Operation Turtle Ransom

by Kimberli A. Bindschatel

  “Now that’s the Poppy I know!” Noah beamed.

  “Hurry,” I said. “Those men will come to any second. Let’s get them in here.”

  “Right,” he said, and he and Chris ran to the lobby.

  I forced Officer Ramón into the cell. “I’m sure your cook will be by first thing in the morning. Disfrute su desayuno en la cárcel.” Enjoy your breakfast in jail.

  He glowered at me. “If I’m still alive.”

  “Can’t help you there,” I said, feeling a little bit cold for it.

  Noah and Chris each dragged a man into the cell and dropped their arms.

  Noah said, “What in the world did you do to these guys? This one has a smashed nose, and I think that one’s elbow is broken.”

  “Nothing, I just—”

  “Nothing?”

  “He had me in an arm bar. Kinda pissed me off.”

  Noah got this turned-on look on his face. “Remind me to never piss you off.”

  “Good luck,” I said to Officer Ramón, slamming the door shut.

  Noah was still grinning.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We ran for the door, but as I passed Ramón’s desk, I put on the skids. The folder. I grabbed it and we kept running.

  Outside, Chris came to a halt and spun around. “What now? Which way do we go?”

  I stopped beside him. I hadn’t thought this far ahead.

  Noah glanced around. “The car. Let’s take the car.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. This was too much. “We can’t steal a cop car.”

  “You have the keys in your hand,” said Chris.

  I looked down. I still had the key ring clenched between my fingers. “Yeah, but I’m a federal agent. I don’t steal cars.”

  Noah snatched the keys from my hand. “Yeah, I bet you don’t break out of jail either. Now c’mon.”

  He raced to the car and jumped into the driver’s seat.

  “Let’s go!” said Chris, following him.

  Oh my god. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  I climbed into the passenger seat. Chris crammed in beside me.

  Noah fired up the engine. “Where to, Miyagi?”

  “Margaritas. The tiki bar.”

  Noah’s face went slack. “What?”

  “To find Dalton.” I pointed to the stick shift. “And fast. I think they mean to kill him.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Whoever those thugs called is going after Dalton. We have to find him before they do,” I said as we tore out of the parking lot, my teeth rattling as we bumped along the hard-packed, pot-filled road. “Faster, drive faster!”

  “Don’t worry,” Chris said. “Dalton can take care of himself.”

  “But he has no idea he’s a target. He’d be taken by surprise.”

  “Pshhh,” Chris said. “He’s a SEAL. I don’t think that’s possible.”

  Noah’s head swiveled toward Chris. “Dalton’s a SEAL?”

  “He’s having a margarita!” I said. “I mean, he’s watching for trolling behavior, but you know what I mean.”

  “So a SEAL, as in a Navy SEAL?” Noah asked. “As in Special Forces, kill-people-with-their-bare-hands kind of SEAL?”

  Chris leaned over me. “He’s a badass.”

  “I thought he was an agent at Fish and Wildlife.”

  “He is,” I said. “But he was a SEAL. And you know, there’s no such thing as an ex-SEAL.”

  “Right,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “So what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is, we find Dalton before they do, tell him he’s in danger, then we go get Doug.”

  “Sounds like you’ve really thought this through.”

  “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here. Gimme a break.”

  The Tiki bar stood out on the long stretch of dark beach, all lit up with white twinkling Christmas lights strung around the trunks of palm trees. The neon sign out front simply read, “Tik Bar.” The second “i” was burned out.

  “We can’t pull in the parking lot in a cop car,” I said.

  “Good point.” Noah drove past and pulled off the road where the cruiser would be somewhat hidden in the brush.

  “Eyes and ears open, guys. Anything suspicious, let me know.” I slinked from the car into the bushes.

  “Roger that,” said Noah.

  We decided to approach from the beach, rather than walk in through the door under the lights. Why announce our presence? I wanted to look around for any trouble before walking right into it.

  Bare bulbs, strung from poles above our heads, gave a warm glow. On the edge of the dining area, tiki torches flickered in the soft breeze. The low hum of conversation was punctuated by occasional laughter.

  The place had about twelve tables on the beach, four more on a wood-plank deck. At a palapa-covered bar, most of the patrons sat on stools, their elbows on the bar, watching a soccer game on the big screen mounted on the wall behind the bartender. The uptempo beat of the Latino music inside gave it a party vibe.

  Chris tugged at my wrist. “There he is.”

  On the far corner of the bar, Dalton relaxed on a bar stool, a beer bottle in his hand.

  “I don’t see anything shady. Let’s go get him.”

  “Wait,” I said, my arm out blocking his way. On the stool next to Dalton sat a young woman, petite, long brown hair. Her legs pointed in Dalton’s direction. Oh, and now she was leaning toward him. He smiled at her. “I think we should wait a minute. Make sure.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Just—just wait one minute,” I said and moved out of Dalton’s periphery. “She could be baiting him. I mean, look at her.”

  “Poppy Alvira McVie,” Chris said with that annoying tone my mother would use.

  I spun around. “Don’t you dare ever repeat that again.”

  He cocked his head, gave me the look. “Are you kidding me right now?”

  “Oh, all right.” I glanced around the dining area and bar. No one looking shady. I walked straight toward him. When I got about twelve feet from him, he noticed me and rose from the stool. “What in the world are you—”

  “No time for questions,” I said. “We need to get going.”

  “How’d you manage—”

  I slipped my hand under his arm. “Like I said, time’s a wastin’.”

  The brunette rose from her stool, her heavily-mascaraed eyelashes fluttering in disbelief. “Excuse me.”

  “Sorry, honey. Date’s over.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  I dragged Dalton away.

  “Hey, you don’t have to be rude,” he said.

  “I do. It’s life or death. Yours.”

  I lead him straight to the door. Noah and Chris followed.

  “We need to take your car,” I said, scanning the parking area. “You got a rental, right?”

  He slowly turned to face me. “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “You have a car, right?”

  “Well yeah. Over there.” He gestured toward a four-door sedan.

  “Do your thing. Make sure it’s not rigged to explode.” The look on his face made me lose it. “I’m not kidding right now!”

  “All right, all right.” He walked the perimeter of the vehicle, got on the ground and looked underneath. With a flourish, he opened the driver’s side door, poked his head in and looked around. “All clear.”

  Noah and Chris piled in the backseat. I ran around and got in the passenger side.

  Dalton slid into the driver’s seat, but made no move to put the key in the ignition. “What’s going on? I thought the officer was set on holding you until morning.”

  “Can we just get going?”

  He crossed his arms. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Fine. He was. The officer. Well, he wasn’t. I mean. These men came. He said they were federal agents, but there was no way they were police. They were supposed to interview me,”—I made quot
es in the air with my fingers—“but I could tell that was going somewhere unpleasant. Then he mentioned taking care of the loose end and I knew. You know how you know when someone is—”

  Dalton turned around in the seat to face Chris. “What the hell is she babbling about?”

  “She broke us out of jail.”

  His head spun back in my direction. “You what!”

  “Now, I know it sounds—”

  “Why in the—what kind of—” He slammed back in the seat, ran his hands across the top of his head. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking of you. They’re coming after you.”

  “Me? What makes you think that?”

  “The one said to make sure you take care of that loose end.”

  He waited. “And?”

  “That’s it. He said loose end. That’s you.”

  “Okay.” He pressed his hands together and drew in a long breath. “Let me make sure I have this straight. Some men came, who the officer said were federal agents to interview you, yet you somehow concluded they were not, and one of these men happened to mention a loose end, and you took it and ran with it and decided to break out. Of jail!”

  “Well, obviously, there were some nuances there.”

  I thought his eyeballs might pop right out of the sockets.

  “It’s official. You’ve lost it.” He turned to Noah. “You put her up to this, didn’t you?”

  “Wish I could say so, brother. But that was all Poppy. You should’ve seen her. She was amazing.”

  Dalton’s neck muscles tightened to the point of breaking. He turned to me. “Listen to me, Poppy. If you want to have a job when you get back to the States, you need to do exactly as I’m telling you. We are going to get your passport. First thing in the morning, you are getting on a plane. We’ll straighten all this out from home, including contacting the proper authorities about the situation with Doug.”

  “But you don’t—”

  “You can’t just—are you not—have you lost your mind?”

  I clamped down hard on my teeth.

  “Listen,” he said in a softer tone. He looked back at Noah, then Chris, then stared forward, his jaw twitching. Without another word, he flung open the door, got out, came around to my side of the car, opened my door, took me by the arm, and dragged me out, slamming the door behind us. He led me some twenty paces away from the car. “I know you’re upset about the kidnapping. I know you want to fix it. But you have to be honest, this isn’t something you have any experience with. You have no idea how to handle it. Quite frankly, you could get him killed, not to mention yourself.”

  I looked down at my hands. “Well, I…”

  “And breaking out of jail. What were you thinking?”

  I raised my eyes to meet his. “I was thinking of saving you.”

  “Me? You know I can take care of—” He stopped, let out his breath and gave me that look, the one that says he understands but he can’t say so. “This has gone too far already. And I’m pretty sure you know that.”

  I looked away, nodded. “But Dalton. They’ve got Doug. Chris’s fiancé.”

  He stood there, saying nothing for a long moment, the tension easing away. Then he said, “Something doesn’t add up.”

  I waited.

  “If the goal of kidnapping is ransom, why didn’t they keep the girls, too? Why just Doug?”

  My spirits rose a little. He was with me. “I’ve been wondering about that, too.”

  “You think it’s related to the poaching.” It was a statement of agreement.

  “Maybe the demand for money is a distraction?”

  He nodded, the wheels turning in that brain of his. “Or maybe Doug was the only one they had captive who they thought had someone who could afford the ransom?”

  “They had to make a choice out there. They only had a couple horses. So they grabbed Doug and the two girls. But they let the girls go, which seems odd. They’d be the easiest to control and likely worth the most, whether for ransom or sex trafficking.”

  “C’mon,” he said, turning back toward the car. “Let’s get out to the camp, see what we can find out.”

  I touched his arm. “You don’t have to stay. I’d understand if you headed right back to the airport right now.”

  His eyes came around to meet mine. “And let you have all the fun?”

  As we moved toward the car, I noticed, for the first time, he was favoring one leg. From the knife injury he’d received on our last op. “Dalton, you’re limping.”

  “What? No I’m not.”

  “But you—you’re feeling okay then?”

  “Never better.”

  I knew better than to argue with him and followed him toward the car.

  I had the door open when I remembered. “Oh, I left the folder in the cruiser.”

  Dalton’s head dropped. “The cruiser?” His jaw started to tighten again.

  I pointed in the general direction of the cop car. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “We needed to get away fast.”

  He covered his face with his hands.

  I sprinted to where we’d hidden the cruiser, looked both ways, before I flung the door open, grabbed the folder and hightailed it back to the parking lot.

  Once my fanny was safely planted in the seat, and Dalton had started up the engine, I opened the folder to see what Officer Ramón had written about me and my arrest. But there was no report. No paperwork. Simply a photo.

  The photo of Doug, Chris, Noah and myself that José had taken at the camp right after I arrived.

  I spun around in the seat, facing Noah. “I told you! They weren’t just after Doug. They want you too.”

  With no moon and no flashlights, the trek out to the beach camp felt like walking through an underground tunnel. Unnerving. That and listening to every peep of an insect, every crack of a stick, every whoosh of leaves, thinking it was the goons in an ambush.

  When we finally arrived, Dalton and I walked a perimeter check before firing up the solar lamps.

  Noah headed for the cabin door and stopped cold. “Um, guys. Check it out.”

  Pinned to the door was a Polaroid of Doug and another note.

  Chris pushed past him, ripped the photo from the door, and held it under the lamp. “Look at him,” he said, panic in his voice. “He looks terrible. He’s exhausted.”

  I took down the note. It read: You have one day to pay or he dies.

  “One day? Twenty-four hours?” Chris said, his eyes flitting about, his breath coming in short pants. “We’ve been in jail that long. How do we know when this came? How do we know? What do we do?” He turned to Dalton, his eyes pleading. “What are you gonna do?”

  Dalton turned to me. “You’ve gotta tell him.”

  “What?” Chris’s head pivoted toward me, then back to Dalton, then back to me again. “Tell me what?”

  I took Chris by the hand. “C’mon. Let’s sit down.”

  Dalton and Noah moved away, giving us privacy to talk.

  I led him to a couple of lawn chairs. He wouldn’t sit.

  “Okay, fine, don’t sit. But listen to me. I’m just as scared for Doug as you are, and I’d do anything to help, but the thing is, this is outside the realm of my experience and we can’t risk the chance that—”

  “Risk? You can’t risk what?”

  “Chris, I’m not sure it’s about the money. I think it’s more complicated than that. I don’t know what to do. And I’m afraid, that, well, if we don’t do this right…”

  He looked down, then off into the distance, then his eyes settled back on me. “What does Dalton think?”

  I bristled. When would he trust me? “We’re in agreement.”

  “What are the odds Doug will come back alive?”

  “I—” I had no idea.

  “Even if I could come up with $500,000? You’re saying it wouldn’t matter?”

  I shook my head. I had no idea.
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  He slumped into the chair. “Because of the turtles. It’s retaliation. They want an excuse to kill him.”

  “Maybe. We don’t know that for sure.”

  “Oh my god, he’s going to die.” He held up the picture, shined the flashlight on it. “Maybe there’s a clue in the picture. Maybe—”

  “I know this is difficult.”

  He shoved the picture at me. “Look at the picture. Maybe there’s a clue. Just look at it.”

  I hesitated. There wouldn’t be. But I took the picture. Doug did look exhausted. He held up a newspaper so the front page headline could be read, a typical indication of the date, proof of life. I saw nothing else in the frame that would indicate a location or anything monumental like that.

  Chris was shaking. “Oh, god. We need to find him now. We can’t just sit and wait for them to kill him.”

  “Listen to me, once they give a time and place, we can negotiate and—”

  His eyes burned into me. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’m an emotional wreck, but I’m not an idiot. There aren’t going to be any negotiations. They’re going to kill him.”

  My stomach churned. He was right. Dalton suspected it. I suspected it.

  “You know it’s true, Poppy. You just don’t want to say it. You—” His eyes grew wide with a realization. “The picture. You said it in the car. They’re keeping him alive to lure Noah. If he brings the money, all the better. But they want to kill them both. Oh, my god.” His knees faltered. I grabbed him by the arm and set him in the chair. “We have to do something. I love him. We have to do something!”

  Dalton came up behind me. “We are going to do something.”

  “Wait.” I went to the tree and picked up the rope lying on the ground. “Lucky’s gone.”

  “Who’s Lucky?” asked Dalton.

  “Why would they take my dog?”

  Noah gave me a supportive nudge. “She probably slipped out of the rope.”

  “Maybe.” I hoped that was it.

  “Let’s focus,” Dalton said, taking command. “The kidnappers haven’t named a time and location for the exchange yet. Whether they want the ransom money or it’s to lure Noah, either way, they need to set that up. That means they’ll contact us again.”

  Chris got back up from the chair. “What? You’re saying we sit around and wait?”