Corruption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  My Sig still clutched tightly, I whirled around and took aim at the two other bad guys in the closest boat. Gunshots cracked the calm open ocean air, coming from behind the closest boat. One of the thugs grabbed his chest in pain and fell hard to the deck. Jack noticed his cue and timed his entrance perfectly, catching all the bad guys off guard. I put a bullet through the head of the last thug on the closest boat, causing a spray of blood to explode out the back of his skull and his body to collapse like a house of cards.

  The three guys on the far boat scrambled as Ange and I rained gunfire upon them from the Baia and Jack fired incessantly from his hiding place along the stern of the closest boat. They managed to get off a few good shots, a few of their rounds barely missing me as they struck the Baia’s transom and port gunwale. We managed to hit two of them while the third staggered to the helm. With reckless abandon, he gunned the throttles. The engine roared in a violent symphony that quickly shifted to loud screeching and whining of mechanical parts. The 150-hp engine was firing everything it had, but the prop had been sabotaged, caught in a tangle of coiled nylon rope.

  By the time the guy realized that something was wrong, it was already too late. The thousands of pounds of torque generated by the engine to spin the prop was too much for the shaft to handle. It broke with an ear-rattling crack, causing the remaining part of the shaft to spin wildly.

  In desperation, he reached for his rifle, but it was already over for him. Jack yelled at him to stand down, but if the guy heard him, he didn’t show it. We were forced to fire, sending a trio of bullets into his body from different directions. His body jolted from the blows. He yelled and gasped in pain as his body jerked back, the momentum sending him tumbling over the starboard pontoon and splashing into the water.

  I holstered my Sig and stepped over to the leader, who was resting dazed on the deck between the sunbed and the gunwale. He haphazardly reached for his pistol on the deck, but before he came close I struck him again, squaring my elbow right into his temple and knocking him unconscious.

  As if reading my mind, Ange stepped down into the salon and returned a few seconds later, holding a pack of heavy-duty zip ties. I flipped the big guy onto his chest and dug my right knee forcefully into his back between his shoulder blades. Rotating his arms back, I bound his wrists by tightening two of the three-hundred-pound-breaking-strength zip ties. After binding his ankles together, I rose to my feet, grabbed my binos, and looked out over toward the oil rig and freighter. Both were stirring with activity, but I couldn’t see anyone else coming after us. Lowering the binos, I looked back over the stern of the Baia.

  Jack was on the surface, maneuvering his way around the closest boat filled with dead guys and kicking his way toward us. When he reached the swim platform, he grabbed the ladder with one hand and loosened the straps of his face mask with the other. Pulling it off him and letting it rest on his right shoulder, he wiped his blond hair out of his eyes and looked around.

  “Well, I gotta say, I’ve had better first impressions,” he said, removing his fins and dropping them on the swim platform.

  I stepped down in front of him, offering my right hand.

  “Nice shooting,” I said as he grabbed my hand with a firm grip and I helped pull him up out of the water. “Not bad for a charter captain,” I added. “That prop didn’t stand a chance either.”

  I helped him out of the rebreather gear, and Ange handed him a towel.

  “What’s the plan with him?” Jack said, motioning toward the bound unconscious guy.

  I stepped around the transom and set the rebreather gear beside the dinette.

  “We’ll get what we can from him, then hand him over to the authorities,” I said. “Let’s get everything stowed and get out of here.”

  I bent down and grabbed the unconscious guy by his ankles. With no regard for his well-being, I pulled him down the steps into the salon. After handcuffing him to the metal brace of the dining table, I stepped back up topside and manned the cockpit. As I reached for the key and slid it into the ignition, Ange placed a hand on my shoulder and told us both to be quiet.

  “Do you hear that?” she said softly.

  I glanced over at Atticus, who was standing with his front legs up on the transom, staring out over the eastern horizon. Ange grabbed her binos, stepped quietly to the starboard gunwale, and peered out over the water. But she wasn’t looking northwest toward the oil rig. She was looking to the east, the same direction as Atticus.

  I listened intently and soon heard a distant thrumming echoing across the water. It was far away, choppy, and subtle, but growing louder with each passing second. There was no doubt in my mind as to what was heading our direction.

  “I see it!” Ange said, still focusing her gaze through her binos.

  I could barely make out its silhouette as it grew bigger on the horizon, just a thousand feet or so off the ground.

  “Coast Guard?” Jack said as he looked toward it.

  It would make logical sense, as some nearby fishing or pleasure boat might have heard the commotion and called it in. Though the chopper would have had to be nearby already since the nearest base was back in Key West.

  “Not the Coast Guard,” Ange said. “This doesn’t look good.”

  She handed her binos to Jack, then raced across the deck and stepped down out of sight through the salon door. Once Jack had a look, he handed them to me, and I focused on the incoming chopper. It looked like a Eurocopter 155, a twin-engine long-range helicopter used primarily for transport of high-level business executives. It looked like it was cruising toward either the ship or the oil rig. Either way, it signaled a good cue to get a move on. Besides, we had one of their boys aboard, and I was looking forward to figuring out what he knew about what was going on.

  Quickly, I led Atticus down into the main cabin, then shut the door once he was inside. Striding back up to the cockpit, I started up the engines and accelerated us over the water. Holding the helm, I put us on a southerly course, heading back toward the Lower Keys. Jack kept watch at the stern, his left hand pressed to the transom for stability and his right holding the binos up to his eyes. Ange appeared moments later, her collapsible Lapua .338 sniper rifle clutched in her hands. She sat beside me at the dinette and quickly unfolded the stock, then inserted a fully loaded fifteen-round magazine.

  “Hey, guys!” Jack yelled over the engines. “This bird’s turning.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and watched as the ever-approaching chopper made a wide, sweeping turn toward us. Looking back at my instruments, I saw that we were flying over the water at our top speed of fifty knots. The water was still relatively calm, but regardless we bounced up and down slightly as we cruised over the open ocean swells. Ange made a few quick, intricate adjustments to the rifle, then yelled at Jack to get back and sprawled out on the sunbed. She was facing aft with the barrel resting on a bipod and her right eye peering through the scope.

  The sound of the rotor blades thundered louder and louder. Glancing back, I saw that it was no more than a quarter of a mile behind us. A loud boom rattled the air as Ange fired a round at the approaching helicopter. I watched as a round sparked off its metal body. It turned sharply, allowing me to see that the left side door was wide open.

  “Get down!” she yelled, moments after the report of her rifle had left the air.

  I dropped to the deck beside Jack, keeping my right hand on the bottom of the helm. A bullet crashed through the windscreen just a few feet above my head. Less than a second later, I heard the echoing explosion coming from behind us.

  “Hold on!” I yelled, then turned the helm to port.

  I weaved back and forth a few times, then straightened out so Ange could get an easier shot. As the helicopter turned again to pursue us, she let off two more booming rounds in rapid succession. They struck the chopper head-on, one of the bullets breaking through part of the windshield. I watched as the helicopter bounced wildly up and down a few times, then performed a sharp 180-degree tu
rn.

  “You better run, assholes!” Ange shouted.

  I couldn’t help but grin as I watched her grab her rifle and sweep over onto her feet triumphantly. Even after all the years I’d known her, she never ceased to amaze me.

  “Nice shooting, Fox,” I said, nodding at her. “Not bad for a Valley girl.”

  I’d especially enjoyed her acting performance because, though she looked the part, she was the polar opposite of the role she’d pulled off.

  She laughed, took a quick bow, then nearly stumbled to the deck. We were still flying at just over fifty knots, a speed that makes it nearly impossible to keep one’s balance.

  Jack rose up beside me and, with the horizon clear of hostiles, looked out through the windscreen. The right side had a hole in it about the size of a golf ball.

  “You know,” Jack said, placing a hand on my shoulder, “you may have to change this boat’s name. Dodging Bullets just doesn’t seem appropriate for a boat that gets shot up every other week.”

  We both laughed, and I eased the throttles back to forty knots. Ange stepped over to me and brought me in for a passionate kiss.

  “You weren’t so bad yourself, Dodge,” she said. Her eyes trailed from mine to the salon door. “Let’s go somewhere quiet and make this guy talk.”

  EIGHT

  Carson Richmond sat in the backseat of the Eurocopter, reading messages on her phone as they flew across the Gulf. She was wearing a gray knee-length business dress with long sleeves that hugged her figure. Her eyes were covered by big dark sunglasses. She sat against the left side of the fancy cabin. To her right and across from her were five members of her personal security team, each of them heavily armed.

  “ETA three minutes,” the pilot said to her through the headset.

  She didn’t reply or even acknowledge his words. Her eyes remained focused on the small screen in front of her. After replying to a few messages, she blinked and looked out through the window to her left. The sky was big and blue. The ocean below was perfectly flat.

  She glanced at the time on her phone and saw that she was still behind schedule. She had a lot of work to do, and it would take another late night for her to get back on track with the operation. Failure would not be tolerated; she knew that all too well. Though Wake and she had an on-again, off-again dysfunctional personal relationship, she knew he’d throw her to the wolves in a heartbeat if it benefited him.

  “Ma’am, it looks like we’ve got a situation up here,” the pilot said.

  Her eyes shot up from her phone.

  “What is it?” she said, her tone authoritative and slightly irritated.

  “Take a look out the port window, ma’am,” he said. “There’s something going on down on the water up ahead.”

  Carson leaned over, tilted her sunglasses down, and peered through the glass. About a half a mile ahead of them, there was a white-hulled boat floating with two black smaller boats at its stern. She recognized the smaller boats. They were the RHIBs her Darkwater team had aboard the Jenna Louise, a freighter brought in as a tender for the rig.

  Carson gritted her teeth and focused her gaze. One of her men handed her a pair of binoculars so she could take a better look.

  “Son of a…” she said, staring through the magnifying lenses.

  Being so far away and with them flying so fast, it wasn’t easy to get a good view. But it was clear to her right away what was going on.

  “Change course,” Carson barked into the speaker. “Head over to the boats and keep us as stable as you can.”

  The pilot and copilot acknowledged and followed her order right away, banking the helicopter to the left. Carson turned toward one of her men to give him an order as well, but he was already on it. He opened a narrow plastic case and grabbed a Desert Tech Stealth Recon, a bolt-action sniper rifle with a bullpup design. After checking and inserting a .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge, he shifted around Carson to get a better view of the incident below.

  The white-hulled boat had powered up its engines and was cruising full speed away from them, leaving behind a long trail of bubbles in its wake.

  “Head toward the speeding boat, then turn to starboard so I can get a shot off,” the guy said forcefully into the radio.

  “Get the bird’s camera locked on them,” Carson said, tapping the copilot on the shoulder.

  The helicopter was fitted with a high-end camera that was able to zoom in and lock on to moving targets. She wanted to get footage of what was going on and who was giving them trouble.

  “Door!” the guy beside Carson yelled.

  He held his sniper with his right hand and jerked open the side door with his left, sliding it back and locking it in place. Powerful gusts of warm tropical wind blasted into the cabin. With the door open, the sound of the thundering rotor blades made it almost impossible to communicate, even with the headsets.

  Carson’s sniper leaned over the side of the helicopter, ignoring the wind as he raised his rifle and put his target in his sights. Suddenly, a loud metallic bang rang out as a high-caliber round struck the bottom of the helicopter. The pilot reacted by swerving to the right sharply, both to avoid another shot and to give his guy a better view.

  The sniper jerked to the right, barely catching himself as his momentum was fractions of a second from hurtling him out the open door. Taking a moment to regain control, he lifted his rifle, focused through his scope, and brought his target back into view.

  He put the pilot of the speeding boat right in his crosshairs, then pulled the trigger, sending a quick retaliation. The rifle boomed and the .338 exploded through the air toward his target. The pilot hit the deck at the last second and the round exploded through the windscreen right above his head.

  A second later, their quarry cut a sharp turn to port, then zigzagged back and forth. The sniper pulled the bolt back, then pushed it forward, chambering another round. The pilot of the helicopter adjusted their course again, facing the speeding boat head-on as they fought to get a better angle.

  Tiny bits of glass suddenly exploded out from the helicopter’s windshield as a round exploded into the cockpit and struck the copilot in the chest. Blood spewed out from his white uniform as the round tore through his body. A second round, fired in rapid succession, struck its underbelly. The pilot lost control for a few seconds and the chopper jerked side to side. He fought to steady her, then glanced at his copilot, who was hunched over and bleeding profusely over his seat and the deck.

  The quick, jerky movements of the chopper had nearly knocked Carson out of her seat. Her headset flew off her head and tumbled to her feet. Her blood boiled as anger surged inside her. She wanted nothing more than to continue the pursuit and take down whoever had attacked them, but she knew it wasn’t worth the risk.

  “Turn us around!” she yelled. “To the rig.”

  But with the side door still open, the pilot couldn’t hear her command. Verbal communications had become impossible. She reached down, picked up her headset, then secured it in place over her head and repeated the order into the microphone. Just as the words left her mouth, the pilot swiveled the cyclic to the right, causing the helicopter to turn.

  Carson straightened her body back up, then peered through the still-open port-side door. The wind beat against her, and she had to force her red hair from her face to get a good view. She watched as the boat rocketed over the water, cruising away from them and leaving a long trail behind them. Within seconds the boat disappeared from view as the chopper completed its full 180-degree turn. The sniper leaned over, grabbed the handle, and slammed the door shut.

  Minutes later, the pilot eased the big helicopter onto the Jenna Louise’s helipad and quickly killed the engines. A handful of Darkwater secured the copilot onto a stretcher and rushed him to the ship’s medical room. He’d been struck dead-on by a high-caliber round and had a slim chance of making it.

  Carson didn’t even glance at the bleeding guy as they carried him off. She stepped off and brought the pilot aside.
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  “Did you get footage of the boat?” she asked, her voice raised over the sound of the still-slowing rotor blades.

  The man nodded.

  “Good. I want it brought up to the bridge right away.”

  Before meeting with her men, Carson stormed straight for the nearest head. Entering a stall, she took a few minutes to calm her breathing, then used a few paper towels to wipe the sweat from her forehead.

  When she reached the bridge, a massive black guy wearing a skintight brown tee shirt walked over to her.

  “Axel, what’s the status?” she asked, not bothering with pleasantries.

  “The operation is going according to plan,” he said. He had a low and powerful voice and spoke with a Nigerian accent. “We had a minor hiccup, but it’s not an issue.”

  “The bird’s footage?” she said, storming across the bridge alongside him.

  “We’re bringing it up now,” he said, motioning toward a large flat-screen monitor mounted above the windows. “It shouldn’t be long before we get a positive ID on these guys.”

  He kept his eyes on the screen as the image of the boat appeared. Fast-forwarding for a few seconds as the camera focused, he paused a snapshot when the image became clear. Manipulating the controls, he zoomed in on each of the three people. The guy piloting the boat had his back to them. The woman sprawled out on the sunbed was mostly covered by her sniper rifle. And the guy seated at the dinette was blurry and hard to see under the shadow of the canopy.

  None of that affected Carson’s ability to identify them. She knew instantly who they were. Her eyes grew wide. The mug of hot coffee slid free from her right hand and shattered at her feet. The hot liquid sprayed onto her shoes and the metal floor, but she didn’t even notice.