrugged: he didn’t know what it meant either.

“Money,” the kid said. “A lot of money.”

That Cooper understood.

“But Northwest isn’t even around anymore.”

Steve nodded. “No. Delta is, though. They bought out Northwest, and they’ve got deep pockets.”

Jeff ran his fingers through his hair, lifted it, let the heavy strands drop down a few at a time.

“People have been looking for 2501 for decades,” he said. “ Experts , people who make me look like I know nothing, and trust me, buddy, I know a lot . Besides… if it’s in the deep water, like below three hundred feet, we just don’t have the equipment for that.”

Cooper felt a pain in his jaw — he was grinding his teeth together. Couldn’t Jeff just be a little dishonest for once?

Steve Stanton smiled. “I don’t need you to find it, or go down and get it. I’m an engineer. I designed a remotely operated vehicle that can cover a lot of ground faster and better than anything that came before it. You guys take me out for a few days, maybe a week, we let the ROV survey the bottom for a few days, see if we get lucky and make my boss happy.”

Jeff sighed, crossed his arms. He tilted his head a little to the right, an expression Cooper knew all too well. Jeff was about to show Stanton the door. Cooper had to do something, fast, something that would change Jeff’s mind.

“It would be expensive,” Cooper said. “Jeff’s well-known reputation as a navigator, his expert knowledge of the lake, and the weather is going to be a factor, of course, and—”

Steve Stanton reached into his sweatshirt pocket, pulled out a neat, bank-bound bundle of hundred-dollar bills. He held it up.

“Will this get us started?”

Cooper stared at it. So did Jeff. That certainly wasn’t going to bounce. The bills smelled new. They smelled even better than the green tomato parmesan. That bundle alone would make the payment on the Mary Ellen and catch them up on three months of back utilities.

“Let me guess,” Jeff said. “That’s a mad stack ?”

Steve laughed his too-loud laugh. “This one isn’t even a little ticked off, man. What will it cost to hire you?”

Before Cooper could speak, Jeff gave a number that was triple their normal rate. Cooper froze — Stanton could turn around and hire a boat from one of the big companies for half that. Jeff was actually trying to price JBS out of the job.

Steve Stanton swallowed, licked his lips. He looked nervous. Maybe he wasn’t authorized to pay that much?

“Okay,” he said. “If we can leave tonight, you’re hired. I’ll pay for the first week in advance.”

Cooper Mitchell was a shitty poker player, and he knew it. Always had been. He tried to stay perfectly still, wondered if any tells showed how bad he wanted this job.

Jeff, however, was an amazing poker player. Probably because he didn’t know how truly full of shit he was, and he believed whatever story poured from his mouth at that given moment.

“Tonight,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s a storm coming in right now. Tonight’s not a good idea. Listen, I appreciate you wanting to hire us, but I have to be honest with you, you’re better off—”

“I’ll double your rate,” Steve said. He looked like he might start hyperventilating. “But only if we leave tonight.”

Six times their normal day rate? And he’d pay a full week in advance? This was it, this was the job that could turn everything around.

Cooper looked at Jeff, waited for his partner to accept the job.

But instead, Jeff shook his head.

“I think you might want someone else,” he said.

Cooper reached out, grabbed his best friend’s elbow.

“Jeff, can I talk to you in the office for a moment?” The words came out cold. Jeff looked down at Cooper’s hand.

Cooper let go, tilted his head toward the office. “ Now , please.”

Jeff sighed, smiled at Steve. “Would you excuse us a moment?”

The two partners walked into the cinder-block building within a building. Cooper shut the door.

“Brockman, what the fuck, bro?”

Jeff shook his head. “Dude, the job is bullshit.”

“What do you mean it’s bullshit ?”

“I quoted him a metric fuck-ton of money, he didn’t blink,” Jeff said. “For that kind of scratch, he could hire the bigger companies all up and down the coast. And cash ? And Flight 2501 ? Come on, man, that’s never been found and it’s never gonna be found. It’s like he’s trying to entice us with, I don’t know, the thing that has the most glory attached just in case the cash isn’t enough.”

“Who cares? Glory or no glory, someone wants this computer nerd’s little toy out on the water. Maybe Mister Stanton doesn’t know what a normal rate is.”

Jeff let out a half-huff, half-laugh. “ Mister Stanton ? He’s half our age, man.”

“Is that what this is about? That a twenty-five-year-old kid can come in here with enough cash to make us jump?”

Jeff looked away, scratched at his stubble. Yeah, that was the problem. Part of it, anyway. Both Cooper and Jeff were pushing forty. Every day, they grew more and more aware that they had no money in the bank. No wives. No children. They’d been in business together for two decades. They’d passed up going to college to be the captains of their own ship, literally, and they were one letter from the bank away from having nothing to show for it. Their big plans for a fleet had never materialized.

Cooper had changed his ways: partied less, paid more attention to the books, the business, changed his diet… whatever it took to grow up, to accept that his youth had passed him by. Jeff refused to let go of his. Cooper wasn’t even sure the man could let go.

Jeff begrudgingly nodded. “Okay, that bugs me. But that’s not why we need to pass, bro. This is too good to be true. It’s skunky.”

Skunky: Jeff’s word for a superstitious belief that if something didn’t feel right, it was bound to go wrong.