Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) (17 page)

“That doesn’t make sense,” Doc said. “They would have had to bug the boat before we even knew about the treasure. That means the bug was for something else altogether. Have you pissed anyone off recently, Jesse?”

I laughed and replied, “You better get a notepad.” Then it occurred to me. The only time strangers had been aboard my boat was months before, when the President came down for a little fishing.

“Any chance the Secret Service planted it?” I asked. “That’s the last time any strangers were aboard.”

I knew that Deuce had a great deal of respect for the other agencies he had to work with sometimes. I could see him mulling it over in the green glow of the optics. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The Director was in the cabin the whole time.”

I’d never met either the President or Secretary Chertoff before that day and only knew them by reputation. Both struck me as honorable and besides, it’d be beneath their respective offices to bug a civilian. I did know Colonel Stockwell and had a great deal of respect for him. I thought about that whole day, who all was on the boat and who might have had unaccompanied access to the salon. Deuce was right, except for one short moment.

“Before they went into the cabin,” I said. “The other two agents under Bender went in to clear the cabin ahead of the President.”

“You’re right,” Doc said. “But why would the Secret Service want to bug the boat?”

“I don’t think it was them,” Bourke said. “They have access to a lot more sophisticated equipment and would have planted more than one.”

“Is the bug still active?” I asked.

“No,” Bourke replied. “I deactivated it. Once it was shut down, I checked the battery level. It was down to just five percent. Whoever planted it will assume the battery died.”

“You know I don’t believe in coincidences, Deuce,” I said.

“Nor do I,” he replied, still looking aft through the monocular. “Can you see that go-fast boat on your radar?”

I’d been busy watching the water ahead of us. The radar was on, but with the backlight turned off. I leaned forward and looked at it through the night vision goggles. There was a boat just coming out of the channel and another boat two miles ahead of us.

“Got him,” I said. “You think that’s them?”

Deuce worked the zoom function on the monocular, steading himself with the rail. The radar showed the boat was about a mile back and gaining speed.

“Can’t really tell for sure,” he said. “I count at least two people aboard.”

“Why don’t we find out?” I said, looking closer at the radar screen. “Keep an eye on him. There’s another boat two miles ahead of us, going about half our speed.”

I could clearly see the phytoplankton in the boat’s wake and slowly steered over into it. “I’m going to overtake the boat ahead. We’re in his wake now. We’ll be on top of it before the go-fast is within half a mile. At that point, we’ll go completely dark and turn hard to the east, then come around behind him. If it works and it is them following us, they’ll think the boat ahead is us.”

“Good thinking,” Deuce said.

“Rusty, range me on both boats,” I said while grabbing the mic and switching to boat-wide intercom. “Y’all hang on down there. In a few minutes, I’m going to kill all the lights and make a hard right turn.”

Julie’s voice came back over the intercom, “We’re ready.”

“Fifteen hundred meters ahead, closing fast,” Rusty said. “Twenty-five hundred meters behind, closing faster.”

“He’s right in our wake,” Deuce said. “Where you joined the wake of the slower boat, his is fainter. The go-fast might not even see it.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” I said. I could clearly see the boat ahead with the aid of the IR spot. It was an older sports fisherman, looked like about a thirty-five footer. Close enough in size and shape to the
Revenge
that it might fool them.

“Five hundred meters ahead,” Rusty said, staring intently at the radar screen. “A thousand meters behind.”

It was going to be close. I stood up, straining to see better and put my finger on the master light switch.

“Deuce, you see a radar dome?” I asked.

“No dome,” he replied. “Not even an arch. It’s them, though.”

“Two hundred meters,” Rusty shouted. “She’s barely making fifteen knots. One hundred meters ahead and five hundred astern. Fifty meters!”

“Going dark!” I shouted and flipped the master switch while spinning the wheel to starboard.

At forty-five knots, the
Revenge
responded immediately. We angled quickly away from the other fishing boat. I could see the two men on its bridge very clearly, backlit by their forward spotlights. Neither man saw or heard us as we turned away to the east, accelerating in a straight line once I spun the wheel back.

“He’s slowing,” Deuce said.

I continued an easterly course for half a minute, then grabbed the mic again and shouted, “Another hard right!”

“He’s gone dark and dropped to the same speed as the other boat,” Deuce said. “It worked. Looks like a thirty-eight foot Top Gun.”

I dropped the throttles back to cruising speed and began a sweeping turn that would bring us up behind the Cigarette. After a couple of minutes, we were about a half mile behind them and I brought the throttles back to match the speed of the other two boats.

I keyed the mic again and said, “Come on up to the bridge.”

There was no moon and high, wispy clouds blocked most of the stars. I reached up and switched on the dim red light mounted to the overhead. There was little chance we would be seen at this distance and our followers were likely all looking straight ahead at the lights of the other boat. A moment later, Julie and Charity had joined us.

“What do you want to do, Deuce?” I said.

“As I see it, we have two options,” he began. “We could easily hightail it east or west, put some distance between us and then continue on to Elbow Cay, staying blacked out until we’re well ahead of them. If they realize that other boat isn’t the
Revenge
, they’ll come on fast and might find us. The other option is to ask them why the hell they’re following us.”

“Yeah,” Bourke growled. “I’d kinda like to know that, too.”

I looked up at Deuce and he nodded. “Take the helm, Rusty,” I said as I got up and went down the ladder. I switched the night vision back on and went quickly through the salon and down into the forward stateroom, where I knelt and punched in the code on the keypad. Pulling the lever next to it, the bunk slowly raised up on hydraulic pistons. I grabbed two reel cases, both marked “Penn Senator,” and set them on the deck. I also grabbed a small tackle box marked “Dry Flies” and lowered the bunk back down. Back out in the cockpit, I handed the three boxes up to Deuce then climbed up to the bridge.

Deuce opened the box of flies first and took out six earwigs, very compact communication devices that are inserted in the ear and pick up sound from the jaw bone. I passed them out to Julie, Bourke, Tony, Rusty, and Deuce, keeping one for himself. I’d had the opportunity to watch Deuce in action a few times and we’d practiced what we were about to do a number of times with the 42x.

“Bourke, you’ll board with Tony and Julie,” Deuce said. “I’ll back you up from the foredeck. Arm yourselves.”

Each of the two larger reel cases held two Sig Sauer 9mm semiautos, with a holster and two magazines for each. All were fully loaded with twenty rounds of hollow points. “The pulpit will be three feet above the engine cover on the Cigarette. We’ve trained to do this exact thing several times from this very boat onto the exact same kind of boat—piece of cake.”

He looked ahead through the monocular and said, “They’re all facing forward and haven’t moved. Odds are they won’t even hear us over their own engines. Move fast and shut down their engines quickly.”

Deuce looked at me and said, “At the instant Bourke steps off, hit the spots and go to neutral. Watch me for signals.”

“Roger that,” I said as I nudged the throttle up a hair. The four of them climbed down from the bridge as we slowly crept up on the other boat from behind.

We had trained for this quite a few times before Deuce and Julie’s wedding. Bourke and Julie had both been well trained in boarding tactics, along with Ralph Goodman, another member of Deuce’s team, through the Coast Guard’s Maritime Enforcement School. We’d used the
Revenge
and a Cigarette 42x that we’d confiscated almost a year ago and found using the pulpit to be far better than trying to come alongside. In a beam boarding, the Cigarette could simply turn away and leave us in its wake. The boat ahead of us was also a Cigarette and nearly identical to the one we’d trained on. This technique relied completely on surprise, as there was no way the
Revenge
could chase down the go-fast boat.

Rusty and I put the earwigs in and switched them on, and then we checked com between all six of us. “Going dark,” I whispered as I switched on the goggles, and Rusty reached up and turned off the red overhead light. Even if they looked aft it was doubtful they’d see us in the almost complete darkness, especially after they’d been straining to see the lights of the boat they were following.

The problem was, the boarding team couldn’t see much better and we only had the two sets of Pulsars, a fact that I promised myself then and there to rectify. Bourke was in the front of the pulpit and had already removed the forward bar. They knew to watch out for the windlass and chain and the three of them all stood in the pulpit, each with a hand on the others’ shoulders. All of them were looking down at the water about ten feet in front of the boat, keeping their eyes off the sports fisherman’s lights ahead of the Cigarette to preserve their night vision. They were relying on me to bring the target boat into their line of sight and then Deuce would direct me with hand signals, as we’d practiced dozens of times.

Rusty kept watching the radar and quietly counted off the distance until the stern of the Cigarette disappeared from my view under our bow. We knew from experience that we were only fifteen feet behind the other boat now and both Rusty and I kept our eyes on Deuce. The last ten feet were the hardest, as we would also be fighting the backwash from the other boat’s propellers and riding up on the bulge of water abaft their transom. I had one hand on the throttles and Rusty had his finger on the spotlight switch.

Deuce had his right hand up, opening and closing his fist and bringing us closer to the slow-moving Cigarette. The two women were behind the men, one standing between the two front seats, the other leaning over the man’s shoulder at the helm, talking to him. Behind them was about three feet of open deck and four seats facing forward. The boat had the typically long engine cover, as Cigarettes are narrow boats, with the two engines mounted in a staggered fashion instead of side by side in the narrow engine compartment.

“Go!” Deuce whispered as he dropped his fist out to the right.

Rusty hit the spotlight switch and I dropped the throttles to neutral at the same time that the boarding party surged forward as one, jumping down three feet to the engine cover below and scrambling across it.

Bourke and Tony each grabbed one of the women by the hair, pulling them backward into the seats just as the powerful spotlights lit up the cockpit.

One of the women, the redhead, tried to scramble to her feet, but Julie gave her a shove, forcing both of them to the far left side of the boat while she vaulted to the right side and drew her Sig. Her cap was pulled low to block the light and as she brought her Sig up, she yelled, “Don’t move!”

Tony was less subtle. As the guy in the left seat started to turn, Tony caught him in the temple with a right cross, dropping him in a heap on the deck in front of his seat.

Bourke put his Sig in the driver’s face and reached in front of him and shut down both engines before the man could even react to his sudden appearance. He then reached across the man and grabbed his shirt at the shoulder. Yanking him out of his seat and spinning him around, he shoved him to the deck, face down.

Bourke’s booming voice came over my earwig, “Target is secure.”

I turned on the master light switch and checked the radar. Seeing nothing coming our way, I idled over next to the Cigarette. Doc and Rusty tied us off to the go-fast boat as Tony and Bourke put flex cuffs on our followers and sat them all in the rear seats. I turned a spotlight around and shined it down in the cockpit. I saw that the guy Tony clocked was Jose Reynolds, the son of one of the most successful madams in Florida. He was just coming around and looked very confused, having no idea what had hit him.

Deuce stepped up onto the gunwale, then dropped lightly to the deck of the other boat. At six feet tall and a shade over two hundred pounds, he moved like a man much smaller. Julie stuck her Sig into the holster clipped to the waistband of her shorts and went forward to check the boats instrumentation. Tony and Bourke stood behind the front seats, having holstered their weapons to bind the four.

Deuce stood between his two men with his hands on his hips, looking the captives over. They didn’t look very happy. “You said you saw them before, Captain?” he called up to me.

Following his lead and not using names, I replied, “That’s right. On Big Pine a couple days ago.”

“Why are you following us?” he growled at Lopez.