Dave Collins and the CIA knew him as the Dragonfly.
“Don’t look so surprised, Collins. I told you that we would meet again.” Terzi was tall, bony, gaunt face, scraggly black and white beard, raccoon shadows under flat eyes. His lips scarcely moved when he spoke, whether it was English or the four other languages that he spoke fluently. “You have aged, and do not misconstrue that as a compliment.”
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want. I want a slow death for you. That was what I was going through at the American prison at Guantanamo. I was there only because of you.”
“You were there because you were directly responsible for the deaths of twenty-seven U.S civilians.”
“I imagine you would like your gun now. It is not in the drawer where you keep it.” He used his left hand to reach behind his back, producing a Beretta. “Your guard is down. It was not difficult to enter your boat while you were away earlier. I thought about all of the waterboarding your government did to me. What would be an equal fate for you? I did my research, and I know this harbor is deep here, twenty meters. You can think about that as you sink to the bottom with an injury to your head. You will be an old man who slips off his boat while drinking alcohol. It happens. Karma. By the time they find you, the crabs will have devoured your eyes, lips and ears. They choose the delicate flesh first.”
* * *
Max lifted her head, listening. Her dachshund ears rose as high as they could go, cocked, searching for the source of the noise that had awakened her. She slept at the foot of Sean O’Brien’s bed inside his boat, Jupiter, less than eighty feet from Gibraltar.
A low growl came from the back of her throat.
O’Brien opened his eyes. He didn’t turn his head. Just listening. One of the bowlines creaked, stretching against the tide.
Max growled again.
He whispered. “What do you hear, Max? Is it just the bowlines, or maybe it’s Ol’ Joe. That cat’s been known to rummage the trash cans at night.”
Soft moonlight poured in the master berth through three port windows, two of them wedged open, allowing the night breeze to enter the cabin. Max stood, trotting to the edge of the bed facing the windows. Another low growl.
O’Brien got out of bed, Max following. At six-two, 195 pounds of muscle, he wore boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He walked from the master berth into Jupiter’s salon, the cockpit facing the dock and some of the boats on the far side of the dock. A slight mist rose from the marina water. Most of the boats were gently bobbing silhouettes in the moonlight.
All but one.
O’Brien stood at his siding glass doors. He looked at Gibraltar, studying it for a moment. A light was on inside the salon. “Max, it looks as though Dave didn’t shut his lights off. That’s not like him. He’s usually asleep sometime between the news and the sportscast.”
O’Brien quietly opened the sliding glass doors and stepped onto Jupiter’s cockpit. He glanced down the long dock, the fog building. In the distance, someone walked quickly. O’Brien could tell the figure was that of a man, and he was in a hurry to get off the docks.
“Stay here, kiddo.” O’Brien stepped inside, picked up his Glock, heading to Gibraltar. In less than twenty seconds he walked down the short auxiliary pier leading to the rear of the trawler. He felt something was wrong before he got there.
Maybe Dave was sick, he thought. Maybe not.
He stepped in his bare feet along the dock wet with heavy dew. Then he stopped. In front of him were tracks left in the dew by someone else. He could tell they were not tracks made by Dave Collins.
O’Brien quietly lowered himself over the boat’s transom side railing. The cockpit door was open, soft jazz playing inside the salon. He lifted his Glock and entered.
“Dave, are you here?”
Nothing but the sound of the piano jazz.
O’Brien stopped. The red sheen was unmistakable. Blood. It was spattered on the couch and across part of the floor. O’Brien’s pulse hammered. He extended his gun-hand, searching the boat—frantic that each time he opened a door he’d find Dave’s body.
The last door was to that of the master berth. O’Brien opened it slowly, expecting the worst—a horrific death for his old friend. The cabin was dark. O’Brien felt for the switch and turned on the light.
* * *
The Dragonfly
A Sean O’Brien Novel
Coming 2017
Lowe, Tom - Sean O'Brien 08 Page 41