by Mac Fortner
“Hey, Cam, can I help you with that,” he said and laughed.
I collapsed back down onto the bed.
He made no attempt to move me away from the window or punish me for trying to escape.
“I’m supposed to check on you once in a while. Do you need anything?”
“No thanks, I’m just fine,” I said sarcastically.
“Okay, see ya,” and he turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “Buck said he was going to get me a Wild Turkey.”
Billie Daryl looked at me for a minute and then smiled.
“One Wild Turkey coming up.”
With that, he left the room.
I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him again for a long while, so I continued to move the bed around the room. I reached the door and put my hand on the knob but felt it turn on its own.
It swung open, and Billie Daryl entered with my Wild Turkey in his hand. He started and looked up at me when he saw me standing so close. Out of reflex, I swung my right fist at him as hard as I could. I caught him on the jaw and felt it give. The Wild Turkey crashed to the floor and then so did Billie Daryl.
He fell outward, away from the door, but he didn’t move. He was out cold.
I pulled the bed closer to the doorway and tried to reach him, but he had fallen further than I could stretch against my cuffed arm.
I pulled at the bed even harder. What if he had the key in his pocket? Maybe they’d left it with him just in case I needed to go to the bathroom, or if they needed him to bring me to them somewhere.
The bed was pretty well jammed in the doorway and wasn’t going any further.
I reversed my stance and reached out with my free leg. I could touch him with my foot.
I reached down, removed my shoe and sock and stretched my leg out to him again. I was able to get my toes in his belt and tugged at him. He moved slightly toward me, and I kept pulling until he was finally close enough that I could grab him with my free hand.
I pulled him through the doorway and searched his pockets. Bingo. The key was in his right pants pocket.
I tried it on the cuffs, and they sprang open. I put my shoe and sock back on and cuffed Billie Daryl to the bed, just like I had been.
I peeked out the bedroom door, half expecting to see a gun pointed at me. No one was there. I guessed if someone else were here, they would have heard all the racket. I walked through the living room and looked out the front window. There were no cars in the drive. I looked out the side window and saw Jenny’s under the vestibule.
She must have left with Buck. If I left by the front door, I might be seen walking down the street.
I went to the back door and out into the pool area. Bucks forty-two-foot Sea Ray was sitting at his dock. I climbed aboard and checked the ignition for the keys. They weren’t there, so I checked under the Captains cushion. There they were. Very predictable.
I figured I could take the boat and cruise the canal until I hit open water and then ditch it at the first empty dock I saw. I started one engine and let it idle while I untied the lines. I pushed off and aimed the boat down the canal, a free man once more, in more than one sense of the term. Now I had time to think about Jenny. Even knowing what I then knew, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. That was except for a long prison term for the murder of Jack. Ronnie’s murder could be forgiven.
I didn’t have to go far. I passed under the bridge at Cross Street and pulled the boat into an empty dock. It didn’t look like anyone was around and the dock wasn’t visible from the street. It might take Buck a while to find his boat.
I walked along the canal until I could get to Hurricane Hole without being seen. The bartender let me use the phone, and I called Stacy.
Chapter 78
Agent Wootton arrived in the West Little River easternmost area ten minutes after talking to Sanchez.
Communicating by radio, they did their best to set up a search grid. They called the local police department for assistance and together they had the area covered but knew it would take a lot of luck to find two Iraqi men in this mostly Hispanic neighborhood.
~*~
Amar stood at the window of the warehouse and watched a black SUV with blue flashing lights speed past the building.
“Something has tipped them off,” he said to Kasim.
“Maybe they are not looking for us.”
“Maybe, but we cannot take the chance. We have to get the van out of here and to the Marina before noon.”
They dragged the now stiff bodies away from the door and opened it. Kasim drove the van out of the building, and Amar jumped in.
“I will stay out of sight. If they are looking for us they probably know that there are two of us,” Amar said.
Kasim drove slowly, so as not to draw unwanted attention to the van. He turned onto Little River Drive and followed it toward highway 95.
A city police car passed them heading west. Kasim watched it in the rearview mirror. Suddenly, the police cruiser’s brake lights came on, and the car spun a 180 degrees turn.
“They saw us,” Kasim said.
“Let’s go,” Amar shouted as he pulled his machine gun from the bag. He checked his clips and shoved a new one in.
Kasim floored the van and sped toward the highway. He took the highway entrance on two wheels and fought to keep the van upright. Checking his rear-view mirror again, he saw the cruiser closing in.
Amar broke the back window out of the van with the butt of the rifle. He pointed the barrel out and squeezed the trigger. The cruiser swerved and spun in a circle.
Kasim sped along the highway. He took the next exit and slowed as he entered another neighborhood.
As he crossed through an intersection, a black SUV came from his right side and clipped the rear end of the van.
The van spun halfway around, and Kasim floored it again, jumped the curb and swerved back out on the side street.
The SUV followed only three feet off their bumper. Amar regained his kneeling position and fired another blast of bullets toward the SUV.
Agent Wootton ducked down in the seat and tried to keep the SUV on a straight track.
Another volley of gunfire and Wootton was forced to step on the brake. The SUV came to a halt.
The van sped away and turned right one block later.
Agent Sanchez raced toward the last position that Wootton had called in.
Amar could hear another noise he recognized as a helicopter. This wasn’t good. Kasim looked out the window and up to the sky.
“They are right above us,” he yelled to Amar.
“Keep going. We can’t let them catch us.”
Kasim was flying down side streets now, catching air when he bumped through intersections.
Sanchez saw the van coming straight at him. He hit the brakes and cut the wheel to turn the SUV sideways in the middle of the road, blocking its passage.
Kasim did the same. Both vehicles came to a halt in the middle of the road.
~*~
Agent Wootton stopped his SUV a half block behind the van. Three squad cars pulled up behind him, the officers got out and trained their weapons on the van.
Wootton held his hand up to them and shouted, “There might be a bomb in that van. Don’t shoot.”
The officers immediately dropped the aim of their weapons to the ground.
Two helicopters were now flying around in wide circles over the van and police. One was an FBI helicopter, the other a news one.
This was a big story—whatever it was—the newsmen were sure. They went to live cam, and the cable stations broadcast the scene throughout the city.
Chapter 79
Sheriff Buck and Jenny returned to his house. When they entered, the TV was on.
Billie Daryl was nowhere to be seen in the living room, but the scene on the TV screen caught Buck’s eye.
“Holy shit!” he yelled.
Jenny turned to look at the TV too.
“My god, is that what I think it is
?”
“Yeah, it’s Amar and Kasim. It looks like they didn’t make it to the marina.”
“What are we going to do now?”
Buck ignored her and kept watching the scene unfold. The talking head in the corner of the TV was saying something about a possible bomb in the van.
Buck could see Amar and Kasim through the powerful lens of the camera. They were sitting calmly and talking.
“What the hell are they going to do?” Buck said. “Are they going to surrender?”
Jenny walked to the bedroom to check on Cam. The sight she saw made her heart skip a beat. Billie Daryl was sleeping like a baby on the bed, his hand and leg cuffed to the posts.
“Way to go, Cam,” she said to herself.
She returned to the living room. Buck was still glued to the TV.
“Is there a danger of the bomb going off?” she asked him.
He turned and looked at her. “Would that bother you if it did?”
“I just don’t want a lot of innocent people to get hurt.”
“Sometimes innocent people have to get hurt for the better of the masses,” he said.
“Is there any way to disarm it?”
“Yeah, I can do it with my phone.”
Jenny pulled her gun and pointed it at Bucks' head. She pulled back the hammer. He heard it and turned toward her.
“What the hell, Jenny?”
“Disarm the bomb,” she said.
“Why?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her FBI badge.
He looked at it for a second then back into her eyes and finally laughed.
He turned back to the screen.
“Come on, Amar, don’t give in,” he said to the TV.
Just then, the van sped forward. The camera showed agent Sanchez diving out of the way at the last minute and the van sideswiping his SUV as it blew by.
“Ha!” Buck said. “Look at that.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said, Buck? Disarm the damn bomb,” Jenny repeated, pointing the gun at Buck’s head again.
Buck reached into his pocket and pulled out a small .22 caliber pistol.
Jenny pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“I found your gun earlier when you were in the bathroom. I took the privilege of unloading it. Hope you don’t mind.”
Buck walked Jenny to the bedroom.
“Ah shit,” he said. “Billie Daryl, you stupid son of a bitch.”
“You mean Mike Garrison, don’t you?” Jenny said.
“Well, I guess you have it all figured out.”
“Most of it. Enough to know you’ll never get away with it.”
“I’ll get away with it.”
“No, you won’t. There’s nowhere to go.”
“My guess is that the part you don’t know is that I changed my plan about taking the chance of blowing up Quantico. The president coming along was just a bonus. I found a good way to get rid of Amar and still get my revenge.”
“Your revenge?”
“Yeah, you know, for killing Farah.”
“You killed Farah.”
“No, I didn’t. That part you got wrong because Bosse and Trueblood made it look that way. They killed her.”
“So, what will you gain from killing the president?”
“After I do it, I will announce to the world that the reason the President died was because he was aiding and abetting criminals.
I will have my revenge for the only woman I ever loved, and I will be a hero in Iraq. Not to mention very rich.”
“You’re sick.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been told.”
“All of this for a woman?” Jenny said.
“Well, not all for a woman. Actually, most of it was for the six million dollars we raised through boat jacking, drug sales and donations from sympathizers who would also like to see an attack on the United States.”
“So, you did it for money.”
“Finally, you figured it out.”
Jenny sighed.
“Into the bedroom,” Buck said.
He tossed Jenny the keys and told her to free Billy Daryl. She did, but he still didn’t move.
“Get some water and wake him up,” he said.
Jenny filled a glass with water from the bathroom and poured it over Billy Daryl’s head. He snorted and then woke.
“Wha a hell,” he said in a muffled voice.
Feeling his jaw, he said, “Ma Futing ja e bro.”
“Don’t talk. You sound stupid,” Buck said to him. “Any idea where Cam went?”
Billie shook his head.
“Get up. We have to find him.”
“Why do you need Cam? It’s all over now,” Jenny said.
“Nothing is over. I’m still going to take my six million and go to Iraq and live like a king.”
“Then go,” Jenny said.
“Nope. Not until Cam is dead.”
“What about me? Are you going to kill me too?”
“Maybe, it depends.”
“On what?”
“On if you’ll help me get out of the country.”
“I might. What’s in it for me?”
“You get to live, and I’ll give you two hundred thousand.”
“What about Billie Daryl? You going to kill him?”
Billy Daryl looked intensely at Buck.
“Of course not. He’ll get two hundred thousand, and he can go live where-ever he wants.”
Billie Daryl smiled at this.
“But first we have to find Cam. He knows too much. He’ll have me caught before I even get to the airport.”
Chapter 80
The van tore down the street at breakneck speed, back toward highway 95.
Wootton and Sanchez ran back to their vehicles and jumped in. The van had a good lead, but Sanchez knew there were other cruisers on their way.
Kasim took the on-ramp and sped toward highway 95. It would only take minutes, and then he would be at the Miami Golf Club minutes after that.
“What are we going to do when we get to the golf club?” Kasim asked.
“We’ll drive the van into the clubhouse and then run on foot in all the commotion. We can detonate the bomb from our cell phone later,” Amar said.
The van was only about two minutes from the golf club when it was struck by another police car, on the left rear bumper. The van spun around twice, hit the guardrail and flipped onto its side. The bomb did not explode.
Buck was watching all the action on TV again.
“Crap, it looks like it’s over this time,” he said.
“Good,” Jenny said.
They watched as the van was surrounded by police and FBI vehicles. Two officers ran to the van and pulled Amar out. They leaned him against the van and one returned to get Kasim.
Buck pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. “This is how you disarm a bomb,” he told Jenny and hit the send button.
Jenny watched as the van blew up. The nearby cars and personnel just disappeared in a white flash. The helicopter filming the scene started to spin and crashed to the ground.
“No,” Jenny yelled.
“That bomb just destroyed everything in a half mile radius. I hope none of those men were your friends,” he said to Jenny.
“You son of a bitch,” she yelled and attacked Buck.
He hit her with one big fist, and she went down and out.
“Load her into the car,” he told Billie Daryl. “We’ll go find Cam and then get rid of both of them.”
Buck went to the back door and looked out at his dock. “Son of a bitch stole my boat. I guess we’ll have to use Jenny’s.”
~*~
I was in Stacy’s houseboat. I didn’t know if Buck would think to look here or not. If we had had the TV on, we would have known a lot more than we did now, but unfortunately, we didn’t want the distraction.
“Are you going to call the police?” Stacy asked.
“No, not yet. For one thing,
I don’t know which ones, if any, are working with Buck.”
I looked out the window and up and down the dock. “This is crazy,” I said, “I can’t keep looking over my shoulder forever.”
Stacy brought me a drink. “Wild Turkey on the rocks, right?” she said, holding the glass up to me.
“Perfect,” I said.
I took the drink and downed it.
“Another?” she asked.
“No. I better not. I need to think clearly.”
“Do you think Buck would have killed you?”
“Yeah, I think he would have. I think he would kill anyone who gets in the way of his goal, whatever that really is. It didn’t all add up when he was telling me how he wanted justice for his girlfriend. That was eight years ago. He could seek out the man who he says killed her and shoot him. He was a sniper. I know he could hit his target.”
“Cam, I’m not exactly worldly, but I do know that only a few things motivate men. Sex, money, power and revenge,” she counted on her fingers. “I don’t see any sex in this scenario, and if you don’t think its revenge, then that leaves money and power. Sometimes the two are one.”
“You’re right. There is a lot of money involved in this, and the money would give him power. The power would bring an unlimited amount of sex and sex would, maybe in his mind, exact revenge. Kind of like, they can slow me down for a while, but they can’t stop me,” I said.
“Makes sense to me, but that doesn’t really help us, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t. It might help us to understand him a little, though.”
Stacy’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID but didn’t recognize the number. She answered anyway.
“Hello.”
“Stacy, this is Sheriff Buck. May I talk to Cam please?”
Stacy’s eyes grew large, and she looked at me and mouthed “Buck.”
I shook my head.
“Cam isn’t here,” she said.
“I believe he is.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“I tell you what. Just for kicks, put your phone on speaker and lay it down. That way if Cam should walk in during my conversation he will have the option of picking up.”