Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6) (24 page)

Tony was looking far out ahead as the boat rocketed across the water’s surface. Nearly as fast as the helicopters that were following behind them, the Cigarette ate up the miles of ocean quickly. He liked the go-fast boat. When they used it in training, he’d take her out on the Gulf afterward to blow the cobwebs out of the engines.

Art kept his eyes on the radar screen, which let him know about any boats in their path. There were a lot of them out here. Halfway to their destination, Art switched the radar to full scan to see where the choppers were. He picked them up easily, two echoes flying close together just north of Key West, and a third one more than ten miles behind and closing. He also saw that there was a boat back there on the same course. Stockwell hadn’t mentioned any other boats heading out.

Art studied the echo and determined that whatever boat it was, it was pretty fast, traveling at nearly fifty knots. Jesse’s big boat was the only one he knew of in the area that was as big as the echo return indicated and could make that kind of speed. He doubted even the sheriff’s patrol boats were that fast.

As the chopper came closer he forgot about the boat on the radar. “Charity’s about ten miles back and closing fast,” Art said.

As Tony began a gradual deceleration, Art unbuckled his harness and turned around, putting his knees against the bottom of the seat and leaning forward over the backrest to keep his head out of the slipstream. “Get ready!” he shouted to Linda. “You’ll need to move up here between us in just a minute.”

Linda nodded and unbuckled her harness, sliding forward in the seat. Standing up fully at this speed would probably lift her out of the cockpit, so she intended to scramble forward on her hands and knees.

“Paul,” Art said, “slide over to the outside seat and strap in. I know you haven’t done this yet, but you’re the wide receiver. When Andrew hits the deck, grab him and hang on. He’ll turn around and grab Donnie when he jumps. Don’t let him go until both are on board. Got it?”

Paul nodded, unbuckling his harness and sliding over. He strapped himself in, pulling the lap belt as tight as he could, but leaving the shoulder harness unbuckled.

Tony held his hand to the side of his head, covering his ear. “Roger, Charity,” he said, hearing her voice over his earwig. Then in a calm voice, like they weren’t still traveling faster than any legal speed on land, Tony said, “Slowing to seventy knots. Damned sea is flat as glass. Never seen it so calm. We’ll have to get Jesse to bring us all out here tomorrow and catch some fish.”

A moment later the beating of the helicopter’s rotors all but drowned out the sound of the engines, now throttled back to almost three quarters. Art motioned Linda forward and she scrambled on all fours between the two front seats, then turned around on her knees.

Three minutes later, Linda was sandwiched between Bourke and Bender, amazed at how easy these men made it look. Hinkle sat down in the starboard rear seat, assembling his rifle, as Tony pushed the throttles to the stops once more.

“Welcome aboard,” Tony said, glancing in the small mirror on the console at Bourke. “Might have a few sprinkles in a little while. Glad you got here before it started.”

Picking up the sheriff’s patrol boat on the radar, Art reached for the radio mic. The patrol boat seemed to be drifting about ten miles ahead, maybe a mile from the coast.

“Deputy Phillips,” Art said into the mic, “this is Agent Newman. Do you copy?”

A moment passed and Marty’s voice came over the speaker. “Hi, Agent Newman. I only got here a few minutes ago. Didn’t expect you for a while longer.”

“We caught a tail wind,” Art said. “We’ll rendezvous where you are, and two of our people will join you.”

“Roger that. Standing by.”

Another voice came over the radio then. “Marty? What are you doing out here?”

“That’s Kim!” Linda exclaimed.

“Yeah,” Bourke said, turning to Linda, his voice competing with the roar from the powerful engines right behind them. “We flew over her a little ways back. She’s on Jesse’s fishing boat, but she won’t get here for another twenty minutes or so.”

“Kim?” the young deputy’s voice asked over the radio. “What are you doing out here?”

“I asked you first.”

“I’m doing my job. Where are you?”

A few seconds ticked by before Kim replied. “About twenty miles south of you.”

“I order you to turn back,” Marty said.

Bourke remembered the short conversation he’d had with Charity and laughed out loud. “Yeah, that’s gonna work real good, kid,” he said to nobody in particular.

“She’s got her dad’s backbone, that’s for sure,” Tony added.

There was silence on the radio for a few seconds, then Kim came back on. “Not happening, Marty.
Revenge
out.”

The young man tried to hail her a couple more times, but she didn’t answer. Tony started to slow down as they neared the patrol boat, finally reversing the engines and coming to a stop alongside.

“I hope she turned back,” the deputy said.

“She won’t, mate,” Hinkle said as he vaulted over to the deputy’s boat. “Just as stubborn as her old man, I’d expect.” Art joined Hinkle on the deputy’s boat. He’d cross-trained with him and his spotter, and the two had worked well together.

Tony handed Linda the extra earwig he’d snagged late last night. “Stick this in your ear and adjust it to fit. You stay with me. Like a second skin. Understand? Jesse’ll kick my ass if you get hurt, and I’m pretty sure you’d do it if I told you to stay on the boat. So I’m just mitigating my way out of two ass kickings.”

Looking around at everyone, Tony said, “We have as many as a dozen hostiles and maybe twice that number of refugees here. Probably forced labor to grow weed, housed in a makeshift camp maybe two hundred yards inshore. We only engage if fired on.”

Turning to the young man, he said, “Deputy, this’ll probably be over before Kim gets here. If it’s not, you’ll be out here to stop her. That’s a third ass kicking I want to avoid.”

Phillips started to protest and Tony stopped him with a single look. “This is Collier County, Deputy. You’re outside of your jurisdiction, but you can help us before she gets here. Satellite imaging shows elevated ground three hundred yards from the camp, not far from the northern tip of the island. You said you’re familiar with the area. Know where that is and how to get to it unseen?”

“Sure do,” Phillips replied. “I can get there through the cuts and channels from the north. Take maybe ten or twelve minutes to get there from here.”

“Good,” Tony said. “That’s enough time to put Donnie and Art ashore and get back out here.” Tony quickly outlined the plan and the patrol boat sped off.

I was in a different structure when I woke up for the third time. My head was severely pounding, a lot worse than from the gas. I’d been clobbered. Once more, I had my hands and feet tied, sitting up in a straight-backed chair. Light through an open window told me that I hadn’t been out long. The sky was still gray outside. With my head hanging down, the floor was the first thing to come into focus. I wasn’t blindfolded and two of the gangbangers were in the room with me, standing by the door with assault rifles slung on their shoulders. The room itself was nearly devoid of furnishings and decoration, but had a wood floor and was fairly clean. A bed was pushed up against one wall and a cheap table and two chairs were against the opposite wall.

Remembering my earlier escape, I’d been just about to turn around, hunkered down in those mangroves, when I was clocked from behind. It couldn’t have been the two I saw on the cliff, so it was one of the others.
As soon as I get loose
, I thought,
I’m gonna knock out every damned one of these assholes.
I was getting old, my reflexes were slowing down, and I was becoming lazy with too much relaxing island time. I’d neglected my daily runs and swims and it was taking its toll. I was getting soft. Ten years ago, anyone sneaking up behind me was being lured into a trap.

There was a scuffling sound outside the door. When it opened, Lavolier strode into the room. His eyes spoke of the arrogance he felt as he walked around the room and back, eyeing me like a cat would a mouse. He was dressed in off-the-rack camo pants and a long-sleeved tan shirt.

“You don’t look so tough,
wou kaka
.”

I stared him straight in the eye, my anger slowly building.

“Erzulie say you a rich man. A very rich man.”

Ah, the money from the treasure
, I thought. The number one motivator among criminals, according to Bender.

Lavolier, typical of many islanders, was a dark-skinned black man with light-colored eyes. He came toward me. Grabbing my hair and forcing my head back, he placed a knife against my throat. “Just another chickenshit white boy,” he said.

My eyes never left his as I growled, “You’ll look real cute when I shove that blade up your ass.”

“Enough!”

Lavolier released my hair and wheeled. “I wasn’t going to hurt him. Just wanted to scare him a little.”

“Men like Jesse McDermitt don’t scare easy,” Horvac said as she walked into the room. She had her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and was wearing jeans, boots, and a lightweight tropical work shirt. Miami chic. The two men guarding me lowered their gaze, averting their eyes from the voodoo spirit. “Men like him scare other men.”

“He’s not so scary,” Lavolier replied.

Horvac went to the table, set her black leather briefcase down and opened it up. “It doesn’t matter how frightening he appears just now,” she said calmly, lifting out the false bottom and placing it on the table. “Tell the others to leave.”

Lavolier nodded to the two guards and they hurried out the door, obviously happy to be away from the woman. “You giving him the same
wason
you gave me?”

“Not exactly,” she said, handing him a small flask. “This is yours. Drink only half.”

The man took it from her and quickly twisted off the cap. He began drinking the concoction instantly, swaying as he chugged it down. “His will be a bit stronger and mixed with a serum that will prevent him from telling me a lie.”

Turning to me, I could see his eyes already clouding with animal lust. “You gonna like Erzulie’s
wason
, white boy.” He grabbed his crotch and added, “Might make your
pati gason
as big as mine.”

She mixed several ingredients into a second flask, put the cap on and shook it for a moment, as she turned around. “I doubt that,
cheri
,” she said, embracing him from behind and rubbing her hand across his belly. The man’s knees began to shake as soon as she touched him, and his whole body trembled.

Her eyes smoldered as she looked at me. “You will tell me what I want to know, Jesse. You will want to please me. And once I’ve taken from you what I want, I’ll put your head on a pole for spurning me.”

Gliding toward me, she let her hand lightly caress Lavolier’s shoulder and arm. Lavolier nearly collapsed on the floor. “Hold his head back,
cheri
,” she said over her shoulder, never taking her eyes off mine. “And pinch his nose shut.”

Lavolier went around behind me, yanking my head back by the hair as the first raindrops could be heard falling on the tin roof of the little shack. Not the soft, misty rain like several days ago, but big, fat raindrops that told of an approaching storm. I was the only one that knew what kind of storm it would be, though.

As Lavolier squeezed my nose, Horvac straddled my legs and forced a twisted rag into my mouth. Pulling it down, my jaw opened and she poured the sweet, sticky liquid into my mouth. I coughed, spewing most of it on her blouse and both of their faces. The sight of her breasts showing through the wet blouse caused Lavolier to pull back harder as she poured more. I couldn’t do anything but swallow or drown on the stuff, so I swallowed it in big gulps. My lungs strained to take a breath, but she kept pouring until the flask was empty.

Tossing aside the empty flask, she looked at Lavolier’s face just above mine. Their eyes met and she leaned toward him, licking the stray drops from his cheek. Releasing my hair, the two embraced passionately, Horvac grinding her hips into my lap, as I gasped and fought for breath.

Ignoring me, she stepped back, focused on the tall black man behind me. “Turn his chair around,” she ordered. “He’ll want to watch this.”

My chair scraped roughly on the bare wood floor as he turned me to face the small bed.
These are some sick minds
, I thought, wrestling against the bindings.

With her back to me, Horvac stripped out of her wet blouse. I noticed the full tattoo on her bare back, angel’s wings. A part of my mind realized it was new, since I’d seen her in a bikini top. Another part of my mind was fixed on the seductive imagery as her back muscles extended and flexed while she removed her boots. The angel’s wings seemed real.

A distant flicker from outside the window was like a flashbulb going off on the set of a cheap porn movie. But it wasn’t a camera, as the flash was followed a moment later with the rolling sound of thunder.

The concoction she’d given me spread quickly throughout my body. Rain started pouring down, beating hard on the tin roof. More flashes streaked across the wall, dancing around the room, and though I couldn’t see it, I knew lightning was flashing diagonally across the sky. The accompanying thunder claps now followed in shorter and shorter intervals, no longer rolling, but cracking like a gunshot. The storm was getting closer.

I didn’t want to, but I watched.