by Matthew Rief
Ange wasn’t intimidated. She knew that she could take all three of them. But she needed her Glock to do it. The one that was resting in her backpack a knee bend and an arm’s reach away from her.
She ran through scenarios like a computer. How long it would take her to snatch it up and take aim. She could do it. She could get them out of this mess. But what about Jack? He had a pistol pressed to his temple. She needed to communicate with him somehow. She needed to get him on board with her plan.
“Stop!” Scarlett said suddenly. She held her hands in the air and stepped toward the starboard side of the Calypso. “I don’t want either of you getting hurt. I’ll go.” She looked up at Tank Top, then at Flynn, and said it again. “I’ll go.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Ange. Her eyes were teary but focused.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed, then turned and stepped over the gunwale.
“No!” Ange said.
Flynn nearly pulled the trigger.
“Not another step!” he snarled at Ange. “You,” he said, directing his gaze to Scarlett, “over, now!”
Flynn stepped beside Tank Top at the port gunwale, grabbed Scarlett forcefully, and pulled her onto the Regal.
Ange made eye contact with Jack. She nodded to him slightly, and he nodded back. This was it. They’d need to act quickly and with perfect timing if they were going to have a chance at this.
Jack made the first move.
With only one guy holding him down, he managed to rip an arm free, jerk his body around, and grab hold of Shorty’s wrist. Shorty pulled the trigger just as Jack forced the barrel off his head. A round exploded from the chamber like lightning, firing straight into the overcast afternoon sky.
Flynn glanced away from Ange toward the commotion at his back. It was only a split second, but it was long enough.
Ange dove for her Glock. Clasping it with her right hand, she rolled to the side as Flynn fired off a barrage of rounds that flew right over her head. She managed to stabilize herself, take aim, and get a shot off before Flynn got her back in his sights.
Her 9mm round tore through Tank Top’s left thigh, causing him to lurch forward and grunt. Ange had hoped he’d fall into the space between the boats, but he managed to stay on his feet, his grenade still in his hand.
Scarlett jumped into action. She slammed a heel into Flynn’s left foot, then elbowed him in the gut. He grunted, then smacked her hard across the face.
Jack broke Shorty’s wrist and knocked him to the deck. The short, muscular thug reared back and yelled violently as he retaliated with a powerful front kick. Jack’s wiry frame flew backward, crashing into Tank Top and causing both of them to roll over the sides and slam onto the deck of the Calypso.
Tank Top dropped his handgun, and Ange watched with wide eyes as the grenade fell from his grasp as well. It hit the deck in slow motion and rolled straight toward her at the port gunwale.
She might’ve had time to toss it away, but where? She couldn’t throw it onto their enemy’s boat. No, Scarlett was there.
With no time to think, her body took over. She and Jack both lunged for the port side, then dove headlong as far as they could and splashed into the water. Just as their bodies broke through the surface, the grenade exploded.
A loud boom. A powerful rumble. And a release of razor-sharp shrapnel in all directions.
Tank Top was barely able to stagger to his feet before his body was ripped to bloody shreds. What was left of him flew back, smashing against the transom, toppling onto the swim platform, and splashing into the water. The sliding glass door shattered. Pieces of the deck broke apart. A plume of smoke rose above the boat.
The explosion resonated through the water. Even muffled by the Calypso, it still shook Ange and Jack as they turned over and headed back for the surface. Bursting out of the water, they could hear the loud groan of engines. It was the Regal. Flynn and Shorty had dropped to the deck and were unscathed. They had Scarlett and they were already making a break for it.
Both Ange and Jack reached for the top of the port gunwale and pulled themselves up in one quick motion. Ange rolled onto the deck, snatched her Glock, and took aim. She fired off three rounds in succession, one striking Shorty in the shoulder before they grabbed Scarlett for cover and turned out of view beyond the bow of the Calypso.
Ange didn’t skip a beat. With the agility of a cat, she practically sprinted around the cockpit and onto the forward tip of the bow. Planting her feet, she raised her Glock again. This time, she wasn’t aiming for the cockpit. She couldn’t risk hitting Scarlett. Instead, she aimed for the engines, hoping to disable the craft or at the very least slow their escape.
She fired over and over, relentlessly raining lead upon the rapidly escaping boat. Despite her efforts, the Regal continued to creep farther and farther from her grasp.
Soon, her Glock clicked and the slide locked back, signaling that the magazine was empty. She kept her eyes locked on the boat, as if her surging rage could stop it in its wake. Her jaw clenched tighter and her gaze narrowed as the boat grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Her anger and resolve intensified with every passing second. Her breathing was quick, her eyes focused.
Soon, the Regal was nothing but a blip on the southern horizon.
When Ange finally lowered her weapon, she realized that her hands were shaking. Her hands had never shaken like that before. She’d been thrown into danger against overwhelming odds time and time again in her life. She’d fought, killed, and narrowly escaped death’s grasp. But her hands had never shaken.
Seeing the boat motor from view and not being able to do anything about it cast cold, hard emotions upon her that she’d rarely felt before. She could only watch as the boat disappeared. She could only watch as they took Scarlett.
“Ange!” Jack called out from the cockpit.
It was the fourth time Jack had called her name in the past thirty seconds, but she’d only heard the last one. She was so focused, so entranced by her anger, that her mind had blocked out everything else.
She snapped out of it. Spinning around, she saw Jack standing with the radio in his right hand.
“I’m getting ahold of the Guard,” he stated. “You need to call Logan.”
She nodded but remained frozen in place for a few seconds before fully snapping out of it and climbing back around and onto the deck.
SEVENTEEN
The helicopter touched down at the Port of Tampa an hour and a half after taking off at Key West International. The pilot brought us down in a field just north of the main cargo shipping facility. When the rotors slowed and the door opened, Scott and I stepped out behind two members of his security detail.
He’d given me a rundown of the situation during the flight. We’d be meeting with a ship crewmember who wished to remain anonymous. He was going to give us intel on what had happened to the boat that had disappeared in the Gulf. He gave his name but asked for discretion for the sake of his job. After researching him, Scott and the CIA deputy director had learned that he’d been working for various cargo ship companies for over ten years.
Despite the matter being well below his paygrade, Scott wanted to talk to the guy himself. Unlike most politicians, he was a man of action and liked getting his hands dirty. Just the way he was wired. And he’d asked me to tag along, given that I’d watched the scene unfold a few nights prior.
I wore a pair of cargo shorts, a gray tee shirt, and tennis shoes. Scott wore his usual well-fitted suit, though he’d left the jacket in the helicopter. Good looking, well built, and as sharp as they come, Scott was one of the most badass guys I’d ever met. Not many Rhodes Scholars make the decision to turn down lucrative financial opportunities in exchange for the rigorous life of a Navy SEAL. But Scott thrived on challenges, both academic and physical.
With the wind still billowing down from the main rotor, we stepped out onto the grass. We’d flown in a Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King, the same make and model used by the president, and it was painted dark
blue and white.
A man wearing a white hard hat and a gray dress shirt tucked into jeans met with us briefly and pointed us in the right direction.
The main section of container traffic is along the western shoreline of East Bay Chanel, a narrow strip of deep water that connects East Bay and Hillsborough Bay. It handles over thirty million tons of cargo every year, goods transported primarily to and from Central America and the Caribbean, and the port covers a surface area of over five thousand acres. It’s also the closest US port to the Panama Canal, giving it a strategic advantage in the maritime shipping industry.
We stepped through a checkpoint, then moved into the cargo holding area. There were rows of various brightly colored shipping containers, many stacked up to four high. Once we entered, we could see nothing but walls of metal on both sides, with the occasional break. Even though it was still early, the place was already loud with activity. Two freighters were tied off. Massive cranes lifted shipping containers off one, stacking them on the shore.
The man we were there to talk to was going to meet us right in the middle, on the shaded side of row E. We reached the spot a few minutes early. There was nobody around, no movement as far as we could see in either direction.
Scott and I got to talking about the whole thing while waiting.
“There’s just something I can’t wrap my head around,” he said. “Why would the billionaires that run these operations jeopardize everything by trafficking women?”
I didn’t have to think that one over to come up with a response.
“You deal with the rich and powerful all the time,” I said. “You know how many of them think. Like they’re above the law. Hell, many of them are. And when you’re above the law, you feel like you can get away with anything. What did you guys find on the freighter?”
“It’s an independent. Gets contracted out by various shipping companies.”
“Somebody must own it.”
“A shell conglomerate apparently,” he said.
“And at the top?”
“We’re working on it. But there’s a lot to sift through.”
I shook my head. It was some shitshow. I found it hard to believe that a sex-trafficking operation existed on at least one shipping freighter without the head honchos who ran the show knowing about it. Which meant that we might be dipping our toes into a massive highly illegal and morally corrupt operation.
I glanced at my watch. Our contact was five minutes late.
Growing impatient, Scott grabbed his cellphone and quickly called an already stored number. He waited for thirty seconds as it rang and rang and rang. No answer. He tried a second time. No answer again.
We stood for a few more minutes before a vibrating phone caused us to go quiet. But it wasn’t Scott’s phone. It was mine.
I reached into my pocket and pulled it out. It was Ange. The screen showed a picture that I’d taken of her in Curacao a few months earlier.
I pressed the answer button and held it up to my ear.
“Hey, how—”
“Logan, they took her,” she said, cutting me off. She was frantic, her words rushed.
My heart stopped. “What? What do—”
“They took Scarlett,” she gasped.
EIGHTEEN
We were halfway back to the helicopter by the time we ended the call. Pocketing my phone, we sprinted the rest of the way to the chopper, then Scott told the pilot to take off.
Ange’s words resonated in my mind.
Attacked. Firefight. Scarlett abducted.
Ange was alright. So was Jack. But a group of guys with guns had taken Scarlett, and they were motoring south, into the Straits of Florida.
My heart pounded as I stared with a narrowed gaze through one of the side windows. The pilot had us up and flying back toward Key West in a blur.
After questioning me as much as I’d questioned Ange, Scott went to work. He called contact after contact, starting with the commanding Coast Guard and Navy officers in the Lower Keys.
I wished I hadn’t left. I wished I’d been with them. Ange is one of the best mercenaries on the planet, and Jack can hold his own much better than most. Whoever had managed to swipe Scarlett and get away with their lives couldn’t have been novices.
There never was a damn contact, I thought, the fact creeping into my mind. The entire thing was a ruse to get me out of their hair.
The burning anger I felt transformed into a firm resolve.
Wherever they take her—to the ends of the earth, to the darkest, most dangerous depths—I will find her. I will bring those who took her to justice, and I will bring her to safety.
Ten minutes after takeoff, Scott got a call back from Wilson.
“We can’t find a boat matching the description via satellite,” Wilson said, his voice all business over the speakerphone. “We’ve swept the area over and over.”
“What about a freighter?” I said, looking over at Scott. “Any of those between Key West and Cuba?”
He paused a moment then went back to work.
“There’s one,” he said after a few minutes. “It’s heading for Havana. Should reach Cuban waters in the next half hour.”
Wilson sent over the info on the freighter. It was larger than the one they’d tracked two nights earlier and was owned by a different company.
I thanked him for the intel and told him I’d be in touch.
After ending the call with Wilson, we sat in silence for a few seconds. My gaze was narrowed as I stared out the nearby window.
“You’ve got a look in your eye I’ve seen before, Dodge,” Scott said. “I sure hope you’re not about to do what I think you’re about to do.”
My gaze shifted to meet his. I didn’t need to answer that question. He already knew the answer.
“You barely know her,” he added. “Let us handle this.”
“I’m going to find her, Scott. That’s all there is to it.”
He paused for a moment, then sighed.
“There’s talk of the president going to Cuba. He even wants to eventually lift the travel ban. But we’re a long, long way from that. You go there and you’re on your own. We can’t have your back there. No one will.”
“I’m not expecting any help.”
Scott turned and looked me dead in the eye.
“They’ll kill you, Logan,” he stated. “You start meddling in their business and they’ll throw everything they’ve got at you. These are big-time criminals and it’s their home turf.”
“I don’t give a shit how big-time they are. Or how many there are or where we engage. I’m going after them and I’m going to bring her back. Because that’s what a man does when injustice knocks on his fucking door. A man stands up.”
Scott shook his head.
“Don’t preach to me about injustice and how men ought to deal with it. I fought these bastards in the muddy trenches with you for years and now I’m fighting them behind a desk. There’s a right way to handle this and there’s a wrong way. Who benefits if you get yourself killed?”
We fell silent. Only the choppy whir of the rotor blades and the occasional sounds of radios from the cockpit filled the air.
He was probably right. He had always been much smarter than I was. The logical move would be to follow his plan and to play by the rules of the legal systems. But I couldn’t get her out of my mind. The picture of Scarlett being taken, beaten, drugged, and worse was all I could see. I’d only known her for a few days, but that had been enough. I was going and there was nothing Scott could say that would stop me.
“How in the hell do you plan on getting there anyway?” Scott said. “How do you think they knew she was on the Calypso? They knew the boat, and that means they also know yours.”
“I guess we’ll just have to find an alternate form of transportation.”
“You better not be thinking about flying. You’re too smart to even think about flying a private—”
“One way or another, we’ll get there.”
I stood, strode to the cockpit, and asked for an ETA.
“Five minutes,” the pilot said without taking his eyes from the sky in front of him.
I moved back and plopped back down. Scott had watched my every move, but I stared forward. My mind was made up, and he knew it.
We lowered in altitude and soon we were on the tarmac. Back in Key West.
I rose to my feet. The door couldn’t open fast enough. I strode for the steps as soon as I could.
“Look, Logan,” Scott said, stopping me at the door. “I’ll keep in touch. We’ve got everyone we can mobilized on this, but once they reach Cuban waters there’s not much we can do.”
“I know,” was all I said.
“Just… be careful, alright? Make the first move and don’t give these guys an inch.”
I nodded and headed down the steps. Ange was sitting in my Tacoma right on the tarmac, engine running. She stepped out and I wrapped my arms around her.
Wind from the chopper roared against us as it took off. I held her tight for a few seconds, then got a good look at her.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Her eyes were focused. They stared back into mine, mirroring my own resolve.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m—”
I held a finger up to her lips. “This isn’t your fault.” I looked up at the truck, then added, “Let’s go.”
Nothing more needed to be said. We were both on the same page. There was no point in asking her not to come. That would be wasted breath. Besides, as much as I wanted to keep her safe, I needed her by my side. Scott wasn’t messing around or just trying to scare me. We were about to walk willingly into a damned lion’s den.
We hopped into the truck and I hit the gas.
NINETEEN
I drove us over to our house, pulling into the driveway at just after 1100. I killed the engine and we headed inside. I went straight for our safe in the master bedroom closet. After punching in the code and pressing my thumb against the biometric scanner, I pulled it open.