Fallen Hunter (Jesse McDermitt Series) (8 page)

“You’re kidding,” Deuce said.

Four months ago, when Deuce and I met, he had come to me only to ask that I take him to a reef, to spread his dad’s ashes. At the time, he had an upcoming mission to take down a terrorist smuggling operation, but it turned out that the people involved were also the ones that killed both his dad and my wife.

“So,” I said, “If you and your guys take him down, Trent’s off the hook.”

“Our intel says he’s in Cuba this weekend,” he said, “And he makes a trip there about every month.”

“Your intel is wrong,” I said. “He’s here in Key West.”

“Not possible,” he said. “Where’d you hear this?”

“I have my own intel community,” I said. “Apparently more reliable than Uncle Sam’s.”

Just then my cell phone chimed. I looked and saw that it was Lawrence. “Hang on, I gotta get this.”

I opened the phone and said, “Hey Lawrence, got something?” I listened for a minute, then said, “Thanks, I owe you.”

I ended the call and said to Deuce, “Santiago is partying at the Green Parrot, right now. Lines of coke on the table, with hot and cold running women.”

“Who’s this Lawrence guy?” he asked.

Julie called up from the cockpit, “Are y’all done talking? Can I come back up?”

“Yeah,” I called down. Then to Deuce, I said, “Lawrence is my cab driver. Never underestimate cabbies and bartenders as good intel sources. They’re invisible, but see and hear everything.”

Julie climbed back up and took a seat on the bench next to Deuce. “You have a nice selection down there,” she said.

“So?” Deuce asked, “Are you in?”

I thought it over for a minute and asked, “When?”

“A week to ten days,” he said. “How are you playing it with Trent?”

“He and his family are at my house. That’s who spotted you. I’m skippering his shrimp boat, starting Monday morning.”

Deuce thought about it for a few minutes, while he took a long pull on his beer and looked out over the marina. “Think you might be able to cozy up to him?”

“Well, my initial plan was to just blow him off and say no. What’s on your mind?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he said. “Keep your damn phone turned on. I’ll call you tomorrow, after I talk to the boss.”

“I’ll be incommunicado tomorrow until later in the evening,” I said. “Taking a friend out to Fort Jefferson. Send me an email if you can’t reach me by phone. I’ll plug the laptop into the stereo speaker to hear the chime.”

We talked about things in Marathon and the changes I’d made on the island for another twenty minutes. Then Julie said they had to go, it was getting late. I walked them down to the gate, shook hands with Deuce and Julie gave me another big hug.

“You better get down to the
Anchor
soon and see dad. Oh, that reminds me, there’s a lawyer looking for you. Here’s his card,” she said, handing me a business card.

“Y’all run along,” I said. “I’ll give the guy a call tomorrow.”

They were half way to the gate when I remembered and called out, “Hey, Deuce. Does the name Douzaine Lingots Dior mean anything to you?”

Deuce turned around and said, “It’s not a name, Jesse. Douzaine lingots d’or is French for dozen gold bars. Why?”

I woke up about an hour before dawn to the sound of the coffee maker gurgling in the galley. Padding barefoot across the salon deck in my boxers, I poured coffee into a heavy mug with the Marine Recon logo on it and went outside. I’ve always been an early riser, even as a kid. The hour or two before dawn is a very calm and peaceful time of day. I took my coffee up to the bridge and sat down at the helm. Looking across the bridge and out at the western sky I could see the constellation of Orion the Hunter, on his side as though fallen, slowly sinking toward the horizon.

Since it was still way too early for any lawyer to be in his office, I called the number on the card Julie had given me last night, curious about what a lawyer wanted to talk to me about. As I figured, I got the voicemail and left a message, telling him that I’d be unavailable by phone most of the day and asking him to email me what it was he wanted to talk to me about. Then I left my email address and repeated it a second time.

I was almost done with my first cup of coffee and was climbing down to get a second cup when the bell on the dock rang, signaling someone was at the gate for me. I hadn’t seen any cars pull into the lot, though. Looking down the dock, I could barely make out a woman on a bicycle at the gate. Damn, I thought, she’s early. I dropped quickly to the deck, almost leaped through the salon and grabbed a pair of cargo pants and a tee-shirt from the dresser in the stateroom. Struggling to put the shorts and shirt on, I banged my toe on the steps, going back up to the salon. I finally limped down the dock to the gate and opened it for her.

“I didn’t expect you this early,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, no,” I replied. “I was on the bridge, having coffee, but I wasn’t even dressed yet.”

“You drink coffee in your birthday suit?”

“Well, sometimes, yeah,” I said. “But I had my skivvies on, just now.”

“Your skivvies?”

“Marine slang for boxer shorts,” I said. Then to change the subject, I asked, “Would you like some coffee?”

“What should I do about my bike? I didn’t even think about that, when I left. Guess I should have taken a cab.”

“Bring it over to the dock. Nobody will bother it, inside the gate. You don’t have a car?”

I walked her bike to the storage box at the foot of my slip, then helped her step over the transom. “No,” she said. “I sold it when I moved down here. Seemed wasteful to have a car on an island that’s less than six square miles. Your boat is beautiful.”

We went into the galley and I poured us both a cup of coffee. I showed her around the galley and salon area, then we went up to the bridge. She asked all kinds of questions about my boat, which I was happy to oblige. Then she asked about my time in the Corps, which I’m a little reluctant to talk about. She sensed that and steered the conversation back to my boat, asking, “So, where are you going to take me?”

“I thought that since you’ve never been on a boat, you might like to see Fort Jefferson.”

“Where’s that?” she asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s an old Fort, built right after we bought Florida from Spain to protect the shipping lanes to the Caribbean. It’s about eighty miles west of here.”

“Eighty miles? I thought Key West was the last island in the Keys.”

“Last one you can get to by car,” I said. “There’s quite a few others between here and the Dry Tortugas.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Not long,” I said. “Unless we get caught by a lot of traffic lights.”

She looked at me for a second, then punched me on the shoulder. “I almost fell for that.”

I rubbed the place where she’d punched me and said, “You ready to go?”

She nodded enthusiastically, so I turned around and started the engines, which settled into a throaty rumble. “I’ll be right back. Gotta cast off the lines.”

I climbed down to the cockpit, vaulted over the transom to the dock and untied the mooring lines. A minute later, I was back on the bridge. The sun was just starting to purple the eastern sky, so I switched the bridge lights from white to red, to allow my eyesight to adjust. I turned on the radar, sonar, UHF radio, and running lights. I turned on the GPS and entered Fort Jefferson, which I’d saved before going to bed last night.

I bumped the engines in gear and eased forward until the stern was near the end of the dock, then I reversed the starboard engine to allow the big boat to turn tightly between the two docks. Once we were clear and headed south toward the channel I switched on the big spotlight on the roof of the bridge. It was already facing forward, barely illuminating the pulpit on the bow, but casting a long beam of light out on the water. It easily picked up the markers going all the way out to the main channel. A few minutes later, we were past the last marker and in the open ocean, with barely a swell rolling under the keel.

“Hold on,” I said and pushed both throttles about half way. The bow came up as the
Revenge
gathered speed, finally coming back down as she got up on plane. It’s a great feeling, when a boat goes from cutting through the water, to skimming over its surface. I never get tired of it.

I started a long, slow turn to the west and looked over at Tina in the second seat. She was grinning like the Cheshire cat. “How fast are we going?” she asked.

Looking at the knot meter and running the calculation in my head, I said, “About twenty-five miles per hour.” Not wanting to frighten her, I added, “I can slow down if you want.”

She looked over at me and said, “Can you go faster?”

I checked the radar and there was absolutely nothing ahead of us. So, I pushed the throttles further, but not all the way to the stops. The
Revenge
was built for the drug trade and her big eighteen liter engines pushed the boat beyond its cruising speed of twenty-six knots and I settled her to about forty knots. Faster than I liked to run to save fuel, but the lady wanted speed.

“Is forty-five fast enough?” I asked.

“Really? We’re going that fast? It doesn’t seem like it.”

“Because we’re sitting about as high as the roof of a house,” I said. “I could use another cup of coffee. Take the helm for me. Would you like some more?”

“You want me to drive? I might hit someone.”

I stood up and looked all around. “There’s nobody to hit. I could turn on the auto pilot, if you’d rather not.”

She slid over into the first seat and said, “What do I do?”

I pointed to the GPS and said, “See the line, here? If you stray too far away from it, an arrow will point you back. Or, just check the compass now and then and keep us on a course of about 265 degrees. Third option, and my favorite, just pick a cloud up in front of us and head toward it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I left her at the helm and climbed down to the galley and poured us both another cup. I took my time getting back up topside, to let her get a feel for it. When I did, I took the second seat, checked the compass and handed her the mug.

“This is great!” she exclaimed. “Nothing like my friends have told me.”

“Your friends don’t like boats?”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t think any of them have been in a boat like this. It’s a frigging yacht.”

“No, just a work boat. Even a small yacht would cost ten times what this one did.”

I sat back and watched her enjoying the feel of the big boat under her control. She had her raven hair pulled back in a ponytail and was wearing a loose fitting red blouse, cut off blue jeans and flip flops.

“There’s a little more there,” I said pointing at the throttles, “if you want it.”

She looked over at me, smiling and then shoved the throttles to the stops. The big boat surged forward, reaching its top speed of forty-five knots in just a few seconds. She slowly turned the wheel to the right, then back to the left.

“How fast is this?” She asked.

I pointed to the digital knot meter on the GPS and said, “Multiply by one point one five. About fifty-two miles per hour. You’re really enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”

“Yes, absolutely,” she said. “And you do this for a living?”

Pulling back on the throttles, I dropped our speed to about twenty-eight knots, just slightly above the best cruising speed and said, “Not often, lately. Truth is, this week was the first time the
Revenge’s
been out in four months. We can’t run wide open like that for long. Even at this speed, we’re burning about seventy-five gallons an hour.”

“Wow! That’s a lot of gas. You don’t work much?”

“We live on an island. No bills at all, except my cell phone and I've thought about throwing it overboard quite a few times. My dog and I eat fish and lobster, mostly. Crab, on occasion. We have enough canned vegetables to last a year. I work when I need to and then retire for a little while.”

“You have a dog? And he likes fish?”

“He’s a better fisherman than me,” I said. “His name’s Pescador. Right now, he’s entertaining friends at our house for the week.”

“Pescador? Is that Spanish?”

“It means fisherman,” I said. “We better switch seats, the approach to Fort Jefferson is coming up.”

We switched seats and as she wriggled between me and the helm, she brushed against me and I could smell her hair. It didn’t smell like perfume, just that kind of clean girl smell I like. The close proximity caused a stirring in me. Fort Jefferson was just coming into view and I said, “It’s the biggest brick structure in the western hemisphere, or so I’ve been told.”

As we approached the ancient structure, I slowed, the stern lifted and the
Revenge
came down off plane. She stood up for a better view, placing one hand on my right shoulder and the other on the corner of the helm for balance, as we were now wallowing in the small rollers, gently rocking side to side as they went by under the keel.

“It’s huge,” she said. “What was it built for, way out here in the ocean?”

“I don’t know all the history,” I said. “But I heard that it was a place for the Navy to station one or two ships of the line, to protect the shipping lanes. If bad weather came up, the inner harbor could provide a safe haven for four or five ships. Later, the Union used it to keep Confederate prisoners. Many never left.”

“It’s not used for anything today?”

“No, it’s a National Park now. Sometimes a wayward sailor will hole up here, to get away from a tropical storm.”

We slowly idled around the east side of Bush Key, then circled the north side of the Fort and around to the west side, following the same channel that seventeenth century mariners had used into the little harbor. The docks were all empty, not a soul in sight. Looked like we had the island to ourselves, at least for now.

As I pulled up to one of the docks, I said, “This is going to be a little tricky. Think you can handle the helm if we drift away from the dock before I can get a line on one of the davits?”

“I can try,” she said. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Sit here,” I said. “You won’t need to steer. If anything, I’ll call up for you to shift either the right or left engine into forward or reverse.”

“Sounds easy enough,” she said. I checked again and we hadn’t drifted, so I quickly climbed down the ladder and grabbed a fish gaff from the port side of the cockpit. I was able to hook one of the davits and pulling the stern in close, I got a line on it. Hustling to the bow, the boat had started to drift a little too far for me to reach the pier with the gaff, so I called up to Tina, “Put the right engine in forward and the left one in reverse.”

She did and the bow slowly swung toward the dock. I called up to her again and told her to put both in neutral. Then reaching out with the gaff, I hooked another davit and pulled the bow in and got a line on it. We were now secure.

“Okay,” I said, “Shut both engines off.” It was suddenly very quiet, the only sound being the swish of the small waves breaking on the southern shore and an occasional gull, wheeling and crying overhead.

As I climbed back up to the bridge, Tina looked all around, then said, “Kind of spooky, but beautiful.”

Looking at her, I said, “Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing.” She looked over at me and realizing I was talking about her, she punched me on the shoulder.

“Spooky?” she asked.

I laughed. Something I hadn’t done a lot of in the last few months. “Yeah,” I said. “You seem an open book, but there’s still a mysteriousness I can’t quite put a finger on.”

“That’d be from my dad’s side. He was French Creole, born and raised in southern Louisiana. His family had been there for many generations.”

“And he left there for Nebraska?” I asked. “That’s quite a change in scenery.”

“His ancestors were fishermen, but he wanted to farm. He joined the Army, fought in Korea and when he got out, he never went back to Louisiana. Headed straight for the heartland and bought a farm. That’s where he met mom.”

“A Cajun girl from Nebraska,” I said. “Spooky.”

She looked around again, then said, “Shall we go ashore?”

“Sure,” I said. “I put together a little picnic lunch for later. But I have to catch the main course first. Let’s go.”