by Jack Hardin
He blinked and momentarily forgot his pain.
He knew this woman. Surely the blood loss and trauma of the wreck were making him hallucinate. He had never tried LSD, and maybe this was why. The woman he was thinking of was dead, had been for years.
Her voice was dry and level. “Hello, Virgil. I’m sorry I missed up there. I’m sure you’re in a lot of pain.” She squatted and patted his sweaty cheek, which was stenciled with blood and dirt. “Not to worry,” she said. “It’s about to be all over for you.” She lifted the balaclava from her face.
It was Sarah Cornish—Faraday—his old teammate.
Chapter Three
The canals reached up into the southern end of Pine Island like hospitable fingers, pointing the way into the seventeen mile stretch of rural paradise that was Pine Island. A mid-morning breeze imported scents of salt, pine, and oyster beds, all working in unison to sedate the island’s inhabitants and anyone just fortunate enough to be there.
Ellie O’Conner backed her 21-foot Bayliner Element off the boat lift and brought it around until the bow was pointing toward the south end of the canal. Tyler Borland grabbed the gunwale with his large hands and slid over to the bench seat at the transom. “You know, my mama always told me not to do stupid things.” Tyler, who was tall and tan and generally employed a carefree disposition, was, at the moment, a little sheepish.
“You’ll have fun. I promise,” Ellie said.
He pointed his chin down the canal toward the open water. “Well, the last time I went out on a boat I left my stomach out there somewhere. And Ellie, you know how partial I was to my stomach.”
A week ago, a Category 3 hurricane swiped the edge of Lee County on its way out to the open Gulf, the storm’s eye missing a dead-on hit by less than thirty miles. Hours before Hurricane Josephine pounded the island, Ellie and Tyler had run a boat across five- and six-foot swells to rescue a kidnap victim from the northern edge of Sanibel Island. Tyler, who loved boats about as much as he enjoyed Italian opera, had not fared well.
“I’m not scared. Boats are fun.” The small voice came from the bow and belonged to Ellie’s five-year-old niece, Chloe.
Ellie’s eyes went to her sister, Katie, and they shared a laugh. “She does have a point,” Katie said.
“All right,” Tyler said. “Let’s just get this show on the road.” He bit down on his bottom lip and motioned for Chloe to come over to him. He put a long arm around her and lowered his voice. “You’re little, okay? Little people don’t always understand when things are smart or not.”
Chloe raised her eyebrows to him, and her overbright eyes gleamed. “Maybe,” she giggled, “you’ll get eaten by a shark!”
More female laughs from the console.
Tyler’s brow went up. “You know, you just might—”
At that moment the boat lurched forward as Ellie gave the engine a little throttle. Tyler clutched the edge of the seat like they were about to shoot into outer space. “Here we go,” he mumbled.
Ellie ran the boat out of St. James City, turned west, and cut up past York Island before moving north through Pine Island Sound at a steady fifteen knots. For half an hour Chloe talked non-stop, making observations about the boat’s wake, the color of the water, and a dolphin, as well as inquiring about instruments on the console, what kind of engine did the boat have, and if her Aunt Ellie thought she would catch more fish today than Tyler. Tyler never said a word, just stared ahead as if he were a convict headed to the penitentiary. At one point Ellie gave her sister the wheel and went back to sit with him.
“You doing okay? You’re letting Chloe out-talk you.”
He tried to grin, but failed. “I want to like the water. Just not my thing, I guess.”
“It’ll grow on you,” she said. “You can’t be manly about everything, I suppose.”
He found the grin. “You think I’m manly?”
“Maybe not right now. But generally, yeah.”
“Well, I think you’re girly. Whatever that means.”
“I’ll take it,” she smiled. “At least you get a break from cutting up trees.” When Tyler moved to Southwest Florida from West Texas a couple of years ago, he’d bought eighty acres in North Cape Coral, turning the land into a full-service gun range. Hurricane Josephine had assaulted Reticle’s acreage as well as the nearly two hundred and fifty acres of Yucca Pens Preserve, the southwestern edge of which was butted up against Reticle’s property line. Dozens of pines lay strewn across Tyler’s property. He had counted nine that would disturb business in some way—blocking the entrance or laid out across a long distance range or a path that led to one. A taller, more mature pine had fallen a few yards from the main offices, its branches taking out several windows in the process.
Tyler said, “I would show you the calluses I got from the chainsaw, but you already think I’m manly, so I don’t feel the need to do that.”
“Well, just don’t blister your butt sitting at my stern all morning.” She gave his knee a pat and went back to replace her sister at the wheel. A few minutes later they were passing up Captiva Island to the west and the fishing shacks to the east. The Pine Island fishing shacks were relics of another era altogether, and all but two of them were on the National Register of Historic Places. They were small, one- or two-room fishing cabins built on stilts in a time when commercial fishermen would spend long months out on the water. With no electricity, the shacks afforded the simple necessity of shelter without having to go all the way back inland. Now they hovered over the water like wooden corpses, abandoned by fishermen back in the mid-1950s. The few remaining shacks formed a tiny archipelago of their own, set across a distance of half a mile in the shallows off Little Wood Key.
Two miles later they were passing up Cabbage Key on their port side. After driving further on to the north, Ellie cut east and steered past Camp Key before slowing the Bayliner to idle speed and shutting off the engine. Their small wake caught up to them, and the boat bobbed against it before settling. There was no wind to speak of, and the waters were calm. Before them lay a small key hemmed with mangroves at either end. An old wooden fishing boat was beached at the center, its old, rotting stern sunk deep into the sand.
“So that’s it?” Tyler said, mostly to himself.
“That’s the one,” Ellie said.
“You think they’re still using it?” Katie asked. “To store the gas?”
“I don’t think so. The DEA should still have surveillance set up, possibly hidden in those mangroves over there, but the criminal organization that had been using it to store gas was taken down.” A couple of days before, Katie had playfully nagged her older sister to tell her about the local work she had done with the DEA over the past couple of months. Ellie had finally conceded a page of harmless information and offered to take them out to Mondongo Rocks. What she didn’t say was that she had hidden in these very mangroves one evening just as their investigation was getting underway and had come close to being discovered when a drug runner had walked right up to their branches to relieve himself. All she had told Katie and Tyler was that the boat had been used at one point for storing gas for go-fast boats headed back to Mexico. The boat appeared to have sunken further into the key, most likely the recent work of Hurricane Josephine.
Chloe squinted against the glare of the sun flashing off the water. “Is that the boat the bad guys use? It looks yucky.”
“No, Chloe,” her mother said. “They don’t use it anymore.” She shot her eyes over to her sister.
“Do you think the bad guys are all gone from here?” Chloe asked.
“Of course, Boo,” Ellie said, and then, not wanting to scare the girl, added, “They’re all gone away. No more bad guys around here.”
But she knew that wasn’t true.
Katie took Chloe to the stern to help her prep her fishing line. When they left this spot they were going to drop in their hooks off Big Panther Key, in a spot their father had often taken his daughters when they were children. Ellie re
mained fixated on the old boat with the broken stern.
Tyler said, “Those DEA hotshots are all a spittin’ upwind, if you ask me. I’m sorry they gave you the boot.”
Three months ago, after putting over a decade with the CIA behind her, Ellie had come on with the DEA as a contractor, eventually bringing down an elusive drug boss who had made Lee and Sarasota Counties his base of operations. Two weeks ago, a raid on a walled compound went awry when a bomb exploded on site, killing seven of their suspects and injuring three DEA officers. Ellie, who had done everything right, had been hung out to dry and was let go.
There was nothing she could do about it. Ellie had long ago learned to take things in stride, that there were just some things in life you couldn’t change. But what bothered her the most was that Ringo, whoever he was, was still out there, doing big business in her home county, and it didn’t seem like there were plans to stop him anytime soon.
And Ellie wasn’t sure she was okay with that.
“Thanks,” she told Tyler.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Is it the whole thing about not working with them anymore?”
“I guess so.”
He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice to a whisper. “And your dad?”
“Yep.”
“And seeing your old teammate?”
“Yes. Can you stop now?”
“Sorry,” he said, and looked away. “Maybe you can get back on with them once they figure out how to stop using good people to take the fall.”
“Maybe,” she said, albeit with little optimism. She stared off across the water, lost in thought, considering the things Tyler had brought up: the DEA, her father, and Virgil, plus what Virgil had told her.
Two weeks ago, in the middle of the fun-filled pandemonium that was Mango Mania, Ellie had been approached by a former teammate from TEAM 99. Virgil had come with news that set off alarm bells in her mind and threw ice into her veins. According to him, fresh evidence was pointing to the six remaining members of their team being set up for certain missions they had executed. Virgil’s information had come from a shared and trusted connection; they had no reason not to believe it. Ryan Wilcox had been Ellie’s boss for the two years she was working undercover in Afghanistan. He had died while working in Moscow not a week after passing off the information, leaving both Virgil and Ellie with more questions than answers and no easy way to get them. Virgil said he was going to Arizona to speak with Cicero, to see if Ryan had reached out to him as well, to see if they could start clearing up what was becoming an unsettling turn of events. Ellie still hadn’t heard back from Virgil and was beginning to feel unnerved about that too.
Disconcerting questions now formed the backdrop of Ellie’s daily routine: Who was trying to set them up? Why? And why wait four years after the team had dissolved and everyone had moved on to other things?
It made no sense.
Several days earlier, as Pine Island was just beginning to clean up the leftovers from Mother Nature’s tumult, Ellie had decided to try and get access to footage of Ryan Wilcox’s death in Moscow. According to Virgil, Ryan’s murder had been reported as an accident, but Virgil was fully unconvinced. It wasn’t a detail that Ellie thought should stay up for grabs. If video footage or pictures from the scene showed suspicious activity surrounding the events of Ryan’s car wreck, then it would confirm that something sinister was occurring in the shadows. Ellie wasn’t going to just sit around and wait for a couple of feds to come knocking, arresting her for actions that she had been authorized and commissioned to do.
Ellie had been trained in basic network and cyber analysis. But the information she wanted was located on state-run servers in Russia. Russia employed an Orwellian surveillance network known as The System for Operative Investigative Activities, or SORM. Getting access to it would mean knowing someone on the inside who could get her what she needed. Since Ellie didn’t know anyone that fit the bill, she reconnected with Eugene Ripley, a former cyber operations officer who had worked at Langley’s Directorate of Digital Innovation. As of last year he now lived in Zurich, heading up a cybersecurity consulting firm. Eugene said he might have someone in Ukraine who could get him what she needed, for Ellie to hang tight, and he would be in touch.
Tyler nudged her with his elbow. “Hey, sourpuss. We’re supposed to be having a good time out here. You managed to get me back on a stupid boat and you don’t see me being a Debbie Downer.”
She turned to him and managed a half-smile. “Sorry. You’re right.”
Tyler spread his fingers and grinned mischievously, brought his hands in close. “Do you need a tickle?”
Ellie jerked and moved away from him. “Try it and you lose a finger.”
He slowly lifted his chin in defiance. “How about a thumb instead?”
They stared each other down and broke into laughter.
“Too soon?” He grinned.
“I think maybe so.”
Chapter Four
Virgil’s eyes swam wetly in their sockets. Somewhere from deep within, another, more cognitive part of him was screaming like a drill sergeant, demanding that he stay with it. He took in a breath and looked back at Faraday. “You’re...supposed to be dead. I saw you...die.”
Faraday huffed indignantly. “No. See, that is where you’re wrong, Virgil. You didn’t watch me die. You left me to die.”
“You...took a round in the neck. Our readings showed no heartbeat, no life. We couldn’t...get to you.”
“Your mistake.” Her tone was dry, crisp; her brown hair, once long, was now short, cut above her shoulders. Even in a semiconscious state, Virgil was aware that her eyes were darker than he remembered. Dark green eyes that were now black pools of apathy. If the eyes really were a light into the soul, then it seemed that Faraday had just scurried up from the deepest caverns of hell. If they all really had left her to die in a dusty Somalian alley, then she’d had years to sit on that decision and allow any bitterness to grow deep, thick roots.
“How...how are you alive?” he asked, and his eyes fell from her face to her neck, where a wide, thick scar sat like a bad patch job of melted plastic.
“Simple, I suppose. The radicals we were sent to take down in Mogadishu found me in the alley that you all left me in. They got in touch with the right person in D.C. and bartered me for cash. A few million from what I understand. Can you believe someone thought I was worth that much? Maybe it was for my ping pong skills.”
“But you were...dead.”
“You might say all the king’s men put me back together again.”
“So this...is revenge.”
“Oh, don’t be so nearsighted, Virgil. Of course not. I work for someone else now. Those who saved my life. It’s really that simple.”
“Who?”
“Listen, Virgil, I’d love to take you for a beer and catch up, but I do have to run.” Faraday stood up. She extended her arm and put his forehead between the gun’s sights. “Goodbye, old friend.”
Three rapid shots rang out across the forest. To the east, a bevy of anxious Gambel's quail emerged from a cluster of junipers and relocated.
Faraday stood over Virgil, her vacant eyes assessing him. Then she fell backward and hit the ground harder than a felled eagle. The barrel of Joe Ferguson's .45 vented tendrils of light gray smoke, and Virgil’s knuckles were white as he gripped the weapon. Suddenly recalling that she seemed to have a hard time dying, Virgil turned onto his side and extended the gun out of the truck. He discharged a final round, and it entered just under her chin. Her head flinched backward.
Virgil returned to his back and closed his eyes, the pain and the weariness all-consuming now. His arms and chest were shivering, his teeth chattering. He closed his eyes. Over the next few minutes his breathing became more relaxed and, finally, shallow. In the broken and twisted carcass of the truck, he slept.
Chapter Five
A coastal breeze blew mercifully through t
he Marco Island neighborhood but found few palms or poincianas to stir. Most had been uprooted, and some still lay where they fell, fallen like wooden soldiers, unable to rise again. Homes all along Fruitland Avenue were missing entire sections of roofs or walls, all of them adorned with bright blue tarps as if they held to some traditional commitment to modesty. The cloudless sky reflected a cornflower blue as the sun burned hot across an island that would take years to recover from Josephine's wrath.
Ringo walked thoughtfully up the street toward his own modest home, which sat a mile up the island from the marina he had purchased from Ed Wright six years ago. He pondered the soul-wrenching decision he had made last week. The decision that had forced him to choose between those he loved.
He was going to lay the fedora down.
Ringo approached his home and paused near the mailbox, where the sidewalk cut out and led to his front steps. A blue pinwheel was set into a flower pot full of orange marigolds. Somehow the flower pot had weathered the storm. The pinwheel, a wordless sign of Ringo’s own invention—like a chalked X on a park bench, spun happily in the breeze.
He continued toward the house and went up the front steps. He pulled out his keys, unlocked the door, and went in, then walked into the kitchen and took a water bottle from the fridge. He twisted the cap off and drank it all down before raising his voice above normal. “Come,” he said.
In the back of the house a bedroom door opened and footsteps moved toward the kitchen. Andrés Salamanca stepped into the room.
Ringo smiled large. “Andrés,” he said, “Would you like a drink?”
“Thank you, Jefe.”
Ringo opened the fridge and brought out a can of Coke. He popped the top and handed it to Andrés.
“Thank you.”
“What’s the urgent news?” Ringo asked.
“It’s Kyle Armstrong. Have you heard?”
“I have not.”
“He is in a coma at Lee Memorial. He tried to kill himself.”