Fallen Out: Jesse McDermitt Series, The Beginning (9 page)

Rusty settled his portly frame in the stern and I took the forward seat, facing aft and untied the painter
. Tossing it onto the swim platform, I pushed the bow away and Rusty put the engine in gear and moved slowly away from the
Revenge
.

“You wanna cut that light on?” Rusty said. “I can’t see shit.”

Opening the box, I removed two Pulsar Edge night vision optic headsets and handed him one, after first switching it on. “Here, see if this helps. Just don’t look toward any bright lights.”

He fitted the head strap
on his bald head, settling the optics over his eyes and said, “Damn, man! Where’d you get these?”

“Had ‘em shipped, along with
the rifle,” I said, putting my own on. “Let’s head up the creek about half a mile. We’ll find a narrow spot and tie that line from side to side on the surface.”

“You noticed that, too?
” he asked as he brought the quick Zodiac up on plane and headed upriver. “When that guy backed up sudden, I seen his transom was loose.”

“
Yeah, with luck they’ll be going fast enough to yank the engine right off the transom.” I opened the fly rod case and removed my new M-40A3 rifle. Reaching into the box I removed the last item, a U.S. Optics MST-100 scope, and mounted it to the rifle’s rail. I’d used the M-40A1 with this scope in the Corps. The Unertl designed scope also fit on the newer A3 rifle and I’d put about a hundred rounds through it on my island over the last couple of weeks.

“This looks good,” Rusty said, pointing up ahead.

“Perfect,” I agreed. The creek narrowed just after the first bend and there were large mangroves on either side that we could use for cover. “Put me off on the starboard side. I’ll pay out the rope as you cross over.”

He brought the Zodiac up on a sandbar created by a smaller creek and I climbed out. “Let’s play it by ear,” I said. “I don’t want to kill them if we don’t have to.
Once they’re stopped, you call out to them and I’ll keep them covered. Be careful, they’ll probably have a light on and it’ll cause the optics to go white. You can get the Zodiac behind that dead fall over there and you keep down behind it.”

He slowly started across the creek
as I uncoiled the rope until he reached the far side of the giant log. He pulled the Zodiac behind the large fallen mangrove and tied it off, then moved forward and tied the rope around another one that was still standing.

“Tied off,” he called out.

I pulled the slack out of the rope, leaving just enough so that it lay in the water, almost invisible. I tied my end off to a huge mangrove and then moved back to the sandbar, where a smaller tree trunk had fallen.

It had started raining again, as the next band came ashore. Neither Rusty, nor I were strangers to waiting in the rain. In Okinawa, back in the early ‘80’s we had a Platoon Sergeant by the name of Russ
Livingston that always said, “If it ain’t rainin’, it ain’t trainin’.” He trained us well.

A few minutes later, we could hear them, maybe half
a mile away. Sound travels well across water, even out here in the Glades. A moment later, we could hear their voices. We were between two bends in the creek, about a quarter mile apart. I was counting on them rounding the bend and seeing a long straight stretch, turn off their light. I wanted it dark, when they hit the rope. That would give us the best advantage. That and surprise.

Through the night vision headset, I could see a glow lighting up the horizon around the next bend
east of us. I raised the optics and waited. They came around the bend and just as I’d hoped, turned off their light, seeing that they had a long straight shot in a fairly wide creek. I lowered my headset and looked over at Rusty. He was just lowering his and looked over at me and nodded.

T
hrough the grainy, green lens of the night vision goggles, I could see that there were three men on the boat, they must have left one on the trawler. They were coming toward us pretty fast, at least as fast as their old outboard could push them.

When they hit the rope stretched across the creek, it did a lot more than stop them. All three were big men and they were traveling at nearly
twenty-five knots. The rope snagged the engine below the water line and jerked both it, and the rotten wood transom, completely off, sending the dinghy into a sideways skid as the two men in front were launched over the bow. The guy on the tiller landed in the bow, but managed to stay aboard.

“What the hell’d you hit, Earl?” one of them yelled when he came to the surface.
The dinghy had drifted thirty feet and the two men were swimming for it.

Just as the first man reached it, Rusty called out, “You in the water! Y’all don’t follow directions very good. I distinctly remember telling you not to come back.”

Earl was Baldy. He reached down into the bottom of the boat and came up with a flashlight. Looking through the scope with the night vision goggles wasn’t easy and the dinghy was less than a hundred yards away. In the Corps, we’d trained shooting under all kinds of conditions, including using night vision. I set the cross hairs on the man’s hand as it came up. He had no idea where Rusty was and pointed the light straight toward shore, away from me. Before he could turn it on, I fired. The boom of the big rifle sounded like lightning, as the flashlight splintered in Earl’s hand.

“You two in the water!” I shouted. “Your oars are floating ten feet behind you.
One of you get them and the other get on the boat. You have ten seconds to decide.”

Earl spun around in the dinghy and nearly fell out. He crawled to the stern and felt around. “Fuckin’ engine’s gone!”

“That’s why I said get the oars. Five seconds.” One of the men in the water started splashing around, feeling for the oars. “Five feet further upstream is one. The other one is to your left.”

He found the first one and started toward the other one was as Earl
shouted, “You’re gonna regret this, mister.”

I put the scope on him and said, “If you don’t do exactly what I say, I have no problem putting a hole in your forehead and leaving you for the gators. Now get that man out of the water.”

He helped his friend into the boat, gasping. As he rolled over, I saw his face. It was Handsome. That left Crooked Nose in the water looking for the other oar.

“Straight ahead!” Rusty shouted. “Five feet.”

Crooked Nose found the second oar and was struggling to get to the dinghy with them. When he finally got there, Earl took them and pulled him from the water.

The three men whispered amongst themselves, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Finally Earl said, “You expect us to row back the way we came?”

“You’re damn sure not going downriver toward our boats,” I said. “Now real slowly, I want you to dump everything on that boat into the water.” I could see the indecision on Earl’s face. He was wearing what looked like a gold doubloon necklace. “I could put a round dead center in that doubloon you’re wearing and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

He reached a hand to the necklace and realized that Rusty and I could see them somehow. Looking in my general direction he growled, “One of these days mister, you’re gonna regret you ever met me.”

“I already do. Now start dumping everything. Start with that revolver tucked in your pants. Real slow, Earl.”

He reached with his left hand and pulled the pistol out with just his thumb and forefinger then tossed it into the water.
As I watched, he removed a large duffle bag and dropped it over. Then several sets of handcuffs and finally two Uzi automatic machine pistols and dropped them overboard.

“Very good. I’m going to throw a line to you and you’re going to tie it off to the bow of that dinghy. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” he grunted.

I untied the line from the mangrove tree, coiled it up, and threw it toward the dinghy, hitting Earl in the face. He almost fell out of the boat again, but finally got his balance and handed it forward to Handsome.

“What are you gonna do?” Crooked Nose asked.

“I’m afraid you boys would get lost out here without help, so I’m gonna tow you back to your boat. Once you get there, I’m sinking your dinghy and as soon as this storm passes, you’re going to weigh anchor and get out of here. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Earl grunted again.

“Bravo!” I shouted. “Bring the Zodiac over and pick me up.”

“Roger that, Alpha,” Rusty shouted back, picking up that I didn’t want them knowing our names.

I watched the men as Rusty untied the other end of the rope, started the outboard and came across the creek. I climbed aboard and sat up high on the bow so I could see them clearly through the scope.

“Head up river,” I said and Rusty started us moving forward. When the slack was out of the rope, he gave it more gas and we moved up the creek at about five knots. “Way upriver,” I whispered.

Ten minutes later, we got to the opening into the bay and instead of turning right to go to their boat, Rusty turned left and continued up Shark River. It took the three men another fifteen minutes before the realized they were going away from their boat, not toward it. By then we were three miles up the river at a fork where another creek joined in.

“Where the hell are you taking us?” Earl shouted.

I ignored him and told Rusty to take the right fork. Another mile we rounded a curve and came to a small island in the middle of the creek.

“Beach ‘em on that island,” I told Rusty.

He swung around the island dragging the
hundred-foot rope across the beach on one side. When their dinghy bottomed out on the sand bar, Rusty shut off the engine.

“Get out!” I shouted.

The men hesitated, so I shot the dinghy on the port side pontoon. The loud report of the rifle was followed by the hissing of air escaping from the dinghy.

“I said get out!”

They scrambled onto the sand bar and I put another round in the starboard pontoon. The dinghy deflated quickly.

“Do any of you idiots know how this river got its name?” I asked.

When none of them answered, I continued, “It’s called Shark River because it’s infested with bull sharks. They’re the only shark that can survive in fresh water. Any of you know anything about bull sharks?”

“They’re big and they’re man-eaters,” Handsome said.

“That’s right,” I said. “We’re going to leave you here on this little island now. You can use the dinghy as shelter from the storm. When it’s over, I’ll let the Coast Guard know where you are.”

“One of these days mister,” Earl grumbled as Rusty untied the rope from the Zodiac and started the engine. “When you least expect it.”

A moment later, we were up on plane headed downriver. We sped past the trawler and only slowed down when we got to the anchor buoy. I flashed my light at the boats three times and got a return flash from the bow of the
Revenge
.

Once aboard, Jimmy said that he got a return email from the Coast Guard saying that
the Marine Patrol out of Flamingo was on the way in three boats and should arrive in less than an hour.

I pulled out a chart of the area and gave Jimmy the coordinates of the little island we put Earl and his buddies on and told him to email them back and let them know that only one man was aboard the trawler and the other three were stranded further up Shark River.

Dawn broke gray, rainy and windy. Clouds scudded across the sky constantly, but the rain still came in bands. An hour later, we heard the sound of outboards racing up the river toward us. Jimmy and I went up onto the foredeck and through the rain we could see blue lights flashing. Two of the boats held off, while the third came up to the bow.

“Are one of you Captain McDermitt?” one of the officers asked. He wore the bars of
a Lieutenant on the collar of his yellow slicker.

“
I am,” I replied. “Did you get the update on where the three men are stranded?”

“Yes we did. How sure are you that the kidnap victims are aboard that trawler over there?”

“Not 100%,” I replied. “At least not 100% that it’s the mother and daughters from that kidnapping last week.”

“And how do you know this?”

“I swam over using a Drager rebreather and listened through the hull. I clearly heard them say they had three captives, but also wanted to kidnap the women we have aboard here.”

“A rebreather?” he asked. “You some kind of Navy SEAL or something?”

“No,” I replied. “Marine Force Recon.”

“Really?
You said there was one man aboard that trawler? Is he armed?”

“The other three were,” I replied. “I can’t say for sure if that last one is or not. He’s a meth head, by the way.”

“Oh great,” the Lieutenant said. “Just what I don’t need, an armed tweaker. We’ll be back to get your statements.” Then he turned to the driver and said, “Let’s go check it out, Sergeant.” The three boats sped away toward the trawler. I hoped Tweaker didn’t put up a fight.

Thirty minutes later, the rain stopped and we could see the trawler through the mist. We hadn’t heard any gunshots, so that was good. One of the boats sped away, heading east.