CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #2
“Coast Guard cutter west of him, officially on patrol. FBI aircraft filed out of Houston. EPA has people headed to the port. Local law enforcement is tying itself into a decorative knot over jurisdiction.”
“And the small motor east of the yacht?”
Hex checked the thermal feed.
“Running dark. Six aboard. Could be Burton’s retrieval team, could be journalists, could be six idiots with expensive night-vision gear.”
“Our industry has terrible demographic overlap,” Cam said.
Luke split the teams. Cam took the first interceptor with medics and recovery gear.
Hex took the second with the men most experienced in maritime security.
Eric stayed at the warehouse to fuse drone, marine, news, and agency traffic.
Luke would go with Cam and maintain contact with Alvin and the dolphins as long as distance allowed.
They moved fast. Engines coughed, caught, and settled into heavy growls. Lines came aboard. Men clipped into harness points and checked weapons that Luke hoped would remain holstered. Cam distributed seasickness tablets with the solemnity of communion.
“Take one now,” Cam told Romeo, Iggy, and Sonny. “Heroism is temporary. Vomit on tactical electronics and Hex will haunt your grandchildren.”
“I’m not dead,” Hex said from the next boat.
“You practice,” Cam called back. The new guys stared at one another wondering if the humor was nervousness or normal. In an instant, they knew it was normal. It was the same sarcastic humor they’d used as Marines.
The boats cleared the channel and struck open water. The ride turned violent almost immediately, hulls slamming across a confused chop left by an earlier storm. Spray hammered the windshields. The city’s glow diminished behind them until the Gulf became black glass fractured by running lights.
Luke braced beside the console and closed his eyes. Alvin’s sense reached him first: warm surface water, vibration through bone, the blunt rhythm of the interceptors leaving shore. Farther out, the dolphins painted the Imperium in sound.
Its twin engines had started. Auxiliary pumps changed pitch. A stern door closed. Then came a sudden frantic series of high clicks from the eastern group.
Luke opened his eyes.
“The dark boat accelerated.”
Eric confirmed it in his headset. The unidentified craft was cutting directly toward the Imperium. Hex ordered both interceptors five degrees east, enough to observe without presenting an approach line. The lead boat’s running lights remained dark.
“Burton’s people?” Cam asked.
Luke listened through the animals. Beneath engine noise came the hard tap of equipment against a fiberglass deck and six separate weight shifts. One person moved forward. Something metal was lifted.
“They’re preparing for contact,” he said.
The drone descended until its camera resolved the boat’s stern. Hex captured the registration, ran it, and found a shell company linked to Burton Drilling’s security contractor.
“There’s our discount murder club,” he said. “Six members, no visible sense of irony.”
Luke ordered the drone higher. They needed evidence, not a confrontation born from being spotted. Eric transmitted the registration and live coordinates to the FBI liaison. The answer came back two minutes later: maintain observation, avoid engagement, Coast Guard notified.
On the Imperium, Hollis’s armed men met the arriving boat at the stern. Cases changed hands. One passenger boarded carrying a long canvas bag. Another remained below and passed up a compact satellite terminal.
The drone recorded faces, timestamps, and every transfer. Below the hull, dolphins traced the disturbance, alert to dropped objects and sudden movement.
The news cycle accelerated with them. Another audio file surfaced, then another.
Dorothy’s voice was heard asking why an evacuation drill had been canceled.
Hollis answered that drills frightened investors when crew posted them online.
A maintenance director described falsified pressure tests.
Voss supplied metadata establishing dates and participants.
Each disclosure locked into the previous one until Burton’s defense began to look less like a wall than loose lumber in a hurricane.
Eric patched the television audio into the boats. The anchor announced that federal prosecutors were seeking emergency orders to freeze assets and prevent destruction of evidence. It seemed a stupid request as it was probably ten years too late. But at least they’d stated it for the record.
A live camera showed Burton Drilling’s headquarters in turmoil. Employees exited carrying boxes, plants, desk lamps, and one inexplicable life-size cardboard astronaut.
“That astronaut knows something,” Cam said.
“Put him on the witness list,” Luke said with a smirk.
The Imperium weighed anchor at 2019. The dolphins registered the chain rising before the drone saw it. Metal thunder traveled through the water, followed by the churn of bow thrusters. The yacht pivoted southeast, gathered speed, and laid a broad wake across the moonless Gulf.
Luke felt the pod surge alongside, some riding pressure at the bow, others spreading wide enough to detect any escort.
Alvin could not match the yacht in deep water, but he reached a marsh channel and stopped among cypress roots, holding the route in the old reptilian certainty that had made him useful in the first place.
Luke sent gratitude back. Alvin responded with an image of the lawn flamingo.
“He wants payment,” Luke said.
Cam gripped the console as the boat struck a wave.
“Please tell me alligator labor law does not involve poultry.”
“Plastic lawn ornament. Long story.”
“Good. For a second I thought ethics had gotten complicated.”
The pursuit settled into layers. The Imperium led, bright and arrogant, running at eighteen knots. Burton’s security boat tucked into its wake. Miles behind, Luke’s two interceptors followed without lights.
Above, the drones traded positions to conserve power. Below, dolphins moved through darkness, hearing doors slam, pumps change speed, footsteps cross decks, and the distinctive clatter of cases being dragged aft.
At 2106, one of the dolphins broke formation and circled a point behind the yacht. Luke saw the behavior in his mind before the drone found the floating object.
“Something went overboard.”
Cam altered course while Hex maintained the track.
The object proved to be a black trash bag weighted badly enough to float just beneath the surface.
Two men hauled it aboard with a boat hook.
Inside were shredded papers, three cracked phones, and a scorched solid-state drive sealed in a freezer pouch.
“Subtle,” Cam said. “Nothing says innocence like taking your electronics swimming after setting them on fire.”
Luke photographed the recovery, logged the coordinates, and transferred the bag into an evidence drum. Eric notified federal agents. Before the lid was secured, another alert came from the drone: movement on the Imperium’s lower deck, a crew member struggling with one of Burton’s armed men.
The long-lens image shook in the wind. The crew member pointed toward the engine room. The gunman shoved him against a bulkhead. Two more crew arrived, then backed away when the weapon became visible.
Hollis appeared above them in a white shirt, gesturing with both hands, his body language furious even without sound.
The dolphins supplied the missing layer. Alarm pulses vibrated inside the hull. One engine had developed an uneven rhythm. A pump cycled too fast. The yacht slowed by three knots, accelerated, then slowed again.
“He’s forcing them to run with a mechanical warning,” Luke said.
“Pattern recognition,” Hex replied. “Man sees a red light and assumes it’s applause.”
Luke looked through the binoculars at the Imperium and smiled, then chuckled to himself. Massive arms were moving slowly at first in the water, then helped along by one of the dolphins. Skull. Skull had gotten onboard as a mechanic, screwed with the engines and slipped into the warm gulf waters.
The FBI liaison called Luke directly. A magistrate had signed the seizure warrant. The Coast Guard cutter was changing course to intercept.
Luke’s teams were asked to maintain visual contact and preserve evidence.
Rules of engagement remained defensive. Relief passed through the boats, followed immediately by a sharper focus.
They no longer had to wonder whether authority would arrive.
Now they had to ensure Hollis did not create a catastrophe before it did.