Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) (28 page)

Ten minutes later, I was standing up in knee-deep water, my Colt drawn and pointing at the door. Thankfully, it was a windowless door and the only window on this side was at the far corner. I slowly shuffled sideways toward shore and was soon standing at the corner of the boathouse with my back to the wall. By now, Rosales, Bourke, and Doc should be in place, hidden in the shadows at the edge of the foliage thirty feet away. Julie, Nikki, and Charity were still on the deck and would create a second diversion when Bourke said we were all in place. I glanced toward the bushes but couldn’t see them. Which meant that Michaels couldn’t see them either. I gave a thumbs up in the general direction I thought they’d be and waited.

“We’re in place,” I heard Bourke whisper over the earwig. I waited ten more seconds for the diversion to start. When I heard the women up on the deck begin screaming, laughing, and splashing water, I took the steps quietly up to the landing at the door. On the landing, a board creaked and I instantly took a lunging step forward, bringing my right foot up and planting it just above the doorknob.

The jam splintered and the door gave, flinging in and banging against a chair. I followed it, my gun aimed straight ahead. He wasn’t where I expected him to be, just an empty chair facing the window. I realized too late that he’d heard the creaking board and I started to turn to my left. Something came crashing down on my forearms and as my Colt fell from my grip, I realized it was a wooden barstool.

I followed the force of the blow and summersaulted forward into the room, coming up and turning, just as Michaels connected with a hard right to the side of my head. The room started spinning and lights flashed in front of my eyes. I’d been clocked a time or two, but this guy caught me in just the right place. I saw stars.

In an instant he was behind me, jumping up and snaking a forearm around my neck, forcing my head down into the crook of his elbow, while pushing me forward and down to my knees. I couldn’t breathe and knew that if he held this hold for just a few more seconds, I’d never breathe again. I struggled against the hold, thrashing left and right, but he was very powerful.

I saw Rosales framed in the doorway and a shot rang out. Michaels’s arm went limp and he fell back away from me as I fell forward in a heap, face down, struggling to get air into my lungs. Instantly, Doc was at my side, gently rolling me onto my back and placing two fingers against the side of my throat.

“He’s got a pulse,” I heard Doc say as he started to pull me up into a sitting position.

Then someone shouted, “Gun!” Doc moved instantly, rolling in front of me and forcing me down. I heard a sickening thud and Doc’s dead weight fell on top of me as I was deafened by the sound of three more guns all going off at once.

Sabina bolted upright in the bed she now shared with Elana, who rolled onto her side. “That was a gunshot!” Sabina exclaimed.

Suddenly, three more shots rang out and both women instinctively rolled off the bed on opposite sides.

“It came from down by the water,” Elana said. She got quickly to her feet and pulled on the tee shirt and shorts that lay in the chair by the bed.

“What time is it?” Sabina asked, also dressing quickly.

Elana picked up her watch from the night stand and replied, “It’s after ten o’clock!”

“It was stupid of us to stay up so late,” Sabina said as she hurried into the front room. Opening the door, she heard frantic shouts from down by the docks.

“I told you we should have left,” Elana said as she joined Sabina at the door. “What’s going on down there?”

“I don’t know,” Sabina replied. “The voices seem to be coming up the path now.”

They listened for a moment and the shouting died down, as the people who were shouting got to the house on the hill and went inside. The silence was deafening.

They waited a full five minutes before deciding to head down the path to the road. “We can go to the ferry dock on foot,” Sabina said. “It’s only two miles.”

They grabbed their backpacks, which held what they needed for a fast getaway, and left the villa. Once they reached the main road they turned north, walking at a quick pace, casting furtive glances over their shoulders.

“What do you think of that?” Elana asked, pointing to a tiny house on the left that was part of the Abaco Inn resort. The door of the house had yellow tape across it and the whole house was surrounded with more of the yellow tape.

Suddenly, a golf cart came careening around a curve thirty yards ahead and the two women quickly reversed direction. The golf cart was followed immediately by two more. As the first one approached, it came to a sudden stop.

“Aren’t you the two girls staying at Crystal Villas?” the driver asked. Elana recognized him as the policeman that was at the house two nights earlier and ordered them released.

Knowing it was useless to lie, Elana smiled and said, “Yes, we are. Is something wrong?”

“Get on the back,” he ordered. “There’s been another shooting up there.”

They started to protest and the policeman again ordered them to get on the back of the cart. They were barely seated when the driver took off.

Minutes later, they turned off the main road onto the path Sabina and Elana had just come down minutes earlier. Going past the villas and continuing up to the main house, the other two golf carts close behind, they came to a sudden stop at the steps to the house.

The policeman in charge got out and said to the driver and a second policeman, “Stay with these women.” Then he went up the steps to the deck, followed by the other two men from the other golf carts.

Doc sat on a stool with his shirt ripped open while both Deuce and Tony worked on him. The bullet hit him high, just above the right shoulder blade, and exited just above his collarbone. Charity poured anticoagulant into both wounds as Deuce and Tony held him upright.

Doc winced in pain, gritting his teeth. “Hey,” he grimaced. “Not so rough with the patient.”

Julie ripped open two large gauze pads and, handing one to Charity, she slapped the other onto the exit wound.

“Good thing he didn’t use hollow points,” Deuce said. “That exit wound would’ve been a lot worse.”

Nikki was watching as they worked on her husband. Finally, Doc lifted his head to her and gave her a small grin as Deuce wound sterile tape under both his arms and across his right shoulder. “Just a flesh wound, babe. Nothing to worry about.”

Nikki instantly began crying and screaming at the same time. “Damn you, Bob! Why do you have to keep playing all this macho bullshit! I’m pregnant!”

Doc’s mouth fell open. I looked at Nikki, standing there in a black bikini top, a towel around her narrow waist, with her feet firmly planted and her hands on her hips. Her face was full of concern, but her eyes flashed with fury.

“P-pregnant?” was all Doc could say.

Nikki stepped toward him, as Deuce finished wrapping sterile tape holding the two bandages in place. She took his face in both hands and stared into his eyes.

“Yes,” she said gently. “You’re going to be a father, Bob. Not a gun-wielding warrior father. Not a here today, gone tomorrow father. But a nine-to-five, home for dinner every night, push the stroller around the block kind of daddy.”

Doc pushed himself up off the stool and put his hands on his wife’s waist. “I’m gonna be a dad? For real?”

With tears running down her cheeks, she nodded and said, “Yeah, for real.”

Ignoring the pain, the blood, and everyone in the room, Doc took his wife into his arms and held her close to his chest for a moment, then lifted her chin and kissed her passionately.

“I don’t mean to break this up,” Deuce said, “but the cops will be here any minute.”

Doc suddenly realized he and Nikki weren’t alone and looked around the room at all of us. Finally, his gaze stopped on me. Before my eyes, his whole demeanor changed. “I’m gonna be a dad,” he said with a crooked grin. I knew then that we’d lost him.

“Yeah,” I replied, grinning, “we heard. Congratulations, Bob.”

He tried to raise his right hand to shake my hand but winced in pain, sitting back down on the stool.

I heard a commotion outside and went over to the open door. Cleary was headed up the steps with two of his men. All three men had their guns drawn.

I held up my hands and said, “Easy, Sergeant, it’s all over. Follow me, I’ll show you where the last of your gunmen is.”

Leaving Deuce to clean things up in the house, I led the three cops down to the beach and over to the boathouse. They entered it tactically, guns drawn. When Cleary came back out to the landing, I explained what happened and how we tried to take the man peacefully.

“Who shot him?” Cleary demanded as Rosales came up the steps behind me.

“I did,” she replied. “Four times.”

Cleary looked down at the dead man. He had one dark stain on the top of his right shoulder, close to where Doc’s exit wound had been. He also had a second, much larger stain on the left side of his chest where three holes were visible in his shirt. All of them could easily fit under a silver dollar.

“I had no choice,” Rosales continued. “He had Jesse in a choke hold and was trying to kill him.”

“He would have, too,” I added. “If Agent Rosales hadn’t stopped him.”

Cleary looked inside at the dead man, past me at Rosales and finally looked up at me. “How much longer are you people going to be on my island?”

“Three more days,” I replied. “Tops.”

“I have half a mind to deport all of you today,” he said. “But in the interest of continuing relations with both the American government and the state of Florida, I’ll allow you to stay. For three days.”

Half an hour later, having taken both my and Rosales’s statements, Cleary left. Two of his men stayed behind at the boathouse until the coroner arrived.

“Thanks, Agent Rosales,” I said as she and I walked back up the path to the house.

“Hey, I thought we were drinking buddies?” I stopped and turned toward her at the bottom of the steps.

“Thanks, Linda. I owe you.”

“And I’ll collect,” she replied, with a smile. “One of these days.” I watched after her as she went on up the steps to the house. At the top, she turned and smiled again.

“What are you going to do with me?” Bradbury asked Deuce as we came through the door.

“What we ought to do,” I said, crossing the room toward him, “is feed your ass to the sharks.”

“He did come to warn us,” Julie said. “That took some guts.”

The two women from the villa below the house were there, probably having heard the shots and all the commotion.

“A day late and a dollar short,” I growled. “A lot of people are dead now because of your and Conner’s greed.”

“I am sorry about that,” Bradbury said. “It’s something I’ll have to live with. But if Chase hadn’t brought me in, they’d be just as dead. I’m here now and can tell you all you need to know.”

Over the next hour, Bradbury explained how Conner had approached him about planting the bug after our first meeting on the boat. He said he never thought it would amount to anything but went along anyway. When they heard our conversation weeks later, Conner contacted Madic without Bradbury’s knowledge to provide the funding and manpower. Madic in turn planted a bug in the bar at the
Anchor
and contacted Maggio to have him dig up more information about us. It turned out that Maggio’s son had more connections to the crime world than Madic realized and took steps to beat Madic to the punch. As he was winding up his explanation of the snowball of events, Deuce’s phone chirped.

“It’s Cleary,” he said, before answering it.

He listened for a moment then said, “Thanks for letting us know.” After another moment, he said, “No, we’re going to continue with our plans. If she’s smart, she’s long gone by now.”

Deuce ended the call and turned to me. “Tena Horvac somehow coerced Cleary’s one-man guard force into opening her cell. He’s in the clinic, experiencing hallucinations and a very high pulse rate. Horvac and her little magic briefcase are gone and a Cigarette boat was stolen from a marina in Hope Town Harbour.”

“Oh, great,” Charity said. “That’s all we need is a necrophiliac pharmacist on the loose.”

The two women from the villa exchanged surprised glances and Bradbury’s head drooped.

“What?” I asked him.

“I did some checking after meeting her,” he said. “She was some kind of cult leader in her home country. Practiced witchcraft. Mostly harmless spells that were supposed to increase a farmer’s crops or a fisherman’s catch. But she was said to be a dark witch. Not that I believe in such nonsense, but when she was a young woman, she was gang raped by ten men. They were arrested and tried but never convicted. Over the next year, each one died of an apparent heart attack. Most of them naked in bed.”

“Well, if she’s smart,” Deuce said to all of us, “she’s long gone from here. We have work to do.” Finally, he turned to Bradbury. “Mister Bradbury, we’re going to hold you here until we figure out what to do with you. My guess is, you’ll be turned over to the Police when we get back to Florida.”

Rusty volunteered to stay and keep an eye on Doc and Bradbury while Deuce and three others headed to the second site, the house on the rock. Tony, Bourke, and I would get the boat ready if they struck out at the house. The third site was the offshore rock and we could work it well into the night if we had to.

Michelle, the blonde woman from the villa, asked Tony, “Do you think it would be possible to sort of tag along? We won’t get in the way. Just watching a treasure hunt sounds like a lot of fun.”

Tony looked over at Deuce. “Just stay out of the way,” Deuce replied.

With Doc resting, Nikki taking care of him, and Rusty watching over Bradbury, we were down to seven people. Charity, Julie, and Rosales went with Deuce to the house on the rock, while Tony and Bourke helped me get the boat ready. The two women from the villa proved to be helpful also, as they were familiar with dive gear.

Within an hour, we had the mailboxes mounted above the swim platform on the
Revenge.
I’d had the pair made after using just a single one with great results on a Confederate shipwreck last summer. They were mounted on special swing arms that would drop them down over the platform to the twin propellers, redirecting the wash from the props straight down.

Before leaving for the third site, I went up to check on Doc, Pescador racing up the hill ahead of me. He was sleeping, having taken some pain pills and self-diagnosed himself as being fit enough, if he could just get a few hours of rest.

“You’re going to make him quit the team, aren’t you?” I asked Nikki as she walked to the door with me.

“I won’t have to,” she said. “He already told me that’s what he wants to do. Carl still hasn’t sold
Miss Charlie
and Bob thinks he can talk him into hanging onto it and letting him skipper it. It’s not a nine-to-five job, but it’s a lot less dangerous. I’m sorry, Jesse.”

“Don’t be,” I replied. “He’s got a family to think of now.” My own thoughts turned to Kim. I was already rethinking my own involvement with the team. Colonel Stockwell was putting together another team to work out of Key Largo and had asked me to help him find the right boat, Captain, and location. Maybe I’d just have to find him two. I made Pescador stay with Rusty and walked back down to the
Revenge
to get underway.

It was 1300 before we arrived at the rock a mile off the coast. The water on the lee side of it was fairly shallow, only ten to fifteen feet deep. We anchored about a hundred and twenty yards, or what we’d calculated would be the greatest distance that “eighty forceful advances” west of the rock would be. We put out two heavy Danforth anchors with plenty of rode astern and the main anchor nearly on the rock. The idea was to first blast sand from the bottom at the furthest place we thought the treasure might be. Then we could work our way closer to the rock by letting out ten or fifteen feet of rode to the stern anchors and taking up the slack with the windlass. Michelle and Yvette would be useful when we had to move, by letting out the stern lines.

Tony and I got our scuba gear ready, adding extra weight to our belts to help us hold our ground against the force of the churning water.

“What will you do if you find the treasure?” Yvette asked Tony.

He glanced at me and I nodded. “First, we have to call Cleary,” he told her. “He’ll in turn contact the Interior Minister, who will send out a survey team to lay out a grid and catalogue everything.”

Michelle looked shocked. “You mean you won’t be bringing anything up?”

“Maybe one or two things,” I said. “Anything that might easily be overlooked or lost. If we find anything that we’re sure wasn’t on the ship’s manifest, well, that’s fair game. We’ll have to wait for the survey team to finish the excavation, catalogue everything, and report it to both the Bahamian and Spanish governments.”

“How many days will that take?” Yvette asked.

Tony and I both laughed as we rinsed our masks. “Days?” Tony said. “More likely months or years. Eventually we’ll get credit for the find and probably ten percent of the total worth.”

The two women exchanged nervous glances. “Years?” they asked as one.

“That might be a stretch,” Bourke told the women. “Depends on how much is down there, if it’s there at all. Getting governments involved will cause a lot of red tape, so maybe eighteen months at the outside.”

Turning to me, Bourke said, “Just got off the horn with Deuce. They struck out at the second site. Not even a single Bahamian coin. Good luck.”

I gave him a thumbs up and nodded at Tony. Wearing full face masks equipped with communications on the same frequency as Bourke’s earwig, we rolled backwards off opposite gunwales and descended to the sandy bottom.

“They seemed real disappointed,” I heard Tony say over the com.

“You take the north side, Tony,” I said. “Get a good twenty feet away from the target area and make sure you keep that lanyard around your wrist.”

“Roger that,” Tony replied. We each had a small pick with a lanyard tied to it that we could jam in the sand to help hold us in place as Bourke engaged the engines and blew the sand away from the bottom.

When we were in position, I told Bourke to engage the engines and bring them up to about nine hundred rpm. The force was stronger than I’d counted on, as the twin props forced tons of water down at the bottom. It was all I could do to hang on. After thirty seconds I told Bourke to go to neutral.

There was a pretty good current flowing north and the sand was quickly swept away, exposing a ten-foot-deep crater about thirty feet across and twenty feet wide. Tony and I swam down into it and circled slowly, checking out the newly exposed rocky bottom.