by Jack Hardin
“Hold on now, I’m not quite there. The race ends up being the best of..I think three rounds, and Frank and this turtle get to the last round. Trouble was, so did the guy whose turtle he was borrowing. It’s four turtles on this narrow-framed table about ten feet long. And yes, as it turns out, your father’s turtle won. By about half a shell. And when you win they ring this bell, make you throw down a double shot of local rum, and then hand you your envelope of five hundred dollars cash. When the end came, I saw it all happen in slow motion: the biker, who had fat arms, a gray handlebar mustache, and had a couple hundred pounds on each of us, his eyes zone in on this turtle still sitting on the table. He frowns, pushes through the crowd and back to his turtle carrier, and when he saw it was empty, he pushes back through the crowd again looking pissed and walks up to the turtle still sitting on the table for a closer inspection. When he looks up, he pretty much looks like an angry wolverine, and he starts stomping over toward your father.”
“Now, by this time your father is up on the stage, has rung the bell—the room is going crazy cheering for him—and had just downed the rum and was reaching out for the cash when I put a couple fingers in my teeth and whistled hard from the back of the room. So Frank turns and looks at me from across the room, and I frantically point to the monster coming at him. He turns to look, but not before the big guy’s fist lands square into his jaw. Frank flips around, and I see his eyes roll back and his face disappear and drop down past the sea of shoulders and heads.”
Katie put her hand over her mouth.
“Norma Jean and Gunny are off to the side, and I hear her scream. The crowd goes nuts. No one knew why the winner of the turtle race just got knuckled by one of their own, but they loved it. They just ate it up, man. More cheering and now laughing. The big guy walks over to the guy with the cash and points to the turtle table then jabs his finger into his own chest. The guy with the money shrugs and hands him the envelope. The crowd cheers again. And then…” Major laughed to himself.
“What already?” Ellie pressed.
“And then I see Frank stand up, swaying like he has sea legs. He holds onto a microphone stand for balance, and then he’s gone and I can’t see him. Next thing I know, that envelope isn't in the big guy’s fingers anymore, and I see the top of Frank’s head bobbing up and down the side of the room, heading toward the front door. Norma Jean saw it too, so the three of us got out into the street just before he did. He’s screaming and laughing as he bolts out of there followed by a whole herd of angry thicknecks.”
“I don’t think any of us ever ran as hard as we did that night. Norma Jean ended up flicking her sandals off. I did too. We booked it back to that Datsun and got it cranked up just as the herd got to us. As we drove away, your father sticks a hand out the window holding the envelope and waves it at them. Norma Jean was giving them the bird with both hands.”
“They didn’t chase you guys down?” Katie asked, laughing with him.
“We shot it over the Seven Mile Bridge and hid the truck in some overhanging mangroves behind a motel in Marathon. We ended up staying there for the night. I think it might have been Hemingway who said not to go on trips with anyone you don’t love. He was right, you know. Those, I think, were the best days of my life.”
Major looked into the living room, looked at Chloe watching the television. He looked at Katie and Ellie, sitting here with him. “This is right, all of us being together,” Major said.
Katie smiled softly. “It’s just missing Dad.”
“Yeah,” he said. “He and I could have gone out back and taken you both in horseshoes.” He lifted a cigar from his shirt pocket. “I’ll be on the front porch if anyone wants to join me.”
“You go ahead,” Katie said. “It’s going to take me and Ellie the next hour to put the candles on your cake.”
“There you go again.”
Ellie stared out the open back door, at the old wooden playset her father had built all those years ago, at the grass growing up the sides of the narrow horseshoe stakes.
They were right. Frank O’Conner wasn’t here.
But he was somewhere.
Chapter Thirty
Off-duty Florida State Trooper Robert Barnes was just finishing up his Philly Cheesesteak omelet at the Immokalee Denny’s when the ruckus started.
For the last sixteen years, during which time this particular Denny’s had gone through two remodels and countless managers, he came here every Thursday night for dinner. Trooper Barnes had kept the same spot too. All this time and it never changed: the booth at the far rear corner opposite the bathrooms. It wasn’t that Thursdays were something special or held some kind of nostalgia or sentimental value. Trooper Barnes just happened to be a creature of habit, and somewhere in the yellowing pages of his past, he had made a habit of coming here on Thursday nights. Thursday night, Denny’s, Philly Cheesesteak omelet, two cups of decaf, black, and then home to read thirty pages of Louis L'Amour, shower, and lights out by ten forty-five.
He stood up and wiped his lips with his napkin. After tossing said napkin onto his plate, he made his way toward the front. Martha Sue was standing near the register sobbing into her hands, so he put a hand on her shoulder and asked her what happened. She lifted her head to reveal two tear-streaked jowls, and then she pointed an arthritic finger toward the parking lot and told him that the man had just cursed at her for seating him at a table with crumbs still on it. “I didn’t see the crumbs,” she told him, “really I didn't.” He patted her shoulder and stepped toward the front door, reached for the handle.
But then he paused. It was the color, that very bright color, that gave him such pause. That shiny and terribly obnoxious orange. He didn’t see many of those out this way. But here it was. A bright orange Ford Mustang with a plate number of...he squinted through the glass at the bumper: 24X-994A. And, “That’s a bingo!” as his brother Gerald would say. Martha Sue was still crying behind him, now retelling the event to an assemblage of co-workers, but Trooper Barnes surprised himself to find that he was nearly smiling. Well, and why shouldn’t he be? This was only the second time he had gotten a BOLO himself. The first one occured when he was a young buck, back when it took him four whole days to grow a decent five-o’clock shadow and he didn’t know his gun from his holster, way back when he had just started up with the Miami PD and back when they still called it an APB. As it happened some goof in Fort Lauderdale had hopscotched right over his probation and then thought it wise to rob a record store, leaving with eighty-two dollars in cash, but not before he gave the manager two slugs for eyes and left his body strewn out amongst second hand vinyls of Fleetwood Mac and Charles Ray. Stephen Fleming, as Trooper Barnes recalled his name to be, saw his luck run out when he and an off-duty Officer Barnes shared the same laundromat one Sunday afternoon. Officer Barnes was not but a few moments away from being fully hypnotized by watching his underwear go round, and round, and round, and round in the coin-operated dryer when Fleming walked in with a plastic bag full of clothes.
So that must be the secret, he told himself now. Off-duty. And he allowed himself a full smile at that.
He slid his wallet from his back pocket and pinched out two twentys, turned and handed them to Martha Sue, told her to keep the change and that he hoped she felt better and that he’d see her same time next week. She smiled weakly and thanked him with genuine gratitude at the generous tip, and then went back to drying her tears.
He stepped across the threshold and walked down the three steps to the parking lot. Three spaces to his left the Mustang’s engine revved up and the driver worked the pedal so the engine belched out a magnificent rattling drone. Trooper Barnes went two spaces to the right and got into his 1998 F-150. He started it up.
The Mustang revved up again, sounding like an adolescent boy roaring for attention. The man who was rude to Martha Sue threw it in reverse and, when he was clear of the parking space, left a thin layer of rubber on the asphalt as he peeled out and turned onto U.S. Route 29, headi
ng south.
Trooper Barnes kept back a fair distance and followed the orange Mustang for three miles, passing through Harker and finally turning east onto Oil Well Road.
Then he slipped his phone from his shirt pocket and called it in.
Chapter Thirty-One
There were thirty-two people in the conference room; fourteen at the polished walnut table, two sitting in the corners, the rest standing along the wall, everyone in possession of a folder. Special Agent Tim “Jet” Jahner had spent the last hour and a half briefing everyone on the raid scheduled for this afternoon. Six of those present were from other agencies; two with Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, three with the FBI, and one with Homeland Security.
Last night, as Ellie was driving back home from Major’s party, Garrett had called her in. Much to everyone's relief, Curtis Smith’s orange Mustang had been identified. He had led the off-duty State Trooper right to the location of Eli Oswald's compound. Ellie had gotten to the office at just after eleven and didn’t slip into bed until five hours later. They had spent the early hours of the morning coordinating with other agencies, Garrett fighting to keep the raid under his control, and waiting for retasked satellites to bring back images of the compound. Garrett was losing his battle to the FBI until, at just after two-thirty, surveillance showed two white panel vans enter the compound and, after being unloaded, leave and end up at a particular dock at PortMiami, a dock with a history of receiving shipments of drugs from Cuba.
The package that had been left at Jean Oglesby’s home had yielded no leads, but finding Dawson Montgomery remained everyone's top priority. The FBI allowed Garrett to take the lead with the understanding that a couple of their agents tag along. Because of Ronnie’s testimony that Eli Oswald had also been moving illegal firearms, ATF was sending someone along as well.
Two Special Response Teams divided into three groups would be in full gear and would enter from the front, with the exception that three agents would break off and cut through the rear chain link fence and hold that perimeter. Glitch and his team would be in a surveillance van a quarter mile out, relaying real-time drone footage of the area. Ellie would be set up in the woods; sniper backup in the event that someone fled unnoticed and made it as far as the compound wall. Eric Cardoza had nearly escaped when they raided the Ridgeside property last month. Garrett couldn't afford to chance such a slip-up this time around.
Jet wrapped up the briefing and thanked everyone for their participation, reminding them all why they had signed up for this kind of thing, and then dismissed them.
Mark, Garrett, and Ellie stayed back with Jet. After everyone cleared the room and the glass door had shut, Garrett said, “Listen, we need to get this right. I don’t want another agency getting credit for this. Ellie, you got us where we are and we need to make sure we finish this right. Stay smart out there today.”
Mark glanced down at the folder in his hand and then back at Jet. “I didn’t see what role I have in this. Ellie’s my partner. She’s up in a tree with a rifle. What am I doing?”
Ellie said, “Didn’t I see something in here about you staying back in a cruiser and playing Angry Birds or something?”
Mark rolled his eyes. “I’m serious.”
Garrett said, “You didn’t get anything on paper because it’s all being shared with the other agencies. I want you to keep an eye on the agents that are not with us.”
“Keep an eye on?” Mark repeated.
“Yeah, you know, babysit,” Ellie said.
“Oh, come on…”
“I was trying to be a little more polite, Ellie,” Garrett said. “But yes. Mark, I need you to babysit. They make a call, I want you to hear it. They talk to someone in cuffs, I want you to shut them down. This is our raid, not theirs. They’ll get their chance to talk with anyone we bring in. Just not before we do. Either way, I want you on them.”
Ellie detected a hint of disappointment in Mark’s body language, but he maintained his professionalism. “All right, Garrett.”
Forty-five minutes later, much to Citrus’s great joy, Ellie took her Bayliner out on the water and spent the next hour mentally preparing herself for the raid, thinking through possible scenarios, outcomes, and the individuals involved.
She and Mark had started this investigation looking into Oswald’s connection to cocaine. But now, at least in her mind, that had all taken a back seat to finding Dawson Montgomery. This afternoon, if they were lucky, Dawson would be at the compound, and they could get him to safety and lock up the crazies that had wounded him.
By the time Ellie brought her boat back up the canal, she was ready to go.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Oswald's compound was exactly that. An eight-foot-high cinder block wall that ran for half a football field across the front of the property and then down the east and west sides. The rear of the property had a standard chain link fence with three-wire barb at the top against which sat tall mounds of dirt, an acting backstop for their shooting range. Access was granted at the front through a sliding chain-driven steel gate, spiked at the top. The compound was the only place within a mile, and other than a couple stragglers at the front of the property the compound had no trees to speak of. They had all been cleared away.
Ellie sat in a thick pine tree a hundred and thirty yards from the compound’s southern perimeter. This gave her a view of the entire property. With her depth of experience, this range might as well be point-blank. But setting up further out was unnecessary; just over one hundred yards gave her adequate coverage in the woods without too many trees blocking her field of vision. From her perch she could see the entire length of the wall and over it into the compound.
She had shimmied up the tree twenty minutes ago, attached her tree seat, and sighted in the rifle, letting it rest against a sturdy branch. Modern sniper doctrine did not see a tree as a preferable sniper’s perch as it limited the sniper’s ability to “shoot and scoot.” However, in a non-battle environment such as this, a quick and soundless exfiltration was unnecessary. The Florida terrain was flat, and Ellie needed a higher elevation from which to observe the inside of the compound and its perimeter.
Ellie peered through the scope and waited for the raid to begin. DEA policy would not allow her to use any personal rifle which had not first been certified with the agency, so she had been provided with an M110 chambered in a 7.62 NATO caliber. It had a 20” chrome plated barrel with an accompanying 14" suppressor that brought down the sound of the bullet's explosion and discharge to only twenty-eight decibels. An XM151 3.5 - 10x variable power scope was mounted to the rail. It was an excellent weapons system, and, while most certainly an overstatement for such a close range engagement, Ellie found that she was nearly excited for the opportunity to handle it.
Her directive was simple: to provide any necessary coverage for their teams on the ground and to prevent anyone from escaping from the perimeter. She would be the final means of detainment, should it be needed.
The compound had three buildings. Besides the main, one-story house there was a large building thirty yards to the east, framed in corrugated steel. It appeared to be a storage facility. The third structure was a small storage shed that sat at the rear of the property. Early this morning, a Dodge Ram had driven in through the front gate, and Eli Oswald had gotten out and gone inside. No one had come out since. Two hours ago four men had spent a half hour on the compound's makeshift shooting range, discharging rounds from both handguns and semi-automatic rifles. Surveillance over the last fifteen hours put nine people on the property, and no one was discounting the possibility that more could be on the compound that surveillance hadn’t picked up yet.
The mood throughout the teams was now grave. This wouldn’t be a raid on a stash house where half the occupants might have a few handguns lying around. Today’s raid would be against a group that appeared to be dealing in drugs and possibly illegal weapons and had no issues with kidnapping and torturing those who tried to rat them out.
<
br /> A rush of controlled adrenaline warmed Ellie as she heard Jet’s voice through her earpiece.
“All teams report.”
“Alpha One, ready.” Alpha would come in the front door.
“Bravo Two, ready.” Bravo would snake around the rear of the home.
“Charlie Three, ready.” Charlie would break off and inspect the two standalone buildings.
“Standby,” Jet replied. Only the occasional breath could be heard.
Glitch was in a surveillance van down the road, parked on a dirt trail used only by seasonal hunters. The teams waited for the order to move, waited for Glitch to finishing hacking into the wireless connection to the front gate. Finally, when the gate shuddered and slid a few feet back along its track, Jet said, “Go, go,” his voice quiet but urgent.
Ellie watched as Jet silently led the way in, trailed by a team of twelve other officers clad in muted woodland SWAT gear. They silently snaked their way to the edge of the inside wall and moved stealthily toward the main house. Arriving there they tucked in behind the Dodge Ram, the Mustang, and a brown van. Jet gave the thumbs up, pointed two fingers at the front door, and he and his team left the cover of the vehicles. They crept up to the front porch, and Jet stepped back. One of his men sent a battering ram crashing into the door lock. It cracked and splintered under the force.
Barking loud commands, the team swarmed inside.
Chapter Thirty-Three
He had come out of the rear of the steel building, running like the wind toward the compound wall. Ellie spoke into her microphone. “Charlie, tango approaching south perimeter. Be advised.”
“Copy. Engage at—” He was cut off by bursts of handgun fire.
The man on the loose kept coming. He disappeared from her view as he arrived at the wall’s perimeter. Peering through her scope she saw a few fingers appear at the top of the wall and quickly disappear. The wall was high. The fingers appeared again, stayed a little longer now as they struggled to maintain a grip. They vanished again and quickly reappeared.