"Okay, Paul. Great work. You just missed the best green flash I've ever seen," Phillip said. "Anything else for us?"
"Yeah. J.-P. and Mario put Mario's son, the lawyer, to work again. I've got a federal warrant to arrest Santiago, a.k.a. 'Big Jim,' a.k.a. 'Iago' Rodriguez, just like when we were after that Reilly character. I'll be in Martinique tomorrow morning. Save me a sunset or two."
Dani and Phillip looked at one another, frowning. Sharktooth spoke.
"This mon, he gon' die fightin'. No arres', Paul. He don' gon' live that long, mon."
"I understand, Sharktooth. That could certainly happen. I wouldn't be at all surprised. If I'm there with the paperwork, though, there won't be any doubt that he died resisting arrest, you see."
The three smiled at one another.
"See you in the morning, Paul," Phillip said as they disconnected.
****
José stepped off the town dock in Bequia into the sleek, silver Cigarette boat. He nodded at Cicero, his driver, and the three big V-8 engines rumbled to life. Cicero tapped the throttles, causing a roar like thunder, and then the engines settled into a rough, loping idle. José cast off the dock lines, and Cicero took the boat out through the anchorage.
Before he reached open water, he leaned over and spoke into José's ear. "You see those Donzis here yesterday?"
José shook his head and looked at Cicero, raising his eyebrows. Cicero killed the engines, allowing the boat to drift while they talked.
"What about a Donzi, Cicero?" José asked, intrigued to hear that there was another go-fast boat in the area.
"Come in one time day befo' yesterday. Bright red, flame paint job. Go to anchored yacht, stay for a minute or two, take off in a cloud of spray. Rooster tail behind it, look like it touch the sky. Mebbe fast as this boat, José."
"Where did it go?"
"West. Out of sight in a minute -- prob'ly makin' a hundred knots."
"You say 'one time.' It come again?"
"Different one, mon. This one yellow, but same flame paint job, like twin, almos'. 'Bout lunchtime yesterday. Go to town dock, pick up that big mon you always followin'."
"Let's go to Mustique, Cicero. Fast as we can, okay?"
Chapter 25
José was in too big a hurry to worry about finesse. That pig Rodriguez had given him the slip and made him look bad to his Tío Juan. José's jaw muscles were flexing like snakes writhing in a bag as he contemplated the ways he might exact his vengeance on Big Jim. First, though, he had to find the hijo de puta, and then, he must wait for Tío Juan to decide. He was perplexed at the thought of Rodriguez taking off in a Donzi, too. He would know if there were other go-fast boats around, and even if he didn't, Cicero surely would. José and Cicero shared a love of the sleek over-powered contraptions. Going 100 knots in open water was right up there with cutting someone, in José's reckoning, and it was at the top of Cicero's list. And Cicero had seen not one, but two of the boats; they looked like a matched set from what he told José. José forced his jaws to relax. His teeth were hurting as Cicero brought the boat in to the dock in Mustique. He leapt ashore, leaving Cicero to handle the dock lines.
"You seen Rodriguez?" José asked the dockmaster.
Shaking his head, the man backed up, trying to put distance between himself and the frenzied, cross-eyed maniac. "N-not since I call you, mon," he stammered, as he felt the wall of his little guard shack against his back. "Two, three day ago, mebbe."
To the dockmaster's relief, José spun on his heel and left at a trot, headed for the Rodriguez place. He chewed his lower lip as he watched José leave, anxious at what he knew was coming. Ten minutes later, José was in his face again.
"No one is there," the madman barked.
"I tol' you I no see Señor Rodriguez…" he gasped as José thrust the stiffened fingers of his right hand into his midsection. The dockmaster doubled over, grabbing at José to keep from collapsing.
"Not Rodriguez, you fool. The servants, they are gone!"
"Yes, they took the ferry yesterday, wit' all they b'longing. Say no mo' work for Señor Rodriguez. They go home to Haiti. Say is mo' safe in Haiti than work fo' Señor Rodriguez."
José turned and stalked toward the Cigarette boat, pleased to hear that Cicero still had the engines idling. He helped Cicero with the dock lines, and they roared away to Baliceaux. In his haste, José jumped into the shallow water off the beach in Landing Bay before the boat even touched the shore.
He charged through the brush to the guard shack, where he was brought to a halt by the stench of death wafting from the open door. He approached the door, holding his breath, conscious of the buzzing from the clouds of flies around the bodies. He steeled himself against his rising nausea and stepped inside, fanning the flies away with his baseball cap.
Carlos was stretched out on his back in what could have been a position of sleep, except for the grotesque swelling and the flies. José registered the black bullet hole at the juncture of his eyebrows, and saw that most of the back of his head was splattered on the wall behind the bed.
He turned and fanned the flies away from Hector's body. Hector was stripped naked, spread-eagled, with his wrists tied to the head of the bed, and his ankles to the foot. His clothes were cut cleanly into strips, and had fallen around him. José nodded with grudging admiration at the work of another knife man. Hector's bloated body appeared unmarked other than a few slices that barely broke the skin, not even showing signs of bleeding, but his head was at an odd angle.
José dashed outside and took a deep breath. Two steps from the porch, he dropped to his hands and knees and heaved until his stomach was empty. He stood, wiped his mouth on his forearm, and walked back to the boat, thinking. He was not eager to talk to Tío Juan, but at least he would be on the phone, not in his presence, when José gave him the bad news.
****
It was one of those rare, rainy days in Miami. Juan Camacho sat inside, looking out at the rain through the glass wall that divided his swimming pool into an indoor portion and an outdoor portion. There was a hot tub at either end. The girl reclined in the indoor hot tub, her head resting on the tile border. Her bare, heavily augmented breasts floated in front of her, looking like some kind of obscene tub toys that shouldn't even be associated with the innocent-looking girl. Dealer installed options, Romero called them. The term was a carry-over from his time spent running one of Camacho's car dealerships. He idly wondered why they all wanted that surgery. There was no understanding women, he reflected.
The phone's insistent ringing brought him back to the present. He looked at the caller i.d. screen. "Hola, José. Cómo está usted?"
"Hola, Tío. I got bad news." José knew not to mince words with Camacho in situations like this one.
"Digame."
"Rodriguez is gone, and…"
"What do you mean, he's gone? You were watching him!"
"He gave me the slip. He was seen leaving Bequia yesterday in a Donzi."
"Where are you?"
"Baliceaux. I went first to Mustique, to check the house. No sign of him there, and Herman, he says the servants quit and left in a hurry yesterday, going back to Haiti."
"Who is this Herman?"
"The dockmaster, in Mustique. I pay him."
"I see. So, you let Rodriguez get away. Maybe he is not coming back, if the servants are gone. Anything else?"
"Yes, Tío. Baliceaux."
"What about Baliceaux?"
"While I was in Bequia, someone hit Baliceaux. Hector and Carlos are both dead."
"Damn! Again, they hit Baliceaux. Or maybe not. Maybe Rodriguez did them before he left. Any of our inventory missing, or could you tell?"
"I did not count it, since I don't know how much should be here, but the storage area looks untouched. No footprints, tarps all neat over the pallets, like it looked before. I don't think it was Rodriguez, Tío Juan."
"Why not?" Camacho glanced at the note the butler handed him.
"Because Hector, he
was tied down naked to the bed, with his clothes cut off in strips. Somebody was asking him questions before they kill him, I think. Somebody good with the knife, like me, Tío."
"I see. Okay. You go to the house in Mustique. Stay there until you hear from me. I have someone I must see, now."
Camacho nodded to the man who had brought him the note. "Show Sr. Romero to my office, please."
****
After Luís Romero left, Camacho sat at his desk, thinking. He doodled on a legal pad on the desk in front of him, drawing circles, filling in names of people and places, connecting the circles with lines. There was a pattern hidden somewhere in all of those ink marks; he was sure of it. The information that Romero brought him a few minutes ago had been a catalyst for the thoughts bubbling through his mind.
Camacho and El Grupo had been consolidating shipments at Baliceaux for several years with no problems. They moved drugs and human cargo through on a regular basis. His Venezuelan partners had sent Santiago Rodriguez to oversee the construction and operation of the depot on Baliceaux, and shipments had run smoothly up until a few weeks ago.
Someone had raided the island and killed the staff, except for Rodriguez, who stayed on the neighboring resort island of Mustique. After José's initial inspection of Baliceaux, he and Camacho had concluded that Rodriguez had been using the island for purposes of his own, besides managing El Grupo's local activities. They weren't sure yet what he had been doing, but whatever it was had now precipitated two raids on the island. Camacho decided to cut his losses and do away with Rodriguez. They might never know what he had been doing, but Baliceaux was attracting too much of someone's attention because of him.
Juan Camacho wasn't a religious man, the way most people would define the term, but he did believe in divine providence. The information that Luís Romero had just brought him reinforced his sense that there was order in the universe. A retired cop with personal ties to a prominent Miami businessman, another Cuban exile like Camacho, had been asking questions about Rodriguez. He had somehow come to Romero in search of Rita Salinas, one of Camacho's old girlfriends who was a 'model' for Romero's agency. Rita had been a special friend of Rodriguez, and the cop had wanted to know all of the particulars of her recent visit to Bequia. Romero had encouraged her to tell the cop what she knew, and she had dutifully told Romero everything the cop had asked her.
Camacho had found the information about Rodriguez's motor yacht especially interesting. He knew that Rodriguez often entertained aboard a luxury charter yacht, Maximo, but Rita seemed to think it was his. Camacho had his minions checking that out. Whether Rodriguez owned the vessel or chartered it, it would make a perfect hideaway for him. He was doubtless aboard, somewhere, feeling safe, but nobody was safe from Camacho. He would find Rodriguez and Maximo. José could have his fun with Rodriguez. Camacho had already put that behind him. He was intrigued by the notion that Rodriguez might own the $100 million vessel. If so, it had been paid for with money skimmed from El Grupo. Before Rodriguez died, he would transfer ownership to one of Camacho's offshore companies.
He stood and stretched, satisfied with his afternoon's work. He thought he would go and see how that girl with the free-floating dealer installed options was doing.
Chapter 26
Dani was stowing groceries as quickly as Phillip and Paul could bring them aboard Midnight Thunder. The boat was snuggled into the mangroves in a little cove on the eastern shore of Cul-de-Sac du Marin, where Phillip's friend kept her hidden. The two men were slipping and sliding back and forth to Phillip's Jeep through swampy mud. The Jeep was parked on a rough trail about 100 yards from the boat, and Paul had no clue as to how Phillip had gotten the agile little car through the undergrowth as far as he had. Sharktooth would join them later today; he was at the marina, touching up the bullet holes in the brightwork around the companionway on Vengeance.
Dani had been pleased when he had volunteered to make some quick repairs before the varnish started to lift where the surface film had been broken. Like most hard-core sailors, Dani was no great fan of varnished teak on exterior surfaces, but it was expected on luxury charter yachts, so she was committed to maintaining it. If she had her way, all of the external teak on Vengeance would be the natural silver-gray color that resulted from saltwater and sunshine. Sharktooth, oddly enough given his personality, could while away hours spreading varnish. He claimed to find it soothing, so Dani was happy to allow him to soothe himself. She had been worried that over the course of a few days, moisture would get under the varnish and require that she and Liz devote a couple of weeks to restoring the damage.
She had heard about Midnight Thunder from her father and Phillip, but she had never seen the vessel before. Clarence Devereau, their long-time friend and sometime business associate, had built the boat a few years before. She was designed and constructed specifically for running contraband to Venezuela. Midnight Thunder was the ultimate evolution of the ocean racing designs that had been favored by drug runners for the last 30 years, although Midnight Thunder bore as much resemblance to a Donzi or a Cigarette boat as an F-15 did to a Piper Cub. She was hand-built of space-age composites and powered by two monstrous turbocharged diesels. From what Phillip had told Dani, she had a range of about 2,000 miles at a cruising speed of between 50 and 60 knots, with a top speed in flat water of close to 200 knots. Her composite construction made her virtually invisible to radar, and her low, sleek hull was a strange bronze/silver/gray color that played tricks on the eye. The shape of the hull itself defied description. There were no flat panels and no hard corners; it was an amorphous shape of smoothly blended curves. Staring at it for too long made it appear to change shape before one's eyes.
Looking at her from a few yards away through the mangroves, there was the impression that something shadowy was hiding in the swamp, but there was nothing you could fix your eye on. Staring for more than a few seconds made Dani feel disoriented, almost nauseated. She could imagine that the boat would be invisible, even in daylight, in open water from a short distance away, unless spray and wake disclosed her presence. Phillip had given her a quick tour of the weaponry that was stored in carefully concealed compartments around the boat. There was nothing exotic, but she was as well-armed as the average infantry company, with an assortment of light anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons augmenting small arms and machine guns. She had a full complement of military grade electronics, as well, so no one would be sneaking up on them.
As they finished their provisioning, Sharktooth materialized from the mangroves.
"Time fo' deenah," he rumbled, as he scrambled aboard.
"You always think it's time for dinner, Sharktooth," Phillip teased. "How'd you get back here, anyway? I thought you were going to call me when you were done."
"I catch ride on a beer truck goin' to Ste. Anne. Walk back in from road. Clarence got trip wires out in the mangroves. Gotta be careful."
"I told you that, Sharktooth. Why didn't you stay on the trail? He's got video on that, so you can't get hurt."
"Gotta stay in practice, Phillip. I don' set off anyt'ing."
"That's good. There's no telling what those trip wires are hooked up to -- probably just flares and smoke, I guess. I don't think he'd take a chance on killing somebody this close to home, but you never know with Clarence."
"We gon' eat or talk, Phillip? Varnish hungry work."
"Living is hungry work for you, Sharktooth. I think Dani set out some cold cuts below while we were loading up. Let's go see."
Paul had been a few yards away, a telephone at one ear and his finger in the other. He climbed aboard and went below with the others. "My friends found Maximo about an hour ago," he announced.
"Where is she?" Dani and Phillip asked, simultaneously. Sharktooth paused, a sandwich halfway to his mouth, waiting.
"Was," Paul said.
"Was what?" Sharktooth took the bait.
"Where was she? These guys are dealing with satellite images that are several hours to a few days
old. They don't have the juice to order up real time stuff. Anyway, 18 hours ago, she was about 50 miles west of Bequia. I've got the GPS coordinates in a text message. From the lack of surface disturbance, they say she wasn't moving, or wasn't moving very fast, anyhow."
"If we leave as soon as we finish eating, we can be in the neighborhood well before sunset," Phillip said. "We'll pick them up on radar and hang out just over the visual horizon until after dark. Then we'll move in on them. Any idea how many people aboard, Paul?"
"Not really. The charter broker says the normal company is a captain, a mate, a chef, an engineer, and three or four deckhands who double as stewards. She's not under charter at the moment. The broker said the owner blocked out the rest of the season, starting a couple of weeks ago. It caused some serious upheaval, because they had to buy out the people who had her booked. The broker said there was some excuse of mechanical problems, but he didn't believe it. Said he wouldn't handle any more business for Maximo any time soon. He didn't know who the owner was, but my friends dug that out while they were waiting for the satellite photos. Once you cut through the paperwork, she belongs to Rodriguez."
Phillip was putting away the remains of their hasty lunch as Paul finished his report, and within a few minutes, they were slipping out of the mangroves into Cul-de-Sac du Marin.
"Wow. This thing is really quiet," Paul remarked, listening to the barely audible hum of the big engines. "The go-fast boats around Miami are all deafening."
Phillip smiled. "No advantage to noise when you're running in stealth mode. It kills the turbo boost, though. Probably can't get her much over a hundred without opening the exhausts. Too much back pressure. Once we're in open water, a few miles off shore, we'll open the cutouts and put our fingers in our ears. Then you'll hear the thunder. She's a lot more efficient that way, but we definitely won't sneak up on anybody."
Bluewater Vengeance: Mystery and Adventure in the Caribbean (Bluewater Thrillers Book 2) Page 15