Climate Killers: Book 3. Bernadette Callahan Detective Series

by Lyle Nicholson

  Elvis smiled on shore. He could see and hear everything that Winston did. The glasses were transmitting perfectly. He wore an earpiece and heard, it’s a go, execute.

  Two helicopters rose up in the air from an island close by. Elvis cocked his submachine gun and let out a chuckle. He was about to make a lot of money for today’s work.

  “I hear helicopters,” Percy said.

  Theo looked out the window. “Affirmative. I hear two.”

  “What’s the problem?” Bernadette asked.

  “Sounds like you are,” McAllen said.

  “What? We don’t have any backup. No one in the Nicaraguan government knows we’re here. We came with a guy named Elvis—”

  “Elvis Calderon?” Sebastian asked.

  “Ah... yeah… that’s his name. Why?” Bernadette asked.

  “He’s the worst crook in the country. He works for the CIA, FBI, Russians or Chinese depending on who’s paying him,” McAllen told her. “Did he give you anything to monitor our meeting with?”

  Winston nervously touched her glasses. McAllen grabbed them and looked into the lenses. “Hola, Elvis you little shit. That’s you on the shore isn’t it?” He dropped the glasses on the floor and ground them with his boot. “Okay, everyone, battle stations. We got company coming.”

  Sebastian shouldered his sniper rifle. Percy and Theo grabbed M16’s, Grace and Margaret stood back from the window with their handguns. McAllen watched the helicopters approach.

  “We got a problem,” McAllen said.

  “What’s that?’ Sebastian asked.

  “I see rocket tubes on the sides of the helicopters.”

  “Aw shit. That doesn’t make for a fair fight now does it?” Sebastian said. He looked up from his gun sights. “What’s our plan B?”

  “We get them to give us a nice target.” McAllen turned to Percy, “You man the 50 cal, Theo, grab the RPG, Margaret and Grace take over the M16s, and we’re going for a boat ride.”

  McAllen turned to Bernadette and Winston. “Ladies, we’re about to see if you’re telling the truth—that you didn’t come with back up.”

  “How’s that?” Winston asked.

  “We’re about to take a speed boat out with you two in it. If they come after us, they don’t know you. If they don’t fire on us then these people are your back up.”

  “What happens if they just fire at the house and ignore us?” Bernadette said.

  Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “We’ll find out if that big bull shark that was swimming out there likes white or dark meat.”

  “Doesn’t sound like great options, but let’s get going,” Bernadette suggested.

  Bernadette and Winston followed McAllen and Sebastian down a spiral metal staircase to a dark and damp smelling basement. The sound of water lapping on the sides of the boat canal told them where they were before they saw the boats.

  McAllen jumped in and started the engine. Sebastian cast off the mooring lines and pushed the two ladies towards the back of the boat. The sleek inboard growled with power when McAllen revved the throttle.

  “Now, hold on tight back there, I’m going to come out and make a lot of side to side maneuvers in front of the house. When the helicopters come after us they’ll present broadside targets to Theo and Percy.”

  Bernadette looked at Winston. “Sure, sounds easy.”

  The speedboat roared out of the channel. A helicopter peeled off its attack on the house and came after it. McAllen threw the boat into sharp S turns. High sprays of water shot out the stern.

  Plumes of water erupted on both sides of the boat as a machine gun opened up from the helicopter. McAllen pushed the speedboat to its max. The boat rose up, bouncing hard on the waves.

  Bernadette held onto a gunwale. The boat was rocking violently. She feared the boat would hydroplane and flip with so much power.

  The boat suddenly slowed as McAllen threw the wheel into a 180 turn and gunned the engines. The helicopter overshot them.

  Bernadette saw the helicopter as it passed overhead. Two men were hanging out the doors with machine guns. She could only make out the outline of the pilot in the cockpit.

  The helicopter slowed and turned to come back around after them. Bernadette heard a loud whooshing sound from somewhere on the land and the helicopter exploded in a ball of fire.

  Sebastian looked at the house where the RPG round had been fired from, “Sonofabitch, that’s one hell of a shot.”

  The other helicopter rose high up into the air moving away from the firing range of the RPG. It came high over the house then dipped its nose. All six of its rockets fired at once. The house exploded.

  “You bastard,” Sebastian yelled. He picked up his sniper rifle and fired off a round. It missed.

  McAllen looked at Sebastian. “You need to kill them Sebastian, not make them angry.”

  The helicopter turned and came towards them. The side door machine gunners opened up. The water around the speedboat erupted in plumes of water.

  Bernadette wondered if McAllen was going to make a run or stand and fight. He didn’t rev the engine. He’d made his decision.

  Sebastian lifted up his sniper rifle. McAllen stood at his back to steady him. He called in the distance. “1,000 metres, 800, 500, he’s dropping down—wait for it—he’ll drop down more for a better shot—wait for it—now.”

  Sebastian fired at less than a hundred metres. Bernadette saw the shot break through the helicopters glass cockpit. The pilot’s head exploded, a spray of pink mist covering the glass.

  The helicopter roared over them and dived into the water. The rotors thrashed the water as it hit before exploding and sending a water geyser into the air.

  Waves rocked the boat. They all turned their eyes to look at the house. It was engulfed in a fireball.

  “You think they made it out?” Sebastian asked.

  McAllen looked at his cell phone. He had nothing. He drove the boat towards the front of the house. There were no signs of life.

  The sounds of police sirens could be heard from on shore. “We have to go,” McAllen said. “If we stay here, we’ll become guests of the Nicaraguan government. We can never avenge the deaths of our friends that way.” He revved the boat and headed for the marina.

  5

  The boat sped over the waves. The rowboat ride that Bernadette and Winston had made was covered in minutes by the speedboat. McAllen steered the boat beside the dock. Sebastian leapt off, securing the mooring lines.

  “What now?” Bernadette asked, staring at McAllen. In all of the scenarios she’d thought of—this wasn’t one of them.

  “We’re going to find your little friend, Elvis, and he’s going to tell us who hired him,” McAllen said. “I want to know who’s responsible for killing my friends.”

  “That’s no problem,” Elvis said, stepping out from behind a shed.

  Bernadette looked up to see Elvis on the dock with a machine gun pointed at them.

  Elvis waved his gun at Bernadette, “take that rifle and drop it into the water.”

  Bernadette picked up the sniper rifle. Sebastian’s eyes closed as she dropped it over the side.

  “Now, you want to know who’s trying to kill you?” Elvis said. “I was hired by your American FBI to kill you. Yes, your very own people, Senora Winston.” He nodded in her direction, shrugged and sighed. “These are strange times, but you see, whoever pays the most money gets what they asked for.”

  Winston felt Bernadette’s hand in her back. She pulled her gun, and fired three shots into Elvis, the bullets finding their mark in his chest.

  He fell forward on the dock. His machine gun clattered at Sebastian’s feet.

  Winston turned to Bernadette. “You knew I had that?”

  “Hell yeah. As soon as you came out of your room with a jacket on. You kept fussing with your back every few minutes. You pretty much broadcasted you had a concealed weapon.”

  McAllen stood over Elvis’s body. “Check him for car keys,” he said to Sebastia
n then looked down at Bernadette. “Do you see his vehicle close by?”

  “It’s the silver SUV in the parking lot,” Bernadette said stepping out of the boat.

  A chorus of sirens was coming in their direction, emergency medical services, and police vehicles approaching from Granada. People were lining the docks on the far side of the Marina, staring at the fire across the lake.

  Sebastian pulled Elvis’s body behind the shed and threw his machine gun in the water. He looked at McAllen. “We’d best make tracks.”

  McAllen turned to Bernadette and Winston. “Well, are you coming with us?”

  Winston looked back from the approaching sirens. “Whoa, what? Why would we come with you? We were just witness to outright murder. The Nicaraguan authorities will want to take our statement—”

  “Are you kidding me? Our dead Elvis said your own FBI is trying to kill us. That means all of us,” McAllen said.

  Bernadette nodded in the direction of the island. “He’s right, Winston, if Elvis was lying, the FBI would have made sure you weren’t harmed. They don’t believe in collateral damage.”

  “I just don’t get it—who in my department would want to kill me?” Winston said.

  “Let me break it down for you Agent Winston,” McAllen said. “Four of my friends just got killed out there. Whoever sent those guys didn’t much care if you or Detective Callahan died in the process. They wanted information. They knew I’d give it to the detective—then you became a liability.”

  “Aw, shit,” Winston, said. “This was a goddamn set up. How could I be this stupid?”

  “Welcome to the party,” Bernadette said. “I have no idea how the Canadians are involved in this but I mean to find out.”

  “Hold up for a second,” McAllen said raising his hand. “I wouldn’t be contacting your people just yet. There’s an answer in Florida we need to find. Once we do that, we can go from there.”

  “What answer?” Bernadette asked.

  “Minutes ago, we told the FBI where to find Sigurdsson. They’ll be sending a team there to find him. I want us to get there and stop them. Maybe, if we can capture us an FBI agent we’ll find out who is behind this,” McAllen said.

  “This is getting weird,” Winston said. “Someone in my own department—”

  “On that subject, we need your phone, Winston,” Sebastian said.

  “My phone?”

  “Yes, your phone. The FBI will have a tracking GPS on your phone. The moment we leave here, they’ll be on us. Now, give me your phone.”

  Winston took her phone out of her jacket and handed it to Sebastian. He pulled the sim card out, dropped it on the dock and ground it with his heel.

  “I’ll get you a new burner phone on the way to the airport.”

  “We’ll pick up alternate passports at a place we know in town,” McAllen said. “We can’t land in the USA with your ID’s. Both your governments will be looking for you.”

  “You want us to be on the run with you? Are you kidding me?” Winston asked.

  “It’s not on the run, it’s on the hunt.” Bernadette turned to McAllen. “It’s getting busy, we’d best get out of here.” She nodded in the direction of the ambulances and police arriving at the other end of the marina.

  They walked towards the SUV. Winston and Bernadette got in the back while McAllen took the wheel and Sebastian got in the passenger seat with a cell phone in his hand.

  They passed the emergency vehicle and made their way into Granada where they picked up new passports in an hour. The old guy who made the passports didn’t blink an eye at the FBI and RCMP IDs that he lifted photos from. His bushy eyebrows only rose when McAllen dropped five one hundred American dollars in his weathered hand. He muttered a brief “muchas gracias,” and they were on their way.

  “What’s the plan to fly out of here?” Winston asked. “Do we fly to Miami or Fort Lauderdale?”

  “Neither,” Sebastian said. “We’ve got a direct flight to Key West International Airport.

  “Don’t they only take small planes?”

  “Yeah.” Sebastian turned in his seat. We got one picking us up.”

  Winston sat back in her seat and leaned over to Bernadette. “How are these guys getting a personal plane?”

  Bernadette whispered, “You remember the story I told you about some Wall-Street guys who tried to put a hit on them?”

  “Uh, huh, I remember. Something about them killing all the guys who attacked them on their island.”

  “Well, a short while later, the Wall-Street guys were executed in their office in New York… and all the money in their accounts was gone.”

  “How much money?”

  “About 300 million.”

  “Hmm, I guess that buys a lot of private jet time. Also makes our travel companions stone cold killers.”

  “Guess so,” Bernadette said.

  Bernadette leaned forward in her seat to get closer to McAllen. “You got some kind of plan when we meet up with these so-called FBI people in Key West. I don’t think a handshake and making introductions will be of much use.”

  McAllen looked at Bernadette in the rear-view mirror and smiled. “No, we’ve ordered a friend of ours to have some toys ready for us when we land. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

  “Well, order me an extra-large squirt gun if it’s a toy, and anything in a 9 mm with a hollow point if it’s not,” Bernadette said.

  They made it to the airport by noon to find a Learjet sitting on the tarmac waiting for them. Sebastian drove the SUV to the far side of the airport terminal and gave two teenage kids a one hundred-dollar bill to take the SUV back to the Dario Hotel in Granada. He told them the front desk manager would give them one hundred dollars more when they got there. The second part was a lie, but then, Sebastian reasoned, one hundred dollars was easy money for them.

  The kids jumped in the vehicle and were gone in a flash. Sebastian smiled as he walked back to the terminal. Whoever was looking for Elvis’s vehicle wouldn’t find it at the airport. That gave them some time.

  The Learjet was small. It had four large leather seats that swiveled to face each other, with a tiny restroom at the back that one with the ability of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat could use comfortably.

  Sebastian sat across from Winston, poured himself a glass of Chardonnay and offered one to Winston. She turned away in disgust and poured herself some water.

  “Suit yourself,” Sebastian said. “You need to relax a bit, Agent Winston. You’re very uptight.”

  “Said by an old man, trying to channel a thirty-year-old.” Winston raised an eyebrow.

  Sebastian flashed a smile. “Better than trying to channel an eighty-year-old.” He sipped his wine and smacked his lips.

  Bernadette poured herself a scotch from the self-serve bar and sat across from McAllen. “I wanted to say, I’m sorry for your loss. There was no time until now.”

  McAllen had his own large glass of scotch. He downed a mouthful, swallowed hard. “You can save your sympathies. I’ll mourn my friends in my own time. They all knew if they stayed close to me, that sooner or later this would happen.”

  “That absolves you of having to feel the pain of their loss?” Bernadette asked.

  “You some kind of shrink, detective?”

  “No, just trying to figure out what makes you tick… one day you’re out to destroy the world. The next day you want to save it.”

  “Now, just hold on. You’re making me sound like half the governments on this planet.” McAllen grinned.

  Bernadette was about to launch into a more heated discussion when the pilot stood beside them. “Excuse me, Mr. Van Horn,” the pilot said, using the fake ID McAllen had presented at boarding. “We have a storm coming into our landing destination.”

  “How bad is it?” McAllen asked.

  “It’s going to make for a rough landing, but more importantly, our plane will not be able to stay in the area. We’ll need to leave once you’ve disembarked and fly to a safer location.�
��

  “You expect that big of a storm?” McAllen asked.

  “Yes, Mr. Van Horn. Key West is about to be glanced by Hurricane Kelly. They’ve already put an evacuation order on the barrier islands and much of Key West. Are you sure you still want us to land there? We could land in Miami, but you need to know it will be evacuated later today as well.”

  McAllen smiled at the pilot. “We’ll be fine. Just drop us off in Key West, and we’ll figure our own way back.”

  The pilot nodded and walked back to the cockpit.

  Bernadette watched him walk away and swirled her drink, “You have no idea how we’ll get back, do you?”

  McAllen drained his scotch and looked at Bernadette. “Nope, not a clue, we’ll make it up as we go. But I do know one thing. Those FBI guys, if that’s who they really are, will be in the same kind of weather.”

  “Great, stuck in a hurricane with a bunch of guys who are trying to kill us. How cozy,” Bernadette said and went back to the bar for a refill.

  6

  Agent Morgan couldn’t believe the report from Nicaragua. The body of Elvis Calderon had been found on the dock. The last transmission he’d seen from Calderon showed their cover had been blown. The police were sifting through the destroyed house, but it could take weeks before identification of bodies could be made. There was a report from the airport of two women who had the features of Winston and Callahan with two older men boarding a private jet. None of this was good. His entire plan was at risk.

  He looked across his desk at Lawrence Derman, a squat older man who seemed to recede further into his chair. Morgan tapped his finger on his desk, something he did when things bothered him. His beautifully manicured nails made a loud sound on the polished mahogany.

  “This is what you brought me?” Morgan asked. His eyes narrowed at Derman. “You brought me a bunch of incompetent Russians, Chechens and washed up Arab terrorists who couldn’t mount a helicopter attack—armed with rockets I might add—to take out six geriatrics and two women.”

  “I’m terribly sorry…” Derman muttered, trying to rise up out of the chair. He failed to do so and slouched back down. “Matvel Sokolov. He said he’d put together a crack team—the very best… I just had no idea they’d fail so badly.”