“He never asked for proof of life,” Craig said. “It would go without saying that the Jamaicans would bring the captives along, and Cross will want to see them.”
“At which time,” I said, thinking out loud, “he might have something prearranged to kill not only Pat and Chrissy, but the Jamaicans, too.”
“I’ve been monitoring his phones and online activities,” Chyrel said. “I have Jim Franklin’s phone tracer connected, in case he has a burner. The only call, outside of his ordinary political contacts, was one he made at eight o’clock, to a local cell number. The tower it pinged was located over on Saint Helena Island. That call lasted only two minutes.”
I continued pacing the floor as the others questioned Chyrel about Jim’s tracker device. Jim Franklin is a retired FBI agent and an expert in surveillance. He’d invented a device utilizing a computer’s hard drive that was programmed to pick up other active cell phones located within a small area near a target phone. It would then search phone records to see if the nearby phone had been used in the vicinity of the target phone in the past. He’d explained that the odds of random people making calls at near the same time in near the same location were pretty low. So, if someone had two phones and one was known, he could find the burner really easy.
I stopped pacing. “He set up a meeting.”
“For tomorrow?” Art asked. “Before he makes the exchange? Not enough time for whoever he’s meeting to set anything up.”
“He’s meeting someone tonight,” I said.
Craig picked up his Blackberry and tapped a few buttons. “Nobody’s left since the cook returned with the groceries,” he said, waiting for the call to connect. Then, into the phone, he said, “Still no activity?” Looking at me, Craig shook his head.
“Can one of them get around to the back of the property?” I asked him.
He repeated my question into the phone. “He says probably—the house next door appears empty. What should he look for?”
“A boat!” Sheena said.
Snapping my fingers, I pointed at her. “Or, more precisely, an empty boat dock.”
Craig repeated the information to the surveillance team and ended the call. “He’ll call me right back.”
“We should have anticipated this,” Sheena said.
A few minutes later, Craig’s phone rang and he clicked the speaker function, setting the phone in front of him. “What’d ya find out, Oscar?”
“Just missed him,” the man on the phone replied, sounding out of breath. “When I got back there, he was just idling away from the dock. Saw his face clearly in the glow from the boat’s instruments. It’s definitely Cross, and he appeared to be alone. A big fishing boat, maybe thirty feet long. The kind you can walk all the way around in, and it has a roof over the middle part of it. Dark-colored hull, white roof. Two outboard motors.”
“I hate to ask,” Craig said, “but someone needs to be out there when he comes back.”
“No problem,” Oscar replied. “I have some pretty strong bug spray.”
Craig ended the call as I walked over to Chyrel and leaned to look at her computer. “Can you pull up boat registrations?”
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and within seconds she pointed to the screen. “Custom-built thirty-four-foot center-console. Black with white topsides. Two years old, with twin three-fifties.”
“Can you track his phone’s location?”
“No,” Chyrel replied. “He doesn’t have GPS enabled.”
“Okay,” I said, picking up my pacing again. “So, now we wait. A boat like that can go just about anywhere around here and probably cruises at thirty knots. What time he gets back will give us some idea of where he went. That phone number he called—can you tell where it is?”
“Not specifically,” Chyrel replied. “A general area if he makes another call. Both Cross’s phone and the phone he called have GPS disabled for exact positioning.”
“What about the boat’s GPS?” Art asked.
“Think he’ll have one?” Chyrel asked, her fingers already dancing on the keyboard.
“I didn’t have one when I was stationed here,” I said. “They weren’t available then, and I ran up on quite a few sandbars. For what one costs today, I wouldn’t imagine many boaters around here not having one.”
“What if Cross is meeting the guy at his house and not on his boat?” Keenan said. “Boats are a common way of going from place to place in South Florida.”
“If he’s meeting hired muscle,” Andrew began, “he probably wouldn’t go to the guy’s house. It’d be beneath his stature. They’ll meet on the water, or at the very least, someplace both would be familiar with.”
“I got him!” Chyrel shouted. “He doesn’t have GPS on his boat—he uses a chart plotter app on his phone.”
“What’s an app?” I asked without thinking.
Everyone looked at me like I had three eyes. Except Chyrel. She knew I was a hermit, technologically speaking. “Short for application,” Chyrel said without looking up. “A small subprogram you can download on a mobile device, like his phone, that does one specific thing. In this case, a really accurate chart plotter. Take a look.”
On her screen was pretty much the same typical nautical chart that’s downloaded on my Garmin plotter. I could tell by the movement of the boat icon on the screen that she’d hacked into his application.
“This is real time?” I asked.
“Yep. The guy Cross called is on the water, going south on Beaufort River. I hacked into his GPS. No, wait,” she said, studying the screen again. “Looks like he’s slowing down and turning east.”
“Zoom out so I can see more of the shoreline. And can you change the display to north at the top?”
Within seconds the image rotated almost ninety degrees, showing the boat moving east-northeast. It zoomed out, showing Hilton Head at the south and downtown Beaufort to the north. The boat was just north of the tip of Parris Island.
“Land’s End,” I said. “He’s anchoring up. Do we have satellite imagery?”
“Only an oblique angle,” Chyrel replied. “The bird’s somewhere over Bimini right now.”
“How are you guys doing this?” Sheena asked. “Do you have a warrant?”
“Not exactly,” Andrew said. “Nothing we learn can be used in court. I think Jesse just wants to know what the new player looks like.”
“Not admissible, and also not legal. Passive satellite surveillance, sure, but hacking into his phone’s GPS to know where to look? You’re violating these people’s civil rights.”
“Get me something, Chyrel,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder and turning to Sheena. “Can I talk with you privately, Sheena?”
Without waiting for a response, I turned and went down the hall. Instead of going into my room, I opened the garage door, the light coming on automatically.
A few seconds later, Sheena stepped through, obviously upset. “You can’t be doing these things,” she hissed as I closed the door.
“Can’t or shouldn’t? As in shouldn’t, according to the FBI’s rules of engagement?”
“What are yours?”
“Currently, it’s fire only when fired on. That’s the extent of our limits, and even that’s waived under certain circumstances.”
“So, you’re authorized to do warrantless wiretaps to locate people for satellite surveillance?”
“Yes,” I replied frankly.
“That’s a complete and utter violation of the National Security Act,” Sheena said, practically stomping her foot.
“We’re authorized beyond the scope of that,” I said, becoming irritated. “I think we need to make a conference call, your boss and mine. How will you play it, if ordered to?”
“I won’t like it, but my ass will be covered.”
We returned to the group in the dining room. Chyrel already had the satellite’s camera aimed at the target boat, a big ugly trawler that looked like it had been outfitted for recovery work. A man was on th
e bow, dropping the anchor. A really big man. I didn’t see anyone else on the boat.
“Chyrel, get Travis on, and have him wake up the Homeland Secretary and the Director of the FBI.” Glancing over at the two DEA guys, I asked, “Do we need to get your boss on here, too?”
Keenan shrugged. “She’ll just say to do whatever the Secretary says.”
Chyrel quickly typed in a long message to Travis and sent it. It only took a few minutes, with Sheena stewing the whole time, before Chyrel’s computer pinged and a window opened. Travis was at his desk at home, wearing a tee shirt. Chyrel got up and I sat down as the screen split and Deuce’s face appeared in another window.
“Sorry to wake you guys,” I said. “There’s been a development and we need to clarify something.”
“The other two will be on in a second, Jesse,” Deuce said. “What’s going on?”
“Cross is meeting someone out on the river in a boat. We don’t have any evidence, but my gut tells me that Cross isn’t planning to react like a statesman, and he’s meeting this other guy to arrange something to take out his family and the Jamaicans. Special Agent Mason is reluctant to proceed using our methods. Specifically, the phone taps to locate the target with the satellite.”
“Got it,” Stockwell said. “Deuce, send a message to both the Homeland Secretary and FBI Director, so they’ll have Jesse’s suspicions and the interagency problem on their screen when they sign on.”
Deuce bent over the keyboard and began typing. A few minutes later, he looked up and said the message had been sent. A moment later, there was another ping and two more windows opened, splitting the screen into quarters. One window was blank for a second before a fourth man’s face appeared.
“I knew I’d be seeing your face when Director Stockwell texted me,” Secretary Michael Chertoff said.
“Sorry to wake you, sir,” I said. “We have a bit of a conflict.”
I went on to explain in detail what my suspicions were and what I perceived as a possible threat during or after the exchange and arrest. Both Andrew and Sheena agreed it was a highly probable scenario, based on the background we had on Cross.
“My apologies for the lateness of the hour, Director Mueller,” Sheena said, having quickly put on her blazer, though it didn’t go well with the jeans. “Special Agent Allen and I are bound by certain regulations that the agents we’re assisting apparently aren’t. Specifically, the warrantless wiretap of American citizens.”
Chertoff frowned and tented his fingers, his elbows resting on his desk. “When the Caribbean Counterterrorism Command was created, we’d not expected there to be joint investigations with other agencies so soon. Mike, can your agents be ordered to overlook certain things, when working with Colonel Stockwell’s agency?”
“I’ve read the scope of this investigation, Mister Secretary. Unless there is some proof that we can submit to a federal judge for a warrant, I’d have to say no. I can pull my agents off, if that will eliminate the conflict.”
Before Chertoff could reply, I said, “No need for that, Director. We can scale back our investigation to satisfy the responsibilities and commitments of your agents.”
“It’s settled, then” Chertoff said, briskly. “Travis, have your people follow the National Security Act of 1947 to the letter for this particular op. I’ll schedule a meeting with the agency heads under DHS and sort this out to avoid possible future conflict.”
Chertoff’s screen blinked, leaving Mueller, Travis, and Deuce looking befuddled. “Are you sure, Jesse?” Travis asked. “You lose a bit of advantage.”
“Not a problem, Colonel,” I replied. “You’ll just have to swear me in.”
After taking Nick’s money, Swimp waited a few minutes, watching Nick motor off to the south, toward Parris Island Spit. When the lights from Nick’s boat disappeared around the island and into Broad River, Swimp started his engine and hoisted anchor.
Swimp went the opposite direction on Beaufort River and just let the old boat idle along, while he considered what Nick had asked him to do and just how he’d go about it. This was a lot different than the hookers he’d disposed of for the man. A whole lot different. He wasn’t sure in what way it was different, since he hadn’t asked specifics.
Swimp was sure of one thing. The two white women on the boat with the Jamaicans weren’t going to be tortured, half-dead hookers. That left rivals in either business or politics. The Jamaican drug runners being involved probably meant it wasn’t politics. Not that who they were would carry any weight with Swimp and his cousins. It also didn’t matter what Nick said. If the women were still alive, he and his cousins would take turns with them.
Nick had said the Jamaicans were drug runners of some kind. If Swimp and his cousins made the murders look like it was a rival gang, that’d be the end of it. He’d said the important part was that the two women not be seen, and to get his money back. When Swimp asked what the boat looked like, Nick had said he didn’t know.
“With the number of cousins you have,” Nick had said, “you can have one watch the dock, identify the boat, and then you and the others can stop it down past Spanish Point. It’ll probably move downriver right away. Just get my money any way you can, and make sure those women never see the sun set.”
As Swimp’s boat slowly moved up the river, he wondered who the two women might be and what connection they had to the Jamaicans. Nick said he’d paid the black men to do a job and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the job was. They were supposed to kill the two women and had instead held out for more money. Not a smart thing to do, dealing with a man like Nick Cross. Especially if you were a black man.
Swimp had grown up among the Gullah people. He’d been one of only a handful of white kids on the island. As a boy, he’d been picked on by them and the few other white kids, pretty much equally. His family having been on the islands for over two hundred years, there was a little Gullah blood in him and a little Ross blood in some of the Gullah.
Nick Cross, on the other hand, hated anyone that wasn’t white and privileged. He was smart enough to hide that fact in his public life, but with a few people, he let his racist side show. Mostly, it was people like Swimp. The poor working-stiff whites of the Lowcountry, who Nick assumed were just as bigoted as him.
Swimp and his cousins didn’t care about what color a person’s skin was. They’d grown up among the Gullah, gone to church and to school with them and developed close ties. The Ross cousins also knew that all people bled the same color.
Where were the Jamaicans from? Swimp wondered. He’d met a few, but not around the Sea Islands. Swimp had seen a good bit of the world, unlike his cousins. The Jamaicans were probably from Savannah or Jacksonville, he decided.
Swimp angled the old workboat northeast, out of the river and into Cowen Creek. Throttling up a little, for no other reason than to rock the rich assholes’ docks and yachts on Cat Island, he motored north toward Capers Creek. His property was on the north bank of Capers, near where it joined Cowen Creek. The Ross dock extended several hundred feet out over the pluff mud, now exposed on the banks. The channel itself was the only water left in the creek, and it was barely a hundred feet wide. At high tide, Cowen Creek was nearly a quarter mile across, the pluff mud covered by three to five feet of water, right up and into the reeds. Just a little past the low tide now, only the deepest part of the channel had enough water to maneuver the big boat.
The rising tide was already beginning to cover the pluff mud, and Swimp had the current astern. He normally tied up with the bow facing up the creek, regardless of whether it was rising or falling. But he thought he might need to move quickly and decided to turn the boat around before docking.
Passing his pier, where one of his cousins’ boat was tied up to the end of the tee, Swimp turned the big salvage boat toward the mud on the left bank and shifted to neutral, intentionally letting the boat run aground in the soft, yielding mud. Once the bow caught, the current began to slowly push the stern a
round. When the boat swung perpendicular to the creek, Swimp reversed the engine, backing the boat out of the mud. A few yards clear, he shifted to forward and spun the wheel, gunning the engine to bring the stern around, moving slowly into the current in the middle of the channel.
Quickly tying off to the rickety-looking fixed pier, Swimp shut down the engine and climbed the ladder that extended almost to the mud six feet below the water’s surface. At the shore end of the dock, he saw one of his cousins walking toward him. The two men soon met in the middle of the long pier.
“What’s he want?” Damien Ross asked.
“It’s gonna take a bunch of us,” Swimp replied, relighting the joint he’d stashed in his pocket. “And he’s paying big. A hundred thousand dollars.” Swimp didn’t see any need to tell his cousin about the ten grand in his pocket. “All we gotta do is salvage a few small items from a boat real fast.”
“That much to salvage a boat?” Damien asked, accepting the joint his cousin offered. “Where is it?”
“Depends on where we sink it.”
Damien looked up at his cousin’s features in the moonlight and grinned, blowing the gray-blue smoke up into the night air. “And what’s supposed to happen to whoever’s on the boat?”
“It’ll be crewed by some black guys,” Swimp replied, taking the joint. “They ain’t from these parts, and Cross don’t give a shit what happens to ’em, besides getting dead. S’posed to be drug dealers, so if they get themselves all shot to shit, the cops’ll think it was something to do with that.” A slow grin spread across Swimp’s face. “And there’ll be two white women on the boat that he don’t want to ever be seen or heard from again.”
“Think they’ll be any livelier than them whores he usually gives us to get rid of?”
“Since when do you give a shit?” Swimp scoffed, remembering how the last hooker they’d gang-raped had quit breathing before Damien was finished with her. At the time, he hadn’t let that stop him.
“Fuck you, man,” Damien said. “I didn’t know the whore died. Wasn’t like I was checkin’ her pulse while layin’ pipe.” Then with a bit of pride, he added, “Guess ole Damien’s trouser snake was just too much for her.”
Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) Page 14