Chapter 8:

"It's not his bookie," Sarah said without thinking about it, as she turned into traffic. "My dad doesn't gamble."

"Then what?" Chuck said. "What's going on?"

She let out an enormous sigh. "Okay, Chuck. I never told anybody this before, but... my real name isn't Sarah Walker."
"What are you talking about? Oh my god, you're a spy aren't you?"

"What? No! My dad's... he was a con man, and I kind of... worked with him. We moved around a lot; I had a different alias at every school. Sarah Walker is just the latest," Sarah risked looking away from the road to gauge Chuck's reaction so far. Not good, but not any worse than she'd imagined. "This is hard for me to tell, okay, it's just... fine, pull the bandaid. My dad stole about a quarter million dollars from the West Coast Armenian mob when I was a senior in high school. We had to go on the run, and we wound up here."

"Why are you telling me this?" Chuck said softly. "Not that I don't appreciate how big a deal it is that you're trusting me with this, I mean I've known you for like a day and a half."

"That's who really beat up my dad, not his bookie," she said. "I'm not trying to make excuses for him, but these people, they could have killed him. If he hadn't told them about the coordinates and convinced 'em they could make back their money and then some, we'd have been checking on him at the morgue, Chuck. If anything I'm impressed he convinced them to let him go. If they were smarter they'd have held onto him until they checked out the coordinates."

The conversation naturally lagged there. It was several minutes of Sarah darting the jeep through traffic before Chuck broke the silence. "Then..." he said, and stopped.
"What?"

"Then, why are you so hell-bent on getting there first? Won't they go after just go after your dad again?"

Sarah shook her head. "He'll be out of the country an hour after the docs let him out of the hospital," she said. "With a new identity and half our emergency money. I'm not worried about him; not now anyway. If I'd known they had him last night, though..." she shivered involuntarily.

"What if they catch us?" Chuck said. "Or get there first, or while we're down looking for whatever is at these coordinates?"

Sarah blinked. "Didn't I mention?" she said. "He gave them the plane crash, not the coordinates Bryce sent you. We should be fine."

"Your dad is some kind of criminal mastermind, is that what you're telling me?"

"He likes to think so," Sarah said, slowing down as they approached the marina.

"Okay," he said. "So, what's your real name?"

"It's not important," she said. "I haven't been that person in twenty years, Chuck. Just call me Sarah."

Sarah led the way to Lisa's Revenge, with Chuck lugging the scuba gear from the car at her insistence. When she started untying the mooring lines, Chuck frowned. "Don't we need to fill up? Your dad said something last night..."

"What?" Sarah said, looking up from her ropes. "No, we have plenty. I don't remember him saying anything."

"He said you were down under half a tank, and we didn't want to get stranded out there," Chuck said. He followed her on deck toward the wheelhouse. "Which is... when I gave him the coordinates..."

Sarah laughed. "I must have missed that little conversation. God, he never turns it off. Half a tank is still like better than twelve hours with the engines going full speed. That's probably... 250 nautical miles?" She pointed to the fuel gauge. "And see: we're still at better than three-quarters."

"So he just wanted to get his hands on those coordinates? He was going to double cross me from the start?"

She shrugged, fiddling with dials and such on the dashboard. Sarah pushed a button and the engines caught after a moment; the whole boat started rumbling as the engines spooled up. "I don't know. Maybe. He probably just wanted to have the option."

"Your family is weird."

"My family is weird? Your sister accused me of being a hooker!"

Chuck stared at her. "When did you talk to Ellie?" He looked vaguely stricken.

"When you were in the shower," Sarah said. "We talked about a lot of things."

"Oh, dear lord," Chuck said.

"Relax," Sarah said. "I'm kidding. We only talked for a few minutes. You weren't in there long enough for her to get to anything really juicy. That and I think she was busy trying to decide whether I was a hooker or not; because you didn't seem to react properly to that the first time."

The color drained from his face. "Why would she think that?"

"Well," Sarah said. "Most sisters probably aren't too keen on their brothers dating the kind of girl who sleeps over on the first date."
"But you didn't sleep over," Chuck protested.

"Oh, but does Ellie know that?" Sarah grinned, letting him twist in the wind just a moment longer, before answering that question. "Yes, she knows I didn't sleep over. I told her as much of the truth as I thought prudent. You know, leaving out all the dead bodies and intrigue and such?"

"Thanks," Chuck said. "She's a little bit of a worrier."

"I didn't notice," Sarah goosed the engine a little and they were on their way.

Once they were safely out on the open ocean, Sarah and Chuck went down belowdeck so she could demonstrate how to refill the scuba tanks. "I don't know exactly what we'll find when we get out there, so it's probably best if we've got all our tanks full, especially if you need to go down there with me."

"Even though It'll be my first dive?"

"Hopefully it won't come to that," she said, "but we don't have a very big margin of error here, okay?"

"Sure, I get it," Chuck said, and pointed to the controls. "And I get it."

"Good," she said. "Get to work, then."

He tossed her a mocking salute. "Aye aye, Cap'n Walker."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "If you have any trouble working the compressor, you know where to find me."

Chuck waved her off and tried to let his mind drift, only paying attention to the dials of the pressure gauges and the hum of the compressor motor. There were half a dozen air canisters like the pair Sarah had brought to the hotel for his abbreviated scuba lesson, but three of them were depleted to some extent or another. It took nearly half an hour to get everything topped off, and then there was the matter of manhandling the tanks into some semblance or order.

Finally he had all eight tanks full of compressed air secured with straps to the wall, and his stomach was growling, so he headed up to the wheelhouse.

"So, any chance of lunch?" Chuck asked.

Sarah glanced quizzically at him. "I don't know; did you check the fridge in the galley? There should be some cold cuts or something. I know we've got a couple cases of energy bars in one of the cupboards. You weren't expecting me to drop everything to make you a sammich, were you?"

Chuck rolled his eyes. "I didn't want to just raid the fridge without asking. I'm a guest here, after all."

"Raid away," Sarah said, making a slight course adjustment and consulting her charts. She didn't really pay attention to Chuck's departing comment.

Her eyes darted back to the sea ahead of them, and then down to the charts once more, and she chewed her lip. It was at least another four hours to the coordinates they needed to check, and at the very earliest, if they recovered whatever lay on the bottom quickly and without incident, they would be coming back in darkness.

Maybe that was why she was on edge; there was no use denying it, she felt as she had that day the FBI had nearly caught up to her father ten years ago at their home in the San Diego suburbs. She couldn't shake the feeling, and it didn't make any sense. She knew they were a step ahead of the bad guys, and her father was safe in his hospital room. Sarah couldn't come up with a viable scenario where the local mob got there ahead of them, or at all. But she still couldn't quite convince herself of it.

Her lip curled into a grimace and she tapped the course heading into the navigation system. It wasn't quite an autopilot, but a glance ahead on their present course told her the boat wasn't going to collide with anything in a couple minutes.

Sarah grabbed the binoculars from the peg on the back wall of the wheelhouse and strode to the rail. She put them to her eyes and scanned the horizon. It wasn't completely deserted out; they were near a major shipping lane after all, but none of the cargo vessels she saw were likely to harbor mob goons.

Sarah went further aft and shifted her scan to their stern quarter. Again, nothing suspicious, so she finished the scan and let the binoculars fall to hang on their strap around her neck. She shook her head, more angry at herself than anything. "Getting jumpy, Walker," she said to herself.

"What's that?"

"Gahaah!" Sarah said, spinning around into a defensive posture.

Chuck jumped back in shock and nearly dropped the platter of sandwiches he was carrying. He managed not to lose the sandwiches over the side with a kind of sideways shuffle. "Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you."

Sarah let out a sigh that was nearly a laugh. "I was just telling myself off for being jumpy," she said, grinning ruefully.

"Jumpy requires binoculars?"

Sarah shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I... I'm probably being paranoid. Dad said he gave them the wrong coordinates, and I believe him, it's just... never mind."

Chuck plucked one of the triangle-cut halves of sandwich and held it out to her. "Balogna," he said, and nodded when Sarah took the sandwich. "Also, baloney. We're both on edge, and with good reason. I punched a mobster last night!"

Sarah managed a grin, and shook her head in mild exasperation. "Come on, we'd better get back to the wheelhouse so we don't ram a freighter or something."

Chuck's eyes widened. "Does that happen often?"

"No, not really," she explained. "And if it looked like we were going to cross paths with one of the big ships, they've got lookouts. Their warning horns are pretty hard to miss."

They climbed back up the two stairs into the wheelhouse and Sarah sat on the table as she ate her finger-sandwich, one long leg stretched out to steer the over-sized wheel with her toes.

Chuck looked on incredulously, the sandwich in his hand forgotten. She munched happily and glanced at him questioningly.

"That can't be safe," he protested.

"Which one of us does this for a living, Bartowski?"

They made better time than Sarah expected; maybe the current was with them, but that only meant the return trip would take longer, so it all balanced out. It was still better than half past three when the GPS announced that they had arrived at their destination. Sarah pulled back on the throttle, but after a moment's hesitation left the engines idling. Fuel wasn't a concern, despite her father's story to Chuck the previous day, and she still had the shadow of fear in the back of her head, nagging at her. If they needed to make a quick exit, she didn't want to have to waste time starting the heavy-duty engines back up.

She glanced at the charts and grunted. "What's up?" Chuck asked.

"It's just odd. We're out in the middle of the channel, but the depth on the charts is only fifty feet or so," Sarah shrugged it off. "Probably not important, but it means I don't have to worry so much about decompression. I'd have to be down for more than an hour at that depth before I'd get any serious complications. Hell, I could probably free dive down that far."

"How 'bout we don't borrow trouble, Sarah."

She rolled her eyes, and waved for him to follow.

Next order of business was dropping anchor, but again, Sarah didn't follow her usual routine, thanks to her lingering unease. Usually two anchors were required to make sure the boat stayed exactly where you wanted it for a dive. Once that was finished, she had Chuck go grab the diving gear while she changed into her wetsuit and strapped her diving knife on.

Back on deck, Chuck helped her into the heavy scuba tank.

He looked more nervous than she felt, which was saying something. Sarah finally said something as she was putting on her flippers. "Okay," she said. "Spit it out, Chuck."

"Be careful," he said.

"You know what a ...cautious sort I am."

"That's Raiders, not Star Wars."

Sarah stuck her tongue out at him and flipped backwards into the sea.

The sun was at a good angle, and she could see the bottom, despite the pollution, even without her handheld lamp. It was the same one she'd used the day before, except she hadn't bothered hooking up the camera this time. That left Chuck in the dark, but it was one more delay, and she wanted to be done here and heading back to port as soon as possible. Sarah spotted the sunken vessel right off. A thirty-footer or so, laying capsized on the bottom. As she swam nearer she began to make out details, and her blood went cold at the sight of her third gunshot body in two days. This man was balding and slightly overweight, and his body was half-exposed, head and shoulders and chest poking out from under the railing where it was crushed into the sediment of the bottom.

She swam closer still, playing her light around for other bodies, but found nothing. Sarah went right up to the side and shone her light through about a foot wide gap where the railing had held up the bulk of the craft just enough. Sarah grimaced and swam back up to Chuck on the Lisa's Revenge.

"That was quick," Chuck called. "Find anything?"

"Another dead body. Gunshot same as the others," she said, pumping her legs to get around to the stern ladder and climb back aboard. "And a boat, but I couldn't find any safe way into the wreck to investigate. We're going to have to flip it."

Chuck blinked. "How do we do that?" He extended a hand and hauled her the last couple rungs up onto the deck.

Sarah nodded to the miniature crane assembly nearby. "I'll show you how to work the winch," she said. That took another ten minutes, and then she was diving again, this time with the trailing end of the cables in her right hand and her light in her left. She started to loop the cables around the bit of exposed railing and then stopped to reconsider. Might that just tear the railing off wholesale. Sarah swam a slow circle around the capsized boat and found a more likely spot. She had to dig in the bottom with her hands briefly until she found one of the cleats for the mooring lines, then she looped the cable around them securely. They didn't really need to flip the boat over completely, just on its side and stable would be enough for her. Still, she wasn't entirely satisfied with the setup and, trailed the secondary cable around to the anchor mounting and tied the second cable to the external mounting bracket there.

She went back up one more time to give Chuck the signal to start the winch and then stuck her head under the water to watch.

The cables went taut with an audible twang, only a moment or so before the boat started to shift. From her vantage point near the surface, she saw mostly a cloud of silt erupt from around the white fiberglass hull of the mystery boat. Sarah stuck her head up and spat out her pressure regulator. "Okay, that ought to do it," she shouted.

"Aye aye," Chuck shouted back, in what she realized was an entirely unironic fashion.

Sarah glanced at her air gauge and chewed her lip thoughtfully. She was down to three-quarters of her supply, from all the up and down, and it was probably safer to go get a fresh tank, since this trip would probably be longer, and involve a search of the sunken boat's interior. But there was still a voice in the back of her head nagging her for speed, so she raised her voice again. "I'm going back down," she called out, replaced the regulator and dove back down.

Sarah spotted two new bodies as she approached the wreck and part of her cringed inside. Five dead, and as she played the light over the bloated corpses, she saw the telltale gunshot wounds again. Five men, all murdered over this whatever-it-was. She didn't expect there to actually be an R7 laptop anymore.

Searching the boat didn't turn out to be a very strenuous task. Her lamp picked up a glint of silver through the haze of churned up silt, and Sarah swam in that direction. There was a large briefcase, nearly the size of a suitcase, of a dull grey metal. There was a pair of handcuffs attached to the handle of the case; that was the silvery flash she'd spotted.

Once she got her arms around the thing and started up, she spotted the other boat, just coming alongside the Lisa's Revenge. How the hell had she not heard them on the approach? Sarah cursed herself mentally. The sound of the diesel engines on her boat, even idling, had been audible for most of her dive, if just as background noise, and she'd allowed herself to tune them out.

She briefly considered options. With any luck it was the local coast guard. There were enough ships in this part of the ocean that the Philippine government had dedicated at least some resources to policing the seaways. That's what it must be, she thought, trying to convince herself; and she was still hopeful when her head breached the surface.

That's where her hopes died of course, when she spotted a familiar, but unwelcome face at the railing of her boat.

"Hey there, gorgeous," he called, pointing a pistol at her. "Got a present for me?"

Chuck was standing at the railing as well, yet another man standing behind him, with the muzzle of an AK 47 held to the back of Chuck's head.

Sarah spat out her regulator and grimaced. "Garret. What brings you here?"

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N: Next chapter is kind of kicking my butt. I wanted to be halfway finished with it before I posted this, but it's been more than a week and I'm still working on the opening scene. I'm trying to stick to my guns as far as a chapter a week goes. We'll see how that goes. Reviews usually help me out of a slump. Hint. :)