Going back to the living room, he stared at the body.
“From now on, I’ll stick to weed,” he said to Sue Roy’s corpse. “Meth kills.”
Then, without another thought to his dead sister-in-law, he went out the door and to the barn. Sue Roy’s Expedition was parked behind his truck. He opened the driver’s door and saw the keys were still in the ignition.
He tossed the pack in the backseat and went out the rear door of the barn to the wood pile. By putting his weight against the stack of firewood, he toppled most of it, then began throwing the rest out of the way.
Once the steel door was exposed, he took the key that hung from his neck and unlocked it, throwing the door open.
Stepping down into the musty confines of the long-buried cargo container, Willy let his eyes adjust for a moment. The gold was stored in small metal boxes, two little bars in each box, each weighing twelve and a half kilos, a little over fifty-five pounds per box. There were thirty of them.
He carried two of the heavy boxes at a time over to the steps and hefted them up onto the wet ground, then climbed up and carried them to Sue Roy’s truck.
Repeating this process over and over, Willy was soon exhausted. Even with his strength, it was a lot of weight to move. But he finally had them all in the truck, slid as far forward in the back as he could get them. He didn’t want the rear suspension to squat too much.
It was time to fly.
But first, he had some business to take care of at the shack. If Benito and his street dealer in the Keys were going to meet him there, he could kill them both and make it look like they’d killed the women, then shot each other. The gators could only eat so much and if the PI was onto them, they’d eventually find the shack,
Once he’d opened the barn doors, Willy went back to the truck and reached in with one hand on the brake pedal to start it. Then he used the electric seat controls to move the seat all the way back. Five minutes later, he was on Highway 41, headed toward Carnestown. There, he’d go north on 29 to get to the interstate.
The problem with getting three-quarters of a ton of gold to South America was a big one, and he’d already decided how to do it. He couldn’t very well carry it onto a plane. But with the cash in the backpack, he could hire someone to fly him and the gold to South America.
“Brazil,” he said aloud, grinning. “Land of hot little chiquitas.”
Tank and I idled into the little marina in Flamingo. There were slips for at least a dozen boats the size of my Maverick, with a boat ramp to the left, fuel dock to the right, and the marina store at the center. I headed straight toward the empty fairway in front of the store.
Charity had called and I told her to hang on, while we docked, then slipped the phone in my shirt pocket.
The dockmaster came out and greeted us. “Planning to stay long?”
“Probably all day,” I replied, turning into an empty slip, and reversing the engine. “Maybe till tomorrow.”
I killed the motor and we climbed out and secured the boat. Digging my wallet out, I handed the man my credit card. “Is there a place to land a helicopter nearby?”
“A heli…say, what the heck’s going on here? Who are you guys?”
“No time to explain,” I said, showing him my old Homeland Security ID. “I have a helo inbound. It’ll be here in just a few minutes. Where can it land?”
“Over in front of the Information Center, I guess,” he replied, pointing to the southwest. “By the flagpole. They sometimes land them there when someone gets hurt.”
“Thanks,” I said, pulling my phone out. “Hang onto my card till we get back for the boat.”
Tank and I started around the west side of the slips. I could see the flag flying above and far in front of a large building ahead of us.
I put the phone to my ear and heard the noise from Charity’s chopper. “Look for a flagpole, Charity,” I said, already hearing the heavy whump-whump of her helo’s rotors in the distance.
Tank paused and listened. “Your pilot’s in a Huey?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Be like old times.”
We walked around the Information Center building, not seeing anyone around. Flamingo didn’t get a lot of visitors. I noted the direction of the wind from the flag. Out of the southeast, in line with a long, grassy area beyond the flagpole.
“Easy LZ,” I said into the phone. “Wind’s southeast, you have an area not quite as big as a football field, tapered at the approach end and fifty yards wide at the center.”
The black helo came into view, flying low out of the east and turning toward us. With a main rotor diameter of less than fifty feet, she had more than enough room and the wind on her nose.
Tank and I crossed the road and walked out to the flagpole as Charity made her downwind turn and swooped in toward us.
We both kept watch to make sure nobody got near the field, but the campground, marina, and Information Center all looked abandoned.
A couple of minutes later, Charity touched down softly in the grass and the heavy whump of the blades changed to a whir as she moved the pitch angle to neutral.
We bent low and ran toward the bird.
“You get in the front,” I yelled to Tank.
I went around to Charity’s side and opened the rear door behind her as Tank climbed in the copilot’s side.
Taking one of the jump seats, I pulled on a headset that was hanging on the bulkhead, adjusted the boom mic in front of my mouth, and turned it on. “Charity, meet Owen Tankersley. His friends call him Tank.”
I looked forward and saw Tank pause, looking at Charity. She was dressed in her usual snug-fitting, black flight suit and aviator sunglasses. Her blond hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail at the back of her head.
The interior of Charity’s bird was still the same basic setup Marines flew in Vietnam.
When Tank got his headset on and connected, I said, “Tank, this is Charity Styles, our pilot.”
“Pilot?” Tank asked. “Wish they all looked like you, Miss Charity.”
They shook hands and Charity grinned. “Flattery will get you anything, Tank. Strap up.”
He quickly got into his harness and fastened it up, no stranger to the inside of a Huey.
Charity looked back at me. “Good to see you again, Jesse. How’re Savannah and Flo?”
With that, she simultaneously twisted the throttle, pulled the collective up, and eased the cyclic forward, causing the Huey to leap into the air, nose down and climbing. She turned to the left as we rose, just enough to avoid the flagpole, then circled around the rows of trees that bordered the field. In seconds, we were a hundred feet high, nose down and accelerating toward the northeast.
“They’re doing great,” I replied, once my stomach caught up to us.
Tank sat there grinning.
“Will you be around for the wedding?” I asked her.
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” she replied, then turned toward Tank. “I was being flippant earlier. I’m sorry. That’s just the way I am sometimes. It’s a real honor having you aboard my aircraft, sir.”
Tank’s notoriety was strong among Army helicopter pilots. He’d been a door gunner in his early years as a Marine, in a bird exactly like the one we were in. He’d earned his Medal of Honor by ignoring his pilots orders not to get out.
“Now, why’d you want to go and get all formal and ruin the mood?” Tank asked with a wink. “I was gonna butter you up a little more.”
Charity laughed.
“You have the coordinates where we’re going?” I asked.
“Plotted,” she replied. “ETA is thirty minutes. Paul, Tony, and Andrew will get there about the same time.”
“From what Chyrel said, you might not be able to land. Lean on it and get to the area ahead of the guys. We’ll land somewhere and join up with them.”
“Roger that,” Charity replied. “My long gun’s in the safe. Once I drop you, I’ll have to go back up. Chyrel told me to tell you that the guy
on the west coast is heading east on I-75.”
“Willy Quick? What’s his ETA?”
“If he goes straight to where we’re going, about fifteen minutes behind us.”
“That’s cutting it close,” I said, opening the storage compartment in the floor.
In a tray below the lid were several cameras, lenses, tripods, and other photography equipment, all nestled in form-fitting foam inserts. At the other end lay some kind of nylon harness and rope. I picked it up. It was a rappelling rig and there were two of them.
“You been doing some rock climbing?” I asked.
Charity looked back and smiled. “A friend got me into it recently. He and I climbed Love Shack on Brac last week.”
“Love Shack?” Tank asked.
“It’s a seventy-three-foot, nearly vertical rock wall on Cayman Brac,” she replied. “It gets its name from a little shack built up on top.”
“Whatta ya think, Master Guns?” I said, holding up the rappelling harnesses. “Wanna jump out of a perfectly good aircraft again? We’ll gain a few minutes.”
“There’s two pairs of gloves in that top bin,” Charity said. “Sorry, but one pair is small. You can belay to the bulkhead, then run your lines through those D-rings in front of each door. That way, I can reach back and retrieve them myself.”
After separating the two lines and harnesses and laying one of each on either side of the cabin, I reached behind one of the uprights of an equipment rack and pressed the hidden release mechanism. The tray with the camera gear popped up slightly and I lifted it out.
Tank looked back as I removed Charity’s M40 sniper rifle from its case. Hers was a newer variant of my A3, which she’d given me for my birthday earlier in the year. This one had a longer picatinny rail to mount various optics, and where mine had a five-round integral magazine, her A6 variant had a removable ten-round mag.
“That weapon looks like it’s right at home in your hands,” Tank said.
I looked up at him and grinned as I opened the bolt. Nothing came out. Not that I expected anything to, but I always checked. I flipped the weapon onto its side, muzzle down, and checked the chamber before I closed the bolt. There were two loaded magazines in the case. I inserted one and checked that it was locked in place.
“Go directly to the location Chyrel gave you, Charity,” I instructed. “Tank and I will rappel in and Andrew and the guys can meet us there.”
“If they can get to it,” she replied. “I checked it as I was coming in—it’s in the middle of a swamp.”
“I know,” I replied. “But Quick got there. There are bound to be tracks they can follow.”
After I put the case back into its hiding place and reinserted the tray, I closed the lid and sat sideways in my seat. Once I’d folded the butt stock, I looped the strap over my head and shoulder, adjusting it so it was comfortable and at the ready against my chest.
Turning, I could see through the windshield. We were low, just fifty feet above the sawgrass. Bare spots revealed the dark, tannin-stained water below. Wading birds took flight below and ahead of us, but their efforts were wasted—we were past them before the third or fourth beat of their wings.
Ahead was a cypress stand and, rather than maintain altitude and fly around it, Charity pulled up just enough to clear the tops of the branches without losing much speed.
The airspeed indicator showed we were flying just under 124 knots, which was a little more than what the helo’s maximum speed was back in the day.
I knew the engine was original, rebuilt several times during the last fifty years, but Charity took great care of her bird and had done a lot to lighten its weight and increase both its range and speed.
The miles to destination readout ticked down slowly. We didn’t talk much. Tank removed the magazine from his Beretta, locked the slide, and inspected the chamber carefully. Not once, but three times. I remember him telling me that keeping your hands busy at familiar tasks calmed the mind and brought clarity.
Was he nervous?
How long had it been since Tank was in a combat situation? By Desert Shield, he’d been promoted to master gunnery sergeant and was primarily a marksmanship trainer. He did go to Saudi Arabia when we shifted gears to Operation Desert Storm, but he never crossed the border into Iraq or Kuwait. By then, I’d already been in Kuwait for over a month, hiding by day and moving by night to identify targets.
It was probably that Christmas in Panama, more than thirty years ago. That would have been the last time he’d been shot at. Not that it was anything a person ever got real used to.
Whenever he glanced back, or over at Charity, I could see the same resolve in his features I remembered. That sheer determination to not let his fellow Marines down had made him a man for all Marines to look up to. A hero.
People today have sports and TV heroes. Most would wet their pants going into places Tank had. They’d run from the sound of death and destruction. But a real hero moved toward it.
He shouldn’t be here, I thought. The man was seventy years old and retired. He should be on a beach somewhere, enjoying the time he had left.
“You don’t have to go with me, Tank.”
His head snapped around like the arm of a rat trap, his eyes locking on mine. “I know that, Gunny. I want to go and I am, in fact, going in there. So, you just get any notion you might have of protecting the old man stowed in that grape on your shoulders. You read me?”
What was I thinking?
I grinned at him as Charity began to slow the chopper. “Five by five, Master Guns. Loud and clear.”
“Three minutes,” Charity said.
Tank removed his harness and joined me in the rear, taking a seat on the opposite side. We both got into the rappelling rigs, then looped our lines through the D-rings by the doors and belayed them to two more rings on either side of the bulkheads that separated the cockpit from the cabin.
“Two minutes,” Charity said, looking back. “I see a shack dead ahead.”
Tank and I busied ourselves readying the lines by looping them through round Petzl rings, clipping the loop to carabiners on our rigs. We both snapped on about the same time, ready.
“Won’t work,” Tank said, trying on one of Charity’s gloves. “Too small.”
I handed him one of the other pair, which were larger, and he put it on. I kept the right one, remembering that Tank had natural ambidexterity, and never considered which hand he felt comfortable using.
“One minute,” Charity yelled back. “We’re slow enough to open the doors.”
When we slid the doors back on either side, the wind began to buffet the inside of the chopper. It was an oddly comforting feeling. I moved to the middle of the door with my line in hand, ready to throw it out. Tank did the same on his side.
“Line of departure,” Charity ordered. “Lock and load.”
“Saturday night, Gunny,” came Tank’s voice over the com, his back toward me.
I ratcheted the rifle’s bolt, sending a Lapua .308 cartridge into the chamber. “Rock and roll!” I replied.
“Don’t forget to take off your headsets,” Charity reminded us. “We’re coming up on the target.”
I scooted forward, extending my legs to the chopper’s skids, knowing that every movement I made was being mirrored by Tank, sitting behind me.
I was braced in the door opening as Charity came in hot, flaring at the last moment to a hover. We were about a hundred yards from a decrepit-looking shack, sitting above the water on stilts.
Forty feet below was a crude trail on high ground. The rotor wash lashed at palm trees and sawgrass, sending white water spray away in a circle.
I tossed my line down. It uncoiled as it fell, the bitter end landing in the water next to the trail. Then I removed my headset and stepped out onto the skid, facing inboard. Looking down, I saw Tank’s line on the ground right next to mine.
The two of us looked at each other, then he nodded, falling away from the bird and down as I did the same.
The ground came up fast and I increased the pressure, slowing me further.
Suddenly, I was on the ground.
Tank was already removing his rig, clipping it to the rappel line for Charity to haul back up.
I stripped out of mine and did the same, then we both stepped away from the buffeting rotor wash and toward the house.
Charity flew off, the lines dangling below her bird. One was getting shorter and shorter as she pulled it in.
“You feel that?” Tank asked, his Beretta in his hand.
“Feel what?”
“The jazz, man!”
I grinned at him. “Yeah, I feel it.”
He meant the adrenaline rush, and I did feel it. But lately, I felt it in a different way. There was an element of danger in some of the things I did, and it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve come to realize what the consequences of making a mistake might be.
Hell, two gray-haired boomers jumping out of a helicopter wasn’t something that happened every day.
I pulled an energy bar from my cargo pocket and tapped Tank’s shoulder with it as I surveyed the area. The shack and the rutted trail were the only signs of progress, and neither looked all that civilized.
Tank held his Barretta at low ready, muzzle pointed to the ground, as he also scanned the area. He took the bar I handed him and ripped the paper off with his teeth. He bit off half before putting the rest in his pocket.
I left the rifle slung on my chest, ready to bring to bear in a heartbeat if needed. But like Tank, I had my Sig in my right hand and my head on a swivel. A rifle’s better at longer distances, but I could get fifteen rounds at least on target before I could rack the bolt on the rifle to load a round after the first shot.
We were alone, about a hundred yards from the shack.
With the sound of Charity’s chopper receding in the distance, I pulled up Tony’s number, figuring Andrew would be driving. Tony answered on the first ring.
Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19) Page 17