Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines) (17 page)

Hanna rolled her eyes as she left her
grandmother alone in the kitchen with Nick Kelly, wondering if that was the
smartest thing to do, especially when she heard them laughing. Even at eighty,
Colleen McHenry enjoyed a bawdy sense of humor. Hanna knew Nick did at times,
too. The two of them were probably laughing about that “You ride mine, and I’ll
ride yours” comment!

Nevertheless, a half hour later, Hanna
was indeed riding on the back of Nick’s big, black, chrome adorned Harley
Davidson. She was wearing jeans, boots, a sleeveless turtleneck sweater, and a
short, butter-colored, leather jacket. Scared to death, her eyes squeezed shut,
she couldn’t stop shivering. Nick’s broad chest caught most of the wind, and
she was dressed warmly enough, but her hands felt like ice cubes.

They were clenched around Nick’s waist
as she clung on to him for dear life. Every time they rounded a corner, she
pressed her helmeted head to his shoulder blades, certain she was going to fall
off. Her equilibrium was completely off-kilter!

Nick took one hand off his handlebars
and covered hers with it. “Put your hands under my jacket,” he advised her over
the short wave radios in their helmets.

Hanna did as he suggested and slid her
hands under his waist-length jacket, but they kept slipping out.

He caught them a second time and
tucked both inside the waistband of his Levis. “Better?” he asked over the
radio. “Warmer?”

Her hands were now trapped between his
waistband and the bare, hair-roughed skin of his abdomen. She couldn’t resist
rubbing her cold fingertips back and forth a little against his heated flesh.

She heard him chuckle and immediately
started to withdraw her hands from inside his pants, but Nick stopped her by
clamping one of his hands over hers. “Relax, Doctor. You’ll get there alive and
in one piece. I promise.”

Hanna groaned in reply and opened her
eyes just a bit to peek out at the countryside whizzing by at what seemed like a
frightening speed. It felt like they were flying, and if every muscle in her
body wasn’t so tense, she might actually have been excited by the ride.

When they reached downtown Port George,
they headed to the terminal and slowly drove aboard the waiting ferry where
they parked the bike below deck. Once the engine was turned off, Hanna slumped
against the backrest and blew out the breath she’d been holding. The muscles in
her legs were so knotted with tension, they wouldn’t move.

Nick shoved his kickstand down,
stuffed the keys in his hip pocket, then swung one long leg over his Harley to dismount.
When both feet were planted on the deck of the ferry, he released the chin
strap of his helmet, then lifted it off his head with his gloved hands and hung
it over one of the long-necked handlebars. Turning, he saw that Hanna was still
seated on the back of his bike, rigid and unmoving.

A deep frown wrinkled his dark brows.
“Are you okay?”

When she didn’t make a move to get
off, he reached for her and lifted her off. As soon as her booted feet touched
the ground, her legs buckled beneath her.

“Whoa!” Nick grabbed her around the
waist to steady her. “You’re shaking.”

Hanna held onto him until she felt
strong enough to step away on her own. “Oh Lord! We still have Seattle traffic
to face,” she breathed as she removed her helmet and tucked it under her arm.
Slowly, carefully, she headed toward the stairway that led to the upper
observation deck.

Nick took the helmet from her, put it
on the other handlebar, then followed her. “You really never have been on a
motorcycle before, have you?”

She shook her head and grabbed the
railing to climb the gangway. “No, absolutely not! I’m a doctor. I think
they’re death machines. Have you ever seen a motorcycle accident victim after
he got caught beneath a car or truck?” she demanded, glancing over her shoulder
at him as she climbed the steps upwards. His grin fueled her anger. “It’s not a
pretty sight, even with a helmet! The victims usually have head trauma, broken bones,
and often need plastic surgery.”

Up on the main passenger deck, Nick
followed her to the railing. “I guess we’ve finally found something we don’t
have in common.”

Hanna swung to face him, annoyed at
the laughter she heard in his voice. “Colonel Kelly, this is not funny! You
risk your life enough doing what you do!” she scolded him hotly. “Now, I have
to add riding a motorcycle to my prayers for you.”

His scarred eyebrow lifted in
surprise. “You pray for me?”

“I certainly do! And I have for all
the twenty long years you’ve been a Force Recon Marine. Why do you think you’ve
stayed alive so long?”

“I don’t know.” He laughed, amused by
her spurt of temper, but touched, too. “I always thought it was my superior
skill as a warrior.” Then he gallantly lifted her hand to his lips. “Guess it
was my beautiful guardian angel instead.”

That took the wind out of her sails.
She didn’t have a response. He moved closer and hooked an arm around her waist.
“I love my bike, though, Doctor. And I’m an experienced rider, so stop worrying
that you’re not going to survive the experience.” Removing his arm from her
waist, he intertwined it with hers as they leaned out over the railing, side by
side, to stare across Admiralty Strait. A moment later, he caught her hand in
his. “I promise you’re safe with me.”

TRAFFIC WASN’T AS BAD AS HANNA
EXPECTED. She managed to relax a bit on the ride through downtown Seattle. They
got to the FBI building an hour before all the business people hit their lunch
breaks, so they found a parking space in the public garage down the block.
After locking up his bike and setting the alarm, Nick escorted Hanna the short
distance to the building where Kurt Palmer worked.

Nick wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing
jeans, another polo shirt, black this time, and his brown leather bomber
jacket. Yet everyone who greeted him addressed him as Colonel. Hanna was
impressed with how many people knew him, especially by his new rank.

“You’ve worked with these people
before?” she whispered to him as she walked beside him to Agent Palmer’s
office.

“A few of them.”

The office they were looking for was
at the end of a long corridor. The door was open, but Nick knocked on it anyway
to alert his friend, who was behind his desk, on the phone.

Kurt Palmer appeared to be Nick’s age—
tall, dark haired, well built, and good looking. As soon as he got off the
phone, he had a friendly handshake for Nick and a ready smile for Hanna. He
directed them to sit down in a couple of chairs positioned in front of his
desk.

Nick handed him one of the fishing rod
cylinders that he and Hanna had recovered from their diving expeditions. “This
is one of three that we found around the crab pots we inspected the other day.
All of them were empty. Ring any bells?”

It was obvious that Nick had kept Kurt
fully informed about what they had been up to. He took the tube, inspected the
outside, turning it this way and that, then unscrewed the metal lid and looked
inside. Just like Nick had done, he sniffed it. Then he turned a flashlight
inside it and looked more closely.

Hanna hadn’t seen anything inside. She
wondered what Kurt was looking for. These tubes seemed to interest him as much
as they had Nick.

“I’ll send this over to our lab to
have some tests run on it. Might be some microscopic residue left in here.” He
secured the lid once more, then pulled out a large evidence bag and dropped the
tube inside. “Tell me how and where you found these three tubes again.”

“Hanna found the first one next to
some of the locals’ crab pots in Discovery Bay. Then, she and I found the other
two in a few miles north of the first spot, embedded in the sand next to more
crab pots.”

“So are these cages a permanent
fixture in the bay?”

“Pretty much. They aren’t permanently
fixed, but the locals will leave them in the bay most of the year. They’re used
so predominantly, no one pays them much attention. It’s a common sight around
the area.”

“You said you think you’ve seen these
tubes before,” Kurt prompted Nick.

“Don’t you remember reading about
them? My team was assisting a DEA unit on some joint task force operations in
Thailand, Malaysia, and Hong Kong several years ago. We raided a series of labs
in each of those locations and found tubes similar to these, packed with
plastic bags of heroin. A tube this size could hold several million dollars’
worth of heroin.”

Hanna made a small sound of dismay.

“I’ve read that the Chinese Triad has
been known to ship their heroin in cans of aerosol deodorant,” Kurt replied.
“But these tubes could triple the load, and they look like they’d be watertight.”

“They are. That’s why sport fisherman
like them. They keep their rods dry no matter what the conditions.”

Hanna was fascinated by what they were
discussing. She had begun to suspect drug issues herself, but she didn’t have
the background to link the pieces together like Nick was doing. As both
families had thought, his specialized training gave him the experience to look
at things in ways they would never have thought of.

“What do you think the rods have to do
with the crab pots?” Kurt asked, moving a pencil around on his cluttered desk.

Nick glanced over at Hanna. “This is
just speculation at this point,” he warned her. “But I think someone is
smuggling heroin into this country by packing it into the cylinders like these,
then depositing those cylinders in the crab pots for pick up by local mules.
The pots are already marked, and for the most part, go unnoticed by everyone,
except the locals who fish with them. Because they’re anchored, they don’t
shift much with the tide. They’re fairly stationary. So, the mules come in at
night, look for the marker buoys, pull up the cages, and take out the heroin
packed tubes. Because the delivery guys and the mules operate out of speed
boats, probably equipped with radar scanners and electronic sensing devices,
they don’t need their night lights on. Thus, they don’t attract any attention.
They can deliver and pick up, without anyone ever noticing. Certainly, unless
forewarned, the Coast Guard isn’t going to bother them in the dead of night.
Most of the people who live along the shore are retired. They aren’t up that
late, but even if they were, they wouldn’t be able to see a mile off shore
without night vision scopes. I am a bit surprised no one has inadvertently
picked up a full tube. The smugglers must have some way of preventing that or
they’re just damn lucky.”

“That sounds like a pretty slick
operation,” Hanna interjected.

Nick nodded. “I think it’s been going
on a long time, it’s been so slick and undetectable. But some of the old
timers, like Nat Simms, started to notice their catch was down and suspected
poaching. That’s why he called the sheriff and made complaint after complaint.
The night Dylan went out to investigate Nat’s last complaint, the old guy had
finally spotted a strange boat near his pots. He thought he’d caught someone
tampering with them. Dylan went out to question the boater, and probably ran
straight into a mule making a pick-up. I think that’s how he died.”

“Oh my lord!” Hanna was stunned. She
could feel the blood drain from her face.

“If the Triad is involved, we’ve got a
bad problem here. They’re as violent and as ruthless as it comes,” Kurt added.

Nick took Hanna’s hand. Her face was
so pale, it was nearly white. “We still have to prove this. I may have it all
wrong. That’s why I’ve been hesitant to say anything to the families. I was
hoping to get more evidence. But we may get lucky with those wiretaps and
bugs.”

Kurt raised both his hands. “Whoa! I
don’t think I want to hear this, bud. If you didn’t get the proper clearances,
it could compromise a prosecution later.”

“Fine. You didn’t hear anything,
because I didn’t say it, did I, Hanna?”

She looked at him and shook her head.
“I didn’t hear anything.”

Kurt rolled his eyes. “How you two
private citizens get this information you’re sharing with me is your business.
Understood?”

“Perfectly.” Nick grinned crookedly.
“But I can count on you to do a little surveillance with me if I need it, can’t
I?”

“As long as it doesn’t entail illegal
entry. I’m not in Force Recon anymore. Now, I gotta follow the rules, so we
don’t blow prosecutions.”

“Okay. Think of me as an informant
then,” Nick advised him. “Don’t worry about how I get the information.”

“So where is this heroin coming from?”
Hanna asked quietly from her chair. “And what is the Chinese Triad?”

Kurt answered her. “The Chinese Triad
is a large, powerful, crime organization, a syndicate that operates out of the
Golden Triangle— the Asian countries Nick mentioned. They’re organized into
gangs, and they control most of the world’s heroin traffic. In this country,
they are really strong along the East and West coast. They operate out of
Chinatowns in large cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Vancouver, Canada.
They hide well in these locations. People who live in these primarily Asian communities
are reluctant to inform on them because they mistrust outside authorities and
because the Triad is so violent. They think nothing of killing whole families
if anyone crosses them or interferes with their operations.”