The Rogue Horse Recovery: Book One of the Recovery and Marine Salvage Inc Series (Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc.)

by Chris Poindexter

  “So far so good,” Q observed, pulling a U-turn to get us away from the mess down the street.

  “Yeah, great,” I agreed. “If the Columbians don’t try to double cross us and the cops don’t blunder along and whoever the mystery party is turns out to be a hoser and none of the idiots just get lucky, we’ll be just dandy.”

  “When you put it like that,” Q grinned, “it’s just another day at the office.”

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” I confessed.

  We made our way through downtown toward the marina which was well north of where we were.

  “Back at the barn,” Deek announced.

  “You made quite the mess,” I joked.

  “Li-i-itle too much pyro,” he confessed. “Been a while since I had to wire one.”

  Deek spent most of his time indoors and we all held our collective breath when he actually went out to mix with other human beings.

  “Where’s Mack?” I asked.

  “Five miles out,” Deek assured me, “and he doesn’t have to worry about the bridges.”

  Florida waterways were dissected at regular intervals by all manner of draw bridges that served both cars and trains. Big boats would have to wait until the bridges opened. The train bridges worked just the opposite and only came down when a train was coming through. For today we picked a marina opposite Peanut Island so we could avoid the bridges. We’d all be getting to the dock about the same time.

  “Any problems?”

  “Not a bit,” Deek confirmed. “They filed a float plan and it was all by the numbers. They got checked on the way in but it was all routine.” Routine meaning they hadn’t found the very well concealed hiding place for our passenger. “And, before you ask, I already told them you were on your way. Our delivery girl just texted me, she’ll be on her way momentarily.”

  “Alright, good.” We were like dance partners who have done the same steps for years. It saved a lot of time.

  Q had to swerve to avoid a car that cut us off on a side street, the driver then celebrating by extending his middle finger at us.

  “He cuts us off, then flips us off,” Q marveled.

  “He’s got the driving record to go with the attitude,” Deek informed us. I always forgot he could monitor the dash cam and It was kind of creepy how he did that. “One DUI, license suspended twice...and he’s only 26.”

  I wondered how his attitude would change if he found out we knew where he lived and, in five minutes, Deek could piece together his entire life and credit history. In an hour we’d know him, his family, employer, everything that was worth knowing. We could monitor his phone, bug his house and basically dismember him electronically. I shrugged it off. If we stopped to shake down every jackass on the highway we’d be the busiest crew in South Florida which was a nesting ground for asshole drivers.

  “We have bigger problems,” I said to both Deek and Q. Of the pair Q was far less likely to take it personally.

  “Meh,” Q replied, “his day will come.”

  The rest of the drive was uneventful and by the time we pulled into the marina parking lot, the MP already visible towering over her proletariat cousins. Big boats were usually out on the end of the docks and we had to walk all the way out to the end. Jennifer met us at the steps.

  “Hello, Jen,” I said warmly. “Have a nice trip?”

  Her tan was a darker shade than normal and she looked even more fit than usual. “It was awesome,” she said with a hint of enthusiasm that gave away her age.

  “How’s our friend?” I asked casually.

  “In the salon,” she cocked her head over one shoulder in the direction of the upper deck. “The rest did him a world of good.”

  “Where’s he at mentally?” I couldn’t think of a more tactful way to ask.

  “I think he suspects her of having something to do with his current problem,” she speculated. I found it interesting that it was “her” instead of Mrs. Meadows.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “He talked about everything else, but not her,” she observed. “He doesn’t seem real anxious to call home.”

  “You two get along okay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she beamed, “we had a great time.”

  “Did he…uh?”

  “Hit on me?” she asked bluntly. “Nope. He was a gentleman. I even let him see my boobs once.”

  Q and I exchanged surprised looks. “Well, that’s certainly the definitive test,” I quipped. “How did he react?”

  “Like someone hanging raw meat in front of a hungry dog,” she said, “but he didn’t forget he was married to that woman.”

  That woman. There it was, she liked him.

  “Good job as usual, Jen,” I soothed. “Much appreciated.”

  “You guys hungry?” she asked.

  “Just had a late breakfast,” I informed her, “but thanks.”

  “Alrighty then,” she beamed her best Florida sunshine smile at us, “let me know if you need anything else.”

  With that Jen headed back below decks while Q and I headed up to the MP’s spacious deck and salon, which had the curtains down on the dock side and halfway down on the other. Donnie Meadows got up to meet us.

  It was hard to recognize the man in front of us as the same person we met just a few days before. His hair was trimmed to a regulation cut and was clean shaven and had on clean canvas shorts, a polo shirt and deck shoes. Hiding him during the Coast Guard inspection was completely unnecessary. No one would have recognized the person in front of me as a runaway security guard. Tan and trim after days of swimming and diving he could have passed for a junior executive at any major bank, a hedge fund manager, or dot com billionaire. Only the v-shaped bite mark on his ankle, now neatly stitched up was barely noticeable.

  His handshake was firm and his eyes were clear. The beaten man we’d met days before had been transformed back into a human being.

  “Hey, I never got to thank you,” were the first words out of his mouth. “I’m sorry about how I acted the other night.”

  “You look great, Mr. Meadows.” I shook his hand, noticing then that he was wearing one of my watches, a Rolex Sea-Dweller. He caught my glance.

  “Oh,” he blushed, fumbling with the clasp. “Jen loaned it to me, I was supposed to give it back.”

  “No, no,” I protested. “Keep it. It looks good on you. Besides, you’re going to need to know what time it is later.”

  Q arched an eyebrow. We were rich beyond accounting but casually parting with a $30,000 watch gave even him a twitch. Donnie started to protest but I cut him off.

  “I’d love nothing better than to have a beer and catch up on your trip but we’ve got work to do. We need the bonds,” I said, getting to the point.

  A shadow of the man we met the other night passed between us as his legal troubles, which he’d managed to forget for a couple days, came rushing back.

  He nodded, resigned to his return to an unpleasant reality. “They never left the airport,” he confessed.

  “Ha!” I said out loud. “That’s perfect. You hid them somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” he began. “There’s an old couch in the employee lounge of one of the hangars, the guys go there to smoke. I hid them in the liner.”

  I almost laughed out loud at the visual of people who made $15.00 an hour leaning back on a crappy old couch suddenly worth $65 million dollars. Even funnier is any of the cops who smoked probably sat on that couch as well. It was beautiful.

  “Well, you know what this means?” I asked.

  He looked bewildered.

  “You’re not a thief,” Q filled it in for him. “You didn’t steal anything.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “You took reasonable steps to secure the client’s property in an uncertain situation.”

  “You’re a goddamn hero,” Q added.

  “At least that’s the way our lawyers will paint it,” I observed. “Especially after the insurance company calls up from international airspac
e to report they have recovered the bonds and are dropping the charges.”

  “What about Bruce...the murder charges?” he asked.

  “Your partner? The truth,” I snuffed. “Self-defense. The cops probably already suspect there was something hinky about the robbery story. Somebody had a hard time explaining why they were there in the first place. All we have to do is tie your partner to whoever the cop was and your flight from prosecution then becomes a series of fairly minor charges.”

  “If they can’t get you on the big stuff, they’ll lose interest,” Q added.

  “Oh, they’ll make noise,” I assured him. “You may sit in PC for a couple weeks, but they’ll let you plead to something minor and you’ll walk. I guaran-god-damn-tee it. Especially when they find out a cop was involved.”

  “Doesn’t look good in the papers,” Q filled in for him.

  I could almost hear Deek’s hands flying over the keyboard, piecing it all together. Donnie Meadows was having a hard time processing it all.

  “Deek, we need an ID and cover for V for the airport,” I said to the air. Donnie looked confused for a second, then remembered the earpieces he’d seen the other night.

  “Already here,” she said tiredly. “I’ll be on my way in 30 minutes.”

  Q and I exchanged looks. V and Deek spending time together violated every law of nature we had come to know. Q held out his hands, I put up my hands and shook my head. It was definitely bizarre but the explanation would have to wait for later.

  “I’m still not entirely clear--”

  “It’s simple,” I cut him off. “Only the bad guys know you’re still alive. The cops are starting to think you’re dead and they’re looking around for another explanation for the missing bonds.”

  “Cops are like that,” Q echoed, “always investigating shit.”

  “But you’ll have the bonds,” Donnie Meadows pointed out the obvious.

  “Look, I got some bad news,” I began, changing the subject.

  “My wife was in on it,” he finished for me. “That was why they picked that airport.”

  “Yeah, sorry, and she’s fucking her boss. He’s part of this too,” I added. Donnie Meadows winced like he’d been slapped.

  “We made a deal with the...insurance company,” I decided not to tell him the rest of the story just yet. “We get the bonds back to them and they drop all the charges against you. But...and this is a big but...we have to do all this without the cops getting their hands on the bonds.”

  “There’s something illegal about them, isn’t there?” Donnie Meadows asked.

  “I think you already know the answer to that,” I deflected. The man had gotten enough bad news for one day and the details didn’t matter to him anyway.

  “So my wife is involved in something illegal,” he began. “She tried to have me killed and she’s fucking her boss. Any other bad news?”

  “She’s probably also fucking the cop who tried to kill you,” I added. Sometimes it really stinks not being able to lie. “And maybe at least one other party that we haven’t been able to identify.”

  He let out a wry chuckle. “Anyone she’s not fucking besides me?”

  Q raised his hand and looked at me.

  “She put it out there,” I admitted, keeping my hand down, “but I passed.”

  “So the only guy she didn’t hit on was me?” Q asked, a hurt tone creeping into his voice.

  “She doesn’t fuck the help,” I pointed out.

  “Ah, that hurts,” Q feigned.

  “I’m standing right here,” Donnie reminded us.

  “I’m sorry, bud, I realize this must suck.” I made a clumsy attempt to pat him on the arm. I suck at compassion and really should just avoid even trying. “We need to get you up to speed and we don’t have a lot of time here.”

  He thought about it for a long ten count and then sighed. “Okay, what do we do?”

  I looked at my watch, the one on his arm. “Just hang here and have lunch out on the back deck with Jennifer,” I suggested. “In about...two hours or so we’re going to need you to call your wife and set up a meeting.”

  “Call from where?” he asked.

  “From here, our tech guy will arrange it so it can’t be traced and Jennifer will give you the meet location and the script for the call. Then you gotta go.”

  Nothing surprised Donnie. Meadows at this point, he was a beaten man again. “Where?”

  “One of our safe houses,” I said. “You can’t stay here. The cops will put it together that you and the MP disappeared around the same time. They’ll be back and next time they’ll have a search warrant. We can’t have the Feds nosing around on this boat. Nothing illegal but a lot we’d rather not explain.”

  “I bet,” he smiled. Like a good soldier Don Meadows could compartmentalize his life and separate it from what needed to be done.

  “We got one shot at this,” I reminded everyone, “and it’s gotta go fast and it’s gotta go smooth.”

  “Sgt. Meadows,” I said, deliberately switching to his military rank, “do you think you can still shoot? Normally we don’t arm outsiders,” I didn’t want to say “amateurs” because Donnie Meadows had combat experience, “but we’re going to be a little short of manpower at the meet.”

  “Damn straight,” he confirmed.

  “Okay, good. Things could get a little...tense,” I soft peddled.

  “I was in a room with two guys shooting at me,” he reminded me. “It doesn’t get much more tense than that.”

  “Alright then,” I smiled. “Enjoy your lunch. We’ll be in touch.”

  Q and I made our way back to the parking lot.

  “I see you,” Amber’s familiar voice cooed in my ear. She was at the office watching us on the MP’s security cameras.

  “How do you like Deek’s office?” I asked.

  “This place is amazing,” she replied, letting just a touch of vocal fry give away her age.

  “Deek go over the plan?”

  “He did.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Nope, seems pretty straightforward,” she confirmed. I was reminded that confidence is what you have right before things go to shit.

  “Okay, you’re on, delivery girl. We’re on our way.”

  “See you up there,” she said brightly.

  “Probably not, but we’ll be watching,” I corrected.

  “Even in a delivery uniform she’s got a sweet ass,” Deek observed.

  “Sexual harassment will not be tolerated,” Amber teased, “but it will be graded.”

  “At the airport,” V checked in, reminding us all we had a job here.

  A few minutes later we were back on the road when V announced that she had the package.

  “One of the maintenance guys kept hitting on me,” she complained. “I smell like cigarette smoke”

  “Deek, can you arrange an armored courier for the package?”

  “Already on the way,” he advised.

  Ironically armored cars rarely get stopped by police and it was the best place in the world to hide something valuable in plain sight. Deek would have the drivers drop the truck at the meet and send a car to pick them up. They would never open or question a sealed package and, over the years, had delivered a lot of items it was probably best they never found out about. If you really wanted to hide something, put it in an armored car and drive it right down Main Street.

  “It’s rolling downhill now,” Q observed. He was careful to keep it at the speed limit. It wasn’t big things that derailed ops, it was little things, like getting pulled over for speeding at an inconvenient time.

  “What are the Colombians up to?” I asked out loud.

  “The phone is back at the hotel,” he informed me. “They don’t really seem to be trying to hide.”

  “Have they filed a flight plan?” I asked.

  “They have,” Deek informed us. “They can be wheels up in 20 minutes.”

  “Sounds like they cut loose the Mrs.,” Q ob
served.

  “Wasn’t getting them anywhere,” I pointed out. “Probably figure we’re their best shot at this point.”

  “Our friends downtown have been kinda quiet,” Deek observed.

  “Don’t jinx it!” Q snapped.

  “We’re getting help on that end,” I concluded. “Somebody is making sure that the police are looking in the wrong direction.”

  “The bad guy,” Q added.

  “Almost certainly,” I agreed. “He wants to get there first.”

  “That’s a break at this point,” Deek chimed in.

  “They’ll still be watching the Mrs.,” I pointed out. “This could still go to shit.”

  “It’s already shit,” Q joked.

  It was a quick trip to downtown and we discovered we could get a low-angle view of the office from the parking garage next door. It wasn’t ideal but better than trying to cook up a story to get up on the roof of the adjacent building.

  “I’m at the garage,” Amber announced. “This thing handles like a truck.”

  “That’s because it is a truck,” Deek pointed out helpfully.

  “Oh, they just waved me through,” she informed us.

  “First class security,” Q mumbled.

  “Park at the loading dock and back in,” Deek reminded her.

  “I know,” she said, the delivery truck engine echoing in the confines of the garage. A moment later the automatic gain on the mic picked up the unmistakable sound of gears grinding.

  “Goddamnit,” Amber snapped.

  “Try the clutch,” I offered helpfully.

  “I’ve got my...wait. There it goes,” she said with a sigh of relief, the backup alarm plainly audible in the background.

  “I thought you said you drove a stick?” Deek chided.

  “I did!” Amber said defensively. “It was a Ferrari that belonged to some Italian bank manager with a place in Palm Beach.”

  “You might have mentioned that,” Deek pointed out. Q and I exchanged looks. My phone beeped with a message.

  Deek was tapped into to the security system and he sent us a frame grab from the garage security camera of the panel truck backed in at such a weird angle it was almost sideways to the loading dock. I showed it to Q who just grinned and shook his head.