by Jack Carr
A Ford F-350 King Ranch truck pulled up in front of the hangar and a small man in a western shirt, jeans, and boots tipped his Stetson to Liz and nodded his head at Reece.
“Señora Riley.”
“That’s Ernesto,” said Liz. “He’ll drive us to my place. Don’t worry, he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
They climbed into the pickup and Reece took in the sights of the sprawling ranch as they made the ten-minute drive to Riley’s cabin.
• • •
Islamorada, Florida
It had cost Leonard Howard a fortune, but he had been able to get himself and his family on a red-eye flight from San Diego to Atlanta and then down to Fort Lauderdale, where they rented a car for the drive to Islamorada in the Florida Keys. They arrived at the rental house exhausted, but happy to be safe, and as far away from San Diego as the U.S. borders allowed. That nut job Reece had to be operating without any kind of support, and there was no way he’d be able to make his way across the country without being captured. Besides, how would he ever find them here with no intel assets?
Howard and his family had lain low the first day and caught up on sleep but now they were growing more comfortable with their tropical surroundings and were beginning to explore a bit. His teenage son and daughter complained at first about the lack of a beach near the house but quickly realized that a world of aquatic wonders lay just below the water’s surface, among the flats and reefs that made the Keys a snorkeling and diving destination. Howard bought them snorkeling gear at a local dive shop and they spent most of the day exploring their new world. Leonard and his wife were satisfied sitting on the porch and reading. She read architectural and interior design magazines while he read a new Brad Thor novel he’d picked up in the Atlanta airport. This is the way they’d live the rest of their lives once he cashed in on what he and the late Admiral Pilsner simply called “the Project.”
• • •
Ghost Rose Ranch, Texas
Reece followed Liz up the steps of her cabin and into the small living room. “Can I get you anything?” she asked as she headed for the kitchen. “I’ve got beer, wine, water, not much else. . . .”
“I’ll take a beer, I guess, and maybe some lights. This place is like a cave,” Reece said, squinting at the photos on the mantel. There were pictures of Liz in her flight suit in front of her Kiowa in what was obviously Iraq, one of her father pinning on her wings at flight school graduation, and another that stopped him short: Liz, along with Reece, Lauren, and Lucy, all smiles at Christmas, happiness frozen in time.
Liz walked back into the living room carrying a bottle of Coors Light for Reece and a glass of white wine for herself. “I finally get a man back to my place and he’s the one non–family member I can’t have fun with.”
Reece quickly recovered and pulled himself away from the photo.
“Are family members off-limits where you come from? I didn’t realize that,” he joked.
“I’m from Alabama, asshole, not Tennessee.” Riley punched Reece on the upper arm as she sat down on the couch next to him. “You can use my Wi-Fi if you need it. We can’t get a landline out here so it’s all via satellite. I think it’s secure but I can’t promise anything. You know how risky that stuff is these days. I got three prepaid phones for you as well. I wouldn’t use any of them more than once, if I were you.”
“Okay, thanks.”
It was risky but necessary. Reece connected to the Wi-Fi signal and checked his SpiderOak folder for a message from Ben Edwards. He found one that was nothing more than a series of numbers and letters followed by “JAG.” It took Reece a moment to realize that the characters were grid coordinates and that Ben was leading him to a loose end, one of the few remaining names on his list.
“What do you have there?” Liz asked.
“A message from Ben,” Reece responded. “Looks like it’s the location of my next target.”
“Good ol’ Ben,” Liz said, reminiscing. “I remember him hitting on me constantly when I visited you and Lauren out in Coronado. I think he had just been picked up by the Agency. He always gave me the creeps. I think he was married at the time and his wife was right there!”
“Sounds like Ben. He always had a bit of trouble with those wedding vows.”
“Where’s the target?” Liz asked.
“Florida. The Keys.”
The problem was getting there. It was the most bottlenecked spot in the United States, with one road in and out and surrounded by water on all sides. If this were a SEAL mission, the water would be the easy way in. They could use aircraft, a larger vessel, or even a submarine to drop him and his men in CRRC Zodiac boats offshore, where they’d ride as far as they could before swimming in silently below the surface using closed-circuit breathing apparatus gear that left no telltale bubbles to give away their positions. The irony was that, despite being a highly trained maritime commando, Reece didn’t have access to so much as a canoe.
Reece had spent some time in South Florida as a kid but that was decades ago and that part of the country had changed dramatically since then. Before the war he and his Teammates had conducted demonstrations for the crowds at the UDT/SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, so he did have some semi-local contacts. He’d hit it off while he was down there with some really good local guys who liked to spearfish and had kept in touch with a few via email. Still, he didn’t know them well enough to reach out for help as the most wanted man in America, which he suspected he was well on his way to becoming as law enforcement began putting the puzzle together.
He also knew that there were some small private airstrips in South Florida where the more entrepreneurial and sophisticated black market businessmen had brought in bales of contraband marijuana known as “square grouper” during the 1970s and ’80s, but the feds still watched them closely as part of their counterdrug efforts. He couldn’t think of another way in that gave him a reasonable chance of getting out and decided he’d have to rely once again on the generosity of his friend Marco. Reece excused himself and walked out onto the cabin’s front porch. He used one of the throwaway phones to reach out to his Mexican benefactor and, sure enough, Marco had contacts in Miami who would arrange for no-questions-asked transportation. There would be a car waiting for him at the FBO at the Opa-Locka airport, northwest of Miami.
“So, it looks like you won’t get to have a man stay overnight after all,” he told Liz as he walked back inside.
“Where to then, my fugitive friend?”
“Miami, then I’ll drive down to the Keys. How long would it take us to fly there?”
Liz looked toward the ceiling and did some quick math in her head. “Probably three and a half hours, depending on the winds.”
Reece looked at his watch. “Maybe we will have a sleepover; too late to pull this off tonight. I need to look at the imagery and do some planning anyway. Does this cavern have a guestroom?”
• • •
Early the next morning Liz filed a flight plan and they headed for the Sunshine State. Their flight path straddled the white sands of the Gulf coast and the forgotten shorelines of the Big Bend as the Florida peninsula arched southward toward the Caribbean. After passing over Sarasota, Riley turned due east, crossing the seemingly endless expanse of islands and Everglades.
What looked like a solid wall of saw grass from ground level appeared more like hundreds of intertwined snakes from above. Small rivers, creeks, and streams ran among clumps of dry or semidry land where vegetation grew. Navigating it by water would be nearly impossible.
The desolate habitat, far more varied than most believed, was a stark contrast to the highly populated coastlines of Florida that attracted tourists the world over. This must have been what all of South Florida looked like before men came with dredges to turn a sea of grass into a concrete jungle. When hurricanes came to reclaim the ancient swampscape, they built taller levees and deeper canals to hold back the tide of nature. The westernmost barriers of the levee system drew across the state
like a line in the sand between raw beauty and manufactured civilization. Cookie-cutter neighborhoods stretched eastward toward the Atlantic, and a gridlike maze of asphalt snaked with traffic.
Reece stayed in the plane while Liz checked in with the FBO and located his ride, a 2004 Dodge Ram truck with keys under the mat. She returned to the plane and gave Reece a thumbs-up.
“Your ride is there, just like your friend said it would be. You sure you don’t want me to come along and help out?”
“No, Liz, this is my show. You’re sticking your neck out further than I want you to as it is.”
“Did you see me getting my head cut off by some hooded asshole on YouTube? No? Oh yeah, that’s because some SEAL I’d never met before stuck his neck out for me.”
“Well, I’m glad I saved your ass back then ’cause I sure needed you this week.”
“Go do what you gotta do and call me if you need a hot extract. There are airfields all over down here: Marathon, Key Largo, Tavernier; there’s even a private strip down on Summerland Key that I could probably talk my way into. You call and I’ll be there.”
“Liz, I seriously can’t thank you enough. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Be safe, Reece, be safe.”
Reece started the truck, cranked the air-conditioning, and headed out into the southbound surface streets of Miami. There is the Miami that tourists see, with brilliantly lit skylines, art deco architecture, and white sandy beaches, and then there was this one. Much of Miami’s population is made up of first- or second-generation Americans, immigrants from third-world, Latin American, and Caribbean nations who found refuge in the opportunities offered by Florida’s growing economy. The predictable results of that mass transplant are entire neighborhoods that appear to have been plucked from Havana, Bogota, or Port-au-Prince: places where iron bars cover every window and doorway, English is rarely spoken or read, and the occasional chicken, pig, or even cow can be found in an urban backyard. Reece had done some drug interdiction operations as an enlisted SEAL down in South America during the pre-9/11 days, and the sights and sounds of these neighborhoods brought him back to those more innocent times. He made his way south and west onto the Palmetto Expressway, pulling into an aggressive flow of traffic that would give L.A. a run for its money.
Reece chuckled as he thought of a trip to Miami a few years earlier, when he and some Army special operators staged a mock attack on a prison facility that was set to be demolished. The troops snuck ashore and planted breaching charges to blast their way through the thick concrete walls of the erstwhile correctional facility. When the charges detonated, residents of a nearby housing project thought that they were being raided by SWAT teams and rushed to flush narcotics down the toilets. The effect of hundreds of toilets being flushed nearly simultaneously overwhelmed the utility infrastructure, and it took hours for the area to regain normal water pressure. They probably took more drugs off the street inadvertently that night than the local police would have seized in a month.
Reece finally made his way to Florida City and down into the string of islands known as “the Keys.” The roughly one-hundred-mile chain stretched along the roads and bridges of a single highway, with each mile designated by a numerical marker that counted down to zero as you headed toward Key West. Just about every location in the Keys was referenced by its corresponding mile marker. As you counted down the mile markers and migrated farther south on U.S. 1, you saw fewer signs of Miami’s influence and more artifacts of Old Florida. The long-standing roadside motels and dive restaurants, relics from the 1950s and ’60s, reminded Reece of road trips with his parents and grandparents as a kid. If only his children could have lived to know such carefree days.
CHAPTER 59
Islamorada, Florida
AMY HOWARD WAS TAKING an afternoon nap while the kids watched a movie on the large flat-screen television in the living room. Leonard asked the children if they’d like to join him for a walk, but they declined. They were both at the age where they preferred to spend as little time with mom and dad as possible and they were worn out from snorkeling all morning under the Florida sun.
Howard wore a wide-brimmed sun hat, lightweight nylon Columbia fishing clothing, and Teva rafting sandals as he walked down the coquina driveway toward the access road to U.S. 1. A sidewalk paralleled the highway before connecting to a nature trail that offered a dry look at some of the miles of mangrove swamps that formed the core of the local ecosystem. At one point, the trail entered a cathedral of overhanging trees, which provided some welcome shade from the blazing sun. Despite the slow pace and the short distance he’d covered, Howard was already sweating in the oppressive humidity. He couldn’t imagine this place in August. As pretty as it was here, he’d take California any day.
He heard what sounded like footsteps behind him and turned to see the source of the sound. When he did, he was hit in the jaw by a blow that sent the world to black and him toppling down onto the concrete sidewalk. He awoke with a man astride him, raining blows down on his face. He tried to bring his hands up to block the punches, but his arms were pinned down by a death grip from the man’s thighs. Reece had pummeled Howard’s face to a bloody pulp, but stopped himself before beating the weaker man to death. That would have been too painless an end for the man who sold Reece’s troop out to the Taliban out of pure greed. He took off his leather belt and looped it around Howard’s neck like a leash, dragging him off the sidewalk and into the mangrove swamp, the JAG crawling behind him as best he could. When they were fifty yards from the trail, Howard’s arms gave out and he became dead weight. Reece dropped the belt, letting the man’s head fall to the soft ground before picking the lawyer up in a fireman’s carry and wading into the water. The mangroves were like a maze and Reece had to pay attention to find his way back the way he’d come. He was more than a little relieved when he rounded a corner and saw the bow of the “borrowed” Hewes flats boat riding low against the water. He tossed the semiconscious Howard over the gunwale and bound his hands and feet with flex-cuffs for the ride.
Off the main chain of islands that were bisected by the highway and railroad were numerous islands of varying sizes and shapes that were accessible only by boat. Reece steered the Hewes northward across the clean waters of Florida Bay in search of a suitable spot away from the prying eyes and ears of civilization. He didn’t have to go far. The shallow draft of the flats boat allowed him to cross over countless underwater obstacles by simply raising the outboard motor. Standing on the poling platform in shorts and a T-shirt and moving the boat with a long fiberglass pole, he looked to any observer like just another angler looking for bonefish in this world-class fishing destination. Reece found a protected cove where he could pull the boat in close to the shore and dropped anchor.
The admiral’s JAG had regained consciousness and was jabbering on endlessly, taking no responsibility for his part in the plot to kill Reece’s troop and family, begging for his life, and blaming everyone he could think of for the current predicament. Reece cut the plastic ties binding Howard’s feet and tossed the senior officer over the side, watching him flail wildly until he discovered the water was only chest deep.
Reece slid over the gunwale and shoved the naval judge advocate toward the mangrove-tangled shoreline. Howard tripped constantly on the exposed roots of the native trees and it took them what seemed like an eternity to reach the dry sandy ground of the island. The JAG fell to his knees in front of a sabal palm tree and began to pray loudly. Reece looked down in disgust at a man who would seek the help of God after sending so many good men to early deaths without remorse. Howard’s hat had fallen off somewhere, and Reece attempted to grasp a handful of the man’s balding hair, but what was left after the military-regulation haircut slipped through his fingers. On his second attempt, Reece grabbed the petrified attorney by the throat and hoisted him skyward, holding an evil-looking blade in the other hand.
“Stand the fuck up!” he growled as he yanked the captain to his feet and sho
ved him back against the tree. “I want you to know what’s happening to you. You are a traitor, a coward, and a disgrace to the uniform you wore. You served sixty-eight good men up to the enemy on a silver fucking platter so that you could rise alongside that shitty excuse for an admiral. You are the lowest piece of human shit alive. Look at me! Look at me when I talk to you, motherfucker!” Just as his enemy had lost control in their quest for power, Reece lost control and succumbed to the primal need for vengeance, all the emotions of the past several weeks boiling to the surface as he stood in front of the Navy attorney who had facilitated the deaths of his men half a world away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Reece. I’m just a JAG. I don’t know what you’re saying,” Howard pled with his eyes closed, blood still streaming down his battered face.
His denial sent Reece over the edge with rage. It was time for Howard to die. Reece slashed him across the lower abdomen with the curved blade of his razor-sharp Half-Face karambit knife, splitting the lawyer’s abdominal wall and sending his intestines spilling out onto the marshy ground.
Howard released an animalistic screech and grasped for his bowels, desperately trying to shove them back inside the gaping opening. The wound bled surprisingly little.
“My God, my God . . .” were the only words he could muster, repeating them over and over in agony, his pleas for divine intervention going unanswered.
Reece showed no mercy, dropping the karambit to the ground and pulling his Dynamis Razorback belt knife from his waistband. He wielded the knife with violent grace, deftly skewering Howard’s intestines with the tip of the blade, but carefully not severing them, then jammed the tip of the knife into the soft, pulpy trunk of the tree, tethering the JAG to it with his own entrails.
“Walk,” Reece said in a calm voice that contrasted sharply from the screams of rage he’d used just seconds earlier. “Walk around this tree or I’ll gut your kids while you watch.”