Deuce knew what he was about to say. He’d been watching the fuel gauge and knew they were running low. “Head back to the airport,” he told the pilot. “We’ll refuel and get back out here.”
Taking his sat-phone from his pocket, he called Stockwell with the news. “We’re bingo fuel, Colonel. Returning to Marathon.”
“Roger that, Deuce. Charity is headed there in a few minutes. They’re checking one more boat first. The other two choppers will have to pull off in a few minutes as well. The Coast Guard and sheriff have three patrol boats in the area, with more coming. The patrol boats are intercepting three more boats that Kumar identified as possible bogeys. It’s been three hours, Deuce. They could be anywhere.”
“How’s Kim?”
“As expected. Nervous. But she’s pulled the UHF radio from one of the boats and is hooking it up here. We’ll be on in just a minute. Agent Rosales is en route, arriving at Marathon airport in minutes. Charity is picking her up and bringing her here.”
“The sun will be up in four hours, Colonel. There’ll be a lot more boats out there before then. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack out here.”
Chapter Nineteen
Linda Rosales pulled into the entrance to Marathon airport, the tires on the department’s big sedan protesting with an audible screech. She didn’t bother with finding a parking spot and sped past the main parking area into the passenger pickup and cab stand area. She came to a sudden stop behind two taxis, Cheapo and Keys Hopper. Placing an FDLE placard under the wiper blade, she hurried through the first terminal entrance and looked around.
The airport was small, with only a single departure and arrival gate, manned by a sleepy-looking TSA agent. She flashed her badge and asked where the sheriff’s helicopter would be refueling. He gave her directions and she hurried through the security area and out onto the tarmac. Turning left, she could hear a helicopter starting up and picked up her pace.
Approaching the FBO under the yellow lights that illuminated the parking apron, a sheriff’s helicopter lifted off and turned toward the taxiway. Just beyond where it had taken off from, she saw a black helicopter with dark windows and hurried toward it.
When she got there, the fuel truck operator was just finishing fueling. She’d only met a few people connected with Deuce’s counterterrorism team, but these were obviously part of it. Two very serious-looking men, one who looked like a blond bear and another man dressed in full black, were talking with a tall, short-haired woman a few years younger than herself. Charity Styles, Linda thought, remembering meeting her briefly a few months earlier on Elbow Cay.
As she approached, the big man turned to her and spoke with a deep voice, like he was in a barrel. “I’m Andrew Bourke,” the man said, extending his hand and shaking hers. “You’ve met our pilot, Charity Styles, and this is Donnie Hinkle. We’ll take you to the island before resuming the search.”
“I haven’t talked to anyone since Kim called me, two hours ago.”
“Climb aboard, Linda,” Charity said, shaking Linda’s hand. “We’re ready to go. Tony’s with her and we’ll fill you in on the way out there.”
Linda climbed in back of the Huey and turned to the other man. “Have you heard anything more?” As Charity started the engine, he pointed to the headset he was wearing and another on the bulkhead in front of her. She put on the headset and repeated the question.
“A lot of boats out there,” the man named Hinkle explained in a lyrical Australian accent. “But don’t worry, love. We’ll find him.”
The big helicopter rose into the air, the nose dropping as soon as they were airborne. It moved quickly along the short taxiway, gaining speed. Charity made a climbing turn over the runway and then flew out over the water, turning northwest.
Linda could just make out the sheriff’s chopper heading northeast with its spotlight piercing the black sky creating a circle of light on the water below. The moon was past its zenith and starting down toward the western horizon, where she could see a bright star just about to fade into the sea.
Is that Neptune? she thought. No, too late in the night. She remembered Rusty telling them, while they were on Cape Sable, that the King of the Sea fell into the ocean just a few hours after sunset this time of year.
She couldn’t help but think that if Jesse were here, he’d know what star it was. In the darkness of the chopper she shed a quiet tear born of fear. Wiping her eyes with a handkerchief from her purse, she sat forward in the seat, looking ahead with anticipation.
Charity quickly gave her the details of the previous evening and the search up to now. Linda had met quite a few men over the years, but none that she thought were as tough as Jesse. Not tough in a valiant, or violent sort of way. He had an inner strength that had borne him through a lot of tough things in his life. This one isn’t any different, she assured herself.
The flight to Jesse’s island only took a few minutes. The little mangrove-covered key stood out against the dark islands and black sea surrounding it, like a ship floating on the water. Lights emanated from all four structures, filling the center of the island with enough light to see the ground. Torches were burning on the four corners of the island, marking the inside edge of the dense mangroves that surrounded the fringe.
As they descended toward it, she could easily make out Jesse’s flags flying on the flagpole, illuminated by a solar-powered light mounted on top of the pole. She’d never seen it from the air, only from the boats. On the water’s surface it was nearly impossible to tell it from the dozens of others scattered over hundreds of square miles. From the air, however, it was hard to miss. Seeing the flags, Charity adjusted course to approach the island into the north wind.
Looking down as they flew over the side of the house, Linda could see someone on the deck, headed down the front steps and wondered who it was and how many people were here.
“We’ll only be on the ground for a second, Linda,” a voice said over the headphones she wore. Andrew turned in the front seat and faced her. “We’ll find him. You have my word.”
Chapter Twenty
Travis watched as Hinkle slid the door open as the chopper touched lightly down. He quickly jumped to the ground and helped a tall auburn-haired woman to the ground and quickly climbed back in. The woman ran toward the group at the tables. Stockwell gave a thumbs up to Charity when she was clear, and the chopper took off.
Travis stepped away from the rest of the group and extended his hand. “Agent Rosales, I’m Travis Stockwell.”
Stockwell? Linda thought, taking his outstretched hand. What’s the head of the whole command doing here? “Heard a lot about you Director. Where’s Kim?”
“In the bunkhouse with Chyrel. Please, it’s just Travis.”
She nodded. “Linda, then. Any more news?”
The sound of the receding chopper had faded and the silence on the island was deafening. Pescador came trotting across the clearing and sat down in front of her, looking up expectantly.
Linda glanced down at Jesse’s dog. Somehow, she sensed that he knew Jesse was in trouble. “He’ll be alright,” she assured the dog, with a scratch behind his right ear.
Walking into the bunkhouse with Travis, Linda saw Chyrel sitting at her desk, the main computer showing video feeds from half a dozen cameras while a smaller monitor held a satellite image of all of south Florida and the Keys, with dozens of red and green dots in the Gulf and Florida Bay east of their location.
Kim got up from where she was sitting on a disheveled bunk and met Linda halfway across the tiny room. “They’re going to find your dad,” she said as Kim melted into her arms, sobbing. She tilted the girl’s head back. Her eyes were wet and bloodshot. “Jesse’s been up against a lot tougher people than this.”
“Can we go outside?” Kim asked.
“Sure. The night air will do you good.”
The two of them left the bunkhouse, walking without aim and ending up on the north pier. “I saw someone up on the deck when we flew in,
” Linda said.
“That was Art. Art Newman, Tony’s partner. He was checking the boats. They plan to get out on the water in the morning, if the helicopters don’t find Dad. It’s a lot of water out there.”
“You said the dive boat you saw was heading east?”
“Yeah, Mister Stockwell said they probably came across the flats underwater and in canoes from a bigger boat. The dive boat me and Marty saw—that’s the sheriff’s deputy I was with. Anyway, it was going east, just outside the Contents.” Kim pointed north, where lumps of blackness rose up slightly higher than the far horizon, lit up with stars.
“Here,” Linda said, pointing to the end of the pier. “Let’s sit down for a minute.”
Sitting there with their legs dangling, Linda looked at Kim. “Let’s try something. I want you to stare out over the water past the islands to the deeper water where you saw the boat.”
Kim looked far out over the water to the north as Linda pointed and swept her hand from the bigger islands northwest of them over to the light flashing at regular intervals on Harbor Key Bank.
“Now, let your eyes follow the deeper water you know is out there. You know the water. Follow it to the lighthouse thing over there. When you get to the light, close your eyes and visualize the boat. Try to let your mind just go blank and see it.” Linda spoke quietly, soothingly.
Kim slowly turned her head, her eyes tracing the deep water she knew to be only half a mile out there. She stopped at the light and closed her eyes. She’d fished and snorkeled all around there many times and was really learning her way through all the small channels and eddies created by the islands themselves as the tide surged in and out of the backcountry twice every day. She could see the boat clearly now in the moonlight her mind recreated. It was all white, with a long roof that extended beyond the foot of the bridge to the transom.
“Damn!” Kim exclaimed suddenly.
“What is it?”
“The boat was inside the light on the Bank, running the narrow channel between the light and Marker Fifty-Five! They don’t know the water! It’s deeper on the outside!”
“How is that significant?”
“The light’s built on a shoal. They thought it was another marker and they had to go between it and the channel marker to get to deeper water. Dad would have called them landlubbers. They don’t know the water! That’s why they were going east. They might not have continued east after that at all. Maybe they turned and went north or west, or anything in between. They could be anywhere and everyone’s searching just to the east.”
“Come on!” Linda said, getting quickly to her feet.
The two ran back to the bunkhouse. When Kim explained what she’d suddenly remembered to Stockwell, he turned to Tony, “You’re the Squid. What do you think?”
“People who don’t know boats and aren’t familiar with local waters and markers do all kinds of stupid stuff, Colonel. What she described, and I’m guessing she knows the waters around this island as well as Jesse himself—well, it makes perfect sense in a completely ignorant way. There’s no reason for them to run between the light and the marker. It’s there to warn, not as a navigation marker. In fact, it’s more dangerous, just like Kim said. Unless they’re inexperienced in these waters and assumed that was the pass to deeper water. We should expand the search area.”
Tony looked at his watch and realized it had been almost seven hours since Jesse had disappeared. “A boat like both she and the deputy described with wide bow flares? It’s meant for open water and is probably capable of at least twenty, maybe thirty knots. It could be more than two hundred miles north or west, just as easy as a hundred miles east. A boat like Jesse’s could be more than three hundred miles away.”
Stockwell visibly winced. He turned to Chyrel and told her to get Kumar on. “He’s already on,” she replied and clicked a few keys on the keyboard. One of the images went to full screen and changed to the inside of the Gulfstream, circling far overhead. Even with its extended range, it had to be getting low on fuel.
“Kumar,” Travis said into the desk mic. “Expand your radar search to three hundred miles in all directions.”
“Okay,” Kumar’s voice came over the desk mounted speakers. “That’s a huge chunk of ocean. Half of Florida, most of Cuba and the northern Bahamas. What do you need?”
“Shit,” was all Travis could come up with. He looked at the laptop screen, and the satellite image zoomed out showing a good portion of the Gulf of Mexico, the northern Caribbean, and most of Florida. It took a moment for the computer to communicate with the radar system on the G-5 and the satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Suddenly hundreds of red dots began to appear on the screen. A box in the corner showed a counter, registering 238 small craft. Dejected, Travis turned to Tony he asked, “Three hundred miles?”
“At wide open throttle, yeah.”
“It didn’t look like a fast boat, not very new,” Kim said. “And it looked heavy, like it was struggling to stay on plane.”
“Fifteen knots?” Tony asked. “Then a hundred miles.”
Travis leaned toward the mic. “Set to one hundred miles and give me a count on watercraft?”
“Goodman wants to know, all watercraft, or just the size range we’re looking for?”
“He can be that specific?” Travis asked.
Goodman leaned into the picture and nodded. “Yes, sir, with experience and practice, the return echoes can be differentiated between sizes and I can program the computer to ignore obviously large echoes. To a degree.”
“Just the size we’re looking for, Ralph.”
Goodman leaned back out of the picture and Kumar shifted his gaze to the side, apparently watching the readout on the computer screen.
Kumar whistled softly. “I never would have thought there’d be so many. Over a hundred, Colonel.” As the laptop screen zoomed back in and displayed the new count, Kumar added, “Most are in the area around the Keys.”
“I’m sure you already thought of it, Travis, but what about his cellphone?” Linda asked.
Tony held up Jesse’s cell. “Art found it in a tackle box on his skiff.”
Travis slowly paced the narrow space between the desk and the bunks. “Linda, this is way too much area and too many boats. They have to land somewhere. I think it’s time to add Jesse’s face to the APB. Maybe a local cop will see them.”
“I’ll get on it,” Linda replied somberly, understanding the meaning and taking out her Blackberry. “I can get it done a lot faster than you or the sheriff.”
“You’re giving up?” Kim asked Travis.
“No! We’ll keep looking. But we have to look from the center outward, regardless of how far outward they might be. We now have six choppers up from the sheriff’s department, Coast Guard, DEA, and Fish and Wildlife. Plus twenty boats from those agencies and I don’t know how it happened, but dozens of civilian boats are hailing the Coast Guard that they’re putting out to join the search.”
Chapter Twenty-One
A sudden jarring to my left ribcage woke me up. As I started to struggle against the bindings on my wrists, I heard a hissing sound and drifted back into blackness. Before the inkiness enveloped me completely, I filed something in my memory. As groggy as I was, I knew that I was on a boat. The darkness drifted back over my mind and my head slumped back to the deck.
It seemed like minutes later I woke again. My eyes stung and the back of my throat was dry. I held perfectly still, remembering that I was bound and on a boat. I tried to take stock without moving. Besides my eyes and throat, I had a roaring headache. I didn’t think it was from a blow, though. It felt more like a hangover. At least I couldn’t feel pain anywhere else. My feet were also bound and there was a hood or a bag over my head.
It felt like I was in the open. There was a slight breeze on my lower legs. Whatever was on my head didn’t seem to be a heavy material and if it were light I could have at least seen light through it. So I assumed it was dark. That narrowed the time span
I was out to no more than ten or eleven hours.
By the sound of the bow wave and the movement of the boat I didn’t think we weren’t going very fast. Less than twenty knots, I’d guess. The boat seemed to be struggling just to do that. I’ve been on a few boats, and this one was big and sluggish as it wallowed between the waves, sort of top heavy. The steady, low hum and vibration beneath the deck told me I was on a diesel-powered boat. Probably an old trawler or early model sports fisherman, maybe a motor yacht. Sniffing the air, I thought, No, it smells more like a working boat.
How long was I out? I wondered. It’d take at least an hour to get to water this deep at the speed the scow was going. The area for quite a few miles in any direction from my island was comparatively shallow. It stayed shallow going east and got shallower in Florida Bay before reaching the mainland. That meant any direction between northwest and northeast. Northwest was the Gulf of Mexico and there’s no way this boat was crossing that much water. We were headed toward the west coast of Florida somewhere.
Muffled voices came from above and forward that I couldn’t make out. I was pretty sure it wasn’t anyone that I knew or had met. One was speaking with a slow drawl, like Texas or Oklahoma. The other had a thick accent. A Creole accent.
Haitians.
But how? The last thing I could remember before waking up on this tub was helping Chyrel set up her equipment in the bunkhouse. When Charlie brought her a plate of food and told me there was a thermos on the table, I’d walked out to where Travis sat and poured a cup. We talked for a few minutes. Tony and Art had just woken from a short nap. They had first watch. I must have blacked out a little before twenty-one hundred.
Kim!
She was supposed to be back by then. I gently tested the bindings on my wrists.
Useless.
Every fiber of my body screamed for me to act. But act against who? And how? I had no idea where I was, how long I’d been out, or how many men were even on this boat. Twenty years ago I would have struggled against the restraints anyway, got knocked out again and struggled more when I came to. Stubbornness is a hard thing to work out of some people. I did have a pretty good idea how many of them would die, if Kim had been hurt in any way.
Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6) Page 20