Devlin and the Deep Blue Sea

“Alone?”

“It started out that way.”

“Ayyyy, Lizetta, that is not wise!”

She certainly couldn’t argue the point. Last night’s misadventure had driven home just how unwise.

Despite its slow pace and mañana approach to just about everything, Piedras Rojas was only a half-hour drive from La Paz, situated at the very tip of the Baja California peninsula. The city had become a major crime center since antidrug operations in the Caribbean had forced Colombian drug lords to shift their operations to the Pacific coast.

The cartels’ vehicle of choice for their smuggling trade was the Mexican tuna fleet that operated out of ports all along the coast. The tuna boats were fast, long-range clippers that could spend months at sea. In a good year the fleet generated approximately a hundred million dollars in tuna revenue. A single boat could carry a load of cocaine worth twice that. As a result, drugs, corruption and violence had become a part of life in this corner of the world.

“Then why do you go to the beach so late?” Jorge wanted to know.

“Donny sent me an e-mail.” The words tasted as sour as three-day-old frijoles. “He’s dumped me. Seems he’s fallen for a foreign news correspondent.”

The mechanic fired off a string of highly colorful Spanish. Liz caught only a few of the more exotic phrases, but they were enough to produce a reluctant smile.

“That was pretty much my reaction, too.”

Spitting out a final curse, Jorge squinted at her through the iridescent waves of heat rising from the dirt pad.

“Will you go back to the States now?”

“Maybe. I haven’t decided.”

“But the helo you have saved every peso to buy! The charter service you plan to start! You do not need this pig, this Donny. You can start your own company without him.”

Liz didn’t tell him about her now-empty bank account. No sense broadcasting her monumental stupidity in making Donny joint on her account when he’d somehow never got around to putting her on his.

Nor did she care to reveal that she didn’t have enough cash left to cover her rent, due tomorrow. She’d have to swallow her pride and ask the smarmy AmMex on-site rep for an advance on next month’s salary. Trying not to wince at the prospect, Liz repeated her often made promise.

“When I do open my own charter service, you will most definitely be my chief mechanic.”

“Bueno! We make a good team, yes?”

“That we do.”

Satisfied, Jorge returned his attention to the pre-flight checklist. While he inspected the main driveshaft forward coupling for grease leakage, Liz checked the engine inlet and plenum to make sure they were clear of obstructions. The rumble of an approaching vehicle announced the arrival of their passengers.

The bus pulled up at the terminal and a half-dozen men filed into the building. Liz went back to the pre-flight inspection, knowing it would take the sleepy-eyed terminal official a good half hour to search the crew members’ bags for drugs and alcohol, weigh both men and luggage and show them a video explaining the safe boarding and ditching of a helicopter at sea. The video would play twice, once in English, once in Spanish. Hopefully, the non-English-, non-Spanish-speaking crewmen would get the idea from the video.

When the crew filed out of the terminal, Liz pasted on a smile and went to double-check their IDs against the manifest provided by AmMex. Like most of the men working the big rigs, these were a mixed bag of nationalities and skills.

A big, beefy Irish driller led the pack. A Filipino welder followed, then a Mexican radio operator and two Venezuelan cooks. When the last passenger stepped forward, Liz read off his name from the manifest.

“Devlin, Joe.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The slow drawl brought her head whipping up. “It’s you!”

He responded to that with the same wolfish grin he’d given her last night. “Yes, ma’am.”

Two

Devlin waited while a variety of expressions flickered across the face of the woman OMEGA had ID’d as Elizabeth Moore. He’d spent most of what was left of the night after the fiasco on the beach assimilating the background data headquarters had assembled on her.

He had to admit the info was pretty impressive. After completing USAF flight school at the top of her class, Moore had opted to fly rotary wing aircraft because that’s what her father had flown during his long and distinguished military career. Brigadier General Moore had died of a massive coronary less than a year after his daughter pinned on her wings, but she’d lived up to both his name and his reputation as a crack pilot. She’d spent four years inserting special-ops teams into particularly nasty spots all over the globe before leaving the military with the announced intention of opening her own charter service.

Unfortunately for her, Captain Moore’s smarts didn’t extend to her choice in men. According to OMEGA’s hastily assembled dossier, she’d fallen for a jerk by the name of Donald Carter and let him talk her into taking this boring, if highly lucrative, job as a contract pilot in Mexico while he did his thing in Malaysia. In recent months said jerk had reportedly been getting his rocks off with a Malaysian newswoman.

It didn’t take a NASA engineer to fit the pieces together. Obviously, Moore had just found out about her fiancé’s affair. Just as obviously, she’d gone to the beach last night determined to flush the bastard out of her system.

Devlin wished to hell he’d been able to help with the flushing. The woman looked even better in the bright light of day than she had in the glow of the moon, and she’d looked damned good then! Her zippered flight suit didn’t display her long, sexy legs the way her cutoffs had, but the tan fabric hugged her curves very nicely. Very nicely indeed. Devlin almost hated to depart for the oil rig.

Assuming he did depart. The issue looked doubtful at the moment, judging by the suspicion in Moore’s brown eyes.

“Jorge!” Her face tight, she called to a mechanic in grease-stained overalls. “Get our passengers briefed and strapped in. Devlin, you come with me.”

She shoved the clipboard at the crew chief and stalked toward the corrugated tin hangar. Devlin followed, eyeing her trim behind with real appreciation.

“In here.”

She led the way into an office with a beat-up metal desk, a single file cabinet and an ancient air conditioner rattling in the window. The walls were decorated with the usual clutter seen in operations shacks around the world. Weather updates. Flight schedules. Area NOTAMs. A fly-specked calendar depicting a luscious Miss May falling out of a blouse unbuttoned almost to her navel.

Devlin spared Miss May only a passing glance. Ms. Moore held his full attention. Her blunt-cut hair swirled in a silky arc as she slammed the door behind them and spun around.

The woman didn’t waste time. Spearing him with a narrow-eyed stare, she launched a direct attack. “What were you doing on the beach last night?”

Devlin had anticipated this meeting since learning Moore’s identity and had his cover ready. Luckily, it fit him like a second skin. Born and raised amid the oil fields of Oklahoma, he’d worked his way up from mud man to pipe handler to site supervisor. Along the way he’d accumulated undergraduate and graduate degrees in petroleum engineering and drilled holes in every ocean floor from the Gulf of Aden to the Bering Strait.

He’d also racked up a brief marriage and quick divorce. Candace had insisted his pay and benefits compensated for the long separations, but had soon gone looking for other distractions. Devlin didn’t blame her. Divorce was an occupational hazard in his line of work.

His life had become even more erratic after he’d joined the OMEGA team. Nick Jensen, aka Lightning, had recruited him just months after terrorists blew up an American-operated rig in international waters off the coast of Kuwait. Devlin had lost friends in that explosion and had jumped at the chance to use his civilian cover as a means of bringing the murdering bastards to justice.

Now another friend had disappeared. A close friend. And a real badass who specialized in transporting underage aliens across the border to sell into sexual slavery had been picked up while using Harry Johnson’s passport and ID. Law enforcement officials from a dozen different agencies had grilled the imposter but didn’t get much. Turned out he’d never met the man who’d supplied the stolen documents. They’d been left at a designated drop site after the recipient had deposited a hefty sum in the same location.

Nor had Harry’s body ever been recovered. All his fiancée knew, all anyone knew, was that Harry had disappeared after rotating off an AmMex oil rig, and someone using his passport had popped up on U.S. customs screens a few weeks later. What little intelligence OMEGA had been able to gather indicated the brains behind the ring supplying stolen passports operated out of this general vicinity. Devlin fully intended to nail the bastard. He wouldn’t let anyone—Captain Moore included—jeopardize this mission.

Hitching a hip on the desk, he responded to her sharp question with a deliberate combination of fact and fiction. “I went to the beach last night to meet someone.”

That part was true. What came next wasn’t.

“He said he had a onetime good deal for me on personal gear for use on the rig.”

“Why didn’t he come to your hotel in to conduct this sale?”

“My guess is he lifted the equipment from a roustabout, either on the rig or after he came off.”