3 Crystal Blue

by John H. Cunningham

  “Where the hell you going?” Boom-Boom said.

  “I’m taking her to get a taxi, all right? Relax.” I nodded toward the rapidly approaching baggage cart. “What the hell’s in there?”

  “My salvation.”

  With that I hustled back to Crystal, who was staring toward the terminal, her face like chalk. I opened the door to the small building—

  Special Agent T. Edward Booth jumped up from the couch and threw down a copy of People magazine.

  What the hell?

  “I’ve been waiting for you.” His blue blazer and khakis looked like he’d slept in them. He stepped forward and extended his hand. “I’m sorry, Ms. Thedford.”

  “I tried to call you, but my phone’s dead,” I said. “Are you here to give us a ride?”

  Booth’s mouth twisted into what passed for a smile at Crystal.

  “I’ve got good news. The body the Royal Police found is not your husband.”

  Crystal’s hand shot up to cover her mouth but the fast intake of breath was still audible.

  The air froze in my lungs.

  “The deceased was a black man. Gang-banger from St. John.”

  Booth’s smile made it clear he was oblivious to the pain he’d caused with the false alarm.

  “John’s still alive!” Crystal shouted. She jumped up and down, then lunged into my arms. “John’s still alive!”

  “Well, Ms. Thedford, we’re really not sure where—”

  “He’s still alive, Buck! We can still find him!”

  My heart lifted at the tears of joy springing from her eyes.

  “What do we do now, Buck?” Crystal said when she’d calmed down a smidge. “I need to get back to Jost Van Dyke! Everyone there’ll be worried sick—can you take me there now? Please?”

  “Sure—”

  “No water landings, Reilly.”

  I glared. “Give me a minute with Agent Booth first.” I took him by the elbow and steered him back into the waiting area. “How the hell could you think a dead black guy was John Thedford?” I said.

  “Take it up with the Royal VIPD, it’s their fault—”

  “You said a gang-banger from St. John. Any ID?”

  “Worried it’s a friend?” I just stared at him. “Guy named Derek “Spice” Jones, part of Diego Francis’s gang.”

  I felt the blood rush from my face. Spice was Brass Knuckles’s friend. I thought of what Boom-Boom said about Russians—damn! What the hell was Boom-Boom loading into my plane? With Booth right here!

  “Do you know this is a Russian cartel that’s moved in—”

  “I told you to drop this.”

  “—and John Thedford was grabbed from St. John by—”

  “That’s enough, Reilly!” Booth glared at me, his eyes like black beads. “This is too big—I can’t have you free-lancing through the middle—”

  “You have me do the dirty work with Crystal, then cut me out again?” I worked up my best glare. “Oh, I get it! The path to glory’s opened up and you don’t want anyone—”

  “Cease and desist or you’ll be arrested, I’m not fucking around!”

  “Unbelievable.” I pivoted on my heel and started toward the door.

  “I’m serious, Reilly! We have an operation going—”

  I stopped, dug into my pocket, and threw the dead cell phone at him.

  “Go to hell, Booth!”

  With that I pushed the tinted glass door opened and stomped toward Crystal on the tarmac. Then stopped cold.

  BRAMBLE STOOD IN THE shade next to Crystal, and he looked anything but contrite. My stomach flopped as I looked past him toward the Beast. There was no sign of Boom-Boom, but the baggage cart was uncovered, empty and abandoned by the plane. They’d already loaded the contents?

  I tried to swallow, but my mouth was stone dry.

  “The hell’re you doing here?” I said.

  Crystal’s eyebrows shot straight up and she slapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Talking to the nice lady, King Charles. Bold of you to return here after those water landings.”

  “I have permission—”

  “Not any more you don’t. The FBI said you was no longer on their team.”

  “FBI?” Crystal said.

  “Go on out to the plane, Crystal. I need to speak with the good officer for a moment.”

  She didn’t move for thirty seconds, staring me straight in the eye. Was it that I’d given her a brusque order, or was she afraid I’d do something foolish?

  She stormed off, and I again wondered where Boom-Boom was and what he’d put in my plane.

  “I been playing you like a yo-yo, Buck Reilly. Flying back and forth like a dog chasing his own fool tail.” The squint in Bramble’s eyes matched his sneer.

  “Do your people go around misidentifying dead bodies for fun?”

  “Shit’s going down, asshole. You want to help that pretty lady, best thing you could do is take her home before you both get hurt.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  Then it hit me—Bramble must be on the inside with the Russians. Adrenalin exploded in my head.

  “If I find out you’re a part of all this you’ll—”

  “Shut your trap, boy. You say any more you’ll wish you were in jail.”

  What the hell am I thinking? God knows what’s inside my plane, aside from one of the most notorious drug smugglers in the Virgin Islands. And I’m going to pick a fight with a dirty cop in the middle of it all?

  We stared at each other, my tongue burning with the acid of constraint.

  “You got it, Officer. I’ll be on my way now.” I gave him a two-finger salute off my temple, then turned and walked as casually as I could back toward my plane. I damned sure didn’t want him following me back there.

  “I mean it Reilly! Get out of my islands, or you’ll wish you had!”

  I kept walking. As I turned toward the Beast’s open hatch, I glanced back. Sure enough, Bramble stood with his fists on his hips, watching me.

  I peeked inside the plane. Three burlap bales, each the size of a steamer trunk, were piled high behind the back seats.

  Had to be weed.

  Crystal gave me a pinched-lip stare from the back seat. I couldn’t blame her. Boom-Boom sat up front, the shotgun pointed toward us.

  “What was that about?” she said. “And what’s in these burlap bundles?”

  “It’s a long story.” If I shared my concerns about Bramble with them now, Boom-Boom might jump out and shoot him.

  I glanced back at the bales—and the smell hit me, hard. Had to be five hundred pounds of the stuff.

  “Let’s go,” Boom-Boom said.

  Multiple deep breaths did nothing to check the speed of my heart.

  “Crystal, I’m going to get you to Jost Van Dyke, but first we need to make another stop, okay?”

  She just looked at me with the same expression that had crossed her face when I barked at Bramble. I strapped in up front.

  “Christiansted, brudda. Chop-chop,” Boom-Boom said.

  I pulled the chokes, primed the engines, and fired them up.

  And to think I could have been camping out in the Marquesas all this time.

  I taxied out into traffic and waited for a Delta 737 to amble its way up to the head of the runway. The roar was deafening when it started forward, even though I had my headphones on. Once it was airborne ATC told me to proceed, and within a minute the Beast lifted off over Beef Island.

  We lit out over Marina Cay and I banked to the south. Christiansted, St. Croix, was about a thirty-minute flight, dead ahead.

  But that’s not where I planned to go.

  Once up to 1,000 feet, I banked hard to port. Boom-Boom grabbed the instrument panel in surprise.

  “Hey, what the hell’re you doing? St. Croix’s that way.” He pointed with his thumb to the right.

  “That’s the next stop. Right now I need to follow up on the lead Diego Francis gave me.”

  “T
hat piece of shit? The hell you talking to him for?”

  Guana Island was ahead. It looked like a giant triangular insect with big pincers on the top. The mountains that filled the southern land mass dropped down to a flat area with beaches on both sides and a saltwater pond in the middle. Brass Knuckles had said there was a small private beach on the northwest inside edge of what I envisioned as the top pincer. Were he and Diego were still alive, or had they too disappeared at the hands of the Russian cartel?

  There was a person—no, two people below on the small beach, a man and a woman.

  My palms got clammy. After everything Crystal and I had been through, all that mattered now was the truth. And there was only one way to find out.

  I banked again and added flaps. We set down in the two-foot waves, just north of the far tip of the island. I hoped the hill above the private beach would muffle the sound of the Beast on our approach so the people at the villa didn’t have time to react.

  “This better not take long,” Boom-Boom said.

  “This is probably nothing,” I said, “but there’s a chance it could be either of the missing people, John Thedford or—”

  “Stud Mahoney? Motherfucka’s the baddest-ass in movies, man. Makes those old timers like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis seem like pussies.” Boom-Boom sat up in the seat and was now staring out the windshield. “Plus there’s a big reward out for him.”

  “This should be the private villa up here. At least that’s what Diego Francis told me.” I sighed. “Only thing is, it could also be where the Russian mob is holed up.”

  Boom-Boom scowled. “If they’re here…”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “When we go around this point, I’m going to turn in toward shore and get as close as I can. There’s no pier here, so I need you to jump out and scope the beach and villa out while I set the anchors. Can you do that?”

  “Stud Mahoney was kidnapped, man. If it was by the same Russians fucking with me, these dudes’ll have guns.”

  I nodded down toward his lap.

  He held up his shotgun. “I only got four shells.”

  We rounded the point, and thank God the water remained dark blue. I checked the trees and the spray on the water for wind, taxied a little further south, then pressed down on the left pedal. A moment later we were pointed toward the white sand beach. The chairs that had been occupied when we flew over a minute ago were now empty.

  “Get in the back and pop the hatch.”

  Boom-Boom dragged his shotgun through the cabin. I heard a click, and a rush of salt air blew through the plane. I added manifold power and jockeyed the rudder to turn the port hatch toward the shore.

  “Go!” I yelled.

  To my surprise, he was out the door in a flash and up to his chest in water with the gun over his head. Then again, the guy was a smuggler. He’d probably flown into worse situations.

  I didn’t want to take time setting the anchors, so I revved the power and beached the Beast in soft sand. Crystal jumped into the water, I followed after her. Her expression was hard—she knew what we might face, but she was ready to go. We swam the remaining distance and arrived at the sandy beach just as Boom-Boom emerged from the foliage between the beach and the villa, which from here looked like the epitome of luxury.

  “See anything?” I said.

  “Couple people ran into that house when I got to land.”

  “Did they have guns?”

  His mouth twisted. “Nah, man, looked like tourists. Dude and a woman. Scared shitless.”

  “Let’s check it out anyway.”

  “What do we do?” Crystal said, her voice hushed.

  “Find some answers.”

  WE CREPT UP PAST the beach and down the manicured path, hesitated, then listened for what might await us at the villa. Birds chattered, the breeze blew through palms trees—

  THUD!

  Boom-Boom swung the shotgun around, right past my head.

  I crouched into a purple bougainvillea and waited. Nothing. I crept back down the path, stubbed my foot, and nearly fell over a fat green coconut. It had to be the source of the noise.

  I kicked it off the path and returned to Crystal and Boom-Boom, still hunkered down.

  “Damn coconut.”

  We continued on toward the villa. No lights were on and the curtains were drawn. Not exactly heavily fortified—or captors lay in wait inside and would pounce if we got too close.

  Once at the front door, we stopped, and both Crystal and Boom-Boom turned to me.

  “Now what, brudda?”

  “Hide that gun so we aren’t arrested if this is a false alarm,” I said.

  I reached up and knocked hard on the door.

  A lengthy pause stretched out with no response.

  A quick try of the handle revealed the door was locked. To the left was a steep rock incline the villa was built into. No passage in that direction, so I pushed tropical foliage aside and crept through the bushes along the front of the house. Around the corner was a landscaped patio with a bubbling hot tub. There was a sliding glass door but the shades were drawn.

  The door glided open. A muffled shriek—I burst through to see a man in an orange Speedo dash from the room. A tousled pretty woman about my age, wrapped in a towel, rushed toward us with a ceramic pitcher raised high to strike.

  I ducked and blocked the downward arc of her arm. The pitcher flew from her hand and shattered against the wall—

  Another shriek from the adjacent room.

  “What do you want!” the woman said. “This is a private villa—I’ll give you all my money!”

  My heart raced, Crystal’s face went death-sheet white, and Boom-Boom jumped inside with the shotgun.

  “Shut up, bitch!”

  To my surprise the woman lunged at him, fists pounding on his raised forearms. Boom-Boom dropped the gun, she dove for it, I stomped my foot down on the stock and pinned it to the terracotta tile.

  Crystal shoved the woman, who stumbled over a table. Boom-Boom grabbed the gun.

  “Where’s my husband!?” Crystal shouted.

  “Husband?” The woman rolled off the ground to jump up in our faces. “What fucking husband—get out!”

  Again came a shriek from the other room.

  I pushed past the tigress and found a man curled up in a ball on the sofa in the next room. He’d covered himself in pillows that quivered like Jell-O.

  This guy who reminded me of a rabbit wasn’t John Thedford. The exposed legs and arms clutching the white cushions were mahogany tan, and his hair was dark brown—not blond.

  Boom-Boom rushed in after me with the woman hanging onto his back. She jumped between me and the man cowering in the couch.

  “I said get out!” she yelled. “This is none of your business—”

  I yanked a cushion from the man—who shrieked, yet again—and my eyes bulged when I recognized him. Gasps erupted in stereo behind me.

  “Stud Mahoney?” Boom-Boom’s voice got higher with each syllable.

  “We’ll give you our money—she has jewelry!” Stud’s eyes widened. “Crystal?”

  “The action star?” Boom-Boom said.

  “What have you done, Mike?” Crystal said. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “It was her idea. My manager!”

  “Shut the hell up you dumb Polack!” the woman said.

  “I don’t understand,” Crystal said. “Why did you—where’s my husband?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “Who the hell’re you?” the woman said.

  “Crystal Thedford,” Stud said. “My ex fiancée.”

  “What?” Boom-Boom and the manager said at once.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Mike?” Crystal said. “Or do you only go by Stud now?”

  “Back off, honey, you had your chance,” the manager said.

  Just then Stud Mahoney, née Mike Kuznewski, jumped up from the couch.

  “You rescued me! That’s it, you saved me—t
he reward, you’ll get the reward!”

  “You supposed to be a badass, man—what the fuck?” Boom-Boom had the look of a six-year-old who just caught his parents hiding Easter eggs.

  Bile surged in my throat.

  “You have a new movie coming out next month, don’t you, Stud?”

  He straightened, puffed up his chest, and cocked his shoulder forward.

  “That’s right, third in the Brock Blade Navy SEAL series.”

  The manager rolled her eyes.

  I gritted my teeth.

  Crystal sprang forward and punched him in the nose. The blow buckled his knees.

  “You son of a bitch! My husband’s been missing for days—and this is a…a publicity stunt!”

  Stud clutched his face. Blood dripped down his chin.

  “You broke my nose!”

  I grabbed him by the arm, yanked him upright, and pulled him toward the door.

  “Let’s go, Dud, time for your curtain call!”

  “Wait!” the manager shouted. “You’ll get the reward! The studio will pay—”

  “Damn straight they will,” Boom-Boom said.

  “But that won’t stop the FBI from throwing your meal ticket in jail,” I said.

  “Bastards.” Crystal’s voice had dropped to a hiss.

  All the attention that could have been focused on searching for her husband had been directed toward this guy. Unbelievable.

  Stud pulled his arm out of my grasp and turned toward Crystal.

  “Paybacks are hell,” he said.

  Boom-Boom kicked Stud in the rear end.

  “Shut the hell up, fool. Get your ass out to that plane before I shoot you.” His head snapped toward the manager—co-conspirator—whatever the hell she was. “And you say another word, I’ll throw your skinny ass out that piece-a-shit plane. Now move it, I got business on St. Croix!”

  We marched out of the luxury villa. Empty champagne bottles, dirty dishes, and tabloid magazines littered the tables. It was all I could do to not pound Stud Mahoney into a pulp.

  I turned around and found Crystal crying, her face in her hands.

  I wrapped my arms around her. What a miserable twenty-four hours. I held her while she shook. Once she stopped crying, she pushed my arms away and took long strides toward the door.

  “Goddamn crummy stupid sons of bitches,” she said.