Gregoire knelt on the ground over a map, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He’d been up until just after midnight searching for Arris and the now-presumed-sunk helicopter and had found nothing. He hadn’t slept well, either, plagued by half-dreams that he was letting down his best friend by bunking down even though he knew he would be useless today if he hadn’t caught some sleep. He knew in his heart that Arris would have kept at it, ignored the call for rest. That was Arris. That was what a Green Beret would do. Gregoire sipped a long slug of coffee and tapped the map, wondering where Arris could have disappeared in thin air.
Gregoire heard the sound of footfalls on gravel and looked up to see a DEA agent approaching, dressed in black fatigues.
“Anything?” Gregoire asked.
“Nothing,” the agent said.
“What about the drug runners?”
The agent shook his head. “No sign of them, either. Though, that’s not much of a surprise. The grass strip they were using is about a half-mile inland from here, and if they got the shipment in on schedule, they’d have been out sometime in the middle of last night, long before we got here this morning.”
Whatever the drug cartel had been up to the previous day, it hadn’t involved running drugs to the American mainland. Instead, the ships had spread out through the island chains as if they were searching for something, and a light-duty civilian cargo airplane had made several trips back and forth to a small airstrip outside Miami without ever having unloaded anything. Arris had said it hadn’t seemed like a drug running operation, and Gregoire hadn’t known then what to think. Now, he wondered what the ships were really up to.
The lack of action had spooked the DEA as well, as the agents had spent most of the night trying to figure out what they should do, since nothing had happened and Arris’ aircraft had vanished. The early indications were that the government had told them to fold up camp and return home.
Gregoire pulled a flimsy cardboard box of cigars out of his pocket, tapped one out and lit it. He looked back down at the map, knowing that this island’s airstrip would’ve been the one Arris would have made for in the event of trouble. Everywhere else was water.
“We’re going to find them if we have to check every sandbar in the area, and that could take while,” Gregoire said. “What’d the agency say about getting any aircraft?”
The agent shrugged. “They’re on the way, now. One is coming directly here. It should be here in a couple of hours.”
Gregoire nodded. “Okay, then I’ll take the boat and check the next island over. There’s a dirt strip there that they might have been able to make. Radio me when you’re in the air.”