Blank Slate (A Kyle Jackle Thriller)

by Hamric, Zack

  From the RIB, we witnessed the path of destruction caused by the .50 caliber rounds. The heavy jacketed rounds cut through the steel plating like butter, spraying shrapnel as they exploded out the backside. I even felt a twinge of sympathy at the sight of the crew’s blood being sprayed high on the wall behind the bulwark as the rounds took their bloody toll.

  It was time to shut them down permanently. I lased the range to the window of the pilothouse, added four feet to ensure it penetrated inside before exploding, and fired a round from two hundred yards away. A little recoil and muted pop as the 25mm smart munition left the tube. Arriving on target a second later, it punched through the thick glass of the pilothouse and exploded in midair killing the bridge crew and Pedroza instantly.

  I glanced around the boat. “Everyone OK?” Got an affirmative nod from everyone. You think they may be ready to surrender now?” I asked glancing at Miller.

  “I’m not too sure you left anyone still breathing, but I guess we need to check it out,” said Miller. “No way it could have gone down any other way.”

  We cautiously approached with Rivera on the gun and me standing by with the XM25, but it appeared that everyone had been either killed or was cowering below deck. I tied off the stern of the RIB and Rivera took the bow. I had a little problem managing the climb up the boarding ladder to the deck with one arm, but finally reached the top rail and swung my leg over.

  Each of us was armed and ready, but all we found was a ship full of dead men. After taking one look at what remained of the crew behind the bulwark and deciding we couldn’t get through that way, we walked down the center of the ship and circled on the catwalk one level above to reach the pilothouse. Stepping into the pilothouse was no better. The aerial burst had served its deadly purpose and killed everyone on the bridge except the engineer. He had only been wounded because the bulk of a chart table had sheltered him from the worst effects of the blast.

  Tasha had seen enough. She stepped outside onto the port wing bridge to put the bloody sight out of her mind. A moment later, I heard a scream. We turned as one and froze. Standing in the door, with blood dripping from one blind eye was Escabado with his arm wrapped around her neck and a pistol pointed at her head.

  “I leaving on Bandito with my little friend. You follow me, I kill her. Put your guns down now,” he said in a ragged voice that revealed he was more severely injured than he appeared.

  We hesitated. No one was going to put down his weapon in the face of this madman. He pointed his gun toward us to emphasize his point. As he extended his gun hand forward, Tasha drove the knife she had concealed by her side deep into his thigh. He roared with pain and as he doubled forward, she whirled and slit his throat from ear to ear. The raw wound gaped open wide and a fountain of blood joined the others on the wall and floor as he swayed upright for a moment and then collapsed.

  There was complete silence in the room as Tasha bent over and casually wiped the blood from her knife off on Escabado’s shirt. She folded the blade and the knife disappeared again.

  “I still would love to know where you hide that,” said Kyle.

  “I might tell you one day,” Tasha replied with a smile.

  Rivera and Miller were still trying to process what they had seen. “OK, I think we’re done here,” said Miller. “We’ll take the RIB back and drop it with our friends in the Honduras. Can I give you guys a lift?”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I just need you guys to bandage me up back at your base and drop me on Dolce Vita tomorrow morning. I still have to sail her back to Fort Lauderdale. What about you, Tasha? In for another leisurely sail?”

  “Absolutely,” she said with a delighted smile.

  CHAPTER 34

  For the past two days, Miller and Rivera had been wading through responses to the volumes of after action reports. They were already frustrated from interruptions and requests for endless debriefings with all the agencies that wanted to somehow place their stamp of approval on the operation..

  “You realize we are spending longer writing reports than we actually spent in action?” asked Rivera.

  “Naturally-the joys of working for a federal agency. If you ever happen to have the misfortune to die in the line of duty, the first thing you do on arriving in hell is to fill out paperwork for the first two years,” said Miller.

  Miller glanced up as another email announced its arrival in his computer. The subject line-CASE FILE 234A7.

  After reading the first paragraph, he said, “Rivera, you need to take a look at this.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the case we talked about where we kept running into a dead end-the killing of Popov’s associates and customers in Florida,” said Miller.

  “So what’s new?” asked Rivera in a tone that said he really just needed a few days off without having to think about another case.

  “The last killing-it took them a few weeks to process the blood from the scene, mainly because the walls were damn near painted with it. The victim was Yuri Sidorov, a Russian national. We think there might have been a link to Popov, but we can’t prove it.”

  “So why do I care?” asked Rivera.

  “After they washed off all the blood, they found a skin fragment in the diamond pinky ring the guy was wearing-looks like he punched or backhanded his killer. There was a link-they got a hit on Interpol from a killing in Italy a few months before. The victim was some piece of shit working for the Camorra family who was sliced and diced by someone who apparently was really pissed off at him. Lot’s of DNA at the scene that they couldn’t match up, but they picked up a record on a fingerprint from that killing. Turns out that the perpetrator had spent some time in the army in the Ukraine. That record is in the next file.”

  With that, Miller pressed the arrow key to open the next file on the list. They were silent for a moment as they looked at the picture of a woman dressed in a Ukranian military uniform, looking somewhat severe with her unsmiling face and blonde hair tucked under her cap. There was no mistaking the face or the name-Tasha Kozlov.

  “So how does this all fit together?” asked Rivera. “She seemed pretty damn normal when we met her. Maybe a little enthusiastic with her knife, but that was understandable under the circumstances.”

  Miller was silent for a moment as he finished scanning the rest of the reports. “Looks like she had a sister. Ended up getting sucked into the sex trade in Italy…and judging by these pictures, she died very badly.”

  Rivera looked at crime scene photos from Victoria Kozlov’s death and turned away in revulsion. “So what the hell do we do now? We’ve got a stone cold killer with a heart of gold who saved us and managed to remove a few assholes from the world along the way.”

  “I think you know the answer to that one,” said Miller. “We do our jobs.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Popov was in a fine mood. Even with the loss of the submarine in Nicarauga, he chose to view it as a minor cost of doing business. He still had all his contacts for the drug routes coming out of Columbia and distribution channels set up throughout South Florida. The only thing he had really lost was Escabado. Not big loss there, he thought. I just managed to double my share of the profits and didn’t have to kill anyone to do it.

  He was full from the meal at The Forge in South Beach. The combination of a good steak and atmosphere heavy on the South Beach eye candy always made him think about how wonderful life was in America.

  The window was open and wisps from his fragrant Cubana flowed out to join with the heavy tropical atmosphere of a beautiful Miami night. He carefully signaled for a turn onto McArthur Parkway and smoothly accelerated the big Mercedes 600-no reason to give the police a reason to pull him over. Nothing like being a law abiding citizen, he thought with a wry chuckle.

  He turned onto the road leading to the ferry to Fisher Island. This was the only annoying part about the island-the only way on or off the island was a five-minute ferry ride. Within a couple of minutes, the Osprey, one of several ferries tha
t ran between the island and the causeway tied to the dock. Popov drove onto the ramp at the rear of the ferry and pulled into position at the front of the ferry. Good, he thought. I’ll be in bed a few seconds sooner with one of my beauties. He wondered idly which one it was-so hard to keep track of whose turn it was.

  He waited impatiently for the rest of the cars to load and the Captain finally signaled their departure with one blast from the horn. Pulling away from the dock, the Osprey bucked into the strong tidal current flowing out the mouth of Governors Cut. Popov could see the lights of Fisher Island approaching when a woman suddenly appeared at the passenger side window of the Mercedes.

  The first thing he saw was a silenced pistol pointed unwaveringly at his forehead. She opened the door and slid into the passenger seat beside him, being careful to keep the gun trained on him.

  “Tasha, I’m a little surprised to see you here. I understand how there could be some hard feelings-why don’t I give you a little severance package for your trouble?- say a million? I have it in my safe up in the condo.”

  Tasha replied by throwing a pair of handcuffs in his lap. “Put them on. Loop them through the steering wheel.”

  “Fuck you. Who do you think…?” He stopped suddenly as a smoking hole appeared in the seat cushion between his legs. He snapped one end of the cuffs on his left wrist, ran it through the steering wheel and clipped the other cuff on his right wrist.

  “OK. Now let’s calm down and talk about a deal. This is strictly business-I can give you two million and you’re set for life.”

  “Why don’t you spend the next couple of minutes thinking about the deal you gave my sister Victoria.”

  Tasha slid out of the car, walked to the car behind the Mercedes, and slid in on the passenger side. Popov looked in his rear view mirror and saw Kyle Jackle smoking a cigar in the Hummer and waving at him. Kyle looked over at Tasha, smiled and dropped the Hummer into low gear. Popov jerked at the steering wheel and his handcuffs desperately trying to free himself. Kyle pressed the accelerator to the floor and crashed into the Mercedes.

  The first impact drove the Mercedes into the safety chain on the bow of the ferry. The second impact ripped the fitting loose from the bulwark, and the final blow tipped the car over the bow into the path of the ferry. Popov had a moment of panic as the Mercedes tumbled under water and the car filled with water, but then the stern of the ferry with it’s dual six foot props arrived chewing through the car and leaving it a mangled pile of scrap metal on the bottom.

  Kyle surveyed his handiwork with some satisfaction, stepped to the passenger door and opened it. “Tasha, after you,” he gestured. They walked casually to the side of the ferry ignoring the panicked reactions of the other passengers and the shouts from the ferry captain. Kyle flipped his cigar into the churning water and leaped six feet into a center cockpit fisherman running with no lights on that had closed to within six feet of the ferry in the confusion. He turned-Tasha jumped for the rail, but the boat bounced on a wake and she only caught the rail with one hand. She looked up with a look of pure desperation as her grip began to slip on the wet metal. She was suddenly yanked from the water as Kyle grabbed her hand and pulled her aboard. Within seconds the boat sped away disappearing into the darkness and swirling currents of Governors Cut.