The Stronger Chase Read online

  During her time with me, she’d become an extremely capable sailor, and it was impossible to keep her completely out of the work I did. She’d been my counselor and shoulder to cry on while I was trying to get over Anya, and I’d been the same for her as she recovered from the horrors she’d faced. We were good for each other.

  “Are you guys okay for a few hours?” I asked.

  “Sure, we’re good,” Skipper said. “You and Clark go get some sleep. You look like you could use it. We’ll ride the Gulf Stream and this nice breeze up the Keys for a while. Then you guys can take over while Tony and I rest.”

  I had no doubt Tony and Skipper could manage the boat while Clark and I caught some much needed sleep.

  Around noon, Clark and I traded places with Tony and Skipper and continued our trek up the outside of the Florida Keys. The wind blew hard out of the southwest all day, and the Gulf Stream chugged along at almost four knots. We made fifteen knots and held on for the ride. The Molasses Reef Light came into view at four p.m., and it was a welcomed sight. I’d promised Skipper we’d go diving on the way home, and there’s no better diving in North America than Molasses Reef.

  “Hey, Clark. If you don’t mind, go wake up the lovebirds and let them know we’re pulling in to Key Largo.”

  He stretched and crawled out of the trampoline on the bow and headed for the interior. When he returned, he had two of his world-famous daiquiris in hand.

  “Here you go, Captain. I think we’ve earned a cocktail, don’t you?”

  I took the plastic cup full of frozen Heaven from his hand. “Oh, I’d definitely say we’ve earned it. Cheers, my friend!”

  I rarely drank while running the boat, but Clark’s daiquiris were impossible to resist. Skipper and Tony stumbled on deck as we were motoring into the canal.

  “Good morning, sleepy heads. Did you get some rest?”

  Tony yawned. “Yeah, we were sleeping like babies until he”—he pointed at his brother—“disturbed us.”

  “I think you’ll be glad he did. You’re going to love this place,” I said.

  I found a spot on the floating dock and laid alongside in front of the Key Largo Fisheries Backyard Café.

  Forty-five minutes later, after we’d gorged ourselves on the catch of the day and listened to a pretty good Jim Morris soundalike, Skipper said, “So, how about a night dive?”

  I’d been promising her we’d do some night diving since she’d earned her Advanced Open Water Diver certification. She’d become an excellent and avid diver almost instantly. Being a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, Tony was right at home in the water as well.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not. There’s no moon, so it’ll be dark.”

  “Duh,” said Skipper. “Isn’t that the point of night diving?”

  I threw a hushpuppy at her. She caught it, took a bite, then threw it back at me.

  “We’ll go diving, but don’t tell your mom I let you go swimming within three days of eating. She still thinks you’ll cramp up and drown.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a myth,” Tony said with coleslaw clinging to his lip.

  After tipping the guitar player, we headed back to the boat. We motored down to Rodriguez Key to make sure the anchorage wasn’t full. That was the best place to anchor for the night, but motoring into an anchorage after dark on a moonless night is never a great plan. We were pleased to see the anchorage empty, so I set a GPS waypoint where I wanted to drop the hook after our dive, and we headed off for Molasses Reef.

  We found a mooring ball and shut down in fifteen feet of water over one of the most beautiful patches of reef north of the equator. We pulled out our dive gear and staged it on the aft deck before climbing to the upper deck to enjoy one of the most majestic sights anywhere on the planet: a Florida Keys sunset. From the east side of the Keys in Hawk Channel, the sun sets over the islands and casts unforgettable silhouettes against the orange sky.

  I remembered Anya saying, “I never look at sun going away until you show me this on first Aegis boat.”

  I’d never know if anything she said to me was the truth. Her skill as a deep-cover operative fooled everyone, especially me. I had loved her, and part of me always would. Even though she tortured me, the emotions she made me feel would forever remain unforgettable. I missed so much about her, but knowing I’d never watch another sunset with her shattered what was left of my heart into even tinier pieces.

  “Are you all right, dude? Chase. Hey man, are you okay?” I faintly heard Tony say.

  I shook myself from my trance. “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking.”

  “Well, you looked like you were dying,” he said.

  “I think maybe part of me was,” I whispered.

  “Man, that was a pretty sunset,” Clark said. He always knew when to change the subject.

  As we started down the ladder to the aft deck, Skipper slipped her hand inside my elbow. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I squeezed her hand. “I’m fine. I miss Anya.”

  She frowned. “There was never an Anya.”

  “There was to me.”

  We each tied chemlights to our tank valves. Clark’s was red since he was the most experienced and skilled diver of the four of us. The rest were blue. We’d stay together on the dive, but being able to quickly identify the guy who’s most likely to save your life if something goes wrong is pretty important.

  “I’ll lead,” I said as we tested our underwater lights, two each, redundancy for safety. “I’ll lead, and Clark will bring up the rear. Skipper, you and Tony try to stay side by side between the two of us.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Once we start our descent, we’ll turn on our torches, and we won’t turn them off until we’re back on the boat. Remember light discipline. Don’t shine your light in anyone’s eyes. Drawing a circle on the bottom is the same as the ‘okay’ signal with your hands, and moving the light back and forth is ‘no.’”

  I did a giant stride entry and turned to watch the others follow me into the water. We descended onto a sandy patch in eighteen feet of water and started our dive into the light current running from the southeast. We’d been in the water less than three minutes when a beautiful nurse shark swam from beneath a ledge and nuzzled her way between Tony and Skipper. I watched Skipper’s eyes grow huge, and finally a smile overtook her face behind her regulator. The nurse shark was relatively harmless, curious about the only things bigger than her swimming around her reef.

  We saw two green sea turtles and thousands of tropical fish. It was like diving in an aquarium as we glided across the shallow reef. When we’d swum into another sandy patch, Clark signaled for us to gather around him. He pressed the lens of his light against his chest and indicated that he wanted us to do the same. We did, and the underwater world faded to black. Clark waved his hand back and forth, and a trail of brilliant green light appeared as his hand swept through the water. Each of us followed suit, waving our hands, and watching the mesmerizing lightshow.

  This was one of the few times, perhaps since her death, I wasn’t thinking about Anya.

  As soon as we surfaced, Skipper asked excitedly, “What was that?”

  “That’s bioluminescence,” Clark said. “I heard a story about an A-6 Intruder pilot in Vietnam who’d been shot up one night and lost all of his instrumentation—lights, radios, everything. He had no way to find his aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. He saw a green glow in the water left by the massive carrier cutting through the water and setting off the same bioluminescence we played with tonight. He followed the trail and made it back to the ship safe and sound.”

  We climbed back aboard Aegis II and rinsed our dive gear.

  “So, Skipper, what do you think of night diving?” I asked.

  “It was awesome. It’s like a whole other world at night. And that shark . . . oh my gosh, did you see the shark?”

  “Yeah,” said Clark, “I saw you nearly crap your pants when she showed up.”

/>   “Well, yeah, I wasn’t expecting a shark to go swimming with us. What kind was it?”

  “It was a nurse shark,” I told her. “They’re relatively harmless. Their mouth is on the bottom of their body, and they’re primarily bottom feeders. That one was pretty curious. Maybe she liked our lights. I don’t know.”

  “It was amazing. I don’t care what else I ever see in the water. It’ll never be better than that.”

  “I saw Chase getting his butt kicked while he was tangled up in a fishing net underneath this boat one time. That was pretty awesome,” said Tony.

  Tony had saved my life off the coast of northern Florida when I’d found myself in a fight to the death with Michael Anderson, the Russian illegal who’d been sent to find Anya. Had Tony’s patrol boat not shown up, Michael would have drowned me. I owed him my life, but I was pretty sure that getting to meet Skipper in the process was reward enough for Tony. They’d become practically inseparable in the weeks since he’d rescued us. Having the two of them working with Clark and me on our latest mission was an incredible experience for all of us. I didn’t like exposing Skipper to the risks of covert operations, but she had quickly developed a masterful set of boat handling skills, both under sail and power. Having her aboard Aegis II not only made my life easier, but also allowed me to focus on operational aspects of the mission without worrying about who was taking care of my beloved boat. I’d already lost one boat to Poseidon. I didn’t need that heartache again.

  We anchored behind Rodriguez Key for the night, and I decided it was time to let Skipper and Tony in on the plan.

  “Hey guys,” I began, “you two are in this thing deep enough now that you need to know what’s really going on.”

  Clark gave me the look he gave when I was about to say something I shouldn’t. There was no one on the planet I respected more than Clark, but this time I was going out on a limb, even if it was against his better judgment.

  “Okay, so here’s what’s going on,” I said. “The mission Clark and I have been assigned is the result of Colonel Tornovich’s plot to infiltrate American covert ops with Anya, who, we now know, was really Captain Ekaterina Norikova of the SVR.”

  Saying her name out loud turned my stomach inside out. I’d loved her once, and I was trying to flip the switch to extinguish that feeling, but love is one of those things that doesn’t really happen by choice. I think we can choose to hate, but love happens, and for me, it had happened in spades with Anya. She’d been the perfect combination of beauty, brains, and fearlessness. She’d been the most capable operator I’d ever known. She could kill silently with no remorse, and then melt into my arms with unparalleled tenderness. She was both terrifying and magnificent, things I’d known from the first moment I saw her.

  I gathered my wits and continued. “As you both know, Colonel Tornovich planted Anya—”

  “You’ve got to quit calling her Anya,” Skipper said.

  “I know. It’s not easy. Tornovich planted Captain Norikova right in my lap, and I took the bait—hook, line, and sinker. After her death, as Skipper knows all too well, Michael and Sara Anderson were captured while trying to kill us. Thank you, Tony, for showing up when you did.”

  “Man, that’s what we do,” Tony said. “You don’t have to thank me for that, but I do think you’re gonna brief us on some stuff we ain’t supposed to know, and that ain’t such a good idea.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “but you need to know what’s going on, unless you want to walk away from this operation right now. If that’s the case, we’ll wake up in the morning, go diving again, and you and Skipper can forget all about this business. Clark and I will find two other volunteers who want to come along.”

  “No way!” Skipper said.

  “Heck,” said Tony, “if she’s in, I’m in.”

  Clark shook his head and took a seat at the table. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  I paused, considering how to simplify such a complex mission. “Okay. The end goal is to draw Victor Tornovich out of Russia. Once I realized he’d used Anya—or Captain Norikova—to ensnare Dr. Richter and me in his hellish plan, I was ready to march right across Red Square and drag him out of the Kremlin by his throat, but that idea got shot down. I’m still going to get my pound of flesh, but it’s going to be a little more subtle than my original idea.”

  “A nuclear weapon is more subtle than your original idea,” Clark laughed.

  “Yeah, but nukes make a lot of noise,” I said.

  Tony and Skipper eyed Clark and me, silently saying, “Get on with it.”

  I licked my lips and began divulging classified details of a top-secret mission to a twenty-year-old civilian and a Coast Guard rescue swimmer.

  “We stole a submarine.”

  “You did what?” Skipper and Tony exhaled in unison.

  “We stole a Russian mini spy submarine from the Port of Havana last night, and you were our getaway driver.”

  “Why?” Tony appeared astonished. “I mean, I don’t doubt you did it, but what are you going to do with a Russian minisub?”

  “We’re going to hang it around Colonel Victor Vladimirovich Tornovich’s neck and drop him in the Baltic Sea.”

  Skipper furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand.”

  Clark jumped in. “It’s pretty simple, really. Tornovich sent Captain Norikova over here to screw Chase and drive an icepick through Dr. Richter’s memory of Katerina Burinkova. And it almost worked. People like Chase and me, we don’t let folks get away with things like that. So, we ‘borrowed’ the sub from Havana and left a little note from Tornovich taped to the dash with two dead Cubans onboard. Our friends on the trawler will be dropping off the sub in front of the navy base in Key West around midnight tonight on the incoming tide.”

  Tony’s forehead creased like he was trying to piece together an entire puzzle with only half the pieces.

  “What’ll happen when some navy sentry sees the sub bobbing around off the beach, is that they’re going to send out a patrol boat and board the sub with some well-armed and highly trained young men, who’ll discover the dead Cubans and the love note from Tornovich—written in Cyrillic, of course. They’ll tow the sub somewhere safe and secret and send a thousand pictures and the note all the way up the chain of command until it gets to the president himself. Those pictures and that note will pass through so many hands, and will be in front of so many eyes on the way up that chain, that sooner or later, someone will leak it to someone else, and once that leak starts, the dam will burst.”

  Skipper appeared confused. “What do you mean the dam’s going to burst?”

  Tony finally found those missing pieces, and the light came on for him. “Well, if that ain’t a mess, it’ll sure do ’til one gets here.”

  Clark and I burst into laughter.

  “Yeah, Tony, I’d say that’s a pretty good way to put it. Who wants a cocktail?”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Skipper. “All you boys know what’s going on, but I’m still lost. How ’bout helping a girl out here?”

  “It’s simple,” I said. “Word of the sub and Tornovich’s note will get out and find its way to the Kremlin, and Tornovich’s career will be over. Either he’ll be sent to Lubyanka, shot, or he’ll run.”

  “What’s Lubyanka?” asked Skipper.

  “It’s a particularly nasty prison where the Russian ruling class likes to send people who don’t share the views of the mighty.”

  Clark bit at his bottom lip as if he were in deep thought. “There is one other option.”

  We watched him intently, waiting for him to spit it out.

  “He could convince his president this is all a huge setup, and he could come after you.”

  “Yep, he could . . . and that’s exactly what I’m hoping he’ll do.”

  3

  Tired of Losing

  We had spent eleven days sailing back to St. Augustine from Rodriguez Key, with a few stops in The Bahamas and a dozen more dives along the way. It wa
s nice to be back in northeast Florida where the water was warm and predictable, and for some reason, it was beginning to feel like home.

  “I’ve never won a fight,” I said to Clark.

  He sat across the table from me at Cap’s on the Water, my favorite waterfront restaurant in St. Augustine. Clark looked back at me as if I were speaking Cantonese. No, not Cantonese. Clark probably spoke Cantonese and half a dozen other languages, but it was clear my statement left him baffled.

  “What do you mean you’ve never won a fight? You’re still alive. When I fight, the loser ends up dead. Otherwise, it isn’t really a fight.”

  I considered the wisdom of his words, but I wasn’t sure I agreed. “I get my ass kicked a lot, and I’m tired of it. They taught me to fight at The Ranch, but I’ve learned it’s not the same out here in the real world. I need a Mr. Miyagi. You know . . . somebody to teach me wax on wax off.”

  Since losing my ticket to the Major Leagues after a filthy collision at home plate when I was catching for UGA five years earlier, I’d been through more than most twenty-six-year-olds. I’d been recruited into clandestine covert operations loosely tied to the CIA, and trained as an assassin. I’d spent almost two years at a place called The Ranch, being taught to take the lives of other humans, or in some cases, less-than-humans, and then disappear without a trace. I wasn’t yet a master of my craft, but I had become proficient enough to sneak in and out of most places on Earth without being caught, and to leave those places with the dead body of a bad guy bobbing in my wake. The problem with that kind of work was that it put me in harm’s way at the hands of, let’s call them less-than-church-going folks. In the few years I’d been practicing my craft, I’d found myself at fisticuffs on thirteen occasions. By my way of keeping score, I’d lost every one of those thirteen fights. Don’t get me wrong—none of my opponents escaped without some evidence that they’d been in a scuffle, but I’d never walked away from a fight feeling as if I’d truly won.