Heidi joined her and grabbed Nani’s dorsal fin. The dolphin pulled the little girl through a school of wrasse. Kaia wished she had her camera.
A shadowy movement caught her eye, and she turned to see a scuba diver swimming toward her. Dressed in a black wet suit, the man paused when he saw them. Though she was sure he was merely out for a pleasure dive, her orders were to take pictures of any divers or anything unusual. Kaia motioned to Nani, and the dolphin swerved, dislodging Heidi’s grip on her dorsal fin. Her body in torpedo mode, Nani darted past Kaia toward the diver.
Kaia pointed toward the surface, and Heidi nodded and swam to the boat. Once Kaia saw that the little girl was safely aboard the boat, she turned to help Nani. The dolphin was swimming around the man. She could see the camera would get a good look at the diver. The man spotted the camera mounted on the dolphin and swam away.
Maybe it was nothing. He might not have known he wasn’t allowed here, just offshore the naval base. Still, she wanted a look at his face in case the picture in Nani’s camera didn’t come out. Nani raced along beside her, and Kaia grabbed hold of the dolphin’s dorsal fin to let Nani drag her along faster.
Descended from a line of pearl divers, Kaia could hold her breath for four minutes, a fact she hoped would allow her to get close enough before she had to surface. The man glanced back at them then stopped by a large pile of lava rock that had fallen into the sea.
Kaia squinted through her mask. He had something in his hand. Her hold on Nani’s dorsal fin slackened as she realized the man had a dart gun. A dart zipped through the water by her head, and she let out a gurgle of bubbles. Nani paused at Kaia’s sound of distress, then shot forward and plowed her nostrum into the diver’s arm. The dart gun loosened from his fingers and drifted toward the bottom.
He turned and swam away. Too shaken to go after him, Kaia signaled for the dolphin to come to her. Nani pulled her to the surface, and Kaia drew in a deep breath of air and looked around wildly for Heidi. Her breath eased when she saw the little girl still safely in the boat. She grasped the side and rested until her limbs stopped shaking.
“Are you okay?” Heidi peered down at her.
“I’m fine.” Kaia hauled herself aboard. Her legs felt like limp seaweed. She grabbed the ship-to-shore radio the navy had given her and told the sailor on the other end what had happened. He signaled to her from the boat and spoke reassurances to her through the radio, but she glared across the water at the sailors. Where had they been when she, Heidi, and Nani were in danger?
Jesse had promised Nani would be perfectly safe. They’d both nearly been shot with the dart gun. Even worse, Heidi could have been hurt. That guy was no casual diver. She and the dolphin weren’t equipped to handle terrorists.
She dangled her fingers over the side of the boat, and Nani came to her. The dolphin bumped against her hand then chattered, her bright eyes seeming to ask if Kaia was all right. Kaia smiled and patted Nani’s nostrum. “I’m okay,” she told the dolphin. Nani chattered again then plunged into the waves.
Kaia sat back in her seat. “We’re going in,” she told Heidi. “The navy has the coordinates. They don’t need us to wait.” And even if they did, her priority was to get Heidi to safety. Kaia had no idea where the diver had gone. If he came back with some buddies, they would all be in danger.
To be fair, she knew Jesse had thought of these daytime exercises merely as training for real detection that would go on at night. That intruder was brazen to be out here in the daylight. Kaia was sure Jesse never would have let the little girl come out here if he’d thought there was any danger.
She kept an eye out for other boats as she turned on the engine and sped toward home. All she saw was a navy cruiser heading out to where she’d been anchored. They were unlikely to find anything. The diver was long gone, but maybe they could find the dart gun.
Where had the man gone though? She’d seen no other boats around. They were only a hundred yards offshore, but he couldn’t have gone ashore on base. He would have been caught by the navy.
Kaia looked up and down the stretch of Polihale Beach just north of Barking Sands. Nothing there. Na Pali stretched toward the sky just beyond the beach. The verdant green vegetation juxtaposed against the blue sky looked like a picture postcard, too beautiful to be real.
She looked the other direction. Barking Sands gave way to several contract installations. There would be no reason for any of those companies to have divers out here, though she supposed the man could have made it to a safe stretch along there.