Wrecker: A John Crane Adventure

by Mark Parragh

  Crane gunned the engine and circled the bike around to the far side of the street to give himself as much run as he could. Then he revved the engine, dropped it into gear, and soared off the bank.

  The bike cleared the fence by inches and hit the ground with a jarring impact. An old woman ran out of a side door and shouted after Crane as he shot between the houses and out onto the street. The Escalade was already disappearing around a corner, leaving a billowing trail of dust. Crane gunned the engine and roared after it.

  A helmet would have been a good idea, he thought. Or a dust mask, at least. He breathed in grit as he slid around the corner and raced down another unpaved street. He made out the Escalade in flashes of black through the dust cloud it kicked up. Random obstacles appeared on the side of the road—a parked truck, a stack of rusting oil drums. Once a stray dog dashed out of his way.

  He followed the Escalade onto one of the town’s few paved roads and gunned the bike forward. He quickly closed with the SUV. The windows were shaded and Chloe’s bullets had scarred them. He couldn’t see inside, but they knew he was there. The Escalade jigged sharply and forced him to veer to his left. He jumped the curb and leaped over the sidewalk, ending up in someone’s front yard. Crane spotted an open space and steered for it as he fought to keep the bike upright. He shot between two houses and through a backyard, fishtailed around the trunk of a parked car, and roared down a dirt street.

  Ahead, he could see the street angling to the right, taking him back toward the Escalade. He gunned the engine and sped forward, catching flashes of black between the houses as he went. He raced past it to where the streets converged, and skidded to a stop at the corner.

  The Escalade roared toward him at the head of a column of dust. As it flew past, Crane drew the MHS, steadied his aim, and put two rounds into the windshield. They spider-webbed the outer layer of ballistic glass around two bright white circles. Then the Escalade was past him, speeding away. Crane stuck the gun back in his belt, spun the bike around, and followed them.

  Now they knew he had a weapon, and the situation had become a standoff. Tate was protected inside his armored SUV. But unless he managed to elude Crane somehow, he was trapped inside it.

  Crane kept back, following from a distance and letting them lead the way wherever they thought they were going.

  That turned out to be out of town. The buildings grew sparser, and eventually the Escalade turned onto the road that led out of town to the airfield.

  Crane followed, dropping back slightly to get out of the worst of the SUV’s dust. He wasn’t likely to lose them out here.

  Then, as the Escalade rounded a curve ahead, Crane saw brake lights. A rear door flew open, and a shape fell out. Crane saw Chloe hit the dirt and tumble as the Escalade accelerated away.

  Crane braked hard, laid the bike down in the dirt, and ran to her. Chloe had rolled off the edge of the road and was on her side in a stand of small green plants with bright purple flowers. For a moment, he felt a gut-twisting fear that she was dead, either before she left the SUV or in the fall. But then he saw her move, reaching for her right knee with both hands and groaning in pain.

  “Don’t move!” he said as he knelt beside her. “You’re okay. Stay still.”

  He automatically went through the checklist they’d taught him in the Hurricane Group. She was breathing, conscious, and responsive. No major broken bones, but the knee didn’t look great. She was going to be in a lot of pain for a while, but she’d be all right.

  She was trembling and breathing fast, looking at him with fear in her eyes. Crane could see her imagining all the things that could have happened. She was used to using her tactics against normal people, overpowering them with shock and awe. This was something different.

  “How do you do it?” she asked him as she struggled to slow her breathing. “How do you not be afraid?”

  “You don’t,” he said. “You learn to channel it so it doesn’t paralyze you. That takes time and training.”

  “Look at me,” she said. “I’m supposed to be tough.”

  “Believe me,” said Crane. “Tough isn’t your problem. That was just stupid.”

  She pulled back and looked at him with a quick flash of anger. Then it melted away, and she lay back in the dirt. “I hurt.”

  “It’s okay,” said Crane. “We’ll get you back to town and have a doctor look at that knee.”

  She nodded toward the dirt bike still lying in the middle of the dirt road. “How? On that?”

  Okay, Crane thought, that is a good point. How was he going to get her back to town?

  He was still considering it when he heard the growing scream of jet engines. Then Tate’s jet shot by overhead and climbed into the deep blue sky.

  “I’m not sorry I did it,” said Chloe. “He killed Amy.”

  “He had something to do with her death, at least,” said Crane. Crane didn’t know what. Perhaps he’d literally killed her. Maybe she’d overdosed on his boat, and he’d dumped the body. Maybe he’d gotten her high, and she’d fallen overboard and drowned. Whatever happened, Jason Tate’s hands were far from clean. That was one more thing to add to his bill.

  Crane looked up at the jet, a small dot fading rapidly out of view. The roar of its engines grew fainter and was gone. That bill was well past due. But Tate was gone with the plane, and Crane didn’t even know where he was going. Worse, given his probable involvement in Amy Carpenter’s death, there was little reason for him to come back this way. If Crane wanted another crack at Tate, he needed to lure him back from whatever bolt hole he was running to.

  Actually, he realized, there was something still tying Tate to Bahia Tortugas, one way he could get his attention. He had to admit there would be a certain amount of personal satisfaction involved as well.

  Crane shook his head. “How do you do it?” he asked Chloe.

  “Do what?”

  “We all talk a good game, but at the end of the day, you always get your way, don’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Crane sighed. “I think I’m actually going to sink his damn boat.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The warm blue water closed over Crane, and he swam toward the bottom with powerful strokes of his flippers. He’d borrowed the wet suit, flippers, and breathing gear from the crew. Strapped to his chest was the one thing he’d brought with him: a small IP 68 submersible bag full of tools and equipment.

  He’d taken a bearing on the Gypsy before he stepped off Emma’s swim deck into the Pacific. Now he checked the dive compass on his wrist and followed it. Sunlight filtered down from above, and the bottom shimmered as Crane glided over the stones and sand.

  As he swam, he considered for the hundredth time what he was doing. Chloe was back on the Emma, with her knee taped up and her other scrapes and bruises treated. She’d lost much of her taste for violence, at least temporarily. If he did end up sinking the Gypsy, he wouldn’t be doing it for her. He’d be doing it to start a war with Jason Tate. He didn’t find Tate especially worrisome. The idea of taking on a cartel was a bit more concerning. He supposed it came down to just how valuable Tate was to the cartel, and how committed they were to keeping him happy.

  A few minutes later, Crane saw the Gypsy’s bow looming overhead. He hung in the water and looked up at the dark outline of the hull, silhouetted against the gleam of sunlight. They were well away from the other boats anchored in the bay. Gypsy’s tender had been absent when he left the Emma. He didn’t expect to encounter anyone aboard, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Crane rose slowly toward the Gypsy’s stern. He broke the surface, took the regulator from his mouth, and removed his mask. He listened for nearly a minute and heard nothing. Finally he climbed up the diving ladder to the stern cockpit. There he found a pair of folding canvas chairs and a large plastic cooler. He took off his tank and hid it, along with the mask and regulator, behind the cooler.

  Crane had researched the model’s stock layout. Tate might ha
ve made some changes, but there was only so much he could do to the boat. There would be two enclosed decks. The lower deck would have the master’s cabin aft, the engine room amidships, and guest cabins forward. The main deck had two covered walk-around side-decks leading forward to the bow. They wrapped around the deckhouse, which would hold the main saloon, the galley, and the forward pilothouse. On the roof of the deckhouse was the storage deck for the tender and a flybridge from which the boat could be operated in the open air.

  The main saloon was the heart of the yacht. That was the place to start. Crane quietly let himself in through the aft door.

  The place had obviously hosted a party. Sofa cushions lay strewn across the deck, along with empty bottles and plastic cups full of stale beer and cigarette butts. A painting on the forward bulkhead had been skewed to one side. Crane moved quickly and quietly, inventorying the remains as his wetsuit dripped on the carpet. A woman’s shoe—the left one. A portable boom box on the coffee table, with CDs scattered around it. There was nothing of interest, and nothing to suggest that Tate did anything here but entertain.

  At the aft end of the saloon was a staircase leading down. At the bottom, Crane found two doors, an insulated metal one to the engine room, and a wooden one that led aft to the master suite. Crane opened that door and found himself in Jason Tate’s private sex den.

  The king-size bed took up most of the available space. It was unmade, a tangle of sheets and scattered pillows with a metal-framed headboard. The place was spangled with sex toys, bottles of lubricant, and bags of marijuana. Crane saw at least four pairs of handcuffs, including one still cuffed to the headboard. There were clothes scattered around, including a woman’s shoe that matched the one upstairs. Crane suspected they had belonged to Amy Carpenter.

  He checked the drawers and found Tate’s clothes, a plentiful supply of recreational drugs, more sex toys. He was getting the distinct impression that the Gypsy was Tate’s party barge and nothing more. If Tate conducted any other business here, he certainly hadn’t left any evidence of it behind. Then he spotted a small action camera on a high shelf, aimed down at the bed. He pulled it down and found that a USB cable connected it to a laptop.

  Crane unsealed the bag on his chest. He took out a small screwdriver, opened the laptop’s case, and removed the solid state drive. He put it back in the bag, along with the screwdriver. That was something at least. The last time he’d brought home a laptop, Crane reminded himself, it had proved very informative. This one might finally provide real evidence to connect Tate with Amy Carpenter.

  He took a quick look through the engine-room door on his way back up and decided it looked normal enough. Then he went back to the main deck and headed forward. The galley was as much of a mess as the main saloon, but the party had been kept out of the pilothouse. It was neat and well equipped. Crane glanced over the controls and the navigational instruments, and satisfied himself that he could operate the yacht. Then he took the stairs down to the lower deck.

  Crane found himself in a short corridor that ran from two cabin doors amidships to the single small cabin tucked into the bow. The first of the aft cabins was tidy but empty, probably used for guests. The other had two bunks, one low and a higher one perpendicular to it. This looked to be where Tate’s two goons lived. Crane found clothes, magazines, dirty dishes, nothing of interest.

  The forward cabin was different, he realized as he approached the door. This one had a heavy, reinforced wooden door, locked from the outside with two heavy bolts. Crane knew there would be a windowless triangular space on the other side. If Tate was using the boat to smuggle women, this was where he would keep them. The faint sound of metal on metal came from behind the door. Someone was locked inside.

  Crane unsnapped the sheath holding the dive knife on his forearm, just in case. He slowly opened the two bolts, took a deep breath, and yanked the door open. He heard a gasp, the figure on the bunk turned in surprise, and Crane found himself looking into the shocked face of Scott McCall.

  For a moment, Crane simply stared at him, dumbfounded. Scott seemed just as stunned to see him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Crane said at last.

  Scott was seated on the bunk that filled one side of the chamber, with his back to the hull and his knees drawn up to his chest. His left wrist was handcuffed to a lead pipe fastened to the hull.

  “You have to get out of here!” Scott stammered. “Before they get back! Call the police!”

  “I don’t think the police will be much help. Why are you here?”

  “They kidnapped me! Right after I left the Emma. Two guys threw a bag over my head, and here I am!”

  “All right, we’ll sort it out later,” said Crane. The cuffs were Smith and Wesson Model 100s. Getting out of them was more or less a party trick. Crane slipped a pick into the lock and released the tension on the jaw. Scott pulled his wrist free and rubbed the circulation back into it.

  Crane looked around. There wasn’t much in the tiny cabin beyond a pair of shoes in the corner. Scott put them on while Crane double-checked the empty storage cabinets.

  “Stay behind me and close,” said Crane. He led Scott back up the stairs to the pilothouse.

  Crane had still been ambivalent about this, even as he swam over. But he was feeling better about going hard after Tate all the time. Tate might not be trafficking women, but he was up to something bad. It was time to do some damage and see what happened.

  Crane powered up the GPS system and the radar. According to the screens, if he turned the yacht a few degrees to port, there was a straight course that went nowhere near any of the other anchored yachts and ended at a jagged shelf of rocks just off the southern shore. At full speed, Crane was pretty sure those rocks would rip the bottom out of the hull. All he needed then was a little accelerant.

  “Can you swim?” he asked Scott.

  “Yeah. What are you doing here, anyway? Were you looking for me?”

  “I don’t think anybody even knew you were missing. Just your lucky day, I guess. Come on.”

  He led Scott back through the saloon. Then he heard an outboard approaching. He peered out a rear window and saw the yacht’s tender. Arturo cut the motor and let the boat coast up to the stern, while Juan Manuel perched in the bow, ready to jump aboard. From the bags stacked in the boat, Crane gathered they’d been grocery shopping.

  “They’ve got guns!” Scott whispered. “What do we do?”

  Crane moved him around the railing that surrounded the stairwell and pushed him back against the bulkhead. “Stay right there.”

  Crane could hear Arturo and Juan Manuel talking outside, heard someone come up the ladder to the stern cockpit. He saw a shadow fall across the doorway, and then Juan Manuel stepped through, loaded down with grocery bags.

  Crane grabbed two great handfuls of his shirt and pulled him inside before he knew what was happening. Produce and junk food tumbled to the deck. Crane threw a quick series of punches and bounced Juan Manuel’s head off the bulkhead. Then he ran him back to the stair railing and threw him backward over it and down the stairwell.

  As Juan Manuel was going over the railing, Crane saw a heavy revolver in his belt. He grabbed the butt as Juan Manuel went over and then quickly stepped into the doorway and leveled the pistol into Arturo’s face.

  Arturo stopped cold. Crane stepped back into the saloon and beckoned him to follow. Arturo took in the gun, the groceries on the floor, Scott trembling in fear against the bulkhead. “Hey, be cool, man. It’s nothing personal, right? We can cut our own deal here. You want him, you go, right? Hey, take the boat, and we’ll just stay here.”

  “We’ll all go,” he said. He gestured for Arturo to walk back out the door. As soon as Arturo had turned around, Crane struck him hard with the butt of the revolver, and he fell to the deck.

  “Who are you?” asked Scott.

  “Let’s just say I’m not really Chloe’s ex-boyfriend,” said Crane. “Here, help me get him out to the boat.”r />
  They dumped Arturo and Juan Manuel in the bottom of the boat and cuffed them together with cuffs from Tate’s cabin. Then Crane went to work in the engine room. He disabled the fire suppression system. He checked the fuel tanks and filters, disconnected hoses, opened stopcocks, and turned on the engine block heaters. The smell of diesel fuel began to fill the room.

  Back in the pilothouse, he started up the engines. Gypsy laboriously came about to the heading he’d programmed into the autopilot. Through the forward windows, Crane could see the rocks in the distance sliding out of the water at rakish angles. He opened up the throttles, and the yacht started forward.

  By the time he made it back to the stern, Gypsy was already starting to pick up speed. The tender was pulled along behind by its mooring rope. Scott was in the bow, pulling the tender forward by the rope until it was close enough for Crane to leap into. Then Crane cut the rope with his dive knife, and they fell back as the Gypsy accelerated away to her doom.

  Arturo and Juan Manuel had regained consciousness. They said nothing but only watched in horror as Crane made his way past them to the stern and started up the outboard.

  Crane put them ashore on a flat stretch of coastline about a mile past Punto Dorado. He left Arturo and Juan Manuel in the boat while he and Scott sat on a rock and watched the Gypsy close the distance to the rocks. The engine room had already caught fire, and tendrils of black smoke were starting to escape from the saloon.

  Then there was a horrible grinding sound, and the Gypsy heeled over to starboard as it drove itself up and over the rocks, ripping a fatal gash into the bottom of the hull.

  A few moments later, an explosion ripped away the back half of the main deckhouse. Gypsy made it a few dozen yards past the rocks on momentum, spewing fire and smoke, and then began to settle into the water as fire engulfed the main deck. By the time anybody from Bahia Tortugas reached the yacht, there would be nothing left of her.