“Car coming, single occupant,” V finally announced. Mrs. Meadows was late.
“No phone,” Deek added.
Unlike us the driver wasn’t familiar with the warehouse and it took her a minute to establish that she was at the right address. She parked near the office door, stepped out and looked around. She wasn’t wearing any Italian heels tonight. It was hard to make out in the dim light of the parking lot but for Mrs. Meadows this looked like a jeans and jacket kind of night. She walked over to the door and paused for a second under the light to retrieve something from her purse. It was too far away for Q and I to make it out, but V had a better view.
“Subject is armed,” she informed us.
“Not unexpected,” I reminded everyone. Though it was a bit unexpected for her to walk in with it.
“Should we go in?” Q asked.
“Nah, his reaction will be more natural,” I countered. “She’s not going to shoot him until she has the bonds. Well, she’s not to going kill him until she has them.”
“Thank you, Dr. Confidence,” Deek added.
On the video feed on my phone we could see the happy reunion. Don Meadows hopped down from the counter when she walked in, then stopped when he saw the gun. Deek was routing the audio to our earpieces and the audio was out of sync with the video. It was a little like watching an old Italian spaghetti western with dubbed dialog.
“Marissa, what’s with the gun?” He took a step back until he bumped into the counter.
“Donnie, we don’t have a lot of time here,” she said by way of greeting.
“Touching,” I pointed out.
“The lady does get right down to business,” Q observed.
“Donnie, I need to know where the bonds are,” she said plainly, keeping the gun leveled at him.
“That’s it?” he asked indignantly. “All you care about is the money?”
“With the bonds, we can go to the police,” she lied. “Maybe get you a better deal.”
“Really?” Donnie Meadows countered. “Then what’s the gun for?”
“Car coming. Two occupants. Male driver, female passenger,” V interrupted.
“Donnie, just tell me where the bonds are and we’ll sort this all out,” Mrs. Meadows pleaded.
We watched as another car, a sleek late model Jaguar pulled into the parking lot. A man and a woman got out.
“Marissa, seriously what the fuck?” Don Meadows was getting agitated. At that moment the other couple entered the office.
“Who the fuck are you?” Don Meadows demanded.
The answer to that question was Elliot Fielding and his wife, Andrea, who all her friends, for no reason Deek could divine, called her Mousy.
“I think it’s time to make our entrance,” I said to Q. The situation was getting out of hand. “Deek text our friends at the restaurant and give them address but tell them to wait outside.”
“Copy that,” Deek acknowledged.
“Does he have the bonds?” Elliott Fielding asked.
“We were just getting to that,” Marissa Meadows explained.
“What?” Donnie Meadows was now thoroughly bewildered. “Who are these people?”
“Look,” Elliott Fielding explained, “this doesn’t have to be unpleasant.”
“Unpleasant?” Don Meadows balked and took a step forward.
“Don’t!” his wife warned.
And that’s when Q and I walked in. Mrs. Meadows shifted her gun towards us and the Fieldings both produced weapons. Elliott had a nickel plated automatic and Mrs. Fielding had a very presentable two-handed grip on a Glock 19. She had her finger extended along the slide and off the trigger, so it was apparent that both Mrs. Fielding and Mrs. Meadows were both taking lessons from someone who knew how to handle firearms. I had a guess who that might be.
“Hold it right there,” Elliott Fielding said, making sure we got a good glimpse of his gun. “Who are you?”
“These are the people I hired to help find Donnie,” Mrs. Meadows answered.
“Found him!” I said jokingly, trying to lighten the mood a little. The problem with amateurs is they were always so wound up and no sense of humor.
“Put your hands up,” Elliott Fielding demanded.
“We’re not doing that,” I responded. “My arms get tired.”
That kind of put him off. Amateurs always think guns are some kind of magic wand you can wave and everyone does what you say. That works on the fearful and inexperienced, it doesn’t work on professionals.
“Well, hand over your weapons then,” he said, trying a different tact.
“We’re not doing that either, Mr. Fielding,” I said calmly. The sound of his name caught him short and he looked to his wife for guidance.
“What’s stopping us from shooting you?” Andrea Fielding asked, turning the Glock my way. It was immediately obvious who was the real brains of the team and suddenly clear that she was probably the mastermind behind the whole operation.
“Finally, an intelligent question,” I said gratefully.
“Hey, there’s someone coming,” Amber informed us. We could hear Fred in the background reminding her about message discipline. “Right...single male, approaching from the boat houses,” she said more calmly.
“He’s armed,” V added when the subject finally came out from behind the boathouse next to the office.
“Before I answer that, I think we should wait until all the guests have arrived,” I explained to Mrs. Fielding. “I don’t want to go over the whole spiel again.”
“What’s he talking about?” Mr. Fielding asked his wife. Apparently this revelation wasn’t in his copy of the script.
“Oh, goodie, the police are here,” I nodded at the door just as Doug Johansen walked in, also armed, also with a Glock like Mrs. Fielding.
Elliott Fielding turned but Doug Johansen had already closed the gap. He caught the silver automatic with his left hand as Elliott Fielding turned and twisted it out of his grasp. In one fluid motion took the gun away, reversed it and hammered Elliott Fielding in the nose with the butt of the pistol.
Elliott howled and grabbed his nose, blood sprayed out from between his fingers. He staggered backwards and collapsed onto the plastic couch.
“Glad you could join us, Detective,” I said in greeting, noticing that neither Marissa Meadows nor Mrs. Fielding were a bit surprised to see him.
“I had feeling you were behind this,” Doug Johansen informed me. “So you lied about having him.”
“Not true,” I retorted. “The day you stopped by the boat we hadn’t found him and that day in your office, I said I didn’t know where he was because I had no idea where my boat skipper had taken him. I was completely truthful on both occasions.”
“But you left a lot out,” he observed.
“Lean forward,” I said to Elliott Fielding. “Put your head between your legs or you’re going to pass out.” Everyone with a nose bleed tilts their head back, which is just backwards.
I turned back to Doug Johansen. “I was about to answer Mrs. Fielding’s question about why she shouldn’t shoot us.”
“Do tell,” Detective Johansen encouraged.
“This is the deal,” I began. “Right here, right now, one time only. The offer’s good for the next five minutes. Mr. Fielding here has another meeting in about 15 minutes, but the three of you,” I gestured around the room, “can go.”
Mrs. Fielding laughed, Mrs. Meadows said that we had some nerve.
“Hear the man out,” Doug Johansen advised them. That surprised the women, who abruptly went silent.
“Just walk away and you live through this,” I promised them. “You probably have your boat stashed in one of the boathouses,” I said to Doug. “Got here earlier today, that’s why none of my team saw you arrive.”
“That’s about right,” he confirmed.
“Come on, Doug, I know you have a backup plan in case things went bad. Probably a little cash set aside and the boat full of gas. The three of you
would be a little less rich than you planned but you’re resourceful people. I think you’d land on your feet.”
“This is ridiculous,” Mrs. Fielding interrupted. “Give us the money right now or we start shooting people.”
“You don’t want to do that,” I assured her. “If you shoot Mr. Meadows, he’s our client and the rest of my team won’t let you leave here alive. My associate here,” I gestured at Q, “may look a bit motley--”
“Motley?” Q objected indignantly.
“But he’s got enough money he was seriously considering buying a professional baseball team.”
“Part of team,” he corrected.
“Okay part of a team,” I clarified. “If you shoot him we’ll take that money and post a $5 million dollar bounty for the brutal rape and murder of your daughters...well, his daughters,” I corrected with a nod at Mr. Fielding. “One who goes to FSU, the other just graduated from Vanderbilt, I believe. Then we’ll take the balance of the money and put it on your heads and the planet isn’t big enough to hide from that kind of cash.”
That gave them something to think about. “Shoot me,” I continued, “and it’s that same scene only put a multi-million dollar bounty on every living relative all of you have.”
“This is ridiculous,” Mrs. Fielding interrupted irritably. “You’re bluffing.”
“No, he’s not,” Doug Johansen informed her. “These guys have done some shit over the years, not all of it strictly legal, but the one thing I never caught them doing was lying.”
“Give us the bonds, right now, or I call your bluff,” Mrs. Fielding said, moving her finger from the slide to the trigger. No small threat when someone’s holding a Glock which only has a trigger safety.
“Mousy!” Doug Johansen barked.
“How do you know that name?” Elliott Fielding asked through muffled fingers.
“Shut up, Elliott,” Mrs. Fielding demanded.
“Oh, that would because Detective Johansen has been sleeping with both of these lovely ladies. Isn’t that right, Doug?”
“What?” Elliott Fielding said. “Mousy, is that true?”
“Oh, don’t be such a prude, Elliott. It’s pathetic,” she spat.
“You really didn’t know?” I asked incredulously.
“You’ll get used to it,” Don Meadows deadpanned.
“Then I guess you’ll really be surprised when I tell you the women have been planning all along to sink both of you in the ocean after you redeemed the bonds,” I informed the room.
“That’s ridiculous,” Andrea Fielding insisted, proving the old adage that the guilty dog really does bark first.
Doug Johansen considered that for a moment. “But what about the...uh...financing?” he asked.
“You mean the cartel?” I clarified. “The drug cartel,” I said, rubbing it in.
“We’re not that stupid,” Marissa Meadows injected.
“No, you’re not,” I agreed. “I think the plan was to move forward with the development, just without you,” I said to the gentlemen.
“Is that true?” Donnie Meadows asked his wife, who merely shrugged in response.
“I’m going to guess the affair between these two,” I gestured at the ladies, “started just after Mrs. Meadows started at the firm. Turns out Mrs. Meadows swings both ways, which we found out from a local hooker.”
“Ex-hooker,” Amber reminded everyone under her breath.
“The delivery driver!” Mrs. Meadows caught on. “Agh! I knew she looked familiar.”
I went on. “After that it wasn’t too hard to figure out that the other principle in the scheme was Mrs. Fielding. Mrs. Meadows was fucking you,” I directed the commented at Elliot Fielding, but it was quickies at the office. The real passion she saved for your wife.”
“That was before we got married,” Donnie Meadows said, doing the math in his head.
“Yeah,” I said gently. “You were kind of key to the whole plan. See the bonds had to just disappear, D.B Cooper style. Only you had combat experience and survived, plus you hid the money. That really put a crimp in things. Bringing us in was a last desperate attempt to find you before the Feds did.”
“That was a mistake,” Doug Johansen admitted.
“That you thought you could play us? I’ll say,” I chuckled. “Still, you had zero chance with the FBI so I guess a slim chance is better than none, eh?”
I could tell Johansen knew the game was up, he had a better calculation of the odds from the beginning but the ladies were having none of it.
“You can still just walk away,” I reminded them.
“Enough of this!” Andrea Fielding, demanded. For someone nicknamed Mousy she sure had an attitude. “Bonds now or you die!” She extended the Glock at my head and she really wasn’t kidding.
“Andrea!” Johansen barked, turning his gun her way.
“Vehicle arriving, two males,” V informed us of the arrival of the Colombian contingent.
“Get back, Doug,” she menaced, turning her gun the slightest bit his way, giving us the opening we’d been waiting for.
“Time’s up,” I said just loud enough for Q to hear.
When dealing with amateurs the definitive strategy in deadly force situation is to launch an overwhelming counter attack. In the confined space of the office gun shots would be startlingly loud and there was a concussive muzzle blast you could feel at a distance of a few feet. Professionals train for those distractions and I was certain Doug had put the ladies through some kind of stress scenario during training, but it was still an entirely different thing when it happens in real life. On the range targets don’t bleed and they don’t shoot back.
Doug Johansen was the one person most likely to react properly in a deadly force situation. That, unfortunately for him, put him at the top of the tactical order. He was also my friend and I felt some responsibility to be the one taking him out. I produced my weapon and put two rounds into the upper left quadrant of his torso. On a good day I could produce my weapon and accurately deliver two shots in about 1.5 seconds, far too fast for the others to respond.
In the confines of the office the BO-BOOM of the HK even made me blink. He was turned with his left side slightly facing me which means there was a lot of lungs, heart, veins and vital arteries for the bullets to cut through at that angle and at just over seven feet away there was no way I could miss. He had just enough time to register that surprised look people get when they get shot before I let the recoil of the second round carry the HK higher and put the third shot into his left orbital cavity, completing a shooting exercise commonly called a failure drill. Looking at the video later Deek would note the elapsed time of target one engagement was 2.25 seconds.
Q was a half-second behind me producing his Sig but on a good day he’s faster than me and our guns went off at almost the same time. His first shot caught Mrs. Fielding high in the sternum and smashed its way through her chest, shattering her spine. She was already falling by the time the second shot caught her high on the right side of her neck. She didn’t really fall but collapsed straight down in a heap.
Marissa Meadows was momentarily startled by the gunshots in a confined space and seeing her companions explode into a bloody mess. To her credit her training kicked in and she was able to turn her weapon my way before either Q or I could make her a target.
There were four quick shots, the first two were nearly simultaneous. The first shot from Don Meadows gun struck his wife high on the right side of her chest, probably because he wasn’t used to the trigger pull of the HK. The bullet passed right through and, lucky for me, it caused her shoulder to dip a millimeter as her Beretta thundered, striking me in the left lower quadrant of my abdomen. That was the only shot she got off as Don Meadows put the next two in the 10 spot. She collapsed straight down, falling against her companion, and the light in her eyes lasted just long enough to register a bewildered look at her husband.
Pain exploded through my mid-section and I doubled over holding my side.
“Man down! Boss is hit!” Q announced. Still covering the room as he moved toward me. He didn’t need to worry about Elliott Fielding, who was curled into the corner of the couch with his bloody hands over his ears.
“Get me over there!” I heard Amber yell and in the background the Searay engine roared to life.
“I’m okay,” I managed to choke out, but the pain made it hard to breathe and my comment was barely a whisper. Q moved over to Don Meadows and gently removed the HK from his hand and decocked it. Satisfied the room was secure; he moved to me and helped me over to the low counter of the marina office. Moving was a nightmare of pain and I coughed involuntarily trying to get my breath in short, whopping and massively painful gasps.
The Searay roared into the marina dock at nearly full power. Fred spun the craft sideways and the momentum carried it into the dock bumpers with a whump. Amber scrambled over the side but the med kit in her hand threw her balance off and she sort of ended up falling onto the dock with a less than graceful thud. She picked herself up and sprinted toward the office.
She burst in already putting on her gloves and she dumped bandages and bleed-stop pads onto to the counter. She was shaking but I had to admit she was fast. She made me lie back and lifted my shirt up, exposing a large, ugly wound. She probed the wound looking for the bullet entry.
“Ow!” I complained. “That fucking hurts!”
“Shut up!” she barked, pulling on the edges of the welt, trying to find the entry wound. Sometimes a bullet hole can close up and be almost invisible and Amber wasn’t taking any chances. “Why isn’t there any blood?” she asked after a minute, pushing harder on the bruised area with her other hand checking my back for blood.
“Ow! Goddamit!” I howled.
“What the hell?” she asked more to herself. Finding the hole in the outside of the jacket and then running her hand along the inside. She found a spot where the fabric was stretched and distended but there was no hole inside.
“What the serious fuck?” she puzzled, flipping my jacket back and forth and trying to force her finger through the bullet hole and not finding a path.
The reason she couldn’t find a way through was that my jacket was lined with a special material made by a body armor company in The Netherlands. It was a slightly thinner version of a new soft, lightweight material used in concealable body armor. While it wasn’t thick enough to dissipate the force of the impact, it did stop the bullet from penetrating. Still, the bullet deposited all its kinetic energy into a 9mm spot on my side where I’d have a huge welt for a month. It hurt like a motherfucker.
The Rogue Horse Recovery: Book One of the Recovery and Marine Salvage Inc Series (Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc.) Page 16