Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) (27 page)

“My lifestyle isn’t really a choice,” I said, not comprehending why I wanted this perfect stranger to understand without knowing. “It just sort of happened. When I left the Corps six years ago, all I wanted to do was enjoy the down island life, do some diving, catch a few fish, and maybe bed down a pretty tourist woman every now and then.”

She laughed heartily, with a sparkle to her dark eyes I hadn’t noticed before. “What happened to change that?” she asked.

I took a long pull from my beer and watched the sun as it disappeared behind the island. In just a few weeks it would be a year since the only woman I’d ever really loved came back into my life, unannounced. She arrived about the same time as Hurricane Wilma. Things moved really fast over those few days and we decided to get married. She’d been murdered the night we were supposed to be honeymooning. There’d been a couple of other women in my life since then, but my mind was never in the right place for a relationship. Maybe it never would be.

“A lot of things,” I lied.

In the dim light I could see in her eyes that she didn’t quite believe me, her eyes seeming to say,
go on
. Just then, my phone chirped. A text message from Deuce:
Supper’s on
.

“We better get up there if we’re going to get anything to eat,” I said. “Those Squids have huge appetites.”

She laughed and said, “I once dated a Sailor for a while. I know just what you mean.”

After supper, Sergeant Cleary arrived. We filled him in on the events that happened at Hole in the Wall, leaving out the part about the Browning machine gun. He was understandably upset that we hadn’t told him earlier. Charity provided him with pretty good sketches of Quintero and the two men with him and Deuce provided him with the printout of the email Chyrel had sent, outlining the connection between the three men and the Maggio law firm. Cleary came to the same conclusion we had. The three remaining British mercs, and we were pretty sure that’s what they were, would be holed up with Quintero and his men at Abaco Inn waiting for us to find the treasure, or the heat to blow off, before leaving the island.

“I have a dozen police officers arriving in the morning,” Cleary said. “As you might expect, we’re spread quite thin and I won’t be able to move until morning.”

“Can you empty the inn and surrounding buildings tonight, without tipping Quintero off?” I asked. “Then maybe turn your back for five minutes?”

“Your superiors have also offered assistance,” he replied. “As much as I’d like to accept, it’s just not possible. We’ll arrest them in the morning.”

After Cleary and the two women from the villa left, we assigned watch, having two people outside the house and one person on the bridge of the
Revenge
at all times, pulling three-hour watches. Linda volunteered to help out and Deuce gave her the last watch with Charity. Nikki protested not being included, but Deuce pointed out that we had an odd number of people and Rosales was a law enforcement officer.

“At least it’ll only be for one night,” I said. “With Maggio’s people out of the way in the morning, we won’t have to look over our shoulder while we’re looking under rocks.”

“Do you really think you’ll find treasure?” Linda asked.

“We’re pretty confident,” Doc replied. “We have three other places that look good.”

“We’d better all get some rest,” Deuce said.

I headed down to the boat with Rusty and Bourke and took first watch, sitting on the bridge with a thermos of coffee and night vision goggles. Through our earwigs I could talk to Tony and Doc in low whispers, although I couldn’t see either of them. They had the first watch up at the house and posted themselves at opposite corners, where they could see all four sides.

We kept all the lights off inside the house, especially the outside lights. It was highly doubtful that Quintero and the mercs would come here. They obviously wanted to wait until we found the treasure. Having the advantage of three sets of night vision goggles, the darkness was our friend.

We talked about the hunt for the treasure and who the mercs might be. Finally, Tony asked, “What do you make of Agent Rosales, Jesse?”

“Seems pretty competent,” I replied.

“I don’t think he meant her professional ability,” Doc said.

“She’s all right, I guess,” I replied. “Seems nice enough.”

“I overheard her asking Charity about you,” Tony said. “When we were moving our gear from room to room.”

I didn’t say anything. True, she was a good-looking woman and technically I was single. Jackie’s job in Washington pretty much nixed any chance of a relationship there. She couldn’t pass up the opportunity and there was no way I was going to live in a city, especially not one that got snowed in several times a year.

“What about those two in the villa, Tony?” I asked, changing the subject. Sort of.

“Very nice,” he replied. “Gonna be hard to choose. Maybe I’ll just take ’em both.”

“Yeah,” Doc said. “In your dreams.”

We lapsed into silence for a while and soon I felt someone moving around down below. Glancing at my watch, I was surprised at how fast the night had passed by. It was almost midnight.

A moment later, Rusty came up the ladder with my second thermos and said, “Go get some rest, bro.” I handed him the goggles and said goodnight, then climbed down and went to the galley. He’d already set the timer on the coffeemaker for 0230, so I cleaned my thermos and left it for Bourke. I went down to my stateroom and, stripping down to my shorts, climbed into bed.

Nick was in his office very early. Well before daylight, in fact. His wife was becoming suspicious about his late hours and early mornings. She didn’t think he should be away from home so much with her being eight months pregnant. But until this situation was resolved, he needed to stay right on top of it. His father was depending on him.

The mercenary he’d hired two days ago had been instructed to check in at least every twenty-four hours and also as soon as the treasure was found and recovered. The previous morning, he’d called before six o’clock to say, in his words, that “all six targets had been neutralized.”

Nick was still at home when the call came, so he decided it would be best if he were in the office the next day. He’d immediately gone to his computer and wired the second of the three payments they’d agreed on to the man’s numbered account in the Caymans. Michaels called back just as quickly, accepting the second part of the job even though he had lost one man already.

“This part won’t be dangerous,” Nick had told him.

When McDermitt finds the treasure, Nick figured they’d leave the island almost immediately. He’d instructed Michaels to contact him again in twenty-four hours if McDermitt didn’t find it before then. Nick had people in South Florida that could easily intercept the slow moving fishing boat, kill everyone aboard and take the treasure.

At five-thirty Nick’s cell phone rang as he sat at his desk. He answered it immediately. “They didn’t find anything yesterday,” Michaels said, as soon as Nick answered the phone. “My man was close enough to hear that much last night. They’ll be looking in a different place today.”

“Stay on it,” Nick said. “All we need to know is when they depart. I have people in place that will intercept them before they reach Florida.”

“Roger that,” Michaels said and ended the call. He was next up on the rotation and needed to get going. They were working in six-hour shifts, using the property next to the one the targets were staying in. The house was unoccupied, so they had no trouble breaking into the small boathouse on the property’s dock after disabling the alarm system. From that vantage point, they had an unobstructed view of the other dock, the boat and much of the house.

“I’m going to relieve Fletcher,” Michaels told Quintero, who was up and making coffee. “Make sure someone rousts Hailey by eleven.”

“How long do we need to be cooped up here?” Quintero asked.

“As long as it takes, mate. Just make sure you don’t order more bloody food than what three hungry men would normally eat for a meal. I imagine the proprietor would take a dim view of six of us staying here when there’s only supposed to be three. Fletcher will bring back some extra supplies.”

Twenty minutes later, he arrived by bicycle to the back of the boathouse. The path and the back side of the boathouse were completely hidden from both the blue house they were watching and the boat tied at the end of the dock. Having the rear windows open, Fletcher heard Michaels signal with a low whistle and opened the door for him.

“There’s a few more of them than the four we were told about, Colour Sergeant,” Fletcher said. “I counted the original four and two more. On top of that, the two birds from the villa seem to be getting on well with the black bloke.”

“Eight?” Michaels asked. “Who are the two more?”

“Coupla ladies,” Fletcher answered. “One seems to be with the big bloke with the short hair. The other one is a tall bird, with short fair hair.”

“Just the four men and now they’ve picked up some lady friends? No problem, we’re just here to watch and let the man know when they leave.”

“Right, Colour Sergeant,” Fletcher said. “I’d best be on my way. Everything all right at the inn?”

“That Quintero bloke is getting on my nerves,” Michaels said. “Always going on about needing more food and wanting to go outside.”

“Right,” Fletcher responded. “I’ll stop at the grocer and pick up a few things.”

“Don’t forget to drop that Cockney accent when ya do, mate.”

Fletcher left him then, took the bike and headed to the small grocery store on the way to the inn. Michaels settled in and looked out the window. It was dark inside the boathouse and the windows were covered in a reflective screen to keep out the heat.
Still gets bloody hot in here
, he thought.

Looking over at the boat through a pair of binoculars, he could see the man sitting on the bridge in the dim, gray light of dawn. It was a man he hadn’t seen before. He was about the same age as the tall man who owned the boat. His hair was darker, slightly graying at the temples, and he wore a bushy mustache. Though he appeared shorter, he was slightly broader in the chest and shoulders and about the same weight as the tall man.
So, there’s five men
, Michaels thought.

A moment later, the tall man came out of the cabin and climbed up to the bridge and the two stood side by side in the dim early morning light.
What the hell
, Michaels thought.
For ten grand a day, we’ll watch a whole bloody rugby team.

I woke early. It was still dark inside my stateroom, but through the port hatch I could see it was just starting to get light outside. I pulled on a tee shirt, went to the galley, and filled a thermos before heading up to the bridge.

Bourke stood up as I climbed the ladder. “Don’t look around, Jesse,” he whispered, so low that I barely heard him. “We’re being watched.”

I stood next to him and took a sip of my coffee. “Where?”

He looked down into the cockpit and I followed his gaze, knowing that wherever the watcher was, we now had our backs to him. Bourke removed the night vision goggles and handed them to me. I made a great show of putting them on and looking up, down and all around the stern.

“One person in the boathouse at the boat’s ten o’clock,” Bourke whispered. “Left window.”

I pretended to look all around, as if getting used to the night vision, as I slowly turned and my gaze drifted past the boathouse. Deep in the shadows, I could see what looked like a person. But it could be anything.

Over the earwig, I heard Deuce say, “We have no visual here, Jesse.”

Turning back aft, I whispered, “What time did Cleary say he was going to take those guys down?”

“He’s moving against them in about ten minutes,” Deuce replied. “I talked to him just a few minutes ago and told him about our boathouse guest. He suggests we do nothing until he can get here. He’s going to call me back as soon as he takes the men at the inn into custody.”

“I suggest we do nothing until he calls,” I whispered. “And decide then. All six of them might be in there and none at the inn.”

Turning to Bourke, I said loud enough to be heard over the water, “Go on up and get some breakfast, I’m just gonna sit here and enjoy my coffee for a while. Rusty’s probably hungry, too.”

Bourke nodded his understanding and went down to the deck and into the cabin. A moment later, I heard Rusty over the earwig. “You sure, Jesse?”

I swiveled the chair lazily and when my back was turned to the boathouse, I whispered, “Yes, go ashore.”

A few seconds later, Rusty and Bourke headed up the dock, coffee mugs in hand. It was getting lighter and the goggles would be ineffective very soon. I slowly spun the chair back forward and slouched down in it, resting my chin on my chest.

Night vision goggles have a major flaw: tunnel vision. Your head has be pointed at what you’re looking at and you have no peripheral vision at all. So it was impossible to turn my head slightly away from the boathouse and keep my eyes toward it. The next best thing was to slowly swivel the chair back and forth as if I were bored, so that my gaze fell across the boathouse and away from it.

I stopped the back and forth now and then to sip my coffee and look closer at the boathouse. The second time I did this was when I saw movement. As much as I wanted to hold my gaze on the window, I looked away.

Without moving my lips, I whispered, “Saw movement.”

“They’re real crafty,” Bourke said. “I saw the first guy about zero five hundred and he rarely moved. Just before you came up, another person entered the boathouse and the first guy left.”

“Watch schedule,” I whispered, fully aware of how well sound travels over water.

“That’s what we figure,” Deuce said. “One guy on at a time.”

As it grew lighter, the optics automatically reduced the amount of light and within minutes, nothing was visible through the boathouse window.

“Who’s on watch at the northwest corner of the house?” I whispered, removing the night vision headset.

“I am,” came Charity’s voice over the earwig.

“Deuce, have someone take Charity’s position above her on the deck and call out to me,” I whispered. “Charity, move quietly down to the foot of the dock, but stay hidden.”

“Roger that,” she said.

A second later, Tony stepped out of the sliding glass door and moved over to the northwest corner of the deck and called out, “Hey Jesse!”

About the same time, Charity said, “In position.”

I stood up on the bridge and leaned over the port rail and shouted, “Is breakfast ready?”

“Yeah, you coming up?” Tony shouted back.

“I thought we were going to wait for Cleary’s call,” Deuce said.

“We are,” I whispered, as I climbed down the ladder. “I just wanted someone watching the boat and boathouse.” Then shouting at Tony, “Be there in just a minute.”

In the cockpit, I stepped inside and set the alarm, then locked the door. Turning back, I held up my hand at Pescador, staying him. “Stay here a minute, buddy. I’ll bring you some bacon and eggs.”

He looked up at me and whined. “Okay, I’ll bring you fish, then.” He barked once, his thick tail thumping the deck.

When I went into the house, Deuce was on the phone. “I understand,” he said and ended the call. He turned toward me and said, “That was Cleary. There were only five of them at the inn. One’s dead and two wounded. One of his cops took a round, but luckily it was in the vest and he’ll be okay.”

“That leaves one bad guy,” I said. “And he’s sitting right out there, watching my boat.”

“Here’s the bad news,” Deuce said. “Cleary can’t come for at least a couple of hours. He didn’t actually have a dozen guys like he said he would. It was just him and four others. He says so long as the guy in the boathouse doesn’t do anything, he’ll come and check it out before noon.”

“Noon?” I nearly shouted. “Hell, I can crawl right up next to this guy before noon and he’d never see me coming.”

“This guy might,” Deuce said. “Cleary listened to a conversation before busting in the door at the inn. The Colour Sergeant’s name is Michaels, and he’s the only one they didn’t get.”

“You think there’s anyone else here more qualified to sneak across thirty feet of open, white sand beach and sea grass?”

Deuce knew my background very well. As a Scout/Sniper in the Corps, I’d taught cover and concealment to the best shooters the Corps had. Patience is the best quality of a good sniper; taking hours to move just a few feet is a hard task to learn.

Deuce looked at Tony. “No way,” Tony said, holding up both hands. “A black man sneaking across white sand?”

“Hey, guys,” Charity said over my earwig. “I might have a solution.”

“Go ahead, Charity,” Deuce said. “We’re listening.”

“There’s a blind spot on this side of the dock and a lot of sea grass. A sea grass float could hide a snorkeler.”

“Stand by,” I said. “Let me look from the deck.”

I walked out into the morning sunshine with a cup of coffee and moved across to the far side of the deck where the view of the dock was best. I leaned on the railing, pretending to look out over the Sea of Abaco. While my head was stationary, my eyes were measuring the distance from where I knew Charity was hunkered down over to the other dock.

Turning to go back inside, I whispered, “Great idea, Charity.” Once back inside, I said to Deuce, “Looks to be about forty yards, with small clumps of sea grass most of the way. The only other approach is like I said, thirty feet of open beach. Too risky.”

“What will you need?” Deuce asked.

“One ten-yard stretch is devoid of grass,” I said. “I’ll need a diversion to get past that. On that white sand, a pair of white trousers and white socks might help to conceal my legs.”

I looked around at everyone at the table, all of them shaking their heads. “You mean nobody has a pair of white pants?”

“White shorts,” Deuce said. “Your tan legs will stick out like a sore thumb, though.”

“I might be able to help,” Agent Rosales said over my earwig.

“Come on up,” Deuce replied. “Tony, go relieve Charity and keep an eye on the boathouse. While you’re down there, see what you can find for concealment.”

A moment later, Rosales came up the side steps to the front door, the only part of the house hidden from view of the boathouse. She went straight to her and Charity’s room, returning a minute later with a small bag. She set it on the counter and started rummaging through it, finally pulling out a pair of white stockings.

“Stockings?” I asked and everyone laughed.

“They are white,” Rosales said. “And you wouldn’t need socks.”

“They’d fall off,” I said. “Unless you have a garter belt in there that’ll fit me,” I added sarcastically.

“No, they won’t,” she said. “These are thigh highs. They have three rubber grooves around the top that stick to your skin.”

“You gotta be kiddin’,” I said, looking around at the others. “Nobody has a pair of white pants?”

“It’s after Labor Day,” Rusty said with a chuckle. “Nobody wears white after Labor Day. Well, except maybe them high-class call girls.” Everyone got another good laugh at my expense as Rosales tossed them to me and they draped over my shoulder and head.

Thirty minutes later, wearing a white tee shirt and white shorts and feeling really creepy wearing women’s stockings, I made my way around the far side of the house and down to where Tony had taken Charity’s place. Being a SEAL sniper, he’d anticipated my needs and had already begun constructing the blind. We took a heavy life ring that he’d punched holes in with his pocketknife and festooned it with sea grass, sea grapes, and slime from under the dock, and soon had a pretty decent ghillie raft.

Donning my mask and snorkel, I went under the edge of the raft and lay prone in the shallow water. There was enough cover that I really didn’t need the snorkel, but I used it anyway. If I needed to say something over the earwig, I only had to raise my head a few inches and drop the snorkel.

“Looks pretty good,” Tony said. Then he chuckled and added, “But then, I’ve always been partial to white stockings.”

“Just keep a close eye on the boathouse,” I snarled.

“We’re ready here, in case he sees you,” Deuce said.

I shoved off, crawling slowly across the bottom with the benefit of a few pounds of lead weight I wore on a belt around my waist. Allowing my legs to just drag in the sand, I used my fingers for propulsion, moving a few inches and stopping for a minute or two. As a sniper, not being seen comes second to not being remembered. Even a trained mind won’t register a clump of grass that’s a few inches from where it was before. Given a long enough time frame, a properly concealed sniper can move across an entire field while a whole platoon watches from the edges and never be noticed. Forty yards doesn’t seem like a very far distance, but at less than a foot per minute, it was going to take nearly two hours to get to the boathouse.

Forty-five minutes later, I was at the edge of the sea grass, the predetermined spot where Deuce would start the diversion.

“Okay, Rusty,” I heard Deuce say over the earwig. “You guys are on.”

Doc, Rusty, and Bourke began talking loudly as they walked out onto the deck, then down the path to the dock. When they reached the
Revenge
, I started moving again.

Although I couldn’t hear them, I knew that the women were all heading out to the deck for a little sunbathing at the same time. With three men arguing loudly at the end of the dock and three women wearing next to nothing on the deck, Michaels was sure not to be paying attention to the water.

Rusty’s argument started getting more and more heated. None of them were using earwigs, so it’d be impossible for me to hear Deuce or Tony if they needed to warn me. But I could still hear them with my ears just under the surface. Tony, who had a direct line of sight to the boathouse, said, “It’s working. He’s moved closer to the window and is looking back and forth from the deck to the boat.”

I increased my speed and soon made it to the next clump of sea grass, where I froze in position for three full minutes. I was only thirty feet from the dock by the boathouse. There was a boat in the first slip, lifted up out of the water and with the sea grass at the water’s edge angled toward it. I slowly followed the bed of sea grass.

Thirty minutes later, I was under the boathouse in five feet of water and ducked silently out from under the raft. I also reached down and shed the damned stockings, the rubber things snagging on about a million hairs as I pulled them off.
Me and my big mouth
, I thought.

Surfacing, I made an exaggerated
O
with my mouth and tapped twice on my forehead with my middle finger. The sound was lost to the lapping of the small waves on the pilings, but inside my skull it echoed, sending the prearranged signal through my earwig that I’d made it across.

“We have company,” Deuce said over my earwig. “You’re not going to believe who just rode up on a bicycle. It’s Owen Bradbury.”

I sat under the boathouse and listened to the one-sided conversation for ten minutes. Apparently, Bradbury had had second thoughts about being involved in murder, grand theft, and probably a dozen other crimes and had come to warn us.

The three men went back into the house and Deuce told Rusty to keep an eye on our new guest. I slowly crawled through the accumulated detritus you’d expect to find under a boathouse and made my way over to the far shore. Coming out of the water was going to be the hardest part. I was only feet away from the door and any water dripping off my body might alert him. I lifted my head slowly out of the water. Removing the mask and laying it aside, I plastered down my hair to get the water out.