Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Deuce looked at Tony. “No way,” Tony said, holding up both hands. “A black man sneaking across white sand?”

  “Hey, guys,” Charity said over my earwig. “I might have a solution.”

  “Go ahead, Charity,” Deuce said. “We’re listening.”

  “There’s a blind spot on this side of the dock and a lot of sea grass. A sea grass float could hide a snorkeler.”

  “Stand by,” I said. “Let me look from the deck.”

  I walked out into the morning sunshine with a cup of coffee and moved across to the far side of the deck where the view of the dock was best. I leaned on the railing, pretending to look out over the Sea of Abaco. While my head was stationary, my eyes were measuring the distance from where I knew Charity was hunkered down over to the other dock.

  Turning to go back inside, I whispered, “Great idea, Charity.” Once back inside, I said to Deuce, “Looks to be about forty yards, with small clumps of sea grass most of the way. The only other approach is like I said, thirty feet of open beach. Too risky.”

  “What will you need?” Deuce asked.

  “One ten-yard stretch is devoid of grass,” I said. “I’ll need a diversion to get past that. On that white sand, a pair of white trousers and white socks might help to conceal my legs.”

  I looked around at everyone at the table, all of them shaking their heads. “You mean nobody has a pair of white pants?”

  “White shorts,” Deuce said. “Your tan legs will stick out like a sore thumb, though.”

  “I might be able to help,” Agent Rosales said over my earwig.

  “Come on up,” Deuce replied. “Tony, go relieve Charity and keep an eye on the boathouse. While you’re down there, see what you can find for concealment.”

  A moment later, Rosales came up the side steps to the front door, the only part of the house hidden from view of the boathouse. She went straight to her and Charity’s room, returning a minute later with a small bag. She set it on the counter and started rummaging through it, finally pulling out a pair of white stockings.

  “Stockings?” I asked and everyone laughed.

  “They are white,” Rosales said. “And you wouldn’t need socks.”

  “They’d fall off,” I said. “Unless you have a garter belt in there that’ll fit me,” I added sarcastically.

  “No, they won’t,” she said. “These are thigh highs. They have three rubber grooves around the top that stick to your skin.”

  “You gotta be kiddin’,” I said, looking around at the others. “Nobody has a pair of white pants?”

  “It’s after Labor Day,” Rusty said with a chuckle. “Nobody wears white after Labor Day. Well, except maybe them high-class call girls.” Everyone got another good laugh at my expense as Rosales tossed them to me and they draped over my shoulder and head.

  Thirty minutes later, wearing a white tee shirt and white shorts and feeling really creepy wearing women’s stockings, I made my way around the far side of the house and down to where Tony had taken Charity’s place. Being a SEAL sniper, he’d anticipated my needs and had already begun constructing the blind. We took a heavy life ring that he’d punched holes in with his pocketknife and festooned it with sea grass, sea grapes, and slime from under the dock, and soon had a pretty decent ghillie raft.

  Donning my mask and snorkel, I went under the edge of the raft and lay prone in the shallow water. There was enough cover that I really didn’t need the snorkel, but I used it anyway. If I needed to say something over the earwig, I only had to raise my head a few inches and drop the snorkel.

  “Looks pretty good,” Tony said. Then he chuckled and added, “But then, I’ve always been partial to white stockings.”

  “Just keep a close eye on the boathouse,” I snarled.

  “We’re ready here, in case he sees you,” Deuce said.

  I shoved off, crawling slowly across the bottom with the benefit of a few pounds of lead weight I wore on a belt around my waist. Allowing my legs to just drag in the sand, I used my fingers for propulsion, moving a few inches and stopping for a minute or two. As a sniper, not being seen comes second to not being remembered. Even a trained mind won’t register a clump of grass that’s a few inches from where it was before. Given a long enough time frame, a properly concealed sniper can move across an entire field while a whole platoon watches from the edges and never be noticed. Forty yards doesn’t seem like a very far distance, but at less than a foot per minute, it was going to take nearly two hours to get to the boathouse.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was at the edge of the sea grass, the predetermined spot where Deuce would start the diversion.

  “Okay, Rusty,” I heard Deuce say over the earwig. “You guys are on.”

  Doc, Rusty, and Bourke began talking loudly as they walked out onto the deck, then down the path to the dock. When they reached the Revenge, I started moving again.

  Although I couldn’t hear them, I knew that the women were all heading out to the deck for a little sunbathing at the same time. With three men arguing loudly at the end of the dock and three women wearing next to nothing on the deck, Michaels was sure not to be paying attention to the water.

  Rusty’s argument started getting more and more heated. None of them were using earwigs, so it’d be impossible for me to hear Deuce or Tony if they needed to warn me. But I could still hear them with my ears just under the surface. Tony, who had a direct line of sight to the boathouse, said, “It’s working. He’s moved closer to the window and is looking back and forth from the deck to the boat.”

  I increased my speed and soon made it to the next clump of sea grass, where I froze in position for three full minutes. I was only thirty feet from the dock by the boathouse. There was a boat in the first slip, lifted up out of the water and with the sea grass at the water’s edge angled toward it. I slowly followed the bed of sea grass.

  Thirty minutes later, I was under the boathouse in five feet of water and ducked silently out from under the raft. I also reached down and shed the damned stockings, the rubber things snagging on about a million hairs as I pulled them off. Me and my big mouth, I thought.

  Surfacing, I made an exaggerated O with my mouth and tapped twice on my forehead with my middle finger. The sound was lost to the lapping of the small waves on the pilings, but inside my skull it echoed, sending the prearranged signal through my earwig that I’d made it across.

  “We have company,” Deuce said over my earwig. “You’re not going to believe who just rode up on a bicycle. It’s Owen Bradbury.”

  I sat under the boathouse and listened to the one-sided conversation for ten minutes. Apparently, Bradbury had had second thoughts about being involved in murder, grand theft, and probably a dozen other crimes and had come to warn us.

  The three men went back into the house and Deuce told Rusty to keep an eye on our new guest. I slowly crawled through the accumulated detritus you’d expect to find under a boathouse and made my way over to the far shore. Coming out of the water was going to be the hardest part. I was only feet away from the door and any water dripping off my body might alert him. I lifted my head slowly out of the water. Removing the mask and laying it aside, I plastered down my hair to get the water out.

  Ten minutes later, I was standing up in knee-deep water, my Colt drawn and pointing at the door. Thankfully, it was a windowless door and the only window on this side was at the far corner. I slowly shuffled sideways toward shore and was soon standing at the corner of the boathouse with my back to the wall. By now, Rosales, Bourke, and Doc should be in place, hidden in the shadows at the edge of the foliage thirty feet away. Julie, Nikki, and Charity were still on the deck and would create a second diversion when Bourke said we were all in place. I glanced toward the bushes but couldn’t see them. Which meant that Michaels couldn’t see them either. I gave a thumbs up in the general direction I thought they’d be and waited.

  “We’re in place,” I heard Bourke whisper over the earwig. I waited ten more seconds for the diversi
on to start. When I heard the women up on the deck begin screaming, laughing, and splashing water, I took the steps quietly up to the landing at the door. On the landing, a board creaked and I instantly took a lunging step forward, bringing my right foot up and planting it just above the doorknob.

  The jam splintered and the door gave, flinging in and banging against a chair. I followed it, my gun aimed straight ahead. He wasn’t where I expected him to be, just an empty chair facing the window. I realized too late that he’d heard the creaking board and I started to turn to my left. Something came crashing down on my forearms and as my Colt fell from my grip, I realized it was a wooden barstool.

  I followed the force of the blow and summersaulted forward into the room, coming up and turning, just as Michaels connected with a hard right to the side of my head. The room started spinning and lights flashed in front of my eyes. I’d been clocked a time or two, but this guy caught me in just the right place. I saw stars.

  In an instant he was behind me, jumping up and snaking a forearm around my neck, forcing my head down into the crook of his elbow, while pushing me forward and down to my knees. I couldn’t breathe and knew that if he held this hold for just a few more seconds, I’d never breathe again. I struggled against the hold, thrashing left and right, but he was very powerful.

  I saw Rosales framed in the doorway and a shot rang out. Michaels’s arm went limp and he fell back away from me as I fell forward in a heap, face down, struggling to get air into my lungs. Instantly, Doc was at my side, gently rolling me onto my back and placing two fingers against the side of my throat.

  “He’s got a pulse,” I heard Doc say as he started to pull me up into a sitting position.

  Then someone shouted, “Gun!” Doc moved instantly, rolling in front of me and forcing me down. I heard a sickening thud and Doc’s dead weight fell on top of me as I was deafened by the sound of three more guns all going off at once.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Sabina bolted upright in the bed she now shared with Elana, who rolled onto her side. “That was a gunshot!” Sabina exclaimed.

  Suddenly, three more shots rang out and both women instinctively rolled off the bed on opposite sides.

  “It came from down by the water,” Elana said. She got quickly to her feet and pulled on the tee shirt and shorts that lay in the chair by the bed.

  “What time is it?” Sabina asked, also dressing quickly.

  Elana picked up her watch from the night stand and replied, “It’s after ten o’clock!”

  “It was stupid of us to stay up so late,” Sabina said as she hurried into the front room. Opening the door, she heard frantic shouts from down by the docks.

  “I told you we should have left,” Elana said as she joined Sabina at the door. “What’s going on down there?”

  “I don’t know,” Sabina replied. “The voices seem to be coming up the path now.”

  They listened for a moment and the shouting died down, as the people who were shouting got to the house on the hill and went inside. The silence was deafening.

  They waited a full five minutes before deciding to head down the path to the road. “We can go to the ferry dock on foot,” Sabina said. “It’s only two miles.”

  They grabbed their backpacks, which held what they needed for a fast getaway, and left the villa. Once they reached the main road they turned north, walking at a quick pace, casting furtive glances over their shoulders.

  “What do you think of that?” Elana asked, pointing to a tiny house on the left that was part of the Abaco Inn resort. The door of the house had yellow tape across it and the whole house was surrounded with more of the yellow tape.

  Suddenly, a golf cart came careening around a curve thirty yards ahead and the two women quickly reversed direction. The golf cart was followed immediately by two more. As the first one approached, it came to a sudden stop.

  “Aren’t you the two girls staying at Crystal Villas?” the driver asked. Elana recognized him as the policeman that was at the house two nights earlier and ordered them released.

  Knowing it was useless to lie, Elana smiled and said, “Yes, we are. Is something wrong?”

  “Get on the back,” he ordered. “There’s been another shooting up there.”

  They started to protest and the policeman again ordered them to get on the back of the cart. They were barely seated when the driver took off.

  Minutes later, they turned off the main road onto the path Sabina and Elana had just come down minutes earlier. Going past the villas and continuing up to the main house, the other two golf carts close behind, they came to a sudden stop at the steps to the house.

  The policeman in charge got out and said to the driver and a second policeman, “Stay with these women.” Then he went up the steps to the deck, followed by the other two men from the other golf carts.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Doc sat on a stool with his shirt ripped open while both Deuce and Tony worked on him. The bullet hit him high, just above the right shoulder blade, and exited just above his collarbone. Charity poured anticoagulant into both wounds as Deuce and Tony held him upright.

  Doc winced in pain, gritting his teeth. “Hey,” he grimaced. “Not so rough with the patient.”

  Julie ripped open two large gauze pads and, handing one to Charity, she slapped the other onto the exit wound.

  “Good thing he didn’t use hollow points,” Deuce said. “That exit wound would’ve been a lot worse.”

  Nikki was watching as they worked on her husband. Finally, Doc lifted his head to her and gave her a small grin as Deuce wound sterile tape under both his arms and across his right shoulder. “Just a flesh wound, babe. Nothing to worry about.”

  Nikki instantly began crying and screaming at the same time. “Damn you, Bob! Why do you have to keep playing all this macho bullshit! I’m pregnant!”

  Doc’s mouth fell open. I looked at Nikki, standing there in a black bikini top, a towel around her narrow waist, with her feet firmly planted and her hands on her hips. Her face was full of concern, but her eyes flashed with fury.

  “P-pregnant?” was all Doc could say.

  Nikki stepped toward him, as Deuce finished wrapping sterile tape holding the two bandages in place. She took his face in both hands and stared into his eyes.

  “Yes,” she said gently. “You’re going to be a father, Bob. Not a gun-wielding warrior father. Not a here today, gone tomorrow father. But a nine-to-five, home for dinner every night, push the stroller around the block kind of daddy.”

  Doc pushed himself up off the stool and put his hands on his wife’s waist. “I’m gonna be a dad? For real?”

  With tears running down her cheeks, she nodded and said, “Yeah, for real.”

  Ignoring the pain, the blood, and everyone in the room, Doc took his wife into his arms and held her close to his chest for a moment, then lifted her chin and kissed her passionately.

  “I don’t mean to break this up,” Deuce said, “but the cops will be here any minute.”

  Doc suddenly realized he and Nikki weren’t alone and looked around the room at all of us. Finally, his gaze stopped on me. Before my eyes, his whole demeanor changed. “I’m gonna be a dad,” he said with a crooked grin. I knew then that we’d lost him.

  “Yeah,” I replied, grinning, “we heard. Congratulations, Bob.”

  He tried to raise his right hand to shake my hand but winced in pain, sitting back down on the stool.

  I heard a commotion outside and went over to the open door. Cleary was headed up the steps with two of his men. All three men had their guns drawn.

  I held up my hands and said, “Easy, Sergeant, it’s all over. Follow me, I’ll show you where the last of your gunmen is.”

  Leaving Deuce to clean things up in the house, I led the three cops down to the beach and over to the boathouse. They entered it tactically, guns drawn. When Cleary came back out to the landing, I explained what happened and how we tried to take the man peacefully.

 
“Who shot him?” Cleary demanded as Rosales came up the steps behind me.

  “I did,” she replied. “Four times.”

  Cleary looked down at the dead man. He had one dark stain on the top of his right shoulder, close to where Doc’s exit wound had been. He also had a second, much larger stain on the left side of his chest where three holes were visible in his shirt. All of them could easily fit under a silver dollar.

  “I had no choice,” Rosales continued. “He had Jesse in a choke hold and was trying to kill him.”

  “He would have, too,” I added. “If Agent Rosales hadn’t stopped him.”

  Cleary looked inside at the dead man, past me at Rosales and finally looked up at me. “How much longer are you people going to be on my island?”

  “Three more days,” I replied. “Tops.”

  “I have half a mind to deport all of you today,” he said. “But in the interest of continuing relations with both the American government and the state of Florida, I’ll allow you to stay. For three days.”

  Half an hour later, having taken both my and Rosales’s statements, Cleary left. Two of his men stayed behind at the boathouse until the coroner arrived.

  “Thanks, Agent Rosales,” I said as she and I walked back up the path to the house.

  “Hey, I thought we were drinking buddies?” I stopped and turned toward her at the bottom of the steps.

  “Thanks, Linda. I owe you.”

  “And I’ll collect,” she replied, with a smile. “One of these days.” I watched after her as she went on up the steps to the house. At the top, she turned and smiled again.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Bradbury asked Deuce as we came through the door.

  “What we ought to do,” I said, crossing the room toward him, “is feed your ass to the sharks.”

  “He did come to warn us,” Julie said. “That took some guts.”

  The two women from the villa below the house were there, probably having heard the shots and all the commotion.