Fire in the Ice: Episode One

By Mike Palermo

Fire in the Ice is the first installment in an interactive mystery, suspense, crime series

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483570433

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Acknowledgements

FIRE IN THE ICE

CHAPTER 1

June 28, 2011, shortly past midnight.

220 Statute Miles Due East of Charleston, SC

Usually, Jimmy wasn’t even on deck at these times. He’d gone below as the Captain always requested on these nighttime trips, but he was bored and nobody seemed to care when Jimmy popped up to the deck now and then for a few minutes to stretch his legs and get some fresh air.

Jimmy didn’t like these excursions at all. He was still a graduate student in marine geochemistry, but found himself aboard as the Director of Research of the Stella Maris Foundation. His boat - the Stella - was the Foundation’s research vessel. She obviously had a different role as well, but Jimmy wasn’t sure what it was, or what they were doing out there in the middle of the night. He wasn’t doing any research, but he’d been told to be on board for legal reasons, whatever that meant. So there he was.

Nothing had ever gone wrong before, he thought. So relax. But he could not. This was a place he shouldn’t be. That much he knew, even as a few sips from a half-pint of Maker’s Mark was starting to help. The young man pondered while the Stella approached its rendezvous with another boat, not yet visible. The sea was calm, the wind very light and the sky partly cloudy, just a sliver of moon.

The other boat soon appeared about seventy-five yards away. Each side flashed a signal and dispatched a rigid inflatable to meet halfway to do a drug deal. Sonny and Rico, from Jimmy’s boat, passed over six thousand fifty-dollar bills and in return, got a duffel bag with ten, one-kilogram wrapped bricks of ninety-three per cent pure cocaine. Jimmy couldn’t see much of what was going on, and made a point of not asking.

The small craft remained near each other for a few minutes while each side assured itself that the deal had been done right. Sonny opened an EZ Test White kit, then punctured a random package of coke with a penknife. The boat bobbed gently as he added the reagents and the coke to the colorless liquid in the bottle - no small feat - and shook it. Instantly, the mix resembled coffee under his flashlight. He repeated the procedure on another brick with the same result. Perfect. In the other boat, they were examining samples of the currency under a handheld UV lamp.

Dominick, another of Jimmy’s boatmates, was behind a .50 caliber Beowulf with night-vision scope, mounted on the Stella’s aft rail. He assumed the other boat was equally well-equipped. But everyone was cool. As usual, there were no unpleasant surprises on either end, and there would be no need for guns. Dom walked away from his position.

Need to hit the head. Here you go, Professor, he said, handing Jimmy his sidearm - a gangsteresque sawed-off shotgun - in the apparent assumption that Jimmy would know when and how to use it. The weapon was loose in several places, and Jimmy gripped it tightly, fearing it might go off if he looked at it wrong.

The Captain had moved about twenty yards toward Sonny, who piloted his rigid inflatable boat with his precious cargo back to the Stella a few seconds before the dealer reached his own boat - the Ricochet - with the cash. A moment later, Dom came up from the head and picked up his ’nocs to watch the Ricochet, for no particular reason, while Jimmy and the guys stood on the Stella’s transom, making small talk.

Dom cried out. Holy shit!

The others turned to look. A huge swath of open water had begun to churn like a boiling pot, raging most violently twenty-five or thirty yards away from the Ricochet’s starboard side. The Ricochet pitched and yawed with increasing intensity for fifteen seconds or so. Then everyone froze - paralyzed, in awe, as an invisible hand reached from the ocean floor and pulled it straight to the bottom of the sea. The seventy-one-foot boat was gone in less than twenty seconds. Nothing was there anymore.

Jimmy thought he knew what was happening. The old fishermen’s stories had always made sense to him. Still, he was shaking. They all were - standing motionless, staring at nothing, witnessing something their minds could not process.

No survivors appeared after a minute, and reality began to set in all around. Let’s get the fuck outta here, Sonny said, as the four of them ran forward and opened the cockpit door.

Jimmy kept his mouth shut. Nobody would care what he had to say.

The Captain had not seen the spectacle, but it was obvious nobody was joking as they told him what had happened. Say what? he said, as the group stepped outside.

Look, said Dom, handing the Captain the infra-red binoculars. The roiling had subsided, but the sea was still bubbling - without a trace of the Ricochet.

Son of a bitch, said the Captain.

We’re fucked, Sonny said. Get us the fuck outta here.

The Captain was already lurching his large frame back to the wheel inside to make his escape from whatever had claimed the Ricochet. He made a hard right and nailed the throttle. I didn’t hear a mayday, but I wasn’t on sixteen. He switched channels.

…. this or any Coast Guard station. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the United States Coast Guard Group Charleston. A call from the fishing vessel Ricochet has been received on channel 16 FM. Position 32.75 latitude, -76.68 longitude. The vessel is sinking. Four crewmen aboard. All mariners transiting the area are requested to keep a sharp lookout, render assistance and report all sightings to this or any Coast Guard station. This is the United States Coast Guard Group Charleston, out."

There was nothing to discuss. Everyone realized that even if they could avoid the Coast Guard, the Ricochet’s people would soon be after them, trying to get back their coke or the money, or both, then killing them. But at twenty-seven miles per hour, it would take hours to get back to where they’d come from. And who knew what might be waiting for them by then at the dock?

Jimmy kept quiet as the others decided to ditch the original plan, whatever that was, and divide the coke. They insisted that Jimmy take some - never mind if he hadn’t been a partner in the enterprise a few minutes ago. He was now. Then they’d head for shore, find a good spot, anchor the Stella a hundred yards out and make their way to land using one of the rigid inflatables.

The sorry fact was that there was absolutely no reason to be in this situation; Jimmy had simply made it happen. He was a graduate student at the Georgia Tech University School of Marine Geochemistry. He had chosen Remote Sensing of Methane Hydrate as his doctoral project. Not quite a year ago, he’d been given the chance to do the field work for his doctoral thesis using the Stella. He was in a promising position in a promising field - energy exploration - how to find an unimaginably huge source of undersea frozen natural gas.

But against all odds, he had screwed up royally. So it was. Deal with it. Things had changed quite a bit in just a few minutes, he thought.

Jimmy finally spoke. Why don’t you guys leave wherever you want, but I’ll take the boat back to the dock and get out of town fast. Less suspicious than just leaving the boat out there. Probably get us all an extra day.

I don’t give a fuck what you do, said the Captain. When we get near shore it’s every man for himself.

In truth, Jimmy had no idea what he’d actually do. To start with, he’d have a hard time docking the sixty-three-foot boat alone. But he didn’t want to cast his lot with the others. They all seemed like decent guys - for criminals - though he had never talked at length to any of them. He just didn’t trust their collective judgment. Somebody was going to be looking for them all, and Jimmy intended to be on his own. Surely he couldn’t avoid the authorities for long. He just wanted a few days to figure out what to do.

***

The Stella headed due west for eight hours or so. Little was said. Five miles out from the Charleston City Marina from which he’d started, the Captain took a turn toward Folly Beach, a few miles south of Charleston Harbor. Sonny knew somebody there, so they all decided that would be the place to make it to shore. Jimmy pointed out that the beach would be less visible from the waterfront homes a few miles to the north. But they all ignored him, and he was happy to let the matter drop.

Jimmy’s decision to go it alone was validated within a few hours. His four comrades came ashore on the beachfront of a homeowner who happened to be sitting outside. After retrieving a .357 magnum from the house, the man surprised the bungling intruders and had them spread-eagled in the sand when the police came.

Jimmy figured it would take a half day before news of the Ricochet was widely known back at the Marina. He had no way of knowing how soon he’d been proven right about his compatriots’ fate. But he assumed - hoped, anyway - that if they were caught by the police, his boatmates would keep their mouths shut, at least for the moment. Still, he couldn’t count on much time before his name got out somehow. Maybe only a day. Not more than a week.

Jimmy thought about all this while he passed the City Marina in Charleston Harbor and continued north about a mile to Sullivan’s Island. The dunes and brush between the houses and the beach offered more cover than most other places, and he soon saw a secluded area that looked good. He decided to do exactly what he said he would not, and anchored the boat a few hundred yards out.

With his iPhone for navigation, Jimmy took the remaining inflatable and landed on an area of the beach near Station 22 Street. He got off the beach quickly. Fortunately, his aim was true, and he dragged the boat behind a clump of grass, got off the beach and walked the four blocks to Poe’s Tavern. From there he called a cab.

Jimmy took the ten mile ride to the College of Charleston main entrance in silence. He reckoned that the unmanned Stella would just be ignored, at least for the rest of the day. Soon enough, though, someone would realize that something was amiss with the abandoned boat. And the Ricochet’s mysterious disappearance would quickly become widely known. Some investigator would posit a connection between it and the Stella. Then they’d start asking questions. That’s what police do. As