CRUISE SHIP HEIST - chapters 4 & 5 of the second edition - the story continues

This is Cruise Ship Heist. Cruise Ship Crime Investigators. Written and read by Stuart St Paul. Chapter Four. Baggage. The baggage collection area is chaotic. People jostle to get to the front, clogging access to the rotating belt with their empty trolleys. I give them all a wide berth and walk around the outside to where the cases first drop on the carousel. The bags have been fast, so I might get to see the rainforest after all. In my thirty years in the army, I was never deployed to the jungle. Unless you call Northern Ireland a jungle. Thanks again, I hear from behind me in her slight sexy Spanish accent. I acknowledge her smile and she points at the luggage belt. A case is dropping through the veil of industrial plastic curtain. What am I supposed to do? I step forward automatically. It matches the style of the hand luggage that I've just lifted down for this beauty from the plane. I turn for confirmation and she nods. My arm takes it and again, it's much heavier than I expected. I notice the heavy label attached to the handle as I place the bag on her trolley with her other three bags. Thanks again, she smiles as she rips the heavy label off and drops it. Even that act of littering was quite sexy. My pleasure, enjoy your holiday. A good looking woman like her, so smartly dressed, surely can't be single. I turn away to disengage, scolding myself. If I'm going to survive in this outside world, I need to open doors, not close them. On holiday would have been better. An invitation to converse, far more socially engaging. Or is it just prying? I'm not equipped for this game, though I could do it so easily as an instructed agent on a mission. I accept defeat as I snatch my case from escaping away around the rotating carousel and into the crowd. A minor distraction nearly caught me off guard. Page one mistake. I deliberately take a different cue to the one she stands in at customs. I don't want to look like a stalker, but she's noticed and strangely doesn't seem to have given up on me. I raise my eyebrows in surprise, just enough to suggest I didn't notice her. Obviously, I did. A large customs officer shouts in a rhythmic Latin accent. He is guiding all that other cue into ours. It's hot, and the officers are wearing jackets and carbon fiber protection vests. I guess they get used to it. I wore heavy kit in the Middle East. The Latin beauty is coming my way. I'm trapped again. Or is it a second chance? The customs officer turns back to the other two officials at the heavy, fixed inspection table at the front of the queue. They're searching a Spanish-looking woman, I would guess a local, and the tall, fit woman who got off the plane behind me. She looks like she's scanning the strength of the force. She's sensing danger. The situation bites as the lady being searched is pushed roughly towards the table and told to put her hands flat down. The tone in the room has changed. The military-looking woman is grabbed and pushed down. This could turn very nasty. Slowly she complies, but I can see she has her eye on the gun clipped in the officer's belt. She digs her elbow up into him, leaving him gasping for air. Her hands go up immediately like a premiership footballer acting innocence. She didn't like the way he searched her body, but she didn't take his gun, which she could have very easily. She is way too cool to be a civvy, or even rank-and-file military, not least because this is South America, which can be one of the most dangerous places in the world. It's not my fight, but I've worked out the nearest guard and his weapons. I can't do this. I've a ship to catch. A large officer scans her passport and papers, as another pushes the yapping drug doc from the table and unzips her case, with the panache of a magician ending his act. Whatever they were expecting to find in her inexpensive luggage isn't there, and their expression is not just disappointment but one of anger. This means they were expecting to find something. The officers turn their backs on those two and approach our line. Behind them, the released women stride out, but very separately. The local woman angrily passes through the exit, whereas the British-looking military woman stops and glances back. She was confident of her release. I wish I was. Especially here in South America, where power is money and those with guns are officials. She is looking back at me. Does she suspect it's me they're after? I feel vulnerable and exposed. Why on earth fly me into Costa Rica? Why am I even on this cruise? Why am I getting on the ship here for a job in Panama? My mind is racing, because the police here don't need an excuse to arrest you. Nothing can be taken for granted, least of all freedom. The officers inspect those in front of me, one by one, and I have flashbacks of being tortured. I'm not on holiday. My beautiful translator is back in my ear, waking me from my momentary nightmare, picking up on the earlier conversation when I helped her. I hesitate. There's still a side of me that doesn't want to open up. Even though there's no reason to withhold anything now, I'm a normal human being, well, trying. Me neither, I whisper, without moving my lips, leaving her eyes boring into me for more information. What does she want? I know if I tell her I was a soldier, she'll ask me the usual boring questions. Have I ever been shot? Been in Iraq? Then the deal-breaker that everybody wants to ask, have you ever killed anyone? There is no answer they can cope with. My smile's not coming out to play, not now. But that's not stopping her full-scale intrusion into my personal life. The crowd in front are being pushed through slowly. I'm here to see my daughter, I say, without turning back towards her. My admission was probably a deal-breaker, undoubtedly the worst thing I could have said in a search for romance. I should find love and settle down, that's what my daughter keeps telling me. But maybe she just wants a mother figure. Despite being sent out to defend Queen and Country with accuracy, this is where I misfire, with women. Eyes front, I tell myself. No wife, she demands in a sexy tone. I'm imagining it. I twist just enough to sense she's looking past me, not at me. No, I say, hoping it's enough. But her smile is a question, and I feel she'll make all of Port Limon customs wait for me until she's got my story. Maybe she is a customs official, and this is a honey trap, a very expensively dressed honey trap. Single dad? I like. She's not giving up the interrogation. If we were in a bar, she would be buying me a drink. This is her third approach to me. I've become the entertainment. Yes and no, I say, watching the officers advancing with their dog, restraining its eagerness with the short lead. It pulls the officer in and out of people just in front of us. This lady, she's still around, but not your wife? She tilts her head, edging a little closer. Her tone has changed. Is that impatience? There is no she or wife, I add. Gay dad, she enthuses. Why has that excited her? Gay? Is that how I come over? I turn away and edge my weight to the old couple in front of me, whose case I also lifted down. Are you all right? I ask the short old couple, who are looking very worried. They edge back as the dog and the officers pass us, then jump as the dog barks excitedly, drawing everyone's attention. It gives me permission to turn. The officers manhandle the Latina and her cases away from the queue. I wait for hands to grab my shoulder and pull me away too, but nothing. I dodge that metaphorical bullet by a split second. My sixth sense still works. The officers forcefully present the Latina to the table, hands down. The tall military-like woman I thought was looking out for me earlier is still by the exit, silhouetted by the bright sunlight from the outside. She acknowledges me and leaves as if content that she now knows I'm safe. How strange. Was she waiting to help me if it kicked off in the same way as my adrenaline built as she was questioned? A good police or customs guard may have detained me too, for the interaction, but not these guards. These are rough-and-ready security, often the most dangerous and trigger-happy. The Spanish beauty is at the table, the dog jumping at her three cases, barking. Hold on. She had four cases before. What game is being played? I look back to the trolley, the floor. No fourth case. I look to the exit, but the tall woman is gone. I don't remember her having a red case. I try to understand the rushed Spanish of the interrogation officers, but I can't. Barking aloud, the black mutt is the star of the show. I never got to know her name, but her body language has changed. Her bag is unzipped, a thin top layer of clothing removed. A false base is way too high. It is ripped up with a flick knife, revealing blocks of tightly packed $100 bills. The crowd gasp, like an audience, and rather than curtsy to them, the woman stays focused on the guards. She knows she's in trouble. She must be a courier. The dead body she was sitting next to on the plane now seems suspicious. Too much here does not make sense.