Dragon Clan

Chapter 4

Four

Monday, April 18

USS Bougainville

Caribbean Sea

As Eva and Caleb entered the hold, the chorus of whistles and clicks was almost deafening. Axel waved them over.

“Where have you two been? Baby Chico is wigging out.”

Indeed, the young wholphin was moving his body back and forth and arching his back as if irritated. He emitted the same whistle over and over—his signature whistle for Jose.

Eva’s heart broke. He misses his friend.

And Jose, what could he be going through right now without Chico? It had been altogether therapeutic for the autistic young man to find someone he could bond with so well.

“I hear the whistle for Jose,” Eva said, “but what are those other whistles?” She now recognized many of the dolphin whistles by ear, particularly all their names for each other, but she relied on her software to translate the rest.

“Ja, in addition to Jose, he keeps saying swim and boat.”

Eva didn’t know what to make of that. She looked over to Chico, and saw that Sarah was stroking him to help calm him down. Finn and Taffy were vocalizing, as if giving their child a lecture of sorts, and Cleo was off to one side, her head out of the water, focused on an empty corner of the hold. Everyone was acting strange.

“Chico misses swimming with Jose,” Eva said. “I’ll get in with him. Where’d you store our snorkel equipment?”

Axel pointed. “It’s over in our equipment lockers behind that partition.”

As Eva began walking over that way, Chico’s whistling escalated. The sounds made Eva think of the whistles the dolphins made when they were hunting lionfish together. In her mind these whistles said: You’re getting warmer. The young wholphin recognized many English words, snorkel being one of them. So that explains it, Eva thought. The little guy just wants someone to swim with him.

She stepped behind the partition, where her team’s equipment lockers were secured to the deck with heavy canvas straps. All of them were labeled, courtesy of Jose, and she went to the one marked snorkel equipment. She fished out her mask, snorkel, and fins, then turned back to rejoin the others.

It was then that she sensed movement in the corner. For a moment, she startled. There was something back there, behind the equipment lockers.

Did this ship have rats? Or maybe cats? Did Rascal somehow follow Finn aboard? But no, Rascal was never good at being inconspicuous. That was a trait of someone else on her team . . .

Eva’s eyes widened. Chico’s whistles suddenly made sense.

“Jose?” she whispered.

One scrawny leg inched out from behind the lockers, then another, and then a damp and shaking Jose appeared, a scuba mask pushed up on his forehead. He looked down at the floor, avoiding eye contact.

“Axel! Come here,” she called out.

Axel appeared at her side, along with Sarah and Caleb. The dolphins had gone silent, as if they knew now that they had finally been understood.

“Jose?” said Axel.

“Get some towels,” Eva said. “He’s cold.”

As Axel hurried off, Eva rushed forward and wrapped her arms around Jose. The young man didn’t flinch at her touch. He even made an effort to speak, stuttering, “S-sorry.”

“It’s okay, Jose, it’ll be okay,” Eva said, rocking the shivering young man in her arms.

Axel and Sarah found the towels, and Eva let them attend to Jose while she walked with Caleb to another corner of the hold to discuss their situation.

“We aren’t turning around, Captain,” Eva said, her arms crossed in defiance. “And don’t even think about putting him in that cage you call a brig.”

Caleb tilted his head as if perplexed. “What makes you think I’d throw your assistant in the brig? Did he do something wrong?”

“No, but—well, he’s a stowaway. His visa and security clearance haven’t gone through yet.”

Caleb seemed far less concerned than Eva expected. “First, rest assured we aren’t turning around, nor is this young man going to be confined to the brig. Hopefully we can get things sorted en route. It’s a long journey, after all. Is there any reason his security clearance won’t go through?”

Eva shook her head. “I don't think so. He’s a Honduran national, born on Roatán. His history is clean.”

Eva thought back to the day she’d approached Jose with an offer to work with her, back when he’d been cleaning car windshields at the one stoplight on the island. He’d come so far. His contributions to her research were indispensable.

Caleb nodded as if he had made a decision. “Well then, as far as I’m concerned, he is my guest aboard this ship. But Dr. Paz, he will not be able to disembark in Hawai‘i unless his papers are in order by then. It’s your responsibility to make that happen. Understood?”

Eva nodded. “Understood, Captain. Thank you.”