Stop at Nothing

by Michael Ledwidge

  It was a man.

  A short naked black man, and he was covered in blood.

  78

  Emerson dragged the little black man over among the cracked shells.

  It took a full thirty seconds of looking at the swollen, broken face to verify it was Sergeant Jeremy.

  The bald man laughed as he dumped out what was left of the peanuts over Sergeant Jeremy at his feet.

  “You sons of bitches!” Gannon said, wild-eyed, stepping forward.

  As he did this, Sunglasses clocked him hard with the gun in the temple. As Gannon put his hands to the spot, his right leg was kicked out from underneath him and he fell backward. He landed hard on his ass, banging the hell out of the back of his head against the tight hallway’s Sheetrock wall on the way down.

  Gannon’s lower lip split as Sunglasses kneed him explosively in the face a few times. Then the barrel of the gun was jammed painfully in his ear.

  “You have a choice here, Mike,” Reyland said, standing as Emerson dragged Sergeant Jeremy back into the bedroom.

  “An end-of-life decision actually,” he said as he crunched over the shells.

  He crouched down until they were eye level.

  “We can either take you and your friend back into that bathtub of yours and get busy slowly lopping you into pieces small enough to wash down the drain. Or you can tell me where our property is.”

  Gannon stared down at the tile. A drop of blood from his split-open temple plopped down onto it. Then another drop from his lip followed it. One of his lower teeth was loose. He could actually move it with his tongue.

  He looked up at Emerson as he returned from the bedroom alone.

  Then he finally played the only card he had left.

  “I have a video of the people on the plane,” Gannon said, looking up into the bald man’s gray eyes. “I had a GoPro camera when I dived down. It shows the FBI director, the black guy, and the other two white guys. It shows their faces. All close-ups. That’s what you want, right? That’s what all this is about?”

  In the silence, Reyland peered at him poker-faced.

  “And let me guess,” said the younger agent, Emerson. “If you’re not back somewhere by the right time, it gets released by a lawyer or some other bullshit?”

  “No,” Gannon said, shaking his head. “I didn’t make any copies of it. The tape’s still in the camera, and I can get it for you. Right now.”

  Reyland continued to peer at him.

  “What about the missing items? Don’t lie and say you don’t know what I’m talking about. We found the empty case.”

  “It’s there, too. I hid everything together.”

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?” Emerson said. “You’re obviously NYPD or something. Except your fingerprints aren’t in the NYPD database. You have no Social Security card, but you have an Irish passport? You don’t even have any records here in the Bahamas except for your shitty boat.”

  “A New York cop? Me?” Gannon said. “Okay, fine. Guilty as charged. I was a cop. But I’ve been clean for a few years now. Don’t ask me about the records. The Irish passport thing was because my old man was from Donegal. I registered for dual citizenship because I didn’t want to pay taxes back to the States. I’m just a retired cop who happened to see a plane go down. I want to work with you here, okay?”

  Gannon turned to Reyland.

  “Listen, I have what you want. I’m just going to need my diving stuff. I hid the video nearby underwater in a blue hole.”

  “You hid the video in a what?” Emerson said.

  “It’s an underwater cave,” Gannon said. “They call them blue holes. It’s about half an hour south from here.”

  “Well, Mike, I’m glad you’re cooperating,” Reyland said, putting an arm over his shoulder. “I’m on a pretty tight schedule, and I’m overjoyed at least that you’re not being a deaf-mute pain in the ass like your stupid stubborn old friend back there.”

  “Let me just go get it,” Gannon said.

  “A man of action, Mike. I like that,” Reyland said. “But do me a favor and go to the front door, would you?”

  Sunglasses opened the door for him. The barrel of the .45 stayed rammed in his ear as he pulled him up to his feet.

  On the other side of his lawn, a sky blue painters’ van with ladders on its roof was pulling up at his curb. There was a short, stocky Spanish guy in the front passenger seat, and there was an extremely jacked black-bearded guy with a lot of tats behind its wheel.

  The Spanish guy got out and opened the van’s side door.

  Inside, Ruby and Stick and Little Jorge were all down on the floor next to each other. Their hands and feet were secured with zip ties, and they had duct tape covering their mouths.

  “Please,” Gannon said to Reyland as his front door was slammed shut. “I’ll get you everything you want. You can’t hurt them. They have nothing to do with this.”

  “First he’s a wise guy. Now it looks like Mike, the cop, here wants to make a deal all of a sudden,” Reyland said as they all laughed.

  “Why the hell are you doing this?” Gannon said, looking at him. “What the hell is this even for?”

  Emerson stepped over and put a hand on Gannon’s shoulder again and leaned in. Fatherly. The way a coach would in a close basketball game.

  “We couldn’t even tell you if we wanted to,” he whispered in Gannon’s ear. “It’s a matter of national security, Mike. Strictly need-to-know.”

  79

  When they went outside into his warm backyard, the sun was completely down, and it was raining slightly. With the help of the mercenaries forming an assembly line over the scrub grass from his storage shed to the carport, it took almost no time at all to load up his truck with the Gator and the diving equipment.

  Gannon watched as they clunked several more tanks than necessary into the truck’s bed.

  “You don’t need to do that. Two tanks are more than enough,” Gannon said.

  “Good one,” the short, cocky Spanish thug from the van said. “You think you’re going anywhere by yourself, think again.”

  Gannon looked at him. Like the rest of them, he was an American. He reminded him of a guy he once knew, a little all-state wrestler at his high school in the Bronx. What had they called him again? El Mighty Mouse, Gannon remembered.

  Sunglasses zipped Gannon’s hands behind him hard and tight with some plastic ties and put him into his pickup’s crew cab. Gannon watched as he went over to the van with Blackbeard. A moment later, El Mighty Mouse got in behind his truck’s wheel with Agent Emerson riding shotgun.

  “Pardon me for stating the obvious,” El Mighty Mouse said as he sorted through Gannon’s key chain, “but your truck here’s a real genuine piece of shit.”

  “Well, now we know why he took the money,” Emerson said as he rolled down the window.

  Gannon stared at the blue van with Ruby and Stick and Little Jorge in it. After a minute, the big bald son of a bitch, Reyland, came out of his bungalow’s front door.

  At least they were getting away from the house, Gannon thought. He wondered how long they’d had Sergeant Jeremy for. Over a day at least. His wife, Emmaline, had to be crazed. He was badly beaten, but he was a tough old codger. Maybe someone would come by looking for him.

  Reyland walked over to the truck.

  “Ruiz, if you would,” he said, gesturing toward the house.

  Ruiz grinned back at Gannon before he climbed out and walked across the lawn.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Gannon said frantically as El Mighty Mouse went in through the open front door. “What’s he doing in there?”

  The FBI men said nothing. They all stared at the house.

  No, Gannon thought, biting his lip. There was no way.

  Gannon reared back in his seat as if he’d been Tasered as the two shots boom
ed.

  As El Mighty Mouse walked out of the house whistling, Gannon’s gaze slid down onto the inside of his truck floor. There was an empty Gatorade bottle there. It was next to an old sky blue kid’s flipper from when Declan was young.

  He felt dizzy as El Mighty Mouse, still whistling, climbed back into the truck and turned over the engine.

  The sergeant had five kids, Gannon thought. Twenty-something grandkids.

  As the engine revved and they began to pull out, Gannon remembered Sergeant Jeremy’s invitation to his sermon.

  He closed his eyes.

  There would be only one way out of this now.

  80

  Two hours later it was full dark, and they were all back behind the pine woods on the rough rock shelf above the blue hole.

  Along the ridge of the water hole, the mercenaries made an actual campfire, and there were chairs and a folding table with coffee and radios on it. Behind the table was Gannon’s Gator as well as another 4x4 quad they had in the back of the van.

  It looked almost like they were on safari or something.

  They had done a better job of setting up shop than he and the Aussie geology professor had done, Gannon thought as he sat there. And they had been there for over two weeks.

  Beside Gannon sitting on the uncomfortable rock were Ruby and Stick and Little Jorge. Reyland was seated to their right about five feet away on one of the camp chairs.

  As they sat silently in the firelight, Gannon busied himself by vividly wondering how the skin of Reyland’s neck would feel in the palms of his bound hands.

  He was still quietly staring and imagining when there was a sudden loud splash from the water below.

  “He’s right. It’s like a damn maze under there, boss,” Blackbeard suddenly called up from the hole’s pond-like surface. “There are tunnels at every damn turn. We could be here for months. Shit, years!”

  Reyland turned in the campfire’s light.

  “You sneaky little prick,” he said, flinging the dregs of his coffee thermos at Gannon across the firelight.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Gannon said as he chinned coffee off his face onto his shirt. “Just send me down already. I know exactly where it is.”

  “I think this cop is playing games, boss,” he heard Blackbeard call up from the water hole. “There’s so much silt in the water you can hardly see even with a flashlight. I think he’s lying. I don’t think there’s shit down there.”

  Gannon took a relieved breath as he heard this. Twenty minutes before as the mercenary suited up and went under alone, Gannon had started worrying that maybe the son of a bitch might actually come across the bag by sheer luck.

  Guess not, dumbass, he thought.

  “You hearing me, boss?” Blackbeard called up.

  “Shut up,” Reyland said, staring at Gannon.

  “I know you have a map. Where is it?” he said.

  “I already told you. I had a map, but I burned it after I hid everything,” Gannon explained. Which was actually true.

  Reyland wrinkled his large brow as he leaned back in the folding camp chair, thinking.

  In the silence, the only sound was Emerson sitting at another chair behind Reyland, typing at his computer.

  Gannon looked across the limestone rim of the hole to where Sunglasses and El Mighty Mouse stood strapping what looked like fully automatic M4 military rifles. They carried them with a casual ease up before them in the position known as high ready. Butt tight to shoulder, elbows in, trigger finger against the receiver.

  Textbook, Gannon thought, watching them. Professional.

  “What are you looking at?” El Mighty Mouse said to him as Reyland finally nodded.

  “Boys, new plan,” Reyland said, pointing at Ruby. “Take the woman and take her clothes off and tie her to that palm tree there.”

  “Wait for me, fellas,” Blackbeard yelled from the water. “Toss me another rope. C’mon. You can’t start the fun without me.”

  “If you touch her,” Gannon said, calmly shaking his head, “if you touch any of us, you never get it back.”

  “Who are you kidding?” said Sunglasses. “Your girlfriend will be squealing so loud, you’ll tell us the moon is made of queso dip to make it stop.”

  “The only thing you’ll get out of hurting me or my friends,” Gannon said, squinting at Reyland, “will be the joy of me making sure you never find what you’re looking for. Ever.”

  “Oh, listen to this, boys. Supercop here is going to stand up to torture. We’ve got a tough guy here among us,” Sunglasses announced.

  Gannon’s smile was almost wistful in the firelight.

  “I’m not that tough,” he said, staring at the water.

  Gannon’s smile evaporated as he stared at the man level in his aviator sunglasses.

  “I’m just tougher than you,” he said.

  “Sit your silly ass down,” El Mighty Mouse said to the mercenary as he started to come around the rim of the hole at Gannon.

  Gannon turned to Reyland.

  “I said I would get what you need. Untie me, and I’ll go get it.”

  “Maybe this information is time sensitive,” Reyland said. “Maybe I don’t care as long as it stays buried.”

  “And all those diamonds?” Gannon said, staring at him. “Are they time sensitive, too?”

  “Diamonds? What diamonds?” El Mighty Mouse said.

  Gannon looked over at him and then back at Reyland and smiled.

  “You didn’t tell him?” Gannon said. “Oh, wow. You didn’t, did you? He doesn’t know. And here I thought all you guys were friends.”

  “What diamonds?” El Mighty Mouse said again.

  “I mean, the money is nothing,” Gannon continued. “Two point eight million. What’s that? Chump change. The stones down in that cave are worth ten, twenty—who knows, maybe thirty—times that.”

  El Mighty Mouse looked at Gannon, then back at Reyland.

  “Is that true?” he said.

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe,” Reyland said, putting up his hands. “You think they tell me everything, Tommy? Was I on the damn plane?”

  “It’s true,” Gannon said. “There’s a fortune down there.”

  Gannon strained to hide his elation as El Mighty Mouse walked over and knelt. There was a quick metallic snick of a knife and then the zip ties were cut from his wrists.

  “You win,” he said to Gannon. “We won’t touch the girl. Put your shit on. You’re going down with our boys to find it.”

  81

  Blackbeard stroked across the surface of the blue hole as Gannon came down the rope, lugging his tanks and vest. Gannon looked at his tattoos. There were plenty to look at. In fact, from his bull neck on down, there seemed to be virtually no uninked skin at all.

  He tensed at the playful expression on the mercenary’s face as he arrived.

  “Hey, boss,” the huge killer said, smiling widely.

  “Hey,” Gannon said.

  “C’mere. Let me show you something,” Blackbeard said, swimming up close.

  As Gannon watched, the commando grabbed his rope. As he did this, he drew from somewhere a machete-sized black knife. It had evil high-tech lines and a silvery razor-sharp scimitar-like edge that glittered in the firelight as he laid it none too gently up under Gannon’s jaw.

  “Hey, it’s cool, man,” Gannon said, trying to hold the rope and his heavy gear and stay very still all at the same time.

  “I don’t give two shits about recovering anything or whatever they said up there,” he said, staring in Gannon’s eyes. “You mess with me when we go down, you’re going to be the world’s first recipient of underwater open-heart surgery.”

  “No problem,” Gannon said, swallowing carefully. “Gotcha, man.”

  As the blade was withdrawn, there was a tremendo
us splash. When Gannon turned, he saw Sunglasses was there in the water behind them.

  Gannon winced again as the man smiled at him. He was without his sunglasses now, and where his left eye should have been was a hole you could have putted a golf ball into.

  Where did Reyland get these people? Gannon thought as he began to strap up.

  Three quick minutes later, Gannon adjusted his mask, popped the regulator’s gummy rubber piece into his mouth and let go of the rope. He went down first with Blackbeard following almost at the end of his flippers and Sunglasses close behind him.

  He had been walking it all through in his mind, so as they got to the floor of the blue hole’s bowl, he softly tapped the BCD valve to get the horizontal perfect and went easily and immediately into the corridor-like passageway to the east.

  He turned around for the first time when he got to the limestone stairwell with no stairs about a minute later.

  Shit, they were actually good divers, Gannon thought. Still Blackbeard was right behind him, shining his light in his face, and his buddy Sunglasses was close behind him.

  It didn’t matter, Gannon thought as he turned and began to descend lower and lower into the darkness.

  There was no other choice. No other play.

  He breathed in deeply through the hissing regulator and slowly let the air bubbles flow out behind him. He closed his eyes and listened to the silence. After a moment, he began to hear his heartbeat pulse faintly against his eardrums.

  He would just have to get everything done in the eyeblink of time that he would have.

  82

  “How long has it been now, Emerson?” Reyland called into the radio.

  “Twelve minutes,” Emerson called back over the Motorola.

  Ruby glanced over at Reyland.

  Emerson had just left on the Gator quad a minute after they had gone under. Ruby had overheard him say he was having trouble getting a cell signal for the laptop and wanted to try to get better service out closer to the road.