The Second Letter

by Robert Lane

  “Yup.”

  “If he wasn’t into trafficking girls, I might like this guy.”

  “He claims he was railroaded into the girls and had no idea that they were being brought in on his boat.”

  “Believe him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  “What are the coordinates?” Morgan asked and saved me from agreeing with Garrett.

  I had texted Morgan earlier and told him to meet us at the Intrepid. I wasn’t worried about his safety as I planned to stuff him into the cuddy when we approached Anthony’s boat. I gave him the coordinates and lowered the lift with the remote. A sense of familiarity and relief came when her hull floated on the water, and I wondered if there was something deep in my genetic code that made me so comfortable with water. Maybe it’s because all living things evolved from water—The Grand Womb. I don’t question it. Morgan idled until we cleared the mangroves. He unleashed the 1,400 horses. These weren’t beefy draft horses, but three-year-old thoroughbreds. We skimmed the crest of black waves on liquid wings. Garrett and I sat in the center seats and held fast to the white-powdered aluminum railing that circled the seat. Morgan flipped on the Garmin, took a glance at the screen, and then killed it.

  “Ten minutes,” he shouted above the roar of the engines.

  “Think the signal Escobar gave you is correct?” Garrett shouted, even though he was next to me, our sides touching.

  “Not even sure he knows it, but I didn’t have time to beat it out of Elvis. But his reaction to my question told me what I wanted to know. There’s a signal.”

  “Using what he gave you?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Ten minutes later, Morgan throttled back, and the speed and roar diminished in unison, bringing back the still and quiet night that had never left us. A light blinked several times at ten o’clock off our port side.

  “That’s our signal,” Garrett said. “Let’s go in dark.”

  “Down below you go, Morgan,” I said and put my hand on the wheel.

  “I’m fine. I’m going straight in. It gives them less to shoot at or see as we approach. I’ll leave us a path out.”

  “Go below. This isn’t your battle.”

  “You didn’t just say that, did you?”

  I was going to serve up a pointed retort, but recalled asking Binelli the same question and saved my breath. I got out Elvis’s cell phone and texted Anthony a message:

  signal battery dead, returning two back to you

  I didn’t know if Anthony would receive it in time, let alone believe a dead battery, but I hoped that by mentioning the two we were returning, he would relax his guard when we came in without the designated signal. No other beacon came from the dark, and Morgan kept the Intrepid on a steady course in the direction of where we had last seen the light.

  “See it?” Morgan asked. No. I swear the guy’s got owl eyes.

  “Hundred feet at ten o’clock. I can’t make out any figures yet,” Garrett said. He was on his knees along the port side with his Sig Sauer in his right hand. His SASS, M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System, laid on the deck. The SASS, although equipped with night vision, wouldn’t be his choice at close range.

  Morgan took the night binoculars out of the radio box and peered through them. “Looks like two guys plus the captain. Open bow. I see a small head. More heads. They’re exposed.”

  “Positions?” I asked and finally saw the shape of a boat emerge from the black.

  Morgan kept the Night Owls glued to his face and said in a quiet voice, “One guy behind the wheel, another off their starboard side with a gun.”

  “The third?”

  “Directly behind the captain.”

  Garrett ducked beneath the gunwale. “What’s the cue?” he asked.

  “Let’s go with ‘stand up, Elvis.’”

  “How you plan to get that in?”

  “Closing fast. Your guy will be between nine and ten o’clock.” I said.

  Morgan eased the throttle in and out of gear to keep the boat at the slowest controllable motion. The engines operated seamlessly as one. I told him in a low voice to keep her running in case we needed to hightail it out of there, although as I spoke I realized he inherently knew all that. His intuition to leave an exit route indicated that not only was he with me, but he’d been here before.

  I’d have to conduct a serious talk with him someday.

  He positioned the Intrepid with a controlled drift until the other boat was clearly visible. We approached port to port. No other flashes of light came from her, but that didn’t tell me anything. I stood slightly behind Garrett and was fully exposed above the Intrepid’s low gunwale. It was not an ideal position, but I wanted to appear as nonthreatening as possible. My right hand was tucked behind me, holding my gun. Elvis’s gun was in my pocket along with the Boker knife. My five-inch serrated knife was strapped to my thigh. Escobar’s double-barrel rested on the deck. The distance between the boats was cut in half. It was long and narrow like the Intrepid, and then it was upon us.

  “I’ve got two I’m supposed to return to you,” I shouted.

  A man with a rifle held across his body shouted back at me. “Who the fuck are you? Where’s Elvis?”

  Another man stood at his side and forward. He appeared to be unarmed, but then I saw a shotgun in his hand as well. The captain had one hand on the wheel and I couldn’t see his other hand, but I presumed it was on the throttle. Morgan had our boat in idle and we were drifting slightly away from the approaching boat. If he needed to whip the horses, he had nothing but water in front of him. Several bobbleheads were now clearly visible in the bow. But this was no dinner cruise. I had no intention to answer his first question.

  “Too much tequila,” I said.

  “Elvis don’t drink tequila,” the man shouted as he raised his gun and pointed it at me.

  “No shit. That’s why he’s on the floor. Stand up, Elvis.”

  Garrett stayed on his knees but sprung his body up, both hands on his Sauer. He fired two rounds into the man with the gun, who got a shot off while I jerked my gun up and fired into his companion just as he too launched an errant shot. I felt a sting on my left arm just below my shoulder. Garrett’s target fell backward and then lurched forward into the water while the man I hit collapsed straight down. The high, piercing sound of shrieking girls filled the night. I took aim at the captain.

  The man behind the wheel crouched low and hit the throttles. The boat’s bow shot out of the water as he cut his wheel hard to the starboard. The force from the five props pushed the Intrepid sideways and threw a wave of saltwater over her deck. I shot two rounds and missed. I lowered my gun. An errant shot now would go directly into the bow and its human cargo.

  “Go! Go! Go!” I shouted to Morgan. He jammed the throttles down and banked hard to port and flipped on the running lights.

  “Five engines,” Garrett said.

  “We can’t catch it,” Morgan said. The quiet night had again erupted into angry outboards spinning their stainless steel props over 6,000 times a minute. “She’s probably not that much faster, depending on the props, but she got too much of a head start.”

  Garrett started to reach down for his SASS, looked at my upper left arm, stopped, and said, “How bad?”

  “I’m fine. Get it.”

  He reached down and came up with his SASS. He brought it to his eyes. “Hold me,” he said.

  “Move a step forward,” I countered. I placed myself behind him and with my right arm reached up and held the white aluminum rail that supported the T-top. I put my left arm around his waist and hugged him tight.

  “Do you have a clean shot?” I said.

  “We’re losing them,” Morgan said.

  “Take it!” I shouted and felt the quiet recoil of the sniper rifle as it reverberated through Garrett’s body.

  “He’s hit,” Garrett said. The lead boat swerved hard to port and started to
make a circle and come back toward us.

  “It’s slowing down,” Morgan said. “He must have fallen on the throttles.”

  “Can you get next to it?” I asked.

  He looked at me and we both understood. If we got too close, the boats could collide and if we didn’t catch them, the girls on board were lost. If we followed it, both boats could run for hours and eventually sputter out of gas a thousand miles offshore. Or we might watch them crash and die on the rocks of Egmont Key. Either way, their probability of survival was a little less than hitting the Powerball. Morgan cut through the circumference in an attempt to intercept the runaway vessel.

  “I’ll try to match its arch and get in as close as I can,” Morgan said. “She’s coming down, not much over twenty.” The uniformed growl of four engines diminished as their rpms noticeably decreased.

  “Three or four feet is good,” I said.

  “That’s too close.”

  “Seven or eight, tops.”

  He nodded, and we gained on the boat as it continued a lazy and noncommittal circle back toward the direction we had come from. Morgan guided the Intrepid slightly behind the boat and throttled back even more. Garrett stood next to Morgan with one hand on the white aluminum T-top rail and the other holding his Sig Sauer. The low white aluminum grab rail that started just under the T-top ran around the front of the bow. I crawled up on the bow with my left hand on the rail for support. My upper left arm was already numb. As we closed in on the runaway, I made out figures in the bow, but didn’t see any sign of the two men still on board.

  Morgan maneuvered the Intrepid to within twenty feet. The runaway kept bouncing away as the waves on the Gulf’s choppy surface jerked it wildly from side to side. I realized it was going to be more difficult than I had imagined. Morgan couldn’t bring the Intrepid in too close for fear of a collision. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Garrett standing with his gun aimed at the boat.

  “How fast?” I shouted to Morgan. I wanted to calculate my jump. He glanced at the instrument panel.

  “Twenty. Twenty-two.”

  “Close as you can.”

  “Jump when a wave gives you a few feet.”

  Garrett’s arm was suddenly around me and he reached inside my jacket. He pulled the letter out. I’d forgotten about it.

  I felt the gentle and powerful surge of her engines, and Morgan brought the bow of the Intrepid up to about ten feet off the starboard side of the runaway. Huddled figures were in the open bow and I made out the shape of a man on the deck. I crouched about a foot off the edge of the Intrepid’s bow. I wanted to jump when a wave from either boat closed the distance and granted a few precious feet in my favor.

  The runaway suddenly swerved in our direction. I sprang forward with everything my legs could give, cleared the bow rail, and stretched for the cockpit of the runaway boat.

  My hands made it. Not much else.

  Just as my feet left the bow, the Intrepid fell into the swell of a wave and diminished my spring. I was in trouble. I managed to grab the aluminum side rail of the runaway with my hands. My left arm screamed in protest. The boat dragged me through the water and the waves smashed my body into the hard fiberglass side. My body settled into a quick and unfortunate rhythm of bouncing between the water and the side of the boat like a loose rubber fender that was left tied to a boat cleat.

  My mind flared to the girls in Fort Myers Beach who fell from the sky in the parasailing accident and I knew that they hit the water a lot faster and harder than I was. This, I could do.

  I tried to swing my legs up over the side, but had little control over them. Letting go was not an option. By the time Morgan and Garrett fished me out, the boat would be lost in the night. Besides, maybe this jump was the best I could do.

  The boat veered away from me, and for a moment it was all I could do just to hang on, let alone try to climb over the side. I steadied and managed to pull myself halfway up the side before a wave caused separation between my body and the boat. I slammed again into the side. Suddenly something solid was under my left foot, and I was able push off and hoist myself over the side. I landed on a body.

  “He’s dead, but I ain’t.”

  I looked toward the voice in the aft of the boat and saw a man leaning against the transom with a gun pointed at me. He had a crooked smile, as if he didn’t have the energy left for a straight one. His shirt was crimson and there was blood on the deck, and then his head split in two. He was still reclined against the transom, but now his head was like a boat, with port and starboard sides. But both red.

  Garrett’s bullets had to have passed within inches of my own head. I made sure the man I landed on wasn’t going to surprise me. I went to the helm and slowly eased the throttled down to neutral. Morgan pulled the Intrepid up next to me and Garrett grabbed the rail.

  Everything that had been so loud was now quiet except my body, which bellowed with pain.

  “Six inches?” I said to Garrett.

  “Closer to a foot. I had a good angle.”

  “How good?” He didn’t answer me, and I knew there was no damn way he had a foot clearance. Garrett held the boats together and Morgan jumped on board with me.

  “Ready to move them?” he asked. In the bow were four huddled girls. Staring at me. No talking. No space between them. Huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I think each one had soiled her dress.

  “Let’s get them back to Escobar’s,” I said. “They belong to a woman in blue.”

  We moved the girls to the Intrepid, put several rounds in the other boat’s transom, and left it sinking behind us. Morgan got out the first aid kit and I taped a gauze bandage high on my left arm.

  After a few minutes, I took the bloody thing off, recycled it in the Gulf, and applied another one.

  CHAPTER 35

  “Who’s he?” Binelli’s words were aimed at me, but her eyes drilled Garrett.

  Garrett stood in the corner of the kitchen with his SASS over his shoulder. The overhead can lights illuminated his polished copper head like it was a low wattage streetlamp. He had not spoken since we entered the house. Garrett had returned the letter to me, and it was back in my inside pocket. I had checked in the boat and it had the exact same address that the fake one had. I didn’t open it. I didn’t think that Escobar would hide a fake. Besides, I’m arrogant.

  “Tonto. He’s with me,” I said as I looked at Binelli looking at Garrett.

  “That’s your team?” she asked, turning her attention to me. “Team” came out a few notes higher than the previous words.

  “Budget cutbacks.” Escobar sat in a chair and Elvis lay on the floor with a pillow under his head and feet. Both were handcuffed.

  She glanced down at them. She had applied new bandages to Elvis and stemmed the bleeding. “Elvis needs a doctor,” she said. “I’m calling an ambulance as well as my team as soon as you two clear the premises.” Her eyes came back to me. “What happened to you, cowboy, lose a heavyweight fight?”

  “I used my body to punch out a boat.”

  “And the bandage on your left arm? Needs to be changed, by the way.”

  “Wrong end of luck.”

  “Do you charge up every hill you see?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You work with Tonto every time?” She eyed Garrett again.

  “Pretty much.”

  “The u…girls at sea?”

  “In the garage.” Morgan had taken them there and then planned to bring Impulse around to the dock.

  Maria and Rosa sat on chairs by the table. They were cleaned up since I last saw them. Neither had spoken when I came in. Natalie Binelli had her house in order.

  “Is your story ready?” I asked.

  “Pretty much.” She let that stand by itself for a moment and then said, “What did you leave at sea?”

  “Nothing.”

  She started to say something, but stopped. She was better off not knowing.

  Binelli asked, “What about Victor and Cru
z? They’ll do a ballistics test on the bullets.”

  “The ones in Victor came from Elvis’s gun.”

  “Nice. You that good or did you get lucky?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Hey, Elvis,” Binelli said and looked down at him, “they may pin a murder charge on you as well. But don’t worry, you can plead self-defense.” She glanced back up toward me. “And Ramon?”

  “Caught in the chain link fence.”

  “Not so good.”

  “Untraceable bullets. Same as Cruz. Tell them you don’t have a clue.”

  “And you and Tonto?”

  “Were never here.”

  “You hear that, boys?” Binelli said and eyed her collection of gagged and tied men. “Any shit from either of you, and Elvis, I’ll tell them you plugged Victor in cold blood. You can kiss away your self-defense plea.” She got on her knees and looked into Escobar’s eyes. Escobar looked calm, like a fish that was still breathing but had given up the fight and lay on a dock resigned to an incomprehensible fate.

  “Raydel,” Binelli started in, “in exchange for your cooperation, I’ll put in a good word with the attorneys. Remember what we discussed: the more you talk about Mendis, the less time ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ is the only song you ever hear again.”

  I’d been thinking about Escobar on the trip back in and what he told me in the study. Not so much what he said, but how he said it. His voice. His tone.

  I took a step toward Binelli and said, “Why don’t you tell them that while you were still under cover, Escobar, overcome with guilt, informed you that Mendis switched from smuggling paying men to kidnapped virgins without clueing him in. Escobar contacted you in hopes that you might be able to place the two girls he held back. Tell them that you had spun some tale about a cousin in Appalachia that took in wayward children and he remembered that.”

  It was quiet for the first time in forever. Someone had finally killed the music. I wondered who would play it again, and knew that whatever they would play, it wouldn’t be the distinctive chords of Raydel Escobar.

  “Well, I’ll be. I never made you for Mr. Magnanimity, cowboy. And why would I do that?” Binelli asked.