I didn’t even have a boat lined up to get me into Florida, and it all had to happen today and tonight, in order for me to get to Miami before the end of Richard Prechter’s speech tomorrow, when Topaz—and Cori—might be lost from my radar forever. I nudged the little silver skull atop the throttle ahead some more, and grabbed the wheel with both hands.
Salt spray flew back on each impact of the inflatable’s fiberglass hull against the warm blue water. Nick Galloway was hanging onto the grab bar on his side of the console with his left hand, and he slapped me on the back and nodded his head at me. He was grinning like a maniac, with his wet hair plastered back and salt water streaming off his long mustache. I’m sure that I grinned like a maniac right back at him.
By now, Archy was drowned and dead, and becoming a feast for crabs. Cori, I didn’t know about, but I hoped that she was still okay and would remain so until I could reach her. Richard Prechter and Trevor Ridley, they were going to pay, and pay dearly, even worse than Archy had paid. They were dead men walking, even in Miami.
And I was alive, man, I was alive!
9
Nick tied us off to Rebel Yell’s swim platform and we climbed aboard. I gathered enough clothes on my bunk for a week in Florida, then folded and stuck them into my deployment bag. I dug out my loafers and gave them a quick brushing to remove the beginnings of mold. The tropical humidity was hell on leather shoes left in the bottoms of boat lockers. My dark brown Docksiders were in better shape, since I wore them more frequently. Packed them too, but I laced on my best running shoes for the trip. Spotted my trail sandals in the shoe locker and threw them in my kit bag too. I packed enough shirts and shorts to cover a variety of options.
A navy sport jacket and khaki slacks went into a slim hanging bag. I’d need them if I was going to infiltrate Richard Prechter’s conference in Miami Beach. From time to time I had to pass as a member of the professional class and not a wharf rat or manual laborer. In some countries a coat and tie were a virtual requirement for visiting a government office. As a boat captain I was required to visit those offices when clearing in and out of ports. Skippers appearing in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops often waited hours for officials who never seemed to be available.
With my attire seen to, I next gathered a rudimentary urban camouflage kit for moving unnoticed through American civilization. This included an assortment of hats, glasses, badges, and old IDs, along with a green daypack and a soft leather valise. They would allow me to enter a bathroom or other private place as one person and exit as another. I even had a man’s wig that I’d bought on a whim in Colombia.
I packed my Glock 17 and two extra magazines. I’d picked this one up for cash in Buenos Aires. Fifty rounds of nine-millimeter weren’t a lot, but I’d be traveling light and keeping a low profile. These fifty were from my best stash of jacketed hollow points, carefully hoarded. Since I’d left the States, they’d passed a national gun registration law. My Glock wasn’t registered, but so what? I wasn’t registered either. No biometric work card in my wallet, no sir. No scannable chips at all, because I wasn’t taking any credit cards or even a valid driver’s license. The only cards I was taking were out of date, faked, or stolen. Any embedded RFID chips had been microwaved and magnetized into permanent silence.
For a quiet close-range weapon, I threw in one of my Marine Corps mementos, my Ka-bar knife. I kept its seven-inch blade sharp enough to shave the hairs off my arm. It lived in a black nylon sheath when I didn’t need it in my hand.
Besides my handheld Garmin GPS, another concession to modern technology was my Orbcom transceiver. This was a brick-size device with a telescoping whip antenna that could send and receive text messages anywhere on the planet. I’d purchased the Orbcom in Uruguay with a two-year plan, prepaid in cash. You could still do that in some countries. Rebel Yell’s single sideband radio was connected to a laptop, so I could contact my crew by email. I removed the Orbcom’s battery and packed it separately from the unit. You couldn’t be too careful with electronics that could transmit your location. Government spooks had ways of turning them on without your even knowing it.
Of course I packed my NOD, which lived inside its brown hockey helmet when it wasn’t on my head. The helmet was zipped into a nylon bowling ball case that just fit it.
My eight-by-twenty binoculars emitted nothing, and were completely innocuous. They sacrificed low light capability and a wide field of view for being the size of a paperback and not a college textbook. Ten-by-fifty binos were the everyday working glass on Rebel Yell, but were too big and heavy for this mission.
Nick Galloway had never unpacked his duffel bag when he’d arrived aboard Rebel Yell in George Town, so he was ready to go before I was. We left for the beach in the Avon, with Victor behind the wheel. Tran was already ashore, prepping the landing strip. My first stop for refueling would be back in George Town, where Nick’s boat was located and where I would drop him off. For traveling, we both wore our usual low-key tropical attire of shorts and T-shirts, ball caps and shades. Badly lost tourists, if anybody happened to see us on the deserted northeast corner of Acklins Island.
A sandy road terminated near Atwood Harbour. The harbor was used by island supply boats when other docks and landing sites were closed by weather. This rudimentary track had been bulldozed to allow vehicles access to the harbor during those times. More than five hundred yards ran in a straight and level line hacked through low brush. When I had been discussing our options with the pilot back in George Town, he had suggested Atwood Harbour because of the proximity of the road and the absence of people living nearby. Landing against a steady twenty-knot trade wind, his Cessna 180 would need only two hundred yards for stopping. He just asked that we check the road before he arrived, fill in any erosion gullies, and clear any obstacles such as new trees or signposts. The Cessna was a high-wing plane, so this was not going to be a difficult task.
Tran had done the landing strip prep already. He was a good soldier and didn’t sit around waiting for orders. As soon as Victor had called the pilot he had gone ashore in my kayak with a shovel, a folding saw and a machete. The road was airplane-ready by the time we arrived on the beach in the Avon.
While we waited for the Cessna, I did some navigational math in my head. It would take Rebel Yell three or four days to motor-sail to Miami, covering almost five hundred sea miles to go around all of the islands and reefs. Today we would be flying a straight-line route to within fifty miles of Miami in just three hours.
When we finally saw the shiny speck that was the airplane, it was coming from the northwest at no more than a hundred feet above the ocean. The Cessna climbed and made one pass over us to look at the landing strip, then circled around and landed toward the east, facing into the wind. We grabbed our bags and jogged to the plane halfway along the straight section of road. The Cessna 180 was a tail-dragger, with two plump tires up front that enabled it to land on the sandy road without sinking in.
The cabin was about as roomy as the interior of a midsize sedan. Nick climbed in through the passenger door ahead of me and got in the back. Our bags went into the luggage area behind the rear seat. I climbed into the right seat, strapped in and put on the spare headset. The pilot’s name was Harry Allan, and he was one of my best Bahama connections. He looked to be maybe sixty, with a Vandyke beard similar to Victor’s, but his was all white and very closely cropped. A Caucasian who’d lived his entire life in the islands, his face was reddened and lined with deep creases.
Harry was a “belonger,” a strange sort of quasi-Bahamian. This meant he was a British subject who was already a legal resident of the Bahamas in 1967 when the country gained its independence from the United Kingdom. Belongers were allowed to live and work in the Bahamas, but not to vote. They were literally a dying breed, which had been the original intent of their special status. Harry had an odd and shifting accent, a mixture of English, American Southern and Bahamian. While we were discussing the charter back in George Town, he had told me he�
��d landed on this road before, for emergency medical evacuations. Among the other hats he wore, Harry was a BASRA pilot. That was the all-volunteer Bahamas Air-Sea Rescue Association.
There was still enough straight road ahead of us to take off into the wind without taxiing back around. As soon as I closed and latched my door, he pushed in the throttle knob and we raced down the unofficial airstrip, bumping and churning across the sand and shells. We lifted off with twenty yards to spare and flew over Atwood Harbour and past Rebel Yell at mast level before climbing out and banking northwest. Harry was grinning. It was obvious that he would do this bush flying for free. He would pay to do this. Which in fact he did as a BASRA volunteer.
That was all fine, but what mattered to me was that Harry Allan had a very sporty attitude toward official paperwork, flight plans, and crossing international boundaries. I knew this because a few years earlier I’d needed to be in Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos by a certain date to do some banking of an urgent nature. I had to be there in person, but I did not want to officially clear customs into the Turks and thus make a searchable record of my trip to that offshore banking center. Even back then, it was getting to be a real trick for Americans to move funds in and out of foreign banks. The IRS monitored every transaction by Americans that it could, anywhere in the world. Wire transfers were out of the question.
On that trip, Harry and I flew from Nassau to a little-known airstrip on North Caicos. Our unnoticed arrival was followed by a three-mile ride in an ancient Chevy and then a ten-mile ride in a water taxi across to Provo and the small private bank. Numbers were exchanged and the contents of a safe deposit box were unlocked and emptied into an ordinary tourist’s daypack. None of the funds involved had originated as income in the USA, but that was no impediment to the globe-spanning tentacles of the IRS. I wondered even then if the little room in the tiny bank was under some kind of video surveillance, and if an IRS office was at the other end of the line. After that first unlogged flight across an international border, Harry became my preferred charter pilot. But he drew the line at flying into the United States without official permission; hence my flight to Bimini to find a boat.
****
The first leg of the flight from Acklins Island was taking us back to George Town to refuel. A few miles out, we climbed to two thousand feet and Harry engaged the autopilot. There was unlimited blue sky with just a scattering of popcorn cumulus marching steadily westward on the trades. I admired and even envied these island pilots. Aviators enjoyed horizon-to-horizon panoramas that most land-dwellers could no more imagine than a turtle could imagine the view of an eagle. My Raven UAV was a useful tool for obtaining an indirect bird’s-eye view, but in no way did it compare to sitting in the front seat of a high-wing Cessna.
Harry’s voice on the intercom broke my reverie. “I’m wondering why you picked Bimini. Any special reason?”
I adjusted my headset and mike so that we could converse comfortably. “You won’t fly me to Florida without clearing U.S. Customs, and Bimini’s the closest place to Miami that you can land this thing in.”
“Then you must already have a boat lined up.”
“I have a contact there, nothing solid. But I’m usually pretty lucky about these things. Do you know anybody there who can get me on a fast boat in a hurry?”
“In Bimini? Some people. But that I trust? Not only no, but hell no. North Bimini is full of DEA agents and snitches. South Bimini—where the airfield is—well, that’s even worse. It’s the Wild West. The drug gangs run it. Between heat from the DEA and the gangs, Bimini is about the last place I’d go to look for a boat ride to Florida.”
“Well, where would you go, then?”
“Me? Only one place. West End, on Grand Bahama. That’s where I have my best connections, anyway. It’s not a bunch of cutthroats like on Bimini. At least, it’s not all cutthroats.”
“West End is way north, across from Palm Beach.”
“So what? Do you want to get to Florida or not?”
Harry looked across at me. He was smiling, but I couldn’t read the eyes behind his gold-rimmed aviators’ sunglasses. There were rumors about the old BASRA pilots who had been flying around the Caribbean during the seventies and eighties. Some of them lived pretty well. Some of those pilots had gone on to buy their own private islands, or build and operate their own hotels and marinas.
Not Harry Allan. He didn’t exactly live large, not from what I had seen. He had an old beater Toyota truck on Great Exuma, and kept his Cessna in one bay of a ten-plane hangar. Inside his bay Harry had a sofa long enough to sleep on, a fridge, a microwave and a desk. I’d never seen his house, only his hangar bay. Lots of pilots seemed almost to live in their hangars the way that sailors hung around marinas. It’s where they congregated with their aviator brethren when they were not in the air. I didn’t know where Harry lived when he wasn’t around the airport. He’d never invited me to see his home. He might have lived in a shack or a mansion.
“So, you’re saying I should forget Bimini?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. But I can put you onto a good boat, perfect for what you need. Now, I’m assuming that you can drive a fast boat in ocean waves, right? I mean, it’s not something you can learn by trial and error. So don’t bullshit yourself about your capabilities. It’s a skill, like skiing or anything else.”
“Yes, I can drive a fast boat in ocean waves.” I felt like a pro after my trip from Castigo Cay on the Avon inflatable. My reflexes were tuned. Surfboard, windsurfer, sailboat, or speedboat, I knew waves. I was tired, but I knew I was dialed in for driving fast boats on the ocean.
Harry lowered his voice, even though we were speaking on the intercom. “How much gold did you bring? Not for me—I won’t charge more for the flight than what I told you yesterday. I made a call, and I’ve got a boat lined up. I’m not getting a kickback, it’s nothing like that. But if you decide you like the boat, you’ll have to buy it outright. There are no rentals and no charters for what you’re planning. You have to buy the boat, free and clear.”
“That’s the way it works?”
“That’s the way it works, when it works. So—how much gold do you have? I have to make a call when we get there, so I have to know. On you, I mean. Not in your vault in Provo. I’m sure you have a ton of gold there.”
“At least a ton, right next to yours. But on me?” This was another moment of truth. I had to level with him. Well, almost. I undercounted my hoard. “Twenty ounces. Less, after I pay you what I still owe for the flight.”
“Forget it. My expenses are covered out of what you gave me yesterday.”
“Thanks, Harry.”
“I said forget it.”
“No, I won’t. I really appreciate it.”
“Hell, I’d rather fly than sit around any day. You only have twenty ounces? I’m not sure if that’ll be enough. But I’ll talk to my friend. Maybe he can set you up for that much. I called him from George Town. Don’t worry, nothing specific. I just wanted to know if he still had a boat he’s trying to sell. I knew you’d be in the market.”
“I am, for sure.” I wondered if I was being corralled into a bad deal, or maybe something even worse. But I was dog tired and I had few options. Going into South Bimini solo and exhausted would be even more dangerous than trusting Harry.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m enjoying the hell out of this. At my age I don’t get much excitement. Back in my younger days…well, that’s another story. A lot of stories. Maybe we’ll talk about them someday.” He looked across at me, grinning. “They’d curl your hair, young man.”
“I’ll bet they would.” I could only imagine what a barnstormer Harry had been in his prime.
“So, Dan, are you going to tell me why you’re traveling to Miami under the radar? If it’s none of my damn business, my feelings won’t be hurt.”
“Well…actually…” I didn’t care for Harry’s friendly interrogation, but he’d cut me a break on the cost of the charter, an
d he was arranging a boat for me. He was an expert at these things, and he might be able to help me in ways I hadn’t even thought of yet.
He ignored my reticence. “Yesterday you told me it was something about your girlfriend hitching a ride to Miami on a megayacht.”
“Right.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for an ex-girlfriend.”
“There’s more to it than that.” Against my better judgment, I opened up. Harry just had that likeability factor. Or maybe it was fatigue. Without naming names, I filled him in on the situation. I told him about the other missing girls, and “Mr. Evil’s” peculiar hobby. I left out the details of what had recently happened on Castigo Cay, particularly the part about Archy being left in the mangroves.
“And you have a good idea of where this megayacht will be?”
“It should be tied up on Hibiscus Isle, between Miami and Miami Beach.”
“I know the place. There’s the two isles, Palm and Hibiscus, right off the MacArthur Causeway. That’s all movie stars and millionaires. Big, big money. They pay a lot for privacy. Only one bridge on and off the islands, with their own security outfit. Not rent-a-cops. Mostly retired SWAT types. It’s tight—very tight.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Oh, I’ve rubbed up against money now and then. Mostly flying the rich and famous over to the islands. Sometimes it gets buddy-buddy and they take you behind the curtain to where the big money hangs out. That’s how I know.”
“So I won’t be able to tap-dance my way onto Hibiscus Isle with a winning smile and a witty line?”
“Not unless you’re already on somebody’s guest list. And even if you are, they’ll call the house to verify it and check your ID with a magnifying glass. But I’m guessing that Mr. Evil isn’t going to be inviting you for lunch anytime soon.”
Castigo Cay Page 13