“Celia Minnich wants to hire you?” I asked.
“Not directly. The offer is from their head of research and development. A guy named Leon Harvey.”
“Huh,” I grunted. “And you’re thinking of taking it?”
“Helluva lot of money, man.”
I kept silent a minute. I knew about a helluva lot of money. Over the years, I’d inherited a sizeable fortune. Twice. And added to it with a few treasure finds, until my net worth was nearly ten million dollars. Most of it was invested in different trust funds, to be used as the trustees saw fit in helping local fishermen, veterans, and the kids of both. Money didn’t mean a whole lot in the big picture, except what you could do with it to help others. Something Pap taught me.
“And there’s the fact that I’m getting older,” Tony said. “Slowing down some.”
“What are you? Thirty-five? Hell, you’re as sharp as you ever were.”
“Thirty-four. My ship-over date is coming up. Four more years until retirement.”
“And after sixteen years in the Navy, mostly as a SEAL, you don’t think you can hack another four?”
“Bite me, man!” he exclaimed with his trademark grin.
“So what is it, then? You’re uniquely qualified where you are, and you’ll probably be picking up chief soon.”
“Already selected,” he replied, sitting back and crossing his arms.
“You never struck me as the materialistic type, Tony.”
“Man’s gotta think about the future.”
I looked over at him again. His features were calm. “You’ve met someone?”
Turning his head, he looked straight at me. “That obvious?”
“What’s she like?” I asked.
“Nice lady. Professional, funny, and sexy as all hell.”
“And she disapproves of the Navy?”
“She doesn’t know yet. All she knows is my cover job as an underwater demolitions man. But I think we’re at the stage in our relationship to show my cards.”
“Have you talked to Deuce about it?” I asked.
“Not yet. The thing is, she thinks my cover job’s too dangerous. I’m pretty sure she’ll understand about the deception, but I know she’ll think what I really do is a lot more dangerous. Right now, I’m in Mississippi, blowing up an old bridge. She just wishes I had a regular nine-to-five job, that’s all. You’ve been there.”
Yeah, I’ve been there, alright, I thought. As a Marine infantryman, the constant deployments had destroyed my first marriage to my daughters’ mother after six years. She’d packed up the kids and left while I was in Panama in ’89. I hadn’t even been allowed to call her and tell her we got orders.
“You can’t live your life by what others want of it, brother,” I said. “Gotta be tough having to lie about it, too. But four years is a mighty short time. You don’t think she’ll wait once she knows?”
“Maybe, maybe not. You’ll meet her in a few days. She’s coming down for the Fourth.”
“To Homestead?” I asked.
“No, she lives in Miami Beach. She’s coming down to my new place on Grassy Key.”
“So she’ll be at the Anchor for the fireworks you’re doing?”
“Yeah,” Tony replied enthusiastically. The man did like things that went boom. “Rusty suggested using his barge instead of the big yard. Anchor it off to the side of his channel. Anyway, she wants me to quit demolition and pointed out a lot of pretty lucrative opportunities in my field that aren’t as dangerous and don’t require travel.”
Leaning over, I checked the radar screen again. It didn’t look like anyone else was out. Probably the storm, which was still a threat and only a thousand miles to the east.
“Let me ask you this,” I said as we overtook another wave and I turned slightly to port to ride over the crest at a perpendicular angle. “Would any of these lucrative opportunities be on your radar if you didn’t know this woman?”
“No, not until after retirement, at least. But, even at a chief’s pay, I really don’t have much to offer.”
I just let what he said hang there for a moment. Finally, I said, “In a good relationship, there shouldn’t be any offering but love and loyalty. Same with friendships. I can’t help but think that what she’s offering is something you’d find pretty damned boring.”
The change in the pitch of the engines woke me about four hours later. Tony and I talked for a bit longer before I came down to the guest stateroom for a nap and left him at the helm. He seemed pretty sure that he would be leaving the Navy when his tour was up at the end of the summer.
I rose from the bunk, still fully dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a Gaspar’s Revenge Charter Service tee shirt. The Revenge has two staterooms. The master stateroom has a single queen-sized bunk, and the guest stateroom has two single berths that can be made into a queen and a Pullman-type upper above them. The L-shaped couch in the salon can also be converted into a double berth, so the Revenge can sleep seven in a pinch—and we’d be pinched getting back to Florida, with the four of us and our two guests on board.
I slipped on my boat shoes and went up to the galley. The coffee in the coffeemaker looked and smelled fresh, so I poured a cup, noting that Tony was asleep in the salon. When I got to the bridge, Bourke was at the helm and Art in the second seat.
“We’re only ten miles from Nicholls Town,” Bourke said, rising from the helm and moving over to the port-side bench. “Getting close to the reef, so I slowed down. Figured that’d wake you. Crossing the TOTO was a piece of cake.”
Downing half my coffee, I sat down and checked the radar and sonar screens. I easily recognized the coast of Andros the chart plotter displayed to the west, and the bottom was far below the range of my sonar. The sky to the east was just beginning to turn purple with the dawn of a new day.
“My friend’s place is about twenty miles further up the coast,” I said. “We’ll be there in less than an hour. Why don’t you go below and get our guests up and see if they’re hungry?”
“Roger that,” Bourke replied, rising and starting down the ladder. With only four of us aboard for the last two days, Bourke had taken on the cooking duties, as he was by far the more qualified man for the job.
Once he was inside, I turned to Art. “Have you met Tony’s new lady friend?”
“Only briefly,” he replied in his usual clipped speech. “We double-dated three months ago. A friend of hers. Didn’t go all that well. Why?”
“He say anything to you about leaving the Navy?”
“Tony?” Art asked, obviously surprised. “Leave the Navy? What for?”
“It seems the lady doesn’t like his dangerous cover job very much,” I replied, looking back out over the bow. The long rollers were now at a forty-five-degree angle to our direction of travel as they curved away toward the reef.
“Huh,” Art grunted, then sat back and pondered what I’d told him. He and Tony had been best friends for a long time. I wondered why Tony had told me and not Art.
“Probably asked your opinion, ’cause he knew I’d say he was just plain nuts and you’d give your usual sage advice.”
“I didn’t put it in those exact words,” I said, reaching over and switching the sonar to side scan. “She only knows his cover job and thinks that’s too dangerous. I told him he’d probably find life pretty boring without us around.”
The sonar screen showed the steep wall of the west side of the TOTO, the top of which I knew to be one of the coolest wall dives in the world.
“He said the other day that she’s coming down for the Fourth,” Art said while also looking at the sonar screen. “Hey, you ever dive that?”
“Crazy fun dive,” I replied, grinning at Art under the subdued red overhead light. “At low tide, the reef top is only about five or ten feet, and when you swim out beyond it, the bottom drops almost straight down for three thousand. Fun, but spooky as hell. Yeah, Tony’s planning to tell her what he really does when she comes down. Guess he’ll have to
clear that with Deuce first, though.”
We rode in silence for a bit, the faint light from Nicholls Town appearing as a haze on the horizon. Finally, Art said, “Maybe that’ll be the end of it. A lot of women don’t like to be lied to, even if it’s national security.”
“He doesn’t seem to think so. Thinks she’ll understand the greater good aspect.”
Just then, Bourke’s voice came over the intercom speaker. “Breakfast’s on. Our guests want to know if they can come up there.”
“Head on down,” I said to Art. Then, pushing the button on the intercom, I told Bourke they were welcome on the bridge, but to bring another thermos of coffee and some food.
Art climbed down and I could hear him talking to one of the former kidnap victims down in the cockpit. Over the engines, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. A tapping sound came from just behind me. I turned and Art was handing up the thermos. Reaching back, I took it and put it in the console, then grabbed whatever he had wrapped in a napkin. That’s when I saw her climbing up the ladder.
“Where may I sit, Captain?” the woman asked when she reached the bridge deck. Even leaning forward to hold the rail with both hands, she appeared tall.
“Anywhere you feel comfortable, ma’am,” I replied. “And please call me Jesse. You’re safe now. You know that, don’t you?”
Moving her hands one at a time along the railing on the back of my chair, she made her way to the second seat and sat down in it, still holding the side rail. “Andrew was very reassuring, but not very forthcoming. However, my gut instinct tells me he’s trustworthy. And please don’t call me ma’am. My name’s Pat.”
Sitting back, I put my feet up on the console to the left of the wheel. Opening the napkin, I found two sausage biscuits. I didn’t even know I had biscuits on board.
“Are you really going to eat that?” she asked. “There’s about a million pounds of fat in those sausage patties.”
I just shrugged and took a bite. Then I turned and studied her features as she craned her neck to see over the console. She was attractive for her age and had probably been very beautiful when she was younger. High cheekbones, a few wrinkles at the corners of her brown eyes, which moved around with an edginess, taking in everything. About fifty-five, maybe a little older, I guessed. But I was never good at judging a woman’s age. She wore her light brown hair short and didn’t seem to be trying to hide the streaks of gray. She looked like the type of woman that wouldn’t back down from much of any situation. Stalwart, Pap would have said.
She looked at me as I chewed the last of the biscuit and swallowed before speaking. “We’ve been running on adrenaline for nearly three days, Pat. Supplemented by large doses of caffeine, protein and fat, with very little sleep.”
“Andrew said he couldn’t say who sent you.”
“Your uncle,” I replied, then wolfed down the other biscuit.
“Both of my parents were only children and long dead,” she said. “I don’t have any uncles.”
“Uncle Sam. We work for the United States Government.”
She started to say something, when Bourke’s deep voice interrupted. I glanced back and he was showing a girl about sixteen how to get up the ladder. “Don’t worry, Chrissy, I’ll be right behind you,” he said to the girl.
Once on the bridge, the girl moved hand over hand along the rail to the port bench, then slid forward on it as Andrew casually sat down next to her. “Chrissy, this is Captain McDermitt,” Bourke said in a soothing tone, like he was talking to a frightened puppy.
The girl sat straight on the bench, but her head was tilted slightly forward, chestnut-colored hair covering most of her face. She looked around the bridge and out over the bow before looking quickly at me and lifting a hand in greeting.
“Hi,” she barely whispered.
“If you’re with the government, I assume you have some ID?” Pat asked me.
“Just a Florida driver’s license,” I said. “And a boat captain’s license. I’m just the transportation contractor. Andrew’s the agent in charge.”
With that, Bourke dug out his ID case and passed it over to me. Switching the overhead light from red to white, so she could see, I passed the case to Pat.
“We’re with the Department of Homeland Security,” Bourke said as Pat studied his badge and identification card.
Pat’s eyes were cold and distant when she handed Bourke his credentials. And something else there. Fear, maybe?
“You might as well turn around and take us back,” Pat said, surprising both Bourke and myself.
“No, Grandma!” Chrissy said, alarmed. “You’re wrong about Dad.”
The girl stood and nearly tripped over Bourke’s feet as she moved unsteadily toward the ladder. I caught a glimpse of her face as she descended quickly. She was crying.
“Forgive her,” Pat said and pointed toward shore. “You could drop us off on that island. Anywhere would be better than going home. My son-in-law, Chrissy’s father, is the one that arranged the abduction. But it was supposed to be a murder for hire, with Chrissy’s body never found.”
I looked at Bourke and he looked back at me, both of us equally confused. A father who hires someone to kill his very own daughter? That’s just not possible.
“Can you elaborate on that?” I asked incredulously.
Pat looked at me and then at Bourke. “If you’re in charge, Andrew, why does it seem that Captain McDermitt is calling the shots?”
“I’m the agent in charge,” Bourke replied. “Jesse has so far refused to accept a permanent position with our team, so he doesn’t carry a badge. Even without one, I’d defer to him in a fight, and this being his boat, well, he’s definitely in charge of things on the water.”
“I see,” she replied and looked me over more appraisingly. I probably looked like a degenerate boat bum. I hadn’t shaved in over a week, nor had a haircut in months. The clothes I had on were threadbare, and I’d been wearing them for more than a day.
“Chrissy’s mother was my only child,” she began. “Our family has a long history of producing only a single heir. She was killed in a car wreck two years ago. It devastated the child, obviously. Her father is a wealthy man, a South Carolina politician. My daughter and Chrissy were mere arm candy to help his political aspirations, nothing more. He was behind in the polls just before the accident, but her death got him the sympathy vote. Now he’s up for reelection and trailing in the polls again. He must have figured that if it worked once, it should work again. I learned of his plan to have Chrissy murdered and was trying to get her away from him, but only succeeded in getting both of us kidnapped. Those Jamaicans will do just about anything for money, and I convinced them that they could get more for a ransom than a murder. Particularly if it meant their silence on what he hired them to do. It was all I could think of at the time, and it bought us a few extra days. I didn’t think he’d pull strings to get the federal government to rescue us, so he could try it again.”
Bringing the Revenge down off plane, I searched the shoreline for the entrance to Henry’s little hole in the wall. Finding it, I idled the big boat through the narrow mangrove-lined opening, turning left and then right, finally emerging into a large deepwater lagoon. There were two aging Bertram sportfishing boats and a number of smaller boats and skiffs of varying sizes and makes. They all looked clean and well maintained, as did the dock and piers.
Idling slowly toward the covered fuel dock, with two huge tanks set back on the property beyond it, I saw Henry come out of the small ship’s store. He angled toward the dock we were heading to, not seeming to be in any hurry to get there. Living for years on island time will do that to you.
“Help ya?” he called up as I maneuvered the Revenge to the dock. Tony and Art were both ready to jump down with lines, fore and aft.
“Did you get my email, Henry?” I shouted back, then cut the engines as both men stepped off onto the dock and made us fast.
“Jesse?” the old man asked, squinti
ng up. “Jesse McDermitt? What the hell are you doing so far from home?”
“Guess he didn’t get your email,” Bourke said, standing and looking around the lagoon. “Does he even have Internet here?”
A moment later, I was on the dock and shaking Henry’s hand. “Sorry,” he said. “We’ve been having trouble with the phone lines for months. That’s what the computer’s connected to, you know. I just gave up checking it.”
“We need fuel,” I said. “Probably five or six hundred gallons?”
“No problem there,” the old man replied, pulling the nozzle from the diesel pump and handing it to Bourke in the cockpit before unrolling enough hose to reach the port side. “With the Internet down, I haven’t had a lot of charters. That’s where I get most business these days. So, fuel I got plenty of.”
“I’d also like to ask you a favor,” I said, taking a step toward the shore end of the dock and nodding my head. Henry fell into step and I explained the situation.
Our plans had changed somewhat. After Pat’s revelation, I’d relayed the information to Deuce and he’d put his tech wizard, Chyrel Koshinski, to work digging up the facts. Just before we’d arrived, Deuce had reported that Chyrel’s digging had uncovered something that seemed to corroborate Pat’s story.
“So, let me get this straight,” Henry said after I told him what was going on. “You’re back to working for the government, rescued these two girls from kidnappers that were supposed to kill the teenager, and they somehow convinced these Jamaicans to hold them for ransom instead? And the kidnappers were hired by her daddy?”
“Sick as that sounds,” I replied, “it checks out. The group we took them from, Jamaican criminals holed up on Cat Island, received a hundred thousand bucks from the girl’s father a week ago. The grandmother was kidnapped with her. She’d found out about the plot and managed to convince the Jamaicans to renege on the deal and ask for more money as ransom and to keep silent.”
“Sick ain’t the word I’d use,” Henry said, looking back toward the Revenge, where Pat and Chrissy now stood in the cockpit. “That must be one tough lady.”
Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) Page 3