Special thanks to ancientmaverick for beta reading. All remaining mistakes are my own.
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CHAPTER FOUR
David watched through the glass. While Don may have prevented Megan from taking part in the arrest, he had no problem letting her do the actual interrogation.
For a man they suspected to be behind Larry and Colby's abduction, he seemed harmless, incapable of doing such a thing.
If he'd been walking down the street, he wouldn't have given Mister Dumont a second glance. The man was the very definition of bland.
Of course, Colby also hadn't expected to be in danger just bringing files to CalSci. For all he had a dangerous job and dangerous friends, he was now in danger simply because he knew Larry. Larry, the last person you expected to be associated with danger. David wasn't sure he'd have stood a chance, even with two working arms. It just seemed so unfair.
Don came in. "And?"
"Megan knows what she's doing. Anything new?"
"He owns several boats and rents out space in different harbors. We're looking into it. You?"
"Mr. Dumont has a lot of parking and speeding tickets. He drives a lot."
"He owns a lot of cars," Don countered. "He should drive them. Did you see his garage?"
David snorted. "What he called a garage, my entire neighborhood could fit into."
Don shook his head. "That's LA for you."
Inside the interrogation room, Megan stalked around the table.
"He should have sold. I would have paid a good price," Dumont repeated his defense. He had never denied being after Larry's car, but he denied being responsible for any fate that had befallen him.
"Mister Dumont," Robin said leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. "How do you plan to drive a car, or to even see a car for that matter, while you're in federal lock-up."
He smiled. "I won't go to jail," he answered with arrogance only money could buy.
"No, you'll go to prison."
His smile grew. "If I talk to you now, I'll never get the 1931 Ford Model A. So ..."
"Actually", Megan drew the word out while she pulled out a sheet of paper and held it in front of Dumont. "You'll never see this car either way. This is Larry Fleinhardt's last will and testament. That car will be mine. And you can bet I'm not selling."
Slowly Dumont's smile faded. If Larry's disappearance had been his plan to get the car, it was failing.
"And here is another paper for you," Robin leaned forward and also put a sheet of paper in front of him. "It's a statistical overview of sentences for the abduction and murder of federal agents."
Megan smirked as Robin's words hit their mark. A bucket of cold water couldn't have worked better.
Dumont paled and started to shake. "There was never any murder planned. And I don't know anything about a federal agent. You have to believe me. This is all their fault."
"Of course." Robin smiled tolerably. "It's Ronny Shawn and Marc Samuelson who paid you. No, wait. You paid them. "
"Really. I told them to leave the man in the middle of the ocean for a day or two, and then I would have rescued him. As a thank you present, he would have sold me his car."
Megan narrowed her eyes dangerously. "Rescue? After you left him in the middle of the ocean?"
Dumont glanced to her, suddenly detecting the danger he was in. He spoke faster, hoping to prevent the damage her expression promised. "I gave them the keys to a new boat. Complete with a tracker, GPS, water, and enough food for days. They were only supposed to disable the engine. The professor would have been fine, and I could have found him whenever I thought it was a good time just by following the signal."
Megan pushed herself off the table.
After a reassuring glance to Megan, Robin asked, "What went wrong?"
"These idiots put the man in the dinghy and disabled it. Then they drove back with my boat. They were supposed to leave with the dinghy. None of this would have happened if they had done what they were supposed to do."
Don shared a surprised look with David.
David rubbed at his forehead. "If they had stuck to the plan, Colby would have called me at three o'clock in the morning to get him from the harbor and arrest these guys," he concluded. "And now he may never return just because ..." He trailed off.
Don pressed his lips together. There were no words for this.
Inside the interrogation room, Robin had no problem to find words. She put down her pencil and stood up.
"You're wrong, Mister Dumont. None of this would have happened if you knew how to take no for an answer."
The sun stood high in the sky. Colby and Larry had tried to protect their heads, but the sun was merciless and burned like fire. Their conversation had fizzled out. It took too much energy to think, let alone speak.
"What do you think we are going to die from?" Larry asked.
Or not, Colby thought. Even breathing hurt. He had taken his last pain meds a long time ago. His shoulder pulsated in sync with his heartbeat. The hot sun was worsening everything.
He answered with the first thing that came to mind. "You ended that sentence with a preposition."
He wished back the coldness of the night. But his watch wasn't moving fast enough to even think about the next night. At first, they had hoped for another ship or boat, but there was nothing and the heat made moving and hoping impossible
"I don't think one can die from a grammatical mistake," Larry said.
Colby snorted.
"The sun is already frying your brain."
David whistled in awe. "No wonder they took this back. This isn't a boat; this is a yacht."
"Let's start searching." Megan jumped on board the poorly named 'Serendipity'. It sure hadn't brought anybody luck.
Don and David followed together with men from the Harbor Police.
After Mister Dumont had fully understood the situation, he had willingly given them the location of his yacht and everything he knew. But honestly, he didn't really know much more than Samuelson and Shawn. He couldn't know where Larry and Colby were and this was the only thing the team had been interested in.
Their clock was ticking, and Don still didn't have enough data to call Charlie.
"Dinghy is missing," David reported and disappeared again to continue searching.
"Water and food is in the fridge," Megan explained as she returned from the cabin. "But there is no sign of either Colby or Larry."
"This is good. No sign also means no blood and no dead body," Don pointed out as he stared at the horizon. Somewhere out there, two friends were in real danger of dying, and he was still without a search pattern.
"I got a log." David came around the side carrying loose papers. "This thing even has a printer to print routes and data."
"Call Charlie and give him what he needs."
A new voice spoke up. "Actually, you don't need to call me. I'm already here."
Don swirled around while Megan started to smile.
"Good. Come on." He held out his hand and helped his brother and Amita on board.
"What do you need?" Megan asked.
Apparently, she and Charlie were back to being good friends going by the smile they shared.
"Amita, do you have-?" Charlie half-turned to his girlfriend.
"The weather report and current maps from the Pacific?" She held up her laptop. "Yes I have."
The yacht was big enough to get lost on, but they found the bridge easily enough.
"What do you need?" David echoed unknowingly Megan's question.
"If this ship has a GPS log, only this." Charlie pointed to the monitor and its information.
Don took a deep breath. It was time to call the Coast Guard again. He could maybe reach a person allowed to make a decision just in time for Charlie's resulting search pattern.
"Houston, we've got a problem."
Colby's commanding and worried voice awoke a dozing Larry. He raised his head and blinked at the agent through swollen lids. "I don't want to hear these words. I don't remember all the security protocols. This is a bad time for a check. I promise, I won't fall asleep again."
"I mean it, Professor. We have a problem."
His voice was urgent enough that Larry sat up. "What problem?"
"We're losing air and taking on water."
Larry paused. He surely had misheard. "What?"
"We have a leak," Colby repeated.
Then Larry began to feel the cool water around his ankles. He moved his feet and listened to accompany splashing. "This is worthy of a Houston call. If we lose the dinghy … " He grabbed his head. "I don't even want to think about it."
The lost air reduced their sea level. Every wave brought new water.
"Thank you for the observation, professor," Colby snarled. "Do you have any idea?"
Looking around, Larry tried to get his brain in gear. The dehydration made thinking hard. In peak condition, he was sure he would have an idea right away. "We need to find the leak. Maybe we can plug it."
By now, he could feel the water everywhere. It felt cool now, but soon enough the salt would burn on his sensitive skin.
"Start by getting the water back out. I'm thinking," he ordered as Colby watched, as fascinated as Larry the slowly deflating dinghy and the rising water
"How I am supposed to get water out with no tools and only one working arm?"
Trying to use his right arm was out of question. Every breath vibrated though his shoulder, threatening to reduce him to a whimpering ball of agony. The only reprieve he got was while lying still and not breathing. If he had been attentive, he would have seen the danger earlier.
"I'll think about one problem, you think about the other, please."
This seemed to do the trick. Colby suddenly had an idea. He started to fight with his right shoe. After several tries, he could pull it off. Kneeling, he started to scoop the water out.
"Professor. You need to think faster."
Larry nodded to himself. Yes this would be advisable. This problem should be solvable with first grade physics. Air pressure should make either a noise or be perceptible.
He ran his hand along the smooth surface. Suddenly he felt a faint air breeze.
"There." He pointed to the leak.
"There what?" Colby sat up. He pressed his right arm against his chest, taking deep breaths.
"I found the leak."
Together they stared at their possible death sentence. It was a three-centimeter long rip of the seam.
They watched with dangerous fascination as air slowly leaked with a soft whistle. The sun and dehydration were slowly impacting their ability for rational thoughts.
"And can you repair it?" Colby asked.
"I know what kind of work should be done but lack the talent for manual labor."
"So let me. What needs to be done?"
"We need to seal the seam." Larry said. "But we are without the necessary tools."
"What tools?"
"Usually, you would glue a leaky seam." The next shop to buy glue was so far away it wasn't even worth to calculate.
"Glue?"
"You can either close directly the leak with glue or create a seal."
Colby looked around trying to find something that matched Larry's description.
Again, Colby cursed his sling. Without his injured shoulder, this wouldn't have happened. He stared at his sling. Suddenly he knew the solution. It was only fair that the thing that had gotten him into this mess was the very thing to help him now.
"Polypropylene."
"What?"
Without answering, Colby grabbed the pocket knife and pressed it into Larry's hand.
"Take the knife and saw off a longish part of the straps of my sling."
Larry narrowed his eyes, so Colby explained: "The straps of my sling are manufactured from polypropylene, you can either sew this or you melt it with heat. The sun should be hot enough if we, or better you, use my sunglasses to pool its energy. It will hopefully glue to the rubber of the boat-"
"-sealing the leak." Larry understood. He gave Colby the cut off strap and took the sunglasses. After he dried the rubber with the handkerchief, they started to work.
Colby held the part of the strap while Larry worked at angling the boat and glasses correctly with the sun.
They hold their breaths.
It worked.
Exhausted, they sat back down in the dinghy in a swallow pool of water.
"You know, I bet together we could actually be MacGyver. You have the brain, and I bring the muscle," Colby proposed.
Larry shook his head. "No, MacGyver is a useless fantasy. None of his projects would have ever worked. Beside I can't run as fast as you."
Colby laughed. "You're still far faster than a supercomputer – my only other option." He started again to scoop out the water ignoring the surprised look on Larry's face.
Then Larry joined his attempt to clear the dinghy. They worked together in the heat trying to the level the rubber dinghy again.
Their trousers were glued to their skin, and the salt burnt on their underarms. After several minutes of hard work, they had cleared the dinghy.
Lying back to save energy, Colby could already feel the water from the next wave.
"This will not hold completely or for long, but we should sink at a slower rate," Larry sighed.
"If this gives us enough time for a rescue, I am all for it."
"Unfortunately, we will only have saved minutes, not hours."
Colby nodded. "I guess they have to hurry then."
Charlie clapped his hands together, startling the team. "Okay, I -"
Amita coughed.
"Sorry, we," Charlie corrected himself, "have a location."
David pumped his fist, and Don almost saw a 'finally' on his lips. But it also could be that he only saw what he himself had been thinking.
"Based on the assumed point where they put the dinghy in the water -" Charlie continued.
"-the weather, current and time," Amita added and started to pull up a map on the monitor, "we need to search-"
"-somewhere around here." Together they pointed to area out in the open sea far away from the usual shipping routes.
Don, David, and Megan all leaned in to take a closer look and to read the coordinates.
"Okay, let's go." Megan pushed her way to the start key and grabbed it.
"Wait." Don held up his hand. "We can't take this boat."
Megan stared at him, trying to determine if he was really trying to get between her and a possible rescue of Larry. This was both dangerous and brave. "What?"
"It's evidence. And too slow."
David stepped out of the bridge. He also wanted to save Colby, but there had to be another solution.
"It's a high speed boat," Megan argued. "The Coast Guard is going to take ages to get here. We … Larry doesn't have the time."
Amita and Charlie carefully stepped backwards out of the bridge. They had done everything they could.
"I know, but the Coast Guard is already on its way. I'll give them Charlie's search pattern and they will find them long before we are even near," Don said.
Suddenly, a loud engine could be heard.
Megan looked up, trying to identify the source of the sound.
Don smiled. "And we will be on that Coast Guard ship because a chopper is even faster."
David released a breath. He shouldn't have expected anything else. Don wouldn't sit back and wait.
"Let's go."
A chopper was fast and the Coast Guard was already informed. But would this be enough?
David prayed that they would be in time.
TBC
A/N Please don't try this at home. It's not going to work, it's a MacGyver thing - could work, but it's not so simple.