Revenge in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  Angelina Fox, a blond bombshell whom I’d worked alongside as a mercenary for the past five years, was sitting at our table, right beside a window that overlooked the dark ocean. She wore a blue dress with diamond earrings, and her pretty blue eyes stared into mine as I approached her.

  “I know that look,” she said in her sexy Swedish accent. Then, sighing, she added, “I guess we won’t be having dessert.”

  “I’m sorry, Ange,” I said as I grabbed my wallet out of my back pocket, slid out two crisp hundred-dollar bills and set them on the table.

  Ange was sharper than my dive knife and knew me well enough that she slid out of her chair and stood up without hesitation, and together we headed for the front door. We walked past Charles Wilkes, the sheriff of the Key West Police Department, who was wearing a Hawaiian-style button-up shirt and jeans as opposed to his usual uniform. He shrugged as we passed by and eyed us skeptically.

  As the three of us moved through the glass double doors and into the warm evening air, Charles cut us off.

  “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on,” he said in his low and powerful voice. He was maybe an inch shorter than my six foot two inches and had a strong, lean build with dark black skin. Though he was in his late forties, he looked and moved like a man much younger. “You can’t just keep me out of it.”

  We walked along a crimson cobblestone pathway lined with gumbo-limbo and short lignum vitae trees, heading towards my boat, which was moored at a small private dock just a few hundred feet from the restaurant.

  “It’s personal,” I said as our soles made contact with the treated-pine dock. “It doesn’t pertain to anything in the Keys.” When we reached my boat, a forty-eight-foot Baia Flash named Dodging Bullets, I helped Ange step aboard in her high heels, then turned back to Charles. “Look, I’ll call you with my satellite phone with updates, but for now, I’m heading to Curacao, and that’s all you need to know.”

  He seemed unsatisfied with my answer but nodded professionally and then helped me untie the mooring lines wrapped around the cleats. As I climbed aboard, he gave my boat an easy push away from the dock.

  “Godspeed, Logan,” he said.

  I waved, then thanked him for delivering me the message and started up the twin six-hundred-horsepower engines.

  As I eased the boat away from the dock, Ange stood beside me. “Curacao, huh?”

  “Yeah, about that. Any chance you could let me borrow your plane?”

  “To Curacao from Key West in a Cessna? That’s over a thousand miles. Even with the upgraded engine and more efficient wings, it’ll still take us over seven hours to get there. And we’ll have to stop halfway to refuel.”

  “Still faster than trying to catch a last-minute commercial flight.”

  She thought it over a moment as I eased forward, picking up speed.

  “Alright, I’ll fly you there. But you gotta tell me what the hell’s going on. And when whatever this is all about is over, you gotta take me out to dinner again.”

  “Ange, I can—”

  “I’m not letting that baby out of my sight. Plus, I’ve seen you fly one too many times.” She laughed, but when she saw the serious expression on my face go unchanged, she knew that something important was going on. As I cruised the Baia across from Sunset Key and into Conch Harbor Marina, a distance of less than a mile, I told Ange about the phone call. I pulled up alongside the dock at slip twenty-four, then killed the engines and tied her off.

  Before disembarking, I moved into the main cabin and grabbed a black CamelBak that contained various items I deemed essential. Inside was my Sig Sauer P226 pistol with two fully loaded magazines, a night vision monocular, a satellite phone and a few other items. Ever since I’d had to fight off Black Venom, the notorious Mexican drug cartel, for the precious contents of a sunken Spanish galleon, I’d rarely gone anywhere without having it close by.

  Throwing it over my shoulder, I met Ange at the stern and we climbed over the transom, then headed down the dock towards the parking lot. Glancing at my dive watch, I saw that it was just after nine and, being a Wednesday night in October, there wasn’t a whole lot of activity in the marina. Just a few liveaboards hanging out on their decks, cooking on their barbeques and chilling out in the relatively cool evening air.

  We soon reached the large paved lot, and I unlocked my black Toyota Tacoma 4x4, which was parked against a railroad tie in the first row. Once we were seated, I rolled the windows down and pulled onto Caroline Street, heading for my house over near the center of the island.

  “I just don’t get it,” Ange said as the evening air blew softly into her face through her rolled-down window. “Why would anyone desecrate your father’s grave?”

  I shook my head. I’d been thinking the same damned thing ever since the detective had told me what had happened. My dad had been a career Navy man and had retired after thirty years of service as a master chief, the highest enlisted rank in the military. He’d been a diver, and since he’d always loved the ocean, he’d spent his retired years either on his sailboat in the Bahamas, at his condo on the California Coast, or at his other condo on the island of Curacao in the Southern Caribbean. Curacao was where he’d spent most of his time, and it was also where he’d died just under two years ago. Since he’d loved the island so much, he’d put it in his will that he wanted to be buried in a small cemetery on a hillside overlooking the western shore of the island.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said as I turned onto my brick driveway lined with palm trees on both sides. “But I’m going to find out.”

  My neighbor’s golden Labrador, Atticus, was hanging out in my yard and jumped around as I pulled up. Parking under my stilted house, I left the engine running as we stepped out, and I petted Atticus, grabbed the tennis ball from his mouth and chucked it over the palm tree-lined fence into my neighbor’s yard. In a flash, he took off in a happy sprint around the backside of my property. I swore he had been an owl in a previous life, because he was always hanging out in my driveway whenever I pulled in late at night.

  Ange and I headed up the side stairs leading up to the wraparound porch. On the deck by the side door, resting on a dark blue welcome mat with the image of a white conch shell woven into it, was a small FedEx package. I bent over, grabbed the package, then unlocked the door and shouldered my way inside.

  Moving into the master bedroom, I changed into a pair of cargo shorts, a gray tee shirt and a pair of black Converse low-top sneakers. Ange changed beside me, slipping out of her blue dress and into a pair of jean shorts, a black tank top, and white Adidas sneakers. Since neither of us knew how long we’d be in Curacao, we each packed a bag of things we might need, including a few changes of clothes.

  Moving into my bedroom closet, I pushed aside a few hanging shirts and opened my biometric safe, using my right thumbprint and entering my code into the keypad. Inside my safe, I kept an assortment of weapons of various types and calibers, ammunition for each of them, and a few stacks of various currencies. I grabbed a stack of Netherlands Antillean guilder, the official currency of Curacao, along with a stack of Jamaican dollars and US dollars. I always preferred to pay with cash if I could, a habit I’d formed after years of working as a mercenary around the world.

  Once, the cash was loaded into my backpack, I set the FedEx package on top of it and zipped up the main pocket. Then I locked my safe back up, and Ange and I headed for the side door. When the door was locked, I turned on my security system, an advanced array of cameras and motion sensors I’d installed myself, and we climbed inside my Tacoma. Ange had told me that her seaplane was moored at Tarpon Cove Marina, a small marina that was only about a mile northeast of my house.

  Within five minutes, we were parked and climbing aboard her white-and-blue Cessna 182 Skylane, which was tied off on the end of a narrow dock that was almost completely empty aside from a few smaller boats. The four-seat seaplane was twenty-nine-feet long, had a wingspan of thirty-six feet, and was powered by a single 230-horsepo
wer engine that could propel the small aircraft at a max speed of 150 knots.

  Once she’d completed all of her preflight checks, I untied the lines, then gave the port float a shove as I jumped aboard. Ange then made a quick request to the air traffic control tower at Key West International Airport. The ATC gave a rundown of the weather and wind and requested our destination, then gave us the okay.

  It was a calm evening with just a few tiny whitecaps in the open ocean, but the water in the cove was as flat as glass. This made for a smooth ride as Ange raised the throttles and turned to port once we’d past the tip of the dock, facing us into the wind. With the small cove clear of all boats, she hit the gas and lifted us off the water and into the air with a smooth, professional takeoff.

  I reached back, unzipped my backpack and pulled out the FedEx package.

  “Finally arrived, huh?” Ange said, eyeing it as I cut off the plastic wrap.

  I nodded, then opened the box, revealing my new cell phone. I’d finally gotten a replacement for the one I’d lost on Loggerhead Key. It was a second-generation iPhone, a nice upgrade from the first generation one I’d ruined. I had it out of the box and set up within a few minutes.

  Within thirty minutes, Ange had us cruising at twelve thousand feet, an altitude we maintained for most of the trip. We landed near Port Royal on the southern coast of Jamaica to refuel and refill our coffee supplies. Then we were right back in the air, switching back and forth in the pilot’s seat so that we could get a few hours of sleep.

  Ange and I had first taken flying lessons together three years ago and had both received our private licenses. She had taken more of a liking to it than I, however, and spent a great deal of her free time flying all sorts of aircraft around the world. I was a little rusty at my takeoffs and landings, but cruising thousands of feet in the air and heading straight was no problem.

  By zero six thirty, we saw the beautiful island of Curacao by the light of the rising sun, its brilliant beaches and crashing white surf shining like a beacon. Curacao is a Dutch Caribbean island located forty miles off the coast of Venezuela and nestled right between the islands of Bonaire and Aruba. It’s a tropical island paradise with clear, warm waters that attract divers from all over the world. It was the place where my dad had spent most of his time after retiring from the Navy, and I’d visited him there a few times every year before he died.

  Ange touched the Cessna down on the calm turquoise waters of Santa Martha Bay on the northwest side of the island. She eased back on the throttles, then turned around and brought the starboard float against the long dock in front of the Pearl Beach Resort.

  After tying off the lines, we grabbed what we needed from the plane, then locked her up and headed down the dock toward the white sand. I had my black CamelBak strapped over my shoulders, and Ange carried only her small blue backpack and a decent-sized plastic hard case.

  Ange was never one to take chances, and during the flight across the Caribbean, she’d questioned everything about what we were doing. The whole thing had seemed suspicious to her from the beginning, and after checking the Curacao Police Department website, she’d tried to get ahold of Dan Millis, the detective who’d called me, but she’d gotten no answer. Then, after calling Charles and getting the detective’s cell number, she’d reached him, and he’d told us that he wanted to meet us at the cemetery that morning.

  “Just seems wrong,” Ange had said while we flew south. “I think there’s more going on here than simple vandalism.”

  She’d had a good point. Why would a detective want me to fly all the way from Key West if it wasn’t serious?

  We both had a lot of questions regarding the situation, and she’d been suspicious enough to grab her collapsible Remington .338 Lapua Magnum sniper rifle. It was almost identical to mine, which I’d left back on my boat. Ange rarely traveled anywhere without the weapon. The truth was she could be as seemingly reckless at times as anyone who ever lived, but she rarely was so without first thinking everything through thoroughly.

  We moved up a stone pathway leading through Pearl Beach, past a patch of coconut and palm trees growing out of green grass, then up towards the front desk of the Pearl Beach Resort and Condo Association. Meeting with the front desk attendant, we paid the moorage fee, then headed for the parking lot. In one of the covered parking spaces beside my dad’s old unit, I lifted a plastic cover, revealing a classic Café Racer motorcycle with black paint and a brown leather seat.

  It looked well taken care of, and I had a local boy named Jethro, who always brought the fish I caught to his father’s kitchen to be cooked, to thank for it. He enjoyed working on engines and was happy to do it in exchange for taking her for a ride now and then.

  Hopping on the leather seat, I started up the 750cc engine, then drove out of the parking lot with Ange’s arms wrapped around my chest. Cruising right along the bay, heading inland, we breathed in the fresh island air. Curacao is not exactly what you usually picture when imagining a Caribbean paradise. Though it has some of the best beaches and diving in the world, its landscape is an arid desert, littered with cacti and with hills covering the western side.

  After just a few minutes of driving, I turned onto the road to the West Point, heading southeast. I usually soaked in the tropical air and relished the feel of it blowing against my face, but I couldn’t get the thoughts of my dad out of my head. My mind was consumed by countless memories, and I kept quiet for most of the trip.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The road heading towards Willemstad, the capital of Curacao, wasn’t too busy for a Thursday morning. The majority of Curacao’s one hundred and forty thousand residents live on the eastern side, giving the western side more of a quiet and peaceful atmosphere. After just a few minutes on the main road, I turned south, cruising past the small town of Sint Willibrordus. We looked out at the flocks of pink flamingos that covered the shallow waters in front of the town, then cruised down along the coast.

  Our destination was the Saint John Cemetery, a small, humble plot of land littered with less than a hundred tombstones. It was located just south of Harmonie, nestled into the side of a large hill overlooking the ocean on the south-central part of the island.

  It was only about twenty-five minutes from when we left the Pearl Beach Resort until we turned onto Saint John Street, a winding paved road that led to a few houses along the hill, past the cemetery and up to a massive cell phone tower.

  After cruising along a few switchbacks, we soon reached the entrance into Saint John Cemetery, marked by old concrete pillars, a statue of the apostle John, and a carved stone sign indicating the cemetery’s name. As I slowed to pull in, Ange tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Let me off here,” she said, and before I could reply, her butt had already slid off the seat and her shoes hit the pavement.

  I slowed to a stop and turned back to face her. “What’s going on?”

  Staring at me with her fiery blue eyes, she said, “I’m gonna take a little hike up to the top. I wanna check out the view.” Then, handing me what looked like an ordinary ballpoint pen, she added, “Keep this in your pocket, and leave it on.”

  I could only nod as she turned and headed up the road, carrying her backpack over her shoulder and holding the hard case in her right hand. She disappeared around the corner in a matter of seconds. I’d learned over the years that Ange had a pretty good sense about things, and even though we both knew it was unlikely we’d run into trouble, she always planned for the worst.

  I continued through the entrance and towards a small parking lot that was surrounded by cacti, jujube trees and brown grass littered with tombstones. The cemetery wasn’t well taken care of, with shrubs growing as they pleased, rocks on the pathways and faded worn walls, but it was one of the most picturesque locations for a cemetery in the world. The steady slopes of green overlooked the white sandy beaches and the turquoise waters beyond. To the south, you could see the beautiful beach of Kokomo, the inspiration for the Beach Boys’ classic t
une. Looking beyond along the coast, you could see Willemstad five miles away, with its colorful Dutch architecture. To the north, the hilly desert landscape of the western side of the island provided a feast for your eyes, especially in the evenings, when the dying sun lit up the tropical sky.

  It was still early, and there was only one vehicle in the small gravel lot: a silver SUV with tinted windows. As I pulled up alongside it, three men wearing gray suits and sunglasses stepped out. Two of them were big black guys, and the third was smaller and had olive skin. They moved confidently towards me as I shut off the engine and rested the motorcycle against its kickstand.

  “You must be Mr. Dodge,” the smaller man said. He had what sounded like a Venezuelan accent and I pegged him to be in his early thirties. “I’m Detective Millis, and these are Detectives Bosch and Hicks.”

  I nodded and introduced myself, surprised that there were three of them. It only solidified my thinking that this was no ordinary grave desecration, that there was something more going on.

  Glancing at the handgun holstered to Millis’s hip, I said, “I thought law enforcement here used standard-issue Glocks.”

  He hesitated a moment, which I thought was odd, then looked down at his Smith and Wesson M&P 9mm. Glancing back up at me, he said, “Detectives can choose their own. Now, please, Mr. Dodge. If you’d just follow us.”

  The three of them led me along an old dirt path leading away from the parking lot. I’d been there many times since my dad had died, so I knew the grounds well enough. We stopped beside a small bench that was shaded by a divi-divi, a unique tree that bows southwesterly from the swift warm trade winds. A small gecko scurried off into a patch of green as I looked towards a newer-looking tombstone with my dad’s name written on it.

  “We had it taken care of,” Millis said, reading my mind, as I saw nothing wrong with the plot except some recently shifted dirt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dodge.”