by dannal
Max backed up and scrambled to find some cover. He ended up climbing over the bar at the rear of the galley. He crouched on the rear deck, looking through the sight toward the arm that poked through the open doorway, indiscriminately slinging bullets.
Max wanted to start putting bullets through the wall, right where Tiny Deege would have been standing. But Max and Josue had always trained to only fire upon a target that could be fully identified. What’s the worst that could happen, Max asked himself, you might hit Isobel? She just killed Josue.
Suddenly the firing stopped. Max squinted into the cloud of smoke produced by all of the guns shooting inside such a confined space. Max made out the wiggling shape of a small body struggling to writhe through a small vent hatch in the ceiling of the forward stateroom. Tiny Deege must think he can get away, Max thought.
He considered shooting the man’s wiggling lower half with the Sig. Max ultimately decided such an act to be unnecessarily violent and cold-blooded. He bolted back through the salon and galley, reaching the steep steps to the vessel’s flybridge overhead.
A cluster of white-cushioned marine seats surrounded Max as he reached the top deck, all shaded by a fiberglass roof. Max stepped quickly around a counter with a BBQ grilltop and an undercounter fridge, and then slipped past the helm to reach the steps leading down to the catamaran’s expansive forward deck.
Max reached the top step just as Tiny Deege had managed to pull his body through the vent, and stand up to his full diminutive height.
He looked like a child on the wide bow deck, clutching his nickel-plated pistol, which appeared to be a Beretta Cheetah. The compact pistol looked huge in the little guy’s hand.
The petite gangster spotted Max, and he fired twice before Max could raise his own weapon. One of the thug’s bullets struck the ejection port of Max’s Sig Sauer submachine gun, jamming it.
Max slipped the titanium dive knife out of its sheath and took great care in throwing it at the miniature gunman. The knife missed its mark of center mass, near the heart, but it lodged a few inches into the gang member’s right shoulder.
Tiny Deege dropped his pistol on the deck and started screaming, as he looked down at the knife.
Max bounded down and grabbed the knife handle. He snatched the blade out of the little man’s flesh and slipped behind him, holding the knife to his throat. “You have five seconds to make your case for me not cutting your head clean off,” Max said icily.
“Oh, man,” Tiny Deege said, as he burst out into uncontrollable sobs. “I didn’t even want to come on this trip. Zann made me come. Zann!” Deege cried out like a wailing widow. “Zann! Why, Zann?”
“What the hell happened to the kid?” Max asked, still holding the blade at the man’s throat, more willing himself not to use it than anything.
“Reggie pissed off Momo for the last time,” Tiny Deege said, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Told Momo that Mama Dorah wouldn’t like that we stole Josue’s boat from the dock. Momo wen’ nuts. Grabbed the Xbox controller out of Reggie’s hands and killed him with it.”
Max’s mind swirled in disorienting waves of sadness, anxiety, and horror. “You guys the ones I saved Josue from? Six years ago? Ti Flow?”
Tiny Deege nodded as tears streamed down his face.
“Honestly didn’t think you guys would be smart enough to ever find Josue,” Max said woefully.
“I can't go back to Miami now,” the little man said. “Mama Dorah sees me, knowing I let Reggie get killed, and she’ll see me gutted out like that dead cat.”
“Reckon you’ll rot in an island prison before you get the chance,” Max said, digging his hand into the man’s shorts pocket. First thing he grabbed was a glass crack pipe. Max tossed it aside and checked the other pocket. Finding Tiny Deege’s cell phone, Max dialed 17 and dropped the phone into the hatch near their feet.
“Who you call, the 5-0?” Tiny Deege asked. “You know how much them roaming minutes gonna cost?”
Max marched the bleeding man back up the steps to the flybridge and set him down on a cushioned seat under the flybridge’s roof. He zip-tied the man’s wrists together, then zip-tied them to a powder-coated bar supporting the fiberglass roof.
“Ahhhh!” Tiny Deege screamed as the extension of his arms aggrieved the wound in his shoulder. “Man, I’m gonna lose circulation you keep me like this.”
“Cops should be here in about fifteen minutes,” Max said. “Hang out ’til then.” Just for good measure, Max punched Tiny Deege square in the face, knocking him into delirium. The little guy moaned as his head bobbed around in a slow circle.
Max climbed the steps down to the rear deck. He moved gingerly toward the forward stateroom near the bow, knowing Isobel Greer was still inside. Max stepped into the room, finding the two dead thugs lying in sickening, bleeding heaps next to the chair where Josue slumped over, lifeless.
“Why, Isobel?” Max asked. “Why did you kill him?”
Isobel’s face lay on Josue’s lap, her body wracked with violent sobs. She hyperventilated for a moment, and then took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I tried to warn you, Max,” Isobel said, her voice scratchy and hollow, like a desperate whisper. “I told you they were coming for Josue.”
Max remembered the voicemail Isobel had left on his phone. He stepped to the rear deck and dug his cell phone out of his dry bag, and tapped the screen until Isobel’s message played.
“Max, it’s Isobel. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you in person, but my boyfriend, a dangerous gang member from Miami, has come to Martinique to kill Josue. They are going to grab him now. Please get Josue to safety if you can. Please. They’ll torture him. They’ll kill him.”
Max dropped the phone. “You brought them here? You told them where to find Josue?”
“Yes,” Isobel said, her bright eyes now appearing blank and desolate. “I was afraid of that monster. I knew I’d be killed too if I didn’t do what Momo told me.”
“You were playing me,” Max said. “The whole time. I let you play me.”
“No,” she whispered. “That was real. We met by chance, Max. My feelings for you were real, Max…are real.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Isobel?” Max said, sounding irritated. His hands clenched into fists by his sides. “I could have helped you, could have made you safe. I could have saved Josue!”
“I wanted to,” Isobel said, wringing her hands together tightly. “I tried a couple of times. I thought I could warn you before they got here. I didn’t want you to know I was involved with Momo, and I didn’t want you to go after him; I was afraid he would kill you. And then, it was just too late.”
“But why did you kill him?” Max asked, looking down at his friend’s lifeless body. His teeth clenched. “I was about to save him.”
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Isobel said. “I knew that after they finished torturing him they were going to kill him. I just couldn’t stand to let him endure any more pain. So I did it myself, so it would be quick. I’m so sorry, Max.”
Max turned his back. “I can’t ever look at you again, Isobel.”
He began to walk away. Then he stopped.
Max turned around. He flicked open a spring-assisted folding knife that had been clipped to his wetsuit, and slashed the ropes binding his best friend’s body to the chair. Max dropped the knife and leaned down to scoop up Josue’s remains.
He struggled against the younger man’s long, gangly, and now limp limbs, but at last Max hoisted up the man’s lifeless form from the chair. Max strained and heaved to lift Josue’s body over his shoulder. Then he carried his friend to the Cobia, lowering Josue’s body onto the stern deck beside several cases of broken Fleur de Lis rum bottles.
Max grabbed his dry bag of weapons. He tossed his cell phone back inside, along with the Sig Sauer MPX, still hot from shooting, and threw it all into the boat.
Max used his bloody diving knife to cut loose the ropes that secured the fishing boat to the catamaran. And
then he drove the boat back to the dock at Ilet d’Ombres. It only took about a minute, but Max felt the seconds drag on like miniature eternities that never seemed to end. At last he reached the dock.
Max tied off the boat and carried Josue’s body to the grassy area behind the villa. He laid him out, carefully placing his hands across his chest. Then Max leaned over the young Haitian’s remains and tried to contain his tears as his stomach twisted in knots.
“Max?” a voice called from the side of the villa.
Max looked up blankly and spotted Vivienne Monet, the lovely Martinican private detective, stepping through the grass toward him. He couldn’t speak. He tried, but no words came out.
“It’s just me, Max,” Vivienne said, stowing a shiny stainless steel Walther PPK into a purse she carried on her shoulder. She wore a short white sundress and wedge sandals. “Oh no,” she said, clutching her hand to her mouth. “Is that Josue?” Tears instantly filled Vivienne’s stunning brown eyes.
Max felt his chest tighten. He didn’t know if it was anxiety, or if he was being gripped by a heart attack. He stood up from Josue’s body, but stumbled and stooped over as if he was going to throw up. “Can’t breathe.”
Vivienne hurriedly stepped over to Max and put her hand on his back. “You are not alone, Max,” Vivienne said in a soothing voice. She began rubbing his back in soothing circles.
Max began to hyperventilate. “Can’t breathe.”
“You’ve got to try. Slow it down, Max. Just try to take long, deep breaths. Okay? That’s it.” Vivienne took Max’s hand and held it between both of hers. “It’s going to be okay, Max.”
Max clenched his eyelids closed so tightly he thought his face might be crushed. He tried so hard to internalize his pain. He ached to bottle it up and lock it all away inside.
And then Max sobbed, uncontrollably. Tears flooded Max’s cheeks, and there was nothing he could do about it. He cried as he hadn’t cried since he had lost his children, his wife.
Vivienne Monet put her arms around Max and hugged him tightly. “That’s it, Max,” she whispered soothingly into his ear. “Let it out. It’ll help.”
Max felt like a little kid. It was embarrassing. But Vivienne didn’t let him go. She held onto him until his breathing was normal and the sobbing had ceased.
“It’s okay, Max.”
“What made you come here?” Max asked, when he finally felt as if he had some measure of composure.
“I like to listen to a police scanner,” Vivienne said with a hint of a smile. “Old habit from my gendarme days. It’s soothing to me. I heard someone made a distress call from somewhere near Ilet Boisseau and I thought of you. Had to come and make sure you were okay. Max, I’m so sorry about Josue. Who did this?”
“I’ll tell you, Vivienne,” Max said. “But could you do me a favor first? Could you run up to my master bedroom on the second floor and grab my bottle of Percocet?”
“Of course, Max,” Vivienne said. She disappeared inside the kitchen door of the villa.
With Vivienne heading upstairs, looking for a prescription bottle that wasn’t there, Max stepped into his gear room and grabbed a fresh black shirt and trotted out the villa’s front door. He rushed down to the dock and opened the dry bag he’d left in the stern of the Cobia.
Max strapped on his tactical utility belt and checked that everything was there: his holstered FNS .40 caliber pistol; two extra magazines; a second holster with the Smith & Wesson 6906 with three hollow points; a KA-BAR knife with a seven-inch blade; and a small, folding pocketknife made by Cold Steel. Max checked that both pistols had chambered rounds, were cocked, and ready to fire. He grabbed his cell phone from the bag and snapped it into a smartphone holder on his belt. Still in his wetsuit, Max pulled on the Columbia Bahama shirt as he fired up Everest Walsh’s elegant wooden runabout. For the first time in years, Max rolled up his sleeves.
Max threw the throttle lever forward and immediately felt the wind whipping through his hair. He pointed the boat toward Everest Walsh’s mega yacht.
By the time Vivienne stepped out onto the porch, wondering what Max was up to, he was gone.
As Max drove Everest Walsh’s Chris-Craft runabout toward the rich mogul’s mega yacht, he unlocked his smartphone and speedily flipped through his photo albums, eventually finding a photo he had snapped of Colonel Travere’s business card. Max dialed the number and told the head of the Gendarmerie Nationale on Martinique everything that had transpired on Momo’s catamaran.
“You killed two men?” Colonel Travere said. He sounded incredulous. “You’re sure they’re all dead?”
“Josue is dead too,” Max said.
“Maxwell, I am sorry. But I don’t know what to say about what has happened. I will have to bring you in, Max. Maybe arrest you. I need to interview you and sort things out.”
“I know,” Max said. He told Travere where he could find the catamaran with three bodies, a bound Tiny Deege, and Isobel Greer, if she was still there.
“A woman killed Josue?” Colonel Travere asked. “Was it that woman you were sitting with the day we first met, Max? She was setting you up?”
“It’s the same woman,” Max said woefully. “But I don’t know. I believe that she killed Josue out of mercy. She knew these guys were going to kill him, but they wanted to torture him first. She couldn’t let them.”
“All right,” Colonel Travere said, sounding out of breath. Max figured the lawman was already halfway to his helicopter. “I’ve dispatched a team. We’ll be there soon. Stay where you are, Max. Okay?”
“Hey, Max,” Travere continued, sounding as if a light bulb had just popped to life over his head, “were these the fellows that killed your family in Florida? Did you go gunning for them? Did you murder these guys?”
“No, Edgar,” Max said, sounding cold and dangerous. “It wasn’t those guys. But I’m going to square up with them right now.”
Max hung up the phone.
Max aimed the Chris-Craft’s pointed hull directly at the rear swim platform of the Snowy Lady. As many times as he had approached the imposing vessel, it surprised him each time how enormous the hulking white and black craft appeared when he got really close to it.
Max knew his revenge plot against Marquise de Losa was out the window. Josue’s death changed everything. Max would not be bothering with the ricin. He now planned to confront de Losa directly. Today, Max would avenge his family. Justice would be served, swiftly and violently.
The vintage runabout neared the teak swim platform at the stern of the mega yacht, and Max throttled down. He climbed up onto the bow and balanced himself, poised to jump. The second before the runabout’s hull crashed into the yacht’s swim platform, Max sprang down, rolling his body across the hardwood surface.
Eric Pepperdine stepped out of the tinted glass door to the lower deck passageway. Perhaps he had been standing watch at the stern. But when the yacht’s first mate saw what Max had done, he did not look happy.
“Max?” he shrieked, taking in the sight of the crashed yacht tender. The boat’s hull had caved in where it had impacted with the swim platform. “What the hell?” He pulled a Glock 26 from an inside waistband holster and moved to aim it at Max.
Max didn’t know if the Snowy Lady’s first mate meant to shoot him, or just cover him until he could be detained by the authorities. Max caught the crewman’s wrist and easily stripped the pistol from his hand, allowing it to splash into the ocean behind him. He and Josue had been running disarming drills for years.
With Eric Pepperdine’s wrist in his grasp, Max twisted the man’s arm behind his back until a loud, demoralizing “pop” erupted from the crewman’s shoulder as it separated from its socket.
“Ahhh!” the first mate shouted in horror and pain. Max shoved him off the deck into the Atlantic Ocean, and opened the door to the passageway as if nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.
Max walked past the open door to Walsh’s bar, Rum Lord’s Reef.
Coyo
caught sight of Max. “Max?” he shouted. “What’s up? Wanna drink?”
Max flipped him off and continued, undeterred, down the passageway. Then Max rushed up the spiral staircase, all the way to the elegant cigar lounge on the upper deck. He wondered if he should draw his Smith & Wesson pistol, but decided to see how things would unfold first.
Max was startled to find Everest Walsh standing in the middle of the room, with Marquise de Losa stooped over nearby, arranging the sofas, trying to get them lined up just right. Remarkably, the room looked brand new: fresh carpet, replaced furniture, even the walls had been painted a fresh off white color.
“And just where in the hell have you been, Maxwell?” Everest Walsh asked. His face reddened as Max approached. “You take off with my boat, you tell me you’re gonna haul all the bloody furniture to your island, and then you disappear—with my boat! What is the deal?”
Max stepped forward and pounded his fist into Everest Walsh’s face. Walsh’s head bounced backward off Max’s fist, and then sprang forward, like a punching bag. The rich drug trafficker stooped over, hands grasping his nose.
Marquise de Losa stood quickly. He reached for the submachine gun under his olive green coat.
“I wouldn’t,” Max said, producing a Cold Steel folding knife with a tanto blade from his belt. He flipped open the blade and pressed the razor-sharp tip lightly into Walsh’s jugular.
“Let it go, Marquise,” Everest Walsh shouted at his right hand man. Blood dripped from the cigar magnate’s nose onto the fresh white carpet. “He’ll bleed me out.”
De Losa’s hand dropped to his side. He squinted his eyes at Max.
“I’ve been waiting so long, I was starting to wonder if this day would even come,” Max said. He pulled the knife away from Walsh’s neck and twisted his forearm so that Marquise de Losa could see the black tattoo that stretched from his wrist, to the crook of his elbow. The indelible mark depicted a long barbed trident that stretched the length of his forearm with a maddened-looking octopus wrapping the shaft of the long spear-like weapon.